A Pulitzer winner quits 'Washington Post' after a cartoon on Bezos is killed; NPR, January 4, 2025

David Folkenflik, NPR; A Pulitzer winner quits 'Washington Post' after a cartoon on Bezos is killed

[Kip Currier: Every day, U.S. oligarchs like Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong feel more emboldened to cravenly censor criticism of themselves and impede freedom of expression and access to information.

Thank you, Ann Telnaes, for speaking truth to power with your satirical artistry and standing up for the importance of free and independent presses with your principled resignation decision. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist underscored in explaining her resignation, "Democracy can't function without a free press".

The evidence is now even more clear than one year or a decade ago: Consolidation of ownership of print journalism and broadcast media by a few billionaires and corporate conglomerates chills the ability to dissent and provide access to diverse perspectives.

The diagnosis and ramifications are also clear: Having a handful of oligarchs control America's newspapers is antithetical to well-informed citizenries and healthy democracies. (See here for a prescient 2017 article by veteran journalist and free speech/free press advocate Bill Moyers.)

Potential remedies? It's absolutely imperative that free speech-supporting Americans develop and nurture alternative ways to promote access to information and freedom of expression, as is increasingly being done on Substack accounts (see examples here, and here, and here) and via podcasts.

In the longer term, collaborative trusts (see here, for example) that can purchase newspapers and share ownership among more than one individual offer some potential ways to challenge oligarch newspaper monopolies.]

[Excerpt]

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Washington Post has resigned after its editorial page editor rejected a cartoon she created to mock media and tech titans abasing themselves before President-elect Donald Trump.

Among the corporate chiefs depicted by Ann Telnaes was Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos. The episode follows Bezos' decision in October to block publication of a planned endorsement of Vice President Harris over Trump in the waning days of last year's presidential elections.

The inspiration for Telnaes' latest proposed cartoon was the trek by top tech chief executives including Bezos to Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, as well as the seven-figure contributions several promised to make toward his inauguration. She submitted a sketch before Christmas. It was never published."

Chief Justice John Roberts Thinks You're Stupid And He's Probably Right; Above The Law, January 2, 2025

JOE PATRICE, Above The Law; Chief Justice John Roberts Thinks You're Stupid And He's Probably Right

"As Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts prepares a year-end report, ostensibly to communicate with the American people — or Congress — about the state of the federal judiciary and his vision for the branch’s future. His approach this year is to condescend to the public while ignoring every useful area of inquiry about the court system.

Because he thinks everyone is too stupid to care...

More likely, this is a bid to undermine the public’s faith in legal analysis. The public doesn’t necessarily appreciate how much obfuscation exists in rulings by design let alone when a judge affirmatively tries to muddy the waters. When a court tries to say “oh, we didn’t really do what the analysts are saying, we decided it on standing!” the public relies on legal analysts to cut through this nonsense and explain what they’ve actually done...

America should demand more from a Chief Justice. But it won’t."

Net neutrality rules about corporate control over internet speeds blocked by federal appeals court; CBS News, January 3, 2025

CBS News; Net neutrality rules about corporate control over internet speeds blocked by federal appeals court 

"A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that US regulators overstepped their authority by reinstating "net neutrality" rules governing internet service providers, dealing a blow to the Biden administration. 

In a published opinion, the appellate court in the state of Ohio said an order last year by the Federal Communications Commission "resurrected the FCC's heavy-handed regulatory regime." 

The battle over how much control US regulators should have over service providers has been going on for years. Under President Biden, the FCC expanded its oversight. 

"This order -- issued during the Biden administration -- undoes the order issued during the first Trump administration, which undid the order issued during the Obama administration, which undid orders issued during the Bush and Clinton administrations," the court said in its opinion. 

Net neutrality advocates argue that internet service is a vital utility in modern life and that companies providing it should be regulated to stop abuses such as giving speed advantages to those who pay more.

Net Neutrality rules prohibit internet service providers from blocking, slowing down, or charging extra for the internet content and applications their broadband customers choose, according to internet rights group Free Press. 

Internet service giants have fought against being regulated, arguing they should be left to run their businesses as they see fit. 

