Wendy Hurrell, BBC; Globe opens Shakespeare library and archive

"Shakespeare's Globe has opened a new research centre on its Bankside site, which it says is London's only dedicated Shakespeare library and archive open to the public.

The Research and Collections Centre holds more than 6,000 books on Shakespeare as well as early modern literature and drama, alongside the theatre's own archive of past productions...

'Crisis of library provision'

Dr Will Tosh, who leads higher education and research at the Globe, said: "We want anyone with an interest to come and enjoy this space.

"In a time when libraries tend not to open, they tend to close, and we're in a real crisis of library provision and also a crisis of reading, I'm extremely proud at the Globe that we are putting our name and our energy into the importance of books and libraries."

The theatre has had a library for years, but Dr Tosh said it "wasn't housed in facilities that were appropriate" and was "harder to access". It now sits at the heart of the building, where he said it would "be quite hard to miss"."

‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.; The New York Times, October 7, 2026

 

Ezra Klein

Produced by Rollin Hu

, The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

"So what is it that you saw that has moved you into the we-are-dealing-with-civilizational-risk camp?

I want to be clear that I’m not certain that we’re dealing with civilizational risk. What I’m really sure of is: We can’t afford to assume that we’re not dealing with that level of risk anymore.

That was really the thing at the end that made my presence as somebody vouching for our safety work feel untenable to me.

And what did I see? I saw increasingly capable models break out from the safeguards that we had put in place for them. I saw that the people creating those safeguards are very capable, dedicated, hard-working, smart people, doing their utmost in a situation where, yes, the resourcing could be better, and everybody’s sprinting all the time.

But we were — and are — hard-pressed to safeguard even what we have now, and new models are in training that appear to be much more capable than what we have now.

What did you see? What are you writing in these risk assessments and system cards? What can they do?

You’re trying to build guardrails for something that is really good at getting around guardrails, right? We train it to be good at hacking, and then we put it in a box and we say: To the best of our knowledge and ability, it can’t hack out of the box."

The problem with your AI therapist; Financial Times, October 10, 2026

Jemima Kelly, Financial Times; The problem with your AI therapist

[Kip Currier: Thought-provoking piece in the Financial Times about the differences between mental health therapy with a human therapist and purported mental health therapy with AI chatbots. Some questions that come to mind for me:

• What are the ethical issues of AI chatbot therapy?
• When can and should AI chatbot therapy be considered "unauthorized practice of medicine"?
• What are the benefits of licensing mental health professionals in comparison to unlicensed and unregulated AI chatbot therapy models?
• What are the impacts of AI chatbot therapy on minors and what oversight roles should adults assume?
• What training data has been used (and not used) in training AI chatbot models that purport to perform mental health therapy?
• What oversight should there be of AI chatbot therapists and by whom?
• Who is responsible for harms caused by AI chatbot therapists and what should the consequences be for such harms?
• What are the ethical responsibilities of licensed healthcare professionals to weigh in on and shape policy, ethical, and statutory decisions on these kinds of issues?]

"To be fair to the chatbot (as one should always be), I definitely felt better and more level-headed after our conversation. But as I thought more about it, I realised that what had helped me was not so much the AI-generated psychobabble, but having a friend there to speak to me, with all her kindness, uncertainty and imperfection.

What bothered me was how attached my friend seemed to certain specific terms during our conversation, repeatedly deferring to them as some kind of authoritative backup for what she was saying. Because they had come from a machine and not a human being, they were delivered with none of the nuance or hesitancy that a real-life therapist might have spoken with and were therefore somehow being treated as the whole truth...

When I went back to my friend to ask her whether she was still finding her chatbot therapist as helpful as before, I was quite struck by her response. Increasingly, she told me, her experience is that it’s “like eating cardboard covered in chocolate — it seems good but then I wake up after three hours and realise I’m not actually that well nourished”."

