Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are teaming up on a $200 million AI push for global health; Quartz, May 14, 2026

 

Cris Tolomia , Quartz; Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are teaming up on a $200 million AI push for global health

"Anthropic and the Gates Foundation are committing $200 million over four years to deploy AI across global health, education, and economic mobility programs, the organizations said on Thursday.

Under the terms of the arrangement, the Gates Foundation will bring grant funding, program design, and expertise, while Anthropic's contribution takes the form of Claude AI usage credits and support from its technical staff, Reuters reported. Anthropic said the partnership is central to its efforts to extend AI's benefits in areas where markets alone will not.

The largest portion of the funding will focus on improving health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, where about 4.6 billion people lack access to essential health services, Anthropic said. Specific initiatives include using Claude to screen potential drug and vaccine candidates for neglected diseases such as polio, HPV, and eclampsia, as well as working with the Gates Foundation's Institute for Disease Modeling to improve forecasts for where treatments for diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are deployed."

Senators Defend Copyright Office Independence as AI and Executive Overreach Dominate Oversight Hearing; IP Watchdog, May 13, 2026

ROSE ESFANDIARI , IP Watchdog; Senators Defend Copyright Office Independence as AI and Executive Overreach Dominate Oversight Hearing

"Defending the Legislative Branch

The tension surrounding the Trump v. Perlmutter case surfaced during questioning. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) directly addressed the controversy, noting that while Perlmutter could not discuss pending litigation, she wanted to understand the historical value of the Copyright Office remaining within the legislative branch. Hirono referenced the fact that “President Trump tried to illegally fire you.”

Perlmutter responded carefully, highlighting the immense value of the Copyright Office acting as non-partisan expert advising Congress. She noted the Library of Congress serves as a natural home for the office given their overlapping missions, cautioning that moving the office to the executive branch would inevitably result in additional costs and disruption.

Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), speaking as the ranking member of the Rules Committee, defended the agency’s independence. He reminded the subcommittee that Trump had not only attempted to fire Perlmutter but had also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, attempting to install his own Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in her place. Padilla characterized this as a failed “power grab” and a “clear assault” on the legislative branch. He emphasized that as Congress considers legislation to change appointment structures, it must ensure the Copyright Office remains protected from political interference.

Artificial Intelligence Challenge

Chairman Thom Tillis (R-NC) emphasized the delicate balance required in the artificial intelligence environment, as “there would not be anything to ingest for the training of AI models if it had not been for copyright law, which has encouraged the creation of content…and while there’s no question that the U.S. is in an AI race with China, the U.S. should not be in a race to the bottom.”"

Public Knowledge Opposes Blatant Move To Steal Copyright Office for Executive Branch; Public Knowledge, May 14, 2026

Shiva Stella , Public Knowledge; Public Knowledge Opposes Blatant Move To Steal Copyright Office for Executive Branch

"Today, the House Administration Committee marked up the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act,” a bill introduced by Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) to make the Register of Copyrights a position appointed by the president instead of the Librarian of Congress. The bill follows President Trump’s attempt to terminate the Register of Copyrights in 2025.

The following can be attributed to Meredith Rose, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“This bill is a naked power grab on behalf of the White House. It claims to solve the very real problem of the Copyright Office’s constitutional authority – but its solution to the complex administrative and constitutional issues is to simply say, ‘haha, mine now,’ and snag it and the Register’s role for the executive branch.

“The one comfort is that this bill – the product entirely of House leadership and the White House working behind closed doors – has no chance of success. At a moment when Congress has a full suite of issues it could be addressing, it chooses to waste time on a pointless, unclear bill that is dead on arrival.”"

Maker of Canvas Learning Platform Strikes Deal for Hackers to Return Data; The New York Times, May 12, 2026

 Qasim Nauman, The New York Times; Maker of Canvas Learning Platform Strikes Deal for Hackers to Return Data

[Kip Currier: How confident are you that the stolen data and personal information from more than 275 million students and teachers at more than 9,000 colleges and universities around the world has been returned and that copies of that data have been destroyed?]

