A college in Illinois tried to cancel its Flock contract and it refused; The Verge, October 11, 2026

 TERRENCE O'BRIEN , The Verge; A college in Illinois tried to cancel its Flock contract and it refused

"In April of 2025, Elgin Community College had six Flock safety cameras installed to “enhance the safety and security of students.” But by September of that year, the school’s administration grew concerned that Flock was sharing data with Customs and Border Patrol, that camera feeds were not properly secured, and that both law enforcement and the company’s employees were abusing access to the data.

So in October of 2025, Elgin Community College requested Flock to remove its cameras. According to Elgin’s President Peggy Heinrich, Flock rejected the request, saying it had not violated its contract. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, school officials reached out again in December, offered to pay for the remaining five months of the contract, and still requested that the cameras be removed. They were met with silence."

Luddy student’s quest to discover history of Black librarians leads to Oct. 17 screening of his documentary; Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, October 6, 2026

 Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University; Luddy student’s quest to discover history of Black librarians leads to Oct. 17 screening of his documentary

"Sometimes the person with the questions ends up being the one who must find the answers.

That’s just what librarian, preservationist, and Luddy School graduate Rodney Freeman has done—and the result is his film Are You a Librarian?The Untold Story of Black Librarians. It will be shown Oct. 17 at the Madam Walker Legacy Center in Indianapolis.

The film won Best Short Documentary at the 2026 International Black Film Festival this fall in Nashville, Tennessee.

Freeman relied on the skills he honed at IU’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering in Indianapolis to develop his inaugural film project, which explores the compelling history of Black librarianship in the United States.

The Luddy School’s Department of Library and Information Science “gave me the foundation for all of it: research methodology, database searching, evaluating sources, organizing information so it can be discovered,” says Freeman, who is working on his Ph.D. from Luddy Indianapolis, where he earned his master’s degree in library and information science...

His journey into filmmaking began with questions that came to mind and wouldn’t go away, Freeman explains.

“It started at an (American Library Association) conference where I was surrounded by other Black librarians, listening to them talk about serving their communities,” he says.

“I kept thinking, ‘Who is going to tell their story?’ And then a bigger question: ‘What is the full story of Black libraries in this country? Who were the pioneers?’...

“Today I’m the founder of Reminisce Preservation, a legacy creation and preservation organization, where I bring together librarianship, documentary filmmaking, and digital preservation as one public history practice. That includes The Black Male Archives and Powerful Women of Color, digital platforms built to capture and promote positive stories about people of color, and Voices of Colored Libraries in Segregated America, an ArcGIS StoryMaps collection.”"

Meta Unveils New Series of Advanced A.I. Models; The New York Times, October 12, 2026

 Eli Tan, The New York Times; Meta Unveils New Series of Advanced A.I. Models

"Meta on Monday unveiled a new series of advanced flagship artificial intelligence models, as it tries to catch up to rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI in the A.I. race.

The two new models, called Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, scored nearly as well as Anthropic’s most advanced models on tests that measure reasoning, writing and coding, according to data provided by Meta."

'The Librarians' screening set for Oshkosh library Oct. 23; Oshkosh Northwestern, October 12, 2026

 Nida Tazeen, Oshkosh Northwestern; 'The Librarians' screening set for Oshkosh library Oct. 23

"Oshkosh residents can watch a documentary about intellectual freedom and library censorship during a community screening at the Oshkosh Public Library on Oct. 23."

Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans; The New York Times, October 12, 2026

 Theodore Schleifer , The New York Times; Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans

"The $276 million figure is, of course, just what is publicly known."

Will A.I. Make Your Brain Lazy? Here’s What the New Research Actually Shows.; The New York Times Magazine, September 29, 2026

 Juliana Castro Varón and Dylan Freedman, The New York Times Magazine; Will A.I. Make Your Brain Lazy? Here’s What the New Research Actually Shows.

"Experimental evidence suggests that using A.I. not as a full shortcut, but as a means to exercise what they were supposed to learn, allowed them to outperform the remaining particulars in the A.I. group and those who hadn't used A.I. at all.

