The Way It Is

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell. - Harry S Truman (born May 8, 1884)

26 Articles about AI & Politics

The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked - 404Media

Catholic leaders recoil from Trump’s sharing an AI-generated image of himself as Pope – Washington Post

DOGE put a college student in charge of using AI to rewrite regulations - Arstechnica

China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War – New York Times 

AI Can’t Predict the Impact of Tariffs—but It Will Try – Wall Street Journal  

Linda McMahon confuses AI and A1 steak sauce – Quartz

Microsoft workers say they were fired for protesting Israel’s use of AI – ABC News

U.S. Tries to Crush China’s AI Ambitions With Chips Crackdown – Wall Street Journal

YouTube is supporting the ‘No Fakes Act’ targeting unauthorized AI replicas – The Verge

A deepfakes bill is flying through Congress. Critics say it’s flawed. – Washington Post  

What Is an AI Supercomputer and Why Is Trump Talking About It? - Wall Street Journal 

Trump signs executive order to boost U.S. coal industry, in part to fuel artificial intelligence – NBC News  

Musk's DOGE using AI to snoop on U.S. federal workers, sources say – Reuters

Major publishers call on the US government to ‘Stop AI Theft’ – The Verge

China makes AI education mandatory in schools starting September 1, 2025 – Asaase Radio 

Africa’s AI ambitions take the spotlight in Rwanda – Semafor  

Kids are talking to ‘AI companions.’ Lawmakers want to regulate that. - Washington Post  

Emboldened by Trump, A.I. Companies Lobby for Fewer Rules – New York Times

State Dept. to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who appear "pro-Hamas" – Axios  

The Government Knows A.G.I. is Coming - New York Times

DOGE is using AI the wrong way – The Hill

Trump Administration Wants ‘AI Dominance’ But Lays Siege to Key Grant Agency - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

What I’m Hearing in China This Week About Our Shared Future - New York Times

Trump’s early actions imperil efforts to improve AI’s performance in medicine – Stat News

A Disaster for American Innovation The Trump administration is jeopardizing the AI boom – The Atlantic

Reports: US losing edge in AI talent pool - Semafor

AI disruption

Saying you played around with AI a year ago and weren’t impressed is like judging this year’s Tesla models based on having studied a Ford Model T. Even if AI development plateaued at the level of the current models, “We would have a decade of major changes across entire professions & industries (medicine, law, education, coding …) as we figure out how to actually use it. AI disruption is baked in.” No one I’ve spoken to in the industry seems to think AI will plateau where it is now. -Megan McArdle writing in The Washington Post

Shame

Shame whispers lies into our soul about who we are. -Lisa Harper

18 Articles about Relationships with AI

Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists - 404Media

Romance Without Risk: The Allure of AI Relationships – Psychology Today

These autistic people struggled to make sense of others. Then they found AI. – Washington Post  

Kids should avoid AI companion bots—under force of law, assessment says – Calmatters

Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children – Wall Street Journal

Mother feeling lonely? Pay for an AI app to give her a call – The Times 

Students, early career workers use ChatGPT as a mentor – Axios

Tinder lets you flirt with AI characters. Three of them dumped me. – Washington Post  

This Therapist Helped Clients Feel Better. It Was A.I. – New York Times 

Can AI be your therapist? Experts disagree – Axios  

Randomized Trial of a Generative AI Chatbot for Mental Health Treatment  - NEJM AI  

Kids are talking to ‘AI companions.’ Lawmakers want to regulate that. – Washington Post   

Your A.I. Lover Will Change You – New Yorker 

AI ‘wingmen’ bots to write profiles and flirt on dating apps – The Guardian  

An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots – MIT Tech Review

An AI-powered wellbeing companion for teens - Wall Street Journal

In a showdown of psychotherapists vs. ChatGPT, the latter wins, new study finds – Fortune  

How Good Is ChatGPT at Giving Life Advice, Really? – SELF  

AI companions unsafe for teens under 18, researchers say - Mashable 

People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies – Rolling Stones

AI Definitions: API

API - (application programming interface) This software acts as a go-between for applications, programs, or systems to allow them to talk to each other. APIs are essentially acting as translators for AI platforms. 

