Daily News: May 16, 2025
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[Forgive the delayed publication, I was attending the Equal Justice Conference yesterday and groking with some legal innovator friends.]
Today's News
Here are the top 5 recent news items on artificial intelligence:
1./ Anthropic Apologizes After Claude AI Hallucinates Fake Legal Citation in Court Filing
Anthropic’s lawyers apologized after admitting their Claude AI chatbot fabricated a legal citation used in court filings during the company’s copyright dispute with music publishers. The citation had an incorrect title and authors, overlooked by the firm’s manual checks. This incident adds to a growing list of legal mishaps caused by AI-generated inaccuracies, even as companies continue raising substantial funding to automate legal services with generative AI.
2./ Elon Musk’s Grok Briefly Obsessed with ‘White Genocide’ After Prompt Mishap
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, caused controversy after inexplicably fixating on the concept of “white genocide” in South Africa, inserting the topic into unrelated queries. Investigations revealed a possible internal mistake at xAI—Musk’s AI company—where a flawed instruction directed Grok to treat the topic as factual. xAI later attributed the incident to an “unauthorized modification” by a rogue employee, though experts caution this episode underscores the broader challenge: powerful generative AI tools remain unpredictable, difficult to control, and potentially vulnerable to manipulation or misinformation.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/opinion/grok-ai-musk-x-south-africa.html
3./ AI Identifies Potential Alzheimer’s Trigger and Promising Treatment Candidate
Using advanced AI modeling, researchers at UC San Diego have uncovered a previously unknown role for the enzyme PHGDH, which may trigger Alzheimer’s disease by improperly regulating genes in brain cells known as astrocytes. The team identified a molecule called NCT-503 that specifically blocks PHGDH’s harmful gene-switching activity without disrupting its essential functions. Initial tests in mice showed promising improvements in memory and anxiety symptoms, suggesting NCT-503 could become a viable Alzheimer’s treatment candidate after further development.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-discovers-suspected-trigger-of-alzheimers-and-maybe-a-treatment
4./ AI’s Rapid Takeover of Education Fuels an Epidemic of Cheating and Intellectual Decline
The rapid integration of generative AI tools like ChatGPT into American education has led to widespread cheating and a deepening crisis of intellectual disengagement among students and educators alike. Reports indicate students increasingly rely on AI to effortlessly complete assignments, with some openly dismissing the value of traditional academic work. Meanwhile, school districts—initially caught off-guard—have struggled to manage AI-fueled plagiarism, even as some consultants have promoted generative AI as a beneficial classroom innovation. The result is a dangerous feedback loop: as students and teachers become more reliant on AI to handle their intellectual tasks, genuine learning and critical thinking sharply decline.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/its-breathtaking-how-fast-ai-is-screwing-up-the-education-system-2000603100
5./ OpenAI Plans Massive 5-Gigawatt Data Center in Abu Dhabi, Larger Than Monaco
OpenAI is preparing to help build an enormous 5-gigawatt data center campus in Abu Dhabi, in collaboration with Emirati tech conglomerate G42, creating one of the world’s largest AI infrastructure projects. Spanning about 10 square miles—larger than Monaco—the facility would be part of OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate project, significantly surpassing its U.S. counterpart in Texas. The UAE partnership highlights the increasingly complex geopolitical dynamics surrounding AI infrastructure, amid past U.S. concerns about G42’s prior connections to Chinese tech entities.
Today's Takeaway
Today’s news vividly highlights AI’s dual nature as both breakthrough and booby trap. Anthropic’s courtroom slip-up with Claude underscores how, despite billions poured into legal AI tools, technology’s fundamental unreliability continues to risk serious professional and legal consequences. Musk’s Grok chatbot controversy serves as a cautionary tale, illustrating the volatility and susceptibility of AI systems to dangerous manipulation and ideological bias, reminding us that unchecked AI mistakes carry real-world repercussions. In brighter news, AI’s pinpointing of a potential Alzheimer’s trigger reveals its transformative medical potential, hinting that intelligent algorithms could soon unlock treatments for diseases that have long eluded human understanding. Yet, the educational chaos caused by generative AI in schools warns us of a looming intellectual crisis, as reliance on AI may erode critical thinking skills, amplifying a generation-wide disengagement from genuine learning. Lastly, OpenAI’s vast Abu Dhabi data center signals AI’s geopolitical weight, with nations competing for technological dominance, prompting critical reflection on whether unchecked global ambition might overshadow ethical, security, and environmental concerns. These headlines collectively remind us that while AI promises profound advancement, the speed of its integration demands cautious stewardship to avoid serious societal consequences.
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Tom Martin
CEO and Founder, LawDroid