News That Caught Our Eye #59

Published on May 22, 2025

Summary

In the news this week: With AI transforming the legal landscape, InnovateUS announces new training programs to equip public sector legal professionals with responsible AI skills. Miami-Dade schools embrace AI, deploying chatbots to 105,000 students, although U.S. schools were broadly unprepared for ChatGPT’s classroom impact. Meanwhile, The Center for Law and Social Policy warns that AI surveillance tools are disproportionately targeting Black students. AI should decentralize power, not entrench it—echoed by a new framework from The GovLab and Agence Française de Développement. In Washington, a new budget amendment seeks to block states from regulating AI for a decade. And in Kigali, Rwanda, the government is launching an AI-powered app to make legal texts more accessible to the public. Read more in this week’s AI News That Caught Our Eye.

Upcoming InnovateUS Workshops

InnovateUS delivers no-cost, at-your-own-pace, and live learning on data, digital, innovation, and AI skills. Designed for civic and public sector, programs are free and open to all.

InnovateUS Events:

May 21, 2025 2:00 PM ET: Should You Be a Public-Sector Leader? Seth Harris, Former Acting Secretary of Labor, Former Deputy Assistant to the President, Professor and Senior Fellow
May 22, 2025 4:00 PM ET: Teaching with AI – Real Stories from the Classroom Jessica Medeiros, English Teacher, Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, TN, Matt Jones, Special Education Teacher, Suffern Central School District, NY
May 27, 2025 2:00 PM ET: Innovating in the Public Interest: Scaling Anita McGahan, Senior Research Scientist, The Burnes Center for Social Change
May 27, 2025 4:00 PM ET: AI for Family Advocacy and Learning: Making Individualized Education Plans Accessible Sofía Bosch Gómez, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art + Design and Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change, Northeastern University

For more information on events visit https://innovate-us.org/workshops

Special Announcements

Data Commons Event: The New Commons Challenge is an initiative seeking innovative data commons projects to enhance disaster response and local decision-making, with applications due by 11:59 PM on June 2, 2025. Two winners will receive $100,000 in funding each.

Learn more: https://newcommons.ai/

AI for Governance

Public Sector AI and the Evolution of Data Analytics with Oliver Wise

Betsy Gardner on May 14, 2025 in Data Smart City Solutions

“In this episode, host Stephen Goldsmith talks with Oliver Wise, Acting Under Secretary for Economic Affairs and Chief Data Officer at the US Department of Commerce. Drawing on his time in New Orleans City Hall and with the federal government, Wise shares practical insights on using data to drive results — and how cities can harness the power of generative AI without waiting for perfection. From ‘use case truffle pigs’ to building AI-ready data systems, this episode explores how public leaders can unlock smarter governance through better data practices.”

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AI for Governance

Coming Soon: InnovateUS to Offer Training on Responsible AI for Public Sector Legal Professionals

Dane Gambrell, Jess Silverman, and Bonnie McGilpin on May 20, 2025 in Reboot Democracy

“InnovateUS is excited to announce "Responsible AI for Public Sector Legal Professionals," two free courses which equip public sector lawyers and legal support staff to safely and responsibly use AI tools and implement AI systems to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work while safeguarding sensitive information. Co-created with senior legal and technical leaders from state agencies, the curriculum is designed for government attorneys, legal support staff, policymakers, and compliance officers seeking to harness AI's potential while upholding professional and ethical responsibilities.”

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AI for Governance

Rwanda to launch AI-powered mobile app for legal texts and case law

Fidele Nsengiyumva on April 24, 2025 in The New Times

“...Rwanda is developing an AI-powered mobile application designed to provide instant access to legal texts and case law. The initiative, led by the Ministry of Justice, is expected to be rolled out by 2026 and aims to make legal information more accessible, understandable, and user-friendly for the general public. For example, if someone wants to start a cooperative and asks what’s required, the AI-powered mobile app will instantly provide all relevant information sourced from the law. According to the minister, the mobile app will serve as a centralized platform for accessing the constitution, laws, regulations, and court decisions. Beyond simply digitizing legal texts, the app will incorporate features that simplify complex legal jargon, making it easier for laypeople to understand and apply the law in everyday situations.”

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Governing AI

Behind Silicon Valley and the GOP’s campaign to ban state AI laws

Brian Merchant on May 16, 2025 in Blood in the Machine

“On Sunday, May 11th, Republicans added a sweeping amendment to the 2025 budget reconciliation bill that would ban all US states from enacting any laws regulating AI for ten years. …[T]his amendment, put forward by the Kentucky congressman and energy and commerce …is profoundly undemocratic. Both in approach—the act of sliding a bill with such severe repercussions into the reconciliation process, where it won’t receive a proper public hearing—and intent: to prevent the public from having a vote on how pervasive Silicon Valley technologies are impacting their lives…Gutherie’s amendment is the culmination of a multi-pronged lobbying effort from the major AI companies. That effort’s aim, as reported by Politico, was to shut down state laws that might constrain AI firms’ and investors’ ability to profit off of AI products—especially California’s.”

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Governing AI

DOGE Is Using AI To Centralize Government Power. It’s Time to Flip the Script.

Neil Kleiman and Eric Gordon on May 19, 2025 in Reboot Democracy

“The Trump administration’s January 20 executive order rechristening the US Digital Service as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has effectively hijacked the civic tech movement. While the US Digital Service focused on life-saving and government improvement functions, DOGE has used AI and other advanced technologies to burrow deep into administrative datasets and monopolize control. It’s time to flip the script (again) and break the government’s stranglehold on information. Rather than centralize power, let’s use AI to distribute it.”

