More than two-thirds of bosses are ‘accidental managers’—and their requests for proper training are being ignored

Eleanor Pringle
Thu, May 23, 2024 


Getty

You're not alone if you ever feel like your boss isn't cut out to be a manager. But it's not just peers who might feel their superior is underqualified—bosses themselves increasingly say they're not equipped for the task.

Management is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge.

Bosses are still trying to manage conversations about hybrid and in-office working patterns and integrate a new generation—Gen Z—into the workforce. Managers are also having to race to keep up with what AI means for their teams and ensure employees are suitably skilled for the tasks ahead.

So it's perhaps no wonder that a new survey has found a significant proportion of bosses feel "overwhelmed" and "underequipped."


66% of managers have had no formal training for their roles and are thus defined as "accidental managers"'" by global recruitment agency Robert Walters.

The business conducted a survey with 2,000 white-collar professionals in the U.K. last month, and found individuals are increasingly being promoted up the ranks without adequate preparation for the move.

In addition to the more than two-thirds of managers who are "accidental," a further 22% said they were "quietly promoted," which entailed being given responsibility for other people without formal acknowledgment, a pay increase, or a title change.

This means a total of more than eight in 10 managers have found themselves in their roles without the clear intention of preparing to become a team leader—hence the perhaps unsurprising figure that 35% of bosses have repeatedly asked their employers for training.

Almost half of those who have asked for support multiple times said they felt "overwhelmed" and "underequipped" for their role.

Gerrit Bouckaert, CEO of the recruitment specialists that work in 31 countries, said the trend of accidental management has become more "pronounced" in recent years.

He added: “Modern-day managers need to cope with remote management, a greater focus on mental health, and the emergence of Gen Zs in the workplace—how do you train someone to handle all of that? In the past, a manager’s primary role was to keep employees motivated and productive—in today’s world they are required to drive the culture and inclusion in the team, lead on digital adoption, possess an innate ability to know if a member of their team is struggling mentally, and also be the bearer of bad news—be it delayed promotions, or muted pay rises.

“New research is even emerging that today’s managers are at risk of ‘empathy burnout’—whereby too much is being asked of them from an emotional perspective."

While the training industry in the U.S. alone is worth more than $100 billion, a one-size-fits-all approach to bring all managers up to speed may not be the silver bullet employers are hoping for.

"It would be amiss of me to say that a standardized management training program will fix the problem—not everyone is the same, and nor should we encourage that," Bouckaert added.

"One thing that is vital but often overlooked is ‘transition’ coaching or mentoring—preparing a professional over a period of time to genuinely be able to ‘step into’ a management position.”
Losing talent

A survey conducted last year of 4,500 British workers had similar results to Robert Walters's—finding that 82% of bosses had no formal management or leadership training.

However, a study conducted by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and YouGov also found that businesses were losing talent because of the problem.

Only 27% of staffers said their managers were "highly effective," with half of those who didn't rate their boss saying they planned to leave the company in the next year.

Furthermore, just a third of people said they felt motivated to do a good job.

“Promotions based on technical competence that ignore behavior and other key leadership traits are proving—time and time again—to lead to failings that cause damage to individuals and their employers, not to mention the wider economy’s performance," said Ann Francke, the CEO of CMI.

She added: “On a very practical level, skilled managers should be seen as a reputational insurance policy—they will help prevent toxic behaviors, they will call out wrongdoing, and they will get the best out of their teams.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

N.S. reaches deal with owner of Northern Pulp; firm pursues new mill in Queens County

Lyndsay Armstrong
Thu, May 23, 2024 



HALIFAX — A new agreement between Nova Scotia and the owner of Northern Pulp will see the company abandon plans to reopen its idled Pictou County mill and instead focus on building a new plant in southwestern Nova Scotia.

Progressive Conservative Premier Tim Houston said if the deal is approved, Paper Excellence will start a feasibility study for a potential new kraft pulp mill near the former Bowater mill in Brooklyn, N.S., near Liverpool.

"The Pictou mill is not reopening. But that doesn't have to mean an end to the hope for the kind of good-paying jobs and forestry work and exports that a pulp and paper mill brings with it," Houston told reporters Thursday in Halifax. "The company believes that Liverpool could again support a mill, and I agree."

The Pictou County plant once employed about 300 people but has been idle since 2020 after it failed to meet the province's environmental requirements. The Liberal government at the time said the mill could no longer be allowed to dump effluent into Boat Harbour near the Pictou Landing First Nation, after the company had done so for decades. Former Liberal premier Iain Rankin once called the situation one of the worst cases of environmental racism in Canada.

"I know people are concerned about the reputation of this company in the province," Houston said. "Let me assure you that any project that goes forward will need to meet today's standards and undergo environmental assessment, significant public engagement and Indigenous consultation."

Provincial officials said the agreement with British Columbia-based Paper Excellence addresses the $450-million lawsuit the company launched against the province over the 2020 closure of Northern Pulp, as well as the $99 million in loans the firm owes the province. They also said the agreement will protect the pensions of Northern Pulp workers, with Paper Excellence saying in a statement Thursday the pensions of all current and former Northern Pulp employees will be fully funded.

The settlement must be approved by the British Columbia Supreme Court, which will hold a hearing on May 31. If approved, the company's lawsuit will be dismissed and all motions within the court process against the province will be withdrawn. Paper Excellence, which has been under creditor protection since June 2020, says it would then immediately begin an independent feasibility study on the potential for a new pulp mill in Queens County. That study is expected to take around nine months.

Jean-Francois Guillot, chief operating officer of Paper Excellence's fibre division, said the agreement reached with the province is a “win-win” for both sides that have spent years skirmishing.

"We spent too much time, too many years trying to fight each other and, in my books, we didn’t accomplish anything. So it was time to switch gears and do something more positive," Guillot said in an interview Thursday.

If a new mill is considered viable, Paper Excellence will pay about $50 million for costs related to the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and $15 million to the province to settle debts. The company will also put $30 million toward pension plans.

Provincial officials say it's too early to estimate how much work or money will be needed to decommission and clean up the Pictou site if the new mill is deemed viable. Guillot said the Pictou County site will be evaluated as part of the feasibility study to determine what should be done with it, and if there's potential for it to be used in some way for future pulp operations.

