
To live together in social communities, people create and maintain expectations about what is normal and what is not. Sometimes things can fall outside the range of normal and people are OK with it. You might have a...

Getting AIs working toward human goals − study shows how to measure misalignment
Ideally, artificial intelligence agents aim to help humans, but what does that mean when humans want conflicting things? My colleagues and I have come up with a way to measure the alignment of the goals of a group of...

Social Security is one of the federal governments biggest programs. Roughly 67 million Americans, most of whom are 65 or older, received Social Security benefits in 2023. An estimated 183 million workers paid the Social...

401(k) plans and stock market volatility: What you need to know
With stock market charts resembling the contours of a roller-coaster ride in recent days, many Americans could be forgiven for eyeing their 401(k)s with a little concern. Retirement savings are crucial to the financial...

Cambodia’s haunted present: 50 years after Khmer Rouge’s rise, murderous legacy looms large
On April 17, 1975, tanks rolled into the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, to cheering crowds who believed that the countrys long civil war might finally be over. But what followed was one of the worst genocides of the 20th...

Are Britons really poorer than they were 20 years ago, or does it just feel that way?
Millions of UK households are facing whats been dubbed awful April after rising council tax, water bills and broadband costs coincided with the new tax year. It could all start to hurt quite quickly. And it has led many...

We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent – here’s how
We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what it calls...