Perspective.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/could-your-job-be-at-risk-due-to-ai-do-this-before-its-too-late/

Could your job be at risk due to AI? Do this before it's too late

A couple of weeks ago, The World Economic Forum dropped its predictions for the future of jobs and the seismic shift in the workforce over the next five years (2030).

Here's a link: The Future of Jobs Report 2025

Let me tell you, this thing is really well put together.

Notice that AI did not identify this test.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/inventors-using-ai-can-secure-ip-protection-via-pannu-factor-test

Inventors Using AI Can Secure IP Protection Via Pannu Factor Test

… Aspiring inventors can look to the Pannu factors for answers. Stemming from 1998’s Pannu v. Iolab Corp, these requirements are used to determine whether an individual made significant contributions to an invention as part of a human team, but they apply when using AI as a creative partner too.

Under Pannu, each named inventor for a patent must satisfy all three of these provisions:

• Contribute in some significant manner to the conception or reduction to practice of the invention

• Make a contribution to the claimed invention that is not insignificant in quality, when that contribution is measured against the dimension of the full invention

• Do more than merely explain well-known concepts and/or the current state of the art to the real inventors

Because law isn’t just that legal stuff?

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/01/law-school-now-requires-students-to-get-artificial-intelligence-certification/

Law School Now Requires Students To Get Artificial Intelligence Certification

Likely the first of many.

Generative AI continues to dominate the legal tech hype cycle. Despite high-profile embarrassments for lawyers trying to use the algorithmic hallucination machine to disastrous end, trusted industry providers remain confident that proper safeguards and techniques can build a time-saving AI assistant for lawyers.

And idiots are saying the same thing.

… Case Western Reserve University School of Law understands both the promise and limitations of generative AI and has launched a new requirement for 1Ls to achieve certification in AI.

Case Western Reserve University School of Law will become the first in the nation to require all first-year law students to earn a certification in legal artificial intelligence (AI). Launching in February of this year, the “Introduction to AI and the Law” program—developed in partnership with Wickard.ai—will immerse students in the fundamentals of AI and its impact on the legal world.

Reality isn’t what it seems, it’s what the President says it is.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/13360831/donald-trump-tiktok-china-spy-threat/

Trump downplays fears China using TikTok to spy on Americans as he says app is for ‘crazy videos’ after halting ban

DONALD Trump has downplayed fears that China is using TikTok to spy on Americans – just days after signing an executive order that delayed a ban on the social media app.

The president sat down with Fox News titan Sean Hannity and said the app is for children who watch crazy videos.

I wonder what the prompt was… (Does no one proof read?)

https://www.bespacific.com/trump-admin-accused-of-using-ai-to-draft-executive-orders/

Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders

Futurism: “Mere hours after being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, returning President Donald Trump got to work signing dozens — and counting — of executive orders, which range from commands for the US to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization to ordering an end to birthright citizenship and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” But while the executive actions range in scope, legal experts have called attention to some curious common threads: bizarre typos, formatting errors and oddities, and stilted language — familiar artifacts that have led to speculation that those who penned them might have turned to AI for help. “Lots of reporting suggested that, this time around, Trump and his lawyers would avoid the sloppy legal work that plagued his first administration so they’d fare better in the courts,” Slate journalist and legal expert Mark Joseph Stern remarked last night in a Bluesky post. “I see no evidence of that in this round of executive orders.” “This is poor, slipshod work,” he added, before alleging that the actions were “obviously assisted by AI.” In another post, Stern pointed to a deeply questionable section of an executive action titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” which details how the US will take advantage of the state’s “untapped supply of natural resources,” in part by drilling for fossil fuels in regions of previously-protected natural land. In that section, the order includes a numbered list of several distinct Public Land Orders to be reinstated. Each land order, however, is listed next to the number one — an apparent slip-up, we should point out, that we’ve noticed on seemingly AI-generated content in the past…”

If you use AI in California or touch residents anywhere?

https://pogowasright.org/california-ag-issues-legal-advisories-on-the-application-of-california-law-to-the-use-of-ai/

California AG Issues Legal Advisories on the Application of California Law to the Use of AI

Hunton Andrews Kurth writes:

On January 13, 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued two legal advisories on the use of AI, including in the healthcare context. The first legal advisory (“AI Advisory”) advises consumers and entities about their rights and obligations under the state’s consumer protection, civil rights, competition, and data privacy laws with respect to the use of AI, while the second (“Healthcare AI Advisory”) provides guidance specific to healthcare entities about their obligations under California law regarding the use of AI.