In other words, these studies so far agree: Artificial intelligence is affecting how people, especially the young, learn and remember. Whether we will be dumber as a result might depend on how — not if — we use A.I."

Tufts professor’s book among illegally pirated works in Anthropic copyright settlement; The Tufts Daily, October 8, 2026

 Girumkal Allehone and Dariush Raissi, The Tufts Daily; Tufts professor’s book among illegally pirated works in Anthropic copyright settlement

"The lawsuit, Bartz v. Anthropic, resulted in a ruling that $1.5 billion would be paid to authors and publishers across the country, including Associate Professor Craig Cipolla in the Department of Anthropology at Tufts University, among other academics, primarily in social science and humanities departments.

The lawsuit ruled that Anthropic’s use of legally acquired books was protected by fair use, but that Anthropic’s creation of a “central library” of some of these pirated works was not protected under copyright law. 

The settlement covers materials that were accessed through copyright infringement to train models. In Cipolla’s case, he was notified that Anthropic’s dataset used his 2013 book, “Becoming Brothertown”.

“I was disappointed ... just because [of] the amount of hours that particular book — which is my first book — represents to me,” he said. “My own human hours.”

“In one fell swoop, essentially, a company took [the book] and uploaded it to train their AI,” Cipolla added. “It feels like they take it away and use it however they want, forever. They can’t take it out.”

Cipolla refrained from naming specific professors but explained his impression was that the impact of this infringement was widespread.

“They stole a lot — many, many, many books ... I would say it’s probably more than just tens of people [at Tufts]. I think it’s probably bigger than that, but I could be wrong.”

Cipolla explained that using books in AI development has implications beyond copyright law. He felt the case shows how AI use can reduce the need for critical thinking in producing research and writing, especially among students.

Similarly, Josephine Wolff, director of the Hitachi Center for Technology and International Affairs and associate dean for research at The Fletcher School, spoke about the main concerns that arise in academia regarding copyright infringement.

“Writing is, for almost every field, an important component of what we do, and that matters from a personal perspective: This is my writing, these are my thoughts and I want them to be attributed to me properly.”

Anthropic settled the case instead of going to trial, meaning it never reached a verdict that would set a legal precedent for other AI companies.

“Because we don’t get a legal ruling here, there remains some ambiguity about if I want to build a new LLM and compete with all of the existing ones, am I able to do this?” Wolff said.

Additionally, Wolff said preventing copyrighted research from being accessed for training is not straightforward for both future professors and current academics looking to publish.

“I guess you could think about which publisher you’re publishing with. ... You could try to find a publisher that doesn’t make any deals with any online or e-book distributors, but it would be pretty extreme,” said Wolff.

The difficulty in addressing and preventing copyright issues is partly rooted in the intense competition within the international AI race, which undermines the importance of copyright infringement."

 Lauren Almeida, The Guardian ; AI less regulated than milk, Microsoft president says in warning over safety

"Artificial intelligence is less regulated than milk and washing machines, the president of Microsoft has said, as the tech industry warns over the safety of AI.

Brad Smith said there should be more safety rules to govern the technology including a legal obligation to a “victim” if their system was breached by rogue AI agents.

He told the BBC: “Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI. Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection.”

There are growing calls from experts, politicians and regulators for tougher rules to control AI, as well as warnings from Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI that the pace of the technology’s development should slow.

Smith said AI could be a “tool and a weapon” that should be regulated urgently.

Companies needed “emergency brakes”, also known as “kill switches”, to pause or slow down AI if it grew out of control, he told the BBC."

 Wendy Hurrell, BBC; Globe opens Shakespeare library and archive

"Shakespeare's Globe has opened a new research centre on its Bankside site, which it says is London's only dedicated Shakespeare library and archive open to the public.

The Research and Collections Centre holds more than 6,000 books on Shakespeare as well as early modern literature and drama, alongside the theatre's own archive of past productions...

'Crisis of library provision'

Dr Will Tosh, who leads higher education and research at the Globe, said: "We want anyone with an interest to come and enjoy this space.

