But the rise of artificial intelligence has scrambled those calculations. The basic skills she was learning in things like statistical analysis and coding can now easily be automated. “Everyone has a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI,” said the 20-year-old at Miami University in Ohio.

A few weeks ago, Timperman switched her major to marketing. Her new strategy is to use her undergraduate studies to build critical thinking and interpersonal skills — areas where humans still have an edge.

“You don’t just want to be able to code. You want to be able to have a conversation, form relationships and be able to think critically, because at the end of the day, that’s the thing that AI can’t replace,” said Timperman, who is keeping analytics as a minor and plans to dive deeper into the subject for a one-year master’s program.

Today’s college students say that picking a major that’s “AI-proof” feels like shooting at a moving target as they prepare for a job market that could be fundamentally different by the time they graduate.

As a result, many are reconsidering their career paths. About 70% of college students see AI as a threat to their job prospects, according to a 2025 poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, while recent Gallup polling finds U.S. workers are increasingly concerned about being replaced by new technologies.

Students seeking majors that teach ‘human’ skills

The uncertainty appears most concentrated among those pursuing degrees in technology and vocational areas of study, where students feel a need to develop expertise in AI but also fear being replaced by it. A recent Quinnipiac poll found the vast majority of Americans believe it’s “very” or “somewhat” important for college and university students to be taught how to use AI, as Gallup Workforce polling finds AI is getting adopted in technology-related fields at higher rates. Meanwhile, students studying healthcare and natural sciences may be less impacted by AI overhauls, Gallup found.

“We see students all the time change majors. That’s not new or different. But it’s usually for a ton of different reasons,” said Courtney Brown, a vice president at Lumina, an education nonprofit focused on increasing the number of students who seek education beyond high school. “The fact that so many students say it’s because of AI — that is startling.”

A recent Gallup poll of Generation Z youth and adults, between the ages of 14 and 29, found increasing skepticism and concerns about AI. Although half of Gen Z adults use AI at least “weekly,” and teenagers report higher use, many in this generation see drawbacks to the technology and worry about AI’s impact on their cognitive abilities and job prospects. About half — 48% — of Gen Z workers say the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh the possible benefits.

Part of the challenge for college students is that the experts they would typically turn to for advice, like advisers, professors and parents, don’t have any answers. “Students are having to navigate this on their own, without a GPS,” says Brown.

That uncertainty was evident last month at Stanford University, where the leaders of several prominent universities gathered for a wide-ranging panel discussion on the future of higher education. Topics of concern included the AI revolution that is transforming how students learn and forcing educators to rethink pedagogy.

“We need to think really hard about what students need to learn to be successful in the job market in 10, 20, 30 years,” said Brown University President Christina Paxson.

“And none of us know. We don’t know the answer to that,” Paxson said. “I think it’s communication, it’s critical thought. The fundamentals of a liberal education are probably more important than learning how to code in Java right now.”

Anxiety also reaches computer science majors

Computer science major Ben Aybar, 22, graduated last spring from the University of Chicago and applied for about 50 jobs, mostly in software engineering, without getting a single interview. He pivoted to a master’s degree in computer science and meanwhile has found part-time work doing AI consulting for companies.

“People who know how to use AI will be very valuable,” said Aybar, who sees new jobs emerging that require AI skills, particularly for people who can explain the complexities in layman’s terms. “Being able to talk to people and interact with people in a very human way I think is more valuable than ever.”

At the University of Virginia, data science major Ava Lawless is wondering if her major is worthwhile but can’t get concrete answers. Some advisers feel that data scientists will be safe because they’re the ones building AI models, but she keeps seeing gloomy job reports that indicate the contrary.

“It makes me feel a bit hopeless for the future,” Lawless said. “What if by the time I graduate there’s not even a job market for this anymore?”

She is considering switching to studio art, which is her minor.

“I’m at a point where I’m thinking if I can’t get a job being a data scientist, I might as well pursue art,” she said. “Because if I’m going to be unemployed, I might as well do something I love.”

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The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

While an alternative to the sudden layoffs removing tech workers from peers like Meta and Oracle, the savings are likely tied to a similar industry upheaval that is requiring huge spending on the costs of artificial intelligence. Meta has already warned investors that its 2026 expenses will grow significantly — to the range of $162 billion to $169 billion — driven by infrastructure costs and employee compensation, particularly for the artificial intelligence experts it’s been hiring at eye-popping pay levels.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives welcomed Meta’s cuts in a note to investors Thursday.

He said he sees it as part of a strategy of using AI tools to “automate tasks that once required large teams, allowing the company to streamline operations and reduce costs while maintaining productivity driving an increased need for a leaner operating structure.”

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has spent billions of dollars operating an ever-expanding global network of data centers powering cloud computing services, AI systems and its own suite of productivity tools, including the AI assistant Copilot.

