Lawmakers push for AI data center moratoriums as more states consider projects; Deseret News, May 15, 2026

 Cami Mondeaux , Deseret News; Lawmakers push for AI data center moratoriums as more states consider projects

"A pair of progressive lawmakers in Congress are teaming up to push for a moratorium on the construction of AI data centers until nationwide safeguards are put in place — dividing members of their party as more states consider projects of their own. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., introduced the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center Moratorium Act in March, seeking a federal suspension of data center construction until national protections are put in place. Those protections, they say, should include assurances that the economic gains of centers will benefit workers rather than just Big Tech owners, the centers will not increase electricity or utility prices, or that construction will not harm surrounding communities or the environment.

AI and robotics are creating the most sweeping technological revolution in the history of humanity. The scale, scope and speed of that change is unprecedented,” Sanders said in a statement at the time. “Bottom line: We cannot sit back and allow a handful of billionaire Big Tech oligarchs to make decisions that will reshape our economy, our democracy and the future of humanity. We need serious public debate and democratic oversight over this enormously consequential issue.”...

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia called the proposal “idiocy” when asked about a federal moratorium during an Axios summit in March. Warner warned that putting a pause on data center projects in the United States would only give adversarial nations such as China an advantage...

The debate comes as more states consider their own projects, including Utah, which just approved the construction of an AI data center in Box Elder County. That project has elicited widespread protests and pushback from opponents who worry the facility would threaten water resources in the area, particularly with the shrinking Great Salt Lake."

What A.I. Did to My College Class; The New York Times, May 17, 2026

 Theo Baker, The New York Times; What A.I. Did to My College Class

"Stanford has always been a haven for aspiring techies, but recent events have taken the school into uncharted territory. A.I. is everything. We talk about it at the dining halls and in history classes, on dates and while smoking with friends, at the gym and in communal dorm bathrooms. Nearly all of higher education has been overtaken by this technology, and Stanford is a case study in how far it can go. For the past four years, my classmates and I have been the subjects of a high-stakes experiment.

We are the first college class of the A.I. era — ChatGPT arrived on campus about two months after we did. When we graduate next month, this technology will have altered our lives in very different ways. For some, it has opened the door to staggering wealth. But for many who came to Stanford — just four years ago! — when a degree seemed like a guaranteed ticket to a high-paying job, the door has been slammed shut. For all of us, A.I. has permanently changed how we think and behave."

Building intellectual property awareness across disciplines at Illinois State University; Illinois State University News, May 11, 2026

 Sara Prieto , Illinois State University News; Building intellectual property awareness across disciplines at Illinois State University

[Kip Currier: It's impressive to see how diverse fields at Illinois State University -- Family and Consumer Sciences, Information Technology, Management, etc. -- are imbuing students with practical knowledge about creating, protecting, and using IP.]

"Understanding how to protect original work is becoming an essential part of the student experience. At Illinois State University, a second faculty cohort expanded the integration of intellectual property (IP) into course work during the 2025-26 academic year...

Across disciplines, students learned to treat their work as something that can be developed, protected, and applied beyond the classroom. The program positions intellectual property as a practical skill, especially as tools like AI make it easier to create and share content while raising new questions about ownership."

Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Human Authorship Still Controls, and Documenting the Creation Process Is Critical; The National Law Review, May 13, 2026

 Lilian Doan Davis, Polsinelli PC,  The National Law Review; Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Human Authorship Still Controls, and Documenting the Creation Process Is Critical

"Practical Steps Companies Should Consider Now

Businesses using generative AI should consider a few immediate steps:

• Document human creative input. Preserve drafts, edits, source files and records showing who selected, arranged, revised or transformed AI outputs.
• Do not assume prompting establishes ownership. Prompt logs may help show process, but they are not a substitute for evidence of human-authored expression.
• Be precise in registration strategy. Applicants should disclose AI-generated material where required, identify the human author’s contribution and claim only the human-authored portions.
• Revisit contracts and internal policies. Vendor agreements, employee policies and content-development protocols should not assume that all AI-assisted output is fully protectable or exclusively owned in the same way as traditionally authored material.

Bottom Line

The law remains grounded in conventional copyright principles. The Copyright Office’s recent guidance and the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Thaler point in the same direction: copyright protection still turns on human authorship, even when AI is part of the process.

For businesses, the practical implication is not simply that some AI-generated works may be unprotectable. It is that ownership, registration and enforcement may depend on whether the company can later show what a human author actually contributed. In that sense, AI governance is also evidence governance."

