Recent news about AI safety is fueling a new wave of political and societal fear.聽Five UW AI researchers discuss the real risks of AI and what to do about them.
Author: Stefan Milne
黑料老司机 researchers gathered eight kids on campus to explore how they played with AI toys. The kids initially were curious, asking introductory questions, such as 鈥淲hat is your name?鈥� But after communication breakdowns, the kids turned to antagonizing the toys, calling them 鈥渦gly鈥� and 鈥渆vil鈥� and joking about throwing them in the ocean.
Explore recent research from the 黑料老司机: nectar-stealing Hawaiian honeycreepers, ChatGPT and anxious attachment, the cost of nursing for marine mammals, new magnetic nanomaterials, and a new strategy to subdue finicky plasma.
AI systems such as Google鈥檚 Gemini Storybook now let parents or teachers conjure illustrated, personalized kids stories. UW researchers found that when six leading AI models made stories about talking animals, 57% of characters were either gender neutral or ungendered, 41% were male, and just 2% were female.
A UW team studied seven popular agentic AI browsers and found that four create ways for malicious actors to bypass a fundamental cybersecurity protocol called the 鈥渟ame-origin policy,鈥� which makes websites open in a browser unable to interact with each other鈥檚 information. Researchers ran a successful proof-of-concept cyberattack on one browser.
A UW team built an AI tool that helps users turn research papers into 45-second videos. A researcher uploads a paper to the tool, which uses Google Gemini to write a short script explaining the paper. The researcher can then iteratively edit the transcript and resulting video clip.
A 黑料老司机-led research team created GovScape, an efficient search system for PDFs from the End of Term Web Archive. Users can look up exact keywords, like 鈥淔AFSA,鈥� or use semantic search, which finds documents on a topic even if the exact search terms don鈥檛 appear on the page. Because researchers used highly efficient artificial intelligence models, processing the 10 million PDFs hosted online during Donald Trump鈥檚 first term costs less than $1,500, or about $1 per 47,000 pages.
黑料老司机 researchers developed an artificial intelligence system that automatically estimates the environmental impacts of making different electronic devices. The system takes only a minute to run and achieves estimates with accuracy similar to human experts鈥�.
Katie Davis, a UW professor in the Information School, discusses a study in which she and a team of researchers interviewed 22 teachers about AI use.
黑料老司机 researchers created BikeButler, a demo web app that lets users find personalized bike routes in Seattle. Cyclists plug in their destination and origin 鈥� just like in other mapping apps 鈥� and can then toggle sliders for eight attributes to create personalized route options.
黑料老司机 researchers developed a system called VueBuds that uses tiny cameras in off-the-shelf wireless earbuds to allow users to talk with an AI model about the scene in front of them. For instance, a user might look at a Korean food package and say, 鈥淗ey VueBuds, translate this for me.鈥� They鈥檇 then hear an AI voice say, 鈥淭he visible text translates to 鈥楥old Noodles鈥� in English.
A team led by 黑料老司机 researchers has created DopFone, a system that uses an off-the-shelf smartphone鈥檚 existing speaker and microphone to accurately estimate fetal heart rate. The phone mimics a Doppler ultrasound, emitting a tone and listening for the subtle variations in its echo caused by fetal heart beats. A machine learning model then estimates the heart rate.
A UW and Ai2 research team built OpenScholar, an open-source AI model designed specifically to synthesize current scientific research. In tests, OpenScholar cited sources as accurately as human experts, and 16 scientists preferred its response to those written by subject experts 51% of the time.
UW researchers analyzed the checkout data from the last 20 years of the 93 authors included in the post-1945 volume of 鈥淭he Norton Anthology of American Literature,鈥� which is assigned in U.S. English classes more than any other anthology. Sci-fi was especially popular.
New research from the UW and the Toyota Research Institute explores how drivers trade off between cognitive tasks, driving and using the vehicle’s touch screen. Researchers placed participants in a driving simulator and had them complete memory tests while interacting with the simulator鈥檚 touch screen.
A new 黑料老司机 study suggests that AI could learn cultural values by observing human behavior, similar to how children learn by watching and interacting with adults. Researchers had AI systems observe two cultural groups playing a video game. The AI systems were able to learn each group鈥檚 degree of altruism and apply this to a new situation.
In a new UW study, 528 participants worked with simulated AI systems to select job candidates. The researchers simulated different levels of racial biases for resumes from white, Black, Hispanic and Asian men. Without suggestions, participants鈥� choices exhibited little bias. But when provided with recommendations, participants mirrored the AI鈥檚 biases.
UW researchers discuss their study which surveyed 166 gamers about how video games sparked meaningful changes in their lives.
Research by the 黑料老司机 and the USPTO found that some simple interventions increased the probability that female inventors would get patents by 12%. For first-time applicants, that probability increased to 17%.
