Men detained at Texas’s ‘dog pound’ ICE facility describe their experience – in art, letters and song; The Guardian, October 31, 2026

 José Olivares, The Guardian ; Men detained at Texas’s ‘dog pound’ ICE facility describe their experience – in art, letters and song

Nearly 500 men are detained at the T Don Hutto detention facility, and many have risked sharing their experiences in a unique way

"What goes on inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers across the US happens behind closed doors and high fences.

Personal accounts of lengthy detention, misery and sickness and allegations of abuse rarely reach the public directly while people are still behind bars.

But a group of men detained in Texas found a new way to communicate what they are going through in custody, despite being shuttered from the outside world. They compiled hundreds of pages of handwritten testimony and some hand-drawn art, and mailed it from inside the privately run ICE jail...

“These first-hand accounts reveal more than what is happening inside a single detention facility. They expose an entire system that strips people of their dignity, separates families and treats fundamental constitutional rights as optional,” said DaMareo Cooper, co-founder of the New York-based Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive advocacy organization. “What is equally powerful is the extraordinary courage of those risking so much to speak out. Behind every testimony, every piece of artwork and every story is a human being enduring unimaginable pain.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that “any allegations of subprime conditions or misconduct at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center are FALSE”."

Climate skeptics used AI to review their work. It told them they were biased.; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 31, 2026

 Jessica McKenzie , Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Climate skeptics used AI to review their work. It told them they were biased.

"Scientists handpicked by the Trump administration to write a critical review of climate science used various LLMs to review their work, only to find that AI told them they were cherry-picking their facts and using “outdated or narrow sourcing.”

Earlier this year, a judge ruled that the Energy Department and Secretary Chris Wright violated the law when he convened a group of climate experts to write a critical review of climate science and the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, the judge determined the agency violated the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act that stipulate advisory groups must be open, transparent, and balanced.

The judge ordered emails and other documents related to the Climate Working Group report released to the environmental advocacy groups that sued the agency, and in March, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists released those documents to the public—all 4,167 500-page PDFs."

The Smartest People in AI Believe This Is the World’s Most Important Chart; Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2026

 Ben Cohen, Wall Street Journal; The Smartest People in AI Believe This Is the World’s Most Important Chart

"Since the days when artificial intelligence seemed more like fiction than science, one idea has captivated the field’s top researchers."

Lancaster County library tax referendum faces Republican opposition at the ballot box; Lancaster Online, October 30, 2026

TOM LISI | Staff Writer, Lancaster Online; Lancaster County library tax referendum faces Republican opposition at the ballot box

"When local library leaders launched a ballot initiative this year asking Lancaster County voters to back a property tax to fund libraries, they framed it as a nonpartisan endeavor separate from the party politics that generally dominate local, state and national elections.

But the referendum, which will appear on every county voter’s ballot Tuesday, has animated partisans.

Lancaster County Republicans have mounted an enthusiastic campaign against the measure, which, if approved, would create a .55-mill property tax to fund operations at libraries across the county.

One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value. For a property assessed at $329,000 — the median single-family property value in Lancaster County following the 2027 reassessment — the proposed tax would cost $180.95."

In San Francisco’s A.I. Boom, a First Date Has Become an Interview; The New York Times, October 31, 2026

 Emmy Martin , The New York Times; In San Francisco’s A.I. Boom, a First Date Has Become an Interview

"San Francisco’s A.I. boom has drawn a wave of young ambitious people who are now reshaping the city’s dating life. Start-up founders and engineers are dating less because they are working more as they try to build A.I. products and establish their fortunes, many said. So when they date, they bring a high-stakes mind-set to it, which means a first coffee can feel like a final-round interview...

Founders “don’t want to waste time, so you only go on a date when you really feel there’s something to explore,” said Mr. Agarwal, who works long hours. Many A.I. start-up workers keep “996” schedules — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — a norm borrowed from China’s tech scene.

