Have a Thorny Medical Question? Your Doctor May Be Using A.I. for That.; The New York Times, June 8, 2026

Steve Lohr, The New York Times; Have a Thorny Medical Question? Your Doctor May Be Using A.I. for That 

"OpenEvidence’s A.I. app, essentially a chatbot for medicine, has become a viral hit with physicians. Talk to a doctor and chances are he or she uses the app to ask specific medical questions or bounce ideas off it in a diagnostic dialogue.

More than half of the nation’s physicians are regular users. Last month, they used it for 30 million questions and consultations, nearly twice the volume from six months earlier, according to the start-up. A separate survey last year of 1,000 physicians found that 45 percent of them used the app, nearly triple the percentage who used ChatGPT, according to Offcall, a career information service for doctors.

That growth propelled the start-up to a $12 billion valuation in January, up from $3.5 billion last July.

But doctors’ quick adoption of the app since its introduction in 2024 — one of a handful of A.I.-enhanced programs on the market seeking to win over physicians — has heightened concerns about how and when the technology should be used in life-or-death situations. In a high-stakes field like medicine, health care systems are navigating thorny matters of patient privacy, safety and trust, as well as the limitations of the technology itself.

“It’s not an oracle, it’s a tool,” said Daniel Nadler, founder and chief executive of OpenEvidence. “Knowledge and knowledge workers still matter.

The doctor’s office has been a target for computer-assisted decision making for decades, with very limited success until the recent advances of A.I."

Pentagon Cuts 180 Religious Identities From Military Personnel Records; New York Times, June 5, 2026

John IsmayAlexandra E. Petri and Aimee Ortiz, The New York Times; Pentagon Cuts 180 Religious Identities From Military Personnel Records

The new policy, which the Pentagon framed as a largely administrative action, leaves just 31 religious categories to choose from, 22 of which are Christian.

"The Defense Department will no longer allow military service members to claim roughly 180 different religious traditions in their personnel records, leaving just 31 to choose from — 22 of which are Christian denominations.

The change, which was reported earlier by Military.com, was announced on Friday afternoon in a statement posted to social media by Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, who called it “a long overdue move.”

Mr. Parnell framed the change as a largely administrative exercise, intended to simplify data collection for military leaders and chaplains...

Aside from the Christian faiths, the newly consolidated “religious affiliation codes” will allow soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard and Space Force personnel to identify in their records as agnostic, Baha’i, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Sikh. Wicca, paganism, humanism and atheism are among those that were removed from the list.

Those who had identified with one of the 180 eliminated faith groups will have just two options under the new policy: “no religion” or “other religions...

In response to the policy change, Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit religious freedom advocacy organization, said in a statement that Mr. Hegseth “can’t erase the religion of service members whose belief systems he finds less worthy without failing to honor his oath to support and defend the Constitution.”"

Oregon prison library worker charged after massive data breach; The Oregonian/OregonLive, June 5, 2026

Noelle Crombie | The Oregonian/OregonLive ; Oregon prison library worker charged after massive data breach

"A former library worker at Snake River Correctional Institution has been indicted on felony computer crime charges after state corrections officials accused her of downloading tens of thousands of internal files.

Demetre Gennette, 37, of Caldwell, Idaho, faces charges of aggravated first-degree theft, first-degree official misconduct, second-degree custodial sexual misconduct and supplying contraband...

Gennette worked as a library coordinator at the prison law library and was fired earlier this year. Snake River in Ontario, the state’s largest prison, has about 2,700 prisoners.

In an interview Friday with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Gennette acknowledged she accessed a large number of files.

She said she turned them over to the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people in prison. She said she also sent it to two attorneys who work on cases involving prisoner welfare."

AI license plate cameras tore this town apart and led to a state of emergency; The Washington Post, May 17, 2026

Annie Gowen, The Washington Post; AI license plate cameras tore this town apart and led to a state of emergency

"The cameras at the heart of the debate are run by Flock Safety, a technology company that has built a network of automatic license plate readers in more than 6,000 communities across the country in recent years. 

Flock’s system uses AI-enabled cameras to snap photos of every vehicle that passes, creating a digital “fingerprint” that includes data as personal as bumper stickers or gun racks.

Flock cameras are beloved by police because officers can use the company’s national database to track vehicle movements to recover drugs and stolen automobiles, and to solve even more serious crimes. A company spokesman said in a statement that the devices support “communities across the country in addressing crime and locating missing people.”...