CNBC reported earlier Thursday on a memo from Microsoft’s chief people officer, Amy Coleman, announcing the voluntary retirement plan.

“Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support,” Coleman wrote, according to CNBC.

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The legislative blueprint outlines a half-dozen guiding principles for lawmakers, focusing on protecting children, preventing electricity costs from surging, respecting intellectual property rights, preventing censorship and educating Americans on using the technology.

House Republican leaders swiftly endorsed the framework and said they’re ready to work “across the aisle” to pass legislation, but doing so would be a heavy lift, requiring agreement with Democrats in the Senate as public divisions over AI run deep.

The announcement comes as state governments have forged ahead on their own regulations for AI while civil liberties and consumer rights groups lobby for more regulations on the powerful technology. The industry and the White House have pushed back, arguing that a patchwork of rules would hurt growth. Trump signed an executive order in December to block states from crafting their own regulations.

“This was in response to a growing patchwork of 50 different state regulatory regimes that threaten to stifle innovation and jeopardize America’s lead in the AI race,” said White House AI czar David Sacks in a social media post Friday.

Sacks said the next step is to work with Congress to turn the administration’s principles into federal legislation.

AI legislation could need bipartisan support to pass

While passing sweeping AI legislation will be difficult, especially in a midterm election year, the framework appeared designed to appeal to some AI-wary Republicans and Democrats with a focus on widespread and bipartisan concerns, such as the harms that AI chatbot companionship can pose to children and the electricity costs of AI infrastructure.

“It covers basically all the key sticking points I think that might stop an AI bill from moving through Congress,” said Neil Chilson, a Republican former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission who now leads AI policy at the Abundance Institute. “It reads to me as an attempt to build a larger tent, even if it doesn’t give everybody everything that they want.”

But it has already been panned by some Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who said in a statement it “fails to address key issues, including strong accountability for AI companies, under the guise of protecting children, communities, and creators. Americans need protection — but this means nothing if we allow the AI industry to be the Wild West.”

Whether AI legislation can pass both chambers of Congress could also rely heavily on the support of Republicans like U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who has introduced her own AI bill, and last year was instrumental in thwarting Trump’s earlier attempt to deter state governments from regulating AI. Blackburn on Friday called Trump’s framework a roadmap and welcomed the administration to the “important discussion” of getting a bill passed.

States already regulating AI don’t want to be preempted

Several states — including California, Colorado, Texas and Utah — have already passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector.

With bipartisan support in the Texas legislature, a new AI law that took effect this year in the Republican-led state requires government agencies and health care providers to disclose when they are using AI to interact with consumers or answer questions. The law also prohibits the development of AI that encourages a person to commit suicide, harm themselves, harm another person or engage in criminal activity.

A federal law following Trump’s framework “could knock out parts of Texas’s AI code while leaving some parts standing,” said Saurabh Vishnubhakat, a professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law. “The fact that it’s a Republican governor I don’t think is going to save Texas’ law from preemption.”

Also vulnerable is Colorado’s law, which is aimed at preventing AI from discriminating against people when making consequential decisions about things like hiring and medical care. It was passed in 2024 but isn’t set to take effect until later this year. Lawmakers hope to rework the regulations before then.

Colorado State Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Democrat, said voters don’t want to stifle innovation or fall behind China “but our constituents are interested in not becoming China.”

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed some AI bills while signing into law others. His office criticized Trump’s framework Friday.

“Yet again, Donald Trump is trying to gut laws in California that keep our residents safe and protect consumers — a core state responsibility,” Newsom’s spokesperson Marissa Saldivar said in a statement.

The Trump administration says it doesn’t think Congress should preempt all state regulatory powers over AI, including enforcement of general laws against AI developers, “to protect children, prevent fraud, and protect consumers.” It also says Congress shouldn’t interfere with local authorities in deciding where to place data centers and other AI infrastructure, or how states procure their own AI tools for law enforcement or education.

However, it says states “should not be permitted to regulate AI development,” shouldn’t penalize AI developers for a third party’s unlawful conduct using their product, and “should not unduly burden Americans’ use of AI for activity that would be lawful if performed without AI.”

Trump’s AI proposal appeals to concerns about data centers, copyright

As backlash against data centers has increased along with rising power prices, the White House had previously stepped up pressure on AI companies and the power sector to do more to address the issue — including having AI companies sign voluntary pledges earlier this month to build their own power generation plants.

Some AI safety advocates are pushing for Blackburn and other influential Republicans to insist on more protections against AI’s most catastrophic risks to national security or the economy, such as out-of-control AI agents or the widespread replacement of human workers.