If the study finds that a Queens County pulp mill is not viable, the pension and creditor arrangement payments will remain the same, but the company will have to pay the province $30 million to settle debts and spend $15 million on the clean up and closure of the Pictou mill site.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 23, 2024.

Lyndsay Armstrong, The Canadian Press

‘Swamp Creature!’: Trump Gets Shouted Down as He Begs for Libertarian Nomination

Mini Racker
Sat, May 25, 2024


It was clear from the start that this year’s Libertarian convention would not be a staid affair.

Going into the weekend, the Washington Hilton was stocked with shrink-wrapped packs of Blood of Tyrants’ Liquid Freedom Energy Tea. More than one attendee appeared to be smoking indoors. The drinks were flowing and the crowd was chanting, booing, and hollering through speeches left and right. Punches even flew. And that was all before former President Donald Trump took the stage in front of hundreds on Saturday.

When that moment came, the former president was met with a sound he was not accustomed to: boos. They broke out as soon as he appeared, and never died down, marking one of the most negative receptions Trump has ever received.

“A lot of people ask why I came to speak at this Libertarian convention,” Trump said as he began his remarks. “And, you know, it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? But we’re gonna have a lot of fun.”

It soon became clear that Trump most certainly was not having fun. Try as he might to sell himself as an ally to Libertarians, the crowd was not buying it. Whenever the former president’s supporters began chanting, Libertarians shouted them down. When Trump talked about the government crushing citizens’ rights, an audience member screamed, “You crushed my rights!” When he accused President Joe Biden of enacting censorship and persecution, someone else cried, “So do you!” Shouts of “Swamp creature!” and “Fuck you!” peppered his remarks.

Soon enough, he appeared to downright beg them to go easy on him: “Right now, in this election, we need your help. We need your support,” he said, prompting a chorus of boos.

“Combine with us in a partnership, we’re asking that of the Libertarians, we must work together,” he pleaded, again eliciting angry shouts.

There were more boos when Trump urged the Libertarian Party to nominate him as its candidate. But the former president soldiered on.

“Now I think you should nominate me, or at least vote for me, and we should win together,” he said. “Only do that if you want to win,” he said. “If you want to lose, don’t do that.”

Perhaps sensing he should bargain with the crowd he had so far failed to win over, he then said: “I’m committing to you tonight, that I will put a Libertarian in my Cabinet, and also Libertarians in senior posts.”

This weekend’s convention was the first since the right-wing Mises Caucus seized control of the party at its Reno convention in 2022. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported on the Caucus’ hard-right approach, which has at times included anti-trans, antisemitic, and racist sentiments, as well as its ties to Trumpworld. But in the days ahead of the speech, the party’s decision to allow Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to headline the Libertarian convention was a major point of contention, and on Saturday, the disagreement broke out into heated conflict.

Members of the Libertarian Party gather for the party's national convention at the Washington Hilton on May 25, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMore

“I think it was a bad idea,” Virginia Libertarian activist Marta Howard told The Daily Beast ahead of the speech. “Not all publicity is good publicity. The rest of the world is going to think, ‘Oh, it’s because they’re right-leaning.’ Whatever they think of Libertarians, they’re just going to think it’s another flavor of Republicans.”

Libertarian National Committee chair Angela McArdle told the Washington Post in early May that Trump’s appearance would help draw attention and attendance, an argument that resonated with some.

“I was originally not happy about it, just because of the optics of the Republican candidate for president coming to where Libertarians pick their candidate,” Blake Rogers, a Mises-aligned alternate who had driven his motorcycle up from Georgia told The Daily Beast. “But a lot of people have made a lot of really good points about it in terms of it being a lot of publicity that we wouldn’t ordinarily get otherwise.”

Still, it was clear that many were not sold on the MAGA-fied convention. While red-hatted Trump supporters lined up outside the ballroom ahead of the former president’s speech, one woman hurried by, her middle finger up, singing “Fuck Donald Trump.”

Many of the Trump supporters were the first inside and quickly took over the rows closest to the stage. But McArdle soon took the stage and requested they move so Libertarian convention delegates could sit up front, threatening to call security if they didn’t.

The formal program began with Mises Caucus-backed presidential candidate Michael Rectenwald roasting Trump and his leadership of Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to develop the COVID-19 vaccine. “None of us are great fans of Donald Trump,” he said, provoking boos from the middle of the room, where McArdle had relegated most of the Trump supporters.

When Trump chants broke out, Libertarians in the front rows turned around to respond, with some screaming expletives about the former president.

“We are not a bunch of college leftist sissies, so be respectful,” comedian Dave Smith, a Mises Caucus member, warned, earning cheers all around.

As the crowd waited for Trump to appear, supporters in the audience could be heard fretting that there needed to be more of them. A man with a “MAGA=Socialist” sign stood on a chair in the middle of the audience and was soon surrounded by Trump devotees screaming in his face. Others carried signs proclaiming “Stop Trump Vote Lars,” referring to Lars Mapstead, another Libertarian presidential candidate. A chant of “We want Trump!” was quickly overpowered by one demanding to “End the Fed!”

“We should not be fighting each other,” Trump said soon after he took the stage. “Joe Biden gets back in, there will be no more liberty for anyone in our country.”

Trump did sometimes earn cheers from the crowd, including when he talked about ending wars, pardoning Jan. 6 protesters, protecting cryptocurrency, denying money to schools with vaccine or mask mandates, and defunding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The most applause came when he promised to commute the life sentence of Ross Ulbricht, who has been imprisoned for operating a website that sold illegal goods.

But on the whole, the audience wasn’t having it. Even the night before, the anti-Trump resistance was out in full force. When Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy appeared to warm up the crowd and debate the party’s vice presidential nominee, he was booed for so much as mentioning Trump’s name.

“Who’s going to be the President? It’s either going to be the Democratic nominee or the Republican nominee,” Ramaswamy said, sparking audible protests. “I mean, come on! Look, I invite you to dream on.”

Plenty of attendees seemed happy to keep dreaming. An earlier speech by third party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had earned a much warmer reception, with frequent cheers and standing ovations. Many of his best-received lines had been ones slamming the former president.

“I’m curious to know how President Trump is going to defend his attacks on the Constitution when I meet him on the debating stage,” Kennedy said, earning roars from the crowd.