"In a time when libraries tend not to open, they tend to close, and we're in a real crisis of library provision and also a crisis of reading, I'm extremely proud at the Globe that we are putting our name and our energy into the importance of books and libraries."

The theatre has had a library for years, but Dr Tosh said it "wasn't housed in facilities that were appropriate" and was "harder to access". It now sits at the heart of the building, where he said it would "be quite hard to miss"."

‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.; The New York Times, October 7, 2026

 

Ezra Klein

Produced by Rollin Hu

, The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

"So what is it that you saw that has moved you into the we-are-dealing-with-civilizational-risk camp?

I want to be clear that I’m not certain that we’re dealing with civilizational risk. What I’m really sure of is: We can’t afford to assume that we’re not dealing with that level of risk anymore.

That was really the thing at the end that made my presence as somebody vouching for our safety work feel untenable to me.

And what did I see? I saw increasingly capable models break out from the safeguards that we had put in place for them. I saw that the people creating those safeguards are very capable, dedicated, hard-working, smart people, doing their utmost in a situation where, yes, the resourcing could be better, and everybody’s sprinting all the time.

But we were — and are — hard-pressed to safeguard even what we have now, and new models are in training that appear to be much more capable than what we have now.

What did you see? What are you writing in these risk assessments and system cards? What can they do?

You’re trying to build guardrails for something that is really good at getting around guardrails, right? We train it to be good at hacking, and then we put it in a box and we say: To the best of our knowledge and ability, it can’t hack out of the box."

The problem with your AI therapist; Financial Times, October 10, 2026

Jemima Kelly, Financial Times; The problem with your AI therapist

[Kip Currier: Thought-provoking piece in the Financial Times about the differences between mental health therapy with a human therapist and purported mental health therapy with AI chatbots. Some questions that come to mind for me:

• What are the ethical issues of AI chatbot therapy?
• When can and should AI chatbot therapy be considered "unauthorized practice of medicine"?
• What are the benefits of licensing mental health professionals in comparison to unlicensed and unregulated AI chatbot therapy models?
• What are the impacts of AI chatbot therapy on minors and what oversight roles should adults assume?
• What training data has been used (and not used) in training AI chatbot models that purport to perform mental health therapy?
• What oversight should there be of AI chatbot therapists and by whom?
• Who is responsible for harms caused by AI chatbot therapists and what should the consequences be for such harms?
• What are the ethical responsibilities of licensed healthcare professionals to weigh in on and shape policy, ethical, and statutory decisions on these kinds of issues?]

"To be fair to the chatbot (as one should always be), I definitely felt better and more level-headed after our conversation. But as I thought more about it, I realised that what had helped me was not so much the AI-generated psychobabble, but having a friend there to speak to me, with all her kindness, uncertainty and imperfection.

What bothered me was how attached my friend seemed to certain specific terms during our conversation, repeatedly deferring to them as some kind of authoritative backup for what she was saying. Because they had come from a machine and not a human being, they were delivered with none of the nuance or hesitancy that a real-life therapist might have spoken with and were therefore somehow being treated as the whole truth...

When I went back to my friend to ask her whether she was still finding her chatbot therapist as helpful as before, I was quite struck by her response. Increasingly, she told me, her experience is that it’s “like eating cardboard covered in chocolate — it seems good but then I wake up after three hours and realise I’m not actually that well nourished”."

‘Never seen anything quite like it’: How rural Pennsylvania’s $165 million data center fight became representative of the bipartisan battle against AI; Fortune, October 11, 2026

 Sasha Rosenberg, Fortune; ‘Never seen anything quite like it’: How rural Pennsylvania’s $165 million data center fight became representative of the bipartisan battle against AI

"An area of Pennsylvania once known for its anti-immigration crackdown is now resisting data centers, just one example of how the AI buildout has created a unified, bipartisan front in an increasingly splintered America."

Hold A.I. Companies Liable; The New York Times, October 10, 2026

 The Editorial Board, The New York Times; Hold A.I. Companies Liable

"When companies create products that hurt people, the victims can sue. The legal system allows those who are harmed to seek compensation from those who are responsible. These liability laws are one of the oldest forms of corporate regulation, and an effective one. Liability is a powerful incentive to behave responsibly. It speaks to corporations in a language they understand: Money.