"The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies.

ShinyHunters, a hacking group, had claimed responsibility for the attack on Instructure, the Salt Lake City-based company that provides Canvas to about half of all colleges and universities in North America.

The hackers said they had accessed the data of more than 275 million users at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, including private conversations between students and teachers as well as personal identifying information such as names and email addresses. Canvas was shut down for hours after the cyberattack on Thursday.

The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end. Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft."

'AI has no soul': Pope Leo expected to address AI's ethical challenges; USA TODAY, May 13, 2026

Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY ; 'AI has no soul': Pope Leo expected to address AI's ethical challenges

"Is thinking basically computing? Are humans just biological versions of machines – only less efficient than their AI counterparts?

The concept that people may develop such a mindset is a major concern for Catholic observers given the breakneck pace at which AI is developing.

“As soon as you start thinking of yourself as a machine, only not as good, then you’re just a commodity and have no other reason to live,” said John Cavadini, director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. “It’s a pathway to desolation.”

That’s why Cavadini and others are looking forward to the imminent release of Pope Leo XIV’s first major encyclical, expected to address the growing ethical and moral challenges of artificial intelligence.

The treatise will be Leo’s most authoritative document to date, as topical as it is symbolic: Though the Vatican has set no specific date, a May 15 release would come 135 years to the day that Pope Leo XIII, with whom the current pontiff shares his name, issued what is considered the first social encyclical of modern times, Rerum Novarum...

As the term implies, an encyclical is a "circular letter" designed to be shared among a community...

The overarching concern, Daly said, is whether AI will be leveraged to promote human flourishing or whether efficiency and productivity will become the focus, leaving patients behind...

Another overlooked but important risk of AI, Daly said, is that technological advances tend to favor those already represented in such settings – in other words, those adept with new technology and who have electronic health records...

Hayes-Mota hopes the papal document can place the church, especially in the U.S., at the forefront of an emerging and urgent public conversation. The pope, he said, can play a leading role in fostering that conversation and ensuring it’s “anchored in moral values” and the fundamental questions AI is raising."

UCF commencement speaker met with boos over pro-AI remarks during ceremony: ‘Struck a chord’; New York Post, May 13, 2026

 Nicholas McEntyre, New York Post; UCF commencement speaker met with boos over pro-AI remarks during ceremony: ‘Struck a chord’

"A Florida real estate bigwig faced mockery and boos for proclaiming that “artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution” during her commencement speech at the University of Central Florida last week.

Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Orlando-based Tavistock Development Company, made the highly ridiculed remark in front of communication and media graduates at the university’s Addition Financial Arena on Friday night.

“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution,” Caulfield said as a loud chorus of boos rained down on her."

Ye Owes $176,000 In Copyright Verdict Over Song From ‘Donda’; Bloomberg Law, May 13, 2026

Kyle Jahner

, Bloomberg Law; Ye Owes $176,000 In Copyright Verdict Over Song From ‘Donda’ 

"Rapper Ye and his company Yeezy LLC each owe $176,153 for infringing the copyright of music by DJ Khalil and others with a pre-album version of his song “Hurricane” from his “Donda” album, a California federal jury held.

Artist Revenue Advocates LLC, which was licensed the sound recording right to the song, prevailed Tuesday in its bid to show that Ye violated that right, a representative for Ye confirmed."

The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly; The Atlantic, May 13, 2026

Lila Shroff, The Atlantic ; The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

"A version of this has played out before: Silicon Valley is fond of likening AI to the Industrial Revolution. In such comparisons, the tech industry likes to point to the immense wealth that industrialization unlocked. Over the long run, it’s true that the Industrial Revolution radically boosted economic growth. But living through it was another matter entirely. Many people saw their wages stagnate and working conditions deteriorate as factory owners and industrialists came into immense wealth. (Just read a Charles Dickens novel, and you’ll get the idea.) This led to riots and, occasionally, attacks on the industrialists themselves...

