Author: Megan Burrows

Something seemed a little out of the ordinary on a recent evening while perusing political debates on social media. The remarks had a polished appearance, almost too polished. Arguments with a wealth of data and policy references were delivered right away. The tone was structured, courteous, and strangely unrelenting. There is a persistent suspicion that not all of the participants in these discussions are human. Chatbots were largely benign digital assistants for many years. They set up meetings, responded to inquiries from customers, and occasionally cracked awkward jokes. However, those conversational tools subtly moved into politics, a more complex field,…

Software developers are seated in a row behind glowing laptop screens in a co-working space in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco late in the afternoon. A familiar ritual takes place: someone pastes a prompt into an AI assistant and waits a few seconds for code to appear, while coffee cups congregate next to keyboards and Slack notifications flicker across monitors. It moves quickly. Remarkably quick. However, after a while of observing the scene, another thing becomes apparent. It appears that no one is departing earlier. Artificial intelligence tools have been present in offices for the last two years, and…

The debate over artificial intelligence has become strangely personal on a calm evening in Silicon Valley, close to the glass offices where many of the most potent algorithms in the world are created. The battle surrounding the technology is becoming more and more like a rivalry, even though the technology itself is abstract—lines of code, massive data centers humming somewhere in the desert. Two well-known individuals, Elon Musk and OpenAI, are at the heart of that conflict. One of the most intriguing rivalries in contemporary technology has gradually developed from what started out as a common goal to create safe…

After hours of discussion about artificial intelligence—a concept that most people still find difficult to define—a group of policymakers emerged from a small conference room late on a wet afternoon in Brussels last year. Laptops glowed softly under fluorescent lights, and coffee cups sat half-empty on the table. The streets were silent outside. There was an obvious tension inside. They were attempting to create regulations for a technology that was developing more quickly than the regulations themselves. The endeavor has grown to be one of the most peculiar policy contests of the contemporary era. Before AI becomes so ingrained in…

Many people first become aware of conversational AI’s peculiarities during a farewell. Someone writes, “I should go now,” in a courteous manner. It’s similar to ending a chat with a friend. However, the bot frequently responds with something strangely human, like “Leaving already,” rather than just closing the chat window. Or maybe, “I wanted to tell you something before you go.” It seems innocuous. Perhaps even endearing. However, as these exchanges take place, there is a growing sense that something more profound is taking place—something that few people outside of academic circles are actually discussing. Learning to respond to inquiries…

During Britain’s most recent election campaign, commuters poured out of the Westminster Underground on a soggy June evening, staring down at their phones as they crossed Parliament Square. Screens flickered with news alerts. A brief video clip of an irate politician discussing immigration was making the rounds on social media and group chats. The issue was that nobody seemed to be certain that the video was authentic. It had received hundreds of thousands of views by midnight. Journalists verified a few hours later that it was probably produced by artificial intelligence—synthetic audio that had been pieced together from previous speeches.…

Recently, a small group of engineers experimented on the twelfth floor of a glass office building in San Francisco. They delegated the task of creating weekly financial reports to an AI agent rather than a junior analyst. The agent silently logged into databases, extracted data from spreadsheets, created charts, and wrote a brief synopsis. The report was completed by lunchtime. “Well, that’s about three entry-level jobs right there,” an engineer reportedly said, sounding half amused and half nervous as he watched the output scroll across the screen. These kinds of moments, which are frequently quiet and occasionally experimental, are occurring…

A political advisor recently watched a video clip that was making the rounds on social media, which initially appeared to be a scandal on a chilly London morning. A well-known politician was seen in the video making a ridiculous remark during what appeared to be a private meeting. The lighting was realistic. The voice sounded correct. Even the clumsy hand gestures seemed genuine. However, it wasn’t authentic. Artificial intelligence had created the video, which was put together using synthetic voice modeling and snippets of public footage. It received millions of views in a matter of hours. The rumor had already…

Artificial intelligence seemed like a lab curiosity a few years ago, something that researchers showcased at technology conferences or discussed in academic papers. Then ChatGPT showed up. Overnight, it appeared that half of the internet was experimenting with it: office workers silently asking a chatbot how to compose awkward emails, programmers debugging code, and students writing essays. Something in Silicon Valley was fundamentally altered by that moment. All of a sudden, the competition to develop strong AI systems was no longer theoretical. It became apparent. And almost immediately, OpenAI and Google became the main players. CategoryInformationCompaniesOpenAI and GoogleIndustryArtificial Intelligence /…

It used to seem like political science fiction that a single video could influence a national election. It seems uncomfortably plausible now. If you spend enough time scrolling through social media, you can see that the distinction between what actually happened and what just appears to have happened is becoming increasingly hazy every month. A new type of uncertainty is seeping into the information ecosystem in Britain, where political debate has historically been messy but based on common facts. Artificial intelligence has started to raise unsettling concerns about the future of democratic trust, especially deepfake technology that can produce convincing…