News That Caught Our Eye #74

News That Caught Our Eye #74

Published on September 4, 2025

Summary

In the news on AI, governance and democracy this week, sign up for Danielle Allen and Beth Noveck's new workshop series on public engagement in the AI age. Ohio is the first state to require AI policies in K-12 schools, while Michigan bans non-consensual AI imagery. The AI industry pumps $100M into a super PAC. The Pentagon seeks to acquire AI to wage info-war while Stanford researchers show that commercial LLM models show a tendency to escalate conflict. And on the labor front: Irene Tung and Paul Sonn argue that reforming the at-will employment system could help to protect workers from AI-powered surveillance. TikTok replaces hundreds of moderators with AI—days before a union vote.Read more in this week's News That Caught Our Eye.

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AI and Elections

AI and Elections

Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms, with $100M and counting

Nitasha Tiku, Will Oremus and Elizabeth Dwoskin on August 26, 2025 in The Washington Post

“Some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful investors and executives are backing a political committee created to support ‘pro-AI’ candidates in the 2026 midterms and to quash a philosophical debate that has divided the tech industry on the risk of artificial intelligence overpowering humanity. Leading the Future, a super PAC founded this month, will also oppose candidates perceived as slowing down AI development…It seeks to sideline a faction known in tech circles as ‘AI doomers,’ who have asked Congress for more AI regulation and argued that today’s fallible chatbots could rapidly evolve to be so clever and powerful that they threaten human survival.”

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Governing AI

Governing AI

Almost Every State Has Its Own Deepfakes Law Now

Samantha Cole on September 2, 2025 in 404 Media

“It’s now illegal in Michigan to make AI-generated sexual imagery of someone without their written consent. Michigan joins 47 other states in the U.S. that have enacted their own deepfake laws…Making a deepfake of someone is now a misdemeanor in Michigan, punishable by imprisonment of up to one year and fines up to $3,000 if they ‘knew or reasonably should have known that the creation, distribution, dissemination, or reproduction of the deep fake would cause physical, emotional, reputational, or economic harm to an individual falsely depicted,’ and if the deepfake depicts the target engaging in a sexual act and is identifiable ‘by a reasonable individual viewing or listening to the deep fake,’ the law states. On top of the TAKE IT DOWN Act, at the state level, deepfakes laws are either pending or enacted in every state except New Mexico and Missouri. In some states, like Wisconsin, the law only protects minors from deepfakes by expanding child sexual abuse imagery laws.”

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Governing AI

The Missing Foundation in AI Governance: Building Trust Across Parties

Rebekah Tweed and David Ryan Polgar on August 31, 2025 in All Tech is Human

"[T]hroughout 2025, we gathered insights from 275 individuals through our AI Governance interest form and hosted workshops on AI Governance in New York and AI Assurance in London….When asked what most concerns them about AI governance, the responses were strikingly consistent: from regulatory gaps to declining public trust, ten themes emerged, painting a clear picture of what’s at stake if we fail to act.”

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Governing AI

The AI Doomsday Machine Is Closer to Reality Than You Think

Michael Hirsh on September 2, 2025 in Politico

"[The] Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford University, began experimenting with war games that gave the latest generation of artificial intelligence the role of strategic decision-makers. In the games, five off-the-shelf large language models...were confronted with fictional crisis situations that resembled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s threat to Taiwan.The results? Almost all of the AI models showed a preference to escalate aggressively."

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AI and Education

AI and Education

Ohio is first state in the U.S. to require K-12 public schools to adopt AI policies

Karen Kasler on August 25, 2025 in Statehouse News Bureau

“Ohio has become the first state to require K-12 public schools to adopt policies on artificial intelligence…The idea came from a coalition of businesses, nonprofits and educators in a report last November, said Chris Woolard, the Chief Integration Officer at the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. ‘You have to have some guard rails in place. At the same time you want to encourage innovation, but there's so many different considerations, so having some sort of policies are gonna be critical,’ Woolard said in an interview. Those guardrails include things like standards for privacy and data quality, ethical uses, fair use and academic honesty, said Woolard…[Ohio’s Department of Education and Workforce] will put together a model policy by the end of the year, and districts have until July 1 to adopt their own. But schools won't be required to teach AI courses. ”

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AI and International Relations

AI and International Relations

Pentagon Document: U.S. Wants to “Suppress Dissenting Arguments” Using AI Propaganda

Sam Biddle on August 25, 2025 in The Intercept

“The United States hopes to use machine learning to create and distribute propaganda overseas in a bid to ‘influence foreign target audiences’ and ‘suppress dissenting arguments,’ according to a U.S. Special Operations Command document...SOCOM hopes to purchase...state-of-the-art cameras, sensors, directed energy weapons, and other gadgets to help operators find and kill their quarry. Among the tech it wants to procure is machine-learning software that can be used for information warfare.”