Kennedy told the convention Friday he had challenged Trump to a debate at the Libertarian convention, but that the former president had declined.

In comments to The Daily Beast, Trump campaign adviser Brian Hughes called Kennedy an “ultra-leftist” who “called the NRA a terror group.” Jason Miller, senior Trump campaign adviser, said Trump’s “America First agenda is the one that shares many of the Libertarian voters’ concerns, and he is the only candidate who can defeat Joe Biden and put an end to Biden’s assault on our Constitution, our freedoms, and our God-given rights.”

Team Trump is hoping not to lose too many voters to third-party candidates like Kennedy, whose constituency overlaps with that of the former president. In a close race with Biden, where polls consistently find the two men within a few points of each other, whether Trump earns Libertarians’ votes could be a deciding factor.

“The Libertarian Party can make a big difference,” Trump promised the crowd Saturday, saying he would be “a true friend to Libertarians in the White House” before being booed again.

Minutes after Trump left the stage, McArdle announced a press conference with the Libertarian Party’s actual candidates. The first, Chase Oliver, ribbed Trump.

“Isn’t it nice to have a Libertarian on stage at the Libertarian convention?” he asked. “We just had a neocon war criminal on our stage a few minutes ago."

The response was quieter than it had been when Trump was speaking. Most of the crowd had already left.

The Daily Beast



Trump, accustomed to friendly crowds, confronts repeated booing during Libertarian convention speech

Sat, May 25, 2024 



WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing the Libertarian Party National Convention on Saturday night, with many in the crowd shouting insults and decrying him for things like his COVID-19 policies, running up towering federal deficits and lying about his political record.

When he took the stage, many jeered while some supporters clad in “Make America Great” hats and T-shirts cheered and chanted “USA! USA!” It was a rare moment of Trump coming face-to-face with open detractors, which is highly unusual for someone accustomed to staging rallies in front of ever-adoring crowds.

Libertarians, who prioritize small government and individual freedoms, are often skeptical of the former president, and his invitation to address the convention has divided the party. Trump tried to make light of that by referring to the four criminal indictments against him and joking, “If I wasn’t a Libertarian before, I sure as hell am a Libertarian now.”

Trump tried to praise “fierce champions of freedom in this room” and called President Joe Biden a “tyrant” and the “worst president in the history of the United States,” prompting some in the audience to scream back: “That’s you.”

As the insults continued, Trump eventually hit back, saying “you don't want to win” and suggesting that some Libertarians want to “keep getting your 3% every four years.”

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won about 3% of the national vote in 2016, but nominee Jo Jorgensen got only a bit more than 1% during 2020’s close contest.

Libertarians will pick their White House nominee during their convention, which wraps on Sunday. Trump’s appearance also gave him a chance to court voters who might otherwise support independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who gave his own Libertarian convention speech on Friday.

Polls have shown for months that most voters do not want a 2020 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden. That dynamic could potentially boost support for an alternative like the Libertarian nominee or Kennedy, whose candidacy has allies of Biden and Trump concerned that he could be a spoiler.

Despite the raucous atmosphere, Trump continued to press on with his speech, saying he’d come “to extend a hand of friendship” in common opposition to Biden. That prompted a chant of “We want Trump!” from supporters, but more cries of “End the Fed!” — a common refrain from Libertarians who oppose the Federal Reserve. One person who held up a sign reading “No wannabe dictators!” was dragged away by security.

Trump tried to win over the crowd by pledging to include a Libertarian in his Cabinet, but many in the crowd hissed in disbelief. The former president did get a big cheer when he promised to commute the life sentence of the convicted founder of the drug-selling website Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, and potentially release him on time served.

That was designed to energize Libertarian activists who believe government investigators overreached in building their case against Silk Road, and who generally oppose criminal drug policies more broadly. Ulbricht’s case was much-discussed during the Libertarian convention, and many of the hundreds in the crowd for Trump’s speech hoisted “Free Ross” signs and chanted the phrase as he spoke.

Despite those promises, many in the crowd remained antagonistic. One of the candidates vying for the Libertarian presidential nomination, Michael Rectenwald, declared from the stage before the former president arrived that “none of us are great fans of Donald Trump.” After his speech, Rectenwald and other Libertarian White House hopefuls took the stage to scoff at Trump and his speech.

Those for and against Trump even clashed over seating arraignments. About two hours before the former president's arrival, Libertarian organizers asked Trump supporters in the crowd to vacate the first four rows. They wanted convention delegates — many of whom said they’d traveled from around the country and bought expensive tickets to the proceedings — could sit close enough to hear the speech.

Many of the original seat occupants moved, but organizers eventually brought in more seats to calm things down.

The Libertarian split over Trump was reflected by Peter Goettler, president and chief executive of the libertarian Cato Institute, who suggested in a Washington Post column that the former president’s appearance violated the gathering’s core values and that “the political party pretending to be libertarian has transitioned to a different identity.”

Trump’s campaign noted that Biden didn't attend the Libertarian convention himself, and argued that the former president's doing so was part of an ongoing effort to reach would-be supporters in places that are not heavily Republican — including the former president’s rally Thursday in the Bronx during a pause in his New York hush money trial.

The Libertarian ticket will try to draw support from disaffected Republicans as well as people on the left. Such voters could also gravitate toward Kennedy.

Trump didn't dwell on Kennedy on Saturday night. But, after previously praising him and once considering him for a commission on vaccination safety, the former president has gone on the attack against Kennedy. He suggested on social media that a vote for Kennedy would be a “wasted protest vote” and that he would “even take Biden over Junior.”

The former president, while in office, referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as “one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine.” He’s since accused Kennedy of being a “fake” opponent of vaccines.

In his speech at the Libertarian convention, Kennedy accused Trump and Biden of trampling on personal liberties in response to the pandemic. Trump bowed to pressure from public health officials and shut down businesses, Kennedy said, while Biden was wrong to mandate vaccines for millions of workers.

For his part, Biden has promoted winning the endorsement of many high-profile members of the Kennedy family, in an attempt to marginalize their relative’s candidacy.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for Biden’s reelection campaign, slammed Trump and top Republicans for opposing access to abortion and supporting limits on civil society, saying in a statement Saturday, that “freedom isn’t free in Trump’s Republican Party and this weekend will be just one more reminder of that.”