The court sided with internet service providers, saying the FCC lacks statutory authority "to impose its desired net-neutrality policies."

POPEYE, ‘THE SKELETON DANCE,’ AND ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’ ENTER THE PUBLIC DOMAIN; Rolling Stone, January 1, 2025

DANIEL KREPS, Rolling Stone ; POPEYE, ‘THE SKELETON DANCE,’ AND ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’ ENTER THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

"The first iteration of Popeye the Sailor, literary classics by Dashiell Hammett and William Faulkner, Alfred Hitchcock’s first sound film, and songs like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” are among the copyrighted works that will enter the public domain on Jan. 1.

 

As the calendar turns on New Year’s Day, thousands of copyrighted works across literature, film, and music from 1929 become open to fair use. This year’s slate also includes the French comic icon Tintin, Disney’s still-iconic The Skeleton Dance short (38 million views on YouTube!), Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front (the original German text became public domain last year).

Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, documents each year’s Public Domain Day highlights on the center’s website.

 

“For copyrighted culture, the public domain arrives only after a long wait,” Jenkins wrote of the 2025 entrants. “Works from 1929 were first set to go into the public domain after a 56-year term in 1985, but a term extension pushed that date to 2005. They were then supposed to go into the public domain in 2005 after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit another 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years. Now the wait is over.” (For sound recordings, the copyright term is 100 years.) 

Public Domain Day in 2024 was highlighted by the arrival of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, as the first iteration of those characters — as featured in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie — became free to use."

Column: A Faulkner classic and Popeye enter the public domain while copyright only gets more confusing; Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2024

 Michael Hiltzik , Los Angeles Times; Column: A Faulkner classic and Popeye enter the public domain while copyright only gets more confusing

"The annual flow of copyrighted works into the public domain underscores how the progressive lengthening of copyright protection is counter to the public interest—indeed, to the interests of creative artists. The initial U.S. copyright act, passed in 1790, provided for a term of 28 years including a 14-year renewal. In 1909, that was extended to 56 years including a 28-year renewal.

In 1976, the term was changed to the creator’s life plus 50 years. In 1998, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, which is known as the Sonny Bono Act after its chief promoter on Capitol Hill. That law extended the basic term to life plus 70 years; works for hire (in which a third party owns the rights to a creative work), pseudonymous and anonymous works were protected for 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

Along the way, Congress extended copyright protection from written works to movies, recordings, performances and ultimately to almost all works, both published and unpublished.

Once a work enters the public domain, Jenkins observes, “community theaters can screen the films. Youth orchestras can perform the music publicly, without paying licensing fees. Online repositories such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, Google Books and the New York Public Library can make works fully available online. This helps enable both access to and preservation of cultural materials that might otherwise be lost to history.”"

AI Developments at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2024; IP Watchdog, December 30, 2024

  BARRY WERBIN , IP Watchdog; AI Developments at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2024

"“The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.” Such is the conundrum facing the U.S Copyright Office in this era of rapidly expanding generative artificial intelligence technology. Human creativity has been the cornerstone of copyright protection for original works of authorship ever since the U.S. Constitution recognized copyright as a fundamental right to be protected for limited times. But the tenet that originality exists only when a human is primarily responsible for creating works of authorship is currently in flux and subject to extensive debate. Nowhere is this tension more visible than within the Copyright Office itself, which has been grappling with the core issue of what defines human creation when sophisticated technology like generative AI plays a significant role in creating works of authorship under the direction of a human creator."

Anthropic Agrees to Enforce Copyright Guardrails on New AI Tools; Bloomberg Law, December 30, 2024

Annelise Levy, Bloomberg Law; Anthropic Agrees to Enforce Copyright Guardrails on New AI Tools

"Anthropic PBC must apply guardrails to prevent its future AI tools from producing infringing copyrighted content, according to a Monday agreement reached with music publishers suing the company for infringing protected song lyrics. 

Eight music publishers—including Universal Music Corp. and Concord Music Group—and Anthropic filed a stipulation partly resolving the publishers’ preliminary injunction motion in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The publishers’ request that Anthropic refrain from using unauthorized copies of lyrics to train future AI models remains pending."

