Deep View: OpenAI raises record $40 billion – don’t call it a bubble

Posted on April 2, 2025 by michelleclarke2015
OpenAI raises record $40 billion — don’t call it a bubble
Source: OpenAI
OpenAI on Monday announced the closure of a record $40 billion funding round — the largest private tech funding round on record (by quite a large margin) — that valued the company at $300 billion, nearly double its previous valuation of $157 billion. 
It comes at a rather inauspicious moment, when the valuations of publicly-traded AI-related companies have been in full retreat through the first quarter as investor sentiment toward the Magnificant Seven has, rather violently, shifted.  
Here’s everything we know about the round: Fitting for a company with as strange a history as OpenAI, the terms of the fundraise are complicated. 
The round will be led by Japan’s SoftBank, which will be contributing $30 billion. Microsoft and Thrive Capital are also joining in, at unknown amounts. OpenAI, however, isn’t going to get it all at once. The initial funding — to be received in the next two weeks, according to SoftBank — will be $10 billion, while the remaining $30 billion will come by the end of 2025. 
SoftBank, however, added in a disclosure that its full $30 billion commitment is fully contingent upon OpenAI converting to a for-profit organization by the end of 2025. If it does not do so, SoftBank said it could slash its investment to just $10 billion. 
The terms are similar to those attached to the $6.6 billion funding round OpenAI secured as recently as October, 2024, a round that required OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit within two years, or investors can ask for their money back. 
SoftBank said it plans to finance the initial $10 billion investment through borrowings from banks and other financial institutions. SoftBank reported a net loss of $2.4 billion for the quarter ending Dec. 31.
This is all in addition to the $2.2 billion SoftBank has already invested in OpenAI beginning in September of last year. See, OpenAI is SoftBank’s “most important partner.” As SoftBank notes, the reasoning here hinges entirely on the advancement of artificial general, and then super, intelligence, two hypothetical, scientifically dubious pursuits whose potential existence has no grounding in evidence-based science. 
It’s also an addition to Project Stargate, the $500 billion U.S.-based data center buildout project that will be fronted by OpenAI and SoftBank. To that end, $18 billion of this $40 billion funding round will be going toward OpenAI’s Stargate commitments, according to CNBC.
The business: OpenAI reportedly has 20 million paying subscribers and 500 million ChatGPT users, though its method of measuring active users is quite unclear. Either way, fewer than 5% of its total subscription base is monetized. 
As I mentioned yesterday, this round places OpenAI among the largest companies in the world by valuation, with a noticeable difference in that OpenAI is operating a money-losing business at a wildly extreme scale. For example, both Verizon and AT&T have market caps of right around $200 billion, meaning OpenAI is now valued far above both of these companies. But both earned more than $120 billion in revenue last year, and both reported earnings above $2 per share. 
OpenAI, meanwhile — which lost $5 billion in 2024 on $4 billion in revenue — expects to burn a total of $44 billion between 2023 and 2028, before finally making a $14 billion profit in 2029, according to The Information. And that’s if all goes well. That profitability projection is based on an assumption that the company will generate more than $100 billion in revenue that year. 
The landscape: Beyond the challenging landscape of the public tech sector, OpenAI is actively facing a lawsuit from one Elon Musk over the very question of its pending conversion to a for-profit enterprise. A judge recently agreed to expedite a trial to Fall of 2025, the timing of which makes OpenAI’s planned conversion … interesting.
OpenAI did not return a request for comment on the above. 
Then, in the midst of all of this, there’s DeepSeek and the rise of open-source generative AI. According to The Information, a number of larger enterprises, including Palo Alto Networks, are planning to spend less on GenAI from providers like OpenAI, since models from DeepSeek can “handle the same tasks for just 5% of the cost of the OpenAI models.” This coincides, of course, with ongoing challenges in securing enterprise adoption due to concerns of privacy, security, reliability and bias. 
In recognition of this shifting dynamic, CEO Sam Altman said recently that OpenAI plans to release an open-weights model “in the coming months.” 
Much of the current environment — wildly high, speculative valuations based on technological optimism — seems to mirror the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s. 
OpenAI does not seem to be comfortably operational. In October, it secured $6 billion in funding and another $4 billion in debt; just a few short months later, despite all the supposed user growth, it’s getting another $10 billion injection with another $30 billion on the way.
And in recent days, Altman has posted multiple times about the “biblical demand” OpenAI’s been experiencing in light of its copyright-questionable Studio Ghibli viral trend, saying that “our GPUs are melting.” 
Altman said Tuesday that “we are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges.”
The fresh funding round seems like it was vitally needed, which is wildly demonstrative of just how much of a cash burn this business is.
Taking the time to respond to a user who highlighted OpenAI’s flawed business model, Altman wrote: “as a business we are doing really great but thanks for your concern.” 
There are two sides to this field. Tools and gods.

