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Need to get a grip on AI? There are classes for that.

Mar 14, 2024
"In 2023, someone enrolled on Coursera in [generative] AI content every minute," the company's chief content officer says.
Jules White, an AI instructor with Coursera, says most of his courses are designed to get users excited about how to amplify their own creativity with AI, not just how to automate tedious tasks.
Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images

Workers are worried about AI on the job, study shows

Feb 7, 2024
Seven in 10 U.S. workers say they’re “very” or “somewhat” concerned about employers using AI in HR decision-making, according to a Rutgers report.
Some workers are worried AI will make their jobs obsolete. Others have concerns about AI's role in hiring and firing decisions.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The "poison pill" that protects artists' work from AI scraping

Feb 5, 2024
"Everything is at stake," says Ben Zhao of the University of Chicago, who leads the development of two tools that support human creativity.
The goal of Nightshade "is to raise the price for unauthorized training on scraped data," says Ben Zhao at the University of Chicago.
Courtesy the Glaze Project

The economy and ethics of AI training data

Jan 31, 2024
Many artificial intelligence tools were trained on freely-available digital content. That might be legal, but is it ethical?
By publishing something on the internet without explicitly telling other computers to avoid it, you're consenting to its use by AI, says Common Crawl's Rich Skrenta.
Outflow Designs/Getty Images

AI has helped Microsoft beat Apple to become the most valuable company in the world

Jan 30, 2024
And investors will be hoping for more good news on that front when the company announces quarterly earnings.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an OpenAI event on Nov. 6, 2023.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Google Search may be the most powerful arbiter of internet content

Jan 22, 2024
Websites are making content "to try to game Google results," says Mia Sato of The Verge. What has that done to human creativity?
"There is this tension between what we all want to do on the internet and what makes sense to," said Mia Sato at The Verge. "Because if Google cannot see our work, there's really no point in making it."
Photo illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images

AI might not take your job after all

Jan 22, 2024
MIT researchers estimate that artificial intelligence would be cost-effective in less than a quarter of the work it could technically do.
Nvidia, a chipmaker with sought-after AI products, has done well on Wall Street, but that doesn't mean AI will steal all our jobs. Above, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
I-Hwa Cheng / AFP via Getty Images

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Microsoft is adding a dedicated AI key to its keyboards

Jan 4, 2024
The key will launch Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant program. But whether users will take to it is an open question.
On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it would be adding an AI key to PC keyboards. With just one tap, the key opens up Microsoft Copilot, the company’s AI helper.
Courtesy Microsoft

How AI helps some people with disabilities communicate

Jan 2, 2024
Deep learning, voice cloning and image tech are helping people with nonstandard speech express themselves and be better understood.
A close-up of "Always Watching" by Amie Thornburg. After losing movement in her limbs because of ALS, Thornburg turned to the art tool Fotor to create images.
Courtesy Thornburg

New York Times suit may test copyright law's constraints on AI

Dec 28, 2023
Where's the line between fair use and commercial exploitation when it comes to scraping the web to train artificial intelligence models?
Most AI models are trained on data sets scraped from the internet. OpenAI trained its chatbot, ChatGPT, with data that included Times content, the lawsuit says.
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images