Texas book ban law causes a school district to remove Bible from libraries; The Guardian, December 30, 2024

Emily Swanson , The Guardian; Texas book ban law causes a school district to remove Bible from libraries

"While the state adopted library standards inclusive of HB900 last December, the fifth circuit has since blocked the part of the law requiring vendors to rate materials. Most of the rest of the law remains intact.

HB900 is being challenged in the US district court for the western district of Texas by bookshops in Houston and Austin, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which have collectively filed suit against Texas school board and library officials.

The complaint says the “overbroad language of the Book Ban could result in the banning or restricting of access to many classic works of literature, such as ‘Twelfth Night,’ ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ … ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ and even the Bible.”

The complaint argues that HB900 “harkens back to dark days in our nation’s history when the government served as licensors and dictated the public dissemination of information”."

On roads teeming with robotaxis, crossing the street can be harrowing; The Washington Post, December 30, 2024

 Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; On roads teeming with robotaxis, crossing the street can be harrowing

"When I try to cross my street at a marked crosswalk, the Waymo robotaxis often wouldn’t yield to me. I would step out into the white-striped pavement, look at the Waymo, wait to see whether it’s going to stop — and the car would zip right past.

It cut me off again and again on the path I use to get to work and take my kids to the park. It happened even when I was stuck in a small median halfway across the road. So I began using my phone to film myself crossing. I documented more than a dozen Waymo cars failing to yield in the span of a week. (You can watch some of my recordings below.)

It is a cautionary tale about how AI, intended to make us more safe, also needs to learn how to coexist with us. The experience has taught my family that the safest place around an autonomous vehicle is inside it, not walking around it...

What’s more, how does an AI designed to follow the law learn how to break it?...

 showed my videos to outside experts, too. Phil Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who conducts research on autonomous-vehicle safety, said Waymo had no excuse not to stop."

In Memoriam: President Jimmy Carter; Washington National Cathedral, December 29, 2024

Washington National Cathedral; In Memoriam: President Jimmy Carter

"Washington National Cathedral and the Episcopal Diocese of Washington join the nation in giving thanks for the life of President Jimmy Carter, whose deep and abiding faith in Jesus Christ was the foundation of a public life shaped by compassion, humility and care for the least among us.

Our prayers are with President Carter’s children Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy, and the extended Carter family.

President Carter exemplified a life of public service rooted in personal faith. Whether teaching Sunday School, or building houses for the poor, or working through the Carter Center to eradicate diseases in Africa, President Carter exemplified what it means to translate faith into action. 

President Carter’s faith was quiet and humble, fueled by a much-needed sense of generosity. His devotion to God was evidenced by his pursuit of peace and his promotion of human rights, especially for the world’s poor. Indeed, on the global road to Jericho, he was often the Samaritan who stopped to help as others passed by.

Undeterred by age, infirmity or political defeat, President Carter rose again and again to offer an outstretched hand. He embodied St. Paul’s admonition to be “afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10)

We will leave it to others to judge his political legacy, but his graciousness in victory and defeat, his personal decency, and his dogged commitment to public service demonstrated that one need not hold public office to leave an enduring imprint on the fabric of America. Of all the second acts in our political life, President Carter’s post-White House years were among the most inspiring. 

Together with all the saints in glory, we give thanks for the life and legacy of President Jimmy Carter. From his selflessness and humanitarian spirit, we draw inspiration. And from his example of fidelity and generous faith, we find hope that we might yet learn to embody his example of good and faithful service. 

“Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant James. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.” 

The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde
Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington

The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith
Dean of Washington National Cathedral"

Happy Public Domain Day! Popeye, ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ ‘The Sound and the Fury’ and Thousands of Other Captivating Creations Are Finally Free for Everyone to Use; Smithsonian Magazine, December 30, 2024

Ellen Wexler, Smithsonian Magazine ; Happy Public Domain Day! Popeye, ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ ‘The Sound and the Fury’ and Thousands of Other Captivating Creations Are Finally Free for Everyone to Use

"On January 1, 2025, Popeye—along with thousands of other copyrighted creations—will enter the public domain in the United States.

