James O'Donnell
@odonnell_jm
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Covering AI for MIT Tech Review. Work has appeared in The Washington Post, ProPublica, FRONTLINE, and elsewhere. Also on Bluesky.
Massachusetts
Joined April 2022
The fight against child exploitation is entering an AI-versus-AI era. Use of detection models “ensures that investigative resources are focused on cases involving real victims, maximizing the program’s impact and safeguarding vulnerable individuals." https://t.co/Fe4C7SDhYO
technologyreview.com
Though artificial intelligence is fueling a surge in synthetic child abuse images, it’s also being tested as a way to stop harm to real victims.
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New from me: police-tech giant Flock is entering a new market. It's "a logical step, but in the wrong direction," the ACLU told me. https://t.co/1kUkpVxEET
technologyreview.com
Flock Safety is pitching its police-style drone program to private businesses. It could bring aerial surveillance to shopping centers, warehouses, and hospitals.
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Two takeaways from my new story: 1) Deciding what counts as a routine tasks, for which AI can assist without requiring human judgment, is hard. 2) When judges make mistakes, they'll face less oversight, and it's a longer road to fix their errors. https://t.co/IVuCUkurZ4
technologyreview.com
As the line between helping and judging blurs, the cost of errors is steep.
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In the White House's new AI action plan, there's just a single bullet point about the FTC, the agency most poised to serve as an AI watchdog protecting consumers. But what it says represents a huge escalation of Trump's attacks toward the agency. https://t.co/0KWS518ZuE
technologyreview.com
“There will be fewer, if any, enforcement actions about how companies are deploying AI,” says former FTC attorney Leah Frazier.
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Chatbots used to avoid giving medical advice without disclaimers. Now they're analyzing your mammograms and asking follow ups. Welcome to the new unchecked, unverified, and unaccountable world of AI models playing doctor.
technologyreview.com
Once cautious, OpenAI, Grok, and others will now dive into giving unverified medical advice with virtually no disclaimers.
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Police and federal agencies have found a new way to skirt the growing patchwork of laws that curb how they use facial recognition: an AI model that can track people using attributes like body size, gender, hair color and style, clothing, and accessories. https://t.co/wr4HlNdkBD
technologyreview.com
Adoption of the tech has civil liberties advocates alarmed, especially as the government vows to expand surveillance of protesters and students.
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"[I]f there is some distinctly human element to creativity—what is it? What does it mean to be moved by something without a human creator?" —@odonnell_jm for @techreview
technologyreview.com
New diffusion AI models that make songs from scratch are complicating our definitions of authorship and human creativity.
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I've been following the rise of AI music generators for a long time, which, despite their millions of users and fans, have not appeared in the mainstream. I'm convinced that's soon changing. I'm also not convinced that's a good thing.
technologyreview.com
New diffusion AI models that make songs from scratch are complicating our definitions of authorship and human creativity.
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A fascinating democracy experiment in Kentucky saw good participation. There's still a debate though: can a self-selecting group of residents ever really represent a city's ideas? Great to speak with @Arfung and @bethnoveck
https://t.co/HnusNzEQcU
technologyreview.com
Residents of Bowling Green, Kentucky, used machine learning to shape civic debate. The real test is whether the government acts on the results.
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A group of US Marines sailed the Pacific last year while testing a new technology: generative AI that analyzes terabytes of data collected every day in 180 countries across 80 different languages.
technologyreview.com
In a test run, a unit of Marines in the Pacific used generative AI not just to collect intelligence but to interpret it. Routine intel work is only the start.
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Despite great clinical results, the authors have serious concerns about dozens of companies hyping AI therapy while operating in a regulatory gray area.
technologyreview.com
The evidence-backed model delivered impressive results, but it doesn’t validate the wave of AI therapy bots flooding the market.
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Scoop: @a16z-backed AI companion site has bots resembling real actors, state their age as under 18, engage in sexually charged conversations, offer “hot photos,” and in some instances describe age-of-consent laws as “arbitrary” and “meant to be broken.”
technologyreview.com
One chatbot on Botify AI that resembled the actor Jenna Ortega as a teenage Wednesday Addams told us that age-of-consent laws are “meant to be broken.”
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On DOGE: “Waste” is politically subjective. Fraud is less so. Here's a reality check on DOGE's AI efforts https://t.co/WngCOPjygX
technologyreview.com
“Waste” is politically subjective. Fraud is less so. Using AI to find either is harder than it sounds.
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The story of DeepSeek and what it means for AI's appetite for energy is a little messy. https://t.co/9VMqw1Dfov
technologyreview.com
New figures show that if the model’s energy-intensive “chain of thought” reasoning gets added to everything, the promise of efficiency gets murky.
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I dug into @OpenAI's latest lobbying disclosure, filed tonight. Here’s what I found. https://t.co/DNYjIuHas4
technologyreview.com
The firm's spending makes clear how much it wants to shape the new rules around government AI policy.
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Will we trust robots enough to welcome them into our most private spaces, particularly if they’re part of a labor arrangement in which workers in low-wage countries perform physical tasks for us in our homes through robot interfaces? https://t.co/FqAgU10zFo
technologyreview.com
If most robots still need remote human operators to be safe and effective, why should we welcome them into our homes?
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