The copyright war between the AI industry and creatives; Financial Times, June 23, 2025

MARTIN WOLF, Financial Times ; The copyright war between the AI industry and creatives

"One is that the government itself estimates that “creative industries generated £126bn in gross value added to the economy [5 per cent of GDP] and employed 2.4 million people in 2022”. It is at the very least an open question whether the value added of the AI industry will ever be of a comparable scale in this country. Another is that the creative industries represent much of the best of what the UK and indeed humanity does. The idea of handing over its output for free is abhorrent...

Interestingly, for much of the 19th century, the US did not recognise international copyright at all in its domestic law. Anthony Trollope himself complained fiercely about the theft of the copyright over his books."

Can We See Our Future in China’s Cameras?; The New York Times, June 23, 2025

Megan K. Stack , The New York Times; Can We See Our Future in China’s Cameras?

"The Chinese Communist Party famously uses surveillance to crush dissent and, increasingly, is applying predictive algorithms to get ahead of both crimes and protest. People who screen as potential political agitators, for example, can be prevented from stepping onto trains bound for Beijing. During the Covid pandemic, Chinese health authorities used algorithmic contact tracing and QR codes to block people suspected of viral exposure from entering public spaces. Those draconian health initiatives helped to mainstream invasive surveillance and increase biometric data collection.

It would be comforting to think that China has created a singular dystopia, utterly removed from our American reality. But we are not as different as we might like to think.

Thankfully, our political architecture lacks a unified power structure akin to the C.C.P. Americans — who tend to value individual liberties over collective well-being — have deeply embedded rights which, at least theoretically, protect us from such abuses."

The U.S.-Canada Border Runs Through This Library. That’s Now a Problem.; The New York Times, May 30, 2025

Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times ; The U.S.-Canada Border Runs Through This Library. That’s Now a Problem.

"“I think there’s a sentiment of this little library being bullied by this powerful administration, and that helped encourage people to contribute,” said Steve Timmins, a Canadian visiting the library. “In light of what’s going on, it’s an important symbol of the friendship that cannot be taken away.”"

‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks; The Guardian, May 5, 2025

Kate Lamb, The Guardian; ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks

 "Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”

Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.

Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president."

Dismay as cross-border library caught in US-Canada feud: ‘We just want to stay open’; The Guardian, April 13, 2025

Leyland Cecco , The Guardian; Dismay as cross-border library caught in US-Canada feud: ‘We just want to stay open’

"For weeks, curious onlookers, outraged supporters and gaggles of media have descended on both Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont, after US officials announced the main entrance to the library, which sits in Vermont, would soon be cut off to Canadians. They cited drug traffickers and smugglers “exploiting” the accessibility and said the closure meant “we are ending such exploitation by criminals and protecting Americans” without providing evidence...

Under the new rules which go into effect in October, Canadians will need to go through a formal border crossing before entering the library.

The news, met with disbelief from patrons and staff, followed a closely watched visit by the US secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, in March. Touring the library, Noem said “USA number one!” and then hopped over the black tape separating the two countries and said “51st state” when she landed in Canada. She repeated the joke – echoing Donald Trump’s recent fixation on annexing Canada – three times...

Of the thousands of books tucked into the library’s stacks, one author has emerged as a patron favourite: Louise Penny, the bestselling Canadian novelist and creator of the detective Armand Gamache. Her novels are by far the most borrowed and the celebrated writer, whose works have repeatedly topped the New York Times bestseller chart, is also a frequent visitor to the library.

“It’s very hard to not go immediately to the dystopian novels. What’s the first thing a despot or a tyrant does? They target libraries. They target writers. It targets books. Targets anyone who could read and think and become a dissenting voice,” she said. “Nothing good is going to come of this. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.”

The tour for Penny’s forthcoming book Black Wolf, which coincidentally imagines plans to force Canada into becoming the 51st state was due to start at the Kennedy Center in Washington. But a recent decision by Trump to fire the previous board of the Kennedy Center for its support of “woke” programming, and to install himself as board chair, has prompted widespread artistic backlash."