Will Weissert, The Associated Press

Myanmar quietly announces plans to study controversial Chinese dam project suspended 13 years ago

Grant Peck
Thu, May 23, 2024 




BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Myanmar’s military government appears to be considering reviving a massive China-backed hydroelectric dam project, work on which was suspended more than a decade ago after protests over its possible impact on the environment.

A notice from the Information Ministry, published online in the latest issue of the government gazette on Tuesday, announced a new leadership team for the Myitsone hydropower project, which was put on hold in 2011 by Myanmar’s military-backed former president, Thein Sein.

The $3.6 billion project in the northern state of Kachin, along the country’s Irrawaddy River, was supposed to export about 90% of the electricity it generated to China, Myanmar’s northern neighbor.

China had considered the dam an important part of a national strategy to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and meet its targets to cut pollution. It lobbied strongly for its construction to resume, even after the suspension.

Environmental activists have said the dam would displace countless villagers and upset the ecology of the Irrawaddy River, one of the country’s most vital national resources,

Other opponents questioned the arrangement in which China would take 90% of the dam’s power, while nearly 70% of Myanmar at that time had no access to electricity, according to the World Bank.

Myanmar currently suffers from prolonged power outages that have become a major burden since the army seized power in February 2021, ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Power cuts in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, now typically last eight hours a day.

The state-owned Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation reported early this month that the power supply has decreased due to inadequate power generation, a sudden increase in power consumption during a recent brutal heat wave and the destruction of electrical facilities by forces fighting against the country's military government.

Current power production can meet only 50% of demand, it said.

It said a board for the Myitsone hydropower project was formed with 11 members from different departments. Aye Kyaw, a deputy minister of the Electricity Ministry, was appointed the board's leader.

The notice, dated April 24, said the group would conduct research, consider technical solutions and handle public relations for the project in collaboration with the leadership team of China’s SPIC Yunnan International Power Investment company.

Any revival of the project will have to contend with the war being fought over much of Myanmar by pro-democracy guerrillas and their ethnic armed group allies against the military-run government installed after Suu Kyi was ousted.

Fighting has erupted in the nearby townships of Kachin’s capital, Myitkyina, in recent months as the troops from the powerful armed forces of the Kachin ethnic minority have reportedly captured dozens of army bases in the area.

Grant Peck, The Associated Press

Chip-funding ‘warfare’ continues with South Korea’s $19 billion package

David Meyer
Thu, May 23, 2024 


Less than two weeks ago, South Korea’s finance minister said the country was preparing to shell out $7.3 billion for its chip sector, to keep up with the torrents of state funding that are flowing around the world. Today, the government unveiled its promised package—and at $19 billion it’s more than twice as big as previously signaled.

“As we all know, semiconductors are a field where all-out national warfare is underway,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said, according to Reuters. “Win or lose, that depends on who can make cutting-edge semiconductors first.”

South Korea is one of the world’s top chipmaking nations, with its strength specifically lying in the memory market. Production has been booming recently, but the South Korean government would very much like the country to make more non-memory chips, where its share remains in the order of 2%. (The big beast, of course, remains Taiwan, which accounts for around a fifth of the world’s overall semiconductor industry, and which makes more than 90% of the most advanced chips.)

The new funding will mostly be used to provide low-interest loans for semiconductor firms’ private investments and to extend their tax incentives, and also to establish a fund for fabless firms—that is, chip companies that outsource the manufacturing to the likes of Taiwan’s TSMC—and for parts and equipment companies.

However, the Korea Herald reports, South Korea won’t be providing any direct subsidies. Countries like the U.S. may be going subsidy-mad—$39 billion of the $52 billion appropriated under its CHIPS and Science Act is being doled out in straight-up grants—but, according to Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok, those are countries that “have to build chip facilities from scratch.”

“Countries with decent chip manufacturing capability, like Korea and Taiwan, do not have direct subsidies,” Choi said, per the Herald. “What we are offering are tax benefits, and they are similar to subsidies in their character. When it comes to tax credits, we offer the highest level of incentives.”

According to recent Bloomberg number-crunching, governments worldwide have so far earmarked $380 billion to boost chip production. This is mostly down to the West’s gradual uncoupling from China and fears over a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but—in the zoomed-out sweep of history—it’s also a return to the good old-fashioned economic model of making stuff yourself, rather than contracting production out to the someone on the other side of the world.

Speaking of the CHIPS Act, the latest beneficiary of Washington’s largesse is Absolics, which will be taking up to $75 million in American subsidies to develop and make a type of glass that will be used in advanced packaging—i.e., bundling different types of chip into a single chipset.

Investment in advanced packaging is crucial if you want to end up with the kind of power-efficient chipsets that are used in AI and high-performance computing. And at this point, it’s worth pointing out that Absolics is over 80% owned by … South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate, SK Group, which is also parent of the world’s second-biggest memory-chip maker, SK Hynix.

Meanwhile, the largest South Korean conglomerate and memory-chip maker, Samsung, is also happily raking in up to $6.4 billion in CHIPS Act subsidies so it can build out R&D and advanced packaging capacity in the U.S. All-out national warfare indeed!

Bird Flu Is More Widespread Among Dairy Cows, Sewage Tests Suggest

Riley Griffin and Jessica Nix
Thu, May 23, 2024 




(Bloomberg) -- A Michigan farmworker who tested positive for bird flu is just the second person to have been infected since an outbreak in US cattle appeared in March. Surveillance of sewage suggests the virus may be more widespread among dairy cows than reported, raising workers’ risk.

Academic and industry-run labs have been leading the way toward more nuanced and complete information about the H5N1 virus’s range by analyzing wastewater. They found bird flu in sewage samples collected before the virus had been identified in US cows. They’re seeing signs in cities that are far from infected cattle herds. And they’re already giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention better information about where to focus its efforts.

While rarely seen in humans, the H5N1 strain has considered a pandemic threat for decades because it often jumps between species, sometimes causing lethal disease in people. As farmers resist testing, the US needs to expand its monitoring of sewage, particularly in rural areas around farms where the pathogen may be spreading, said Paul Friedrichs, director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.