Joyce Zhang, 32, a dating coach in San Francisco who charges $5,000 a month, works exclusively with tech founders, she said. A former product manager at the payments company Stripe, she coaches clients using the tech vocabulary they already think in — their “top of funnel” (the raw pool of prospects) and their “conversion rate” of dates that actually happen.

Her clients approach dating as any other problem to be solved with money, Ms. Zhang said. Some have connected their dating-app data to spreadsheets to track their matches; others obsess over gaming the apps’ algorithms.

Clients also run their replies to dates through A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT, she said. Some share their entire dating history with ChatGPT and ask the chatbot to diagnose their patterns. In those cases, Ms. Zhang said, she spends the coaching sessions pushing the techies toward trusting their intuition. Her job, she said, is to help them overcome their “blind spots.”"

Christian group touts 'ethical' tech features as concerns over out-of-control AI tools persist; Fox News, October 31, 2026

 Peter D'Abrosca , Fox News; Christian group touts 'ethical' tech features as concerns over out-of-control AI tools persist

""So, we understood that it's important to provide safety guardrails, but also we did not want this intelligent answer assistant to pretend that it was a person," said Larson. "We don't want it to take the place of a pastor or a local church elder or even a parent."

Larson said companies developing AI need to consider guardrails for their technology.

"Anybody developing AI tools today needs to think through ethical guidelines, and that's more of the self-regulation and guardrails that we've been talking about," he said.

"I think there's a real concern today because you have great power that's been entrusted to these different companies and they're not really disclosing their worldview," he continued. "How do they know right from wrong?"

For Ligonier, the absolute truth upon which its AI model is built is the Christian faith.

"How are you determining what is right and wrong? As Christians, we believe we have a true answer — a source that we can turn to.""

If British Library reading rooms become ‘co-working spaces’, what, exactly, is a national library for?; The Guardian, October 29, 2026

Andy Beckett , The Guardian; If British Library reading rooms become ‘co-working spaces’, what, exactly, is a national library for?

"In a crowded country that is short of public money, any expansive public building that seems underused in any way is vulnerable. Professional critics of state spending can claim taxpayers’ money is being wasted. Managers of the building who are under financial pressure can argue it needs to be used more intensely, perhaps that some spaces should be commercialised and offered for rent. The original open, uncommodified, egalitarian quality of the building can be steadily sliced away.

The British Library in London is in danger of that fate. A huge brick battleship moored on the Euston Road since 1997, it claims to be the largest public building constructed in the UK in the 20th century. Its both forbidding and exhilarating exterior conceals 11 unusually elegant and comfortable reading rooms and one of the world’s most extensive print and digital collections, free to use for anyone who is over 18. Last week, these readers received an email with the subject line, “Transforming your Library”. Next summer, the library would “begin work on repurposing our [three] Science and Social Sciences Reading Rooms to become a flexible workspace … available for hire by workers and businesses for co-working, collaboration and meetings”. The reason given for removing more than a quarter of the library’s much-loved research space was “ensuring we generate the necessary revenue to keep our core services free”.

The library has a current annual budget of about £170m – a third the size of my local London hospital’s – 84% of which comes from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The rest is from donations, investments and “charitable and other trading activities”, such as the private parties and ticketed exhibitions already frequently held in the sweeping interior connecting its reading rooms. Even with these multiple income streams, the library’s financial reserves are perilously low – according to its latest accounts – thanks to inflation and austerity, which mean its state funding has in real terms declined to two-thirds of what it was in 2010, and also a devastating cyber-attack in 2023, from which the library has still not fully recovered.

Despite this troubled context, and in some ways because of it, the library’s drastic reading room reduction plan has provoked “outrage” from staff, say the Prospect and Public and Commercial Services (PCS) unions that represent them. Reading room staff understandably fear for their jobs, but also for the building’s fundamental purpose, which was set out by law in 1972 – an indication of how hard the complex was to conceive and build – as “the establishment for the United Kingdom of a national library”. Staff are now “the most furious I’ve ever seen them about anything”, says a union source. A strike over the reading room plan, following one last year over low pay, could begin as soon as December.

