A bitter row over campus privacy and AI-powered lawyers

When computer science students and faculty from the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University returned to campus in the summer of 2020, there was plenty to do.

The department had moved into a brand new building, complete with experimental super-sensing devices called Mites. Integrated at more than 300 locations throughout the building, these switch-sized devices measure 12 types of data, including motion and sound.

The Mites had been installed as part of a smart building research project and quickly met with resistance from students and professors who believed the devices would subject them to experimental surveillance without their consent.

The dispute deteriorated into a bitter dispute, accompanied by accusations of intimidation, vandalism, misinformation and workplace retaliation. Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo and Tate Ryan-Mosley

AI may not steal your job, but it could change it

Advances in artificial intelligence tend to be followed by worries around jobs. This latest wave of AI models, like ChatGPT and GPT-4, is no different. First we had the launch of the systems. Now we see the automation predictions.

Take lawyers: the outdated and slow-moving legal industry has been a candidate for technological disruption for some time. With the industry’s labor shortage and the need to process tons of complex documents, technology that can quickly understand and summarize text could be extremely helpful.