As US and UK refuse to sign the Paris AI Action Summit statement, other countries commit to developing ‘open, inclusive, ethical’ AI;TechCrunch, February 11, 2025

Romain Dillet, TechCrunch ; As US and UK refuse to sign the Paris AI Action Summit statement, other countries commit to developing ‘open, inclusive, ethical’ AI

"The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris was supposed to culminate with a joint declaration on artificial intelligence signed by dozens of world leaders. While the statement isn’t as ambitious as the Bletchley and Seoul declarations, both the U.S. and the U.K. have refused to sign it.

It proves once again that it is difficult to reach a consensus around artificial intelligence — and other topics — in the current (fraught) geopolitical context.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” U.S. vice president, JD Vance, said in a speech during the summit’s closing ceremony.

“The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,” he added.

In all, 61 countries — including China, India, Japan, Australia, and Canada — have signed the declaration that states a focus on “ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.” It also calls for greater collaboration when it comes to AI governance, fostering a “global dialogue.”

Early reactions have expressed disappointment over a lack of ambition."

Where AI Thrives, Religion May Struggle; Chicago Booth Review, March 26, 2024

 Jeff Cockrell, Chicago Booth Review; Where AI Thrives, Religion May Struggle

"The United States has seen one of the biggest drops: the share of its residents who said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque fell from 70 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2020, according to Gallup.

One potential factor is the proliferation of artificial intelligence and robotics, according to a team of researchers led by Chicago Booth’s Joshua Conrad Jackson and Northwestern’s Adam Waytz. The more exposed people are to automation technologies, the researchers find, the weaker their religious beliefs. They argue that the relationship is not coincidental and that “there are meaningful properties of automation which encourage religious decline."

Researchers and philosophers have pondered the connection between science and religion for many years. The German sociologist Max Weber spoke of science contributing to the “disenchantment of the world,” or the replacement of supernatural explanations for the workings of the universe with rational, scientific ones. Evidence from prior research doesn’t support a strong “disenchantment” effect, Jackson says, but he and his coresearchers suggest that AI and robotics may influence people’s beliefs in a way that science more generally does not."

Navigating the Patchwork of AI Laws, Standards, and Guidance; American Bar Association (ABA), May 9, 2024

Emily Maxim Lamm , American Bar Association (ABA); Navigating the Patchwork of AI Laws, Standards, and Guidance

"The opening weeks of 2024 have seen a record number of state legislative proposals seeking to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) across different sectors in the United States...

With this type of rapid-fire start to the 2024 legislative season, the AI legal landscape will likely continue evolving across the board. As a result, organizations today are facing a complex and dizzying web of proposed and existing AI laws, standards, and guidance.

This article aims to provide a cohesive overview of this AI patchwork and to help organizations navigate this increasingly intricate terrain. The focus here will be on the implications of the White House AI Executive Order, existing state and local laws in the United States, the European Union’s AI Act, and, finally, governance standards to help bring these diverse elements together within a framework."

CMU Joins $110M U.S.-Japan Partnership To Accelerate AI Innovation; Carnegie Mellon University, April 11, 2024

 Kelly Saavedra, Carnegie Mellon University; CMU Joins $110M U.S.-Japan Partnership To Accelerate AI Innovation

"Carnegie Mellon University and Keio University have announced they will join forces with one another and with industry partners to boost AI-focused research and workforce development in the United States and Japan. The partnership is one of two new university partnerships between the two countries in the area of artificial intelligence announced in Washington, D.C., April 9 at an event hosted by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

The collaboration joins two universities with outstanding AI programs and forward-looking leaders with leading technology companies committed to providing funding and resources aimed at solving real-world problems. 

CMU President Farnam Jahanian was in Washington, D.C., for the signing ceremony held in the Department of Commerce's Research Library, during which the University of Washington and the University of Tsukuba agreed to a similar collaboration."