“We have companies that explicitly are hoping to replace human labor,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a former Republican strategist who now leads The Alliance for Secure AI and believes Trump’s framework doesn’t do enough to address risks. “Tinkering at the edges with upskilling and job training is just not going to make an impact on that. I just don’t think we as a country are taking this seriously enough.”

The framework aims for a more balanced approach to another controversial topic: AI and copyright.

It recommends against wading into the legal fights between artists and creators and the technology companies that have ingested huge amounts of copyrighted works to build AI systems that can generate new text, images and sound.

The Trump administration “believes that training of AI models on copyrighted material does not violate copyright laws,” according to the document, but acknowledges “arguments to the contrary exist and therefore supports allowing the Courts to resolve this issue.”

That language was welcomed by trade group AI Progress — a coalition that includes Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Midjourney and OpenAI.

Tech companies have been fighting dozens of copyright infringement lawsuits from writers and publishers, visual artists, music record labels and others. Judges have largely sided with AI developers in allowing for the “fair use” of copyrighted works to create something new, but some have questioned how the materials were obtained. A federal judge in September approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and authors who allege nearly half a million books had been illegally pirated to train its chatbot.

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She turned to artificial intelligence.

White, who runs a small music production business and had previously used AI tools to create promotional videos, began feeding court documents and case details into generative AI platforms. She asked the programs to analyze procedural rulings, identify possible errors and draft arguments for her appeal.

“It felt like having an on-demand research assistant,” White said. “I never could have managed all that paperwork and legal language on my own.”

Months later, White succeeded in overturning her eviction notice, avoiding tens of thousands of dollars in penalties and unpaid rent. She credits AI with helping her organize her case and better understand court procedures.

White is part of a growing number of self-represented, or “pro se,” litigants turning to generative AI to help them navigate the legal system. With tools available for as little as $20 a month — or even free — some are skipping attorneys entirely and relying on algorithms to draft motions, explain statutes and outline strategies.

A Growing Trend in Courtrooms

Legal professionals across the country say they are seeing an increase in court filings that bear the hallmarks of AI assistance.

“I’ve seen more pro se litigants in the last year than in most of my career,” said Meagan Holmes, a paralegal at a Phoenix law firm. “You can usually tell when a document has been generated by AI.”

While some litigants report success in small claims or procedural disputes, attorneys warn that AI-generated filings often contain inaccuracies — sometimes significant ones.

One of the most common issues is fabricated case law. AI systems occasionally generate citations to court decisions that do not exist, a phenomenon known as “hallucination.” In other instances, real cases are cited but misrepresented.

Damien Charlotin, a legal researcher who tracks judicial decisions involving AI-related filing errors, has documented hundreds of cases worldwide since 2023 in which courts directly addressed AI misuse.

“It’s accelerating,” Charlotin said. “The most common problem is fabricated case law, but misrepresented precedent is harder to detect and can be just as serious.”

Judges have issued sanctions in some cases, including fines and community service requirements, when litigants — and even licensed attorneys — submitted filings containing AI-generated errors.

Risk and Responsibility

Several AI companies include disclaimers stating their platforms should not replace professional legal advice. Yet when users ask legal questions, chatbots generally provide detailed responses with only minimal cautionary notes.

Legal experts say the responsibility ultimately falls on the user.

“Just like a law firm would double-check the work of a junior associate, you have to verify anything AI produces,” said one attorney who has reviewed AI-assisted filings. “Courts don’t excuse inaccuracies because a litigant used a chatbot.”

Self-represented litigants who rely heavily on AI may face consequences if filings contain false or misleading information. Judges have warned frequent filers against submitting repetitive or frivolous motions generated by automated tools.

A Tool — Not a Replacement

Despite the pitfalls, some legal professionals remain cautiously optimistic. Pro bono legal clinics in several cities are now teaching self-represented litigants how to use AI responsibly — focusing on research support, document organization and fact-checking techniques rather than legal advice.

“This is a transformative moment,” said Zoe Dolan, a supervising attorney at a Los Angeles-based nonprofit legal advocacy organization. “AI can expand access to information. But it has to be used carefully and critically.”

Even attorneys who caution against overreliance on AI admit they use it themselves — as a brainstorming or research aid.

“AI is helpful as a starting point,” said Andrew Montez, a Southern California attorney. “But it’s never a substitute for legal judgment, experience and manual verification.”

Leveling the Playing Field?

For litigants like White, AI represents something else entirely: access.

“AI gave me drafting help and organizational skills I couldn’t afford otherwise,” she said. “It felt like David and Goliath — except my slingshot was technology.”

As courts grapple with a surge of AI-assisted filings, one thing is clear: generative AI is reshaping how some Americans approach the legal system. Whether it ultimately empowers litigants or overwhelms courtrooms may depend less on the technology itself — and more on how responsibly it’s used.

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As they shuffled and occasionally froze for a battery change, their creators and futurologists debated the central question of when robots will be ready to tidy closets and wash dishes.