Behind this potentially explosive dispute – not least because many well-connected authors, academics and journalists use the library – lurks a big question. In a digital age of decentralised study and dispersed online resources, what is a national library for?"

 CHRIS MARQUETTE, Politico; Top House Democrats demand Trump preserve conversations with Grok

"The top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees want President Donald Trump to preserve his conversations with artificial intelligence chatbots as part of an inquiry into whether Elon Musk’s AI assistant played a role in shaping White House policy — a preview of what’s to come if their party flips the chamber next week."

Patrick Stewart was thinking about AI ethics years before ChatGPT launched; Fast Company, October 30, 2026

 MICHAEL GROTHAUS, Fast Company; Patrick Stewart was thinking about AI ethics years before ChatGPT launched

The accomplished thespian was well-versed in the humanities, but he was also keen to consider the moral questions surrounding technology.

"Unlike other sci-fi of the time, particularly the more popular Star Wars, Star Trek: The Next Generation often explored the philosophical and social aspects of technology, with many of its most memorable episodes addressing the moral implications of scientific progress.

One particular episode, “The Measure of a Man,” from 1989, saw Stewart’s Picard make an impassioned plea and legal argument that his friend, the artificially intelligent android Data, played by Brent Spiner, should not be considered Starfleet property but a sentient being with the associated rights all individual sentient beings have.

This, of course, was decades before artificial intelligence went from being science fiction to science fact in our 21st-century world. But it’s not the only time Stewart contemplated the technology and its moral implications.

In 2014, Stewart gave an interview to Smithsonian magazine in which he, perhaps the most popular science fiction captain ever, was asked his opinion on the then-burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, and whether any future AI beings should have the same rights as humans.

At the time, Stewart was no longer just an accomplished actor. He was also in his tenth year as the Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield in the United Kingdom, a position he held from 2004 to 2015 (before continuing his relationship with the university as its Emeritus Chancellor).

During the time of Stewart’s chancellorship, the University of Huddersfield was known for its engineering and applied research programs and today runs an Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence.

In his answer, Stewart reflected on “The Measure of a Man” episode:

“I remember at one script conference, Whoopi Goldberg, during the period when she was with us on the show, saying what we ought to make clear in this­—that we’re actually talking about slavery,” Stewart recalled. “And it was a great point to make. If we create independent life but keep it under our control, what is that? It can be said to be a form of slavery.”"

Wikimedia Foundation Tries to Save Itself From Oblivion by Brokering AI Copyright Deal; Gizmodo, October 30, 2026

 WEBB WRIGHT, Gizmodo; Wikimedia Foundation Tries to Save Itself From Oblivion by Brokering AI Copyright Deal

Call it the Great Copyright Compromise.

"The nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia has a plan to save the open internet, one in which AI chatbots and human artistry can coexist peacefully."

AI data center boom faces backlash at US ballot box; Reuters, October 29, 2026

Courtney Rozen, Reuters ; AI data center boom faces backlash at US ballot box

"Voters in ​10 US states will decide on Election Day whether to curb data center development in their communities, as the ‌rapid buildout needed to power the AI boom stirs local opposition.

Resistance is especially visible in Ohio, one of the country's fastest-growing data center markets. No state has more data center-related ballot measures, with voters in more than a dozen jurisdictions set to consider 21 proposals alongside Tuesday's midterm elections, according to the ​nonpartisan research group Ballotpedia."

Backlash against AI data centers threatens GOP’s grip on Ohio, Texas; The Hill, October 30, 2026

 IRA BHAKTA , The Hill; Backlash against AI data centers threatens GOP’s grip on Ohio, Texas

"The importance of AI data centers is growing this election cycle as the fight over the infrastructure’s costs and environmental impacts may be threatening Republicans in battleground states like Texas and Ohio.

