They all had some effect, surely. Could I have done it without them? Hang on, what *is* the it that I wouldn't have done? Real life usually lacks counterfactuals. I sense this topic could add some spice to the discussions of those who have been asking about the role of psychoactive substances in art since time immemorial, though the AI component adds nothing fundamentally new.

Autonomous vehicle startup Gatik says it will start using its self-driving box trucks in Kansas as it expands to more territories. Governor Laura Kelly last week signed a bill that makes it legal for self-driving vehicles to run on public roads under certain circumstances. Following a similar effort in Arkansas, Gatik says it and its partner Walmart worked with legislators and stakeholders to "develop and propose legislation that prioritizes the safe and structured introduction of autonomous vehicles in the state." Before Gatik's trucks hit Kansas roads, the company says it will provide training to first responders and law enforcement. Gatik claims that, since it started commercial operations three years ago, it has maintained a clean safety record in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Ontario, Canada.

More than a million Illinois residents will receive a $397 settlement payment from Facebook this week, thanks to a legal battle over the platform's since-retired photo-tagging system that used facial recognition. It's been nearly seven years since the 2015 class-action lawsuit was first filed, which accused Facebook of breaking a state privacy law that forbids companies from collecting biometric data without informing users. The platform has since faced broad, global criticism for its use of facial recognition tech, and last year Meta halted the practice completely on Facebook and Instagram. But as Vox notes, the company has made no promises to avoid facial recognition in future products. Even though it was first filed in Illinois, the class-action lawsuit eventually wound up on Facebook's home turf -- at the U.S. District Court for Northern California.

Following that gaffe, Insomniac, the Sony subsidiary behind "Ratchet & Clank" and "Marvel's Spider-Man," plans to donate $50,000 to the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), according to an internal email sent May 13 from Insomniac CEO Ted Price viewed by The Washington Post. Sony will match the donation, along with donations from individual Insomniac employees if they make them via the company's "PlayStation Cares" program. In addition, Sony now plans to formulate an initiative to provide financial assistance to employees who might have to travel to different states to receive reproductive care. Insomniac will aid in formulating that policy.

As companies increasingly involve AI in their hiring processes, advocates, lawyers, and researchers have continued to sound the alarm. Algorithms have been found to automatically assign job candidates different scores based on arbitrary criteria like whether they wear glasses or a headscarf or have a bookshelf in the background. Hiring algorithms can penalize applicants for having a Black-sounding name, mentioning a women's college, and even submitting their résumé using certain file types. They can disadvantage people who stutter or have a physical disability that limits their ability to interact with a keyboard. All of this has gone widely unchecked.

What kinds of arguments do people make, and what effect do they have on others? Normative constraints on argument-making are as old as philosophy itself, but little is known about the diversity of arguments made in practice. We use NLP tools to extract patterns of argument-making from the Reddit site "Change My View" (r/CMV). This reveals six distinct argument patterns: not just the familiar deductive and inductive forms, but also arguments about definitions, relevance, possibility and cause, and personal experience. Data from r/CMV also reveal differences in efficacy: personal experience and, to a lesser extent, arguments about causation and examples, are most likely to shift a person's view, while arguments about relevance are the least. Finally, our methods reveal a gradient of argument-making preferences among users: a two-axis model, of "personal--impersonal" and "concrete--abstract", can account for nearly 80% of the strategy variance between individuals.

The parents of several Oxford High School students, including deceased Tate Myre, have filed a lawsuit against shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley, his parents and school staff. The parents of two victims of the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan are demanding more transparency from the Oxford Community School District after the board voted against moving forward with an independent investigation into the tragedy last fall. The Oxford Board of Education on Tuesday announced that the district has, for the second time, declined an offer from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to conduct a third-party investigation into the school shooting with the goal of determining how shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley, 15, managed to kill four students and injure seven others last fall. "To me, this is an admission of guilt," Buck Myre, father of deceased 16-year-old Tate Myre, said during a Thursday press conference. "They know that things didn't go right that day, and they don't want to stand up and fix it. They're going to hide behind governmental immunity and they're going to hide behind insurance and the lawyers. What's this teach the kids? "We just want accountability," he added later when asked why an independent investigation is important to parents. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald revealed in December 2021 that school officials met with Crumbley and his parents to discuss violent drawings he created just hours before the deadly rampage. The 15-year-old suspect was able to convince them during the meeting that the concerning drawings were for a "video game." His parents "flatly refused" to take their son home. The shooting has also resulted in several lawsuits, including two that seek $100 million in damages each, against the school district and school employees on behalf of the family of two sisters who attend the school. Ethan Robert Crumbley, 15, charged with first-degree murder in a high school shooting, poses in a jail booking photograph taken at the Oakland County Jail in Pontiac, Michigan. Myre and Meghan Gregory, the mother of 15-year-old Keegan Gregory, who survived the shooting but witnessed and was traumatized by Crumbley's rampage, are suing the shooting suspect's parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, as well as school staff for negligence. JENNIFER CRUMBLEY, ETHAN CRUMBLEY'S MOTHER, SENT OMINOUS TEXTS ON DAY OF SHOOTING: 'HE CAN'T BE LEFT ALONE' "They're the ones that know what happened that day.

Employers have a responsibility to inspect artificial intelligence tools for disability bias and should have plans to provide reasonable accommodations, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Justice Department said in guidance documents. The guidance released Thursday is the first from the federal government on the use of AI hiring tools that focuses on their impact on people with disabilities. The guidance also seeks to inform workers of their right to inquire about a company's use of AI and to request accommodations, the agencies said. "Today we are sounding an alarm regarding the dangers of blind reliance on AI and other technologies that are increasingly used by employers," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke told reporters. The DOJ enforces disability discrimination laws with respect to state and local government employers, while the EEOC enforces such laws in the private sector and federal employers.

Federal agencies are the latest to alert companies to potential bias in AI recruiting tools. As the AP notes, the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have warned employers that AI hiring and productivity systems can violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. These technologies might discriminate against people with disabilities by unfairly ruling out job candidates, applying incorrect performance monitoring, asking for illegal sensitive info or limiting pay raises and promotions. Accordingly, the government bodies have released documents (DOJ, EEOC) outlining the ADA's requirements and offering help to improve the fairness of workplace AI systems. Businesses should ensure their AI allows for reasonable accommodations.They should also consider how any of their automated tools might affect people with various disabilities.

The Biden administration announced Thursday that employers who use algorithms and artificial intelligence to make hiring decisions risk violating the Americans with Disabilities Act if applicants with disabilities are disadvantaged in the process. The majority of American employers now use the automated hiring technology -- tools such as resume scanners, chatbot interviewers, gamified personality tests, facial recognition and voice analysis. The ADA is supposed to protect people with disabilities from employment discrimination, but just 19 percent of disabled Americans were employed in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, which made the announcement jointly with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, told NBC News there is "no doubt" that increased use of the technologies is "fueling some of the persistent discrimination." "We hope this sends a strong message to employers that we are prepared to stand up for people with disabilities who are locked out of the job market because of increased reliance on these bias-fueled technologies," she said.