Wendy Liu, The Guardian; I avoid AI tools because thinking is supposed to be hard. It’s what makes us human
"I am wary of cognitive offloading, as tempting as it can be to turn over certain tasks to a machine so I don’t have to think so much. Thinking is the point. I don’t want to get into the habit of avoiding it purely for the sake of convenience."
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Magazine; I Profile Celebrities for a Living. Nothing Prepared Me for Tilly Norwood.
The A.I. actress on her craft, the future of film and how she definitely does not intend to murder us.
"I directed one scene with Tilly in her generative mode. I asked her to enact a breakup, and within four seconds, I had four options, most of them passable, none of them great, though A.I. acting has improved by magnitudes in just the past year, so it’s only a matter of time before she’s handing in something like a real performance. The real problem is that if I hadn’t been looking closely, this would be fine with me, because for now she’s in art that isn’t worth looking at closely. You couldn’t put Tilly in “Citizen Kane.” But you could put her in a streaming show that’s built to be half-watched from beyond the lip of your laptop while you do other things, produced by entertainment executives more concerned with churn than artistry.
That is the real issue: the moment that arrives to greet Tilly Norwood — a moment when we’ve all given up, when it doesn’t much matter who or what is playing the character that may or may not have been written by A.I., but what do I care? I’m on my phone anyway. Is she good? It’s the wrong question. She will be. We know what it will mean to the industry. What will it mean to us?
Once, I interviewed Bradley Cooper, in time for “A Star Is Born,” his directorial debut, which he co-wrote and starred in. He answered some of my questions, but mostly he didn’t understand why I would want to know so much that’s personal about him, what it had to do with anything. I told him that when people see something that touches them, they want to understand where it came from. They want to know who exactly it was that recognized their human wounds, who recognized them and made them feel less alone. That is what great art inspires in people. That is why I wrote all these profiles, why people even read them. To understand the person who made the art, which is just as essential as the art itself. There’s an entire conversation about separating the art from the artist, but maybe the conversation persists because we know we can’t do it. The art is the person.
Before I left London, I returned to Hampstead Heath. In the morning there was a mist over it, and I could remember Tom Hiddleston telling me he loved when it was foggy there, how it allowed him to see London as it must have been in the old days, just trees and lanterns and people with their collar up against the cold. I can still see Tom turning around at its altitudinal peak, presenting a view of London that he knew would dazzle me, dazzle anyone, the expectation of it in his eyes in a way that broke my heart. I liked him so much. I liked all of them. No, I loved them. Gwyneth Paltrow, who could not understand why the public was so preoccupied with her divorce, with her life. Ethan Hawke, a man who insisted that art mattered above all else, refusing to be the pretty-boy subject of low expectations. Tom Hanks was invested in his goodness, addicted to it. And all their anxieties and experiences animated all their performances, and it made us love them more. Yes, it made us love them to understand them, to have them accompany us in our lives and age as we do, and when we see them, we are seeing ourselves too.
But Tilly? I don’t think I’ll ever think of her again after this story is published. Even as I write this, just days after my time with her, I can’t picture her. Seriously. I’m closing my eyes right now, and I can’t see her face. But what did you want? Tilly is just a computer. Oh, my god. Why am I interviewing a computer? What has happened to the world that I am interviewing a computer?
I returned home, and in the subsequent days, I found myself saying yes to anyone who asked me to go to the theater with them during the rush of Tony-qualifying April openings on Broadway. I saw everything. I saw vampires flying and the Titanic sinking and mathematicians breaking down and a salesman dying. I went to the movies and saw art forgers and scientists in space trying to escape impending doom. I saw a movie playing briefly at Film Forum about children in Germany in the 1930s that was based on a book I had read. Then, one night, I went to see a series of monologues, just four actors sitting in chairs. They each looked exactly their age, their faces glorious with the novelty of life that is earned and not simulated. The entire audience, we didn’t move over three acts, and I went home and watched a movie from the 1990s with one of the actors from the play, a movie I loved and watch from time to time, then I looked into whether or not anyone had written about her, thinking maybe I would. I said to a friend, “Oh, I’d see her in anything,” and my friend agreed, and we tried to figure out if it was because she was so watchable and personable-seeming or because she had such good taste in material. The next morning, I woke up and I was no longer very tired. That, too, is called alignment."
Sarah Hernholm , Forbes; 3 Habits That Make You More Human In The Age Of AI
"AI can write your emails, summarize your meetings, generate your content, and answer almost any question faster than you can type it. And it will keep getting better at all of those things.
What AI cannot do is build genuine trust with another person, read the emotions in a room or sit with someone during a difficult moment and say exactly the right thing. AI cannot provide the kind of presence that makes people feel seen and understood.
These skills are becoming harder to find, and more valuable, precisely because AI is handling everything else. Here are three habits that strengthen them.