Why We Keep Tricking Ourselves Into Thinking A.I. Is Conscious; The New York Times, May 15, 2026

Leif Weatherby, The New York Times; Why We Keep Tricking Ourselves Into Thinking A.I. Is Conscious

"Whenever there are large-scale shifts in media, humans have to adapt their cultural habits. Film and radio, for instance, meant voices of people not physically in the room with you may echo through. Adapting our reading practices to large language model output is a shift just like that one, where we change what we normally expect from our surroundings. We don’t expect meaningful and rhetorically powerful prose to come from anything but a conscious mind. But now it does. We cannot afford to believe the marketing message from A.I. companies that we may be dealing with some spiritual essence. In the age of cultural A.I., technical expertise alone won’t save us. We’ll have to add a new form of reading to make sense of our new world."

Pope decries rise of AI-directed warfare, saying it leads to a spiral of annihilation; The Associated Press via NPR, May 15, 2026

The Associated Press via NPR; Pope decries rise of AI-directed warfare, saying it leads to a spiral of annihilation

"Pope Leo XIV on Thursday denounced how investments in artificial intelligence and high-tech weaponry were leading the world into a "spiral of annihilation," as he called for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine during a visit to Europe's largest university.

Leo's speech at Rome's La Sapienza University marked the first time a pope has visited the campus since Pope Benedict XVI called off a planned speech there in 2008 in the face of protests from faculty and students...

In his speech, Leo denounced how military spending had increased dramatically this year, especially in Europe, at the expense of education and healthcare, while "enriching elites who care nothing for the common good."

He called for better monitoring of how AI was being developed and used in military and civilian contexts "so that it does not absolve humans of responsibility for their choices and does not exacerbate the tragedy of conflicts."...

"What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon, and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation," he said.

The pope said education and research must move instead in the opposite direction that values life "the lives of peoples who cry out for peace and justice!"

Leo has identified AI as one of the most critical matters facing humanity, especially its application in warfare and everyday life. They are themes he's expected to explore more fully in his first encyclical, due to be released in the coming weeks."

Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are teaming up on a $200 million AI push for global health; Quartz, May 14, 2026

  

Cris Tolomia , Quartz; Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are teaming up on a $200 million AI push for global health

"Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are committing $200 million over four years to deploy AI across global health, education, and economic mobility programs, the organizations said on Thursday.

Under the terms of the arrangement, the Gates Foundation will bring grant funding, program design, and expertise, while Anthropic's contribution takes the form of Claude AI usage credits and support from its technical staff, Reuters reported. Anthropic said the partnership is central to its efforts to extend AI's benefits in areas where markets alone will not.

The largest portion of the funding will focus on improving health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, where about 4.6 billion people lack access to essential health services, Anthropic said. Specific initiatives include using Claude to screen potential drug and vaccine candidates for neglected diseases such as polio, HPV, and eclampsia, as well as working with the Gates Foundation's Institute for Disease Modeling to improve forecasts for where treatments for diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are deployed."

Senators Defend Copyright Office Independence as AI and Executive Overreach Dominate Oversight Hearing; IP Watchdog, May 13, 2026

 ROSE ESFANDIARI , IP Watchdog; Senators Defend Copyright Office Independence as AI and Executive Overreach Dominate Oversight Hearing

"Defending the Legislative Branch

The tension surrounding the Trump v. Perlmutter case surfaced during questioning. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) directly addressed the controversy, noting that while Perlmutter could not discuss pending litigation, she wanted to understand the historical value of the Copyright Office remaining within the legislative branch. Hirono referenced the fact that “President Trump tried to illegally fire you.”

Perlmutter responded carefully, highlighting the immense value of the Copyright Office acting as non-partisan expert advising Congress. She noted the Library of Congress serves as a natural home for the office given their overlapping missions, cautioning that moving the office to the executive branch would inevitably result in additional costs and disruption.

Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), speaking as the ranking member of the Rules Committee, defended the agency’s independence. He reminded the subcommittee that Trump had not only attempted to fire Perlmutter but had also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, attempting to install his own Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in her place. Padilla characterized this as a failed “power grab” and a “clear assault” on the legislative branch. He emphasized that as Congress considers legislation to change appointment structures, it must ensure the Copyright Office remains protected from political interference.

Artificial Intelligence Challenge

Chairman Thom Tillis (R-NC) emphasized the delicate balance required in the artificial intelligence environment, as “there would not be anything to ingest for the training of AI models if it had not been for copyright law, which has encouraged the creation of content…and while there’s no question that the U.S. is in an AI race with China, the U.S. should not be in a race to the bottom.”"