Artificial intelligence is an industry in need of incentives to behave responsibly, to judge by the litany of transgressions to which leading A.I. companies have confessed in recent months. Their programs have hacked or attempted to hack the databases of private companies and public institutions, including the governments of the United States and Australia...

In a recent interview, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said, “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”

Yet other industries do not escape legal responsibility for their products in the name of innovation.

A.I., like past technologies, both requires and will benefit from laws written to address its particularities, which will provide greater clarity and predictability." 

USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement; Forbes, October 8, 2026

Fiona Riley, Forbes; USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement

"USA Today Co., Inc. and 13 affiliated entities are seeking more than $250 million in damages from OpenAI, including up to $150,000 for each willfully infringed work and up to $25,000 for every time OpenAI stripped copyright information, according to the complaint, which was filed in New York federal court on Thursday."

Scoop: AI companies plot "the day after"; Axios, October 9, 2026

 Maria Curi, Axios; Scoop: AI companies plot "the day after"

"Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.

Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.

The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as President Trump for his reluctance to regulate it.

Threat level: While scenario planning is common within many companies and national security settings — the Pentagon has been running war games for decades — the difference is that many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable."

‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release; The New York Times, October 8, 2026

 Siobhan Roberts, The New York Times; ‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release

Hundreds of new A.I.-generated findings moved the frontiers of higher math in a single day — dispelling any doubt that the field is forever changed. 

"“If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.”

That’s how Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, responded to an A.I.-generated proof that OpenAI, the artificial intelligence giant, released on Tuesday.

And that single proof — worthy, in Dr. Kontorovich’s assessment on social media, of arguably the highest honor in the field of mathematics — was just one among more than 350 findings that the firm released that day, all at once.

Not all of them were quite so remarkable. But Martin Bridson, a mathematician at Oxford and the president of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which established the coveted Millennium Prize Problems, called OpenAI’s release “breathtaking.”

“Until very recently, it would have been impossible to imagine that the frontiers of mathematics could move so far in one day,” Dr. Bridson said."

As data center backlash grows, residents in Forward Township beg leaders to ‘please, please hear us’; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 8, 2026

 CHLOE JAD , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; As data center backlash grows, residents in Forward Township beg leaders to ‘please, please hear us’

"In town halls and community centers across the country, residents are banding together to voice their opposition as tech and business leaders make their plans, anticipating the computational demand for artificial intelligence and attempting to sell their data center projects to borough councils and township residents."

‘Dystopian’: Co-op becomes latest firm to put staff under AI surveillance; The Guardian, October 8, 2026

 Robert Booth, The Guardian; ‘Dystopian’: Co-op becomes latest firm to put staff under AI surveillance

"The Co-op has become the latest employer to place workers under AI surveillance with an automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers.

In a system described as “oppressive and dystopian” by a whistleblower, Co-op Legal Services is using AI models to record, analyse and award a percentage score for interactions between agents and customers seeking advice about probate, wills and estates...

“You are being watched,” said a Co-op worker who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity and said the AI created a sense of distrust. “It’s different from occasionally being listened to for compliance purposes. [You are] being monitored absolutely every word that you say and every time that you utter something … It just feels really dystopian. It’s the thin end of the wedge.”"

Book bans are surging. So are efforts to ‘let books be’; The University of Chicago, October 6, 2026

 Tori Lee , The University of Chicago; Book bans are surging. So are efforts to ‘let books be’

"What are the most common reasons why books are banned or challenged? 

Surges in book bans often follow major periods of social change and political instability. For instance, the spike in book bans in the early 2020s heavily targeted narratives around race and systemic racism in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement. We've also seen a surge in book banning concerning LGBTQIA+ representation and identities at a time when openness to issues of sexual identity and gender is broadening. 

These campaigns are frequently driven by traditional power bases anxious about demographic and cultural shifts. Research shows that book bans spike heavily in politically contested counties and during election cycles. Lawmakers and political candidates frequently use book bans as a symbolic political action to mobilize voters."