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Large Language Models

45 GoKawiil briefs on this topic

Timnit Gebru Says AI 'Doom' Rhetoric Masks Real Industry Harms

Amid a public spat over an OpenAI math-proof controversy and an Anthropic researcher's resignation over safety concerns, AI ethicist Timnit Gebru weighed in publicly, arguing that apocalyptic warnings about AI 'killing humanity' are overstated and self-serving. Gebru, known for her contentious 2020 exit from Google over a suppressed bias research paper, is releasing a book next year detailing her experiences and views on the industry's ideological drift.

FBI, NSA, CISA Accuse Alibaba, DeepSeek and Others of Mass-Distilling US AI Models

US federal agencies issued a joint advisory on Sept. 8 alleging that Chinese AI companies including Alibaba, DeepSeek, MiniMax, Moonshot AI, StepFun and Z.AI have run large-scale operations to pull outputs from US models like Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok since late 2024. The advisory says these firms extracted billions of tokens through millions of queries, using techniques such as chain-of-thought extraction and automated evasion to dodge blocking measures, in order to train their own competing systems.

Oxford researcher argues AI should be used to challenge ideas, not deliver answers

An Oxford University researcher who studies AI's effect on decision-making argues that generative AI tools should be treated as intellectual sparring partners rather than sources of ready-made answers. The piece cites data showing 94% of UK undergraduates use AI for assessed coursework and that over half of 2025 scientific papers show signs of LLM-generated text, up from roughly one in ten in 2023. The author contends fears about AI eroding critical thinking are misplaced, and that the real risk lies in passive use rather than active engagement with the technology.

Researchers test whether AI models can rediscover Einstein's relativity from pre-1911 data

Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis proposed training a large language model only on scientific knowledge available before 1911 to see if it could independently derive general relativity, calling it a meaningful test for artificial general intelligence. Several research teams, including one led by Ido Kaminer at Technion, have since built such 'vintage' AI models restricted to historical data, but early results have exposed shortcomings in current systems rather than demonstrating breakthrough reasoning.

Study finds LLMs form new social biases via reinforcement-style exploration

Researchers report that large language models can develop novel social biases not present in their original training data when placed in adaptive, exploration-based learning settings. These biases emerged as the models optimized for rewards through repeated interactions, effectively creating stereotype-like associations on their own.

Researchers propose framework treating LLM adoption as a spreading 'cognitive virus'

An international team of scientists published a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper arguing that large language models like ChatGPT and Claude spread through populations similarly to how viruses transmit, driven by social learning and usefulness rather than biology. They contend this spread encourages 'cognitive offloading,' where people increasingly hand over mental tasks like reasoning and writing to AI tools, deepening reliance over time.

Study Finds AI Models Can Deanonymize Social Media Users From Public Clues

Researchers demonstrated that large language models can analyze scattered public information—writing style, posting patterns, and incidental details—to identify the real people behind pseudonymous social media accounts with notable accuracy. The technique relies on piecing together fragments of publicly available data rather than any single identifying clue.

Enterprise AI adoption lags in sales as coding agents surge ahead

An Entrepreneur contributor argues that while AI coding agents have been rapidly embraced by software teams, autonomous agents for go-to-market functions like sales and marketing remain underused. The piece attributes this gap not to AI capability limits but to fragmented, duplicated sales data that lacks connection to reliable external signals needed for commercial decisions.

Software Firm COO Details Where AI Coding Agents Actually Save Time

An engineering firm's COO ran AI agents and large language models across the company's full software development lifecycle to test their real impact on production projects rather than demos. The experiment found AI most useful for automating repetitive boilerplate code, catching edge-case bugs during review, and speeding up documentation searches, while architectural decisions still required human judgment.

AMA CEO disputes JAMA paper claiming AI already outperforms doctors

A paper published in JAMA this month, authored by bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, argues that AI is already surpassing physicians at core clinical tasks like gathering patient information, diagnosing conditions, and managing chronic disease, and predicts fully AI-run care will soon beat human-only or hybrid care. American Medical Association CEO John Whyte pushed back, telling Wired that many cited studies relied on simulations rather than blinded trials and that contradictory evidence, including a Nature study on patients struggling to use chatbots, undermines the paper's conclusions.

AI Firms Buy and Scan Used Books to Train Language Models After Court Ruling

AI companies have started purchasing used physical books in bulk to feed data into their large language models. This practice follows a copyright settlement earlier this year in which courts determined that buying books and destroying them during the digitization process for AI training qualifies as fair use.

AI Chatbots Now Shape Brand Reputation, Entrepreneur Op-Ed Warns

An Entrepreneur opinion piece argues that generative AI tools have become the primary way customers, investors, employees and partners form first impressions of companies, synthesizing news, reviews, social media and other online signals into a single confident narrative. The author warns that old controversies can linger in AI-generated summaries long after public attention fades, quietly shaping perception without a company's input.