A new research project called the AI Observatory aims to fill in the gap. Its analysis shows many more sensitive behaviors than are captured in reports from major AI companies, which focus more on work than on personal use.
The researchers also found significant differences between models. People were more likely to turn to Anthropic for coding, Gemini for social and roleplay uses, and ChatGPT for homework assistance. Here’s what the AI Observatory reveals about how people use AI.
—Eileen Guo
What Flock’s defenders are missing
Flock Safety, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, recently announced changes to its platform. The updates are meant to prevent officers from using it for illegal or illegitimate purposes, including stalking.
Amid all this, there have recently been several arguments defending Flock: If these cameras help solve crime, is it as big a deal? On a good day they might help catch a kidnapper, and if not, they’re simply snapping pictures of my car that nobody will bother to look at.
But this all skips over a more important question: What kind of crime-fighting system has Flock chosen to build? Its network works the way it does because of decisions about what information to collect, who can search it, how long to keep it, and how widely to share it. Those decisions set the terms of the bargain between security and civil liberties.
Find out what a narrower Flock system could look like.
—James O’Donnell