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AI and International Relations

Why Trump’s New AI Action Plan Spells Trouble for the Global South

Nimra Javed on August 29, 2025 in Tech Policy Press

“The Trump administration’s recently announced AI Action Plan marks one of the most ambitious attempts to consolidate global leadership in artificial intelligence. Built on three main pillars — deregulation at home, exporting a US-controlled ‘AI technology stack’ to its allies, and curbing China’s technological rise — the plan is a strategy document shaped by Washington’s own geopolitical thinking. Yet while it may help accelerate US competitiveness, the policy raises serious concerns for countries of the Global South by not meaningfully grappling with the need of lower-income nations, reinforcing their structural dependency and risking regulatory backsliding at a time when climate resilience and equitable development are already under strain. The plan’s focus on deregulation threatens to deepen the Global South’s exposure to climate vulnerabilities. By rolling back Biden-era safeguards and loosening environmental regulations, such as the permitting process under the Clean Water Act, the US has shown that climate is not the priority compared to gaining a technological lead. This sets a dangerous example. Other countries joining the AI race might feel pressured to lower their own climate standards, thinking that having strict environmental rules will make them less competitive. This could result in a global race to the bottom where climate promises are thrown aside just for the promise of AI gains.”

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AI and Labor

AI and Labor

TikTok lays off hundreds of content moderators, replaces them with AI

Rob Thubron on August 25, 2025 in TechSpot

“It's a sad case of another day, another company laying off hundreds of people as their jobs become automated by AI. This time, the firm in question is TikTok, which is replacing human moderators in favor of artificial intelligence. In what is certainly a coincidence, the layoffs at the London site come just a week before employees were due to vote on unionization. TikTok's layoffs will mostly impact members of a 2,500-person team based in the UK, though many in South and Southeast Asia will also be affected, writes The Wall Street Journal.”

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AI and Labor

Trump’s AI Plan Promises Jobs, Not A Seat at the Table

Henry Wu on August 28, 2025 in Power at Work

“On July 23, United States President Donald Trump revealed his administration’s plan for AI. In contrast to the years of doom and gloom about how robots will take all the jobs, the plan promises to center American workers. Despite the label as worker-centered, Trump’s plan avoids the hard questions about how AI will reshape the future of work, and who will have a say in that process. Who decides if a job is to be created or eliminated? Who protects workers who warn of out of control AI? And who ensures that the benefits of AI are shared?”

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AI and Labor

Workers aren't getting what they want from AI

News Staff on August 25, 2025 in Marketplace Tech

“The conversation about AI and workers is often centered on which human jobs might be ‘replaced by robots,’ rather than what working humans want from AI tools. Researchers at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, led by Yijia Shao, asked about 1,500 workers what they want from the technology. The survey found that while some workers find AI useful for repetitive work, other respondents wanted more — sometimes, more than the technology is capable of, according to research co-author and Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Marketplace’s Meghan Mccarty Carino spoke with Brynjolfsson about the disconnect between what workers want and what workplace AI software is actually doing for them.”

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AI and Labor

Fired by an Algorithm? How Curbing At-Will Employment Could Protect Workers from Bossware and AI

Paul Sonn and Irene Tung on August 31, 2025 in Power at Work

“As digital technologies including AI are deployed in a growing range of settings including the workplace, they pose a particular threat to workers’ rights... To respond to growing harms posed by these systems, policymakers must both update existing foundational workplace protections and regulate new technologies directly. One good place to start is by reforming our at-will employment system. Under at-will employment workers can be fired without advance notice for any reason or no reason at all…Introducing bossware into this at-will employment system further deepens the power imbalance between workers and employers."

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AI and Problem Solving

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