AI trained on AI garbage spits out AI garbage

July 24, 2024
AI models work by training on huge swaths of data from the internet. But as AI is increasingly being used to pump out web pages filled with junk content, that process is in danger of being undermined. New research published in Nature shows that the quality of the model’s output gradually degrades when AI trains…

The Download: Chinese LLMs, and transforming heavy-duty trucking

July 24, 2024
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How to access Chinese LLM chatbots across the world Hundreds of Chinese large language models have been released since the government started permitting AI companies to open up their models for the general…

How battery-powered trailers could transform trucking

July 24, 2024
Semi-trucks move over 11 billion tons of freight in the US each year, spewing greenhouse-gas emissions and other pollutants along the highways as they go.    Shifting these and other heavy-duty trucks to zero-emissions technologies will be a challenge—even more so than for smaller vehicles, since larger vehicles require bigger batteries and more powerful chargers. One…

Why Chinese companies are betting on open-source AI

July 24, 2024
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. I’ve talked a lot about Chinese large language models in this newsletter, and I’ve managed to try out quite a few of them in the past year. But many people, especially those…