'It may not be surprising that creative work is used without permission'

'There's no longer any doubt that Hollywood writing is powering AI'

Alex Reisner at The Atlantic

People can "say with absolute confidence that many AI systems have been trained on TV and film writers' work," says Alex Reisner. It "may seem like a strange source for AI-training data," but "subtitles are valuable because they're a raw form of written dialogue." They "may be especially valuable for training chatbots to 'speak' naturally." Subtitles are "on the internet, and there's no telling how many independent generative-AI programs they've been used for."

Read more

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'Democrats: Don't abandon identity politics, get them right'

Kam Buckner at The Hill

The "issue isn't with identity politics itself; it's with the way we're applying it," says Illinois State Rep. Kam Buckner (D). Democrats' "approach has become overly simplistic, compartmentalizing people into single dimensions rather than embracing the layered and intersecting identities that shape real lives." Democrats "need to embrace identity politics as a framework for understanding people's layered realities," and "only then, can we build the connections that resonate on a personal level."

Read more

'Parents are stressed and overwhelmed. They need help.'

Jay Lee at the San Francisco Chronicle

A "cruel irony is that young families with the youngest children tend to have the least resources when they need them the most," says Jay Lee. When "caregivers can't meet their family's basic needs, their emotional distress increases. And when their emotional distress increases, so does the emotional distress of children." Caring "for children means caring for their parents, too. That's one lesson we all can start putting into practice better."

Read more

'Donald Trump's foreign policy will be chaos first, not America first'

Jeet Heer at The Nation

Donald Trump "shouldn't have been able to sell himself in 2024 as a peace candidate," says Jeet Heer. The "fact that he did so is part based on his amazing chutzpah — but also on the dubious foreign policy record of Joe Biden." Trump's "advisers are a mixed bag of establishment hawks and cranky America First outsiders." A "foreign policy team blowing in whatever direction Trump's passing fancies points to will by definition be unstable."

Read more