1. Have More Conversations AI Cannot Have For You...
2. Practice The Honesty AI Cannot Fake...
3. Do The Hard Things AI Cannot Do For You"
MADDIE AIKEN , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Carlow, Duquesne leaders to meet Pope Leo during Catholic higher education seminar in Rome
"In addition to meeting the pope, the university leaders are scheduled to attend a session on ethics and artificial intelligence; visit the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, where Pope Francis is buried; and discuss immigration, Catholic identity and lifestyle with Vatican dicastery officials.
Humphrey expects the AI session to be enlightening. She thinks AI can transform education and the workforce in a positive way, but also believes it’s important to have conversations surrounding responsibility and environmental concerns.
“AI is changing the enterprise. It is changing how we teach, and it is creating, I believe, an opportunity to provide a higher level of learning,” she said."
Mike Isaac, The New York Times ; Soundtrack to 8,000 Job Cuts: A Meta Worker’s Layoff-Themed A.I. Songs
"If you wondered what it might be like to be laid off from a giant tech company like Meta, now you can hear it in song. And the chorus goes like this:
Meta layoff, Meta layoff
Say it like a joke
Meta layoff, Meta layoff
House of cards went broke
Listen to “Meta Layoff”
Note: This song was generated by A.I.
Those were the lyrics to an artificial-intelligence-generated song that one Meta employee created shortly before the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, laid off 8,000 workers on Wednesday — 10 percent of its work force — as it transforms itself into an A.I.-first firm."
AARON MAK , Politico; Deepfakes are testing the limits of IP law
"Nonconsensual deepfakes have become one of the most reviled applications of AI, and Congress is now looking to use the might of intellectual property law to keep them in check.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers reintroduced the NO FAKES Act, which would essentially give all Americans an IP right to their voice and likeness. The act’s sponsors promote it not only as a way to protect artists and entertainers from having their creative output co-opted by AI, but as a safeguard for everyone else against pornographic deepfakes, fraudulent impersonation and a host of other ills.
NO FAKES would considerably expand the ambit of IP, which was originally aimed at incentivizing innovation and creativity. Using IP to also address issues like misinformation and sexual exploitation arguably brings this body of law into uncharted territory. Legal scholars told DFD that marshaling IP as an all-purpose shield against malicious deepfakes may have unintended consequences.
“The challenge posed by deepfakes is real, urgent and human, but not every human harm is an intellectual property harm,” said Georgetown IP law professor Madhavi Sunder. “Intellectual property can’t be everything everywhere all at once.”"
Tim Bajarin,, Forbes; Class Of 2026 Faces A Hard Truth: AI Isn’t The Threat—Ignoring It Is
"We moaned about the Internet when it first started, ridiculed the first smartphones and considered social media a passing fad. Yet all these technologies not only survived but thrived in a relatively short period after launch. The only commonality between them was that those who were quick to embrace the changes and learn to leverage their new capabilities came out on top – sometimes with dramatic results.
AI is no different in this respect. Only this time, the stakes are higher."
"This April, the US Department of Justice joined Elon Musk’s xAI in suing the state of Colorado to kill its AI anti-discrimination law.
When the federal government sides with a billionaire against a state trying to protect its residents from AI discrimination, that’s not only a Colorado story. That’s everyone’s story.
The justice department’s lawsuit is part of a coordinated federal effort to reframe AI consumer protections as ideological overreach. In July 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order on “preventing woke AI”, equating bias mitigation measures to a leftist “woke” agenda that suppresses free speech and truth. The federal National Policy Framework launched in March included a push to pre-empt state laws on AI, with Colorado’s law targeted. The justice department’s intervention in Colorado marks the first time the federal government has sought to intervene in a lawsuit challenging a state AI law."
Katherine Kornei, The New York Times; A 16th-Century Sketch Claims to Depict Anne Boleyn. A.I. Says It’s Her Mom.
Using facial-recognition technology, scholars have concluded that a 500-year-old drawing labeled “Anna Bollein Queen” more likely showed her mother, Elizabeth Howard.
"To dig into this mystery, Ms. Davies and her colleagues, including David G. Stork, a computer scientist and electrical engineer at Stanford University, turned to computational facial recognition. “This has one foot in art history and one foot in computer science,” Dr. Stork said...
Amit Roy-Chowdhury, a computer vision scientist at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the research, said that facial recognition can play an important role in art history. But going forward, he added, it will be important to assemble larger training data sets of faces in artwork, as algorithms trained strictly on photographs can introduce uncertainties. And that could be a challenge, since there are millions of faces in photographs but far fewer in art. “For artwork, you don’t have that many examples,” Dr. Roy-Chowdhury said."
Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced, Niko Gallogly, Brian O’Keefe and , The New York Times; The Villain of This Year’s Commencement Speeches: A.I.
College students have interrupted graduation ceremonies to voice their fears about artificial intelligence. They’re not the only ones who are worried.
"Andrew here. If you want to understand the deep fear that artificial intelligence is creating in much of the nation, look no further than the reaction to Eric Schmidt’s commencement address. The former Google C.E.O. spoke the truth about the technology, but it did not go over well with graduates who are anxious about their future. We’ve got more below."
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."
, 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."
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."
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:
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."
, 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."
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."
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."
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.”"
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."
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."