In much the same way, during an economic downturn of any kind, AI’s reputation seems likely to decline...

Silicon Valley is waking up to the resentment. Tech insiders have spent recent weeks exchanging tactics on X with advice on how to better sell AI. Perhaps, if data centers were beautiful, people would like them more? In particular, there’s been an effort to change the narrative around AI job loss. The venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz recently published an essay declaring the “job apocalypse” to be a baseless fantasy. “The macro story is not a jobless future, where we retire fat and complacent to our Netflix-scooters,” it read. In 2023, after ChatGPT came out, Altman told my colleague Ross Andersen that “jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.” Now he appears to have changed his tune: “Jobs doomerism is likely long-term wrong,” Altman wrote earlier this month...

“Disruption has winners and losers,” Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford law professor and AI expert, told me. “For many Americans, they’re not convinced they’re going to be the winners, and they base that conclusion on the history of technology over the last 20 years.” If the tech industry truly believes that a simple change in messaging will quell the backlash, then they are misunderstanding the problem entirely."

Most U.S. doctors are quietly using this AI tool. Few patients know about it.; NBC News, May 13, 2026

  Jared Perlo, NBC News; Most U.S. doctors are quietly using this AI tool. Few patients know about it. 

"Almost two-thirds of physicians — or roughly 650,000 doctors — in the U.S. actively use OpenEvidence, while another 1.2 million use it internationally, OpenEvidence representatives said. With its quick and tailored replies, OpenEvidence has become an AI-era equivalent of consulting a colleague for their expert opinion, though the software can also write patient discharge notes and provide custom study tools for doctors’ medical exams.

“Sixty percent of all the searches are about how to make clinical decisions,” said Jena, who is currently examining 90 million OpenEvidence queries submitted since 2024 as part of a new research project. “The physicians are asking: For this particular patient, or with this profile, this condition, maybe other comorbidities that they have, what’s the right treatment?”

Yet with OpenEvidence’s skyrocketing popularity, some experts worry about potential hallucinations or incomplete answers, a lack of rigorous scientific studies on the tool’s patient impact, and the potential for doctors’ critical thinking and evaluation skills to erode with increased OpenEvidence use and dependence.

But many in the medical world see OpenEvidence as a time-saving tool that can improve patient care."

Canada Targets AI Copyright Rules While Weighing Social Media Age Restrictions — Web Summit; Deadline, May 12, 2026

Stewart Clarke , Deadline; Canada Targets AI Copyright Rules While Weighing Social Media Age Restrictions — Web Summit

"The Canadian government is preparing new rules on how copyright holders should be compensated when their work is used by AI systems, as it also weighs age restrictions on social media and tighter regulation of AI chatbots.

Evan Solomon, Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, was speaking at Web Summit Vancouver."

Celebrities are filing trademarks to combat AI clones. Should you?; The Washington Post, May 8, 2026

Ethan Beck, The Washington Post ; Celebrities are filing trademarks to combat AI clones. Should you?

"The lawyers The Post spoke with for this article said that more celebrities might follow McConaughey and Swift in registering trademarks of their likenesses. If they’re using their likenesses or voices in a commercial context — a requirement to claim a trademark — these registrations could act as a safeguard. Pollack said a lot of his clients have asked about filing trademarks as a protection in the AI age.

“McConaughey and Swift registered sound clips, which is not entirely novel,” said Jennifer Rothman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “That will probably cause more of a trend of people who are actors and singers using those voice clips to claim that their voice itself is a mark.”"

Mayor Mamdani restores library funding after public outcry; Gothamist, May 12, 2026

 Elizabeth Kim , Gothamist; Mayor Mamdani restores library funding after public outcry

"Mayor Zohran Mamdani is turning the page on a plan that would have cut funding to New York City libraries...

