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" Meta apologises over flood of gore, violence and dead bodies on Instagram Users of Reels report feeds dominated by violent and graphic footage after apparent algorithm malfunction Dan Milmo Global technology editor Fri 28 Feb 2025 15.01 GMT Share Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has apologised after Instagram users were subjected to a flood of violence, gore, animal abuse and dead bodies on their Reels feeds. Users reported the footage after an apparent malfunction in Instagram's algorithm, which curates what people see on the app. Reels is a feature on the social media platform that allows users to share short videos, similar to TikTok."

""At Microsoft, we have long believed that AI has the incredible potential to free clinicians from much of the administrative burden in healthcare and enable them to refocus on taking care of patients," said Joe Petro, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms. "With the launch of our new Dragon Copilot, we are introducing the first unified voice AI experience to the market, drawing on our trusted, decades-long expertise that has consistently enhanced provider wellness and improved clinical and financial outcomes for provider organizations and the patients they serve." "With Dragon Copilot, we're not just enhancing how we work in the EHR - we're tapping into a Microsoft-powered ecosystem where AI assistance extends across our organization, delivering a consistent and intelligent experience everywhere we work," said Dr. R. Hal Baker, senior vice president and chief digital and chief information officer, WellSpan Health. "It's this ability to enhance the patient experience while streamlining clinician workflows that makes Dragon Copilot such a game-changer.""

"Despite all the industry hype and genuine advances, generative AI models are still prone to odd, inexplicable, and downright worrisome quirks. There's also a growing body of research suggesting that the overall performance of many large language models (LLMs) may degrade over time. According to recent evidence, the industry's newer reasoning models may already possess the ability to manipulate and circumvent their human programmers' goals. Some AI will even attempt to cheat their way out of losing in games of chess. This poor sportsmanship is documented in a preprint study from Palisade Research, an organization focused on risk assessments of emerging AI systems."

"We've been told that social media feeds can either be engagement-maximizing or chronological-and that those are the only two options. But this is a false choice. A new report by the Knight-Georgetown Institute, Better Feeds: Algorithms That Put People First, makes it clear: platforms could offer far better feeds-ones that serve users' interests without the distortions of engagement-driven design."

" 'Serious concerns' about DWP's use of AI to read correspondence from benefit claimants White mail system handles 'highly sensitive personal data' and people not told it is processing their information AI prototypes for UK welfare system dropped as officials lament 'false starts' Robert Booth UK technology editor Mon 27 Jan 2025 05.00 GMT Share When your mailbag brims with 25,000 letters and emails every day, deciding which to answer first is daunting. When lurking within are pleas for help from some of the country's most vulnerable people, the stakes only get higher. That is the challenge facing the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as correspondence floods in from benefit applicants and claimants - of which there are more than 20 million, including pensioners, in the UK. The DWP thinks it may have found a solution in using artificial intelligence to read it all first - including handwritten missives. Human reading used to take weeks and could leave the most vulnerable people waiting for too long for help. But "white mail" is an AI that can do the same work in a day and supposedly prioritise the most vulnerable cases for officials to get to first."

"Some might scoff at this, and point out that news organisations make their own mistakes all the time - more consequential than my physicist/physician howler, if less humiliating. But cases of bad journalism are almost always warped representations of the real world, rather than missives from an imaginary one. Crucially, if an outlet gets big things wrong a lot, its reputation will suffer, and its audience are likely to vote with their feet, or other people will publish stories that air the mistake. And all of it will be out in the open. You may also note that journalists are increasingly likely to use AI in the production of stories - and there is no doubt that it is a phenomenally powerful tool, allowing investigative reporters to find patterns in vast financial datasets that reveal corruption, or analyse satellite imagery for evidence of bombing attacks in areas designated safe for civilians. There is a legitimate debate over the extent of disclosure required in such cases: on the one hand, if the inputs and outputs are being properly vetted, it might be a bit like flagging the use of Excel; on the other, AI is still new enough that readers may expect you to err on the side of caution. Still, the fundamental difference is not in what you're telling your audience, but what degree of supervision you're exercising over the machine."

"Anthropic has an "AI policy" for job candidates that discourages the technology from being used during the application process. The company says it wants to field candidates' human communication skills. Anthropic is known for its AI innovations-but the company doesn't want job candidates using the technology."

"The missing internet history could hold vital clues about why the killer targeted young girls, but it was deleted by Rudakubana 10 minutes before he left home to carry out the "ferocious assault" on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. Police fear it could be years before they see the evidence because they have had to apply for it using a specialist prosecutor in the US, where the technology companies are based. DCI Jason Pye, the detective leading the investigation for Merseyside police, said: "We're going through that process at the moment but we've been told it could be years.""