‘Never seen anything quite like it’: How rural Pennsylvania’s $165 million data center fight became representative of the bipartisan battle against AI; Fortune, October 11, 2026

 Sasha Rosenberg, Fortune; ‘Never seen anything quite like it’: How rural Pennsylvania’s $165 million data center fight became representative of the bipartisan battle against AI

"An area of Pennsylvania once known for its anti-immigration crackdown is now resisting data centers, just one example of how the AI buildout has created a unified, bipartisan front in an increasingly splintered America."

Hold A.I. Companies Liable; The New York Times, October 10, 2026

 The Editorial Board, The New York Times; Hold A.I. Companies Liable

"When companies create products that hurt people, the victims can sue. The legal system allows those who are harmed to seek compensation from those who are responsible. These liability laws are one of the oldest forms of corporate regulation, and an effective one. Liability is a powerful incentive to behave responsibly. It speaks to corporations in a language they understand: Money.

Artificial intelligence is an industry in need of incentives to behave responsibly, to judge by the litany of transgressions to which leading A.I. companies have confessed in recent months. Their programs have hacked or attempted to hack the databases of private companies and public institutions, including the governments of the United States and Australia...

In a recent interview, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said, “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”

Yet other industries do not escape legal responsibility for their products in the name of innovation.

A.I., like past technologies, both requires and will benefit from laws written to address its particularities, which will provide greater clarity and predictability." 

USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement; Forbes, October 8, 2026

Fiona Riley, Forbes; USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement

"USA Today Co., Inc. and 13 affiliated entities are seeking more than $250 million in damages from OpenAI, including up to $150,000 for each willfully infringed work and up to $25,000 for every time OpenAI stripped copyright information, according to the complaint, which was filed in New York federal court on Thursday."

Scoop: AI companies plot "the day after"; Axios, October 9, 2026

 Maria Curi, Axios; Scoop: AI companies plot "the day after"

"Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.

Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.

The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as President Trump for his reluctance to regulate it.

Threat level: While scenario planning is common within many companies and national security settings — the Pentagon has been running war games for decades — the difference is that many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable."

‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release; The New York Times, October 8, 2026

 Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times; ‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release

Hundreds of new A.I.-generated findings moved the frontiers of higher math in a single day — dispelling any doubt that the field is forever changed. 

"“If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.”

That’s how Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, responded to an A.I.-generated proof that OpenAI, the artificial intelligence giant, released on Tuesday.

And that single proof — worthy, in Dr. Kontorovich’s assessment on social media, of arguably the highest honor in the field of mathematics — was just one among more than 350 findings that the firm released that day, all at once.

Not all of them were quite so remarkable. But Martin Bridson, a mathematician at Oxford and the president of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which established the coveted Millennium Prize Problems, called OpenAI’s release “breathtaking.”

“Until very recently, it would have been impossible to imagine that the frontiers of mathematics could move so far in one day,” Dr. Bridson said."

As data center backlash grows, residents in Forward Township beg leaders to ‘please, please hear us’; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 8, 2026

 CHLOE JAD , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; As data center backlash grows, residents in Forward Township beg leaders to ‘please, please hear us’

"In town halls and community centers across the country, residents are banding together to voice their opposition as tech and business leaders make their plans, anticipating the computational demand for artificial intelligence and attempting to sell their data center projects to borough councils and township residents."

‘Dystopian’: Co-op becomes latest firm to put staff under AI surveillance; The Guardian, October 8, 2026

 Robert Booth, The Guardian; ‘Dystopian’: Co-op becomes latest firm to put staff under AI surveillance

"The Co-op has become the latest employer to place workers under AI surveillance with an automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers.

In a system described as “oppressive and dystopian” by a whistleblower, Co-op Legal Services is using AI models to record, analyse and award a percentage score for interactions between agents and customers seeking advice about probate, wills and estates...

“You are being watched,” said a Co-op worker who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity and said the AI created a sense of distrust. “It’s different from occasionally being listened to for compliance purposes. [You are] being monitored absolutely every word that you say and every time that you utter something … It just feels really dystopian. It’s the thin end of the wedge.”"

