Hell Gate vs The New York Times

Introducing the Inaugural Wirecutter Hall of Fame Awards

The New York Times announces the inaugural Wirecutter Hall of Fame Awards, recognizing top products and services.

Essay: Minority Report Predicted Generative AI's Hallucinations

In a Medium essay on UX design, Patrick Neeman argues that Steven Spielberg's 2002 film Minority Report is a more accurate forecast of generative AI than of gesture interfaces. He compares the film's precogs to large language models: both produce confident, plausible output rather than retrieving facts, which leads to hallucination. The essay highlights the 'minority report' concept as an early description of hallucination. It also addresses AI's hidden training-data costs, citing Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement and OpenAI's low-paid Kenyan contractors. On AI agents, Neeman notes a PwC survey finding 79% of companies use AI agents, and warns of automation bias. He cites Stanford research showing legal AI tools fabricate law 17–33% of the time. The piece concludes that designers should surface uncertainty and keep humans in the loop.

• ChatGPT crossed 800 million weekly active users within three years of launch, per Sam Altman.
• A federal judge approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement with authors in 2026.
• PwC found that 79% of companies already have AI agents in use.

US Government Sides With OpenAI in Copyright Training Lawsuit

The Trump administration has filed a 20-page legal brief in the copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times against OpenAI, arguing that AI companies should be allowed to train large language models on copyrighted material without explicit permission. The brief asserts that the United States has a strong interest in maintaining global leadership in artificial intelligence and warns against constraining LLM development under what it calls a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine. It is not a ruling; the case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The intervention could influence the ongoing fair-use debate, which centers on whether training AI on copyrighted works is transformative. The article also notes a related case in which Anthropic was ordered to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to writers, but the penalty was tied to its use of illegal shadow libraries, not to the act of training models on copyrighted texts.

• The Trump administration filed a 20-page brief in The New York Times v. OpenAI lawsuit supporting OpenAI's unlicensed use of copyrighted works for AI training.
• The brief argues the United States has a strong interest in retaining global leadership in artificial intelligence.
• The case is being tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; the brief is not a ruling.