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China after what it called its One Hundred Years of Humiliation is on the Ascent. This is about Oil Reserve in the South China Sea.

Posted on April 2, 2025 by michelleclarke2015
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Larry Fink’s letter to investors via Grok3 summary. March 2025

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015

Larry Fink’s 2025 Chairman’s Letter to Investors, published by BlackRock on March 31, 2025, focuses on reshaping retirement planning and expanding access to capital markets to foster broader prosperity. Here’s a summary of the key points:

Fink reflects on BlackRock’s origins in 1988, highlighting how its risk management software, Aladdin, transformed investing by offering a unified view of portfolio risk. He suggests that 2025 could mark another pivotal shift in the financial landscape, driven not just by asset managers but by economic rules, investment policies, and capital deployment strategies that determine who benefits from growth.

He emphasizes the growing demand for private market investments, such as infrastructure and private credit, noting BlackRock’s recent acquisitions of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and HPS Investment Partners as steps to meet this demand. Clients are increasingly reallocating capital, with $164 billion in net inflows to fixed income last year and $9 billion to private markets, driven by a need for yields beyond the 4% offered by money-market accounts to meet long-term goals like retirement.

Fink argues for democratizing access to capital markets, particularly private markets, which have historically been limited to wealthy or institutional investors due to risks like illiquidity and complexity. He envisions a future where innovations make these markets more accessible, potentially shifting traditional 60/40 stock-bond portfolios to a 50/30/20 model that includes private assets.

The letter avoids explicit political references but subtly addresses economic anxiety and the need for inclusive prosperity, suggesting that broader market participation can address wealth divides. Fink also highlights BlackRock’s role in navigating a transitional rate environment and its optimism for significant growth in 2025 and beyond, fueled by client trust and strategic expansions.

In essence, Fink calls for rethinking retirement through expanded market access, positioning BlackRock as a leader in this evolution while balancing innovation with its fiduciary duty to clients.

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The Japan Times: OpenAI study finds links between ChatGPT use and loneliness. Quote: “Character Technologies was sued last year after its chatbot allegedly encouraged suicidal ideation in conversations with minors, including one 14-year-old who took his own life.”

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015

Today’s print edition

OpenAI study finds links between ChatGPT use and loneliness

San Francisco-based OpenAI sees the new studies as a way to get a better sense of how people interact with, and are affected by, its popular chatbot.

San Francisco-based OpenAI sees the new studies as a way to get a better sense of how people interact with, and are affected by, its popular chatbot. | bloomberg

By Rachel Metz
bloomberg

Mar 22, 2025

Higher use of chatbots like ChatGPT may correspond with increased loneliness and less time spent socializing with other people, according to new research from OpenAI in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Those who spent more time typing or speaking with ChatGPT each day tended to report higher levels of emotional dependence on, and problematic use of, the chatbot, as well as heightened levels of loneliness, according to research released Friday. The findings were part of a pair of studies conducted by researchers at the two organizations and have not been peer reviewed.

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 helped kick off a frenzy for generative artificial intelligence. Since then, people have used chatbots for everything from coding to ersatz therapy sessions. As developers like OpenAI push out more sophisticated models and voice features that make them better at mimicking the ways humans communicate, there is arguably more potential for forming parasocial relationships with these chatbots.

