Today’s AI systems are powerful, and it’s natural to see them as having humanlike intelligence. Shaking that illusion is important – and difficult to do.

Danger arises when law enforcement believes that AI models are retrieving certainties rather than generating likelihoods.

The expiration of the New START treaty has the US and Russia poised to increase the number of their deployed strategic nuclear weapons, pushing the world into dangerous territory.

YouTube video by The Conversation

ICE’s dragnet is expanding across social media, putting everyone’s digital lives into the realm of border and immigration enforcement.

AI agents are poised to do your online shopping for you, with major consequences for the e-commerce industry – and your ability to make choices.

AI-generated police reports promise to save cops time, but they also raise a host of legal and technical concerns.

Missile defense systems are nothing new. History shows that even if they work as advertised – a big if – they’re a bad idea if your aim is to make your country safer from nuclear attack.

Today’s supercomputers are enormously powerful, but the work they do − running AI and tackling difficult science − is pushing them to their limits. Building bigger supercomputers won’t be easy.

Under the guise of efficiency and fraud prevention, the federal government is breaking down data silos to collect and aggregate information on virtually everyone in the US.

Years before Colin Kaepernick was born, Robinson wrote, ‘I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world.’

As DOGE taps into sensitive federal agency data repositories, many people fear what could happen to the data. One little-discussed but hugely consequential possibility: fueling Elon Musk’s xAI company...

When the US Constitution was written, many people − from those who wrote the document to those on the outside who read it − believed that endowing the president with kinglike powers was dangerous.

News reports paint a frightening picture of DOGE staff trampling time-tested – and in many cases legally required – management and security practices.

A digital media scholar and longtime RedNote user gives a firsthand account of US and Chinese social media users interacting on the app.

Ethical and legal issues around death in the digital age are thorny enough dealing with social media accounts. AI puts the notion of a digital afterlife into overdrive.

Noam Chomsky’s notion of the human instinct for freedom ties together his many intellectual pursuits, from educating creative, independent citizens to rejecting social and economic hierarchies.

Improv theater is known for improvisation, audience participation and riffing on memes and stories circulating on social and traditional media – all hallmarks of right-wing media.

Like it or not, AI is now part and parcel of elections, from helping with mundane campaign functions to enabling politicians to speak to constituents in multiple languages at once.

The damage AI algorithms cause is not easily remedied. Breaking algorithmic harms into four categories results in pieces that better align with the law and points the way to better regulation.

Unexpectedly, we found that the rats had an intense motivation for their driving training.

AI is already widespread and garnering billions of dollars in investment. But that doesn’t mean its ubiquity is predetermined. Society can decide when and how it’s used.

The explosion of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and fears about where the technology might be headed distract from the many ways AI affects people every day – for better and worse.

Language model AIs seem smart because of how they string words together, but in reality they can’t do anything without many people guiding them every step of the way.

What would you do if the industry you work in could clone your skills, style and even the way you look and sound?

Social media companies’ drive to keep you on their platforms clashes with how people evolved to learn from each other. One result is more conflict and misinformation.