“We’re going to need to do more work as a nation on how do we better structure wastewater surveillance in areas that don’t have or aren’t on a municipal wastewater system,” Friedrichs, a retired major general and joint staff surgeon at the Pentagon, said in an interview. “That’s the gap we’re going to have to figure out how to bridge.”

Concerned about lost income, dairy farms have resisted efforts to test cows and workers, potentially concealing the true scope of the virus’s spread.

Viruses are often excreted in feces, which prompted scientists to turn to wastewater early in the pandemic to track Covid’s spread, hunt for new trends and spot the emergence of concerning variants. Although it’s unable to show whether the source is infected humans, animals or products like milk, wastewater surveillance paints a more complete picture of where pathogens are emerging across broad geographic areas.

In Texas, for example, 19 out of 23 wastewater sites were found to contain traces of the virus between early March and the end of April, according to Texas Wastewater Environmental Biomonitoring. Meanwhile, the state has some 400 dairy farms, and just 14 herds have tested positive for bird flu to date, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Other Biden administration officials, who asked not to be named while describing the federal response, said they’re worried about the time it took the government to first spot the outbreak in cattle, which likely began in late 2023 after contact with sick migratory birds. That monthslong delay shows the limitations of US pandemic preparedness efforts and a disjointed public-health system, the officials said.

Friedrichs said the US should seek the help of additional wastewater experts and operations to develop “a more robust national picture.”

Tracking Technology

Specialists in the field include Verily, the Alphabet Inc. life-sciences unit that began working with Stanford University and Emory University to monitor wastewater during the pandemic. With funding from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and others, Verily expanded testing for more than dozen viruses to 190 sites, and in October, it was tapped to support the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System that includes hundreds more facilities.

Since it was first detected in US cattle in March, bird flu has been found in 52 herds from nine states. However, before the first reported case, Verily’s top wastewater scientist Bradley White noticed a strange trend: influenza A, a viral category that includes H5N1, was spiking in parts of the country. White had a hunch the surge was driven by bird flu, and developed a test for genetic signatures typical of H5N1 and its H5 cousins.

Using the assay to look back through old wastewater samples, White found an H5 virus had been present in Amarillo, Texas, as early as February — weeks before the White House was first alerted of the emerging outbreak. That shows the potential for wastewater surveillance as an early warning signal for bird flu, White said.

It appears bird flu has “run its course” in Texas, he said, as overall influenza A levels appear to be declining in the state. Verily announced this week that it had expanded its search for H5 markers to all 190 sites in an effort to better track the outbreak.

Recognizing the need for more monitoring, the CDC is also putting an additional $3 million into wastewater analysis, part of a $93 million package aimed at improving H5N1 surveillance. The agency said in 2022 that it had put more than $100 million toward testing for Covid in wastewater, and expected the funds to last for an additional three years. In March, it made a fiscal 2025 budget request for an additional $20 million to test sewage for emerging diseases.

The CDC is also starting a project to check sewage at 10 new locations close to livestock, and launching a study that would help distinguish whether human or animals were responsible for virus detected in wastewater. Last week, it launched an online wastewater data dashboard tracking influenza A. Between late April and mid-May, only two of six Michigan-based wastewater sites on the CDC dashboard showed moderate levels of influenza A.

Potential Mutations

Concern about H5N1 soared about two decades ago when a strain of the virus began running rampant in poultry, occasionally infecting people. Health officials worldwide began looking for signs of human-to-human transmission that might have signaled a potential pandemic before the outbreak finally subsided. While some human cases have been severe, even deadly, the two farmworkers infected in the recent US outbreak both had mild symptoms and recovered. No transmission between people has been seen.

H5N1 infections in cows can lead to decreased milk production and may raise their risk of other conditions, like pneumonia. Pasteurization kills the virus, and there’s no evidence of danger from commercial milk, cheese or ice cream.

Health officials are particularly concerned about tracking the virus on dairy farms where infected cows frequently come in contact with workers, and mutated viruses may find opportunities to infect humans. The dangers the virus has shown in the past raises the stakes for wastewater monitoring.

“The risk is the longer this outbreak continues, the more opportunities there may be for a spillover jump from an animal species to a human,” said Al Ozonoff, an infectious disease scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The next event experts worry about is, he said is “some viral evolution which creates an opportunity for human-to-human transmission.”

--With assistance from Ilena Peng.

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Deena Shanker
Thu, May 23, 2024 

(Bloomberg) -- Roughly 30% of Mondelez International Inc. shareholders voted in favor of a proposal on the company’s human rights policy in Russia and Ukraine, sending a clear signal to management that investors want the snack maker to provide more clarity on its business practices in the warring countries.

The proposal didn’t pass, so the company isn’t required to fulfill the request. But the support passed a key threshold that can often get executives to take requests seriously, and it adds more scrutiny to Mondelez’s continued presence in Russia after the withdrawal of many other Western companies.

“When support reaches 20-25%, companies are generally paying attention and willing to discuss implementing the proposal, even if only partially,” said Susana McDermott, communications director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

The proposal from shareholder Wespath Benefits and Investments said that the maker of Oreo cookies and Alpen Gold chocolate needs to increase disclosures so investors can better assess its performance on human rights in conflict zones, specifically naming Russia and Ukraine. (The filing contains an error, listing another resolution twice. The company has confirmed to Bloomberg that item number 8 includes the totals for the vote on human rights and an amendment will be filed.)

“The significant investor support for this resolution demonstrates that a substantial portion of Mondelez’s shareholders feel that human rights risk is a material issue that deserves heightened attention, especially as it relates to the company’s operations in conflict-affected and high-risk areas,” Wespath Managing Director of Sustainable Investment Strategies Jake Barnett said in an email. Wespath is “open to further engagement” on the issue, he added.

Mondelez, which didn’t comment, has previously said that it’s complying with sanctions while setting up the Russia business to operate independently, and that abandoning the country would risk giving its operations to another party that could use the full proceeds. Chief Executive Officer Dirk Van de Put also told the Financial Times earlier this year that investors don’t “morally care” about Mondelez’s ongoing presence in Russia.

Rich Stazinski, executive director of Heartland Initiative, a nonprofit research organization that promotes human rights in conflict areas, said the results show that perception is mistaken.

“We were reminded today that many Mondelez shareholders don’t share his myopic view and care deeply about the moral and material risks of irresponsibly operating in a state that’s waging war on its democratic neighbor,” he said in an email.

