AI and Society

• 100 Leaders Shaping the Future of Artificial Intelligence
• Thomas’ story - a positive story about a man using Gemini to research his son’s rare disease and build and motivate a network of researchers working on related conditions (inc. Alzheimer’s) to investigate intersections of their work with this disease
• College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time - The Verge
• Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online
• Understanding the Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Framework - Can Export Controls Create a U.S.-Led Global Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem? Lennart Heim. Expert Insights. Published Jan 14, 2025
• Anthropic Education Report How University Students Use Claude
• Exclusive The $2 Per Hour Workers Who Made ChatGPT Safer
• Inside an AI Training for Doctors
  • question I was confused by the claims that the PII/PHI doesn’t leave wondering Northwell Health’s walls but that the clinicians are offered access to Gemini, Claude etc in the app, which would be routed via APIs. How does this work?
  • asked Sam Cole on Twitter/X (no response)
• Why Apple Still Hasn’t Cracked AI

Economic Impact of AI

• AI Could Wipe Out the Working Class Sen. Bernie Sanders

Data centres and the environment

• ‘I can’t drink the water’ - life next to a US data centre
• Circular water solutions key to sustainable data centres
• Making AI Less Thirsty Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models

Language Models, Our Emotions, Therapy

• My Boyfriend is AI A Computational Analysis of Human-AI Companionship in Reddit’s AI Community
• ✨ ELIZA effect - Wikipedia
• Early methods for studying affective use and emotional wellbeing in ChatGPT An OpenAI and MIT Media Lab Research collaboration
• Instagram’s AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists
• Adam Raine case
  • The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI’s ChatGPT is to blame
  • OpenAI, Altman sued over ChatGPT’s role in California teen’s suicide
• Sewell Setzer III case; Character.AI (C.AI)
  • Can a Chatbot Named Daenerys Targaryen Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide…
  • Grieving Mother AI was the stranger in my home Dear Tomorrow
  • The Social Media Victims Law Center - Representing Families Whose Kids Have Been Harmed by Social Media
  • ✨ Breaking Down the Lawsuit Against Character.AI Over Teen’s Suicide TechPolicy.Press
  • Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of Product Liability Tort Litigation Novel Action Alleges AI Chatbot Caused Minor’s Suicide

Perspective Pieces

• Why LLMs Are Hitting a Wall The Low-Hanging Fruit Has Been Eaten - well written perspective on the plateauing performance of LLMs as of December 2024. Rich for its links to reference material e.g. the piece in Time on OpenAI’s contracting of Kenyan workers in February 2022 via Sama.
• Why I attack - was pointed to this by Giuseppe. By Nicholas Carlini
• When does generative AI qualify for fair use? - thepost from Suchir Balaji
• The Government Knows AGI is Coming The Ezra Klein Show

Insider Perspectives

• Reflections on OpenAI

AI Regulation

• An introduction to Codes of Practice for the AI Act EU Artificial Intelligence Act
• Meta won’t bring future multimodal AI models to EU
• Meta Rolls Out Multimodal Llama 3.2 — But Not in Europe - Slator
  • Can Llama3.2 Vision be used by researchers in europe rLocalLLaMA
• Ensuring AI innovation in Europe Open letter to EU policymakers - this is https://euneedsai.com/
• Llama 3.2 Acceptable Use Policy
• meta-llamaLlama-3.2-11B-Vision · Why EXACTLY this model is not available in Europe - Hugging Face Community discussion on meta-llama/Llama-3.2-11B-Vision repo 🤗

Excerpts from Articles

AI’s Walking Dog - Boston Review by Brian Eno

Yet AI is part of the wave of technologies that are making it easier for people to live their lives in complete independence from each other, and even from their own inner lives and self-interest.

In my own experience as an artist, experimenting with AI has mixed results. I’ve used several “songwriting” AIs and similar “picture-making” AIs. I’m intrigued and bored at the same time: I find it quickly becomes quite tedious. I have a sort of inner dissatisfaction when I play with it, a little like the feeling I get from eating a lot of confectionery when I’m hungry. I suspect this is because the joy of art isn’t only the pleasure of an end result but also the experience of going through the process of having made it. When you go out for a walk it isn’t just (or even primarily) for the pleasure of reaching a destination, but for the process of doing the walking. For me, using AI all too often feels like I’m engaging in a socially useless process, in which I learn almost nothing and then pass on my non-learning to others. It’s like getting the postcard instead of the holiday. Of course, it is possible that people find beauty and value in the Weisswurst, but that says more about the power of the human imagination than the cleverness of AI.

Brian Eno is a musician, producer, visual artist, and activist. In 2019 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.