Here’s some links to the issues explored in this week’s show.
The wild west of AI-powered toys: Lizzie clocked growing concerns with the unregulated release of AI-companions dressed ups toys being permitted to very young children.
This piece from Arts Technica looks at the surge in AI tors and the paucity of associated regulation.
This study from Cambridge Uni researchers debunks the industry claims that Gen AI toys are delivering educational or social benefits.
Lizzie also mentioned the Museum of Torts, which seems like the nerdiest place on earth. You can take a virtual tour here!
Chat-GPT’s new bot-phone: enough with the kid toys, Dan looked at the hype surrounding the pending release of Chat-GPT’s phone-based AI agent interface and the implications on user privacy.
This piece in The Verge reports the storied designer of the Apple i-phone Jony Ive is due for release in early 2027.
Here is some background from Wired (paywall) on Ive’s work at Open AI.
Lizzie noted this report from Lawfare where similar technology in China is being resisted around the security and privacy trade-offs
AI tapping religious leaders for moral guidance: I looked at a recently reported meeting the Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities and executives from Open AI and Anthropic.
This Decoder piece lays out the news and the rection to the curiously unreported meeting.
I also noted that in a few days Pope Leo is expected to hand down his encyclical on Artificial Intelligence – there’s a good backgrounder on what it might include here
The Great Heist: All this God-talk gave rise to a deeper discussion with our great Australian Writers guild CEO Claire Pullin about the ongoing fight for creators to protect the integrity of their work and address the theft of content that has already been perpetrated. Claire has been part of a group of industry leaders who have been working relentless to push back on calls by the hyper-scalers to secure changes to copyright to give them the right to mine the words, music and images of Australian creators. While that crime has been committed, the tech industry now wants a retrospective pardon. Claire shares some of the strategy behind the group’s work and also serves up some more ambitious ways that the models could be held to account.
But its not just the theft, evidence is growing at how horrible the AI-generated outputs that are threatening the work o creative works really is. Here are a few recent posts that brings this emerging threat to our humanity to life:
Pod Save the World’s ben Rhodes wrote this great piece on called ‘Why I Write’.
James Button has penned this love letter to live music in Inside Story
While this piece in The Guardian by an MIT writing teacher hits thenail on the head.
Enjoy !
