AI systems are getting better at tricking us A wave of AI systems have “deceived” humans in ways they haven’t been explicitly trained to do, by offering up untrue explanations for their behavior or concealing the truth from human users and misleading them to achieve a strategic end.  This issue highlights how difficult artificial intelligence is to control and the unpredictable ways in…
https://www.technologyreview.c....om/2024/05/10/109229

Tech workers should shine a light on the industry’s secretive work with the military It’s a hell of a time to have a conscience if you work in tech. The ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza has brought the stakes of Silicon Valley’s military contracts into stark relief. Meanwhile, corporate leadership has embraced a no-politics-in-the-workplace policy enforced at the point of the knife. Workers are caught in the middle. Do…
https://www.technologyreview.c....om/2024/05/10/109224

The burgeoning field of brain mapping This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.  The human brain is an engineering marvel: 86 billion neurons form some 100 trillion connections to create a network so complex that it is, ironically, mind boggling. This…
https://www.technologyreview.c....om/2024/05/10/109223

Hong Kong is targeting Western Big Tech companies in its new ban of a popular protest song It wasn’t exactly surprising when, on Wednesday May 8, a Hong Kong appeals court sided with the city government to take down “Glory to Hong Kong” from the internet. The trial, in which no one represented the defense, was the culmination of a years-long battle over the song that has become the unofficial anthem for…
https://www.technologyreview.c....om/2024/05/09/109225