Welcome to our first post of 2024; we had a robust holiday season, and further: now that AI has become the topic-de-jour, with articles and programs abounding, we will have less to say about AI as the world has caught up with our focus and view of AI’s importance, risks and transformative power.

Highlights of recent AI events: litigation by news sources and publishers, claiming that the use by AI in absorbing those publications into their database constitutes a copyright violation;  announcement from the US Copyright Office that they have received 10,000 comments in advance of anticipated issuance of regulations about  AI use (digestion) of prior published work and whether or not what AI produces based on such activity is a violation of copyright but rather permitted utilization under the “fair use” doctrine (per the New York Times today the typical number of comments in advance of similar (non-AI) announcements is less than a dozen); a startling visual in the press showing an AI generated image of “Joker” being an absolute copy of  the clearly trademarked “Joker” movie image.

Seems what is at stake here is whether your computer can get away with something that you, personally, clearly cannot do.  Yet another hint that robots will at some point rule our world?  (Just kidding–I think….)