Airmen criticize Air Force’s use of AI in suicide prevention training as ‘uncomfortable and odd’; Task & Purpose, September 30, 2026

AUSTIN CAMPBELL, Task & Purpose; Airmen criticize Air Force’s use of AI in suicide prevention training as ‘uncomfortable and odd’

"The materials that make up the 2026 Suicide Prevention Total Force Awareness Training use several video segments with AI-generated characters, scenarios and presenters to deliver portions of the annual instruction required across the force. The Air Force did not specify which portions of the video presentations were AI-generated.

The videos, which are used in training for all Air Force and Space Force members, depict airmen showing signs of stress and distress in fictional scenarios. The videos are intended, an official told Task & Purpose, to lead to facilitator-led discussions as groups watch them. Training notes distributed online with videos even go so far as to note in all caps that “watching the video alone does not meet the training requirement.”

Since the videos began being used across the Air Force this year, they have drawn sharp criticism from rank-and-file service members.

“I think to take such a human subject and to take the humanity from it is insensitive and feels as if the Air Force doesn’t recognize the impact of this training,” one Air Force member told Task & Purpose. The airman, a senior leader who works in Air Force mental health and who has dealt directly with patient suicides by Air Force members, spoke on the condition that their name not be used.

“Does it meet the intent? Yes. Does it do it well? That would depend on the individual airman. For me it felt cold and unnatural,” they said. “Allowing AI to teach like this with little to no emotion and no human experience makes it feel uncomfortable and odd.”

Behind the Curtain: AI's existential legal crisis; Axios, October 2, 2026

Jim VanderHei, Mike Allen, Axios; Behind the Curtain: AI's existential legal crisis

"No industry has ever documented its own foreseeable risks as loudly as AI.

Imagine a plaintiff's lawyer reading the public warnings of Sam Altman and Dario Amodei: They told the world it was dangerous. They told the world it was moving too fast. Then they unleashed it and sold it to your kid.

No industry has ever taken so much copyrighted work and left behind so much proof.

Imagine a plaintiff's lawyer reading OpenAI's own files to a jury: They trained on a pirated library. They renamed it to something blander. Then they deleted it when the headlines got hot...

The big picture: The fights are no longer theoretical. They're underway, in discovery and headed toward juries. Early verdicts and settlements capture the risk for the biggest players.

1. 🤖 Chatbots are being treated as products, not speech. Unlike social media companies, they likely can't hide behind Section 230, which protects platforms from liability for what users post — not what the platform itself creates. 
2. 📖 Copyright is a massive problem. Anthropic already paid the biggest copyright settlement in history, $1.5 billion to authors and book publishers, and now music publishers and news media want a piece."

Swedish Company Uses A.I. Likeness of Greta Garbo in Ad; The New York Times, October 1, 2026

 Isabella Kwai, The New York Times; Swedish Company Uses A.I. Likeness of Greta Garbo in Ad

"An ad for a Swedish manufacturing company released this week turned an A.I.-generated likeness of Ms. Garbo into a company spokeswoman."

Sentence tossed in Arizona case where deceased victim was depicted speaking in AI-generated video; AP, October 1, 2026

JACQUES BILLEAUD , AP; Sentence tossed in Arizona case where deceased victim was depicted speaking in AI-generated video

"In what’s believed to be a first in U.S. courts, Pelkey’s family used AI to create a video of his likeness to give him a voice. Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, raised the idea of her brother speaking for himself after struggling to figure out what he would say."

Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I.; The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, September 29, 2026

Ezra Klein

Produced by Jack McCordick,

 The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I.

"Bill Gates is a fascinating person in the artificial intelligence debate right now. He is somebody with experience in several of the different perspectives that most people can only hold one of: He was a revolutionary technologist who built some of the foundations of the future that we’re now living in. When he was chief executive of Microsoft, he was a corporate leader. He has felt the momentum of corporate competition — Microsoft, of course, is still in some of the race dynamics present in A.I. And then, as chair of the Gates Foundation, he has been working with governments around the world on regulatory issues, poverty alleviation and equity for many years.

Very few people combine technological experience, corporate experience and governmental experience in quite the way he does.

So his recent essay on A.I., in which he says that he is staking his reputation on trying to get people to see how bad what is coming might be and trying to get them to see that we are not ready for what is about to happen, was something...

We see the beginnings of control issues with things like the Hugging Face hack, where at least experimental A.I.s are breaking out of sandboxes and coordinating to do things that are way outside the scope of what we would want them to do. But again, those are nonrelease systems — Anthropic withheld Mythos, trying to create more cybersecurity.

So why is anything needed beyond — and is anything needed beyond? — the simply natural incentives under capitalism and normal corporate reputational management?

Well, I almost can’t believe you’re asking that. This is the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near.

In other areas, do we just say: Hey, release your drugs? There’s no F.D.A., there’s no airline safety board, there’s no requirement that cars use seatbelts. Do we just use the liability laws to try and keep humans safe? You know: Oh, you’re shipping opioids. Somebody should just sue you.

I mean, we’ve created a society that tries to keep people safe not by saying: Oh, we can bankrupt the person who does that.

And you say there’s filtering. There’s no filtering. You can take an open-source model that can create bioweapons and disable any monitoring of any kind, and this exists today.

So no, there is no filtering of any kind. And so say you kill 100 million people — you want to use a lawsuit?

I almost can’t keep a straight face.

Well, this is not my view, but it is President Trump’s view. It is the Trump adviser David Sacks’s view. To some degree, it’s Jensen Huang’s view, and so that’s why I’m putting you in conversation with it, because it is the governing view of the United States of America at this moment.

No, it’s fair to say that outside of the industry, the awareness of the dangers of A.I. is extremely low. And you can say that of academia, you can say that of think tanks, you can say that of policymakers, politicians.

And part of the reason I’m speaking so loudly — as loud as I can — is that you can’t rely on the industry to self-regulate here. I mean, it’s just insane."

Justice Department files ethics complaint against Minnesota federal judges; Politico, September 30, 2026

JOSH GERSTEIN and  KYLE CHENEY , Politico; Justice Department files ethics complaint against Minnesota federal judges

"The Justice Department has filed a formal complaint against nearly all of the federal district court judges in Minnesota, alleging that they violated the judicial ethics code by speaking out about the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement surge on their court...

The complaint contends that former Chief District Judge Patrick Schiltz, Judge John Tunheim and other “anonymous district judges” from Minnesota who spoke to The New York Times for an article published earlier this month expressed bias against the government. 

DOJ contends that the judges’ remarks about agencies involved in the federal immigration surge there breached the ethics rules preventing judges from commenting on matters still before the courts or likely to wind up there...

In a statement Wednesday, Schiltz defended his actions.

“As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times,” Schiltzsaid “Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges may ‘[speak] and [write] on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence.’ That is exactly what I did.”

A court spokesperson responded on behalf of Tunheim, echoing Schiltz’sstatement that the comments were permitted under federal rules for judges."

LIBRARIANS on LIBRARIES; The New York Times, October 1, 2026

 Elisabeth Egan and John Maher,Photographs by Lyndon French, The New York Times; LIBRARIANS ON LIBRARIES

"This year, Americans are marking the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding. The nation’s librarians are celebrating a milestone too: the 150th birthday of the modern American library.

A lot has changed since the American Library Association was established in 1876 — even just over the past decade. The library has gone from a building full of books to arguably the most versatile civic center in any community lucky enough to have one.

We spoke with dozens of librarians at the A.L.A. conference this summer in Chicago. They came from rural towns and major cities, elementary schools and universities, local branches and big government agencies.

These librarians want you to know that they don’t sit around reading all day. They want you to know about book bans and budget cuts, but also about career counseling and crafting groups and pop-up medical clinics.

They want you to worry, the way they worry, about artificial intelligence, looming legislation and harassment of their staff. But most of all, they want you to know what the library really is: a safe place for people to gather around books, ideas and one another.

Here’s what librarians had to say, in their own words."

Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month; The Guardian, October 1, 2026

Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender, The Guardian; Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month

"A series of events almost got us to armageddon, not caused by “rogue, superintelligent AI”, but by government reliance on error-prone systems that are marketed by their manufacturers as being close to superintelligent.

A CNN report published on 18 September, which hasn’t been verified by other major outlets, describes how the US “almost started a war” with China, based on an intelligence report that claimed a Chinese ship was transporting components of nuclear weapons. Military personnel made plans to intercept the Chinese vessel, complete with aircraft and soldiers ready to board the ship. A military skirmish of this kind between China and the US could quickly escalate and spiral into world war three.

It was only moments before executing on the plan that American officials further investigated the intelligence report and found that it had been generated with the use of a chatbot and contained erroneous information about the vessel’s contents.

Unlike the terminator, “rogue AI”, scenario, this incident didn’t galvanize lawmakers into announcing calls for regulation so as to avoid potential human extinction. Media outlet after media outlet didn’t warn the public that we almost triggered a war against a nuclear superpower because of our military’s reliance on error-prone chatbots."

First ‘Public Nature Library’ in the U.S. Offers ‘Immersive’ Experiences with 1-Mile Hiking Loop on a 15-Acre Campus; People, September 29, 2026

Natalia Senanayake, People; First ‘Public Nature Library’ in the U.S. Offers ‘Immersive’ Experiences with 1-Mile Hiking Loop on a 15-Acre Campus

The 33,000-square-foot Anythink Nature Library in Thornton, Colo., officially opened its doors to the public in August

"A “one-of-a-kind” library officially opened its doors to the public last month — and it’s on a mission to promote environmental education while also serving as a destination for interactive nature experiences. 

Anythink Nature Library in Thornton, Colo., officially became the “first public nature library” in the U.S. when it opened its doors on Saturday, Aug. 8, according to a press release from the library. 

While the location boasts a 33,000-square-foot library filled with educational books and materials, it also offers “immersive indoor and outdoor” experiences for visitors to connect with nature. 

Located outside of Denver, the entire destination sits on a 15-acre campus next to Thornton’s  140-acre Aylor Open Lands. The property boasts a one-mile hiking trail loop with a “storytelling circle,” specialized gardens and a “mud exploration pit.”"

Late Night Is Skeptical of A.I. Leaders Self-Regulating; The New York Times, October 1, 2026

Trish Bendix, The New York Times; Late Night Is Skeptical of A.I. Leaders Self-Regulating

“Sure, we don’t need laws! I’m sure we could trust these guys,” Jordan Klepper said of technology executives on “The Daily Show,” after Trump asked them to police themselves.

"President Trump met with tech leaders on Tuesday, with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos among the attendees who signed a voluntary agreement to adopt A.I. safety policies. “They’re really going to be policing each other,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday afternoon outside the White House.

Jordan Klepper likened the White House luncheon to “the last supper if everyone there believed they were the son of God” on Wednesday’s “Daily Show...

“Look at this signature: Donald J. Trump, President of the ‘Unites States.’ Could there ever be a better metaphor for this presidency than misspelling ‘United States’ on a document about ‘super intelligence?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL"

Milwaukee mayor backtracks on library director nomination over accreditation issue; 620WTMJ, September 29, 2026

 Adam Roberts, 620WTMJ; Milwaukee mayor backtracks on library director nomination over accreditation issue 

"Just over a week after announcing the nomination of Jean Darnell to be the newest director of the Milwaukee Public Library, Mayor Cavalier Johnson is rescinding the nomination after discovering that her degree does not meet accreditation requirements listed in the job description.

Darnell, who operates the webpage Awaken Librarian and recently led library services for the School District of Philadelphia, received her graduate degree in information science and school librarianship from the University of Houston–Clear Lake. While the degree is regionally accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges, the Schools Commission on Colleges, and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), it is not accredited by the American Libraries Association (ALA). That, the mayor’s spokesperson Jeff Fleming tells WTMJ, is what disqualifies Darnell from the job.

“That ​said, ​we ​should ​have ​caught ​this ​at ​an ​early ​stage, ​and ​we ​regret ​that ​this ​is ​the ​circumstance ​that ​we ​are ​in,” said Fleming. “She’s ​a ​very ​talented ​person, ​but ​she ​doesn’t ​meet ​the ​legal ​requirements, ​and ​we ​own ​that. ​It ​was ​our ​oversight ​not ​to ​have ​caught ​that ​in ​the ​initial ​application ​process.”

The law requires library administrators employed by a public, county, or municipal public library in a city of 6,000 people or more to hold an ALA-accredited degree except for “a library in a city of the first class” such as Milwaukee. But Fleming says after consulting with City Attorney Evan Goyke, leaders determined that exception didn’t apply, coupled with the ALA requirement being a specific ask in the job description.

While a waiver process does exist, Fleming noted it would be a lengthy process that could take “an indeterminate amount of time”.

When reached by WTMJ over the phone, Darnell expressed frustration at the decision, saying she learned of the move one day before she had planned to move to Milwaukee.

“I have 13 years of library experience, I have achieved accomplishments within the library field that others dream of. They made their decision…it is surprising that the mayor and the council does not want to support their own law,” said Darnell.

While acknowledging she doesn’t hold an ALA-accredited graduate degree, Darnell pointed to her decade-plus of experience in the field combined with her degree’s certification by the CHEA she says is applicable to the Milwaukee director job. The law governing administrator Grade I certification allows an applicant to hold a master’s decree from an unaccredited library school program “if the division is satisfied that the program leading to that degree is substantially equivalent and the applicant’s professional experience is demonstrative of the ability to provide professional library services.”"