Every year, Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University School of Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, publishes an exhaustive analysis of some of the most important works entering the public domain. This year, the list includes copyrighted titles from 1929 and sound recordings from 1924.

Works enter the public domain when their copyrights expire, typically 95 years after publication. At that point, they become free for anyone to adapt or build upon without permission—with a few caveats. Copyrights to audio recordings, meanwhile, expire 100 years after they were first put to wax...

As Jenkins points out, many of the celebrated classics entering the public domain this year were themselves built atop other public domain works. Disney featured more than a dozen copyright-free songs in its 1929 Mickey cartoons. William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which enters public domain on January 1, gets its name from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “[Life] is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” Faulkner, Jenkins writes, is an “author of a timeless work that took from the public domain and now gives back to it.”"

Copyright on the Calendar: Top Cases of 2024 and What to Watch in 2025; IP Watchdog, December 20, 2024

 YAN SUN & JEFFREY HAJDIN & JOHANNA SCHMITT , IP Watchdog; Copyright on the Calendar: Top Cases of 2024 and What to Watch in 2025

"Copyright law provided an arena for some of the most interesting legal battles in 2024. We review some highlights from 2024 below, as well as some cases to watch in 2025."

We Stood Up for Access to the Law and Congress Listened: 2024 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), December 25, 2024

 KATHARINE TRENDACOSTA , Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); We Stood Up for Access to the Law and Congress Listened: 2024 in Review

"Because you wrote in, because experts sent letters explaining the problems, enough members of Congress recognized that Pro Codes is not uncontroversial. It is not a small deal to allow industry giants to own parts of the law."

AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped; Financial Times, December 21, 2024

 Kate Mosse, Financial Times; AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped

"Imagine my dismay, therefore, to discover that those 15 years of dreaming, researching, planning, writing, rewriting, editing, visiting libraries and archives, translating Occitan texts, hunting down original 13th-century documents, becoming an expert in Catharsis, apparently counts for nothing. Labyrinth is just one of several of my novels that have been scraped by Meta's large language model. This has been done without my consent, without remuneration, without even notification. This is theft...

AI companies present creators as being against change. We are  not. Every artist I know is already engaging with AI in one way or another. But a distinction needs to be made between AI that can be used in brilliant ways -- for example, medical diagnosis -- and the foundations of AI models, where companies are essentially stealing creatives' work for their own profit. We should not forget that the AI companies rely on creators to build their models. Without strong copyright law that ensures creators can earn a living, AI companies will lack the high-quality material that is essential for their future growth."

Overcoming AI’s Nagging Trust And Ethics Issues; Forbes, December 28, 2024

Joe McKendrick, Forbes ; Overcoming AI’s Nagging Trust And Ethics Issues

"Trust and ethics in AI is what is making business leaders nervous. For example, at least 72% of executives responding to a recent surveyfrom the IBM Institute for Business Value say they “are willing to forgo generative AI benefits due to ethical concerns.” In addition, more than half (56%) indicate they are delaying major investments in generative AI until there is clarity on AI standards and regulations...

"Today, guardrails are a growing area of practice for the AI community given the stochastic nature of these models,” said Ross. “Guardrails can be employed for virtually any area of decisioning, from examining bias to preventing the leakage of sensitive data."...

The situation is not likely to change soon, Jeremy Rambarran, professor at Touro University Graduate School, pointed out. “Although the output that's being generated may be unique, depending on how the output is being presented, there's always a chance that part of the results may not be entirely accurate. This will eventually change down the road as algorithms are enhanced and could eventually be updated in an automated manner.”...

How can AI be best directed to be ethical and trustworthy? Compliance requirements, of course, will be a major driver of AI trust in the future, said Rambarran. “We need to ensure that AI-driven processes comply with ethical guidelines, legal regulations, and industry standards. Humans should be aware of the ethical implications of AI decisions and be ready to intervene when ethical concerns arise.”

A truck driver's quiet kindness on the highway leads to gratitude and recognition; CBC, December 27, 2024

CBC; A truck driver's quiet kindness on the highway leads to gratitude and recognition

"When trucker Daljit Sohi spotted a woman drop her purse in a B.C. parking lot, he immediately stepped in to help.