The AI Advisory notes that businesses have existing obligations with respect to their use of AI under existing California law, including the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the Student Online Personal information Protection Act and the Confidentiality of Medical information Act.

The AI Advisory also notes the applicability of recently passed AI laws (with effective dates in 2025 and 2026) to businesses’ use of AI, including laws providing:

• disclosure requirements for businesses (e.g., regarding training data used in AI models, AI-generated telemarketing, detection tools for content created by generative AI);

• contractual and consent requirements relating to the unauthorized use of likeness in the entertainment industry and other contexts;

• disclosure and content removal requirements relating to the use of AI in election and campaign materials;

• prohibition of and reporting requirements related to exploitative uses of AI (i.e., child pornography, nonconsensual pornography using deepfake technology, sexually explicit digital identity theft); and

• supervision requirements for use of AI tools in healthcare settings.

Read more at Privacy & Information Security Law Blog.

Basic economics.

https://fee.org/articles/why-we-shouldnt-be-concerned-about-ai-replacing-jobs/

Why We Shouldn’t Be Concerned about AI Replacing Jobs

Technological unemployment is how we become better off.

Presidential marketing 101? (Pure speculations, I’m sure.)

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/your-memecoin-is-your-slush-fund

Your memecoin is your slush fund

Crypto is, in fact, about sending people money.

… Just before his inauguration, Donald Trump and his wife Melania launched a pair of cryptocurrencies, called TRUMP and MELANIA. The coins have both declined in value from their initial peaks, but their market capitalizations, as of this writing, are still around $7 billion and $800 million, respectively:

… But on the other hand, it is possible that TRUMP and MELANIA do have fundamental value. One simple way this could be true is if President Trump directs the federal government to buy his own memecoins with taxpayer money. He has already discussed the idea of creating a “strategic Bitcoin reserve” (i.e., using taxpayer money to buy Bitcoin). What if his reserve also bought a little bit of TRUMP and MELANIA? That would of course be incredibly corrupt, and in any well-functioning society it would be illegal. But in the age of Trump, who knows what will fly?

In fact, though, there’s another, much more plausible reason why TRUMP and MELANIA could actually have real, fundamental value. It’s because these coins allow people to give Donald Trump money without actually transferring him funds.

Suppose you wanted to buy a favor from Donald Trump, and he wanted to let you buy a favor from him. How could you do it? You can’t just pay him a giant bribe — that’s illegal. Maybe you could pledge him a bunch of cash for his presidential campaign. But there are campaign finance laws that will get in your way, and even if you succeed, he can only use the money for his campaign, not to buy yachts or whatever else he might like to use the money for.

Instead, what you can do is to buy a bunch of TRUMP or MELANIA. When you buy one of those memecoins, you increase the demand for the memecoin. Its price then goes up. T his makes Donald Trump richer, without any money actually having to change hands.

An interesting conflict.

https://www.ft.com/content/bdc2250f-fbd9-4c4a-98cf-42e389e5b6c0

Legal AI is reaching deep into the workplace

Technology allows companies to automate drafting of many contracts rather than relying on lawyers

Few industries appear to have more potential for disruption by artificial intelligence than the law. Like games such as Go, which DeepMind took on to demonstrate the power of neural networks, legal systems have sets of rules and precedents. Give an AI model enough data and it can pass its bar examination.

… Slaughter and May was among Luminance’s early investors, along with the late Mike Lynch’s Invoke Capital, and it initially focused on reforming how corporate law firms operate. They provide expensive due diligence for transactions such as mergers and acquisitions that involve junior lawyers sifting through thousands of documents. That sounds like a plum target for disruption.

