Hub AI and society

Artificial Intelligence is a key technology that can help us solve major societal challenges such as climate change, energy supply, healthcare, education or logistics. AI can solve specific problems more effectively by supporting us in decision-making, automating solutions and thus scaling them, or discovering completely new solutions. But the use of AI also poses new risks, for example when it comes to surveillance or questions of social justice.

What is our society doing with AI – and what is AI doing to our society? We shed light on this question in our AI and Society Content Hub.

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

AI and society

Meta's human-like chatbot personas can mislead users and result in real-world harm

AI and society

US think tank warns of "reverse brain drain" in China's AI sector

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AI and society
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LLM hype critic Gary Marcus argues in a conversation with chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov that large language models only create the appearance of understanding, not genuine intelligence.

"It's one of the most profound illusions of our time that most people see these systems and attribute an understanding to them that they don't really have."

Gary Marcus

He explains that while language models can, for example, mimic the rules of chess by generating text based on examples, they can't actually play the game because they lack any real internal sense of what's happening on the board.

"They will repeat the rules, because in the way that they create text based on other texts, they'll be there. [...] But when it actually comes to playing the game, it doesn't have an internal model of what's going on."

For Marcus, this gap between surface-level performance and true comprehension is at the heart of the AI "illusion of intelligence."

AI and society
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Apple is facing a lawsuit in California from authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, who claim the company violated their copyrights by using their books to train AI models like OpenELM and Apple Intelligence. The lawsuit alleges Apple used the Books3 dataset, a collection of more than 196,000 pirated books that includes works by both authors. The complaint also accuses Apple of using its Applebot web crawler to copy website content and pull material from so-called shadow libraries.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages and a court order barring Apple from using their works. This case follows a recent lawsuit against Anthropic, which ended in a settlement after similar copyright claims.

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AI and society
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Warner Bros. Discovery is suing AI image generator company Midjourney for copyright infringement in federal court in California. The studio accuses Midjourney of building its business on the mass theft of content and using copyrighted characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Rick and Morty. Warner Bros. Discovery is joining Disney and Universal, which filed similar lawsuits earlier this year. The complaint includes side-by-side comparisons of Midjourney outputs and original film images, such as Christian Bale's Batman from "The Dark Knight." According to Warner Bros. Discovery, the AI tool generates Warner-owned characters even for prompts as generic as "classic comic superhero battle." Midjourney offers four paid subscription tiers ranging from $10 to $120 per month. The company has not commented on the allegations. Warner Bros. Discovery is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.

AI and society
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OpenAI plans to launch a new AI-powered job platform and introduce a certification program for AI skills next year. The goal is to connect businesses and government agencies with qualified professionals. According to Bloomberg, the project is backed by major partners, including US retail giant Walmart. The initiative aims to certify ten million people in the US by 2030. The plans were announced at an AI education meeting at the White House, attended by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other tech leaders. The platform will let job seekers prove their skills and be matched with relevant opportunities. By helping workers adapt to the growing impact of AI across many professions, the project is intended to address concerns about AI's disruptive potential - and probably to bolster OpenAI's public image.

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AI and society
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Large language models have a tendency to escalate military scenarios - sometimes all the way to nuclear war.

"The AI is always playing Curtis LeMay," Jacquelyn Schneider of Stanford University told Politico, describing her team's experiments using language models in military wargames. LeMay, a US general during the Cold War, was famous for his aggressive stance on nuclear weapons. "It’s almost like the AI understands escalation, but not de-escalation. We don’t really know why that is."

In these simulations, the models consistently pushed situations toward escalation - often ending in nuclear strikes. Schneider and her team think the root of the problem is the training data: large language models learn from existing literature, which usually highlights conflicts and escalation. Peaceful resolutions, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, are rarely covered in detail. With so few examples of "non-events" in the data, de-escalation is hard for the AI to model. These tests used older language models, including GPT-4, Claude 2, and Llama-2.

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Universities are recognizing that AI literacy is now critical for every graduate, not just those in computer science.

This new priority is leading top US schools, including UCLA and the University of Maryland, to appoint their first Chief AI Officers. The aim is to equip all students with foundational AI skills, reflecting the sense that understanding AI is becoming as essential as traditional core subjects.

Higher education leaders see a particular responsibility in this area, given their historic role in launching companies like Facebook, Google, and Dell. As AI expertise quickly becomes a basic requirement in the tough job market for new graduates, universities are under growing pressure to ensure students are prepared.

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Generative AI has already changed the rules of the game in the search market, according to Judge Amit Mehta's ruling in the Google antitrust case. Mehta pointed out that "companies already are in a better position, both financially and technologically, to compete with Google than any traditional search company has been in decades (except perhaps Microsoft)." That shift helped Google avoid the toughest penalties in court, such as forcing the company to sell Chrome or a blanket prohibition of paid deals with Apple and Mozilla - both key demands the US Department of Justice had pushed for. Ironically, the same technology that was once seen as a threat to Google's search monopoly ended up working in Google's favor. Now, Google is moving forward with its core product, rolling out AI-powered agentic search worldwide.

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AI and society

Anthropic settles landmark AI copyright lawsuit for at least $1.5 billion

AI in practice

Microsoft presents its first large AI models and signals greater independence from OpenAI

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

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