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Category Archives: Legal Research

The Secret IRS Files – Inside the Tax Records of the .001%

ProPublica: “In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same… Continue Reading

AI trains on kids’ photos even when parents use strict privacy settings

Ars Technica: “Human Rights Watch (HRW) continues to reveal how photos of real children casually posted online years ago are being used to train AI models powering image generators—even when platforms prohibit scraping and families use strict privacy settings. Last month, HRW researcher Hye Jung Han found 170 photos of Brazilian kids that were linked… Continue Reading

The End of Libraries as We Know Them? with Brewster Kahle and Kyle Courtney

The End of Libraries as We Know Them? with Brewster Kahle and Kyle Courtney Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast– Could the future of libraries as we’ve known them be completely different? Our guests this week say so. Megapublishers are suing the Internet Archive, perhaps best known for its Wayback Machine, to redefine… Continue Reading

LLRX June 2024 Articles and Columns

Protecting the Vulnerable: Navigating Online Risks for Minors – Veronica Garrick PowerPoint Has Its Problems – Jerry Lawson AI in Banking and Finance, June 30, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact… Continue Reading

Quora’s Chatbot Platform Poe Allows Users to Download Paywalled Articles on Demand

Wired [unpaywalled]: “WIRED was able to download stories from publishers like The New York Times and The Atlantic using Poe’s Assistant bot. One expert calls it “prima facie copyright infringement,” which Quora disputes. Poe, an AI chatbot platform owned by the question-and-answer site Quora and backed by a $75 million Andreessen Horowitz investment, is providing… Continue Reading

The telltale words that could identify generative AI text

Ars Technica: “Thus far, even AI companies have had trouble coming up with tools that can reliably detect when a piece of writing was generated using a large language model. Now, a group of researchers has established a novel method for estimating LLM usage across a large set of scientific writing by measuring which “excess… Continue Reading

Microsoft tells yet more customers their emails have been stolen

The Register: “It took a while, but Microsoft has told customers that the Russian criminals who compromised its systems earlier this year made off with even more emails than it first admitted.  We’ve been aware for some time that the digital Russian break-in at the Windows maker saw Kremlin spies make off with source code,… Continue Reading

The Supreme Court Puts Trump Above the Law

The Atlantic via MSN: “Near the top of their sweeping, lawless opinion in Trump v. United States, Donald Trump’s defenders on the Supreme Court repeat one of the most basic principles of American constitutional government: “The president is not above the law.” They then proceed to obliterate it. Although the pro-Trump justices attempt to nest… Continue Reading

ChatGPT is bullshit

ChatGPT is bullshit. Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries. Ethics and Information Technology, June 8, 2024. Volume 26, article number 38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5. “Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are… Continue Reading

Vox PopulAI: Lessons from a global law firm’s exploration of generative AI

Ashurst: “The speed at which organisations are adopting generative AI technology (GenAI) shows no sign of slowing. Business leaders in every industry are seeking to identify the best use cases for GenAI and where it can add the most value to their organisations. This is as true in law firms as it is in other… Continue Reading

AI in Finance and Banking June 30, 2024

Via LLRX – AI in Finance and Banking June 30, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and… Continue Reading

No surprises act

ProPublica:  “In 2020, Congress passed the No Surprises Act to protect patients from exorbitant medical bills that had burdened Americans with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. The law was designed to decrease the charges for patients treated by an out-of-network doctor during medical emergencies. Such ER visits often left people vulnerable to so-called… Continue Reading