But library supporters wasted no time mobilizing against the cuts. NYC PLAN, which is made up of library patrons and staff members, held a rally for libraries in March. They also launched an online campaign describing the mayor’s preliminary budget as “terrible” for the city’s libraries."

At the AAP’s Annual Meeting, Talk of AI, Copyright, and ‘Ripples of Hope’; Publishing Perspectives, May 12, 2026

 Andrew Albanese, Publishing Perspectives; At the AAP’s Annual Meeting, Talk of AI, Copyright, and ‘Ripples of Hope’

"The Association of American Publishers hosted its annual meeting on May 7, with a program that used the 250th birthday of the United States to celebrate the central role of publishing and copyright in the nation’s history.

The 90-minute virtual program featured Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham, in conversation with his editor, Andy Ward, Executive Vice President and Publisher at Random House, and Stanford University copyright scholar and author Paul Goldstein, who joined AAP president and CEO Maria Pallante, for a conversation about copyright law on the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act."

How AI Killed a 133-Year-Old Princeton Tradition; The Atlantic, May 12, 2026

Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic ; How AI Killed a 133-Year-Old Princeton Tradition

The school’s famous Honor Code was no match for chatbot-enabled cheating.

"Much of higher education’s value rests on the assumption that cheating is an exception, not the rule. A diploma is meaningless if employers and graduate programs can’t trust that graduates learned something in college. Prospective students and their families must believe that their tuition dollars will purchase a good education. And taxpayers need to trust that public-school students are getting something from their four years of subsidized education. Rampant AI use breaks down these signals. “It is bad policy to suspect a man of being a rogue in order to be sure that he is a scholar,” The Princetonian warned in 1876. Perhaps so. But the alternative is even worse."

Authors Guild Issues Updated AI Best Practices for Writers; Publishers Weekly, May 12, 2026

Jim, Milliot, Publishers Weekly; Authors Guild Issues Updated AI Best Practices for Writers

What palm readers and chatbots have in common; The New York Times, May 12, 2026

 Herbert Lin, The New York Times; What palm readers and chatbots have in common

Artificial intelligence doesn’t understand humans. It reflects them back to themselves. 

"A Pew Research Center survey conducted last fall found that around 1 in 8 American teenagers turn to artificial intelligence chatbots for emotional support — for the simple human need to feel heard. A 2025 Common Sense Media study went further: Thirty-one percent of teens said their conversations with AI companions were at least as satisfying as talking with real friends. Famed evolutionary biologist and science communicator Richard Dawkins spent many hours chatting with Anthropic’s Claude, after which he felt he had gained a new friend — a reaction that says less about Claude’s consciousness than about people’s readiness to find it.

But this is not only about technology. It’s an ancient human story. 

Chatbots are just programs running on computers. Yet we speak of them with a reverence that has little to do with engineering. AI “knows.” It “understands.” It “sees” patterns invisible to the rest of us. It delivers judgments on health, relationships, careers, grief — questions where facts and logic fall short. What makes these machines seem wise is a simple combination: fluency, confidence and frequent usefulness. That is enough. 

It is also the grammar of the occult...

None of this is an argument against using AI or chatbots. These systems are genuinely useful — for analysis, synthesis, translation, coding and cognitive reframing of problems that resist easy solutions. The concern here is not capability but epistemology: not what AI can do, but how we reason about what it is."

I’m a Doctor. Here’s What A.I. Cannot Do.; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

 Danielle Ofri, The New York Times; I’m a Doctor. Here’s What A.I. Cannot Do.

"There’s an ocean of distance between the “patient” that A.I. is analyzing and the patient that the human doctor or nurse is assessing."

Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright; The Guardian, May 11, 2026

Kim Willsher, The Guardian; Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright

"Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.

Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.

L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.

The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instruction of a charlatan astrologer called Pseudoramus, insists his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden and elderly wigmaker.

While the theme could well have been dreamed up by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and scenery were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat).

A group of researchers at the Sorbonne worked on the project, called Molière Ex Machina, for two and a half years. The team included a three-person group of artists and researchers called Obvious."