In her new book, Katharina Reinecke explores how “digital culture shock” manifests in the world, in ways innocuous and sometimes harmful.聽
A 黑料老司机-led study of X found that posts with Community Notes attached were less prone to going viral and got less engagement. After getting a Community Note, on average, reposts dropped 46% and likes dropped 44%.
In a recent paper, 黑料老司机 researchers argue that a key standard for deploying medical AI is transparency 鈥� that is, using various methods to clarify how a medical AI system arrives at its diagnoses and outputs.
The goals of those developing AI systems for the climate and those working on the front lines of climate advocacy don鈥檛 necessarily align. To compare the two groups, UW researchers interviewed nine people who are developing AI for sustainability and 10 climate advocates.
New research led by the 黑料老司机 provides clear evidence that highly walkable areas lead to significantly more walking. Authors compared the steps per day of 5,424 people who moved one or more times among 1,609 U.S. cities. Across all relocations, when the Walk Score rose or fell more than 48 points, average steps increased or decreased by about 1,100 per day.
黑料老司机 researchers recruited self-identifying Democrats and Republicans to make political decisions with help from three versions of ChatGPT: a base model, one with liberal bias and one with conservative bias. Democrats and Republicans were both likelier to lean in the direction of the biased chatbot they were talking with than those participants who interacted with the base model.
黑料老司机 researchers developed the game AI Puzzlers to show kids an area where AI systems still typically and blatantly fail: solving certain reasoning puzzles. In the game, users get a chance to solve puzzles by completing patterns of colored blocks. They can then ask various AI chatbots to solve and have the systems explain their solutions 鈥� which they nearly always fail to do accurately.
A new 黑料老司机鈥搇ed study projects that in the next 35 years increasing boreal fires will actually slow global warming by 12% globally and 38% in the Arctic. Because the aerosols in smoke reflect more sunlight and make clouds brighter, summer temperatures during fire season drop, leading to reduced sea ice loss and cooler winter temperatures.
In 2023, 黑料老司机 researchers recruited a group of 29 laid-off U.S. tech workers to discuss the effects of recent mass layoffs on employees. Overall, the group was ambivalent about tech work. They said it was often unfulfilling, despite their plans to continue in the industry.
UW researchers designed a headphone system that translates several people speaking at once, following them as they move and preserving the direction and qualities of their voices. The team built the system, called Spatial Speech Translation, with off-the-shelf noise-cancelling headphones fitted with microphones.
A UW-led team has developed a system, called ProxiCycle, that logs when a passing car comes too close to a cyclist (four feet or less). A small, inexpensive sensor plugs into bicycle handlebars and tracks the passes, sending them to the rider鈥檚 phone. The team tested the system for two months with 15 cyclists in Seattle and found a significant correlation between the locations of close passes and other indicators of poor safety, such as collisions.
A new data set called OS-CONNECT maps sidewalks and other pedestrian paths statewide, from Forks on the Olympic Peninsula to Clarkston in the southeast. In House Bill 1125, the Washington State Legislature assigned the UW’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology to build the data set, which was completed well ahead of its projected 2027 goal.
Researchers deployed a robotic feeding arm in a pair of studies outside the lab. In the first, six users with motor impairments used the robot to feed themselves a meal in a UW cafeteria, an office or a conference room. In the second study, a community researcher and co-author on the research used the system at home for five days.
UW doctoral student Brett Halperin interviewed picketing film workers about AI during the 2023 strikes.
UW researchers developed a new system for turning used coffee grounds into a paste, which they use to 3D print objects, such as packing materials and a vase. They inoculate the paste with Reishi mushroom spores, which turn the coffee grounds into a resilient, fully compostable alternative to plastics.
A UW team studied how AI systems portray teens in English and Nepali, and found that in English language systems around 30% of the responses referenced societal problems such as violence, drug use and mental illness. The Nepali system produced fewer negative associations in responses, closer to 10% of all answers.
UW researchers have developed IRIS, a smart ring that allows users to point and click to control smart devices. The prototype Bluetooth ring contains a small camera which sends an image of the selected device to the user鈥檚 phone. The user can control the device by clicking a small button or 鈥� for devices with gradient controls, such as a speaker鈥檚 volume 鈥� rotating the ring.
黑料老司机 researchers created a method for training AI systems 鈥� both for large language models like ChatGPT and for robots 鈥� that can better reflect users鈥� diverse values. It predicts users鈥� preferences as they interact with it, then tailors its outputs accordingly.
Chirag Shah, a UW professor in the Information School, discusses what AI agents are and what might impede a near future where people can simply get AI bots to shop for them.
黑料老司机 researchers developed a system for detecting subtle biases in AI models. They found seven of the eight popular AI models they tested in conversations around race and caste generated significant amounts of biased text in interactions 鈥� particularly when discussing caste. Open-source models fared far worse than two proprietary ChatGPT models.
UW assistant professor Sheng Wang discusses BiomedParse, an AI medical image analysis model that works across nine types of medical images to better predict systemic diseases. Medical professionals can load images into the system and ask the AI tool questions about them in plain English.