Anthropic's Mythos ban exposes AI regulation's fault lines

The other day, a colleague sent me an article about the ten most recognizable brands in the world. Many of them have consistent and distinctive brand identities (think Apple’s bitten-apple logo or McDonald’s ubiquitous golden arches) that have helped them become household names across the globe. But good branding involves more than just a snazzy logo; it also reflects an organization’s culture and values as well. I suspect many of us tend to assume that branding is only something only corporations and cattle need to worry about, but savvy content creators know how to develop a persona that can help convey their values and their authority.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about AI and how it can shape human creativity going forward. Today, we’re going to place this discussion in the proper historical context. While it can be tempting to assume that the modern debates over AI and art are unprecedented, they’re just the latest example of a far larger trend.

Unless you happen to have been living under a rock, you’re probably aware that AI has been in the news a lot lately. Yoshua Bengio–one of the three so-called ‘godfathers’ of AI–recently made headlines when he put out a statement declaring that “[m]itigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” But while it would be reckless to ignore the potential dangers of AI, at the same time, it also has the potential to be a powerful creative force. Many creators have already found innovative uses for AI, such as when Grimes decided to lend her voice to AI-generated songs. Today, we’re going to look at some of the exciting ways generative AI can help fan the fires of creativity.

An interview with Dr. Michael Eburn of Australian Emergency Law.

The doctrine of ‘fair use’ is one of the cornerstones of modern copyright law. It establishes that there are certain situations in which someone can use a copyrighted work without the owner’s permission. But if you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you know that boundaries of fair use are hotly contested. And the emergence of AI has made the waters even murkier since many of the leading AI tools have been trained on other (copyrighted) works. In this post, we’re going to look at the messy intersection of AI and copyright law.