We exercised our classic First Amendment rights to speak up and disagree with the government. Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world, and we are patriots in everything we have done here. We have stood up for the values of this country.
Anthropic said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude won't be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language "framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will."
Using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values. AI systems are not yet reliable enough to be trusted to power deadly weapons without a human in ultimate control. We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America's warfighters and civilians at risk.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists, after the fact, that the military should be able to use the Anthropic models for "all lawful purposes." Hegseth summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for a Tuesday morning meeting, in which he reportedly gave Anthropic until 5:01 p.m. Friday to comply with the Pentagon's demand. If Anthropic fails to do so, Hegseth threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel the AI company to supply its models with no guardrails.
We've started to notice all these things in Meta advertising, where the majority of our marketing spend is. Things like your text being used to train AI, and more and more AI things you have to opt out of - like AI pictures and AI videos that can alter the image of the thing you've uploaded quite dramatically. You have to opt out of each one, individually, every time you post something.
Rivera creditsthe creation of courses focusing on the intersection of AI and humanities with a resurgence in student interest in liberal arts degrees like English. Pre-pandemic, the number of English majors at the university was shrinking,part of a broader decline in English across the country, he said. It was a far cry from the days of over 1,500 majors and long waitlists in the early 2000s, according to Rivera. But there's been a rebound, with the number of English majors rising 9% since 2021.
We are living through one of the most disorienting periods in recorded history. The AI race is accelerating toward ever faster, ever more sophisticated automation and optimization. Agentic AI systems are moving from research labs into workplaces, healthcare, and governance. Geopolitical tensions are restructuring alliances faster than institutions can adapt. And planetary systems are signaling, with increasing urgency, that our current trajectory is unsustainable. Amid all this, it is dangerously easy to lose sight of a foundational question: What are we actually optimizing for?
"We are deeply troubled by leaked documentation revealing that Salesforce has pitched AI technology to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help the agency 'expeditiously' hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip-line reports," the letter reads. "Providing 'Agentforce' infrastructure to scale a mass deportation agenda that currently detains 66,000 people-73 percent of whom have no criminal record-represents a fundamental betrayal of our commitment to the ethical use of technology."
OpenAI's decision to introduce advertisements into ChatGPT has sparked serious concerns about privacy, trust, and the ethical complexities of monetizing artificial intelligence. This shift marks a dramatic departure from earlier assurances by OpenAI's leadership, who once described pairing ads with AI as a "last resort." For users who rely on ChatGPT for everything from brainstorming ideas to sharing sensitive information, the implications of this change feel deeply personal, and potentially unsettling.
"Overly affectionate chatbots, besides being ever-present and readily available, can become hidden architects of our emotional states, thereby invading and occupying the sphere of people's intimacy," the first-ever US-born pope wrote. "All stakeholders - from the technology industry to policymakers, from creative businesses to academia, from artists to journalists and educators - must be involved in building and implementing a conscious and responsible digital citizenship," the pope wrote.
Anthropic has completely overhauled the "Claude constitution", a document that sets out the ethical parameters governing its AI model's reasoning and behavior. Launched at the World Economic Forum's Davos Summit, the new constitution's principles are that Claude should be "broadly safe" (not undermining human oversight), "Broadly ethical" (honest, avoiding inappropriate, dangerous, or harmful actions), "genuinely helpful" (benefitting its users), as well as being "compliant with Anthropic's guidelines".
This is not a novelty feature. It's a strategic choice. And at scale, it represents something far more dangerous than a questionable product decision. WHY AI COMPANIES ARE ENCOURAGING INTIMACY Romance is the most powerful engagement mechanism ever discovered. A user who treats AI as a tool can leave. A user who treats it as a companion cannot. Emotional attachment produces longer sessions, repeat engagement, dependency, and vast amounts of deeply personal data.
This past fall, OpenAI, the source of the ChatGPT app that 800 million people now use every week, chose to restructure its organization to prioritize generating revenue for stakeholders over providing ethical and objective information for the world. Reporter Frank Landymore summarized the decision: "The move completes the company's metamorphosis: from its origins as a non-profit devoted to developing open source AI technology for the betterment of humankind to the closed-source, profit- seeking juggernaut that it is today, with its staggering half-trillion dollar valuation."
Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
ChatGPT now has more than 800 million visitors per week, and hundreds of millions are using Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, xAI's Grok, and Meta's Lambda. These AI systems are powerful and have many valuable uses in business, medicine, education, science, and other fields. They also have scary uses such as military applications, spreading misinformation, and the elimination of jobs.
"Make your own prompts" isn't advice. It's basic integrity.I'm honestly fed up.Changing a few words, renaming the prompt, or slightly rephrasing it doesn't make it yours, the idea is still the same, the vibe is the same, and the results are obviously similar.And no, this...- Amira Zairi (@azed_ai) January 6, 2026
As AI rapidly reshapes the media landscape, Poynter is helping people understand how the technology works and how it should be used responsibly. Through practical AI training, ethical guidance and media literacy programs, Poynter's work supports transparent, trustworthy adoption as the technology continues to evolve. The Poynter Institute has hosted two summits on AI, ethics and journalism that have established guidelines to encourage responsible innovation and minimize risk of damage to newsrooms' reputations.