In recent months, there have been renewed concerns about the potential emotional harms of this technology, particularly among younger users and those with mental health issues. Character Technologies was sued last year after its chatbot allegedly encouraged suicidal ideation in conversations with minors, including one 14-year-old who took his own life.

San Francisco-based OpenAI sees the new studies as a way to get a better sense of how people interact with, and are affected by, its popular chatbot. “Some of our goals here have really been to empower people to understand what their usage can mean and do this work to inform responsible design,” said Sandhini Agarwal, who heads OpenAI’s trustworthy AI team and co-authored the research.

To conduct the studies, the researchers followed nearly 1,000 people for a month. Participants had a wide range of prior experience with ChatGPT and were randomly assigned a text-only version of it or one of two different voice-based options to use for at least five minutes per day. Some were told to carry out open-ended chats about anything they wanted; others were told to have personal or nonpersonal conversations with the service.

The researchers found that people who tend to get more emotionally attached in human relationships and are more trusting of the chatbot were more likely to feel lonelier and more emotionally dependent on ChatGPT. The researchers didn’t find that a more engaging voice led to a more negative outcome, they said.

In the second study, researchers used software to analyze 3 million user conversations with ChatGPT and also surveyed people about how they interact with the chatbot. They found very few people actually use ChatGPT for emotional conversations.

It’s still early days for this body of research and remains unclear how much chatbots may cause people to feel lonelier versus how much people prone to a sense of loneliness and emotional dependence may have those feelings exacerbated by chatbots.

Cathy Mengying Fang, a study co-author and MIT graduate student, said the researchers are wary of people using the findings to conclude that more usage of the chatbot will necessarily have negative consequences for users. The study didn’t control for the amount of time people used the chatbot as a main factor, she said, and didn’t compare to a control group that doesn’t use chatbots.

The researchers hope the work leads to more studies on how humans interact with AI. “Focusing on the AI itself is interesting,” said Pat Pataranutaporn, a study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. “But what is really critical, especially when AI is being deployed at scale, is to understand its impact on people.”

KEYWORDS

AI, chatgpt, openAI, mental health, CHATBOTS

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New Atlas: First new stroke and UTI drugs in 30 years get FDA (GSK)

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015

Stroke

First new stroke and UTI drugs in 30 years get FDA approval

By Bronwyn Thompson

March 30, 2025

FDA gives the green light to two important new therapeutics

FDA gives the green light to two important new therapeutics

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A new antibiotic to treat stubborn urinary tract infection (UTI) and a blood-clot-dissolving intravenous treatment for acute ischemic stroke have been granted approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It’s been nearly three decades since adjacent treatments have entered the market to treat their respective conditions.

This comes as it was announced last week that a further 3,500 jobs at the FDA would be cut, with some existing review staff now with double the workload due to previous personnel losses. But for now, it’s good news in some health fields with these two drugs getting a green light.

GSK’s Blujepa (gepotidacin) becomes the first in a new class of oral antibiotics to treat uncomplicated UTIs (also known as uUTIs) in almost 30 years, taking aim at infection-causing bacteria Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Citrobacter freundii complex, Staphylococcus saprophyticus and Enterococcus faecalis.

More than half of all women will contract this kind of UTI in their lifetime, and almost a third will battle recurring episodes. Blujepa, for females aged 12 and over, is expected to be available commercially in the US in the second quarter of 2025 – so, very soon.

“The approval of Blujepa is a crucial milestone with uUTIs among the most common infections in women,” said Tony Wood, Chief Scientific Officer at GSK. “We are proud to have developed Blujepa, the first in a new class of oral antibiotics for uUTIs in nearly three decades, and to bring another option to patients given recurrent infections and rising rates of resistance to existing treatments.”

Blujepa is a bactericidal, first-in-class triazaacenaphthylene antibiotic with a novel mechanism that inhibits bacterial DNA replication. And because it has high efficacy in disabling a broad range of pathogens, it also comes with low risk of bacteria developing resistance to it.