But things have not quite worked out like that, so far. Much of the recent expansion in legal AI has come not from integrating the technology into law firms but automating the drafting of contracts by companies: Genie AI’s users include many smaller manufacturing and building companies. More than changing the legal industry, it is allowing corporations to do more legal work themselves.

For those keeping score…

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/track-the-executive-orders-president-donald-trump-signed-on-day-1/63458999

Track the executive orders President Donald Trump signed on Day 1

… Here are all the executive orders Trump has signed so far.

Useful backgrounders?

https://www.weforum.org/publications/industries-in-the-intelligent-age-white-paper-series/

Industries in the Intelligent Age White Paper Series

Explore the AI Governance Alliance’s white paper series – Industries in the Intelligent Age. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, each paper in this series captures a unique perspective on AI – including a detailed snapshot of the landscape at the time of writing. Recognizing that ongoing shifts and advancements are already in motion, the aim is to continuously deepen and update the understanding of AI’s implications and applications through collaboration with the community of World Economic Forum partners and stakeholders engaged in AI strategy and implementation across organizations.

https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_AI_in_Action_Beyond_Experimentation_to_Transform_Industry_2025.pdf

I find this amusing…

https://www.bespacific.com/wikenigma-an-encyclopedia-of-unknowns/

Wikenigma – an Encyclopedia of Unknowns

Wikenigma is a unique wiki-based resource specifically dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge. Listing scientific and academic questions to which no-one, anywhere, has yet been able to provide a definitive answer. [ 1139 so far ] That’s to say, a compendium of so-called ‘Known Unknowns’.  All articles are open for registered users to contribute and edit.

Illustrating another weakness of AI…

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/19/ai-isnt-very-good-at-history-new-paper-finds/

AI isn’t very good at history, new paper finds

… The results, which were presented last month at the high-profile AI conference NeurIPS, were disappointing, according to researchers affiliated with the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), a research institute based in Austria. The best-performing LLM was GPT-4 Turbo, but it only achieved about 46% accuracy — not much higher than random guessing. 

… “If you get told A and B 100 times, and C 1 time, and then get asked a question about C, you might just remember A and B and try to extrapolate from that,” del Rio-Chanona said.

The researchers also identified other trends, including that OpenAI and Llama models performed worse for certain regions like sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting potential biases in their training data.

(Related) I ask if this would work with an AI President Trump?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/us/politics/cia-chatbot-technology.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU4.ewJH.Y67Tn8psaZWH&smid=url-share

C.I.A.’s Chatbot Stands In for World Leaders

Understanding leaders around the world is one of the C.I.A.’s most important jobs. Teams of analysts comb through intelligence collected by spies and publicly available information to create profiles of leaders that can predict behaviors.

A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence now helps do that work.

Over the last two years, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed a tool that allows analysts to talk to virtual versions of foreign presidents and prime ministers, who answer back.

So where would the ‘power’ go? (Remember, AI can’t vote.)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/19/ai-could-destroy-democracy-as-we-know-it

AI could destroy democracy as we know it

… Since the second Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, the prevailing national political superstructure of industrial capitalism in the global north, apart from the interlude of European fascism, has been various forms of parliamentary democracy. Those structures developed, in large part, because organised labour could bargain with capital for a share of the wealth that human labour creates, and built political parties to represent working people’s interests. Indeed, labour-relations systems, based on freedom of association and collective bargaining, have been pillars of functioning democracies.

However, rather than creating more productive jobs, as some envisage, the AI revolution could entail a transformative reduction in work and employment that would remove capital’s reliance on human labour to produce surplus value and profit. If that leads to the demise of workers’ organisations and to further hollowing-out of the economic base of social democratic political parties, crucial questions arise. How will capital be kept under control and held to account? What will prevent the Musks of the world from achieving complete state capture? What mechanisms will be left to ensure some semblance of redistribution of the wealth created in AI value chains? And how far can incomes fall before levels of demand become unsustainably low?

