Large language models are famous for their ability to make things up—in fact, it’s what they’re best at. But their inability to tell fact from fiction has left many businesses wondering if using them is worth the risk. A new tool created by Cleanlab, an AI startup spun out of a quantum computing lab at MIT, is designed to give high-stakes users a clearer sense of how trustworthy these models really are. Called the Trustworthy Language Model, it gives any output generated by a large language model a score between 0 and 1, according to its reliability. This lets people choose which responses to ..read more

I’m stressed and running late, because what do you wear for the rest of eternity?  This makes it sound like I’m dying, but it’s the opposite. I am, in a way, about to live forever, thanks to the AI video startup Synthesia. For the past several years, the company has produced AI-generated avatars, but today it launches a new generation, its first to take advantage of the latest advancements in generative AI, and they are more realistic and expressive than anything I’ve ever seen. While today’s release means almost anyone will now be able to make a digital double, on this early April aftern ..read more

The role of AI prompt engineer attracted attention for its high-six-figure salaries when it emerged in early 2023. Companies define it in different ways, but its principal aim is to help a company integrate AI into its operations.  Danai Myrtzani of Sleed, a digital marketing agency in Greece, describes herself as more prompter than engineer. She joined the company in March 2023 as one of two experts on its new experimental-AI team. Go-to AI experts: Since joining Sleed, Myrtzani has helped develop a tool that generates personalized LinkedIn posts for clients. The tool works with OpenAI’s ..read more

As Climax Foods CEO Oliver Zahn serves up a plate of vegan brie, feta, and blue cheese in his offices in Emeryville, California, I’m keeping my expectations modest. Most vegan cheese falls into an edible uncanny valley full of discomforting not-quite-right versions of the real thing. But the brie I taste today is smooth, rich, and velvety—and delicious. I could easily believe it was made from cow’s milk, but it is made entirely from plants. And it couldn’t have come into existence, says Zahn, without the use of machine learning. Climax Foods is one of several startups, also including Shiru of ..read more

We’ve all seen videos over the past few years demonstrating how agile humanoid robots have become, running and jumping with ease. We’re no longer surprised by this kind of agility—in fact, we’ve grown to expect it. The problem is, these shiny demos lack real-world applications. When it comes to creating robots that are useful and safe around humans, the fundamentals of movement are more important. As a result, researchers are using the same techniques to train humanoid robots to achieve much more modest goals.  Alan Fern, a professor of computer science at Oregon State University, and a t ..read more

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The holy grail of robotics since the field’s beginning has been to build a robot that can do our housework. But for a long time, that has just been a dream. While roboticists have been able to get robots to do impressive things in the lab, such as parkour, this usually requires meticulous planning in a tightly-controlled setting. This makes it hard for robots to work reliably in homes around children and pets, homes have wildly varying floorplans, and contai ..read more

Silent. Rigid. Clumsy. Henry and Jane Evans are used to awkward houseguests. For more than a decade, the couple, who live in Los Altos Hills, California, have hosted a slew of robots in their home.  In 2002, at age 40, Henry had a massive stroke, which left him with quadriplegia and an inability to speak. Since then, he’s learned how to communicate by moving his eyes over a letter board, but he is highly reliant on caregivers and his wife, Jane.  Henry got a glimmer of a different kind of life when he saw Charlie Kemp on CNN in 2010. Kemp, a robotics professor at Georgia Tech, was o ..read more

The views expressed in this video are those of the speakers, and do not represent any endorsement or sponsorship. Is the open-source approach, which has democratized access to software, ensured transparency, and improved security for decades, now poised to have a similar impact on AI? We dissect the balance between collaboration and control, legal ramifications, ethical considerations, and innovation barriers as the AI industry seeks to democratize the development of large language models. Explore more from Booz Allen Hamilton on the future of AI About the speakers Alison Smith, Director of G ..read more

Few technological advances have generated as much excitement as AI. In particular, generative AI seems to have taken business discourse to a fever pitch. Many manufacturing leaders express optimism: Research conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights found ambitions for AI development to be stronger in manufacturing than in most other sectors. Manufacturers rightly view AI as integral to the creation of the hyper-automated intelligent factory. They see AI’s utility in enhancing product and process innovation, reducing cycle time, wringing ever more efficiency from operations and assets, impr ..read more

Forget Skynet: One of the biggest risks of AI is your organization’s reputation. That means it’s time to put science-fiction catastrophizing to one side and begin thinking seriously about what AI actually means for us in our day-to-day work. This isn’t to advocate for navel-gazing at the expense of the bigger picture: It’s to urge technologists and business leaders to recognize that if we’re to address the risks of AI as an industry—maybe even as a society—we need to closely consider its immediate implications and outcomes. If we fail to do that, taking action will be practically impossible ..read more