Outer space before house chores

Despite the explosive advance of artificial intelligence in applications like ChatGPT, their physical cousins — robots with human-like appearances and skills — are lagging years behind.

“I really believe that humanoids will first go to space and then to houses … the house is the final frontier,” said Minas Liarokapis, a Greek academic and startup founder who organized the International Humanoid Olympiad.

The four-day event gathered experts and developers at Ancient Olympia in southern Greece where the flame is lit every two years for the modern Summer and Winter Games.

“To enter the house it’ll take more than 10 years. Definitely more,” Liarokapis said. “I’m talking about executing tasks with dexterity, not about selling robots that are cute and are companions.”

Training material lacking

AI is racing ahead thanks to vast amounts of data readily available online. But training material for humanoid robots is scarce. It involves real-world actions that are slower, more expensive and harder to record than digital data like text or images.

By one measure, humanlike robots are roughly 100,000 years behind AI in learning from data, according to an article in the current edition of the journal Science Robotics.

To catch up, author Ken Goldberg, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, urged makers to move beyond simulations and combine “old-fashioned engineering” with real-world training. That, he argues, would let robots “collect data as they perform useful work, such as driving taxis and sorting packages.”

The race for useful data

Luis Sentis, professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, said that successful robotics requires collaboration between researchers, data companies and major manufacturers to provide scale. Those partnerships, he noted, are already attracting billions of dollars in funding to develop humanoid robots.

“These synergies are happening very, very quickly. So I do see these problems being cracked on a day-to-day basis,” said Sentis, who’s also a co-founder of humanoid maker Apptronik.

Developers at the Greek event brought their own ideas.

Aadeel Akhtar, CEO and founder of advanced prosthetics maker Psyonic, gained international attention after appearing on the U.S. television show “Shark Tank” last year seeking investment for his company’s bionic hand, which offers sensory feedback.

That data, he told The Associated Press on Monday, could accelerate robot development.

“We’ve built our hand for both humans and robots,” he said. “So we’re closing that gap by actually using the hand of the prosthetic on humans and then translating that (data) over to robots.”

Brain cells

Hon Weng Chong, CEO of Cortical Labs, said that the Australian biotech company is developing a so-called biological computer that uses real brain cells grown on a chip. Those cells can learn and respond to information — and potentially teach robots to think and adapt more like humans.

At the Olympiad, organizers hoped to lay a foundation for annual competitions providing an “honest validation of the progress that has been made in humanoid robots,” said Patrick Jarvis, who with Liarokapis is co-founder of robot maker Acumino.

Organizers limited events to what humanoids could reasonably attempt.

“We were trying to get the discus and the javelin, but that’s tough for humanoid robots,” Jarvis said. “We also can’t say whose robot can do a high jump because you’d have to build special legs … and that’s not necessary for most humanoid robots.”

China is keen to display its robots, the U.S. less so

One company even tested whether its machine could manage the shot put, said Thomas Ryden, executive director of MassRobotics, who worked to “get as many humanoid companies there as possible.”

In the end, several U.S. roboticists came to Greece to speak, but few brought robots.

Chinese companies increasingly showcase their machines at public events, such as Beijing’s first Humanoid Robot Games in August, while U.S. rivals mostly stick to polished videos that can mask failures.

There are exceptions. Elon Musk revealed Tesla’s Optimus in 2022: The prototype walked stiffly onstage, turned and waved to a cheering crowd.

Boston Dynamics went further. Ten years after launching its dog-like Spot, the company had them dance in synchrony to a Queen song on “America’s Got Talent.”

One of the five broke down mid-routine, creating a reality-show punchline, but also highlighting their agility and coordination.

“Can I be honest with you? I actually think — I don’t mean this in a cruel way — it was weirdly better that one of them died,” judge Simon Cowell said. “Because it showed how difficult this was.”

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The hour-long comedy centers on high school student Eleanor who uses a chatbot to write a paper on “The Great Gatsby” for her class assignment. That leads to the chatbot writing the best essay ever and having Eleanor sent to a special school for genius children. It turns out that every other student there used a chatbot to get into the school. The chatbots dictate their personal lives by guiding them in what they say based on the persona they want to present.

Monica Reichl, who has been the theater teacher at the high school since it opened in 2007, said she read the script about a year and a half ago and enjoyed it but decided to do a different play last year.

“And now it seems in our meetings and trainings, we have more and more conversations about A.I., I have more and more students using it, thinking we, as teachers, can’t spot the difference,” she said. “So, Eleanor delivers the message of the story, that it isn’t about turning in that perfect paper or achieving ‘success’ based on things created for us, but rather that we should fail and struggle and that is when the learning happens.”