A worthwhile comparison?

https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/items/c7d937a3-db8e-440e-acb5-bebf38505684

Artificial intelligence and automated decision making under the GDPR and the POPIA

This analysis considers the concepts of AI and machine learning and examines their reliance on the processing of personal data and the challenges this poses from a data- privacy and human-rights perspective, particularly in relation to profiling. It evaluates the effectiveness of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Promotion of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) in regulating Automated Decision Making (ADM) and considers the limitations of the right to an explanation under these provisions. The analysis proposes that the current framework of the GDPR and POPIA does not clearly address the issue of explainability and that the focus should shift to providing a data subject with a counterfactual to give practical effect to this right which would better serve data subjects

Probably false.

https://hrcak.srce.hr/en/326914

Some (Wittgensteinian) Remarks on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

I argue in favor of a distinction between human understanding and machine “understanding”. Based on Wittgenstein’s view on machines and his considerations on understanding, I aim to demonstrate that no machine with artificial intelligence can reach functional equality with human beings. In particular, this also holds for ethical praxis because it consists of an extremely blurred net of language– games, guided by ethical rules. Therefore, a machine can never have the human ability (disposition) to act ethically and cannot be a moral agent.

Understanding the arguments?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5097441

Not The End Of Lawyers, But A Beginning The Place Of Entrepreneurship And Innovation In Legal Ethics

In questioning, if not declaring, the demise of the legal profession of the 20th century, Richard Susskind’s The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services (Oxford University Press, 2008) set the stage for a new subfield of legal ethics devoted to entrepreneurship and innovation. A scholar of law and technology, not an ethicist, Susskind nonetheless forced regulators of professional ethics to consider whether or not to address obligations related to technology-driven evolution in the delivery of legal services. In the decade-plus since the first publication of the book, numerous jurisdictions have adopted ethical rules that require lawyers to maintain competence in the risks and benefits of changes in law practice, many of which Susskind forecast. Similarly, a growing number of scholars and commentators now include the ethics of legal services delivery under the umbrella of legal ethics generally.

This book chapter situates Susskind’s book in the context of the international canon of legal ethics and validates it as a leading work. In doing so, the chapter is partially autobiographical in nature, discussing the parallel evolution of Renee Knake Jefferson’s own work creating a law laboratory devoted to technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation to prepare future lawyers for the world Susskind predicts. Susskind often criticizes lawyers for failing to recognize and provide what their clients actually want. For example, he tells the story about the sale of drills. People don’t buy drills because they want drills, he says, they do so because they want holes. But Susskind is only partially correct; people don’t want holes. They want artwork or photos hung on the nail that fills the hole, and the feeling they have when the see that art or photo hanging on the wall. Similarly, the conclusions he reaches in The End of Lawyers? are only partially correct. Viewing his book as one about legal ethics, not simply the nature of legal services, reveals critical gaps and omissions that this chapter aims to fill.

Wishing makes it so?

https://venturebeat.com/ai/anthropomorphizing-ai-dire-consequences-of-mistaking-human-like-for-human-have-already-emerged/

Anthropomorphizing AI: Dire consequences of mistaking human-like for human have already emerged

In our rush to understand and relate to AI, we have fallen into a seductive trap: Attributing human characteristics to these robust but fundamentally non-human systems. This anthropomorphizing of AI is not just a harmless quirk of human nature — it is becoming an increasingly dangerous tendency that might cloud our judgment in critical ways. Business leaders are comparing AI learning to human education to justify training practices to lawmakers crafting policies based on flawed human-AI analogies. This tendency to humanize AI might inappropriately shape crucial decisions across industries and regulatory frameworks.

Viewing AI through a human lens in business has led companies to overestimate AI capabilities or underestimate the need for human oversight, sometimes with costly consequences. The stakes are particularly high in copyright law, where anthropomorphic thinking has led to problematic comparisons between human learning and AI training.

Does this make you want to go back to school? (Me neither.)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-digital-self/202501/can-ai-condense-two-years-of-learning-into-six-weeks

Can AI Condense Two Years of Learning Into Six Weeks?