Google Says Criminal Hackers Used A.I. to Find a Major Software Flaw; The New York Times, May 11, 2026

 Dustin Volz, The New York Times ; Google Says Criminal Hackers Used A.I. to Find a Major Software Flaw

"A criminal hacking group recently attempted to launch a widespread cyberattack that appeared to rely on artificial intelligence to detect a previously unknown bug, Google said in research published Monday, highlighting the potential threat that A.I. poses to digital security.

Security experts have feared for years that malicious hackers could eventually rely on A.I. models to identify undisclosed flaws in computer code to launch crippling attacks that are difficult to guard against. That fear was largely theoretical until now.

“We have high confidence that the actor likely leveraged an A.I. model to support the discovery and weaponization of this vulnerability,” the report said.

The tech giant did not say precisely when the thwarted attack happened, whom it was targeting or which A.I. platform the hackers used, but the company added that it did not believe it was its own Gemini chatbot."

This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage; The New York Times, May 9, 2026

Visuals and Text by Ruth Fremson, The New York Times; This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage

"Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore Textual Apothecary (its name painted on the sides and back of the van) is a vehicle for the cross-pollination of people and conversation. That’s what has evolved since Collins, now 74, began imagining her retirement dream more than a decade ago — not just selling high quality, inexpensive books, but setting her love of people, places and the wonders of a good read all in motion together."

Shein accuses Temu of copyright infringement on 'industrial scale'; Quartz, May 11, 2026

Colleen Cabili , Quarz; Shein accuses Temu of copyright infringement on 'industrial scale'

"Shein accused rival Temu of copyright infringement "on an industrial scale" as a two-week trial opened Monday at London's High Court, with Temu firing back that the lawsuit was designed to stifle competition rather than protect intellectual property."

Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million for allegedly using her image to sell TVs; Reuters, May 11, 2026

Rhea Rose Abraham , Reuters; Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million for allegedly using her image to sell TVs

"British pop star ‌Dua Lipa has filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics seeking at least $15 million in damages, accusing the South Korean tech giant of using her image without permission to market its television sets.

The lawsuit ​alleges that Samsung featured a copyrighted image of the pop star on ​the front of cardboard boxes containing televisions for retail sale, enabling the company ⁠to benefit from what seemed like her endorsement of the product."

Forget the AI job apocalypse. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance; The Guardian, May 11, 2026

Nazrul Islam , The Guardian; Forget the AI job apocalypse. AI’s real threat is worker control and surveillance

"The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control.

The debate about artificial intelligence and how it will affect workers is stuck in the wrong place. On one side are warnings that machines are coming for millions of jobs. On the other are claims that AI will turbocharge productivity. Both stories miss what is already happening in workplaces across the world, from Britain to Kenya to the United States.

For some, AI can help remove the drudgery from daily work. These are often people in better-paid, higher-autonomy roles: analysts, consultants, lawyers, academics, managers. In these jobs, provided AI is being rolled out to augment workers rather than replace them, it can feel like a copilot. It can support human judgment, speed up routine tasks and create space for more creative thinking.

For many others, though, AI is not an assistant. It is a boss.

It appears in scheduling and monitoring tools, route optimisation software and automated performance dashboards – all systems that decide who gets what shift, how long a task should take and whether someone is performing at their maximum capacity. In these workplaces, AI is not something you use. It is something that watches and rules you.

That is the new divide we should all be paying attention to."

Sony’s failed war against Internet piracy may doom other copyright lawsuits; Ars Technica, May 11, 2026

JON BRODKIN, Ars Technica ; Sony’s failed war against Internet piracy may doom other copyright lawsuits

"Sony and other major record labels recently suffered a thorough defeat at the Supreme Court in their attempt to make Internet service providers pay huge financial penalties for their customers’ copyright infringement. Sony’s loss is certain to have wide-ranging effects on copyright lawsuits, offering protection for ISPs, their customers, and potentially other technology companies whose services can be used for both legal and illegal purposes.

In Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court ruled that cable Internet firm Cox is not liable under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when its customers use their broadband connections to download or upload pirated materials."

A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready.; The New York Times, May 8, 2026

David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times ; A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready. Silicon Valley oligarchs worried about the risks their technology posed to the world. They forgot about people.

"In one sense, the vision peddled by A.I. companies is remarkably depersonalized: We hand more and more responsibility and judgment off to superintelligent black boxes, which rapidly begin shaping the course of the human future with decisions that remain illegible to the rest of us, including their designers. “People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own A.I. creations work,” Anthropic’s Dario Amodei wrote last year. “They are right to be concerned: This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”

In another sense, and in the meantime, A.I. represents perhaps the most personalized sales pitch ever foisted on the passive American consumer — a vision of a near-total takeover of the country’s economic, social and cognitive lives by tools engineered by just five companies, run by five particular people, several of whom are widely described as sociopaths. The list is so short that you may know most of them by first name: Sam, Dario, Elon and Mark. (Demis Hassabis, who runs Google’s DeepMind, is perhaps less famous.)

These men are all already billionaires, or close to it, and on their current trajectories their wealth and influence look set to expand exponentially as, around them, anti-elitism multiplies, too. Perhaps this is one reason 50 percent of Americans told the Pew Research Center last year they were more concerned than excited about what’s to come from A.I. Only 10 percent said they were more excited. That is a yawning gap into which an entire society is being asked to tumble."

Top law schools for intellectual property law; the National Jurist, May 6, 2026

PreLaw Editors, the National Jurist; Top law schools for intellectual property law

"The following law schools earned a place on our Intellectual Property Law Honor Roll, recognized for the strength of their programs."

Is Your Bot Becoming Your Balm?; Psychology Today, May 10, 2026

Cornelia C. Walther Ph.D. , Psychology Today; Is Your Bot Becoming Your Balm?

• "Bots become companions through listening, which can secretly worsen loneliness. 
• Over-reliance on AI may reduce genuine human connection and social skill development. 
• AI comfort can damage autonomy; we must choose genuine human engagement."

Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI; AP, May 7, 2026

 KRYSTA FAURIA, AP; Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI

"As concerns mount over artificial intelligence and its rapid integration into society, tech companies are increasingly turning to faith leaders for guidance on how to shape the technology — a surprising about-face on Silicon Valley’s longstanding skepticism of organized religion.

Leaders from various religious groups met last week with representatives from companies including Anthropic and OpenAI for the inaugural “Faith-AI Covenant” roundtable in New York to discuss how best to infuse morality and ethics into the fast-developing technology. It was organized by the Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities, which seeks to take on issues such as extremism, radicalization and human trafficking. The roundtable is expected to be the first of several around the globe, including in Beijing, Nairobi and Abu Dhabi.

Tech executives need to recognize their power — and their responsibility — to make the right decisions, said Baroness Joanna Shields, a key partner in the initiative. She worked as a tech executive with stints at Google and Facebook before pivoting to British politics.

“Regulation can’t keep up with this,” she said. But the leaders of the world’s religions, with billions of followers globally, have the “expertise of shepherding people’s moral safety,” she reasoned. Faith leaders ought to have a voice, Shields said.

“This dialogue, this direct connection is so important because the people who are building this understand the power and capabilities of what they’re building and they want to do it right — most of them,” she said of AI tech executives.

The goal of this initiative, according to Shields, is an eventual “set of norms or principles” informed by different groups and faiths, from Christians to Sikhs to Buddhists, that companies will abide by...

Present at the meeting were a variety of faith groups, including representatives from the Hindu Temple Society of North America, the Baha’i International Community, The Sikh Coalition, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church...

The partnership highlights a growing coalition between faith and tech, born out of an effort to create moral AI — a contested concept which begs questions about whether that is possible and what it means...