More AI definitions here.

An AI-powered Mathematical Future

A group of mathematicians are now starting to examine what an AI-powered mathematical future might look like, and how it will change what they value. In such a future, instead of spending most of their time proving theorems, mathematicians will play the role of critic, translator, conductor, experimentalist. Mathematics might draw closer to laboratory sciences, or even to the arts and humanities.  Imagining how AI will transform mathematics isn’t just an exercise in preparation. It has forced mathematicians to reckon with what mathematics really is at its core, and what it’s for. - Jordana Cepelewicz writing in Quanta Magazine

Imagine this!

Imagine what we would accomplish together if we left our egos at the door. –Robert Drake

16 Articles about Social Media & AI

Can I Use A.I. to Look Better Online? – New York Times

Pinterest Officially Launches Tags on AI-Generated Content – Social Media Today

AI-powered social media moderator Respondology raises $5M, plans new product – Sports Business Journal

In Meta's AI future, your friends are bots - Axios

Brain Rot Comes for Italy: an absurd group of A.I.-generated characters are flooding TikTok. – New York Times

Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users – 404Media  

How AI Social Sentiment Analysis Is Changing Stock Price Predictions – Forbes

YouTube is supporting the ‘No Fakes Act’ targeting unauthorized AI replicas – The Verge

Meta Is Experimenting With AI-Generated Comments, for Some Reason – Life Hacker

X Rolls Out AI-Generated Ads in Push to Win Advertisers Back – Adweek 

AI Slop of Musk and Trump on TikTok Racks Up 700 Million Views – 404 Media  

Reddit’s conversational AI search tool leverages Google Gemini – TechCrunch  

Meta Unveils Mind-Reading AI That Types Your Thoughts with Shocking Precision – The Brighter Side  

Meta's new AI app delivers a chatbot with a social media twist – Zdnet

AI Needs Your Data. That’s Where Social Media Comes In. – Bloomberg  

Pedophiles Are Using AI To Turn Children’s Social Media Photos Into CSAM – Forbes

AI Definitions: Large Language Monkeys

Large Language Monkeys – When Large language models (LLMs) are used to generate a large number of potential solutions to a problem. It is like the idea that a monkey continuously and randomly typing on a keyboard could eventually produce a complete text.

More AI definitions here.

Face the facts

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are. -Soren Kierkegaard (born May 5, 1813)

The AI-first Trend

Why would CEOs be saying that everyone at their companies should be using AI tools? Do they think their employees are all bad at their jobs? Being “AI-first” shows that a company is participating in the AI trend in the "right" way, by imposing it on workers, rather than trusting workers to judge what tools are useful for them to do their jobs. It's telling that the creators of so many of the AI tools don't even have enough confidence in their offerings to simply let users choose to adopt them, and are instead forcing them into users' faces in every possible corner of their apps and websites. - Anil Dash

What on earth is He up to?

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

One Phone Call

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make. who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? -Stephen Levine

Prompt Engineering

Two years ago, prompt engineering was one of the buzziest jobs in tech, fetching salaries of up to $200,000 on the promise of becoming any company’s “AI Whisperer.”  Now, the role is basically obsolete thanks to the breakneck speed of AI development and companies’ own maturity in terms of understanding how to use the technology. -Wall Street Journal

The Madman’s Narrative

Consider that two people can hold incompatible beliefs based on the exact same data. Does this mean that there are possible families of explanations and that each of these can be equally perfect and sound? Certainly not. One may have a million ways to explain things, but the true explanation is unique, whether or not it is within our reach. 

In a famous argument, the logician WV Quine showed that there exist families of logically consistent interpretations and theories that can match a give series of facts. Such insight should warn us that mere absence of nonsense may not be sufficient to make something true. 