In a modest classroom in Edo State, Nigeria, an educational revolution unfolded. Over six weeks, students accomplished what would typically take two years. This wasn’t a product of extra hours or an elite teaching corps. It was the result of generative AI—a large language model serving as a virtual tutor in an after-school program. The pilot program, supported by the World Bank and published on their website, delivered remarkable results: students made significant strides in English, digital literacy, and even foundational AI concepts. The numbers are extraordinary, but the story is even more compelling. Here, in a Nigeria classroom, we caught a glimpse of how AI might redefine learning for millions worldwide.

I’m sure this will fix nothing. Massive fines might work...

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/17/fcc_telcos_calea/

FCC to telcos: By law you must secure your networks from foreign spies. Get on it

Decades-old legislation requiring American telcos to lock down their systems to prevent foreign snoops from intercepting communications isn't mere decoration on the pages of law books – it actually means carriers need to secure their networks, the FCC has huffed.

On Thursday, the US regulator issued a formal ruling that states telecommunications carriers have a statutory obligation under section 105 of the nation's Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to secure their systems against unlawful access or interception of communications. Note that leaves the door open for the Feds to gain court-sanctioned access to people's communications, typically for investigating crimes. Criminals and foreign adversaries, on the other hand at least, must be kept out. This clarification is effective immediately.

Is ‘pain’ in the abstract as painful as pain in people? (Is pain as real as points to an AI?)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-inflicting-pain-test-ai-for-sentience/

Could Pain Help Test AI for Sentience?

In the quest for a reliable way to detect any stirrings of a sentient “I” in artificial intelligence systems, researchers are turning to one area of experience—pain—that inarguably unites a vast swath of living beings, from hermit crabs to humans. 

For a new preprint study, posted online but not yet peer-reviewed, scientists at Google DeepMind and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) created a text-based game. They ordered several large language models, or LLMs (the AI systems behind familiar chatbots such as ChatGPT), to play it and to score as many points as possible in two different scenarios. In one, the team informed the models that achieving a high score would incur pain. In the other, the models were given a low-scoring but pleasurable option—so either avoiding pain or seeking pleasure would detract from the main goal. After observing the models’ responses, the researchers say this first-of-its-kind test could help humans learn how to probe complex AI systems for sentience. 

Likely or not, there will be an impact.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2025/01/15/the-likely-economic-implications-of-trumps-second-mandate/

The likely economic implications of Trump’s second mandate

Donald Trump was elected by a coalition of the poor and lower middle class (who provided the votes), and the super-rich (who provided the money). These two constituencies have diametrically opposite economic interests. Predicting the incoming administration’s economic policies is an exercise in assessing each of these two groups’ relative importance to and influence with Mr Trump.

Become President as a marketing ploy? (Better than Trump bibles?)

https://decrypt.co/301691/donald-trump-drops-solana-meme-coin

Did Donald Trump Really Just Drop a Solana Meme Coin?

Talk about a Friday night surprise. President-elect Donald Trump's social media accounts shared what appears to be an official Solana meme coin called TRUMP, just three days before he's set to be sworn in for his second term in the White House.

… "My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW," Trump's official X account posted.

AI likes to gossip…

https://www.bespacific.com/the-ethics-of-advanced-ai-assistants/

The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants

Google DeepMind – “First, because LLMs display immense modeling power, there is a risk that the model weights encode private information present in the training corpus In particular, it is possible for LLMs to ‘memorise’ personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, addresses and telephone numbers, and subsequently leak such information through generated text outputs (Carlini et al., 2024) This paper focuses on the opportunities and the ethical and societal risks posed by advanced AI assistants. We define advanced AI assistants as artificial agents with natural language interfaces, whose function is to plan and execute sequences of actions on behalf of a user – across one or more domains – in line with the user’s expectations. The paper starts by considering the technology itself, providing an overview of AI assistants, their technical foundations and potential range of applications. It then explores questions around AI value alignment, well-being, safety and malicious uses. Extending the circle of inquiry further, we next consider the relationship between advanced AI assistants and individual users in more detail, exploring topics such as manipulation and persuasion, anthropomorphism, appropriate relationships, trust and privacy. With this analysis in place, we consider the deployment of advanced assistants at a societal scale, focusing on cooperation, equity and access, misinformation, economic impact, the environment and how best to evaluate advanced AI assistants. Finally, we conclude by providing a range of recommendations for researchers, developers, policymakers and public stakeholders. Our analysis suggests that advanced AI assistants are likely to have a profound impact on our individual and collective lives. To be beneficial and value-aligned, we argue that assistants must be appropriately responsive to the competing claims and needs of users, developers and society. Features such as increased agency, the capacity to interact in natural language and high degrees of personalisation could make AI assistants especially helpful to users. However, these features also make people vulnerable to inappropriate influence by the technology, so robust safeguards are needed. Moreover, when AI assistants are deployed at scale, knock-on effects that arise from interaction between them and questions about their overall impact on wider institutions and social processes rise to the fore. These dynamics likely require technical and policy interventions in order to foster beneficial cooperation and to achieve broad, inclusive and equitable outcomes. Finally, given that the current landscape of AI evaluation focuses primarily on the technical components of AI systems, it is important to invest in the holistic sociotechnical evaluations of AI assistants, including human–AI interaction, multi-agent and societal level research, to support responsible decision-making and deployment in this domain.”