Ukrainian activists, who are lobbying for Western companies to “drop the keys and leave” Russia as a way to starve the country of funds, said they hope the result leads to more engagement from Mondelez. “Our numerous attempts to engage Mondelez on this issue have fallen on deaf ears,” a spokesperson from the group, B4Ukraine, said in a statement to Bloomberg. “Will the company’s leadership also ignore the calls from its investors?”

Mondelez has been a central focus of B4Ukraine, which is also calling for renewed sanctions including a European ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, US companies including McDonald’s Corp., Kellogg Co. and Starbucks Corp. moved to exit Russia. Mondelez, along with large multinationals such as PepsiCo Inc. and Nestlé SA stayed, despite criticism. Bloomberg News reported in February that Mondelez’s business had expanded in Russia by some measures, including higher imports of some goods, despite promises to pull back.

US intelligence agencies' embrace of generative AI is at once wary and urgent

Frank Bajak
Fri, May 24, 2024 




ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) — Long before generative AI's boom, a Silicon Valley firm contracted to collect and analyze non-classified data on illicit Chinese fentanyl trafficking made a compelling case for its embrace by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The operation's results far exceeded human-only analysis, finding twice as many companies and 400% more people engaged in illegal or suspicious commerce in the deadly opioid.

Excited U.S. intelligence officials touted the results publicly — the AI made connections based mostly on internet and dark-web data — and shared them with Beijing authorities, urging a crackdown.

One important aspect of the 2019 operation, called Sable Spear, that has not previously been reported: The firm used generative AI to provide U.S. agencies — three years ahead of the release of OpenAI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT product — with evidence summaries for potential criminal cases, saving countless work hours.

“You wouldn’t be able to do that without artificial intelligence,” said Brian Drake, the Defense Intelligence Agency's then-director of AI and the project coordinator.

The contractor, Rhombus Power, would later use generative AI to predict Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine with 80% certainty four months in advance, for a different U.S. government client. Rhombus says it also alerts government customers, who it declines to name, to imminent North Korean missile launches and Chinese space operations.

U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to embrace the AI revolution, believing they’ll otherwise be smothered by exponential data growth as sensor-generated surveillance tech further blankets the planet.

But officials are acutely aware that the tech is young and brittle, and that generative AI — prediction models trained on vast datasets to generate on-demand text, images, video and human-like conversation — is anything but tailor-made for a dangerous trade steeped in deception.

Analysts require “sophisticated artificial intelligence models that can digest mammoth amounts of open-source and clandestinely acquired information,” CIA director William Burns r ecently wrote in Foreign Affairs. But that won't be simple.

The CIA’s inaugural chief technology officer, Nand Mulchandani, thinks that because gen AI models “hallucinate” they are best treated as a “crazy, drunk friend” — capable of great insight and creativity but also bias-prone fibbers. There are also security and privacy issues: adversaries could steal and poison them, and they may contain sensitive personal data that officers aren't authorized to see.

That's not stopping the experimentation, though, which is mostly happening in secret.

An exception: Thousands of analysts across the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies now use a CIA-developed gen AI called Osiris. It runs on unclassified and publicly or commercially available data — what's known as open-source. It writes annotated summaries and its chatbot function lets analysts go deeper with queries.

Mulchandani said it employs multiple AI models from various commercial providers he would not name. Nor would he say whether the CIA is using gen AI for anything major on classified networks.

“It’s still early days,” said Mulchandani, “and our analysts need to be able to mark out with absolute certainty where the information comes from.” CIA is trying out all major gen AI models – not committing to anyone -- in part because AIs keep leapfrogging each other in ability, he said.

Mulchandani says gen AI is mostly good as a virtual assistant looking for "the needle in the needle stack.” What it won’t ever do, officials insist, is replace human analysts.

Linda Weissgold, who retired as deputy CIA director of analysis last year, thinks war-gaming will be a "killer app."

During her tenure, the agency was already using regular AI — algorithms and natural-language processing — for translation and tasks including alerting analysts during off hours to potentially important developments. The AI wouldn’t be able to describe what happened — that would be classified — but could say “here’s something you need to come in and look at.”

Gen AI is expected to enhance such processes.

Its most potent intelligence use will be in predictive analysis, believes Rhombus Power’s CEO, Anshu Roy. “This is probably going to be one of the biggest paradigm shifts in the entire national security realm — the ability to predict what your adversaries are likely to do.”

Rhombus’ AI machine draws on 5,000-plus datastreams in 250 languages gathered over 10-plus years including global news sources, satellite images and data cyberspace. All of it is open-source. “We can track people, we can track objects,” said Roy.

AI bigshots vying for U.S. intelligence agency business include Microsoft, which announced on May 7 that it was offering OpenAI’s GPT-4 for top-secret networks, though the product must still be accredited for work on classified networks.

A competitor, Primer AI, lists two unnamed intelligence agencies among its customers — which include military services, documents posted online for recent military AI workshops show. It offers AI-powered search in 100 languages to “detect emerging signals of breaking events" of sources including Twitter, Telegram, Reddit and Discord and help identify “key people, organizations, locations.” Primer lists targeting among its technology's advertised uses. In a demo at an Army conference just days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, company executives described how their tech separates fact from fiction in the flood of online information from the Middle East.

Primer executives declined to be interviewed.

In the near term, how U.S. intelligence officials wield gen AI may be less important than counteracting how adversaries use it: To pierce U.S. defenses, spread disinformation and attempt to undermine Washington's ability to read their intent and capabilities.

And because Silicon Valley drives this technology, the White House is also concerned that any gen AI models adopted by U.S. agencies could be infiltrated and poisoned, something research indicates is very much a threat.

Another worry: Ensuring the privacy of “U.S. persons” whose data may be embedded in a large-language model.

“If you speak to any researcher or developer that is training a large-language model, and ask them if it is possible to basically kind of delete one individual piece of information from an LLM and make it forget that -- and have a robust empirical guarantee of that forgetting -- that is not a thing that is possible,” John Beieler, AI lead at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview.

It's one reason the intelligence community is not in "move-fast-and-break-things” mode on gen AI adoption.

“We don’t want to be in a world where we move quickly and deploy one of these things, and then two or three years from now realize that they have some information or some effect or some emergent behavior that we did not anticipate,” Beieler said.