Grassroots movements in rural communities, particularly where President Trump won by double-digit margins in each of his presidential bids, are threatening the rural vote the GOP has counted on for decades, experts and voters say...

Data centers are increasingly being built in rural communities, with 67 percent of planned projects slated in rural areas, according to an April Pew Research Center study."

Ohio’s Data-Center Revolt Is Upending the Midterms; Time, October 29, 2026

 Naomi Nix , Time; Ohio’s Data-Center Revolt Is Upending the Midterms

"Community pushback prompted the Grove City council to pass a yearlong moratorium on data-center construction. In November, Grove City residents will vote on a proposal to go even further, making all large developments subject to voter approval. The issue has upended the intimate politics of this conservative community of 45,180. Community Facebook groups are filled with bickering, angry residents have filled council meetings, and activists filed freedom-of-information requests seeking answers about city officials’ communications about the referendum. Grove City’s longtime mayor, Richard “Ike” Stage, and other local leaders have fought against their efforts, saying the ballot initiative to restrict development would hurt economic growth...

In June, the moratorium passed 6-1. Emboldened, the anti-data-center advocates with Protect Grove City decided the one-year moratorium wasn’t enough, and wrote a proposed amendment to the city’s charter, which functions like a governing constitution. It would prohibit the city from approving zoning applications for developments that occupy at least 50 acres, use more than 20 megawatts of power at peak capacity, or consume more than 500,000 gallons of water per day unless a majority of voters have backed the project in a public referendum. To drum up support, they canvassed local farmers’ markets, parks, and sporting events to ask people to sign a petition to put the measure on the ballot in November. Within a few weeks, they secured enough signatures."

House Democrats Criticize Justice Dept. Support of OpenAI in Copyright Suit; The New York Times, October 30, 2026

 Karen Weise , The New York Times; House Democrats Criticize Justice Dept. Support of OpenAI in Copyright Suit

"Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said on Friday that the Justice Department had overstepped its authority and made a flawed legal argument in its support of OpenAI in a landmark copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times and other publishers.

In a filing in federal court in Manhattan, the lawmakers also signaled that if the Democrats retook the House in elections on Tuesday, the chamber was likely to shift away from its largely hands-off approach to artificial intelligence companies.

In early September, the Justice Department argued in a court filingthat using articles from The Times and other written works to train A.I. systems sufficiently transformed them into new material, which copyright law allows. And it made a broader case that developing A.I. was critical to national security and outweighed potential harms.

But the Democrats said that when Congress passed the copyright law in 1976, it did not include an exception for national security or give the Justice Department authority to assert specific or broad national security exceptions."

Ollie, a privacy-focused AI assistant, is shutting down; TechCrunch, October 30, 2026

 Lucas Ropek , TechCrunch; Ollie, a privacy-focused AI assistant, is shutting down

"Ollie, which discussed its $7.5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures with TechCrunch in September, offered a subscription-based model. The assistant was focused on helping families stay connected and organized. The app connected to a user’s email and calendar, while also providing integrated functions to help with appointment bookings, meal planning, and bill payments. The company had also planned to eventually move into household budgeting.

Crucially, Ollie was one of the first mainstream apps that managed to achieve SOC 2, a privacy compliance standard that companies can attain via an independent audit. Unfortunately, user privacy has never been a hugely profitable aspect of the tech industry. If anything, many new digital assistants present unique privacy challenges for their users — as companies like Instinct have shown. 

Ultimately, the pressures of the burgeoning AI industry took a toll on the company, Lennon said."

Dartmouth Provost Resigns Over AI Use; Inside Higher Ed, October 28, 2026

 Kenneth C. Zirkel and Eudoro Lopez/Wikimedia Commons , Inside Higher Ed; Dartmouth Provost Resigns Over AI Use

A review committee used Santiago Schnell’s available chat logs to help determine that he overused artificial intelligence to help write published articles and wasn’t forthcoming about it.

