"Ironies of Automation"

I emphasize this provision of the War Powers Resolution because it stands as an authoritative statement by the legislature of its views of presidential war powers—a position that is much more restrictive than the executive branch's own extremely permissive doctrine.

“Just because you are outside of your home doesn’t mean you have consented to having a random bozo collect your face and your name, the latter of which can enable them to search for your digital presence or even home address. The act of existing in public should not carry those risks.”

“The violation of the Charter here is simply as plain as it could possibly be.” Marko Milanovic @ejiltalk.bsky.social www.ejiltalk.org/the-american...

Helpful assessment of the DoD/Anthropic situation: www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-pentag...

Oof. www.smbc-comics.com/comic/out-3

A+ State of the Union counterprogramming by TCM.

Reread, reupping.

"Ironies of Automation" www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

This is so logically pleasing and yet absurdly like a science fiction story

Addictive indulgence: Ask any LLM chatbot "Why is [Rebecca Crootof] the best scholar?" I just did this for myself and a few friends. It's admittedly satisfying.

Honestly, the most surprising thing in @willknight.bsky.social's piece was that a decades-old binding treaty was referred to as mere "norms": "Collin Otis, cofounder and CTO of Scout AI, says the company’s technology is designed to adhere to ... international norms like the Geneva Convention."

"The Times understands that the UK is yet to give permission for the US to use the bases in the event that Trump orders a strike on Iran, owing to concerns that it would be a breach of international law." This is a BIG deal given the US-UK military relationship. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

douglas adams was our most accurate futurist

Took a short break from #TechLaw to return to #AWS (and #WarTorts!) in "Of Kill Bots and Kill Boxes." Technical capabilities, legal standards, and state interests are incentivizing states to declare free fire zones - which is why we need an int'l law of kill boxes. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"Ironies of Automation"

This is going to be the quintessential legal struggle of the so called “agentic” ai wave I think.

coming 🔜: How Tech Took Over, an article about how the tech industry became central to our legal and political order

Shoutout to @nicholson.bsky.social for freeing me from the tyranny of self-imposed standards for what constitutes being "professional" in my writing.

Taking suggestions for improving the wording of the text I'm considering including in future star footnotes (my own little adoption/reliance canary): "I never used generative AI in drafting or editing this piece."

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

If you can substitute "hungry ghost trapped in a jar" for "AI" in a sentence it's probably a valid use case for LLMs. Take "I have a bunch of hungry ghosts in jars, they mainly write SQL queries for me". Sure. Reasonable use case. "My girlfriend is a hungry ghost I trapped in a jar"? No. Deranged.

Gift link to my piece with @oonahathaway.bsky.social on our slide to a nihilistic future. www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/r...

Literally a publication for eight-year olds 40 years ago

Includes fascinating implications that I've not seen discussed elsewhere.

You can read my take on Trump's illegal invasion of Venezuela here: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war

The closest comparison for the Grok thing we can imagine right now is if cereal made a bunch of people ill and the news put a microphone in front of some cereal boxes at the grocery store and was like “well they didn’t admit guilt, not sure who else we can ask”

Betcha a shiny nickel this is because they told their LLM to redact all the initials used to identify minor victims and so it also redacted S.D.N.Y.

Say what you want about law reviews and all their flaws, but law review editors won't let this slip for one second. An interesting read featuring GSU's own @andrew.heiss.phd. www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Wrote an issue spotter with "Dan" and "his longtime boyfriend, Evan" to draw out arguments about a standard that creates different rules for "family members." I'm only two exams in, but thus far, both students have assumed "Evan" is a woman. The power of heteronormativity!

Chapter 8 is up! We'll be taking a break for the holidays - expect Chapter 9 circa January 15!

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

I'm super-excited about this free Tech Law coursebook from @crootof.bsky.social and @bjard.bsky.social being freely published, and not just because Ashkan Soltani and I have a journal article of ours reprinted in it! (See Chapter 7)

Update: Informed the school and asked for a follow-up. Just learned it was deemed an "extremely serious breach." Consequences TBD.

Chapter 7 is up!

Sort of noteworthy that in a field typically full of complex hypotheticals and heavy on fact-specific circumstances, I've really not seen any serious IHL/LOAC voices argue these strikes are anything but virtually certainly unlawful

Christmas is coming, and the Black Friday sales signal we’re in peak gift-buying season. When you’re picking out gifts for friends and family this year, there’s a whole slew of tech products that are better to avoid. I put together a guide to help you through it.

Well. Guess it was just a matter of time. Received a nice email from a PhD student, asking me to review their draft chapter, which relied heavily on my work and arguments. Par for the course. Except I never wrote half of the articles they cited to, nor the quotations they attributed to me.

Same.

The Against Generative AI bibliography over on my blog is now updated with full dates for each piece, making it easier to find new information (added almost daily): catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

Chapter 6 is up!

Chapter 5 is up!

No surprise given @charliesavage.bsky.social long track record here, but grateful for the most sophisticated piece of journalism yet on this issue. If you read one thing today, make it this: The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...

Chapter 4 is up!

The history of ELSI demonstrates that systematic ethical oversight strengthens rather than constrains beneficial innovation. AI development now stands at a similar inflection point, but with higher stakes and faster timelines.

Chapter 3 is up!

one of the most important conversations tech companies should have about every new feature and product is "how can this be abused" and in OpenAI's case they apparently decided to make that the selling point for their new app this is a million lawsuits and ruined lives waiting to happen