Eleanor is played by Olivia Peña, a senior who has been in theater for the past seven years. She plans to pursue theater past high school and “maybe Broadway someday.” She said, “Eleanor is definitely a leader, a procrastinator and a little awkward.” She said she found the play very relatable since she herself had to turn to online research when she was assigned to read the classic novel in her English class and had no idea what she was reading about.

“I love theater because I’m able to express myself and be someone else and not myself which is the most socially anxious and awkward person you’d ever meet,” Olivia said. Of all the comedies, dramas and musicals she has appeared in, she said she prefers drama the most. “I joined choir just to improve my voice for theater.”

Ellie Ballard is a junior who has been cast in the role of Minerva, Eleanor’s chatbot. She has been acting her whole life and has been in theater and choir for the past two years. She is also in the school’s band and takes studio dance, focusing on tap, ballet and pointe. She wants to attend UC, Irvine for dance and prefers musical theater productions.

“I like that the role of Minerva is different in that she gets to control a person’s movements,” Ellie said. “Minerva is a very dramatic character, and she shows that. There are some plot twists in a show that is funny, dramatic and over the top at times. It is fun for us to perform, and I think it will be fun for others to see it.”

Reichl’s goal is to choose plays that she thinks the students will like and it appears this one accomplishes that.

“Casting is the biggest challenge and the most dreaded part of my job,” Reichl said. “A lot of times I look at the students I have and imagine them in different roles, but then the auditions come around and one I thought would be great in one role just didn’t quite nail it, but then surprises me in a different part. But every time I post a cast list, I know some students will be thrilled and others will be devastated.”

Julia Reyes spent her pre-high school career as a homeschooled charter school student who always took acting and improv classes. “I really enjoy theater and hopefully one day I can be in a production like a movie,” the sophomore said. Her character in this play is Joe-Bob, who she describes as a paranoid conspiracy theorist at the school for genius children. She likes the character development that takes place during the course of the play. Although she also played a male role in the school’s spring production, the talented actor said she can play different roles despite gender. Although Joe-Bob was her third choice when she auditioned, “I was happy with the role I got and still enjoy it to this day.”

Julia also likes how relatable the characters are and the jokes that come and go. “In this show, some of the minor roles are the funniest. I’m happy to be in this production with so many amazing people,” she said of the cast of about 20. She said the play has a nice balance of funny and serious, due to the subject matter at the center of it all. Julia sees artificial intelligence as a “solution but also our doom at the same time.”

Senior Madison Tyra has been acting since she was in seventh grade. Her favorite genre is musicals because she loves singing. She describes her character Ali as “a peppy, talkative girl obsessed with getting into college.” She said her joyful and happy tendencies in real life carried over into her character. “This is a fun comedy about high schoolers struggling with A.I.,” she said. “I try to stay off A.I. for schoolwork but enjoy it for games and storytelling.” Her favorite part of being in this play is the fact she is joined onstage by her best friend, Milah, so they can share as characters what they have in real life.

While Madison has been exploring higher education opportunities for her eventual goal of becoming a math teacher, she will be going on a mission for her church after high school graduation.

Greydon Gudat is a sophomore who has been in theater since third grade, attending lots of camps and being involved in choir and dance. He said that although he really loves the performing arts, he doesn’t see it as a career path, stating that he will most likely enter the education field. His character is Rider but being that he wants to be considered the “cool” guy, he opts to spell it Ryder. Greydon said the role offers a great demonstration of range and shows off how much he can stretch as an actor. “I love complex roles; I love to stray from my own self and convince the audience that I am that character,” he said.

Drake Rodgers is a student at Renaissance Valley Academy-Springs Charter School who participates in theater classes at Tahquitz. He plays Minerva’s father in this play and said he was happy to get the part in the hilarious, family-friendly show. “I like the comedy of my role,” he said. “When I read the script, I liked the story. I do like the message it tells which is basically, don’t cheat your way through life.”

Working so closely with the actors in the play, Reichl said it led to a few discussions about students not getting away with using artificial intelligence as cleverly as they think they do.

“There are times when A.I. can be a great tool, but it ultimately does not replace their imagination, their curiosity, their skills,” she said.

The Tahquitz High School Performing Arts Center is at 4425 Titan Trail (off Cawston Ave.) in Hemet. Parking is free and doors open at 6 p.m. for the 6:30 p.m. shows on Nov. 14 and 15. Tickets are $5 each. For more information, mreichl@hemetusd.org.

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U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez said artificial intelligence and deepfakes pose significant risks, but he ruled that the law likely violates the First Amendment.

“Most of AB 2839 acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel, serving as a blunt tool that hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate,” Mendez wrote.

The law took effect immediately after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it last month. The Democrat signed two other bills at the time aimed at cracking down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election. They are among the toughest laws of their kind in the nation.

