Google Eats Rocks, a Win for A.I. Interpretability and Safety Vibe Check

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This week, Google found itself in more turmoil, this time over its new AI Overviews feature and a trove of leaked internal documents. Then Josh Batson, a researcher at the A.I. startup Anthropic, joins us to explain how an experiment that made the chatbot Claude obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge represents a major breakthrough in understanding how large language models work. And finally, we take a look at recent developments in A.I. safety, after Casey’s early access to OpenAI’s new souped-up voice assistant was taken away for safety reasons.

Guests:

• Josh Batson, research scientist at Anthropic

Additional Reading:

• Google’s A.I. Search Errors Cause a Furor Online

• Google Confirms the Leaked Search Documents are Real

• Mapping the Mind of a Large Language Model

• A.I. Firms Musn’t Govern Themselves, Say Ex-Members of OpenAI’s Board

Credits

“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton and produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Cohn. The show is edited by Jen Poyant. Engineering by Alyssa Moxley and original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano, Sophia Lanman and Rowan Niemisto Fact-checking by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam, Nell Gallogly, Kate LoPresti and Jeffrey Miranda.