What followed was a three-hour drive to return her belongings, a gesture that would later earn him a generous gift and nomination for a prestigious trucking award...

Sohi, who has been with the company since 2021, hadn't told anyone at work about what happened, not even his family. 

Harpreet Sabharwal, HR Manager at Triple Eight Transport, praised Sohi's humility.

"The gentleman is quite humble to not boast about himself but we were quite surprised in a positive way.""

Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index; Ars Technica, December 19, 2024

BETH MOLE , Ars Technica; Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index

"The publisher of a high-profile, now-corrected study on black plastics has been removed from a critical index of academic journals after failing to meet quality criteria, according to a report by Retraction Watch.

On December 16, Clarivate—a scholarly publication analytics company—removed the journal Chemosphere from its platform, the Web of Science, which is a key index for academic journals. The indexing platform tracks citations and calculates journal "impact factors," a proxy for relevance in its field. It's a critical metric not only for the journals but for the academic authors of the journal's articles, who use the score in their pursuit of promotions and research funding."

While the Court Fights Over AI and Copyright Continue, Congress and States Focus On Digital Replicas: 2024 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), December 27, 2024

 CORYNNE MCSHERRY, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ; While the Court Fights Over AI and Copyright Continue, Congress and States Focus On Digital Replicas: 2024 in Review

"These state laws are a done deal, so we’ll just have to see how they play out. At the federal level, however, we still have a chance to steer policymakers in the right direction.  

We get it–everyone should be able to prevent unfair and deceptive commercial exploitation of their personas. But expanded property rights are not the way to do it. If Congress really wants to protect performers and ordinary people from deceptive or exploitative uses of their images and voice, it should take a precise, careful and practical approach that avoids potential collateral damage to free expression, competition, and innovation."

The Job Interview Question Everyone Will Be Asking In 2025; Forbes, December 26, 2024

 Chris Westfall, Forbes; 

The Job Interview Question Everyone Will Be Asking In 2025

"Inside job interview questions, a new number one topic has emerged. Beyond the usual inquiries around your background and experience, the theme that’s top of mind is artificial intelligence (AI). The number one question every candidate should anticipate in 2025 is this one: How familiar are you with AI, and how are you using it? Here’s how to prepare, and respond, to the new number one job interview question.

As with any job interview question, the best answer usually involves a story. Because the minute you say, “I’m very familiar with AI,” the interviewer would like you to prove it. You can say you’re a genius, super empathetic, trustworthy, or the world’s fastest coder - the tricky part is providing credible evidence. Saying you are familiar with something is not the same as demonstrating it. That’s where soft skills like communication come into play."

New Course Creates Ethical Leaders for an AI-Driven Future; George Mason University, December 10, 2024

Buzz McClain, George Mason University; New Course Creates Ethical Leaders for an AI-Driven Future

"While the debates continue over artificial intelligence’s possible impacts on privacy, economics, education, and job displacement, perhaps the largest question regards the ethics of AI. Bias, accountability, transparency, and governance of the powerful technology are aspects that have yet to be fully answered.

A new cross-disciplinary course at George Mason University is designed to prepare students to tackle the ethical, societal, and governance challenges presented by AI. The course, AI: Ethics, Policy, and Society, will draw expertise from the Schar School of Policy and Government, the College of Engineering and Computing(CEC), and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS).

The master’s degree-level course begins in spring 2025 and will be taught by Jesse Kirkpatrick, a research associate professor in the CEC, the Department of Philosophy, and codirector of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center. 

The course is important now, said Kirkpatrick, because “artificial intelligence is transforming industries, reshaping societal norms, and challenging long-standing ethical frameworks. This course provides critical insights into the ethical, societal, and policy implications of AI at a time when these technologies are increasingly deployed in areas like healthcare, criminal justice, and national defense.”"

Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures; The New York Times, December 24, 2024

Roger Rosenblatt , The New York Times; Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures

"In some ways, the story’s enduring appeal is easy to account for. “A Christmas Carol” is, first and foremost, a ghost story — a genre that never seems to go out of fashion. But what’s less easy to account for, and more interesting, is how this 19th-century tale has continued to speak to modern readers, offering moral lessons that have only grown more relevant over the decades.

