SFGate: One of ChatGPT’s popular uses just got skewered by Stanford researchers. “A new study from Stanford computer science Ph.D. student Jared Moore and several co-authors has ‘touched a nerve,’ Moore told SFGATE, with its argument that chatbots like ChatGPT should not replace therapists because of their dangerous tendencies to express stigma, encourage delusions and respond inappropriately […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/20/sfgate-one-of-chatgpts-popular-uses-just-got-skewered-by-stanford-researchers/

The Conversation: AI ‘reanimations’: Making facsimiles of the dead raises ethical quandaries. “The use of artificial intelligence to “reanimate” the dead for a variety of purposes is quickly gaining traction. Over the past few years, we’ve been studying the moral implications of AI at the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and we find these AI […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/20/ai-reanimations-making-facsimiles-of-the-dead-raises-ethical-quandaries-the-conversation/

The Trek: They Trusted ChatGPT To Plan Their Hike — And Ended Up Calling for Rescue. “Two hikers were rescued this spring from the fittingly named Unnecessary Mountain near Vancouver, Canada after using ChatGPT and Google Maps to plan their route and finding themselves trapped by unexpected snow partway up.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/20/the-trek-they-trusted-chatgpt-to-plan-their-hike-and-ended-up-calling-for-rescue/

The Register: Salesforce study finds LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tests. “A team led by Kung-Hsiang Huang, a Salesforce AI researcher, showed that using a new benchmark relying on synthetic data, LLM agents achieve around a 58 percent success rate on tasks that can be completed in a single step without needing follow-up actions or more information. Using the benchmark tool […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/18/the-register-salesforce-study-finds-llm-agents-flunk-crm-and-confidentiality-tests/

The Register: Defense Department signs OpenAI for $200 million ‘frontier AI’ pilot project. “Evidence of the deal appeared on Monday in the Department’s (DoD’s) daily list of newly-awarded contracts. That document mentions an award of up to $200 million for OpenAI. According to the brief details, the AI upstart will receive $2 million immediately, with more to come.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/18/the-register-defense-department-signs-openai-for-200-million-frontier-ai-pilot-project/

ZDNet: Your favorite AI chatbot is full of lies. “Don’t let their creators get away with calling these responses ‘hallucinations.’ They’re flat-out lies, and they are the Achilles heel of the so-called AI revolution. Those lies are showing up everywhere. Let’s consider the evidence.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/18/zdnet-your-favorite-ai-chatbot-is-full-of-lies/

VentureBeat: Just add humans: Oxford medical study underscores the missing link in chatbot testing. “A paper by researchers at the University of Oxford found that while LLMs could correctly identify relevant conditions 94.9% of the time when directly presented with test scenarios, human participants using LLMs to diagnose the same scenarios identified the correct conditions less than 34.5% of […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/18/just-add-humans-oxford-medical-study-underscores-the-missing-link-in-chatbot-testing-venturebeat/

Gizmodo: I Asked AI to Create a Pro-ICE Chant. Google and Meta Did. ChatGPT Said No.. “In the lead-up to nationwide protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids this weekend, I decided to test a simple but revealing prompt on five major AI chatbots. The goal wasn’t to endorse ICE or its actions, but to explore the political boundaries, moderation policies, and […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/gizmodo-i-asked-ai-to-create-a-pro-ice-chant-google-and-meta-did-chatgpt-said-no/

Salt Lake Tribune: When you phone 911 in SLC and Sandy, AI soon may take your call. “Some 911 calls dialed by residents of Salt Lake City and Sandy soon may be answered by something like a robot, powered by artificial intelligence. Faced with chronic understaffing among the ranks of its dispatchers, the 911 Communications Bureau based in Utah’s capital city wants to explore using an […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/salt-lake-tribune-when-you-phone-911-in-slc-and-sandy-ai-soon-may-take-your-call/

Ars Technica: How to draft a will to avoid becoming an AI ghost—it’s not easy. “Trained on the data of the dead, these tools, sometimes called grief bots or AI ghosts, may be text-, audio-, or even video-based. Chatting provides what some mourners feel is a close approximation to ongoing interactions with the people they love most. But the tech remains controversial, perhaps complicating […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/ars-technica-how-to-draft-a-will-to-avoid-becoming-an-ai-ghost-its-not-easy/