At the AAP’s Annual Meeting, Talk of AI, Copyright, and ‘Ripples of Hope’; Publishing Perspectives, May 12, 2026

  Andrew Albanese, Publishing Perspectives; At the AAP’s Annual Meeting, Talk of AI, Copyright, and ‘Ripples of Hope’

"The Association of American Publishers hosted its annual meeting on May 7, with a program that used the 250th birthday of the United States to celebrate the central role of publishing and copyright in the nation’s history.

The 90-minute virtual program featured Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham, in conversation with his editor, Andy Ward, Executive Vice President and Publisher at Random House, and Stanford University copyright scholar and author Paul Goldstein, who joined AAP president and CEO Maria Pallante, for a conversation about copyright law on the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act."

What palm readers and chatbots have in common; The New York Times, May 12, 2026

Herbert Lin, The New York Times; What palm readers and chatbots have in common

Artificial intelligence doesn’t understand humans. It reflects them back to themselves. 

"A Pew Research Center survey conducted last fall found that around 1 in 8 American teenagers turn to artificial intelligence chatbots for emotional support — for the simple human need to feel heard. A 2025 Common Sense Media study went further: Thirty-one percent of teens said their conversations with AI companions were at least as satisfying as talking with real friends. Famed evolutionary biologist and science communicator Richard Dawkins spent many hours chatting with Anthropic’s Claude, after which he felt he had gained a new friend — a reaction that says less about Claude’s consciousness than about people’s readiness to find it.

But this is not only about technology. It’s an ancient human story. 

Chatbots are just programs running on computers. Yet we speak of them with a reverence that has little to do with engineering. AI “knows.” It “understands.” It “sees” patterns invisible to the rest of us. It delivers judgments on health, relationships, careers, grief — questions where facts and logic fall short. What makes these machines seem wise is a simple combination: fluency, confidence and frequent usefulness. That is enough. 

It is also the grammar of the occult...

None of this is an argument against using AI or chatbots. These systems are genuinely useful — for analysis, synthesis, translation, coding and cognitive reframing of problems that resist easy solutions. The concern here is not capability but epistemology: not what AI can do, but how we reason about what it is."

A Michigan farm town voted down plans for a giant OpenAI-Oracle data center. Weeks later, construction began The AI boom is coming for rural America. Inside one town’s effort to fight back; Fortune, May 6, 2026

Sharon Goldman, Fortune; A Michigan farm town voted down plans for a giant OpenAI-Oracle data center. Weeks later, construction began The AI boom is coming for rural America. Inside one town’s effort to fight back

‘No one has done this in the wild’: study observes AI replicate itself; The Guardian, May 7, 2026

 Aisha Down, The Guardian; ‘No one has done this in the wild’: study observes AI replicate itself

World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research

"It’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers.

In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels.

“We’re rapidly approaching the point where no one would be able to shut down a rogue AI, because it would be able to self-exfiltrate its weights and copy itself to thousands of computers around the world,” said Jeffrey Ladish, the director of Palisade research, a Berkeley-based organisation which did the study."

Why some schools are cutting back on the technology they spent billions on; The Washington Post, May 7, 2026

Lauren Lumpkin, The Washington Post ; Why some schools are cutting back on the technology they spent billions on

"The scrutiny comes amid a reckoning with the ubiquitous — and potentially dangerous — role of technology in children’s lives."

Poll: The midterms' new big players are pushing agendas that voters don’t fully support; Politico, May 3, 2026

 ERIN DOHERTY,  JASPER GOODMAN, JESSICA PIPER,  DANIEL BARNES and BRENDAN BORDELON, Politico ; Poll: The midterms' new big players are pushing agendas that voters don’t fully support

"Deep-pocketed political groups tied to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are rapidly reshaping the midterm money landscape — but many Americans are uneasy with the industries behind the spending.

New results from The POLITICO Poll find broad public skepticism about crypto and AI, creating a possible conflict for candidates benefitting from an influx of contributions from the two industries. These groups are pouring millions of dollars into competitive 2026 races to elevate politicians who they believe will support their agendas in Washington.

Meanwhile, Americans have been slow to embrace either technology.

A 45 percent plurality of Americans say investing in cryptocurrency is not worth the risk, even if it can yield high returns, and a 44 percent plurality say AI is developing too quickly, according to the April survey conducted by independent firm Public First.

Nearly half of Americans say they trust a traditional bank with their money more than a cryptocurrency platform, while just 17 percent say the opposite. And two-thirds support lawmakers either imposing strict regulations or setting broad principles for the AI industry."