Yet the company’s rapid expansion has given rise to citizen concerns about intrusive surveillance, worries that have intensified amid reports that federal immigration enforcement officials used the system to target immigrants."

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.”"

Man charged with killing Florida doctoral students allegedly consulted ChatGPT; The Guardian, April 27, 2026

Anna Betts , The Guardian; Man charged with killing Florida doctoral students allegedly consulted ChatGPT

"The man charged with killing two University of South Florida doctoral students from Bangladesh allegedly asked ChatGPT about what happens if a person has been put in a garbage bag and “thrown in a dumpster”, according to prosecutors in a court filing."

Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears; The Guardian, April 21, 2026

Aisha Down and Robert Booth, The Guardian ; Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears

Alarm caused by posts of Alex Karp, tech firm’s CEO, championing US military dominance and of AI weapons

"The US spy tech company Palantir published a manifesto extolling the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others – in what MPs have called “a parody of a RoboCop film” and “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

“Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive,” wrote Palantir in a 22-point post on X over the weekend, which also called for an end to the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan...

The pronouncement is the most recent of a number of high-profile statements from Palantir and its chief executive, Alex Karp, which appear to indicate that Karp views himself as not simply the head of a software company, but a pundit with important insights into the future of civilisation."...

In an interview with CNBC in early March, Karp suggested that AI would “disrupt” the power of “highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat”,and instead empower “vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters”."

Maryland passes legislation banning retailers from using personal data to set prices. Does it do enough?; WAMU, April 17, 2026

Esther Ciammichilli, Jackson Sinnenberg, WAMU; Maryland passes legislation banning retailers from using personal data to set prices. Does it do enough?

"The Maryland General Assembly passed a bill this week will prohibit food retailers from changing the price of their products – in real time – depending on who is buying them. The practice is called dynamic pricing. 

The new legislation is expected to be signed into law by Governor Wes Moore, who introduced it with leaders in the General Assembly. It will specifically prohibit retailers from using personal protected data to set prices for individual customers. This kind of data includes biometric information like ethnicity, sex, and gender identity...

What made Governor Wes Moore and the assembly leadership want to tackle dynamic pricing during this session?

Well, I think we’ve seen over the last several years this sort of catch up that we’re doing. Technology is moving so fast and the tech companies are finding more and more ways to exploit, really, the data, the algorithms, what they know about us in ways that are really harmful to consumers.

Over the last few years we’ve had several bills that are about protecting biodynamics, protecting consumer privacy, protecting the use of data without people’s permission. I think over the last year we saw a new way that these tech companies and these large corporations are finding ways to combine data brokers, private personal data, in a way that’s really harmful to consumers, in a way that really exploits consumers. And so this year, this is what we tackled.

During the final debate over the bill last week, you said, “One of the largest corporations in the world is announcing to their shareholders technology which they will patent to be able to adjust prices based on personal data.” Can you elaborate on the details of that announcement?

Yeah, so, you know, Walmart is …  they’re not going to have paper tags on their grocery stores anymore on there for for their prices. They’re gonna have these little screens that can change immediately. Digital screens to price your milk and your eggs and flour and and whatever else.

But what this technology allows them to do ultimately is to figure out who’s standing in front of that screen and change the price based on who you are. And that’s really the thing that we’re trying to get ahead of with this legislation."

What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots; The New York Times, April 4, 2026

Kashmir Hill

Photographs by Frances F. Denny

, The New York Times ; What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots

"There are a growing number of companies offering social chatbots that can act like friends, enemies, lovers, adventurous companions, or the manifestation of a fictional or real person you’ve always wanted to meet. You can pick A.I. Elon Musk’s brain or spar with A.I. Draco Malfoy. The myriad characters, often created by fellow users, offer drama, romance, therapy and LOLs.

Apps that feature role-playing chatbots are used by tens of millions of people, with engagement times that rival or surpass those of social media behemoths such as TikTok, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The majority of teens surveyed by Pew use A.I. chatbots, with one out of 11 saying they had used Character.AI.

“If you think your child is not talking to chatbot companions, you’re probably wrong,” said Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at U.N.C. Chapel Hill.

Chatbots are surging in popularity as society is still grappling with how social media has affected young people; a wave of lawsuits is moving through the courts seeking damages from companies that plaintiffs say have deliberately created addictive products. (A jury in California recently found that Meta and YouTube were liable for $6 million in damages to one young woman.) And now parents and caregivers have a new attention-absorbing technology to reckon with.

