Modern scientific societies are increasingly vulnerable due to their dependence on membership fees and journal subscriptions, which are being challenged by the rise of virtual networking and open-access publishing.
On 13 January 2026, Bandcamp published "Keeping Bandcamp Human", declaring that "music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp", alongside a strict prohibition on AI-enabled impersonation of other artists or styles. The post invites users to report releases that appear to rely heavily on generative tools, and it explicitly reserves the right to remove music "on suspicion of being AI-generated".
Section 230 helps make it possible for online communities to host user speech: from restaurant reviews, to fan fiction, to collaborative encyclopedias. But recent debates about the law often overlook how it works in practice. To mark its 30th anniversary, EFF is interviewing leaders of online platforms about how they handle complaints, moderate content, and protect their users' ability to speak and share information.
Librarians have been actively collaborating and talking about it almost every day, whether it's creating tutorials and digital learning objectives or thinking about the conversations to have with instructors. It can feel like cognitive dissonance to be actively working with AI on a regular basis and also saying we're constantly thinking about the harms and the biases.
Within a couple of years of ChatGPT coming out, I had come to rely on the artificial-intelligence tool, for my work as a professor of plant sciences at the University of Cologne in Germany. Having signed up for OpenAI's subscription plan, ChatGPT Plus, I used it as an assistant every day - to write e-mails, draft course descriptions, structure grant applications, revise publications, prepare lectures, create exams and analyse student responses, and even as an interactive tool as part of my teaching.
While AI tools are lowering the barrier to development, the gap between speed and manageability is growing. In just over a year and a half, AI code assistants have grown from an experiment to an integral part of modern development environments. They are driving strong productivity growth, but organizations are not keeping up with the associated security and governance issues.
I'm less interested in topics than in questions, and I'm less interested in publishing than I am in curation. When I've testified before Congress or dealt with an appropriations bill or a budget negotiation, this question, of what is the return on investments when you're doing R&D, comes up quite often. It's been asked by economists in very formal ways since at least the 1950s, but the data and the methods that were available were really not very strong.
A few years ago, I put together what I felt was a truly innovative concept, which I presented in a conference poster at an international meeting in my field. After the presentation, I spoke to another early-career scientist about my work and how it might apply to their findings. Two years later, they scooped me by publishing a preprint paper that presented my idea, with many of the same verbal formulations and an identical flow of ideas, without any acknowledgement or attribution to my work.
In 2023, Australia abandoned its expensive and bureaucratic scholar-led research-assessment programme. New Zealand followed suit soon after. The hope, according to a transition plan unveiled by the Australian federal government's Department of Education and the research sector, was to find a "more modern, data-driven approach". In the United Kingdom, where financial pressures on universities are especially acute, there are similar calls to reform the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the country's performance-based research-funding system.
That was a year or so ago, and my first brush with what generative AI could do. Like many, I started using it for fun: planning trips, finding nineteenth century authors I could recommend to fantasy-loving students (a genre I don't read), and making a holiday card starring my dog, Harry. But as work piled up, I didn't have time for new toys, so now I use AI for work.