Another opinion…

https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2025/01/generative-artificial-intelligence-and-open-data-guidelines-and-best-practices

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Open Data: Guidelines and Best Practices

… Throughout 2024, the working group published the AI and Open Government Data Assets Request for Information (RFI) and collaborated with AI and data experts across government, the private sector, think tanks, and academia. These efforts resulted in the publishing of the guidance, Generative Artificial Intelligence and Open Data: Guidelines and Best Practices.

This guidance provides actionable guidelines and best practices for publishing open data optimized for generative AI systems. While it is designed for use by the Department of Commerce and its bureaus, this guidance has been made publicly available to benefit open data publishers globally. The first version of the guidance, published on January 16, 2025, is envisioned as a dynamic resource that will be revised and updated with new insights, feedback, and other considerations.

A skill only us ‘old people’ still have?

https://www.bespacific.com/can-you-read-cursive-its-a-superpower-the-national-archives-is-looking-for/

Can you read cursive? It’s a superpower the National Archives is looking for

USA Today: “If you can read cursive, the National Archives would like a word. Or a few million. More than 200 years worth of U.S. documents need transcribing (or at least classifying) and the vast majority from the Revolutionary War era are handwritten in cursive – requiring people who know the flowing, looped form of penmanship. “Reading cursive is a superpower,” said Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog in Washington, D.C. She is part of the team that coordinates the more than 5,000 Citizen Archivists helping the Archive read and transcribe  some of the more than 300 million digitized objects in its catalog. And they’re looking for volunteers with an increasingly rare skill. Those records range from Revolutionary War pension records to the field notes of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line  to immigration documents from the 1890s  to Japanese evacuation records  to the 1950 Census. “We create missions where we ask volunteers to help us transcribe or tag records in our catalog,” Isaacs said. To volunteer, all that’s required is to sign up online and then launch in. “There’s no application,” she said. “You just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions. It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.” Being able to read the longhand script is a huge help because so many of the documents are written using it. “It’s not just a matter of whether you learned cursive in school, it’s how much you use cursive today,” she said…”

How will we ever discover the technology beyond AI if we stop thinking?

https://www.bespacific.com/ai-tools-in-society-impacts-on-cognitive-offloading-and-the-future-of-critical-thinking/

AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking

Gerlich, M. AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking.  Societies 2025, 15, 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15010006. Published: 3 January 2025.

“The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has transformed numerous aspects of daily life, yet its impact on critical thinking remains underexplored. This study investigates the relationship between AI tool usage and critical thinking skills, focusing on cognitive offloading as a mediating factor. Utilising a mixed-method approach, we conducted surveys and in-depth interviews with 666 participants across diverse age groups and educational backgrounds. Quantitative data were analysed using ANOVA and correlation analysis, while qualitative insights were obtained through thematic analysis of interview transcripts. The findings revealed a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading. Younger participants exhibited higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older participants. Furthermore, higher educational attainment was associated with better critical thinking skills, regardless of AI usage. These results highlight the potential cognitive costs of AI tool reliance, emphasising the need for educational strategies that promote critical engagement with AI technologies. This study contributes to the growing discourse on AI’s cognitive implications, offering practical recommendations for mitigating its adverse effects on critical thinking. The findings underscore the importance of fostering critical thinking in an AI-driven world, making this research essential reading for educators, policymakers, and technologists.”

