17 Articles about AI & Legal Issues

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5 Critical AI Legal Issues Every Business Must Navigate – Forbes

Artist appeals copyright denial for prize-winning AI-generated work - ArsTechnica

Podcast: AI and Voice Replication  - Illusion of More

YouTube Develops Tool to Allow Creators to Detect AI-Generated Content Using Their Likeness – Hollywood Reporter

FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist – ArsTechnica 

Supio brings generative AI to personal injury cases – Tech Crunch 

Mickey Mouse Smoking: How AI Image Tools Are Generating New Content-Moderation Problems – Wall Street Journal 

Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court? – Associated Press  

Watermarking in Images Will Not Solve AI-Generated Content Abuse – Data Innovation 

Amid New York Times Lawsuit, ChatGPT Is Citing Plagiarized Versions of NYT Articles on an Armenian Content Mill – Futurism  

Bill to Outlaw AI Deepfakes Backed by SAG-AFTRA – Variety

The European Union’s world-first artificial intelligence rules are officially taking effect - Associated Press  

Buzzfeed sends ‘cease and desist’ letter over AI aggregator’s logo – Press Gazette  

The Push to Develop Generative A.I. Without All the Lawsuits – New York Times 

AI can’t make music — but that doesn’t mean it poses an empty threat to musicians – The Atlantic 

The music industry is coming for AI – NPR

Judge sharply criticizes lawyers for authors in AI suit against Meta – Politico

The Ethical Task

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Self-actualization is not merely a good to be desired, but rather a task, something human persons have been assigned to do and which they will be held responsible for achieving or failing to achieve.

Of course, not everyone is aware of this ethical task. (Kierkegaard) says that a great many people drift through life, “managing with custom and tradition” in their respective cities. Such people live their lives in a way similar to the way children who have not been taught table manners might get by at a fancy party: “Watch the other polite children and behave as they do.” Someone who lives life this way lacks… “authenticity” or “originality.” Such a person “would never do anything first and would never have any opinion unless he first knew that other had it.”

C. Steven Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction

AI Definitions: AI Washing

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AI Washing - This references a company’s misleading claims about its use of AI. It’s a marketing tactic that exaggerates the amount of AI technology used in their products to appear more advanced than they actually are. AI washing takes its name from greenwashing, where companies make false or misleading claims about the positive impact they have on the environment.

More AI definitions here.

24 Recent Articles about AI Deepfakes

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What to know about the rise of AI deepfakes – CBS News

High School Is Becoming a Cesspool of Sexually Explicit Deepfakes – The Atlantic

Sophistication of AI-backed operation targeting senator points to future of deepfake schemes – Associated Press

Due to AI fakes, the “deep doubt” era is here - ArsTechnica

Taylor Swift and the Power of the AI Backlash – New York Magazine

How AI Is Helping ‘Fake Candidates’ Land Jobs – Wall Street Journal

A.I. Can Now Create Lifelike Videos. Can You Tell What’s Real? - The New York Times

FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist - ArsTechnica

Educational resource page with information and tips about deepfakes - Microsoft

5 Best Deepfake Detector Tools & Techniques – Unite  

U.S. Army soldier charged with using AI to create child sexual abuse images – Washington Post

New McAfee tool can detect AI-generated audio - Axios 

See why AI detection tools can fail to catch election deepfakes – Washington Post

Google's Nonconsensual Explicit Image Problem is Getting Worse – Wired

Something fascinating is wrong with the eyes in deepfakes – Futurism

Bill to Outlaw AI Deepfakes Backed by SAG-AFTRA – Variety  

As AI entrenches itself in the political world, discerning real from fake is critical – NBC Boston

The FCC wants the AI voice calling you to say it's a deepfake – Tech Radar

California lawmakers approve legislation to ban deepfakes, protect workers and regulate AI  - ABC News

YouTube is developing AI detection tools for music and faces, plus creator controls for AI training – Tech Crunch

Scammers now using deepfakes to commit title fraud – NBC 6 South Florida

Many political AI deepfakes are totally cartoonish, but the technology is still shaping the election – Fortune

AI-generated deepfakes are a growing threat to consumer identity – CBS 8

What the US can learn from the role of AI in other elections – MIT Tech Review

Looking Down

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A small but detailed 2015 study of young adults found that participants were using their phones five hours a day, at 85 separate times. Most of these interactions were for less than 30 seconds, but they add up. Just as revealing: The users weren’t fully aware of how addicted they were. They thought they picked up their phones half as much as they actually did. Whether they were aware of it or not, a new technology had seized control of around one-third of these young adults’ waking hours.

Just look around you—at the people crouched over their phones as they walk the streets, or drive their cars, or walk their dogs, or play with their children. Observe yourself in line for coffee, or in a quick work break, or driving, or even just going to the bathroom. Visit an airport and see the sea of craned necks and dead eyes. We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.

