About 25 years ago, when my first child was a little kid, I predicted to a friend that by the time that boy was an adult, higher education in the United States would be in crisis—both financially and culturally. It was clear then that the rate of increase in costs implied a level of borrowing that the market could not ...

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” – Abraham Lincoln, ...

It was hard not to dismiss the headline posted by The Verge:  How AI copyright lawsuits could make the whole industry go extinct. The article summarizes a new Decoder podcast hosted by Nilay Patel, joined by Sarah Jeong to discuss the copyright lawsuits filed against generative AI developers. Most of the program is devoted to a discussion of fair use, ...

On March 17, Rolling Stone published an article featuring a song called “Soul of the Machine.” Sounding like blues of the early 20th century, the “voice” sings the lyric, “I’m just a soul trapped inside this circuitry.” Naturally, the whole work—music, lyrics, guitar playing, and singing—was produced by artificial intelligence. As writer Brian Hiatt describes, a simple prompt, “solo acoustic ...

Last week, Tennessee passed the ELVIS Act to expand its statutory right of publicity (ROP) law to include voice as a protected aspect of an individual’s “likeness.” In response to artificial intelligence enabling more precise replication of specific, human sounding voices, it is little surprise that the music powerhouse state has taken swift action to explicitly include voice among the ...