“For many, uUTIs can be a burden that severely impacts daily life,” said Thomas Hooton, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of Miami School of Medicine. “With an increasing number of patients experiencing recurrent infections, there remains a clear need for continued research of antimicrobials to help address ongoing patient challenges and the strain on healthcare systems.”

Meanwhile, the FDA also approved Genetech’s TNKase to treat adults who suffer acute ischemic stroke. THNKase (tenecteplace) is a single-dose intravenous bolus that is faster and easier to administer than the only other existing drug on the market, Activase (alteplase) – and it comes nearly 30 years after that particular treatment was approved.

Essentially, TNKase goes to work immediately to dissolve blood clots and is just one dose, as opposed to the preceding Activase that requires two, 60 minutes apart.

“Today’s approval is a significant step forward and underscores our commitment to advancing stroke treatment options for patients,” said Levi Garraway, MD, Chief Medical Officer and head of Global Product Development at Genentech. “TNKase provides a faster and simpler administration, which can be critical for anyone who is dealing with an acute stroke.”

The rapid administration of TNKase is important here, where time is critical in relieving damage to the brain and halting the progression of nerve and tissue deterioration following a stroke. The drug will be administered in just five seconds, within three hours of the first sign of stroke symptoms.

Sources: GSK, Genetech

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Lord Bebo on X: “Europe in the Grips of Gas Imperialists.

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015

LMAO:

Lord Bebo

@MyLordBebo

Europe is considering increasing imports of Russian gas amid increasingly tense relations with Trump.

Because now the White House has a president who “also wants to blackmail the world with his gas.” and Europe is at a loss, between two superpowers, writes Der Spiegel.

GERMAN SPIEGEL: “Germany and the EU are caught in a dilemma when it comes to energy policy: In the West, Donald Trump is trying to force more liquefied natural gas on them. In the East, Russia is pushing for a comeback of Nord Stream 2. What now?”

Europe’s dual position is best illustrated by what Brussels is not doing. By the end of March, EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen promised to present a master plan for the EU to completely abandon Russian gas supplies.

By 2027, the EU intends to reduce imports to zero – along with oil and uranium supplies. When Jorgensen took office, he promised to develop a strategy within 100 days. However, this deadline has already expired – and without results.

According to insiders, there are two reasons for this: – First, the EU does not want to look like a brake on the peace talks between the US and Russia, by ruling out in advance the possibility of resuming Russian gas supplies. – Second, the unstable global energy situation prevents strategic decisions from being made.

The EU was able to compensate for the deficit of Russian gas with American LNG. But now the White House has a president who “also wants to blackmail the world with his gas.” and Europe is at a loss, between two superpowers.

If the US drops out as a guarantor of gas supplies, where will the raw materials come from?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that the United States and Russia were discussing repairs to the Nord Stream pipelines as part of peace talks over Ukraine. The pipelines were largely destroyed in late 2022 by sabotage carried out by a Ukrainian special forces group, according to German Spiegel. (We know who it was)

In Germany, politicians and businessmen have once again started talking about possible supplies of Russian gas after the peace treaty. Among them are CDU deputies Thomas Bareis and Jan Heinisch, as well as representatives of the chemical industry. Potential CDU chancellor Friedrich Merz has not yet disowned such ideas. Deputy head of the Green faction in the Bundestag Julia Verlinden called such statements “irresponsible.”

Brussels is now caught in a trap. If the EU sticks to its plan to wean itself off Russian gas by 2027, it will become increasingly dependent on the increasingly unpredictable US. If it moves toward partial rapprochement with Russia, it will become dependent on two “undesirable partners” at once – but perhaps too much on neither. The EU has little time to think about it. There has never been a formal ban on gas supplies via pipelines from Russia. If the pipes are repaired, supplies could resume at any time.

