This is the week that was in AI: News briefs from twenty sources, gathered by our anonymous sleuth.
9–11 minutes read
News from The Guardian
US student handcuffed after AI system apparently mistook bag of chips for gun
Baltimore county high schools have gun detection system that alerts police if it sees what it deems suspicious. An artificial intelligence system (AI) apparently mistook a high school student’s bag of Doritos for a firearm and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed.
October 24, 2025
__________________________________
News from the Hollywood Reporter
Out to Pasture: Why Hollywood’s Animal Actors Can’t Find Work
They’ve helped fetch Oscars, boosted box office and upstaged their A-list co-stars — but these days, Hollywood’s animals can’t seem to book a gig…. many four-legged actors in the L.A. area who aren’t landing Hollywood gigs like they used to. As AI continues to advance, more productions are opting to create animal performances in post rather than film with the real thing — a trend that’s left trainers, wranglers and animal coordinators increasingly anxious about the future of their profession.
October 24, 2025
__________________________________
News from The Drive
Local NBC Station Fooled by AI Video of Race Track Power Outage Causing Huge Crash
They even parroted the video’s caption, which said the power company turned the lights off during the race to intimidate the track owners so they’d pay their bill.
October 24, 2025
__________________________________
News from The Triad
AI and the Problem of the Last 10 Percent: How AI will completely reorder the media ecosystem. And make it worse.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had some people ask me how I use AI in my work and I want to share my answer with you, because my use case is illustrative of both the possibilities and limitations of AI as a tool.
The short version is that I can’t use AI in my work, because AI is fundamentally unsuited to jobs that require high levels of trust.
October 24, 2025
__________________________________
News from Science Advisor
At futuristic meeting, AIs took the lead in producing and reviewing all the studies
Organizers aim to tune AI to help accelerate science
Major scientific journals and conferences ban crediting an artificial intelligence (AI) program, such as ChatGPT, as an author or reviewer of a study. Computers can’t be held accountable, the thinking goes. But yesterday, a norm-breaking meeting turned that taboo on its head: All 48 papers presented, covering topics ranging from designer proteins to mental health, were required to list an AI as the lead author and be scrutinized by AIs acting as reviewers.
October 23, 2025
__________________________________
News from Rolling Stone
OpenAI’s Sora 2 Can Generate Videos of Celebrities Appearing to Shout Racial Slurs
New research by AI detection firm Copyleaks found deepfake clips of Jake Paul, Mark Cuban, and Sam Altman spewing what sound like offensive epithets
October 23, 2025
__________________________________
News from BBC
Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory
New research coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC has found that AI assistants – already a daily information gateway for millions of people – routinely misrepresent news content no matter which language, territory, or AI platform is tested.
October 22, 2025
__________________________________
News from the Independent
AI can help the environment, even though it uses tremendous energy. Here are 5 ways how.
Artificial intelligence has caused concern for its tremendous consumption of water and power….But scientists are also experimenting with ways that AI can help people and businesses use energy more efficiently and pollute less.
October 22, 2025
__________________________________
News from Reuters
US right-wing media figures, tech pioneers call for superintelligent AI ban
A group including right-wing U.S. media personalities Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck has signed a statement calling for a ban on developing superintelligent artificial intelligence until the public demands it and science paves a safe way forward, according to the non-profit organizers of the initiative.
October 22, 2025
__________________________________
News from the Chris Hedges Report
The Rise of the Thielverse and the Construction of the Surveillance State (w/ Whitney Webb)
Whitney Webb traces the Thielverse’s rise and the bipartisan construction of the modern surveillance state that Trump and his benefactors are deploying against dissidents and immigrants today….The underlying idea behind this new system is “pre-crime,” or the use of mass surveillance to designate people criminals before they’ve committed any crime.
October 22, 2025
__________________________________
News from Bloomberg
Norway’s Wealth Fund Bets on AI to Reduce Its Climate Exposure
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, is giving artificial intelligence a key role in protecting its $2 trillion portfolio from climate risk.
Norges Bank Investment Management will use AI for a range of tasks including to “extract signals from company dialogues,” according to its 2030 Climate Action Plan.
October 22, 2025
__________________________________
News from the New York Times
Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots
…Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.
October 21, 2025
__________________________________
News from Axios
Get ready for AI on the TV
Samsung has inked a deal to include Perplexity’s AI engine on its latest smart TVs, the companies told me first. Why it matters: The move is a sign that the shared living room experience is likely to be another key battleground in the AI wars.
October 21, 2025
__________________________________
News from Curmudgucation
“ChatGPT shouldn’t have political bias in any direction,” said OpenAI in a post that detailed some of their attempts to measure bias in their bot.
I’m not reassured.
October 21, 2025
__________________________________
News fron Ars Technica
Should an AI copy of you help decide if you live or die?
Doctors share top concerns of AI surrogates aiding life-or-death decisions.
October 20, 2025
__________________________________
News from the Wall Street Journal
How Sam Altman Tied Tech’s Biggest Players to OpenAI
The CEO’s dealmaking blitz has convinced Silicon Valley’s giants to tether their fates to his company, essentially making it too big to fail
October 20, 2025
__________________________________
News from Naked Captialism
AI Is Coming For Your Doctor
IM Doc has been giving regular reports from the front, particularly on the accelerating crapification of medical care in the US. You may recall his horror show experience with AI, as in having it forced on him for the transcription of patient notes and having the output not simply have many important errors but even complete fabrications. He has a new report below about how his hospital plans to roll out sweeping changes implemented via the widely-used billing/records system Epic, that amount to turning diagnosis and care decisions over to AI.
October 20, 2025
__________________________________
News from Sentinel Global Risks Watch
Technology and artificial intelligence
In the UK MI5 Director General’s annual threat update, Ken McCallum mentioned the possibility of AIs evading human oversight and control as potential future risks that MI5 needs to scope out.
October 20, 2025
__________________________________
News from Good Judgment
Human vs AI Forecasts: What Leaders Need to Know
In October 2025, our colleagues at the Forecasting Research Institute released new ForecastBench results comparing large language models (LLMs) and human forecasters on real-world questions. Superforecasters still lead with a difficulty-adjusted Brier score of 0.081, while the best LLM to date, GPT-4.5, scores 0.101.
In other words, Superforecasters have a roughly 20% edge over the best model (lower scores are better).
October 20, 2025
__________________________________
News from the National Academies
Making Machine Learning Safer in High-Stakes Settings
Machine learning, a key enabler of artificial intelligence, is increasingly used for applications like self-driving cars, medical devices, and advanced robots that work near humans — all contexts where safety is of critical importance.
October 20, 2025
__________________________________
News from Axios
The AI resisters
Resistance to AI is bubbling up among some workers, students, coders and creatives…. The pace at which AI takes off depends in part on its users — and there’s a cohort that’s just saying no.
October 19, 2025
__________________________________
News from Axios
Formula One bets on AI to win the next era of racing
Formula One teams are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to convert terabytes of data into winning decisions. Why it matters: In a data-driven sport with big name sponsors and stiff competition, F1 teams need AI to succeed now and prepare for big changes the future.
October 19, 2025
More news briefs —>
# # #