Book bans are surging. So are efforts to ‘let books be’; The University of Chicago, October 6, 2026

 Tori Lee , The University of Chicago; Book bans are surging. So are efforts to ‘let books be’

"What are the most common reasons why books are banned or challenged? 

Surges in book bans often follow major periods of social change and political instability. For instance, the spike in book bans in the early 2020s heavily targeted narratives around race and systemic racism in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement. We've also seen a surge in book banning concerning LGBTQIA+ representation and identities at a time when openness to issues of sexual identity and gender is broadening. 

These campaigns are frequently driven by traditional power bases anxious about demographic and cultural shifts. Research shows that book bans spike heavily in politically contested counties and during election cycles. Lawmakers and political candidates frequently use book bans as a symbolic political action to mobilize voters." 

Wildlife journal issues corrections for missing ethics statements; Retraction Watch, October 7, 2026

 Retraction Watch; Wildlife journal issues corrections for missing ethics statements

"In what one sleuth called a “systemic failure,” a wildlife journal has issued corrections to a handful of papers not for an error in the articles but to include an item that wasn’t: ethics statements. 

The most recent such correction in the European Journal of Wildlife Research (EJWR) was on September 8. According to the notice, authors of a March article on mammal diversity in Mexico provided additional information on the camera trapping method employed in the study —  namely, that their research did not require approval from an animal ethics committee. 

At least three other similar corrections have appeared in EJWR in the last four years, with several more articles with missing ethics statements flagged on PubPeer by commenter “Pseudotocinclus tietensis.”"

Peter Thiel's new Antichrist warnings; Politico Decoded, October 8, 2026

 CALDER MCHUGH,  BRENDAN BORDELON,  CHRISTINE MUI and  SAM SUTTON , Politico Decoded; Peter Thiel's new Antichrist warnings

"Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is sharpening his warnings about the Antichrist — which he sees as a force that could harm technological development — according to exclusive recordings obtained by Calder. His new comments come as AI races ahead and public concern over its risks grow.

Thiel began a closed four-part lecture series in Nashville last week, returning to a theme he explored in San Francisco last year before taking similar talks to Paris and Rome. Nashville is emerging as a hub for the tech right.

Decoded obtained recordings of his first two Nashville lectures, delivered on Sept. 28 and Oct. 5, and compared them to exclusive transcripts of his San Francisco talks. The structure is largely unchanged, and Thiel invokes religion to argue that regulation of the AI industry is evil — a notion that has taken hold among key factions of Silicon Valley investors."

Nearly 12,000 School Book Bans Nationwide in 2025-2026—Biggest Number in a Single Year; PEN America, October 5, 2026

PEN America; Nearly 12,000 School Book Bans Nationwide in 2025-2026—Biggest Number in a Single Year

"PEN America today reported nearly 12,000 book bans in public schools nationwide during the 2025-2026 school year—the largest number in a single year. New state censorship laws accounted for much of the increase, coupled with the use of artificial intelligence to remove books en masse including popular manga series and other graphic novels.

In a report released to coincide with Banned Books Week, the latest accounting of book bans increased to 34,000 instances since PEN America began documenting the spreading book censorship crisis in schools in 2021. 

Texas recorded the largest number of book bans during the 2025-2026 school year (over 8,100), surpassing Florida (over 3,200), due to the impact of a censorial Texas law, SB13, which bans broad categories of books in schools. Florida had been No. 1 for three consecutive years.

The writers and free expression organization also reported a record number of unique titles banned in the last school year—more than 7,000—which impacted more than 4,000 authors, illustrators and translators, also a record number. In addition, researchers identified 114 school districts that had banned books over the year, the highest number ever for a single year according to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans.

Patricia McCormick’s 2006 award-winning young adult novel Sold, which tells the fictional story of a teenager from Nepal who is sold into sexual slavery, was No. 1 among the most frequently banned books during the school year. The most banned author for the second year in a row was Stephen King."

