Robert Hart is a London-based reporter at The Verge covering all things AI. His work explores the social and ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence, applications in health and science and the evolving policy landscape, as well as safety threats and frontier labs like OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic. Rob’s work is currently supported by a Senior Fellowship from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. Prior to joining The Verge, Rob was a senior reporter at Forbes leading breaking news coverage of science, tech, and health and a features writer on the privacy beat for Lexology, with his byline appearing in publications including Wired, Time, and The Guardian. When not pondering emerging technologies, Rob can be found attempting CrossFit or trying to find a good cup of coffee. Contact him on Signal for tips: @robhart.01
Bots were breaking records and breaking down at Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games.
A Russian drone fitted with an Nvidia chip and guided entirely by AI killed three Ukrainian civilians in July, according to the New York Times. Though AI is already a standard feature of modern warfare, with both sides of this conflict having experimented with battlefield automation, it could mark the first time AI both guided a drone and selected a target.
One of the most interesting parts of the OpenAI chief’s appearance on David Senra’s podcast is him trying to explain why he avoids the company’s digital assistant Codex for work as if it’s a kind of personal failing. “It makes no sense,” he said. Altman admitted “I don’t really know” when asked what it would take for him to adopt Codex more deeply.
Humanoid robot makers are earning much of their revenue selling bots to government-backed training centers, which then sell training data back to the industry, the FT reports. It’s AI circularity all over again, stoking fresh humanoid bubble fears as Unitree soars in its stock market debut despite the US foreign robot ban.
[Financial Times]
For years, fears about AI systems slipping human control were dismissed as speculative.
