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

OpenAI restructures under new foundation, Microsoft takes 27 percent stake

AI and society

The long-predicted deepfake dystopia has arrived with Sora 2

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

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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.

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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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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 research

Frustrated authors withdraw papers after realizing their reviewers are just lazy LLMs

AI research

Gemini 3 Pro tops new AI reliability benchmark, but hallucination rates remain high

AI research

Researchers push "Context Engineering 2.0" as the road to lifelong AI memory

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