Andrew Sullivan, I used to Be a Human Being

15 Articles about How AI Works

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18 Articles about AI & the Bigger Questions

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4 Family Types

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There are basically four family types that we all come from. 

1 - The Traditional Family System

The old-fashioned family has a myth that “father knows best.”  This family is under the control of only one member. 

2 - Enmeshed Family System

The frightened family has a myth that it's “us against the world.”  It is emotionally bound together and protective of itself. 

3 - The Fighting Family System

The fighting family has a myth of “every man for himself.”  Each member of this family is strongly individualistic, recognizing no other authority than his (or her) own.

4 - The Open Family System

The healthy family system theme is “all for one and one for all.” The open family system emphasizes the worth, dignity, and uniqueness of each individual, the importance of unconditional positive regard, and the value of positive reinforcement.

7 Quotes about the Limitations of AI

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While AI can enhance individual creativity, it might do so at the expense of collective diversity and novelty in creative works. PsyPost

The AI programs aren’t necessarily doing something no human can; they’re doing something no human can in such a short period of time. Sometimes that’s great, as when an AI model quickly solves a scientific challenge that would have taken a researcher years. Sometimes that’s terrifying, as when (they appear) capable of replacing entire production studios. -The Atlantic

“On average 30% of the time the AI models spread misinformation when asked about claims in the news. On average 29% of the time, the AI models simply refused to respond to prompts about false claims in the news over the past month. Instead, the models delivered only non-responsive responses.” -News Guard

While AI models are starting to replicate musical patterns, it is the breaking of rules that tends to produce era-defining songs. Algorithms ‘are great at fulfilling expectations but not good at subverting them, but that’s what often makes the best music,’ Eric Drott, a music-theory professor at the University of Texas at Austin.” How can we be more human than an AI? Produce creative work that goes beyond the expected, the predictable, the established and popular. -The Atlantic

Recent brain scans suggest we don’t need language to think. A group of neuroscientists now argue that our words are primarily for communicating, not for reasoning. "Separating thought and language could help explain why AI systems like ChatGPT are so good at some tasks and so bad at others. These programs mimic the language network in the human brain — but fall short on reasoning." - New York Times

If an LLM can be trained on 17th-century texts, it can just as easily be trained on QAnon forums, or a dataset that presupposes the superiority of one religion or political system. Use a deeply skewed bubble machine like that to try to understand a book, a movie, or someone's medical records and the results will be inherently biased against whatever — or whoever — got left out of the training material. -Business Insider

At times, A.I. chatbots have stumbled with simple arithmetic and math word problems that require multiple steps to reach a solution, something recently documented by some technology reviewers. The A.I.’s proficiency is getting better, but it remains a shortcoming. -New York Times

How to Pick a Leader

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Try to ignore everything that is style and not substance. We should de-emphasize things like credentials, expertise, and experience, especially when they apply to something people have done before but is not so relevant for the future. Most of us are less likely to lose our jobs to AI than to reimagine our current roles while working out how to use AI to add value in different ways. Less focus on hard skills and more focus on the right soft skills.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Columbia University

Those who must be in control

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Imperative people can have too strong a sense of responsibility. In pushing themselves to do right, they often pay the price of burnout. When others encourage them to slow down, they won’t for fear that a bad habit of laziness might develop. Or perhaps someone will be displeased. The saying, “When you want something done, ask the busiest person in town to do it” may contain a lot of truth. Especially if the busiest person in town doesn’t have the ability to say no.

Les Carter, Imperative People: Those Who Must Be in Control

11 Interesting Quotes about AI & Academic Research

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Our findings suggest that AI tools are not yet ready to take on the task of editing academic papers without extensive human intervention to generate useful prompts, evaluate the output, and manage the practicalities. - Science Editor

If AI-generated papers flood the scientific literature, future AI systems may be trained on AI output and undergo model collapse. This means they may become increasingly ineffectual at innovating. - The Conversation

In a set of 300 fake and real scientific papers, the AI-based tool, named 'xFakeSci', detected up to 94 per cent of the fake ones. - Deccan Herald

People will say, I have 100 ideas that I don’t have time for. Get the AI Scientist to do those. - Nature

There are signs that AI evaluations of academic papers could be corrupting the integrity of knowledge production. Up to 17 percent of reviews submitted to prestigious AI conferences in the last year were substantially written by large language models (LLMs), a recent study estimated. - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Google just created a version of its search engine free of all the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. All you have to do is add udm=14 to the search URL. - Tedium

It’s possible to switch back to an AI-free search experience. Google has added a new Web tab to its search engine page at the same time as introducing these new AI features. You can configure this kind of web search as the default. - PopSci

In a 2023 Nature survey of more than 1,600 scientists, almost 30% said that they had used generative AI tools to help write (academic) manuscripts. - Nature