"Dartmouth College Provost Santiago Schnell resigned Wednesday after a faculty-led review committee concluded that he “used AI to meaningfully alter his writing” and “fell short” of the university’s academic integrity standards. "

She Trusted ChatGPT With Her Medication Decisions. It Cost Her Everything.; The New York Times, October 27, 2026

 Teddy Rosenbluth, The New York Times; She Trusted ChatGPT With Her Medication Decisions. It Cost Her Everything.

The chatbot helped a woman taper off a lifesaving drug and hide the plan from her doctors.

"Bowen’s parents landed in Seattle in late February to settle their child’s affairs. They viewed her body at the funeral home, before cremation. They picked up the urn. Now, sitting in her apartment, surrounded by Bowen’s belongings, they were resolved to understand how this could have happened.

The details of Bowen’s death didn’t add up. The official cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, which often succeeds a severe seizure. But she had lived with epilepsy for more than a decade and seemed to be on a medication that was working. Even cutting her dose by a quarter, which she had admitted to on the phone call a few days before her death, shouldn’t have been enough to cause such a catastrophic seizure.

Then, Qun opened the ChatGPT app on Bowen’s cellphone. Suddenly the details of her death were overwhelming. As he scrolled, he saw the chatbot offer plans that would take her from 400 milligrams down to 0 milligrams in a matter of weeks. The messages continued, down to the day she died — an hour-by-hour accounting of her increasing sickness and desperation."

Springdale data center hearing draws a crowd, a chorus and regional opposition; Pittsburgh's Public Source, October 29, 2026

 Jamie Wiggan and  Lucas Dufalla, Pittsburgh's Public Source; Springdale data center hearing draws a crowd, a chorus and regional opposition

Allegheny County’s in-person meeting amid its review of a data center plan filled Springdale Borough’s gymnasium. Concern over diesel generators drowned out enthusiasm for construction work.

"Speakers took turns denouncing the data center plans in prepared speeches, then a spirit of improv took over. One attendee who said she had driven to the Allegheny Valley town from Pittsburgh performed a song she’d written for the occasion on a three-quarter-sized acoustic guitar. Then the crowd broke into a chorus of “we don’t need your damn pollution” to the tune of Pink Floyd. 

The carnival-like protest came ahead of a county-led hearing on Dynamo DC’s plans to transform a former coal-fired power plant site into a mega data center campus. 

With borough approval already secured in December, opponents from Springdale and beyond  see Allegheny County’s land development review as their last chance to halt the project." 

Episode 54 Bonus (Oct 2026): From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds; Library Journal, October 27, 2026

Dave Lankes, Library Journal ; Episode 54 Bonus (Oct 2026): From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds

"This special bonus episode is from a keynote address delivered at the opening of the new ESSECI Public Library in Cuneo, Italy, at the end of September 2026. “From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds” explores what libraries can and must become in an age of generative AI, declining trust, and profound changes in how people create knowledge. Dave argues that libraries offer something machines cannot: accountable human relationships grounded in community. He calls on libraries to move beyond repositories of information and become platforms for conversation, cultural heritage, creativity, and collective action."

All the latest updates on AI data centers; The Verge, October 28, 2026

 Verge Staff and Justine Calma , The Verge; All the latest updates on AI data centers

"Massive new data centers are the physical foundation for tech companies’ hopes and dreams for AI. But the rush to expand warehouses full of energy-hungry servers has also kicked up fights across the world over their impact on power grids, utility bills, nearby communities, and the environment.

From audacious plans to launch data centers into space to the latest legal battles over pollution, The Verge has the biggest news and reporting surrounding data centers."