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Client Alert: AI Enters the Courtroom—Judges Get Chatty with ChatGPT in Ross v. United States (2025)

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015
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Client Alert: AI Enters the Courtroom—Judges Get Chatty with ChatGPT in Ross v. United States (2025)

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February 27, 2025

What is common knowledge? Consider consulting ChatGPT, as the panel in Ross v. United States, a case before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals did. In an opinion issued on February 20, 2025, the majority and dissenting judges publicly disclosed and discussed their use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools—specifically, ChatGPT—to assist in reaching a determination regarding whether the government’s reliance on “common knowledge” was sufficient to fill critical gaps in the government’s case. Following in the footsteps of a federal appellate court, dissenting Associate Judge Deahl used ChatGPT to make a point regarding common knowledge, while the majority responded with its own ChatGPT example. For law firms, clients, and legal practitioners, this opinion signals the judiciary’s growing interest, reliance and use of AI tools in the courtroom.

Background of the Case

In the case, the government charged Niya Ross with one count of cruelty to animals under D.C. Code §§ 22-1001, 22-1002 for leaving her dog, Cinnamon, in a car on a hot day in September 2023. During a bench trial, the trial court found Ross guilty. On appeal, Ross challenged the decision on two grounds. First, she argued that the government failed to demonstrate that her dog suffered from being left in the car, particularly because the government did not introduce expert testimony. Second, Ross argued that the government had not established that she possessed the requisite intent under the criminal statute: general intent with malice.

AI’s Role in the Opinion

What sets this case apart is the transparency regarding the use of AI in the judicial process. Associate Judge Deahl, in his dissent, explicitly stated that he consulted ChatGPT, an AI-powered large language model developed by OpenAI, to explore what he described as “common knowledge” about the effects of leaving a dog in a hot car. He posed hypothetical questions to ChatGPT, such as whether it is harmful to leave a dog in a car with the windows cracked for an hour and twenty minutes at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, and referenced its responses to bolster his reasoning.

The majority, in turn, responded by also engaging with ChatGPT, using it to analyze a hypothetical question related to a prior case, Long v. United States (156 A.3d 698), to contrast the dissent’s approach and underscore the limitations of relying on AI for factual or legal conclusions. Associate Judge Howard, in a concurring opinion, further elaborated on the broader implications of AI in judicial decision-making, drawing on his involvement with the D.C. Courts AI Task Force and addressing ethical, security, and privacy concerns.

This open acknowledgment is a landmark development, as few, if any, prior published judicial opinions in the U.S. have detailed the use of AI tools in judicial opinions with such specificity. The court’s discussion builds on Judge Kevin Newsom’s concurring opinion in Snell v. United Specialty Ins. Co. (102 F.4th 1208, 11th Cir. 2024), which explored AI’s role in judicial reasoning, but Ross takes the conversation further by integrating AI directly into the opinion-drafting process.

Key Implications for Legal Practitioners and Clients

  1. Judicial Transparency and Innovation: The Ross opinion demonstrates a willingness by the judiciary to experiment with AI tools while maintaining transparency about their use. This openness invites legal professionals to consider how AI might enhance efficiency in legal research, drafting, and analysis, but also underscores the need for critical evaluation of AI outputs.
  2. Ethical and Practical Concerns: Associate Judge Howard’s concurrence highlights critical issues, including AI bias, data privacy, security risks, and the potential for confidential judicial information to be exposed if AI tools are not carefully managed. For law firms and clients, this raises questions about using AI in legal work while ensuring compliance with ethical obligations and protecting sensitive data.
  3. Precedential Value and Caution: While the decision emphasized that the Court used AI as a tool to aid, not replace, judicial reasoning, the dissent’s reliance on ChatGPT’s responses as “color commentary” could spark debate about the reliability of AI as a source of “common knowledge.” Legal practitioners should approach AI-generated insights with skepticism, ensuring they are grounded in evidence and precedent rather than unverified assumptions or hallucinations.
  4. Future of AI in Courts: The D.C. Courts’ establishment of an AI Task Force and partnership with the National Conference of State Courts (as noted in Associate Judge Howard’s concurrence) signals a broader trend toward integrating AI into judicial systems. Firms and clients should monitor these developments, as they may influence case strategy, discovery, and courtroom technology.