At its core, it is a story about the forces that exist within all of us: greed and generosity, hatred and love, repentance and forgiveness. It doesn’t hurt that it concerns one of literature’s most compelling characters: Ebenezer Scrooge."

After 55 Years, The MCU's Villains Still Follow The Golden Rule Stan Lee Insisted Should Never Be Broken; ScreenRant, December 24, 2024

 Ben Gibbons, ScreenRant; After 55 Years, The MCU's Villains Still Follow The Golden Rule Stan Lee Insisted Should Never Be Broken

"And all of these villains having some degree of nuance actually stems back to a rule set up by the father of modern Marvel Comics, Stan Lee. One of Stan's greatest contributions to the world, beyond his incredible characters, was the regular Soapbox columns he would include in the comics, where he would wax philosophical and share his personal ideas and values with the world. And in one such Soapbox column from March 1969, Stan shared this sentiment about the essence of heroes and villains:

"One of the things we try to demonstrate in our yarns is that nobody is all good, or all bad. Even a shoddy super-villain can have a redeeming trait, just as any howlin’ hero might have his nutty hang-ups. One of the greatest barriers to real peace and justice in this troubled world is the feeling that everyone on the other side of the ideological fence is a “bad guy”. We don’t know if you’re a far-out radical, or Mr. Establishment himself — if you’re a black militant or a white liberal — if you’re a pantin’ protest marcher or a jolly John Bircher — but, whatever you are, don’t get bogged down by kindergarten labels! It’s time we learned how fruitless it is to think in terms of us and them — of black and white. Maybe, just maybe, the other side isn’t all bad. Maybe your own point of view isn’t the only one that’s divinely inspired. Maybe we’ll never find true understanding until we listen to the other guy; and until we realize that we can never march across the Rainbow Bridge to true Nirvana — unless we do it side-by-side!""

‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years; The Guardian, December 27, 2024

Dan Milmo, The Guardian; ‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

"The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected.

Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades...

Hinton is one of the three “godfathers of AI” who have won the ACM AM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work. However, one of the trio, Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI “could actually save humanity from extinction”."

Why ethics is becoming AI's biggest challenge; ZDNet, December 27, 2024

 Joe McKendrick, ZDNet ; Why ethics is becoming AI's biggest challenge

"Many of the technical issues associated with artificial intelligence have been resolved, but the hard work surrounding AI ethics is now coming to the forefront. This is proving even more challenging than addressing technology issues.

The challenge for development teams at this stage is "to recognize that creating ethical AI is not strictly a technical problem but a socio-technical problem," said Phaedra Boinodiris, global leader for trustworthy AI at IBM Consulting, in a recent podcast. This means extending AI oversight beyond IT and data management teams across organizations.

To build responsibly curated AI models, "you need a team composed of more than just data scientists," Boinodiris said. "For decades, we've been communicating that those who don't have traditional domain expertise don't belong in the room. That's a huge misstep."

"It's also notable that well-curated AI models "are also more accurate models," she added. To achieve this, "the team designing the model should be multidisciplinary rather than siloed." The ideal AI team should include "linguistics and philosophy experts, parents, young people, everyday people with different life experiences from different socio-economic backgrounds," she urged. "The wider the variety, the better." Team members are needed to weigh in on the following types of questions:

• "Is this AI solving the problem we need it to?"
• "Is this even the right data according to domain experts?"
• "What are the unintended effects of AI?"
• "How can we mitigate those effects?""

Character.AI Confirms Mass Deletion of Fandom Characters, Says They're Not Coming Back; Futurism, November 27, 2024

MAGGIE HARRISON DUPRÉ , Futurism; Character.AI Confirms Mass Deletion of Fandom Characters, Says They're Not Coming Back

"The embattled AI companion company Character.AI confirmed to Futurism that it removed a large number of characters from its platform, citing its adherence to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) and copyright law, but failing to say whether the deletions were proactive or in response to requests from the holders of the characters' intellectual property rights...