To make AI morally good, tech companies are turning to religion. But some say it isn’t that simple; AP, October 25, 2026

 KRYSTA FAURIA, AP; To make AI morally good, tech companies are turning to religion. But some say it isn’t that simple

"Religion is more than a set of rules to follow

For decades, scholars have pushed back against a widespread view of religion as a set of rules or principles that can be divorced from the “messy, practical, ad hoc” ways adherents live, argues Webb Keane, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan.

The idea that religion can be separated from things like culture and politics remains entrenched, even though it suffuses both in many ways. Some worry that AI companies, as they ask various faith leaders to answer ethical questions, will further perpetuate a theory of religion that fails to recognize the importance of doctrine, ritual and relationships.

Here’s the issue, Keane argues: If you assume that religion overall can offer a distinct set of extractable moral principles, using it to train AI risks prioritizing certain traditions and distorting others — particularly when it comes to faiths that do not see themselves primarily as a system of ethics.

“There’s a very conventional way of thinking of religion as a rule book,” he said. “It is certainly very tied to scriptural religion, and the scriptural religions at the end of the day really turn out to be the Abrahamic religions.”"

BC Professor Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Use Of Copyrighted Textbooks; The Heights, October 25, 2026

 Nikita Osadchiy , The Heights; BC Professor Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Use Of Copyrighted Textbooks

"A Boston College finance professor is among six textbook authors suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging the companies downloaded their books from pirate websites and used them without authorization to train their large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT.

“OpenAI reproduced Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s Works without authorization by downloading them from shadow libraries, copying them into datasets and computer memory, converting them into training-ready formats, and copying them into the materials used to train their LLMs and ChatGPT,” the textbook authors argued in their complaint. 

The suit seeks to represent every textbook author whose copyrighted work OpenAI or Microsoft allegedly copied. 

Alan Marcus, the Mario J. Gabelli endowed professor of finance at the Carroll School of Management, filed the proposed class-action lawsuit on Aug. 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alongside five current and former professors from across the country. 

The plaintiffs name Microsoft in the lawsuit for its role in building the infrastructure on which OpenAI trained its models and profiting by building those models into products like Bing Chat and Copilot, the complaint alleges."

Kent Branch Library closes due to patron allegedly throwing box infested with cockroaches; WTOL, October 27, 2026

 WTOL Staff, WTOL ; Kent Branch Library closes due to patron allegedly throwing box infested with cockroaches

"Toledo-Lucas County Public Library's Kent Branch is closed for the entire day Tuesday after a patron reportedly threw items covered in cockroaches at a staff member. 

A TLCPL spokesperson confirmed that a library customer threw a box with cockroaches in/on it at a staff member, leading library staff to shut down the building and restrict public access. The spokesperson said that 911 was called, but it is unclear if law enforcement was on scene."

Kent Branch Library closes due to patron allegedly throwing box infested with cockroaches; WTOL, October 27, 2026

WTOL Staff, WTOL ; Kent Branch Library closes due to patron allegedly throwing box infested with cockroaches

"Toledo-Lucas County Public Library's Kent Branch is closed for the entire day Tuesday after a patron reportedly threw items covered in cockroaches at a staff member. 

A TLCPL spokesperson confirmed that a library customer threw a box with cockroaches in/on it at a staff member, leading library staff to shut down the building and restrict public access. The spokesperson said that 911 was called, but it is unclear if law enforcement was on scene."

Anthropic IPO filing warns some risks may be uninsurable. AI coverage will be issue for every company; CNBC, October 28, 2026

Kevin Williams, CNBC; Anthropic IPO filing warns some risks may be uninsurable. AI coverage will be issue for every company

"Anthropic’s IPO filing includes many words covering many risks, from IP theft to security incidents, data loss, climate change, rogue agents and all the way to an existential crisis for humanity. Embedded in all of the risk language are basic questions about insurance: What’s going to be covered? Is it even possible to provide a policy for all of the ways that AI could go wrong? Anthropic, even with more cash than almost any company in America, couldn’t answer that question with confidence."