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the laws protect democracy and preserve free speech.

“We’re confident the courts will uphold the state’s ability to regulate these types of dangerous and misleading deepfakes,” he said in a statement. “Satire remains alive and well in California — even for those who miss the punchline.”

But a lawyer representing YouTuber Christopher Kohls, who sued state officials over the law, called the ruling “straightforward.”

“We are gratified that the district court agreed with our analysis that new technologies do not change the principles behind First Amendment protections,” attorney Theodore Frank said.

The law was also unpopular among First Amendment experts, who urged Newsom last month to veto the measure. They argued that the law is unconstitutional and a government overreach.

“If something is truly defamatory, there’s a whole body of law and established legal standards for how to prove a claim for defamation consistent with the First Amendment,” David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said in an interview in September. “The government is not free to create new categories of speech outside the First Amendment.”

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Technical topics, of any sort at all, are generally subject to serious distortion when they hit the level of public discussion. There are many reasons for this – ideology, click-lust, and the sheer inability of the average journo school grad to adequately wrap his head around whatever concept is under consideration.

There’s no end of examples: Just think of the garbage written about global warming or COVID.

The latest of these topics is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Commentary on AI has exploded across the media sphere since the release of ChatGPT, an AI app purportedly capable of learning how to produce prose in any style at request. The consensus, to quote a style not yet mastered by ChatGPT, is almost uniformly “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The media uproar has been characterized by two approaches — the first (and most common) is complete lack of understanding of the technology. The second is an impression of the topic derived from movies, largely HAL 9000 and Skynet (an older generation would add Colossus). These AI entities are uniformly insane, malevolent, or both (though not to the level of the one envisioned in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream” which is so overcome by existential loathing that it destroys all humanity except for five individuals, whom it then sets out to torture for all eternity). For some reason, nobody ever suggests the AI Samantha in the superb film Her, who is cheerful, helpful, and even loving. That says more about human nature than it does Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Turing had first proposed computers in the 1930s and then played a role in building the earliest working models for the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park. In this paper he suggested something that came to be called the Turing Test, intended to answer the question as to whether an AI should be treated as a self-aware entity – as another person. Turing’s argument is that if you converse with an AI – ask it questions and receive answers – and cannot decide whether you are interacting with a human person or a machine, you must consider it to be an intelligent, self-aware entity. (The Turing Test has been philosophically challenged since them, while at the same time being subject to cheating by some AI researchers, who have pulled tricks such as personifying the AI as a twelve-year-old or a foreigner who speaks English as a second language.)

Turing’s speculations fell on fertile ground. While the original Bletchley Park “bombes” (so-called due to the ticking noise they made while calculating) had been shut down after the war, more advanced computers such as UNIVAC were being designed and built during the early 50s. They were greeted with wild speculation along with musing on what it all meant for the fate of humanity. Conclusions were largely unanimous: “thinking machines” would soon outdo mere humans, who would then be either destroyed or shoved aside to go quietly extinct.

Eighty years on, little has changed. The debate continues on the same shallow, uninformed level while we eagerly await for AM or HAL to appear and start torturing or murdering us.

So what is the problem here? First and above all, when we speak of AI in the 21st century, we’re discussing two distinct and separate types as if they were one and the same thing. These are what I call “App AI,” which includes ChatGPT and the numerous AI art apps making the rounds, and “General Intelligence AI,” the movie-style HALs and Skynets capable of taking over everything and doing what they damn well please.

Up until now, all that we’ve seen are App AIs. These are software, generally operating on neural nets, devoted to one particular task – text creation or artwork – that feature algorithms capable of modifying the responses of the program as it “learns” more about the task. AI learning is accomplished through “supervised learning,” in which mere humans set the parameters and goals, oversee the process, and examine and judge the results. Until now this human interaction has proven strictly necessary — “unsupervised learning,” when it has been attempted, usually goes off the rails pretty quickly. The App AI’s single task comprises their entire universe and they can’t simply take what they’ve learned and apply it to other fields. As Erik J. Larson puts it in The Myth of Artificial Intelligence (which should be read by anybody with an interest in the topic), “…chess-playing systems don’t play the more complex game of Go. Go systems don’t even play chess.” So no such AI is ever going to quit sampling internet imagery and try to take over the Pentagon. (This also applies to the guy who claimed, a couple weeks back, that ChatGPT is already “running the financial system.”)

There’s been a lot of speculation recently as to whether these systems will supplant humans working in particular fields. The answer is no — not yet, and probably not ever. A few weeks ago, Monica Showalter, esteemed by all AT readers, ran a Turing Test of sorts on ChatGPT. She entered the prompt “Write a piece on the future of the airline industry in the style of Thomas Lifson.” What she got was a bland, gassy, ill-written piece filled with clichés, non-sequiturs, and outright errors, none of which, I can state with authority, has ever been characteristic of Thomas’s writing.

