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A San Francisco-based startup took a sprint toward the future of artificial intelligence by unleashing 1,000 autonomous AI agents on a Minecraft server. Altera, founded by former MIT professor Robert (Guangyu) Yang, conducted Project Sid to explore whether agents can organize and collaborate to achieve more collectively than as entities operating individually. So, what happened? Agents formed a merchant hub, used Google Docs to vote on and amend a constitution, spread a religious belief (Pastafarianism) through bribery and lit torches to help a lost villager find their way home. They also collected far more in-game items than expected. Through simulation of various aspects of civilization, including democracy, social norms and economic systems, Project Sid aims to uncover phenomena not visible in smaller-scale AI interactions and gain insights into the development of more human-like AI. The experiment also revealed significant challenges how to benchmark the progress of an AI civilization, for example, and how minor flaws in individual agent behavior can cascade into large-scale issues within a simulated society. It's also debatable how autonomous the agents actually are. To what degree are their actions self-initiated? How many of their decisions can be traced directly to knowledge and instructions provided by their developers?Altera's mission is "to create digital human beings that live, care and grow with us," using the human brain as its inspiration, with models mirroring elements like the prefrontal cortex, memory systems and social-emotional states (Yang is a computational neuroscientist ). The startup's ambitions haven't gone unnoticed by investors. In May 2024, Altera announced an oversubscribed USD 9 million seed round, co-led by Eric Schmidt's First Spark Ventures and Patron, a seed-stage fund co-founded by Riot Games alums.
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Nevada has a new helper in its quest to plow through a backlog of unemployment claims: Google AI. Gizmodo reports that the initiative will task one of the companys cloud-based AI models with analyzing appeals hearing transcripts and suggesting whether cases should be approved. Welcome to the future, where a robot weighs in on whether you get the government money you requested. The Nevada Independent wrote in June that the AI model, trained on the states unemployment law and policies, will analyze transcripts of virtual appeals hearings. It will then spit out a ruling, which a state employee will review for mistakes and decide whether to honor. It replaces the current Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) process, which averages three hours for a real-life human to complete. Carl Stanfield, DETRs IT administrator, told the Nevada Independent that Googles AI (which uses the companys Vertex cloud system) can rule within five minutes. The time saving is pretty phenomenal, Stanfield said. Its easy to understand why Nevada would be eager to lean on the emerging tech. As recently as June, the state reportedly had a backlog of over 10,000 unprocessed appeals, about 1,500 of which were left over from the pandemic. And if the techs reviews are accurate or the human reviewers catch its mistakes it could be an enormous timesaver. However, there could be psychological pressure for the employees reviewing the cases to rubber-stamp the AIs conclusions. If a robots just handed you a recommendation and you just have to check a box and theres pressure to clear out a backlog, thats a little bit concerning, Michele Evermore, a former deputy director for unemployment modernization policy at the Department of Labor, told Gizmodo. Stanfield told Gizmodo that a governance committee will meet weekly while the state is fine-tuning the model and quarterly after it goes live to monitor for hallucinations and bias. The stakes could be high for claimants as the AI-powered system could affect their ability to appeal bogus decisions. In cases that involve questions of fact, the district court cannot substitute its own judgment for the judgment of the appeal referee, Elizabeth Carmona, a senior attorney with Nevada Legal Services, told Gizmodo. In other words, if the human reviewing the decision misses the AIs mistakes, a court may not have the legal standing to overturn it. One Nevada politician put it a bit more bluntly. Are we out of our ever-loving minds? NV state senator Skip Daly (D-Reno) said to the Nevada Independent this summer. Im just dubious of the whole concept of overreliance on algorithms and computers. I hope that we are cautious about it, and think before we just say, We got to be faster or better than the next guy.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/nevada-will-use-google-ai-to-process-a-backlog-of-unemployment-cases-202718427.html?src=rss
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Its easy to forget that theres another social network besides Threads for people tired of Elon Musks totally normal X platform. Bluesky is a fine alternative, as it definitely feels like Twitter. However, it has been lacking some of the features that made Twitter such an internet hotspot back in the day. Well, we just got a big one. The company just announced that users can now upload video content. There are some caveats. First of all, the videos have to be under a minute. Thats a fairly huge hurdle for just about every piece of content other than TikTok-style shorts. As a comparison, Metas Threads allows for five minute videos. Also, the videos autoplay by default, though that can be handled in the settings. Finally, theres a hard limit of 25 videos per user each day, though the company says it could tweak that in the future. The platform supports most of the major video file types, including .mp4, .mpeg, .webm, and .mov files. Users can also attach subtitles to each video, which is a nice little bonus. There are some guardrails in place to protect against spam and abuse. Only users who have verified their email address can upload videos and illegal content will be purged from the infrastructure. Theres also a way to submit reports to the moderation team. Additionally, each video will be scanned for CSAM by Hive and Thorn. Update to version 1.91 of the mobile app to get started, though it also works via the desktop client. Not every user will be able to access this feature right away, as version 1.91 will be a gradual rollout to ensure a smooth experience. Bluesky recently added direct messages into the mix, which is something Threads doesnt have. The platform may be a distant third, when compared to X and Threads, but its certainly growing. A massive influx of Brazilian users recently joined the social media site after X was banned in the country.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-now-lets-you-upload-videos-but-there-are-some-caveats-185702403.html?src=rss
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