Conclusion

Ross v. United States is a pioneering decision and the start of what is likely to become a trend of judges (or their clerks) trying out AI tools. As the legal profession navigates the intersection of technology and law, this opinion serves as both an opportunity and a cautionary tale. Law firms and clients should stay informed about the evolving use of AI in courts and the legal profession, assess its potential benefits for legal practice, and address the associated risks to maintain ethical and effective representation.

For assistance with IP or AI questions, please contact Victor Johnson, Sara Gates, or anyone from the Dentons US Intellectual Property & Technology Group.

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Futurism: Elon Musk Secretly Working to Rewrite the Social Security Codebase Using AI

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015

SS-AI

Mar 30, 6:45 AM EDTbyJoe Wilkins

Elon Musk Secretly Working to Rewrite the Social Security Codebase Using AI

“The cruelty is the point.”

/ Future Society/ Artificial Inteligence/ Cobol/ Elon Musk

Andrew Harnik via Getty / Futurism

Image by Andrew Harnik via Getty / Futurism

In what feels like another life, Donald Trump ran for presidential election on the promise of “draining the swamp,” in a direct appeal to the masses of workers and the poor of the US who knew something wasn’t quite right with the status quo. It worked, sparking a nationwide movement backing a man whose immense fortune had been built on union busting, labor exploitation, and government handouts from the poor to the rich — in short, on the backs of the very workers he swore to protect.

Now that Trump is the status quo, those voters are learning once again what a shrewd business man he is. Case in point, his chief lackey Elon Musk is in charge of gutting the federal government and its various social safety programs — and it sounds like he’s looking to hand off the gig to the totally stable hands of artificial intelligence.

New reporting by Wired has revealed that Musk’s DOGE is putting together a team to totally redo the Social Security Administration’s computer systems from COBOL, an old but trustworthy code language undergirding the entire Social Security program. Experts say the process is a major undertaking with some huge risks, which probably explains why it hasn’t been done yet — a 2014 report by the SSA noted that the system contains some 60 million lines of code.

The plan is headed by Steve Davis, one of Musk’s faithful enforcers, and will apparently encompass migrating the entire system onto a more modern contemporary language within a matter of months.

With that timeframe, the venture is likely to rely on generative AI, a source told Wired — a horrifying prospect given that even the most advanced AI models still struggle to solve the majority of programming tasks. Add to that a team of inexperienced tech bros, and the SSA system responsible for over 65 million payments is poised for disaster.

“DOGE thinks if they can say they got rid of all the COBOL in months, then their way is the right way and we all just suck for not breaking shit,” an SSA source told Wired.

It’s not just the government that still runs on COBOL. A 2017 Reuters study on the coding language found that COBOL is a major pillar of the US financial industry, making up 43 percent of banking systems. At the time, some 95 percent of ATM transactions depended on COBOL, and software experts still note that 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies actively use it.

If COBOL is so ubiquitous, then why the sudden rush to scrap it all and start fresh when it comes to social security?

On the surface, this definitely falls on Musk’s “work fast, break things” ethos, paired with Trump’s beloved austerity policies. Indeed, the private equity buzzards are already circling over the SSA. That said, DOGE didn’t come up with the idea to gut social spending — that’s a time-honored tradition of capitalism’s elites — and it certainly isn’t the first administration to chip away at Social Security.

What is new is the callous disregard with which this administration is treating the most vulnerable in America, in what basically amounts to a PR campaign for DOGE. An AI-enabled SSA crash might not mean much to the richest man in the history of the world, but the millions of people relying on the already flailing system to dispense retirement funds, disability, and Medicare benefits don’t share his luxury.

As Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley pined: “The cruelty is the point.”