“There’s some aspect of PR to it. The slogan was ‘Move fast and break things.’ And they broke too many things and too many people,” said Brian Boyd, the U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Future of Life Institute...

But other advocates for AI regulation and safety aren’t so sure these efforts are genuine.

“At best it’s a distraction. At worst it’s diverting attention from things that really matter,” said Rumman Chowdhury, the CEO of the nonprofit Humane Intelligence and the U.S. science envoy for AI under the Biden administration.

Chowdhury says she’s not inclined to believe religion is the best place to help answer questions surrounding AI and ethics, but thinks she understands why companies are increasingly turning to it.

“I think a very naive take that Silicon Valley has had for a couple of years related to generative AI was that we could arrive at some sort of universal principles of ethics,” she said. “They have very quickly realized that that’s just not true. That’s not real. So now they’re looking at maybe religion as a way of dealing with the ambiguity of ethically gray situations.”"

Banned Nonfiction Books Double in Public Schools, Erasing Authentic Stories & Histories; PEN America, May 7, 2026

 PEN America; Banned Nonfiction Books Double in Public Schools, Erasing Authentic Stories & Histories

"In its latest report on book bans in public schools, PEN America today documents a doubling of censorship of nonfiction on subjects from history and health to general knowledge, including biographies and memoirs. The targeting of titles about real events or people underscores “an embrace of anti-intellectualism” within the book banning movement, according to the new report Facts & Fiction: Stories Stripped Away By Book Bans.

The report offers detailed analysis of the content of the 3,743 unique titles that were removed from school libraries and classrooms from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. Over this same period, PEN America tracked 6,780 total instances of bans across 23 states.

Twenty-nine percent of the unique titles banned last school year were nonfiction. In addition, approximately 13% of all unique titles fell into the educational/informational genre – texts primarily written for students for reference or learning purposes and covering a range of subjects. Overall, the rise of banned nonfiction and educational titles exposed a new casualty in the campaign to suppress and restrict learning, which goes hand in hand with efforts to undermine public education and librarianship itself, the report states.

“This latest trend shows an embrace of anti-intellectualism, undermining public knowledge by  devaluing education and expertise,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “It is another example of how censorship sweeps broadly, leading to removals of all kinds of books, in its efforts to sow fear and distrust in our public education system.”

As book bans in public schools have exploded since 2021, PEN America, the writers and free expression organization, has documented the crisis nationwide, counting more than 23,000 bans over the period.

The increase in nonfiction bans over 2024-2025 is especially troubling as reading scores and literacy rates decline while the report notes that nonfiction “is the gateway to literacy” and essential for young people to make sense of the world and form their own opinions. Books in this category often deal with personal, artistic, historical, and educational topics – just this month, Utah added the memoir of Jaycee Dugard, who was abducted from the street at age 11 and held for 18 years, to its list of books banned statewide."

Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over Annie Leibovitz’s ‘Star Wars’ Photos; PetaPixel, May 8, 2026

Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel; Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over Annie Leibovitz’s ‘Star Wars’ Photos

"An appeals court has revived Annie Leibovitz’s agency’s copyright lawsuit against an online magazine over its use of her photographs from the Star Wars movie set.

On Tuesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court wrongly dismissed the lawsuit brought by licensing company Great Bowery Inc. against online outlet Consequence Sound LLC based on a lower court’s misunderstanding of copyright law.

The dispute centers on a group of Star Wars cast photographs taken by Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. In 2014, Leibovitz signed an “Artist Agreement” with Trunk Archive, a business operated by Great Bowery, granting the company the “exclusive worldwide right to license, market, and promote” certain images from the shoot."

A Michigan farm town voted down plans for a giant OpenAI-Oracle data center. Weeks later, construction began The AI boom is coming for rural America. Inside one town’s effort to fight back; Fortune, May 6, 2026

 Sharon Goldman, Fortune; A Michigan farm town voted down plans for a giant OpenAI-Oracle data center. Weeks later, construction began The AI boom is coming for rural America. Inside one town’s effort to fight back