It's a concern, for instance, if government agencies decide to use AIs to explore bio- and cyber-weapons tech.

William Hartung, a senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says intelligence agencies must carefully assess AIs for potential abuse lest they lead to unintended consequences such as unlawful surveillance or a rise in civilian casualties in conflicts.

“All of this comes in the context of repeated instances where the military and intelligence sectors have touted “miracle weapons” and revolutionary approaches -- from the electronic battlefield in Vietnam to the Star Wars program of the 1980s to the “revolution in military affairs in the 1990s and 2000s -- only to find them fall short,” he said.

Government officials insist they are sensitive to such concerns. Besides, they say, AI missions will vary widely depending on the agency involved. There's no one-size-fits-all.

Take the National Security Agency. It intercepts communications. Or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Its job includes seeing and understanding every inch of the planet. Then there is measurement and signature intel, which multiple agencies use to track threats using physical sensors.

Supercharging such missions with AI is a clear priority.

In December, the NGA issued a request for proposals for a completely new type of generative AI model. The aim is to use imagery it collects — from satellites and at ground level – to harvest precise geospatial intel with simple voice or text prompts. Gen AI models don't map roads and railways and "don’t understand the basics of geography,” the NGA’s director of innovation, Mark Munsell, said in an interview.

Munsell said at an April conference in Arlington, Virginia that the U.S. government has currently only modeled and labeled about 3% of the planet.

Gen AI applications also make a lot of sense for cyberconflict, where attackers and defenders are in constant combat and automation is already in play.

But lots of vital intelligence work has nothing to do with data science, says Zachery Tyson Brown, a former defense intelligence officer. He believes intel agencies will invite disaster if they adopt gen AI too swiftly or completely. The models don't reason. They merely predict. And their designers can't entirely explain how they work.

Not the best tool, then, for matching wits with rival masters of deception.

“Intelligence analysis is usually more like the old trope about putting together a jigsaw puzzle, only with someone else constantly trying to steal your pieces while also placing pieces of an entirely different puzzle into the pile you’re working with,” Brown recently wrote in an in-house CIA journal. Analysts work with “incomplete, ambiguous, often contradictory snippets of partial, unreliable information.”

They place considerable trust in instinct, colleagues and institutional memories.

“I don’t see AI replacing analysts anytime soon,” said Weissgold, the former CIA deputy director of analysis.

Quick life-and-death decisions sometimes must be made based on incomplete data, and current gen AI models are still too opaque.

“I don’t think it will ever be acceptable to some president,” Weissgold said, “for the intelligence community to come in and say, ‘I don’t know, the black box just told me so.’”

Frank Bajak, The Associated Press

Attempts to regulate AI’s hidden hand in Americans’ lives flounder in US statehouses

Jesse Bedayn
Thu, May 23, 2024 




DENVER (AP) — The first attempts to regulate artificial intelligence programs that play a hidden role in hiring, housing and medical decisions for millions of Americans are facing pressure from all sides and floundering in statehouses nationwide.

Only one of seven bills aimed at preventing AI’s penchant to discriminate when making consequential decisions — including who gets hired, money for a home or medical care — has passed. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis hesitantly signed the bill on Friday.

Colorado’s bill and those that faltered in Washington, Connecticut and elsewhere faced battles on many fronts, including between civil rights groups and the tech industry, and lawmakers wary of wading into a technology few yet understand and governors worried about being the odd-state-out and spooking AI startups.

Polis signed Colorado’s bill “with reservations,” saying in an statement he was wary of regulations dousing AI innovation. The bill has a two-year runway and can be altered before it becomes law.

“I encourage (lawmakers) to significantly improve on this before it takes effect,” Polis wrote.

Colorado’s proposal, along with six sister bills, are complex, but will broadly require companies to assess the risk of discrimination from their AI and inform customers when AI was used to help make a consequential decision for them.

The bills are separate from more than 400 AI-related bills that have been debated this year. Most are aimed at slices of AI, such as the use of deepfakes in elections or to make pornography.

The seven bills are more ambitious, applying across major industries and targeting discrimination, one of the technology’s most perverse and complex problems.

“We actually have no visibility into the algorithms that are used, whether they work or they don’t, or whether we’re discriminated against,” said Rumman Chowdhury, AI envoy for the U.S. Department of State who previously led Twitter’s AI ethics team.

While anti-discrimination laws are already on the books, those who study AI discrimination say it’s a different beast, which the U.S. is already behind in regulating.

“The computers are making biased decisions at scale,” said Christine Webber, a civil rights attorney who has worked on class action lawsuits over discrimination including against Boeing and Tyson Foods. Now, Webber is nearing final approval on one of the first-in-the-nation settlements in a class action over AI discrimination.

“Not, I should say, that the old systems were perfectly free from bias either,” said Webber. But “any one person could only look at so many resumes in the day. So you could only make so many biased decisions in one day and the computer can do it rapidly across large numbers of people.”

When you apply for a job, an apartment or a home loan, there’s a good chance AI is assessing your application: sending it up the line, assigning it a score or filtering it out. It’s estimated as many as 83% of employers use algorithms to help in hiring, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

AI itself doesn’t know what to look for in a job application, so it’s taught based on past resumes. The historical data that is used to train algorithms can smuggle in bias.

Amazon, for example, worked on a hiring algorithm that was trained on old resumes: largely male applicants. When assessing new applicants, it downgraded resumes with the word “women’s” or that listed women’s colleges because they were not represented in the historical data — the resumes — it had learned from. The project was scuttled.

Webber’s class action lawsuit alleges that an AI system that scores rental applications disproportionately assigned lower scores to Black or Hispanic applicants. A study found that an AI system built to assess medical needs passed over Black patients for special care.

Studies and lawsuits have allowed a glimpse under the hood of AI systems, but most algorithms remain veiled. Americans are largely unaware that these tools are being used, polling from Pew Research shows. Companies generally aren’t required to explicitly disclose that an AI was used.

“Just pulling back the curtain so that we can see who’s really doing the assessing and what tool is being used is a huge, huge first step,” said Webber. “The existing laws don’t work if we can’t get at least some basic information.”

