This Week in AI: The Right and Wrong Way to Use AI

The word "hallucinate" has taken on a new meaning in the age of artificial intelligence. The technology's propensity to make things up and sincerely pass them off as true is a daily part of life nowadays. It's also a telltale giveaway that someone's trying to pass AI work off as their own.

Despite the litany of embarrassing examples of people using AI the wrong way, it keeps happening. Last week, the U.S. Health and Human Services "Make America Healthy Again" report cited studies that don't exist. That was just after the Chicago Sun-Times published a suggested summer reading list, filled with books that were never published.

"Stupidly, and 100% on me, I just kind of republished this list that [an AI program] spit out," Marco Buscaglia, a longtime journalist, admitted to WBEZ. "Usually, it’s something I wouldn’t do."

Sadly, those are far from isolated incidents. Students are doing it, and so are teachers, too. Vulture reports that it's happening in Hollywood, even despite union contracts forbidding it. "We can say, 'Do it in anime, make it PG-13.' Three hours later, I’ll have the movie," the publication quoted a movie studio leader saying.

Axios reports that one analysis tracked more than 30 instances in the last month alone, where lawyers wrongly cited non-existent cases, likely dreamed up by an AI. In one instance, a lawyer cited a quote the presiding judge had never said. (The motion was denied.)

These issues go way beyond the debate about whether AI will steal people's jobs. It's a question of integrity, and how hard it's becoming for all of us to separate reality from fiction.

But while we grapple with the morality of people passing off AI work as their own...

Google dismisses AI layoff fears

It's easy to argue that the age of AI layoffs are already here. Entry-level jobs are disappearing so quickly that the unemployment rate for recent college grads jumped to 5.8% in March, up from 3.9% in April three years ago, USA Today reports.

The Philadelphia Enquirer called it "The Summer of Hallucination," while Fortune warned that "AI is ‘breaking’ entry-level jobs that Gen Z workers need to launch careers."

In its assessment, the professional social network LinkedIn has likened the phenomenon to the decline of U.S. manufacturing in the 1980s. "Now it is our office workers who are staring down the same kind of technological and economic disruption," LinkedIn Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman said in an opinion piece published in The New York Times. "Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder."

Despite the data and increasing warnings, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent Alphabet, told Bloomberg he expects his company's army of engineers to grow.

Of course so-called "AI doomerism" isn't hard to find. Axios reported that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said he believes AI could erode half of entry level jobs within five years. "I think it’s important to voice those concerns and debate them," he reportedly said.

AI does appear to creating more jobs in one industry though...

Reddit sues Anthropic

In a moment that seems ripe for an r/AITA post, Reddit has sued AI giant Anthropic, saying its systems have accessed its "front page of the internet" social network more than 100,000 times even after promising it had stopped.

In its filing, reported by The Wall Street Journal, Reddit said Anthropic had used its data to help train its popular Claude AI, a competitor to ChatGPT and others.

"Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent,” the publication quoted from the complaint.

“We believe in an open internet. That does not mean open for exploitation,” Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, added in an interview with the WSJ.

Of course, Reddit's suit is just the latest in a long and twisting list of lawsuits over AI, including the New York Times suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Getty Images suing image-generator Stability AI, and more.

Meta pushing AI ads

It's probably no surprise to anyone, but Meta is planning to "fully automate ad creation" using AI, according to a WSJ report which detailed how the company wants to offer tools to make and target ads.

"Using the ad tools Meta is developing, a brand could present an image of the product it wants to promote along with a budgetary goal, and AI would create the entire ad, including imagery, video and text," the WSJ report said. "The system would then decide which Instagram and Facebook users to target and offer suggestions on budget, people familiar with the matter said."