That's not surprising: Character.AI is currently facing a lawsuit brought by the family of a 14-year-old teenager in Florida who died by suicide after forming an intense relationship with a Daenerys Targaryen chatbot on its platform...

It's been a bad few months for Character.AI. In October, shortly before the recent lawsuit was filed, it was revealed that someone had created a chatbot based on a murdered teenager without consent from the slain teen's family. (The character was removed and Character.AI apologized, as AdWeek first reported.) And in recent weeks, we've reported on disturbing hordes of suicide, pedophilia, and eating disorder-themed chatbots hosted by the platform, all of which were freely accessible to Character.AI users of all ages."

‘2073’ Review: Back to the Future; The New York Times, December 26, 2024

 Natalia Winkelman, The New York Times; ‘2073’ Review: Back to the Future

"The existential questions guiding “2073,” Asif Kapadia’s audacious exercise in futurism, are broad and familiar ones. How did we get here? What does our future look like? How can we change our current course toward a brighter one?...

Big Tech, climate catastrophe, autocracy — these are the hallmarks of Kapadia’s vision of the future, and they each receive an origin story of sorts in the nonfiction portions of his film. Montages of archival footage are paired with expert commentary on how the issues are correlated, and the bleak future they presage. Kapadia also profiles a handful of female journalists, who, alongside the film’s array of villains, emerge as spirited heroes offering an iota of hope to counter the feeling of impending doom."

The AI Boom May Be Too Good to Be True; Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2024

 Josh Harlan, Wall Street Journal; The AI Boom May Be Too Good to Be True

 "Investors rushing to capitalize on artificial intelligence have focused on the technology—the capabilities of new models, the potential of generative tools, and the scale of processing power to sustain it all. What too many ignore is the evolving legal structure surrounding the technology, which will ultimately shape the economics of AI. The core question is: Who controls the value that AI produces? The answer depends on whether AI companies must compensate rights holders for using their data to train AI models and whether AI creations can themselves enjoy copyright or patent protections.

The current landscape of AI law is rife with uncertainty...How these cases are decided will determine whether AI developers can harvest publicly available data or must license the content used to train their models."

Tech companies face tough AI copyright questions in 2025; Reuters, December 27, 2024

 Blake Brittain, Reuters ; Tech companies face tough AI copyright questions in 2025

"The new year may bring pivotal developments in a series of copyright lawsuits that could shape the future business of artificial intelligence.

The lawsuits from authors, news outlets, visual artists, musicians and other copyright owners accuse OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Platforms and other technology companies of using their work to train chatbots and other AI-based content generators without permission or payment.

Courts will likely begin hearing arguments starting next year on whether the defendants' copying amounts to "fair use," which could be the AI copyright war's defining legal question."

The AI revolution is running out of data. What can researchers do?; Nature, December 11, 2024

Nicola Jones, Nature; The AI revolution is running out of data. What can researchers do?

"A prominent study1 made headlines this year by putting a number on this problem: researchers at Epoch AI, a virtual research institute, projected that, by around 2028, the typical size of data set used to train an AI model will reach the same size as the total estimated stock of public online text. In other words, AI is likely to run out of training data in about four years’ time (see ‘Running out of data’). At the same time, data owners — such as newspaper publishers — are starting to crack down on how their content can be used, tightening access even more. That’s causing a crisis in the size of the ‘data commons’, says Shayne Longpre, an AI researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who leads the Data Provenance Initiative, a grass-roots organization that conducts audits of AI data sets...

Several lawsuits are now under way attempting to win compensation for the providers of data being used in AI training. In December 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft for copyright infringement; in April this year, eight newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital in New York City jointly filed a similar lawsuit. The counterargument is that an AI should be allowed to read and learn from online content in the same way as a person, and that this constitutes fair use of the material. OpenAI has said publicly that it thinks The New York Times lawsuit is “without merit”.

If courts uphold the idea that content providers deserve financial compensation, it will make it harder for both AI developers and researchers to get what they need — including academics, who don’t have deep pockets. “Academics will be most hit by these deals,” says Longpre. “There are many, very pro-social, pro-democratic benefits of having an open web,” he adds."