That’s what Colorado’s bill, along with another surviving bill in California, are trying to change. The bills, including a flagship proposal in Connecticut that was killed under opposition from the governor, are largely similar.

Colorado’s bill will require companies using AI to help make consequential decisions for Americans to annually assess their AI for potential bias; implement an oversight program within the company; tell the state attorney general if discrimination was found; and inform to customers when an AI was used to help make a decision for them, including an option to appeal.

Labor unions and academics fear that a reliance on companies overseeing themselves means it'll be hard to proactively address discrimination in an AI system before it's done damage. Companies are fearful that forced transparency could reveal trade secrets, including in potential litigation, in this hyper-competitive new field.

AI companies also pushed for, and generally received, a provision that only allows the attorney general, not citizens, to file lawsuits under the new law. Enforcement details have been left up to the attorney general.

While larger AI companies have more or less been on board with these proposals, a group of smaller Colorado-based AI companies said the requirements might be manageable by behemoth AI companies, but not by budding startups.

“We are in a brand new era of primordial soup,” said Logan Cerkovnik, founder of Thumper.ai, referring to the field of AI. “Having overly restrictive legislation that forces us into definitions and restricts our use of technology while this is forming is just going to be detrimental to innovation.”

All agreed, along with many AI companies, that what’s formally called “algorithmic discrimination” is critical to tackle. But they said the bill as written falls short of that goal. Instead, they proposed beefing up existing anti-discrimination laws.

Chowdhury worries that lawsuits are too costly and time consuming to be an effective enforcement tool, and laws should instead go beyond what even Colorado is proposing. Instead, Chowdhury and academics have proposed accredited, independent organization that can explicitly test for potential bias in an AI algorithm.

“You can understand and deal with a single person who is discriminatory or biased,” said Chowdhury. “What do we do when it’s embedded into the entire institution?”

___

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Jesse Bedayn, The Associated Press

White House pushes tech industry to shut down market for sexually abusive AI deepfakes

Matt O'brien And Barbara Ortutay
Thu, May 23, 2024 

The Associated Press


President Joe Biden's administration is pushing the tech industry and financial institutions to shut down a growing market of abusive sexual images made with artificial intelligence technology.

New generative AI tools have made it easy to transform someone's likeness into a sexually explicit AI deepfake and share those realistic images across chatrooms or social media. The victims — be they celebrities or children — have little recourse to stop it.

The White House is putting out a call Thursday looking for voluntary cooperation from companies in the absence of federal legislation. By committing to a set of specific measures, officials hope the private sector can curb the creation, spread and monetization of such nonconsensual AI images, including explicit images of children.

“As generative AI broke on the scene, everyone was speculating about where the first real harms would come. And I think we have the answer,” said Biden's chief science adviser Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

She described to The Associated Press a “phenomenal acceleration” of nonconsensual imagery fueled by AI tools and largely targeting women and girls in a way that can upend their lives.

“If you’re a teenage girl, if you’re a gay kid, these are problems that people are experiencing right now,” she said. “We’ve seen an acceleration because of generative AI that’s moving really fast. And the fastest thing that can happen is for companies to step up and take responsibility.”

A document shared with AP ahead of its Thursday release calls for action from not just AI developers but payment processors, financial institutions, cloud computing providers, search engines and the gatekeepers — namely Apple and Google — that control what makes it onto mobile app stores.

The private sector should step up to “disrupt the monetization” of image-based sexual abuse, restricting payment access particularly to sites that advertise explicit images of minors, the administration said.

Prabhakar said many payment platforms and financial institutions already say that they won't support the kinds of businesses promoting abusive imagery.

“But sometimes it’s not enforced; sometimes they don’t have those terms of service,” she said. “And so that’s an example of something that could be done much more rigorously.”

Cloud service providers and mobile app stores could also “curb web services and mobile applications that are marketed for the purpose of creating or altering sexual images without individuals’ consent," the document says.

And whether it is AI-generated or a real nude photo put on the internet, survivors should more easily be able to get online platforms to remove them.

The most widely known victim of pornographic deepfake images is Taylor Swift, whose ardent fanbase fought back in January when abusive AI-generated images of the singer-songwriter began circulating on social media. Microsoft promised to strengthen its safeguards after some of the Swift images were traced to its AI visual design tool.

A growing number of schools in the U.S. and elsewhere are also grappling with AI-generated deepfake nudes depicting their students. In some cases, fellow teenagers were found to be creating AI-manipulated images and sharing them with classmates.

Last summer, the Biden administration brokered voluntary commitments by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other major technology companies to place a range of safeguards on new AI systems before releasing them publicly.

That was followed by Biden signing an ambitious executive order in October designed to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy. While focused on broader AI concerns, including national security, it nodded to the emerging problem of AI-generated child abuse imagery and finding better ways to detect it.

But Biden also said the administration's AI safeguards would need to be supported by legislation. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is now pushing Congress to spend at least $32 billion over the next three years to develop artificial intelligence and fund measures to safely guide it, though has largely put off calls to enact those safeguards into law.

Encouraging companies to step up and make voluntary commitments “doesn’t change the underlying need for Congress to take action here,” said Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council.

Longstanding laws already criminalize making and possessing sexual images of children, even if they're fake. Federal prosecutors brought charges earlier this month against a Wisconsin man they said used a popular AI image-generator, Stable Diffusion, to make thousands of AI-generated realistic images of minors engaged in sexual conduct. An attorney for the man declined to comment after his arraignment hearing Wednesday.

But there's almost no oversight over the tech tools and services that make it possible to create such images. Some are on fly-by-night commercial websites that reveal little information about who runs them or the technology they're based on.

The Stanford Internet Observatory in December said it found thousands of images of suspected child sexual abuse in the giant AI database LAION, an index of online images and captions that’s been used to train leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion.

London-based Stability AI, which owns the latest versions of Stable Diffusion, said this week that it “did not approve the release” of the earlier model reportedly used by the Wisconsin man. Such open-sourced models, because their technical components are released publicly on the internet, are hard to put back in the bottle.

Prabhakar said it's not just open-source AI technology that's causing harm.

“It's a broader problem,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is a category that a lot of people seem to be using image generators for. And it’s a place where we’ve just seen such an explosion. But I think it’s not neatly broken down into open source and proprietary systems.”

——

AP Writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

Matt O'brien And Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press