"In the short term, generative AI will replace a lot of people because productivity increases while demand stays the same due to inertia. In the long term, the creation of new jobs compensates for the loss of old ones, resulting in a net positive outcome for humans who leave behind jobs no one wants to do. The most important aspect of any technological revolution is the transition from before to after. Timing and location matters: older people have a harder time reinventing themselves into a new trade or craft. Poor people and poor countries have less margin to react to a wave of unemployment. Digital automation is quicker and more aggressive than physical automation because it bypasses logistical constraints-while ChatGPT can be infinitely cloned, a metallic robot cannot. Writing and painting won't die because people care about the human factor first and foremost; there are already a lot of books we can't possibly read in one lifetime so we select them as a function of who's the author. Even if you hate OpenAI and ChatGPT for being responsible for the lack of job postings, I recommend you ally with them for now; learn to use ChatGPT before it's too late to keep your options open. Companies are choosing to reduce costs over increasing output because the sectors where generative AI is useful can't artificially increase demand in parallel to productivity. (Who needs more online content?) Our generation is reasonably angry at generative AI and will bravely fight it. Still, our offspring-and theirs-will be grateful for a transformed world whose painful transformation they didn't have to endure. Certifiable human-made creative output will reduce its quantity but multiply its value in the next years because demand specific for it will grow; automation can mimic 99% of what we do but never reaches 100%. The maxim "AI won't take your job, a person using AI will; yes, you using AI will replace yourself not using it" applies more in the long term than the

"There is also a lot of research that both third-party fact-checking and Community Notes can be really effective at reducing misperceptions. But - and this is a significant caveat - neither works well as a complete solution for lies on social media. When Twitter was working on Birdwatch, they claimed it would "not replace other labels and fact checks Twitter currently uses". But as I've written about before, Musk scaled back Twitter's Trust and Safety team significantly and positioned Community Notes as the replacement. As Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety, told WIRED, "The intention of Birdwatch was always to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, Twitter's other misinformation methods." In fact, research on various attempts to mitigate COVID misinformation found that a layered, "Swiss cheese" approach might work best, where some efforts work well sometimes, but collectively the system catches most falsehoods."

"We both agree: The status quo, with these giant private companies controlling all of social media, is terrible. But if digital spaces really are public places, should the government play a part in managing them? Below, we attempt a speculative thought exercise about the future of platform ownership: Should governments control social media?"

"Anthropic expects AI-powered virtual employees to begin roaming corporate networks in the next year, the company's top security leader told Axios in an interview this week. Why it matters: Managing those AI identities will require companies to reassess their cybersecurity strategies or risk exposing their networks to major security breaches."

"Duolingo, on the other hand, is going full speed ahead with generative AI. The company announced this week that it would stop relying on human contractors for "work that AI can handle," while also committing to using AI in hiring and performance reviews. On top of that, Duolingo announced on Wednesday that it used generative AI to come up with 148 new language learning courses, doubling its total course offerings."

""All I kept coming back to was, what would Chris say?" Wales said. As AI spreads across society and enters the courtroom, the US judicial conference advisory committee has announced that it will begin seeking public comment as part of determining how to regulate the use of AI-generated evidence at trial."

"Brands such as fintech company Ramp, jobs search site Indeed and Pernod Ricard-owned Scottish whisky maker Chivas Brothers have adopted the software. They are hoping to reach millions of users who regularly use generative AI products as a new method to search for information online - a shift that poses a long-term threat for Google's main business. "This is about much more than just getting your website indexed in their results. This is about recognising large language models as the ultimate influencer," said Jack Smyth, partner at marketing technology group Brandtech, which has created its own interface for brands. "

"Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse. Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people. Moderators working for Majorel in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content."

"One of the biggest cases of hypocrisy was uncovered last year with little more than a whisper. Most of us will remember seeing the "You wouldn't steal a car" piracy adverts on every dvd we played in the early 00s. What most people have yet to discover is that the music for the anti-piracy campaign was actually pirated from a Dutch musician named Melchior Reitveldt. In a move that would have marketing specialists turning in their graves, Reitveldt's music (which had been sanctioned for a local film festival's anti-piracy campaign) was used repeatedly for the standardised anti-piracy warning that appeared constantly. In a tale that became pointlessly complicated, Reitveldt dealt with corrupt royalty collectors such as Jochem Gerrits (who tried to gain profit for himself through the situation) before finally reaping his just rewards in 2012, 6 years after he originally composed the music."

"When was the last time your chatbot disagreed with you? Probably only when you told it to. Companion AIs-like Replika, Nomi, or Character.ai-are tuned to be supportive, affirming, and endlessly agreeable. That might feel good in the moment. But what happens when people start preferring digital "friends" over real ones-especially when real ones come with friction?"

"I believe the answer has a lot to do with the fact that few things created by humans with artsy aspirations are worth anything in isolation. Their worth comes from what surrounds them, from the human context that birthed them and the human lives that were impacted by them. That's how masterpieces are judged as such."