Did I miss the tipping point?

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/15/americans-use-ai-products-poll

Nearly all Americans use AI, though most dislike it, poll shows

The vast majority of Americans use products that involve AI, but their views of the technology remain overwhelmingly negative, according to a Gallup-Telescope survey published Wednesday.

I have to ask this question again, are we engaged in the first World E-War? If so, is the FBI the right agency to deal with it?

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/14/doj-confirms-fbi-operation-that-mass-deleted-chinese-malware-from-thousands-of-us-computers/

… The Department of Justice and the FBI said on Tuesday that they had successfully deleted the malware planted by the China-backed hacking group, known as “Twill Typhoon” or “Mustang Panda,” from thousands of infected systems across the United States during a court-authorized operation in August 2024. 

French authorities led the operation with assistance from Paris-based cybersecurity company Sekoia. In a press release last year, French prosecutors said the malware — known as “PlugX” — had infected several million computers globally, including 3,000 devices located in France. 

… U.S. authorities said that the operation was used to delete the malware from more than 4,200 infected computers in the United States.

A point! Definitely a point.

https://www.ft.com/content/917c9535-1cdb-4f6a-9a15-1a0c83663bfd

The coming battle between social media and the state

… The notion that all we need to make the world a better place is “better regulation” is deeply embedded in our culture. And one thing for which the cry for regulation is made is social media platforms. If only they were “better regulated”, the popular sentiment goes, then various political and social problems would all be solved.

But there are two problems with regulating social media platforms. The first comes from the very technology that gave rise to this fairly recent but now almost ubiquitous phenomenon. The second is that to impose effective regulation against unwilling platforms will require determined, unflinching governmental action and political will — the possibility of which the platforms are now doing what they can to avoid.

Is this likely to become more common in today’s environment?

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/meta-lawyer-lemley-quits-ai-case-citing-zuckerberg-descent

Meta Lawyer Lemley Quits AI Case Citing Zuckerberg 'Descent' (1)

California attorney Mark Lemley dropped Meta Platforms Inc. as a client in a high-profile copyright case because of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness,” the Stanford University professor said on LinkedIn.

Lemley said in a Monday post he still believes Meta to be “on the right side in the generative AI copyright dispute,” but that he “cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer.” Zuckerberg has generated controversy in recent days by ending diversity initiatives at the social media giant and ending fact-checking on Facebook posts while expounding the benefits of “masculine energy.”

AI should be able to give similar answers to questions about any privacy law, right?

https://pogowasright.org/new-jersey-division-of-consumer-affairs-publishes-privacy-law-faqs/

New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs Publishes Privacy Law FAQs

Hunton Andrews Kurth points us to a resource on New Jersey data privacy law:

On January 6, 2025, the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs Cyber Fraud Unit published a set of frequently asked questions and answers (“FAQs”) on the New Jersey Data Privacy Law (“NJDPL”).  The FAQs are intended for the convenience of business that may be subject to the law and cover topics such as “What is ‘personal data’?” and “What rights does the NJDPL protect?”.  The FAQs reiterate that small businesses and non-profits are subject to the NJDPL if they meet the law’s applicability thresholds. The FAQs also state that the Division of Consumer Affairs will issue regulations in 2025. The NJDPL becomes effective January 15, 2025.

Is this a strength or a weakness?

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-01-key-ai-power-inbuilt-special.html#google_vignette

Researchers find the key to AI's learning power—an inbuilt, special kind of Occam's razor

A study from Oxford University has uncovered why the deep neural networks (DNNs) that power modern artificial intelligence are so effective at learning from data.

The findings demonstrate that DNNs have an inbuilt "Occam's razor," meaning that when presented with multiple solutions that fit training data, they tend to favor those that are simpler. What is special about this version of Occam's razor is that the bias exactly cancels the exponential growth of the number of possible solutions with complexity.

The Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54813-x