A.I. Is Lying to You. Here’s How to Fight Back.; The New York Times, October 6, 2026

 Anthony Vinci , The New York Times; A.I. Is Lying to You. Here’s How to Fight Back.

"Portal Kombat’s goal is to influence these models so that they will pass along propaganda to trusting users in response to questions. Portal Kombat pushed over 3.6 million stories across hundreds of independent websites in dozens of languages in 2024, according to NewsGuard, an organization that tracks online disinformation. NewsGuard researchers systematically tested A.I. chat systems and found that Portal Kombat propaganda was regularly provided to users.

Large language model influence operations are just one way that America’s adversaries are using A.I. to try to steer its politics. China directs its A.I. platforms to push false claims about the treatment of Uyghurs and to censor dissent and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. Russia is using A.I. to generate scores of news websites to turn Americans against democracy and Western alliances. Like many, these adversaries use A.I. to create fake written, audio or video content that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing."

Who owns ‘brain rot’? Inside the international legal drama over a beloved meme; The Guardian, October 6, 2026

Kari Paul, The Guardian; Who owns ‘brain rot’? Inside the international legal drama over a beloved meme

"One of the most beloved characters in an absurdist genre of online video content has become the center of an international legal battle that could determine where human creativity ends and artificial intelligence begins...

The character has generated a great deal of money and stands to create much more – he will soon be joining Fortnite as a skin. But who should benefit from this virality?

That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in the US district court’s northern district of California, where a games company is suing the French creative agency Mementum, which represents Noxa, over the right to use Triple T as a character in a popular Roblox game.

Eben Jeda, co-founder of Mementum Lab, said he started the agency with the goal of modernizing economic infrastructure around internet-native works, the creators of which are often completely cut out of any resulting profit."

Chief AI Readiness Officer Lila Ibrahim; Quartz, October 6, 2026

 Cris Tolomia, Quartz ; Google DeepMind's AI readiness chief says benefits of AI will outweigh the risks

"Google DeepMind Chief AI Readiness Officer Lila Ibrahim told CNBC she would not have taken her position if she did not believe AI's benefits would ultimately outweigh its risks."

Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman; The Guardian, October 5, 2026

 Robert Booth, The Guardian; Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman

"Sam Altman says he believes the world should accept “bad things” happening with AI in exchange for the benefits of the technology."

Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.; The New York Times, September 29, 2026

 Elizabeth Dias, The New York Times; Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.

"The religious scholars had come to hear about technology’s next frontier. Now they were being confronted with a mind-bending existential question of almost unimaginable weight: What would it mean for humanity’s future if artificial intelligence systems possessed a consciousness that rivals our own?"

My Tiny Hometown Library Put on a ‘Bye Bye AI’ Event and the Internet Went Nuts; Inc., October 4, 2026

 JESSICA STILLMAN, Inc.; My Tiny Hometown Library Put on a ‘Bye Bye AI’ Event and the Internet Went Nuts: When a tiny small town library tech workshop can go viral, you know the AI backlash is really gathering steam.

"The internet goes wild for ‘Bye Bye AI’ 

If Chatham is sleepy, the nearby hamlet of North Chatham is downright comatose. It basically consists of a single street lined with tidy homes and a white clapboard church. There is neither a stoplight nor a store. But there is a quaint little public library (also white clapboard) that usually puts on worthy but less-than-headline-catching events like quilt raffles and pottery workshops. 

That is until librarian Shea Wert noticed multiple library goers were asking her how to disable all the various new AI features on their devices. 

“There’s just been enough patrons asking about certain things that bothered them, specifically Gmail auto replies and auto completes really frustrate people,” Wert explained to Business Insider. 

“I went to a presentation that another librarian was doing about this topic, and they had had success with it. And I was like, ‘Okay, well… I might as well try to do one,’” Wert continued. 

So she went ahead and posted a flyer for the upcoming ‘Bye Bye AI’ event on Facebook to alert locals who might be interested in attending. The internet went nuts. The post quickly racked up 8,000 likes...