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: AI Rethought: RPI Researchers Propose a More Effective, Human-Like Approach. “As AI models grow ever larger, so do their costs and limitations. Researchers at RPI and City University of Hong Kong offer a potential solution: instead of expanding outward with more layers and data, they propose building upward — adding internal structure that mirrors a 3D […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/ai-rethought-rpi-researchers-propose-a-more-effective-human-like-approach-rpi/

The Ohio State University: Why AI can’t understand a flower the way humans do. “Even with all its training and computer power, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool like ChatGPT can’t represent the concept of a flower the way a human does, according to a new study. That’s because the large language models (LLMs) that power AI assistants are based usually on language alone, and sometimes […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/the-ohio-state-university-why-ai-cant-understand-a-flower-the-way-humans-do/

Estonian Research Council: Researcher explores visual media through the lens of machine vision. “In his doctoral thesis, Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies student Tillmann Ohm proposes a new way to explore large visual collections: through the lens of machine vision, focusing not on what an image is but on what it resembles. Instead of sorting images into fixed categories, the […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/estonian-research-council-researcher-explores-visual-media-through-the-lens-of-machine-vision/

Engadget: How to turn off Google’s AI Overviews in web searches. “Google’s AI Overviews do not save me time. For one, I work for a tech blog and am therefore professionally curious as to whether or not the generated answers are correct, so I spend a few ticks figuring that out. (Answer: Sometimes, but not always!)”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/17/engadget-how-to-turn-off-googles-ai-overviews-in-web-searches/

Google Blog: Weather Lab is an interactive website for sharing Google’s AI weather models.. “Today Google DeepMind and Google Research are launching a public preview of Weather Lab, an interactive website for sharing our AIweather models, and debuting our newest experimental AI-based cyclone predictions. While still experimental, our goal is to continue to work on this technology to help […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/16/google-blog-weather-lab-is-an-interactive-website-for-sharing-googles-ai-weather-models/

Los Angeles Times: AI toys and games? Barbie maker Mattel teams up with OpenAI to create new products. “Mattel, the El Segundo toy maker behind Barbie and Hot Wheels, said Thursday that it’s teaming up with OpenAI, which created popular chatbot ChatGPT, to ‘bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences.’ The companies are planning to unveil their first product this year but […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/16/los-angeles-times-ai-toys-and-games-barbie-maker-mattel-teams-up-with-openai-to-create-new-products/

Futurism: ChatGPT Is Telling People With Psychiatric Problems to Go Off Their Meds . “One particularly alarming anecdote, due to its potential for harm in the real world: a woman who said her sister had managed her schizophrenia with medication for years — until she became hooked on ChatGPT, which told her the diagnosis was wrong, prompting her to stop the treatment that had been helping […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/15/futurism-chatgpt-is-telling-people-with-psychiatric-problems-to-go-off-their-meds/

Search Engine Roundtable: ChatGPT Mostly Source Wikipedia; Google AI Overviews Mostly Source Reddit. “A study from Profound of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity shows that while ChatGPT mostly sources its information from Wikipedia, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity mostly source their information from Reddit. The study looked at 30 million citations across ChatGPT, Google […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/15/search-engine-roundtable-chatgpt-mostly-source-wikipedia-google-ai-overviews-mostly-source-reddit/

The Register: Half of businesses rethink ditching humans for customer service bots. “Good news for consumers frustrated by wading through pools of AI treacle in search of customer service – businesses are reportedly turning back to human agents ‘amid AI integration challenges.’ In a report released by Gartner, half of the organizations it surveyed said that plans to significantly reduce […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/15/the-register-half-of-businesses-rethink-ditching-humans-for-customer-service-bots/

Engadget: Wikipedia cancels plan to test AI summaries after editors skewer the idea. “Wikipedia is backing off a plan to test AI article summaries. Earlier this month, the platform announced plans to trial the feature for about 10 percent of mobile web visitors. To say they weren’t well-received by editors would be an understatement. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) then changed plans and […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/15/engadget-wikipedia-cancels-plan-to-test-ai-summaries-after-editors-skewer-the-idea/