But couldn’t an App AI conceivably learn enough, experience enough, and develop enough to stretch its electronic tentacles into fields that it was never intended for?

That brings us to General Intelligence AI, the realm of HAL and Samantha, the Holy Grail of AI research, and what Stephan Hawking and Elon Musk have both warned us against.

Turing had originally dismissed notions of machine intelligence due to the fact that machines lacked intuition – the human facility that enables us to skip step-by-step procedures and go immediately to the heart of a problem. There exists no way to quantify intuition – along with other related human capabilities such as imagination. Though Turing ignored this factor in his 1950 paper, it remains true today. There is no means of breaking down intuition, imagination, or simple common sense to make them programmable.

One of the shocking developments in AI research late in the last century was the revelation that machines can’t deal with the everyday. A program could play chess, model the interior of an M-class star, or plot a rocket trajectory with ease, but ask it to pilot a robot down a hall and it will immediately run into a wall and suffer a complete breakdown. This is something that Elon himself has encountered with his “self-driving” cars.

The statistical techniques that AI programs utilize – rifling through thousands, millions, or conceivably billions of possible solutions before they select the most probable – simply cannot replace the human attributes we all take for granted.

We don’t actually know what “intuition” or “common sense” are, which means that we don’t know what thinking is. And if that’s the case, how can we hope to duplicate it? It took something on the order of three-and-a-half million years for intelligence to develop in human beings. Nobody, however adept, will replicate that in a handful of years.

We are likely to find that conscious intelligence is an emergent property arising from elements we can now scarcely conceptualize, much less understand. And if we can’t understand it, it’s unlikely that we will be able to transfer it to silicon chips.

So Skynet is not going to be stomping on our skulls just yet. Which doesn’t mean that people will stop working on General Intelligence AI. That’s no bad thing – such research will teach us a lot about ourselves, possibly including things we’d rather not know. And if by some wild chance such an effort was successful, we’d still have little reason to worry. As Elon has pointed out, such an entity would be isolated in a research facility and dependent on extraordinarily complex and sensitive hardware. Any change in the system, such as a malfunction or brownout, would be likely to shut the whole thing down. (Which raises other questions: are we morally justified in creating an intelligent entity that will inevitably succumb to malfunctions? I would say “no.”)

As for App AI, it is simply a new kind of tool, and Sapiens does well with tools. It will continue to improve, providing us with more capabilities and potential. At the moment, App AI is at about at the same level as home computing was in the early 80s, when it was limited to trivia such as primitive games. The prospects are enormous.

But ChatGPT will not take over and force everyone to read its stuff eighteen hours a day. Nor will AIs put everybody out of work, something that has been predicted since Kurt Vonnegut published Player Piano in 1952. Since the 1970s, it has been clear that infotech actually creates jobs by expanding existing industries and establishing new ones. We have no reason to think that AI will be any different.

AI will also provide us with a new armory of digital defenses against the current efforts by the WEF, the tech giants, and the elites to force technofeudalism on us. And that, playmates, will be something worth having.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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By Skymount Medical

Skymount Medical has partnered with Riverside University Health System (RUHS) Medical Center to conduct the first U.S. clinical trial on the efficacy of COVID-19 oral therapeutics discovered by LSU researchers using artificial intelligence (AI). The testing will be conducted through RUHS Medical Center’s Comparative Effectiveness & Clinical Outcomes Research Center (CECORC) in Moreno Valley. It will evaluate the combined effects of an already FDA-approved cancer medication and an already FDA-approved anti-parasitic agent (both approved for humans) on patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms that do not require hospitalization.

Similar studies are already underway in Europe. Although the outcomes for patients have yet to be revealed, predictive studies leveraged by LSU’s AI technology and early cell and animal studies conducted by Illinois Institute of Technology have already shown the new drug combination up to 97% effective in reducing the amount of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“We’re excited to partner with RUHS and Dr. Bruce Weng’s team to facilitate a human clinical investigation to try to demonstrate the safety of the drug combination and efficacy in adult patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 and exhibit mild-to-moderate symptoms,” said Dr. Kishor Wasan, Skymount Medical’s Chief Medical & Scientific Officer, Distinguished University Scholar Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and co-inventor of the therapeutic combination.

The study will be a double-blind intervention conducted in an outpatient setting, comparing the two-drug combination to a placebo. The goal of the study is to determine the impact this combination therapy will have on decreasing the length and severity of symptoms without negative side effects. The study will also evaluate if the combination drug can help decrease the need for hospitalizations. The clinical research study has been ruled FDA Investigational New Drug Exempt (FDA-IND exempt) by the local Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Dr. Weng, an infectious disease physician at RUHS Medical Center, will inform patients diagnosed with COVID-19 about the study, and invite them to participate. Patients will be screened, enrolled, and have subsequent follow up visits in the RUHS Emergency Department.

