Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Google's research arm on Wednesday showed off a whiz-bang assortment of artificial intelligence (AI) projects it's incubating, aimed at everything from mitigating climate change to helping novelists craft prose.
Why it matters: AI has breathtaking potential to improve and enrich our lives — and comes with hugely worrisome risks of misuse, intrusion and malfeasance, if not developed and deployed responsibly.
Driving the news: The dozen-or-so AI projects that Google Research unfurled at a Manhattan media event are in various stages of development, with goals ranging from societal improvement (such as better health diagnoses) to pure creativity and fun (text-to-image generation that can help you build a 3D image of a skirt-clad monster made of marzipan).
On the "social good" side:
On the more speculative and experimental side:
The big picture: Fears about AI's dark side — from privacy violations and the spread of misinformation to losing control of consumer data — recently prompted the White House to issue a preliminary "AI Bill of Rights," encouraging technologists to build safeguards into their products.
Yes, but: Google executives sounded multiple notes of caution as they showed off their wares.
Threat level: A recent Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology report examined how text-generating AI could "be used to turbocharge disinformation campaigns."
Still, there's fun stuff: This summer, Google Research introduced Imagen and Parti — two AI models that can generate photorealistic images from text prompts (like "a puppy in a nest emerging from a cracked egg"). Now they're working on text-to-video:
The bottom line: Despite recent financial headwinds, AI is steamrolling forward — with companies such as Google positioned to serve as moral arbiters and standard-setters.
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