Anthropic AI LLC

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares99 Views

    A.I.’s Black Boxes Just Got a Little Less Mysterious

    by

    Researchers at the A.I. company Anthropic claim to have found clues about the inner workings of large language models, possibly helping to prevent their misuse and to curb their potential threats.One of the weirder, more unnerving things about today’s leading artificial intelligence systems is that nobody — not even the people who build them — really knows how the systems work.That’s because large language models, the type of A.I. systems that power ChatGPT and other popular chatbots, are not programmed line by line by human engineers, as conventional computer programs are.Instead, these systems essentially learn on their own, by ingesting massive amounts of data and identifying patterns and relationships in language, then using that knowledge to predict the next words in a sequence.One consequence of building A.I. systems this way is that it’s difficult to reverse-engineer them or to fix problems by identifying specific bugs in the code. Right now, if a user types “Which American city has the best food?” and a chatbot responds with “Tokyo,” there’s no real way of understanding why the model made that error, or why the next person who asks may receive a different answer.And when large language models do misbehave or go off the rails, nobody can really explain why. (I encountered this problem last year, when a Bing chatbot acted in an unhinged way during an interaction with me, and not even top executives at Microsoft could tell me with any certainty what had gone wrong.)The inscrutability of large language models is not just an annoyance but a major reason some researchers fear that powerful A.I. systems could eventually become a threat to humanity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      A.I. Has a Measurement Problem

      by

      There’s a problem with leading artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude: We don’t really know how smart they are.That’s because, unlike companies that make cars or drugs or baby formula, A.I. companies aren’t required to submit their products for testing before releasing them to the public. There’s no Good Housekeeping seal for A.I. chatbots, and few independent groups are putting these tools through their paces in a rigorous way.Instead, we’re left to rely on the claims of A.I. companies, which often use vague, fuzzy phrases like “improved capabilities” to describe how their models differ from one version to the next. And while there are some standard tests given to A.I. models to assess how good they are at, say, math or logical reasoning, many experts have doubts about how reliable those tests really are.This might sound like a petty gripe. But I’ve become convinced that a lack of good measurement and evaluation for A.I. systems is a major problem.For starters, without reliable information about A.I. products, how are people supposed to know what to do with them?I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked in the past year, by a friend or a colleague, which A.I. tool they should use for a certain task. Does ChatGPT or Gemini write better Python code? Is DALL-E 3 or Midjourney better at generating realistic images of people?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Dozens of Top Scientists Sign Effort to Prevent A.I. Bioweapons

      by

      An agreement by more than 90 said, however, that artificial intelligence’s benefit to the field of biology would exceed any potential harm.Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death.Senators from both parties were alarmed, while A.I. researchers in industry and academia debated how serious the threat might be.Now, over 90 biologists and other scientists who specialize in A.I. technologies used to design new proteins — the microscopic mechanisms that drive all creations in biology — have signed an agreement that seeks to ensure that their A.I.-aided research will move forward without exposing the world to serious harm.The biologists, who include the Nobel laureate Frances Arnold and represent labs in the United States and other countries, also argued that the latest technologies would have far more benefits than negatives, including new vaccines and medicines.“As scientists engaged in this work, we believe the benefits of current A.I. technologies for protein design far outweigh the potential for harm, and we would like to ensure our research remains beneficial for all going forward,” the agreement reads.The agreement does not seek to suppress the development or distribution of A.I. technologies. Instead, the biologists aim to regulate the use of equipment needed to manufacture new genetic material.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More