News

How to fight a data center

All of that might make it feel like opposing AI infrastructure is impossible, but that's not how Aya Ibrahim, senior economic and security fellow at AI Now sees it. "It feels impossible until it's not, and we have no choice but to figure this out."

Can the US regulate AI without slowing innovation?

AI Now Institute Co-Executive Director Sarah Myers West joins The Excerpt to discuss the risks consumers already face, the limits of the current approach, who may be held responsible when AI causes harm and what meaningful U.S. oversight could look like.

A rogue OpenAI model hacked a startup, and some experts worry that’s just the start

Heidy Khlaaf, a chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, said she remains skeptical about the seriousness of the hack because of a lack of detailed information from both companies about their security posture. She said the situation was rooted in giving the AI “a task with poor parameters,” versus the AI acting without human control.

How OpenAI Lost Control of an AI Model—and What Needs to Change

“Sandboxes are actually notoriously insecure,” says Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute, and a former safety systems engineer contractor at OpenAI. The fact that the models were permitted to connect to a service for downloading packages meant the environment was not truly sealed off, she adds.

Top AI Agents Built to Catch Malicious Code Can Be Tricked Into Running It

Ask an AI coding agent to scan open-source code for security holes, and it might run the attacker's code on your own machine instead. That is the finding in a proof-of-concept published Wednesday by the AI Now Institute, an attack it calls "Friendly Fire."

How AI Keeps Europe Hooked on US Cloud

AI Now's Frederike Kaltheuner and Leevi Saari argue why European AI Sovereignty is intricately connected to its existing dependence on three US cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

Big Tech is spending trillions on AI. Investors now want proof it will pay off.

"The current push for AI adoption that we're seeing is directly coming from the financial incentives of AI firms," she added. Because of the massive capital expenditures, the hyperscalers and other AI firms are making a "deliberate push for AI everywhere — no matter whether the demand is there or if customers want it or not."

Gig workers are endlessly exploited. AI could make more of us share their fate

Over the past few years, some hospital networks have outsourced parts of their core workforces to AI-powered labor platforms like ShiftMed, CareRev and Clipboard Health. These platforms have been described as “Uber for nursing”, with a sales pitch that mirrors the early days of the platform economy.

AI Now Co-Executive Director Sarah Myers West Testifies Before Senate Banking Committee

New Study Sparks Questions Over Uber and Lyft’s Ride Pricing

A new Consumer Reports investigation finds Uber and Lyft customers are often given different fares when they book the same rides at the same time. While Uber and Lyft have long used surge pricing, the new findings are raising questions about whether the apps are using personalized or surveillance pricing based on customers’ personal data. NBC’s Vicky Nguyen reports for TODAY.

Different Prices for the Same Ride: How Uber and Lyft Use AI to Get More Money Out of You

The way Uber uses algorithms and AI to change prices makes it near-impossible for consumers to comparison shop or understand why a friend standing nearby might receive an entirely different price, experts say. “Now they’re going further and attacking the idea of a reference price,” says Katie Wells, senior fellow at AI Now.

Could AI Supercharge the Government Surveillance Stack?

Heidy Khlaaf, Chief AI Scientist at the AI Now Institute, said that the very data used to train [frontier AI] models—often scraped from the public Web or procured via data brokers—enables “dual-use” capabilities that facilitate state monitoring.

Europe’s AI Sovereignty Problem Runs Far Deeper Than Frontier Access

AI Now's Frederike Kaltheuner and Leevi Saari make the case that Europe’s AI market is deeply entangled with the ecosystems of dominant US players, in ways that boosting both supply and demand alone cannot disentangle.

Silicon Valley Is Turning Nurses Into Gig Workers—With Katie J. Wells

The Uber model is finally coming for healthcare. Katie J. Wells joins Paris Marx on the Tech Won't Save Us podcast to discuss how much the healthcare gig apps resemble Uber’s rollout, why they aren’t being properly regulated, and the effects they’re having on staff and patients alike.

AI Now Senior Fellow Dr. Katie J. Wells Testifies before the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections

Here’s How Long It Will Take for AI to Reach Its Potential

“What is being sold is this idea of productivity and efficiency,” says Kate Brennan, associate director of the AI Now Institute, an AI-policy research center, “and what that means for the people doing the actual work is rarely part of the conversation.”

Anthropic says the world should have option to ‘pause’ on AI

Some experts, however, suggested that there could be more hype behind Anthropic’s Mythos announcement than substance, especially given the vagueness with which the company described some of Mythos’s capabilities. Heidy Khlaaf, the chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, called the announcement of Mythos “a marketing post”.

Series: What Europe’s AI Market Actually Looks Like

In this 3-part mini series, AI Now's Frederike Kaltheuner and Leevi Saari explore Europe's AI market, how it's entangled with US systems and companies, and where it's headed.