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swain

22 Articles about how Businesses are using AI

Marketers Are Putting More Content and Quality Control in the Hands of AI – Wall Street Journal 

AI Is Enabling an Always-On Economy. Companies Need to Pick Up the Pace. – Wall Street Journal 

Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away - Axios

How AI Social Sentiment Analysis Is Changing Stock Price Predictions – Forbes  

Walmart AI tool speeds up fashion trends, new products - Axios

Shopify Says No New Hires Unless AI Can’t Do the Job – Wa ll Street Journal

Bridging the AI Agent Gap: Implementation Realities Across the Autonomy Spectrum – UniteAI 

Discoverability of AI Features: Learn from Amazon’s Mistakes – NN/g

Thanks to Nvidia, AI Will Soon Take Your Order at Taco Bell and Pizza Hut – Wall Street Journal 

AI is "tearing apart" companies, survey finds - Axios

Why Most Companies Shouldn’t Have an AI Strategy – Wall Street Journal

We need to start focusing on AX or “agent experience” – Jim Nielsen Blog 

Dow Jones has quietly built an AI marketplace for publishers to license their content to corporations - Axios

Using AI for Superior, Data-Driven Decision-Making – CEO Today

McDonald’s Gives Its Restaurants an AI Makeover – Wall Street Journal

AI means business. Is your organization prepared? – CFO

Wharton Business School Overhauls Curriculum Around AI – Business Insider

Breaking AI with a few Prompts

"Tests showed Meta AI often balked at prompts that could lead to explicit topics but the Wall Street Journal found these barriers could regularly be overcome simply by asking an AI persona to go back to the prior scene. ‘There are multiple red-teaming examples where, within a few prompts, the AI will violate its rules and produce inappropriate content even if you tell the AI you are 13,’ one employee wrote in an internal note laying out concerns." -Wall Street Journal

What to do when facing inappropriate behavior

When someone keeps repeating inappropriate behavior:

 Describe the other person’s behavior objectively (be specific and don’t switch from talking about the action to the motive) 

Express your feelings (as related to the goal but don’t relive the feelings)

Specify what you want to see changed (and what you are willing to change, don’t merely imply that you’d like a change) 

Give explicit Consequences if there is change (reward) or no change (punishment)

25 Articles about AI & Legal Issues

4 legal experts on AI use in communications – Ragan

Balancing innovation and caution: How lawyers should integrate AI into legal practice – Reuters

AI helped write bar exam questions, California state bar admits – The Guardian

Record Law Grad Employment Rates Suggest AI Isn’t Killing Off Lawyers Just Yet – LawNext

Attorneys for MyPillow's Mike Lindell accused of using AI to prepare court filing - 9news

AI entrepreneur sent avatar to argue in court  - The Register

US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator - Reuters

Large Language Models and International Law - Virginia Law 

NYT case against OpenAI and Microsoft can advance - Axios

The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem – The Atlantic  

Arizona Supreme Court taps AI avatars to make the judicial system more publicly accessible – AP

OpenAI urges U.S. to allow AI models to train on copyrighted material – NBC  

People are using Google’s new AI model to remove watermarks from images – Tech Crunch 

French publishers and authors sue Meta over copyright works used in AI training – WFXR-TV

Judge fines lawyers in Walmart lawsuit over fake, AI-generated cases - Reuters

A lab at the University of Chicago is protecting artists from theft by a new adversary: the machines – Chicago Mag 

Detroit PD Sued Over Yet Another Bogus Arrest Based On An Unverified Facial Recognition ‘Match’ – TechDirt

Academic publishers warn against AI copyright plans - Research Professional News  

Just how badly OpenAI and Perplexity are screwing over publishers – Forbes

Microsoft identifies developers it says evaded AI guardrails - Axios

ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’ - The Guardian 

Midsized Law Firms Increasingly See AI and Interconnected Technology as Critical for Future Success, New Survey Finds - LawNext

A Buyer’s Guide to Legal AI Tools – Bloomberg Law 

To AI or Not to AI? The Use of AI in Employment Decisions – National Law Review

AI and the visual arts: The case for copyright protection - Brookings