At the beginning of last year, a high school teacher in Chicago told me that some of her students were dating chatbots, and she worried that they were having their first erotic experiences with them. I wanted to find out what teens had to say about that, so I joined communities devoted to social chatbot apps on the online messaging forum Discord. I introduced myself as a reporter and “an old,” and explained that I was interested in talking to young people who used the services regularly."

I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better.; The Washington Post, March 31, 2026

Michael J. Coren, The Washington Post; I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better.

After Amazon’s Kindle removed my ability to download and back up my own e-books, I went in search of an alternative.

"As corporate walled gardens have replaced the freewheeling, open internet of the 1990s and 2000s, we’ve ceded control over almost everything about our online experience. Nearly every keystroke, swipe and tap is now monitored, recorded and analyzed for potential profit.

The Kindle ecosystem is perhaps the apotheosis of this shift. One Guardian reporter found Amazon had recorded every title, highlight and page turn on her Kindle app (40,000 entries over two years). The company’s dominance sets the terms for everyone in the marketplace.

Including me. Like tens of millions of others, I have owned a Kindle (a Paperwhite). Last year, it started to feel as if it owned me. The final straw was when Kindle removed my ability to download and back up my own e-books. So I went in search of an alternative.

I bought a Kobo.

Was it the bibliophile Eden some Kobo fans described? Not quite. The reality was messier than I expected. It turns out we can’t escape Big Brother on our e-readers just yet. But a more open society is coming into view for book lovers — and perhaps all of us.

Here’s how to turn the page."

The problem with doorbell cams: Nancy Guthrie case and Ring Super Bowl ad reawaken surveillance fears; The Guardian, February 14, 2026

Sanya Mansoor , The Guardian; The problem with doorbell cams: Nancy Guthrie case and Ring Super Bowl ad reawaken surveillance fears

"What happens to the data that smart home cameras collect? Can law enforcement access this information – even when users aren’t aware officers may be viewing their footage? Two recent events have put these concerns in the spotlight.

A Super Bowl ad by the doorbell-camera company Ring and the FBI’s pursuit of the kidnapper of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, have resurfaced longstanding concerns about surveillance against a backdrop of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The fear is that home cameras’ video feeds could become yet another part of the government’s mass surveillance apparatus...

“Ring has a history of playing it pretty loose with people’s privacy rights,” said Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission charged the company with “compromising its customers’ privacy by allowing any employee or contractor to access consumers’ private videos and by failing to implement basic privacy and security protections”. This, in turn, allowed hackers to “take control of consumers’ accounts, cameras, and videos”. Ring agreed to pay $5.8m in a settlement with the FTC."

Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again; The Guardian, January 10, 2026

Cory Doctorow, The Guardian ; Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again

"Until we repeal the anti-circumvention law, we can’t reverse-engineer the US’s cloud software, whether it’s a database, a word processor or a tractor, in order to swap out proprietary, American code for robust, open, auditable alternatives that will safeguard our digital sovereignty. The same goes for any technology tethered to servers operated by any government that might have interests adverse to ours – say, the solar inverters and batteries we buy from China.

This is the state of play at the dawn of 2026. The digital rights movement has two powerful potential coalition partners in the fight to reclaim the right of people to change how their devices work, to claw back privacy and a fair deal from tech: investors and national security hawks.

Admittedly, the door is only open a crack, but it’s been locked tight since the turn of the century. When it comes to a better technology future, “open a crack” is the most exciting proposition I’ve heard in decades."

What Are the Risks of Sharing Medical Records With ChatGPT?; The New York Times, December 3, 2025

Maggie Astor, The New York Times; What Are the Risks of Sharing Medical Records With ChatGPT?

"Around the world, millions of people are using chatbots to try to better understand their health. And some, like Ms. Kerr and Mr. Royce, are going further than just asking medical questions. They and more than a dozen others who spoke with The New York Times have handed over lab results, medical images, doctor’s notes, surgical reports and more to chatbots.

Inaccurate information is a major concern; some studies have found that people without medical training obtain correct diagnoses from chatbots less than half the time. And uploading sensitive data adds privacy risks in exchange for responses that can feel more personalized.

Dr. Danielle Bitterman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and clinical lead for data science and A.I. at Mass General Brigham, said it wasn’t safe to assume a chatbot was personalizing its analysis of test results. Her research has found that chatbots can veer toward offering more generally applicable responses even when given context on specific patients.

“Just because you’re providing all of this information to language models,” she said, “doesn’t mean they’re effectively using that information in the same way that a physician would.”

And once people upload this kind of data, they have limited control over how it is used.

