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February 15, 2024

The Techshow 2024 issue

Tweet by San Francisco Fire Department Media with 4 pictures and a text description of a Waymo vehicle that was attacked and set on fire via a firework
Tweet from SF Fire Department with pictures of a Waymo driveless vehicle set afire by a crowd in Chinatown

AI

  • Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, handling two copyright lawsuits against OpenAI brought by authors, has dismissed most of the plaintiff's claims against the ChatGPT developer [Bloomberg Law ($) | Hollywood Reporter | The Verge | Order]

  • Eugene Volokh counts 14 known cases of AI-hallucinated citations being used in court filings - the latest one involves a self-represented litigant

  • The FCC has officially banned robocalls that use AI-generated voice-cloning.

  • How AI is affecting political campaigning in India

  • From the WSJ [$]: the proliferation of AI tools is making the creation of deepfakes easier, more sophisticated, leading to more election worries this year

  • The North Carolina State Bar has a proposed formal ethics opinion on the use of AI by attorneys

  • From CyberScoop: "Microsoft and OpenAI say hackers from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are exploring the use of large language models in their operations"

  • From Wired [$]: "AI Chatbot Girlfriends Are a Privacy Nightmare"

  • A man wrongly arrested for robbing a Sunglass Hut, partially on the basis of an erroneous hit by a facial recognition program run by Macy's department store, is suing both stores after getting beaten and sexually assaulted in jail

Blockchain/Digital Currency

  • From CNBC: "The value of all the bitcoin in circulation, or market capitalization, on Wednesday rose above $1 trillion for the first time since late 2021"

Data Privacy

  • "Digital twins" exist at the intersection of the metaverse and data protection, and may end up posing serious legal challenges

  • The House of Representatives have again delayed in voting on a bill to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

  • The Federal Trade Commission announced that it would crack down on companies that "quietly" change their privacy policies to amass or sell user data to be used for AI training

Miscellaneous

  • The Supreme Court of South Carolina has approved a proposed Housing Advocates Program, to be run by the NAACP and will "train volunteers volunteers who are not lawyers to give limited legal advice to tenants facing eviction," with the holding that the program does not violate prohibitions against the unlicensed practice of law [Reuters | Order]

  • Waymo is recalling all of the software for its driverless cars after 2 of its vehicles hit the same truck

Long Reads

  • Engel, Christoph and McAdams, Richard H., Asking GPT for the Ordinary Meaning of Statutory Terms (February 6, 2024). MPI Collective Goods Discussion Paper, No. 2024/5, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4718347 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4718347

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