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Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are moving to give the federal government the power to shut down artificial intelligence systems deemed a serious public threat. The proposed legislation, prompted by concerns over OpenAI's recent conduct, would establish what critics and supporters alike are calling an AI kill switch — raising hard questions about who decides when a technology has gone too far.
That tension between AI ambition and financial reality runs even deeper in the data center world. Analysts are now drawing uncomfortable comparisons between the ballooning debt behind AI infrastructure and the subprime mortgage crisis of two thousand eight. Bloomberg puts outstanding data center debt above five hundred billion dollars, with parent companies allegedly hiding much of their true exposure inside shell entities and special purpose vehicles.
And on a different front, a dog photographer has lost a copyright case after an AI-generated comic version of her image was ruled not to infringe on her original work. The ruling, handed down in two thousand twenty six, adds another unsettling chapter to the ongoing legal debate over what artists actually own in the age of generative AI — and who bears the cost when the answer is not much.
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