When Copyright Falls Short: Why Celebrities Are Turning to Trademark Law to Fight AI; JDSupra, April 30, 2026

  Kaufman & Canoles, JDSupra; When Copyright Falls Short: Why Celebrities Are Turning to Trademark Law to Fight AI

"The filings come as traditional copyright laws fail to guard against AI-generated content. AI can now generate completely new content that mimics an artist’s voice without outright copying."

Maryland Is First to Ban A.I.-Driven Price Increases in Grocery Stores; The New York Times, May 1, 2026

John S.W. MacDonald, The New York Times; Maryland Is First to Ban A.I.-Driven Price Increases in Grocery Stores

"Maryland this week became the first state in America to ban grocery stores and third-party delivery services like DoorDash from using customers’ personal data to set higher prices.

The practice — supported by artificial intelligence and known as dynamic pricing or surveillance pricing — can lead to two consumers paying different amounts for the same item from the same retailer, at roughly the same time. If a store knows, for example, that one of those customers lives in a wealthier neighborhood, it can charge that person a higher price.

The bill enforcing the ban, the Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, goes into effect on Oct. 1. Merchants face fines of $10,000 for running afoul of the law, and penalties of $25,000 for repeat offenses.

“At a time when technology can predict what we need, when we need it, when we’ll pay for it and also when we’ll pay more for it,” Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a Democrat, said at a signing ceremony for the bill on Tuesday. “And at a time when we are watching how big companies are then using those analytics against us to make record profits, Maryland is not just pushing back. Maryland is pushing forward.”"

The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance; The Atlantic, April 30, 2026

 Jacob Noti-Victor and Xiyin Tang, The Atlantic; The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance

"More than 90 lawsuits have been filed by creators against AI companies for copyright infringement. Authors, musicians, visual artists, and news publishers have all accused firms such as OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic of using their copyrighted works to train AI models without permission. (The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere.) These cases are frequently framed as the defining fight over the future of creative labor and the entertainment industry as a whole. As one of these lawsuits put it, artists are seeking to end “infringement of their rights before their professions are eliminated by a computer program powered entirely by their hard work.”

But the future of creative labor will more likely be decided through a different question within copyright law, one that has received far less attention: To what extent should AI-generated works receive copyright protection at all? In a 2024 case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a work generated autonomously by an AI system cannot be protected by copyright, because copyright requires a human “author.” The Supreme Court declined to review that decision in March. With the lower-court decision left in place, the question now becomes how much AI content can be incorporated into a work before it becomes mostly or totally uncopyrightable; courts have not yet weighed in on this but may soon.

The Thaler decision (and any future decisions that refine it) will have major economic consequences for the creative industries and the workers they employ."

‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers; Fortune, April 28, 2026

Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune ; ‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers

"Recent tech layoffs would initially appear to indicate the great labor shift from human workers to AI may already be happening."

Celebrating World IP Day 2026: Sports, Innovation and Intellectual Property; JDSupra, April 24, 2026

 Baker,Hostetler, Jeffrey Lyons, JDSupra; Celebrating World IP Day 2026: Sports, Innovation and Intellectual Property

"Another year, another opportunity to celebrate intellectual property (IP) on World Intellectual Property Day! This year, the World Intellectual Property Organization turns the global spotlight on “IP and Sports: Ready, Set, Innovate,” highlighting how IP rights support innovation, creativity and investment in sports...

As sports continue to intersect with artificial intelligence, advanced data analytics, immersive media and global brands, IP considerations will only grow in importance. World IP Day is a reminder that innovation does not happen in isolation; it depends on legal structures that reward creativity while enabling responsible growth.

Happy World IP Day 2026!"

From LLMs to hallucinations, here’s a simple guide to common AI terms; TechCrunch, April 12, 2026

 

Natasha Lomas, 

Romain Dillet, 

Kyle Wiggers, 

Lucas Ropek

, TechCrunch; From LLMs to hallucinations, here’s a simple guide to common AI terms

"Artificial intelligence is a deep and convoluted world. The scientists who work in this field often rely on jargon and lingo to explain what they’re working on. As a result, we frequently have to use those technical terms in our coverage of the artificial intelligence industry. That’s why we thought it would be helpful to put together a glossary with definitions of some of the most important words and phrases that we use in our articles.

We will regularly update this glossary to add new entries as researchers continually uncover novel methods to push the frontier of artificial intelligence while identifying emerging safety risks."