In 2004, Microsoft’s future chief sustainability officer, Melanie Nakagawa, co-edited a law journal issue on Indigenous peoples’ right to prior informed consent. This month, as a data center developer routed around exactly that standard in New Mexico, she didn’t answer whether it applies to her own company’s work. Ask Google, Amazon, and Microsoft whether they consult Native nations before…
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Newly unsealed court documents reveal that employees at Microsoft and OpenAI expressed alarm that AI systems they were jointly developing could lead to an “existential threat” to the publishing industry. The court document in question is part of a joint filing from news organizations, including The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and 10 other publications that are suing Microsoft and…
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Microsoft’s Israel subsidiary has announced that its general manager, Alon Haimovich, will be stepping down from his position on May 31, after an investigation into the subsidiary’s collaboration with the Israeli military. Microsoft ordered an inquiry into its Israel subsidiary last year after a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine…
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Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved from a niche lobbying issue into a central pillar of corporate influence in Washington. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the defense industry, where both legacy defense contractors and an influx of AI-first startups are making the technology a core focus of their lobbying efforts. AI barely registered in federal lobbying disclosures for…
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Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations…
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US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at preventing state-level regulation of the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, a gift to tech corporations that bankrolled his inauguration and are currently funding his White House ballroom project. Trump’s order instructs the US Justice Department to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with a single mandate…
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