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Governing AI

Anthropic’s lawyer was forced to apologize after Claude hallucinated a legal citation

Maxwell Zeff on May 15, 2025 in TechCrunch

“A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court on Thursday. Claude hallucinated the citation with ‘an inaccurate title and inaccurate authors,’ Anthropic says in the filing, first reported by Bloomberg. Anthropic’s lawyers explain that their ‘manual citation check’ did not catch it, nor several other errors that were caused by Claude’s hallucinations."

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AI and Public Engagement

Reimagining Data Governance for AI

Stefaan G. Verhulst, Adam Zable, Andrew Zahuranec, and Peter Addo on April 30, 2025 in Agence Française de Développement and The GovLab

“This report introduces a practical, community-centered framework for governing data reuse in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). As AI increasingly relies on data from LMICs, affected communities are often excluded from decision-making and see little benefit from how their data is used. This report…offers a step-by-step methodology and actionable tools, including a Social Licensing Questionnaire and adaptable contract clauses, alongside real-world scenarios and recommendations for enforcement, policy integration, and future research. This report recasts data governance as a collective, continuous process – shifting the focus from individual consent to community decision-making.”

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News that caught our eye

Digital Infrastructure Solutions to Empower Citizens: A Toolkit for Policymakers

Jeb Bell et al. on January 1, 1970 in Project Liberty Institute

“This toolkit walks policymakers through a four-stage process, highlighting key questions, considerations and trade-offs that can affect the degree to which digital infrastructure is trusted, used and responsive to the needs of citizens and society.”

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AI and Public Safety

Black Students Are Being Watched Under AI — and They Know It

Quintessa Williams on May 14, 2025 in Word in Black

“…Across the country, public schools are adopting artificial intelligence tools — including facial recognition cameras, vape detectors, and predictive analytics software — designed to flag students considered ‘high risk’ — all in the name of safety. But civil rights advocates warn that these technologies are being disproportionately deployed in Black and low-income schools, without public oversight or legal accountability. AI programs and mass surveillance aren’t making schools any safer, but rather quietly expanding the school-to-prison pipeline. And according to author Clarence Okoh, the tools don’t just monitor students — they criminalize them.’”

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AI and Education

American Schools Were Deeply Unprepared for ChatGPT, Public Records Show

Jason Koebler on May 15, 2025 in 404media

Investigative reporting based on 60 public records requests with state departments of education and local school districts: shows that districts around the country did not comprehend how much ChatGPT would change their classrooms: “Some states claimed that they had not thought about ChatGPT at all, while other state departments of education brought in consulting firms to give trainings to teachers and principals about how to use ChatGPT in the classroom. Some of the trainings were given by explicitly pro-AI organizations and authors, and organizations backed by tech companies. The documents, taken in their totality, show that American public schools were wildly unprepared for students’ widespread adoption of ChatGPT, which has since become one of the biggest struggles in American education. This is creating a class of students who are ‘functionally illiterate,’ one expert told New York.”

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AI and Education

How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the AI Future

Natasha Singer on May 19, 2025 in The New York Times

“Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school district, is at the forefront of a fast-moving national experiment to embed generative A.I. technologies into teaching and learning. Over the last year, the district has trained more than 1,000 educators on new A.I. tools and is now introducing Google chatbots for more than 105,000 high schoolers — the largest U.S. school district deployment of its kind to date. It is a sharp turnabout from two years ago, when districts like Miami blocked A.I. chatbots over fears of mass cheating and misinformation.”

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AI and Problem Solving

Leading, not lagging: Africa’s gen AI opportunity

Mayowa Kuyoro and Umar Bagus on May 12, 2025 in Quantum Black AI by McKinsey

“As institutions apply AI in novel ways, beyond the advanced analytics and machine learning (ML) applications of the past ten years, the global economy could increase significantly, improving the lives and livelihoods of millions. Nowhere is this truer than in Africa, a continent that has already demonstrated its ability to use technology to leapfrog traditional development pathways; for example, mobile technology overcoming the fixed-line internet gap, mobile payments in Kenya, and numerous African institutions making the leap to cloud faster than their peers in developed markets… Our research has found that more than 40 percent of institutions have either started to experiment with gen AI or have already implemented significant solutions…However, the continent has so far only scratched the surface of what is possible, with both AI and gen AI. If institutions can address barriers and focus on building for scale, our analysis suggests African economies could unlock up to $100 billion in annual economic value across multiple sectors from gen AI alone.”

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AI and Labor

How AI is reshaping the future of informal work in the Global South

Rya G. Kuewor on May 13, 2025 in World Economic Forum,

“Across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and much of Latin America, informal work remains the dominant form of employment. Voice-based AI tools, powered by natural language processing, can allow workers to navigate platforms in local dialects they understand better. Computer vision can verify craftsmanship through image recognition, enabling workers to build portable portfolios. Machine learning algorithms can match workers to tasks based on availability, proximity, and peer ratings. In cities like Accra or Ahmedabad, where labour markets are dense but disorganised, AI could help workers and employers find each other more efficiently and equitably. AI-backed platforms could help harmonise job classifications, standardise skills recognition, and translate job descriptions into multiple languages. In South Asia and Latin America, where similar dynamics exist, AI could enable portable digital identities that allow informal workers to carry their reputations and certifications across regions, and more.”

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