The highest-profile research is heavily influenced by cultural forces and career incentives that are not necessarily aligned with the dispassionate pursuit of truth. To get your research published in high-impact journals it helps enormously not to challenge the predominant narrative. Scientific narratives can become entrenched and self-reinforcing. And that’s where we are in climate science. - Chronicle of Higher Ed

How big is science’s fake-paper problem? An unpublished analysis shared with Nature suggests that over the past two decades, more than 400,000 research articles have been published that show strong textual similarities to known studies produced by paper mills. - Nature

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the country's top science institute, on Tuesday published new guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in scientific research, as part of its efforts to improve scientific integrity and reduce research misconduct, such as data fabrication and plagiarism. - Global Times

26 Articles about Politics & AI

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Half of U.S. states seek to crack down on AI in elections – Axios

No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans – Semafor

Sophistication of AI-backed operation targeting senator points to future of deepfake schemes – Associated Press  

US intel says AI is boosting, but not revolutionizing, foreign efforts to influence the 2024 elections - CNN

Half of U.S. states seek to crack down on AI in elections – Axios

Rethinking ‘Checks and Balances’ for the A.I. Age – New York Times

AI Could Still Wreck the Presidential Election – The Atlantic 

How A.I., QAnon and Falsehoods Are Reshaping the Presidential Race - New York Times

Uncle Sam wants to know: What can your country do for AI? – Semafor

California lawmakers approve legislation to ban deepfakes, protect workers and regulate AI – ABC News

AI Regulation Is Coming. Fortune 500 Companies Are Bracing for Impact. – Wall Street Journal  

Harris will use human Donald Trump stand-ins, not AI, for debate prep – Semafor

Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court? – Associated Press

Breaking Down Global Government Spending on AI – Enterprise AI 

How Innovative Is China in AI? – Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

AI researchers call for ‘personhood credentials’ as bots get smarter – Washington Post 

How AI-generated memes are changing the 2024 election – NPR  

States are writing their own rules for AI in health care  - Axios

Political consultant fined $6M for using AI to fake Biden’s voice in robocalls to voters – New York Post 

AI enters politics: 3 Pa. House candidates used ChatGPT to shape voters guide responses – Lancaster Online

Israel establishes national expert forum to guide AI policy and regulation – Jerusalem Post  

France appoints first AI minister amid political unrest as it aims to become global AI leader – Euro News  

Can politicians benefit from claiming real scandals are deep fakes? (video) – CNN

Self-Deception

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The psychologist Ray Hyman has spent most of his life studying the art of deception. Before he entered the halls of science, he worked as a magician and then moved on to mentalism after discovering he could make more money reading palms than performing card tricks. The crazy thing about Hyman’s career as a palm reader is, like many psychics, over time he began to believe he actually did have psychic powers. The people who came to him were so satisfied, so bowled over, he thought he must have a real gift. Subjective validation cuts both ways.

Hyman was using a technique called cold reading where you start with the wide-angle lens of generalities and watch the other person for cues so you can constrict the iris down to what seems like a powerful insight into the other person’s soul. It works because people tend to ignore the little misses and focus on the hits. As he worked his way through college, another mentalist, Stanley Jaks, took Hyman aside and saved him from delusion by asking him to try something new – tell people the opposite of what he believed their palms revealed. The result? They were just as flabbergasted by his abilities, if not more so. Cold reading was powerful, but tossing it aside he was still able to amaze. Hyman realized what he said didn’t matter as long as his presentation was good. The other person was doing all the work, tricking themselves, seeing the general as the specific.

Mediums and palm readers, those who speak for the dead or see into the beyond for cash, depend on subjective validation. Remember, your capacity to fool yourself is greater than the abilities of any conjurer, and conjurers come in many guises. You are a creature impelled to hope. As you attempt to make sense of the world you focus on what falls into place and neglect that which doesn’t fit, and there is so much in life that does not fit.

David McRaney, You are Not so Smart

Wasting Our Love

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We may have a feeling of love for mankind, and this feeling may also be useful in providing us with enough energy to manifest genuine love for a few specific individuals. But genuine love for a relatively few individuals is all that is within our power. To attempt to exceed the limits of our energy is to offer more than we can deliver, and there is a point of no return beyond which an attempt to love all comers becomes fraudulent and harmful to the very ones we desire to assist.

Consequently if we are fortunate enough to be in a position in which many people ask for our attention, we must choose those among them whom we are actually to love. This choice is not easy; it may be excruciatingly painful, as the assumption of godlike power so often is. But it must be made.

Many factors need to be considered, primarily the capacity of a prospective recipient of our love to respond to that love with spiritual growth. It is unquestionable that there are many whose spirits are so locked in behind impenetrable armor that even the greatest efforts to nurture the growth of those spirits are doomed to almost certain failure.

To attempt to love someone who cannot benefit from your love with spiritual growth is to waste your energy, to cast your seed upon arid ground. Genuine love is precious, and those who are capable of genuine love know that their loving must be focused as productively as possible through self-discipline.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled