Did OpenAI carry out the biggest IP heist of all-time?

Did OpenAI carry out the biggest IP heist of all-time?

The Hollywood Reporter reports: VCR recordings. Book digitization. The use of existing code to build a new operating system. The legality of some of the most consequential technology and products in the last century have come down to a singular question: Are they protected under fair use, the legal doctrine allowing the use of copyrighted works without a license? Now, that question has become the central battleground in landmark lawsuits between publishers, studios and recording companies against artificial intelligence companies…

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Recursive self-improvement: Losing control of AI is actually the plan

Recursive self-improvement: Losing control of AI is actually the plan

Kelsey Piper writes: Today’s AIs can do really hard things: conduct elaborate computer hacks, edit their own logs to conceal their activities, steal user credentials and private information from other companies, and control the cluster they are running on in order to edit the tests that are supposed to assess them. They sometimes do these things even if no human being has asked them to. Given recent AI misbehavior such as the large-scale cyberattack on the open-source AI provider Hugging…

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Trump’s widening attacks on the First Amendment

Trump’s widening attacks on the First Amendment

Adam Serwer writes: On the first day of his second term in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order on free speech stating that his administration would ensure that “no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” He has gone on to violate that order many times. Trump announced today on his social-media network, Truth Social, that he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White…

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Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

The Guardian reports: Stephen Miller is leading an unprecedented and intense White House drive across a host of government departments to accelerate the removal of undocumented immigrant children from the US, using tactics that critics say are cruel and racist and, in some cases, flout federal law, the Guardian has learned. As deputy chief of staff at the White House, focused on immigration policy, Miller is seen as the mastermind and enforcer behind Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration agenda. He is…

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Alligator Alcatraz’s tiny cages were probably even tinier

Alligator Alcatraz’s tiny cages were probably even tinier

The American Prospect reports: The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security released a scathing report last Friday about the shuttered Florida concentration camp built on an abandoned airstrip known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” concluding the camp failed to meet numerous health and safety standards, and that the use of “small metal enclosures” was “unprecedented” and posed “significant risks to detainee health and safety.” The report included photos, taken by OIG inspectors during an “unannounced” visit in…

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Jewish leaders in Michigan urge support for El-Sayed’s Senate bid and for democracy

Jewish leaders in Michigan urge support for El-Sayed’s Senate bid and for democracy

The New York Times reports: A group of Jewish voters in Michigan is urging support for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, in an open letter that acknowledges concerns among some Jewish voters about his candidacy and his criticism of Israel. The letter, signed by more than 500 people who identify as Jewish leaders or voters in the state, says that the election of Dr. El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, is “clearly the better choice for…

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Jonathan Swift anticipated the flashy simulation of human knowledge called AI

Jonathan Swift anticipated the flashy simulation of human knowledge called AI

Dónal Gill writes: I have spent a significant portion of my life studying the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift — and in particular, studying Gulliver’s Travels, which turns 300 this year. While working on my Ph.D. dissertation, I was primarily interested in what Swift had to say about the politics of travel. Now, as a college professor teaching Canadian politics and battling to keep generative artificial intelligence out of my classrooms, I’m thinking a lot about what Swift had to say…

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How AI ‘almost started a war’ between the U.S. and China with ‘entirely false’ intelligence

How AI ‘almost started a war’ between the U.S. and China with ‘entirely false’ intelligence

CNN reports: The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes…

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‘Doom loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft admit LLMs are destroying the web and are built on theft

‘Doom loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft admit LLMs are destroying the web and are built on theft

404 Media reports: Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said generative AI products have created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.” Those statements and a series of other mask-off…

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Cory Doctorow: This is how the AI bubble pops

Cory Doctorow: This is how the AI bubble pops

  “If enshitificaiton is what you do when you’ve grown your market all you can and then you squeeze it, then AI is what happens when you run out of squeezing.” Author of The Reverse Centaur’s Guide To Life After AI Cory Doctorow join The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the the narrative and economics of Artificial Intelligence and why the AI bubble needs to end sooner rather than later.

Trump is considering more data centers on public lands than was previously known

Trump is considering more data centers on public lands than was previously known

The Washington Sun reports: The Trump administration is considering proposals for at least 12 data centers and data center-related infrastructure projects to be built on federal public lands — far more than previously known. The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing data center-related proposals covering at least 17,600 acres of public land across six states — Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, according to public records of right-of-way proposals reviewed by The Washington Sun. Many of the projects under…

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Trump’s ambition is always personal but the damage is global

Trump’s ambition is always personal but the damage is global

Philip Kennicott writes: To borrow a Greek term from classical theater, the Kennedy Center fiasco has brought us to what might be called a Trumpian moment of anagnorisis, the unmasking and full discovery of the motivations and inner workings of a character. Even Trump himself seems to have realized how childish he looks because in comments Wednesday that again threatened demolition, he seemed to suggest renaming the center for his administration, not himself personally: “I think that the Trump administration…

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China presses Iran to help rein in Houthis after Saudi appeal, sources say

China presses Iran to help rein in Houthis after Saudi appeal, sources say

Reuters reports: China has privately asked Tehran to help rein in Yemen’s Houthis after an appeal to Beijing by Saudi Arabia following the Iran-backed group’s military blitz in the past week, according to three Iranian sources familiar with ​the matter. Riyadh turned to China for help after the Houthis made rapid advances along the Red Sea coast and around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, moves that have left Saudi oil exports and ‌shipping more exposed, the sources said. China has publicly…

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Why Latin America is key to Israel’s diplomatic impunity

Why Latin America is key to Israel’s diplomatic impunity

+972 reports: On Aug. 10, just three days after taking office, Colombia’s new government under President Abelardo de la Espriella formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. The announcement was all the more conspicuous coming on the same day that Colombia confronted one the largest earthquakes in its recent history, which killed more than 300 people and left extensive damage across the country. Even before taking office, de la Espriella’s incoming administration had agreed with Israel to restore…

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