More on DOGE: One of Elon Musk’s DOGE Kids Reportedly Helped a Cybercrime Ring

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AI, JUDGES AND JUDGEMENT: SETTING THE SCENE

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015

Harvard Kennedy School

AI, JUDGES AND JUDGEMENT: SETTING THE SCENE

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M-RCBG Associate Working Paper No. 220

AI, JUDGES AND JUDGEMENT: SETTING THE SCENE

Rt. Hon Sir Robert Buckland KBE KC MP

Introduction Excerpt

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the administration of justice is growing at rapid pace. This is driven by widespread recognition of AI justice’s undeniable advantages, despite the risks it presents to the integrity of legal systems.

AI justice may, for example, lower the administrative burden of cases. The Crown Courts in England and Wales ended 2022 with a near-record load of over 60,000 outstanding cases. AI can dramatically increase court efficiency and reduce backlogs, providing standardised outcomes faster and at lower cost. After all, AI judges do not need to rest. At the same time, AI-driven judicial decision-making could make justice more accessible to the large segments of society that cannot afford human lawyers.

Proponents also argue algorithms could improve the fairness of judgements because “AI judges strictly follow precedents, restrict improper judicial discretion, prevent personal biases and preferences of individual judges, handle large amounts of information, complete complicated calculative balances, and discover statistical representations of variations of fact patterns and legal factors”.  Even where AI tools assist human judges, these tools can push relevant legal provisions through comprehensive data retrieval. This in turn can improve judges’ understanding of cases, helping them avoid one-sided access to data and information.

At this point, it is important to clarify the different ways in which AI is being deployed in the courtroom. At a foundation level, AI may be used for auxiliary administrative functions. This includes communication between judicial personnel, allocation of resources and cases, and ensuring the anonymisation of judicial decisions, documents, or data. These activities may ostensibly appear separate from the core of judicial decision-making but carry subtler implications. For instance, the allocation of a case to a specific judge, given their unique expertise or biases, could indirectly influence the outcome. These nuances notwithstanding, the primary objective of these AI-driven tasks remain administrative in nature, aiming to streamline the judicial process rather than directly determine case outcomes.

Download the paper in PDF format

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Deep View: Apple’s go an AI ‘coach’ on the way

Posted on April 1, 2025 by michelleclarke2015
Apple’s got an AI health ‘coach’ on the way
An older image of Apple’s Health App. Source: Apple
Apple is working on a big revamp of its Health app, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, a revamp that will include an AI-powered health coach. And it’s set to launch with IOS 19.4, an update set to go live sometime in the first half of 2026. 
The details: According to Gurman, the effort — nicknamed Project Mulberry — has been in the works for years. The general idea is that the Health app will collect all sorts of data from across a user’s Apple ecosystem, data that will then be processed by an AI health coach to provide personalized health recommendations. 
Apple is currently training the system with data from in-house doctors, and plans to bring in more doctors — experts across sleep, nutrition, mental health and cardiology — to make custom videos for the app.The plan, reportedly, is for this to expand into food tracking and fitness tracking, where Apple would use iPhone cameras and AI systems to provide pointers on exercise technique and form. 
According to Gurman, the project is currently the top priority for Apple’s Health team.
Apple did not return a request for comment on the report. 
Going deeper: This rather succinctly highlights a major tension in the integration of AI in healthcare. In order for these algorithms to work as advertised, they need constant access to an enormous, ceaseless stream of data, which raises numerous questions over data privacy and data security. 
For a company that has always prided itself on privacy, such an integration isn’t easy to pull off. And at this stage, it’s not clear how Apple plans to navigate this environment; will it do all computing on-device? Is that even possible for something like this? If not, how will it guarantee its Cloud is genuinely secure? How will Apple ensure it doesn’t gather data on people beyond the specific user (other folks walking around in the gym, for instance)? And what happens if governments or insurance companies want to gain access to those highly specific insights? 
I will add to this that reliability remains an unsolved problem in most modern AI applications. In speaking of “agents,” the assumption is Apple will be leveraging language models, which are known to get stuff wrong; and when it comes to building trust among users for health recommendations, I’d say the room for error is zero but the capacity for error is high.  
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