A class action filed this week accused Amazon's Twitch gaming service of using video streams to fuel its AI products without licensing or obtaining permission, reports Engadget: Earlier this month, Twitch Support posted on X that it added an option to opt out of "having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon." Shortly after, Twitch hosted an episode of its recurring Patch Notes stream where Mike Minton, the company's chief product officer, said "if it was opt-in, nobody would opt in," when asked by a viewer why the Twitch settings for AI training aren't opt-in but instead enabled by default, requiring users to opt out if they don't want to participate. Now, the latest class action lawsuit claims that Twitch and Amazon committed a breach of contract when the companies decided to use its streamers as "free training stock for separate commercial AI products."

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This week OpenAI launched a version of ChatGPT exclusively designed for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17, reports CTV, "saying this version came with stronger protections around content related to mentions of suicide, self-harm and romantic or sexual chats." [Tech analyst Carmi Levy says] "What it's doing is it's using cues, it's sort of watching how you're using the tool, and it's trying to guess your age." Levy said if ChatGPT thinks a person has lied about their age when they first signed up, it will automatically put them into the Teens mode for protection. "It includes those sort of two things: prevent you from having experiences that are age inappropriate, and also add features that are aligned with academics, so that makes it easier to study, makes it less likely for you to cheat on an assignment, provide resources that that that allow you to learn more effectively," he said. Levy reminded users that this is still an application and a web service, which means it's constantly collecting personal information about the users' activities on the device and using the data to estimate their age... In the event a user is talking about self-harm, this new version will block the conversation and suggest additional help or call emergency or mental health services, Levy explained. It would do the same with violent content, eating disorders, engaging in dangerous activities, as well as explicit, sexual or graphic content. "It's using AI again to sort of parse out that conversation: 'are we headed in a in a significant direction? If so, throw up that guardrail, stop it from happening, redirect.'" However, the tech analyst said a number of people who have attempted to bypass the guiderails for research have succeeded in doing so "with a little bit of prompting.... I wouldn't call it 100% safe. That's kind of the catch-22 of the entire AI industry." This will lead parents to think that their children are safer and reduce the oversight on their online activities, which Levy described as a "perverse impact" that is "problematic." "Parents should not assume that OpenAI has their kids' best interests at heart. They should also not assume that these technologies are perfect. They will miss certain things, and they will also engage in what we call false positives," he said. "An adult who's legitimately is in the platform might be tagged as a child because the AI simply got it wrong." OpenAI's blog post says the new mode was designed for "preserving the ability to learn, create, and explore." But CNN notes the move "comes as OpenAI faces a string of lawsuits alleging that inappropriate conversations with ChatGPT contributed to the harm or deaths of young people." [New tools] include nudges for teen users to take a break if they've been active for 90 minutes within a three-hour window. OpenAI is also adding options for teens or parents to set "Quiet Hours" when ChatGPT is unavailable or "Study Hours" where ChatGPT's study mode for learning will be on by default. The company also said it has improved protections to prevent ChatGPT from expressing personal feelings toward a user. And it's adding reminders that caution teens to think twice if they try to upload a private or sensitive image to the chatbot... Nearly a third of American teens use AI chatbots daily, a Pew Research Center study published in December found. ChatGPT was by far the most popular AI chatbot in the survey, with more than half of those teens reporting having used it. Engadget shared this observation from Josh Golin, the executive director of Fairplay, a non-profit advocating for policies to make the internet safer for children. "Most parents, overwhelmingly, do not avail themselves of [parental oversight] tools, in part because they are deliberately made hard to find and use." Golin's group wanted to see testing of the tools first to see whether they led to better outcomes for teenagers. "The way this was just announced feels more like a response aimed at public relations than actual deep thinking about what kind of support [teens] need." And Mashable got a similar quote from Robbie Torney, head of AI/digital assessments for Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute. OpenAI's teen experience makes important safety commitments, but "What we really need now is evidence that they work, and we need this evidence, including our testing and the testing of others, before anyone, including parents, puts real trust in ChatGPT for Teens." Importantly, Torney said parents shouldn't assume their child is using ChatGPT for Teens. While OpenAI uses age estimation to place users in the age-appropriate version of ChatGPT, it can still mistake a user as older. Parents can be sure their child is using the teen version by linking their ChatGPT account to their child's and implementing OpenAI's parental control features. If a teen has previously lied about their age — and plenty do — they may continue to access the adult version of ChatGPT... Torney said caregivers must enact parental controls to receive notifications from OpenAI should their teen discuss suicide, self-harm, or acts of violence in immediate or dangerous ways... An OpenAI spokesperson said every notification is reviewed by a trained human before it's sent. The company strives to review notifications in under one hour.

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"There is still no sign of economy-wide job destruction," says economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Working with researchers at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Brynjolfsson has determined an AI "job apocalypse" is unlikely, reports the Washington Post, "even though it will likely impact entry-level jobs." And Brynjolfsson "predicts that demand for experienced workers such as senior coders will still be high even if AI takes on more routine knowledge and coding work in the future." Earlier this month, Brynjolfsson and his colleagues at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab updated their widely publicized report, "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence," to reflect that they do not see widespread, economy-wide job displacement associated with AI... Brynjolfsson: What has moved on the upside is productivity. Nonfarm business productivity growth is running over 2 percent, the best sustained stretch since the late-1990s boom... The gains show up years after the investment, and they're starting to show up... By 2030, we will have enormously more capable AI, meaningfully faster productivity growth and an unemployment rate that looks unremarkable — somewhere in its historical range. That surprises people, but it's what the mechanism implies... [T]he technology is becoming much more powerful, and it's going to be even more powerful. Secondly, there are huge implications for business and the economy, including some increases in living standards, but also, potentially, job disruption. And then, thirdly, we must act now to address this gap. We can't just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us. And one of the things we can do is put in place institutions, policies and research to make the technology more complementary — using AI to complement people so it creates more jobs. A common misconception among business managers is AI, in order to be effective, has to reduce jobs. That's just not true. You can use AI to increase employment and productivity at the same time. It's kind of a win-win... Right now, tax policy is very skewed toward favoring capital versus labor — and, as a consequence, a lot of entrepreneurs and managers, they're basically being guided by the federal government to replace workers with machines. And I don't think that's necessarily what we'd like to have happen. From an economist's perspective, what you want to be doing is not mimicking and replacing things. You want to be extending and complementing — have humans do new things they never could have done before. He acknowledges "real, persistent and widening" effects on entry-level jobs, with a labor market "closing the on-ramp for people starting their careers... If companies don't hire people at the base of the pyramid, then they're not going to have those people later when they need them." One he points out that one company is instead using AI to speed up its training of young employees.

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