#ethics

#ethics

Besides blocking users from reading its website with an AI chatbot, the magazine anointed the "architects of AI" as its most important visionaries of 2025, eschewing the definition of "person" yet again. The eyeroll-inducing announcement was met with plenty of incredulity, especially considering the astronomical amount of money being spent on building out data centers, their enormous carbon footprint, and a whole litany of other ethical conundrums that the embrace of generative AI has spawned.

The episode featured the Honorable Sue Gordon, former principal deputy director of National Intelligence, Dr. David Bray, distinguished chair of the accelerator at the Stimson Center, and Prof. Barry O'Sullivan, vice chair of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. Their combined experience, spanning intelligence, technology, and organizational transformation, offered a compelling vision for executives navigating the AI era.

With all this boundless possibility, why is AI focused on replacing screenwriters instead of, say, figuring out a solution to fixing plastic bottles polluting the oceans? "I don't think that's an accident," said Lyonne, 46. "It's about cutting costs." What the co-founder of the media production company Animal Pictures would like to see is people paid for their expertise, work, and creative ideas, and the democratization of filmmaking so more people can engage in a business that has traditionally had sky-high barriers to entry.

As AI accelerates and expands in media, journalism needs a pedagogy of wonder. This is an approach in education that encourages students to be critical, curious, and creative. For journalists, a pedagogy of wonder calls on them to become explorers, treating AI as a partner in inquiry to help them ask better questions, notice more, and deepen public understanding. It treats the newsroom as a learning space where curiosity is a method, and ethics is a practice.

Beagles are very popular companion dogs and also very popular among breeding facilities and research laboratories where they live highly compromised lives, all "in the name of research" to help humans. 1 Many, if not most people, have no idea what goes on behind these closed doors. I've often wondered why these wonderful dogs rather than others wound up being used for a sorts of research, and now I know because of Dr. Brad Bolman's excellent new book Lab Dog.

In 2016, the legendary Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki was shown a bizarre AI-generated video of a misshapen human body crawling across a floor. Miyazaki declared himself "utterly disgusted" by the technology demo, which he considered an "insult to life itself." "If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it," Miyazaki said. "I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all."

It follows the banning of the drugs for gender treatment last year after a major review raised concerns about the lack of clinical evidence over their safety for under-18s. Researchers from King's College London say the trial will involve around 220 children under the age of 16 who are going through puberty, and will examine the impact of the drugs on their physical, social and emotional wellbeing.

Many of the objects dating from 1933 to 1945 up for sale under the title "System of Terror Vol II" contained the names and personal information about the persecuted. "For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless", Christoph Heubner, the executive-vice president of International Auschwitz Committee said in a statement. "They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and not degraded to mere commodities."

One of the last remaining fun things about the internet is getting to pass judgment on the goings-on in households that you would never hear about otherwise. On Reddit, for instance, there is a whole thriving sub for just this purpose called Am I the Asshole?, where people describe conflicts from their lives and ask strangers to adjudicate on them.

Mayor Daniel Lurie's District 4 appointee, Beya Alcaraz, was the only San Francisco supervisor appointee in at least 30 years to enter the job with zero experience in either politics or government, a Mission Local analysis found. Alcaraz abruptly resigned from her post on Thursday night after controversy. Hours earlier, Mission Local published text messages in which Alcaraz said she paid her former pet store workers "under the table," skimped on taxes, and underreported income.

The military is going to use artificial intelligence. But while planners in the government may have an idea of the best way forward, can they truly lead, or will industry steer things forward? In a new Breaking Defense video on the future of military AI, Breaking Defense Editor-in-Chief Aaron Mehta and our in-house AI expert Sydney Freedberg are joined by Joshua Wallin of the Center for a New American Security to tackle that very question.

"Everybody has been trying to say to her, 'Why today?' We have really focused, important work to do today,' one House Democrat who was on the floor at the time told Axios. Clark, the lawmaker explained, 'was trying to ... say [to Gluesenkamp Perez], 'You don't need to do this right now.'"

Chess's international governing body said Tuesday that it filed a complaint against former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik after he leveled unproven allegations of cheating against fellow players, including Daniel Naroditsky, who died last month at age 29. The complaint centers on harassment and "the insulting of an individual's dignity," said the International Chess Federation, known by the acronym FIDE, in a news release.

The culture secretary has apologised for breaking rules by failing to declare she had received donations from the man she picked to run England's new football regulator. On Thursday, the commissioner for public appointments published a report which found that David Kogan had made two separate donations of 1,450 to Lisa Nandy, when she was running to be Labour leader in 2020.

As we entered the AI micro age, which is where we are now, I asked a simple question: If we have access to all the information in the world at our fingertips, what will be the most important skill moving forward? It's going to be asking the right questions, like "Should I do this?" The option will be there to do just about anything, which raises questions about ethics, philosophy, and problem-solving. All of that happens to be the bedrock humanities curriculum.

The binding nature of early decision means that a student can apply to only one college through early decision. In most cases students applying through early decision are asked, along with a parent and their school counselor, to sign an early-decision agreement attesting to their understanding of the commitment to enroll if admitted. Early decision is in no way legally binding, but colleges take the early-decision commitment seriously and are appalled and disgusted when students back out of the commitment.

We called in Jared,

As I wrote last week, I'm rapidly running out of body parts to do my job. Part of being human is knowing when to ask for help, so a few months ago, I enlisted senior editor Sean Hollister - a fellow smart glasses nerd - to help me test Halo Glass, an always-listening AI companion that lives inside a pair of glasses.

The social app draws entirely from artificial intelligence: Instead of sharing photos and videos of themselves, users can opt in for "cameos" and create fake clips that depict themselves or their friends in any scenario imaginable. It's mostly being used to make viral meme content and the type of short-form videos you'd scroll past on TikTok, albeit with deepfakes. Sora doesn't allow you to make videos of other living people ( dead celebrities and SpongeBob SquarePants characters are fair game) unless given express permission.

He realized that a batch of letters he'd sent to landowners, offering to lease their rights, had incorrect information, including monetary amounts and other details. But instead of correcting the errors, Bentley doubled down, not wanting to admit his mistake. When the letters failed to secure enough land leases to generate big profits, Bentley tried to make up the difference by sinking his investors' money into new, risky deals, some of which faltered and drained the coffers of his company, Bellatorum Resources.

In one video, a forklift delivers Hawking's wheelchair into a WWE-style ring, where he's immediately knocked to the ground by burly wrestlers. "This shouldn't even be legal!" exclaims an announcer in the AI-generated clip. In another video, Hawking takes blow after blow to the face from a UFC fighter. "Hawking's in trouble," the announcer yells, as the physicist topples out of his wheelchair. In another, Hawking is trampled by a raging bull.

In David Osit's new documentary, "Predators," the director includes a short clip from a mid-two-thousands episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in which the late-night host-his free-speech tussle with the Trump Administration, at this point, not even close to a glimmer in his eye-is introducing the news journalist Chris Hansen to viewers. "Our next guest is the host of the funniest comedy on television. It's called 'To Catch a Predator,' " Kimmel says with a grin, as the studio audience's laughter rings in the background.