U.S., Finland Agree To Cooperate On Combating Foreign Disinformation; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 4, 2024

RFE/RL, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; U.S., Finland Agree To Cooperate On Combating Foreign Disinformation

"The United States and Finland have agreed to cooperate in “countering foreign state information manipulation,” the U.S. State Department announced on April 4. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen signed the memorandum in Brussels at a summit of NATO foreign ministers. The two countries pledged to “expand information sharing about foreign disinformation, share best practices for countering it,” and align policies with the U.S. Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation. At a joint press briefing, Valtonen said “information manipulation is a growing challenge to democratic countries and open societies.”"

China Is Targeting U.S. Voters and Taiwan With AI-Powered Disinformation; Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2024

 

Dustin Volz, Wall Street Journal ; China Is Targeting U.S. Voters and Taiwan With AI-Powered Disinformation

"Online actors linked to the Chinese government are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to target voters in the U.S., Taiwan and elsewhere with disinformation, according to new cybersecurity research and U.S. officials."

Senator to Pope Francis: Not so fast on AI; Politico, December 14, 2023

MATT BERG, Politico; Senator to Pope Francis: Not so fast on AI

"Congress hasn’t done enough work on artificial intelligence regulation in the U.S. to join Pope Francis’ proposal for a global treaty to regulate the technology, Sen. Mark Warner told POLITICO. On Thursday, Francis called for a binding treaty that would ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically. He said in a statement that the risks of technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness are too great — and that failing to regulate it could “pose a risk to our survival.”

The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over; The New York Times, May 5, 2022

 SERGE SCHMEMANN, The New York Times; The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over

"As a former K.G.B. agent, Mr. Putin sees the world as a battleground of conspiratorial maneuvers. In his speeches, the color revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring and other global upheavals are machinations to bolster American domination. As an heir to the Soviet worldview, he believes more than many Western leaders do in the importance of information warfare, both to give his regime a veneer of legitimacy and to challenge liberal democracy. On this battlefield, lies are ammunition in Mr. Putin’s long and increasingly personal struggle to stay in power.

As the war enters a new phase, as the images and horrors become familiar and the costs rise, it will become ever more difficult for the Biden administration and for Mr. Zelensky to sustain their early lead in the information war. That makes it all the more imperative for the West to press the message that this is not a war Ukraine chose and that the cost of allowing Mr. Putin to have his way in Ukraine would be far higher than the sacrifices required to block him."

AI and Copyright in China; Lexology, April 15, 2022

 Harris Bricken - Fred Rocafort, Lexology; AI and Copyright in China 

"In the landmark Shenzhen Tencent v. Shanghai Yingxun case, the Nanshan District People’s Court considered whether an article written by Tencent’s AI software Dreamwriter was entitled to copyright protection. The court found that it was, with copyright vesting in Dreamwriter’s developers, not Dreamwriter itself. In its decision, the court noted that “the arrangement and selection of the creative team in terms of data input, trigger condition setting, template and corpus style choices are intellectual activities that have a direct connection with the specific expression of the article.” These intellectual activities were carried out by the software developers.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has distinguished between works that are generated without human intervention (“AI-generated”) and works generated with material human intervention and/or direction (“AI-assisted”). In the case of AI-assisted works, artificial intelligence is arguably just a tool used by humans. Vesting of copyright in the humans involved in these cases is consistent with existing copyright law, just as an artist owns the copyright to a portrait made using a paintbrush or a song recorded using a guitar. The scenario in the Tencent case falls in the AI-assisted bucket, with Dreamwriter being the tool."

Pig heart transplants: ethics, regulations and why we shouldn't expect to see them in Australia soon; ABC Science News, January 21, 2022

Belinda Smith, ABC Science News; Pig heart transplants: ethics, regulations and why we shouldn't expect to see them in Australia soon

"So what are some of these ethical quandaries around the practice of transplanting organs and tissues between species — a technique called xenotransplantation — and can we expect to see pig hearts in chests in Australia soon?"

How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India; The Washington Post, October 24, 2021

 

Cat Zakrzewski

, 

Gerrit De Vynck

, 

Niha Masih

 and 

Shibani Mahtani

 ,

The Washington Post; How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India

A trove of internal documents show Facebook didn’t invest in key safety protocols in the company’s largest market.

"In February 2019, not long before India’s general election, a pair of Facebook employees set up a dummy account to better understand the experience of a new user in the company’s largest market. They made a profile of a 21-year-old woman, a resident of North India, and began to track what Facebook showed her.

At first, her feed filled with soft-core porn and other, more harmless, fare. Then violence flared in Kashmir, the site of a long-running territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, campaigning for reelection as a nationalist strongman, unleashed retaliatory airstrikes that India claimed hit a terrorist training camp.

Soon, without any direction from the user, the Facebook account was flooded with pro-Modi propaganda and anti-Muslim hate speech. “300 dogs died now say long live India, death to Pakistan,” one post said, over a background of laughing emoji faces. “These are pakistani dogs,” said the translated caption of one photo of dead bodies lined-up on stretchers, hosted in the News Feed.

An internal Facebook memo, reviewed by The Washington Post, called the dummy account test an “integrity nightmare” that underscored the vast difference between the experience of Facebook in India and what U.S. users typically encounter. One Facebook worker noted the staggering number of dead bodies."

Algorithms can drive inequality. Just look at Britain's school exam chaos; CNN, August 23, 2020

Zamira Rahim, CNN; Algorithms can drive inequality. Just look at Britain's school exam chaos

""Part of the problem is the data being fed in," Crider said.

"Historical data is being fed in [to algorithms] and they are replicating the [existing] bias."

Webb agrees. "A lot of [the issue] is about the data that the algorithm learns from," she said. "For example, a lot of facial recognition technology has come out ... the problem is, a lot of [those] systems were trained on a lot of white, male faces.

"So when the software comes to be used it's very good at recognizing white men, but not so good at recognizing women and people of color. And that comes from the data and the way the data was put into the algorithm."

Webb added that she believed the problems could partly be mitigated through "a greater attention to inclusivity in datasets" and a push to add a greater "multiplicity of voices" around the development of algorithms."

Coronavirus: The global race to patent a remedy; The Mercury News, February 13, 2020

Lisa M. Krieger, The Mercury News; Coronavirus: The global race to patent a remedy

"As a lethal coronavirus triggers a humanitarian crisis in the world’s most populous nation, who owns the rights to a potential cure?

The Bay Area’s pharmaceutical powerhouse Gilead Sciences is first in line for a Chinese patent for its drug called Remdesivir, which shows promise against the broad family of coronaviruses.

But now a team of Chinese scientists say they’ve improved and targeted its use — and, in a startling move, have also filed for a patent...

“Each side wants to be the entity that came up with the treatment for coronavirus,” said Jacob Sherkow, professor of law at the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School. “This is not a knockoff of a Louis Vuitton handbag,”...

Patent protection — and market exclusivity — is the lifeblood of drug companies such as Gilead, creating the incentive to find, test and market a medicine."

TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S. audience; The Washington Post, September 15, 2019

Drew Harwell and Tony Romm, The Washington Post; TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S. audience

"TikTok’s surging popularity spotlights the tension between the Web’s global powers: the United States, where free speech and competing ideologies are held as (sometimes messy) societal bedrocks, and China, where political criticism is forbidden as troublemaking."

A Confederacy of Grift The subjects of Robert Mueller’s investigation are cashing in.; The Atlantic, February 10, 2019

Quinta Jurecic; A Confederacy of Grift:

The subjects of Robert Mueller’s investigation are cashing in.

"For people in the greater Trump orbit, the publicity of a legal clash with Robert Mueller provides a chance to tap into the thriving marketplace of fringe pro-Trump media. Disinformation in America is a business. And the profit to be turned from that business is a warning sign that the alternative stories of the Mueller investigation spun by the president’s supporters will have a long shelf life."