Adi Robertson

Astute AI copyright observer Michael Weinberg raises some good questions about the Common Pile, an AI training dataset billed as being composed of only “openly licensed text”:

The New York Times surveyed the ecosystem of disinformation around the LA anti-ICE protests, and the results are striking for looking... pretty much exactly like the pre-AI world: old recirculated photos, fabricated quotes, and a shot from an ‘80s action movie. The Washington Post did its own social media look-around and found mostly people supporting dueling narratives with real footage. There’s still time for generated fakes to cause problems, but at the moment, reality seems to be eye-catching enough.

Gail Simone — known for her stints writing Deadpool, Birds of Prey, and many other comics series — has now made it into the Merriam-Webster dictionary thanks to her famous pre-comics-career essay about a noteworthy trend in comic book tropes, too:

The National Guard arrived in Los Angeles earlier today in a move that hasn’t been seen since 1965, and protests are stretching into the evening. There’s a Bluesky starter pack of LA-based independent journalists providing text and photo updates, plus news outlets and streamer Hasan Piker live on the ground. And demonstrations in several cities are planned for tomorrow, pushing for the release of union leader David Huerta, arrested during the recent aggressive ICE raids.

We’re at the end of a day-long set of closing arguments, concluding with one final request to the judge from DOJ attorney David Dahlquist to “please seize this moment in time” and order Google to change how it runs search. Judge Mehta thanks everyone for dealing with a “challenging schedule” for the trial and says, “we’ll get back to you as soon as we can,” and with that, the remedies trial portion of US v. Google is officially done.

Its attorney notes that an appeal in the liability case is ongoing, and Google wants that to be able to proceed. The DOJ, in a response, asks Judge Mehta to disregard the request, saying the appeal and remedies can proceed in parallel.

Mehta briefly asks how Google would recommend forming a committee that could handle all the specifics of whatever remedy is proposed, as suggested by the DOJ. Google’s attorney complains any committee could end up simply letting the DOJ — and the executive branch in general — control how the deal gets interpreted. “That delegation of authority, I submit, is a violation of due process.” Schmidtlein also brings up how broad the remit of the committee would be, covering everything from privacy to identifying competitors.

We’re wrapping up final discussions about some of the more obscure remedies, and Google briefly references the issue of advertisers gaming the system if they’re provided search data. “There’s lots of problems with this,” Google’s attorney says, including significant privacy problems.

Judge Mehta has been triaging some non-Google cases to continue past 5, and we’re now back, with Mehta questioning Google’s attorney.