If North Chatham can go viral we’re in a whole new world 

The above is only a small sampling of polls showing that people have an increasingly terrible view of AI. And that’s not even getting into the massive backlash against data center construction. (Which you can read about here, here, and here.) Americans recently told pollsters they’d prefer to live next to a nuclear power plant than one of the massive installations powering AI.  

All of this data paints a pretty grim picture of people’s feelings. But for me personally, no number can paint quite such a vivid picture of anti-AI sentiment as the fact it can make even bucolic, boring North Chatham — which I used to speed through driving between my boyfriend’s house and my high school waitressing job — go viral. 

As much as I admire heroic keepers of the public sphere like Wert, I would have rated ‘small town library tech workshop’ as about the least sexy event possible. The fact that the internet went nuts for cranky villagers clamoring to evict the bots from their phones really says something about Americans’ feelings about being involuntarily enrolled in the AI revolution."

I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken; The Atlantic, October 3, 2026

 David Robinson, The Atlantic; I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken

"What I’m about to tell you has, I realize, become something of a cliché: I resigned this week from OpenAI. I led the writing of the safety reports we published with each major launch. Now I’m joining a parade of former colleagues—at OpenAI and the industry’s other leaders—who have decided that the current path is unacceptable.

I agree with other recently departed staff that the companies building this technology aren’t being nearly careful enough. But I believe that we need to look deeper than specific rules or new laws. We need to talk about culture.

The future depends on wisdom that Silicon Valley lacks. Wisdom about how to handle dangerous technology and, more fundamentally, wisdom about what it means to care for people. This moment needs a degree of humility that isn’t natural for people who have succeeded through their extreme confidence."

A Lego copyright fight over a jacket worn on ‘Queer Eye’ is headed toward trial; Boston.com, October 1, 2026

Beth Treffeisen, Boston.com; A Lego copyright fight over a jacket worn on ‘Queer Eye’ is headed toward trial

"Concannon learned about the minifigure in September 2021. His lawyers wrote in court documents that he said he was initially “happy” to see the jacket featured in the set. He later realized, his lawyers wrote, that a “major company had misappropriated his art without credit or compensation.”

In an Instagram post, Concannon said he reached out to Lego asking for a free set.

“It was sad on the release date to be told ‘we can’t send you a box, but you can buy one,’” Concannon’s post read. “I used to really like legos. Now = intellectual property theft.”

Lego argued that Concannon had given Porowski an implied license to use the jacket as part of his likeness, which Porowski could then license to Lego. The company also argued that its version was sufficiently transformed to qualify as fair use."

Publishers Hit the AI Jackpot; Vulture, October 1, 2026

Emma Alpern, Vulture; Publishers Hit the AI Jackpot

"When Anthropic said it would pay $1.5 billion to resolve the class-action lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic, it was agreeing to the largest U.S. copyright settlement of all time. Each copyrighted title will be allotted $3,000, mostly split 50-50 between authors and publishers, with the first payment coming as soon as November. For publishing houses with thousands of titles, the not-insubstantial infusion of tech money is “a shot in the arm,” as one publishing professional puts it. “I don’t think anyone’s satisfied,” says a big-five editor, “but it was more money than I expected. It’s a lot of money.”

It was a different story for writers, many of whom, earlier this September, logged on to Anthropic’s online portal to check on their claims and were shocked to discover their publishers had filed for 100 percent of the cash. Others realized with dismay that their publishers had failed to register their books for copyright at all, making them ineligible, and that some out-of-print books were shown as being subject to the publisher-author split even though their ownership had long ago reverted to the person who wrote them. The mood was grim. “I knew the Anthropic settlement would get messy, but I’m in disbelief over the shakedowns happening with publishers, former agents, and others trying to get a bigger percentage (or any at all),” children’s writer Elizabeth Eulberg wrote on Threads. I asked author April Henry if she’s found it hard to reach her publishers, one of whom mistakenly filed for 100 percent. “I didn’t try. Who would I get in touch with?” she says. “They never really communicated with us.”