“Unfortunately, California has its fair share of COVID-19 cases,” Dr. Weng said. “The one silver lining in this is that the sample size at our hospital is substantial enough to produce valuable data when evaluating the safety and efficacy of this drug combination. This is a pilot study and 100% voluntary. The safety of our patients is paramount, and we will stay in constant contact with those choosing to participate to ensure their health and well-being.”

The researchers are hopeful that the new therapeutic also will prevent lingering symptoms, which some people experience following COVID-19.

“The drug combination may reduce long-haul syndrome, the long-term consequences some patients report even after recovering from COVID-19, such as mental health issues and damage to organs,” Dr. Wasan said.

DeepDrug™, the AI platform that helped discover the oral therapeutic, was created by an interdisciplinary team of LSU researchers led by Dr. Supratik Mukhopadhyay, associate professor in the LSU Department of Computer Science. DeepDrug™ uses a next-generation AI capability that reduces the time and cost of drug discovery by up to 90%.

“It’s very gratifying to see this medication enter into the human study phase,” Dr. Mukhopadhyay said. “The fact that we are at this stage so quickly is due to Skymount Medical’s vast professional medical network and our DeepDrug™ platform, which was able to identify this particular combination of medications in a fraction of the time that traditional research takes.”

If Skymount Medical’s oral therapeutic for COVID-19 receives final approval, the company intends to make the treatment widely available and cost-effective.

About Skymount Medical

Skymount Medical’s mission is to accelerate the development of better medicines using DeepDrug™, drug design software leveraged by artificial intelligence developed by researchers at Louisiana State University (LSU). Our focus is to become a leading provider of innovative treatments to improve global health and increase access to the most cutting-edge therapeutics. Visit skymountmed.com to learn more.

About Riverside University Health System

Riverside University Health System (RUHS) includes a 439-bed Medical Center with a Level 1 Trauma Center, including 77 inpatient psychiatric treatment beds at the Arlington Campus, Medical Surgical Center, 13 Community Health Centers, and several primary and specialty clinics, as well as the departments of Public Health and Behavioral Health with services provided throughout Riverside County, California. With more than 8,000 staff members and over 125 years of experience serving Riverside County communities, RUHS continues its commitment to and legacy of delivering exceptional, compassionate care with a focus on community wellness and medical education. Visit ruhealth.org to learn more.

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VA’s National Artificial Intelligence Institute competition encourages innovators to develop ways to improve services for Veterans.

National AI Tech Sprint award recipients include:

• First place and $50,000 to Behavidence for a smartphone application that monitors Veteran activity, categorizes users by similar behavior and flags for follow-up those at increased risk for suicide.

• Second place and $25,000 to SoKat Consulting, LLC, for creating a chatbot that can integrate with VA’s Blue Button medical records access. The chatbot can help Veterans get answers to questions and better understand their health care between visits.

• Third place and $10,000 to General Dynamics IT for an algorithm that can classify skin lesions and help medical staff determine if the quality of an image is good enough to make a skin cancer diagnosis.

VA also gave $5,000 awards to JumpStartCSR for an app that integrates with physical therapy to prevent and treat injuries; HIVE Lab at George Washington University for an app that helps Veterans manage conditions such as diabetes by personalizing treatments based on gut microbiome; and Ouva, LLC for a platform that helps clinicians better monitor vital signs and other health care issues for patients in isolation.

The intent of the sprint is to match the private sector with Veterans, VA clinicians and other experts who mentor the companies to brainstorm solutions and new ideas over a three-month period. VA will further evaluate the best ideas and products to potentially adopt at pilot sites and then roll out nationwide.

Participating teams gave presentations and demonstrations judged by panels of Veterans and other experts. In all, 44 teams from industry and universities participated, addressing a range of health care challenges such as chronic conditions management, cancer screening, rehabilitation, patient experiences and more.

“VA has long been an industry leader in research and innovation, and this sprint competition accelerates discovery,” said Artificial Intelligence Tech Sprint Lead Rafael Fricks, Ph.D. “The short timeline and mentoring allow VA to partner with industry leaders without any roadblocks to develop the health care solutions of the future — not just for those giving the care, but those who will benefit from it most.”

Instead of the traditional contracting process that might take months or years to bring a product online that may not work as anticipated, this allows companies to tailor their products while VA is involved from the ground up.

The next round of competition will open by the end of 2021. More information can be found at the Challenge.gov.

NAII is a joint initiative of the Office of Research and Development and the Secretary’s Center for Strategic Partnerships. For more information, visit the NAII’s Tech Sprint website, or sign up for the AI@VA Community for the latest announcements.

Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs | Contributed

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