HIPAA, the federal health privacy law, doesn’t apply to the companies behind popular chatbots. Legally, said Bradley Malin, a professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “you’re basically waiving any rights that you have with respect to medical privacy,” leaving only the protections that a given company chooses to offer."

Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort; The New York Times, December 12, 2025

Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times; Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort

"The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders.

Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.

It’s unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration."

Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day; The New York Times, November 26, 2025

Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times; Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day

[Kip Currier: How disconcerting it is to see the Trump 2.0 administration make this policy change from years of recognizing December 1st's World AIDS Day, particularly when many other proclamations have been issued this year for "World Autism Awareness Day, National Manufacturing Day and World Intellectual Property Day", as reported in the New York Times article.]

[Excerpt]

"Every year since 1988, the United States has marked Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day, when people mourn those who died of the disease, honor efforts to contain the epidemic and raise awareness among the general public.

Not this year.

The State Department this month instructed employees and grantees not to use funds from the United States government to commemorate the day. The directive is part of a broader policy “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day,” according to an email viewed by The New York Times.

Employees and grantees may still “tout the work” being done through various programs “to counter this dangerous disease and other infectious diseases around the world,” the email said. And they may attend events related to the commemoration.

But they should “refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging."...

So far this year, the White House has issued proclamations for dozens of other observances, including World Autism Awareness Day, National Manufacturing Day and World Intellectual Property Day.

The Trump administration froze foreign aid early in the year, derailing many public health programs dedicated to fighting H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Modeling studies have suggested that cuts by the United States and other countries could result in 10 million additional H.I.V. infections, including one million among children, and three million additional deaths over the next five years.

To some activists, the administration’s decision was a painful reminder of the early days of the epidemic, when H.I.V. was neglected as a public health crisis...

World AIDS Day is when the State Department sends data to Congress from the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, which provides money for H.I.V. programs worldwide. The program’s budget was sharply cut back earlier this year, and the administration is reported to be planning to end it."

Trump Hatches Creepy New Plot to Target ‘Suspicious’ Drivers; The Daily Beast, November 20, 2025

Tom Latchem  , The Daily Beast; Trump Hatches Creepy New Plot to Target ‘Suspicious’ Drivers

"Border Patrol agents armed with hidden cameras and AI-driven algorithms are flagging millions of American drivers as “suspicious” and triggering covert traffic stops across the country, according to a new investigation.

The Trump administration has quietly expanded a vast domestic surveillance web that tracks and analyzes the travel patterns of millions of drivers—feeding local police tips that lead to secretive traffic stops, searches, and arrests, the Associated Press reports.

The intelligence project, built and run by Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gathers vehicle movements through a national network of covert license plate readers disguised inside roadside barrels, cones, and job-site equipment, AP reports...

Legal scholars warn that the scale of the data collection—tracking “patterns of life” for millions of ordinary drivers—could violate the Fourth Amendment. “Large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” may be unconstitutional, Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University, told AP.

The program is powered by an enormous expansion of CBP’s intelligence capabilities since President Donald Trump returned to office. Congress has authorized more than $2.7 billion to layer artificial intelligence onto existing surveillance networks. 

Meanwhile, Operation Stonegarden—a two-decade-old federal grant scheme—now channels hundreds of millions of dollars to local sheriff’s offices to buy license-plate readers and drones, and to fund overtime that effectively deputizes local cops into Border Patrol’s mission. Under Trump, congressional Republicans increased Stonegarden to $450 million over four fiscal years."

OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert; Bloomberg Law, November 18, 2025

Cassandre Coyer

, Aruni Soni, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert

"OpenAI Inc. is banking on a privacy argument to block a court’s probe into millions of ChatGPT user conversations. 

That hasn’t worked so far as a winning legal strategy that can be used by other chatbot makers anticipating similar discovery demands in exploding chatbot-related litigation.

Instead, it threatens to turn attention to just how much information chatbots like ChatGPT are collecting and retaining about their users."

The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power; The Guardian, November 12, 2025

Johnny Ryan and Georg Riekeles, The Guardian ; The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power

"Europe is hurtling toward digital vassalage. Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, EU laws to tackle tech giants have been either not applied or delayed, for fear of offending Donald Trump. Now leaked documents reveal that the European Commission plans to gut a central part of Europe’s digital rulebook. This will hurt Europe’s innovators and hand the future of Europe’s tech sovereignty to US firms.

Once Europe’s most hyped law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now on the chopping block. Powerful forces within the European Commission, supported by the German government, hope that deregulation will boost Europe’s tech sector, particularly AI. This is a grave mistake."