James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
White House, AI firms keep safety framework talks private
The White House met with representatives from leading artificial intelligence companies today to discuss a safety framework for the government to review frontier models prior to launch, although there’s no plan as yet to make the details public fare. The Trump administration teamed up with executives from a number of firms that included Anthropic PBC, ...
Lawmakers call for a ‘kill switch’ after rogue AI causes alarm
U.S. lawmakers are preparing to introduce a bill that will give the government the ability to trigger an emergency shutdown of artificial intelligence models that may cause harm to the public. In what might sound like it’s veering too close to Hollywood science fiction, the news comes two days after OpenAI Group PBC admitted that ...
France to become first EU nation to ban social media for children under 15
French lawmakers today voted in favor of banning social media use for children under the age of 15, making it the first nation in the European Union to introduce an age limit in line with legislation that is slowly taking hold globally. President Emmanuel Macron, currently serving his last term, welcomed the ban, calling it ...
Anthropic settles with authors and publishers for $1.5B in landmark copyright case
A federal judge today approved a $1.5 billion settlement awarded to authors and publishers whose works were used by Anthropic PBC to train the AI chatbot, Claude, in what is the largest copyright class action settlement in history. Judge William Alsup issued a preliminary approval of the settlement last year, though he has since retired, ...
EU paves way for banning social media for children
The European Union today moved closer to a ban on social media for children across its 27 member states in what will become the most meaningful effort so far to protect young people from the dangers of spending too much time online. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the bloc’s executive arm, the European ...
Palantir CEO Alex Karp doesn’t hold back in interview as he rails against AI industry
Palantir Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Alex Karp appeared to go into meltdown mode during an interview with CNBC today where for 20-odd minutes he went off script after being asked to discuss his company’s ongoing deal with chip maker Nvidia Corp. The conversation turned to the AI industry where he lambasted the U.S. government’s relationship ...
Supreme Court rules constitutional privacy protections apply to geofence warrants
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that law enforcement’s use of warrants to collect large amounts of cellphone location data requires privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment. The case centered on a bank robbery, where prosecutors relied in part on cellphone location data obtained from Google LLC through a “geofence warrant.” Unlike traditional warrants aimed ...
Google settles lawsuit over social media harm
Google LLC-owned YouTube today reached a settlement with a Florida-based minor in a social media addiction case, one of many trials that will take place as social media platforms face growing scrutiny for a mental health crisis in the young. The suit named four defendants, including Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram, Snap Inc.’s Snapchat and ByteDance ...
With chatbot regulation, Canada proposes a ban on social media for under 16s
The government of Canada announced today that it’s mulling a ban on social media for children under 16, though unlike some other countries that have already introduced such a ban, Canada has said the social media platforms can keep serving children if they can prove they’re safe. In what’s fast becoming a global effort to ...
In policy paper, OpenAI diverges from White House on AI safety
OpenAI Group PBC’s newly released proposal for how advanced artificial intelligence should be regulated differs slightly from the Trump administration’s executive order, also released this week. Released Tuesday, OpenAI’s paper, “Democratic Governance of Frontier AI: A blueprint for a federal framework,” asks that civilian agencies be responsible for overseeing the safety of frontier AI, while ...