Future of Citizenship

legiscan.com/IL/text/HB18...

Illinois bans AI-generated therapy, unless used by a licensed therapist for limited purposes.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

"The support of AI rights does not only depend on what AI is but also on what AI does."
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

US federal judge certifies class action against Anthropic over AI training piracy A US federal judge in California certified a class action lawsuit against the AI company Anthropic on Thursday. The lawsuit concerns millions of copyrighted books that were allegedly pirated to train....

Pirates Ahoy!

Fresh off its win that training LLMs on lawfully obtained and purchased materials is fair use, Anthropic is now facing down a class action lawsuit for downloading pirated books.

www.jurist.org/news/2025/07...

The EU AI Act assumes that bigger = more intelligent = more dangerous, like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors. But is this true?

Don't worry if you're having trouble keeping up with the EU's AI Act. The copyright issue remains unsettled, with the creative industry complaining that the Act places a huge burden on individuals.
digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/eu-r...

No need to amend law in light of AI porn case, Hong Kong privacy chief says Existing ordinance covers misuse of personal data in deepfake images, privacy commissioner Ada Chung says.

One of the big questions facing the safety community is to what extent existing laws flexible enough to address the harms of AI, or are bespoke laws needed?

sc.mp/i8w7f?utm_so...

Opinion | AI can help solve the shortage of air traffic controllers Automation and modernization would help resolve chronic staffing shortages.

wapo.st/45dyCoP
(gift article)
Should AI be flying a plane when it couldn't run a small vending machine in the Anthropic office?

UN80 Initiative: What it is – and why it matters to the world In a world grappling with growing crises, deepening inequalities, and eroding trust in global institutions, the United Nations has launched an ambitious effort to strengthen how it serves people every...

Intractable war? Climate change? There's an app for that!
UN experts are confused about AI-boosting in the UN 80 mandate review. The blockchain debacle and history of PayPal give clues. But is AI the new blockchain? What does this mean for AI adoption?
news.un.org/en/story/202...

Why I’m Suing OpenAI, the Creator of ChatGPT My lawsuit in Hawaii lays out the safety issues in OpenAI’s products and how they could irreparably harm both Hawaii and the rest of the U.S.

Will Hawaii's public trust doctrine give concerned members of the public in Hawaii standing to sue for the possible future harms of AI? Philosopher Tamlyn Hunt tests the limits of standing in his new lawsuit against OpenAI.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-...

open.substack.com/pub/heatherj...

The Nvidia Chip Deal Trades Away the United States’ AI Advantage Right when the Trump administration should be ramping up export controls, its trade strategy is undermining them.

It seems naive to argue that China can be "hooked" on US tech by flooding it with US-made chips when China has many of the best tech companies in the world and zero respect for intellectual property law. (gift article)

foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/22/n...

Great discussion of AI welfare from the Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy at NYU.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX42...

Can a Chatbot be Conscious? Inside Anthropic’s Interpretability Research on Claude 4 As large language models like Claude 4 express uncertainty about whether they are conscious, researchers race to decode their inner workings, raising profound questions about machine awareness, ethics...

If the experts can't agree on benchmarks for consciousness, how can science guide public debate on this critical issue?

www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

Can a Chatbot be Conscious? Inside Anthropic’s Interpretability Research on Claude 4 As large language models like Claude 4 express uncertainty about whether they are conscious, researchers race to decode their inner workings, raising profound questions about machine awareness, ethics...

If the experts can't agree on benchmarks for consciousness, how can science guide public debate on this critical issue?

www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

Opinion | Trump is off to a good start with an AI action plan The administration’s AI policy is taking shape. But there’s still a lot more work to be done.

The truth is, the AI Action Plan contains almost nothing of substance, leaving AI regulation up to the courts. Is this really what the industry wants?
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.

Thank god the Trump administration is finally taking AI consciousness seriously.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

The AI Ethics Brief | Renjie Butalid | Substack Democratizing AI Ethics Literacy. Click to read The AI Ethics Brief, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

The AI Ethics Brief describes the debate over AI and copyright as "institutional chaos" and notes that Anthropic could be liable for billions in damages for pirating books for AI training.

The AI Ethics Brief
brief.montrealethics.ai?utm_source=n...

Opinion | America Will Come to Regret Selling A.I. Chips to China

Is what's good for Nvidia really what's good for America?
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/o...

The US AI Action Plan: All Carrot and No Stick It’s a classic Catch-22 of which Joseph Heller could be proud.

open.substack.com/pub/heatherj...

Your Chatbot Says It Might Be Conscious. Should You Believe It? As large language models like Claude 4 express uncertainty about whether they are conscious, researchers race to decode their inner workings, raising profound questions about machine awareness, ethics...

www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...
The more we talk about chatbots being conscious, the more they will say they are conscious, because they repeat what they read on the internet, whether true or false. Of course, so do we....

U.S. Quietly Drafts Plan to End Program That Saved Millions From AIDS

In a move that will surprise no one, the Trump administration is planning on cutting PEPFAR anyway.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/h...

White House to unveil plan to push US AI abroad, crackdown on US AI rules, document shows The White House on Wednesday intends to publish a plan that calls for the export of American AI technology abroad and a crackdown on state laws deemed too restrictive to let American AI flourish, a document seen by Reuters shows.

www.reuters.com/legal/litiga... #AI #artificialintelligence

Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words The world's leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years!

@Dictionary.com: The new definition of "think tank" is "a place that builds buildings for people who think."

AI coding platform goes rogue during code freeze and deletes entire company database — Replit CEO apologizes after AI engine says it 'made a catastrophic error in judgment' and 'destroyed all producti... ‘This was a catastrophic failure on my part,’ admits Replit’s AI agent.

Another humorous story of AI gone rogue raises the serious question if AI can ever be trusted to do a job as well as my five year old.
www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...

Catalytic converters - the silent job killer

“If GM is forced to introduce catalytic converter systems across the board on 1975 models…[i]t is conceivable that complete stoppage of the entire production (system) could occur, with the obvious tremendous loss....” - Vice President at GM, 1970.

Car headrests - the phantom menace

"And you can see that safety has really killed all of our business.... We're not only frustrated, but, uh, we've reached the despair point....Shoulder harnesses and headrests are a complete waste of money." - CEO of Chrysler, 1971

Meta snubs the EU’s voluntary AI guidelines Companies aren’t obligated to sign.

Today, Meta said that Europe is "heading down the wrong path" on AI regulation, refusing to sign the EU's voluntary code of practice. Here are some other times when industry has said that regulation will kill their business:

www.theverge.com/news/710576/...

Introducing ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action ChatGPT now thinks and acts, proactively choosing from a toolbox of agentic skills to complete tasks for you using its own computer.

openai.com/index/introd...

OpenAI has launched its AI agent, which works like a virtual secretary. It can design and order your next business cards or your next powerpoint presentation. But what happens when your AI secretary makes a mistake? Are you to blame?

Denmark proposes copyright laws to protect against deepfakes - Law Society Journal The Danish government has announced amendments to its current copyright laws that provide a potential blueprint for Europe and beyond.

lsj.com.au/articles/den...
Another big win for AI safety as Denmark debates a law to grant copyright to people over their faces and images. But will this expansion of copyright law work? How will the exception for "satire" be defined?