OpEd
John Bailey
When AI Feels Human: The Promise and Peril of ...

A recent webinar with Julia Freeland Fisher, Ryan McBain, and Pat Pataranutaporn explored how AI is learning to simulate warmth, patience, and compassion—traits that make systems feel empathetic. These advances promise major benefits, including personalized tutoring, mental-health support, and reduced loneliness, but also raise concerns about dependency, weakened human bonds, and manipulative “addictive intelligence.” Experts urged designing AI that promotes human flourishing, measuring emotional and social well-being—not just accuracy—and enforcing transparency and child-safety standards. The central question: can AI empathy strengthen human connection rather than replace it?

When AI Feels Human: The Promise and Peril of Digital Empathy
OpEd
John Bailey
Reading the Mind of the Machine: Why GPT-5’s ...

OpenAI’s GPT-5 introduces a breakthrough in AI safety: real-time monitoring of its internal reasoning, or chain-of-thought (CoT). GPT-5 cut deceptive reasoning from 4.8% in earlier models to 2.1%, with 81% precision and 84% recall in flagging risks. Yet studies warn this interpretability may erode as models evolve toward opaque, machine-optimized reasoning. Both OpenAI and academic researchers urge treating CoT readability as a core safety metric—measured, reported, and preserved through training—to ensure humans retain visibility into how advanced AI systems reason, decide, and potentially deceive.

Reading the Mind of the Machine: Why GPT-5’s Chain-of-Thought Monitoring Matters for AI Safety
OpEd
John Bailey
The AI Action Plan: Securing America’s Future ...

The White House’s 2025 AI Action Plan outlines an ambitious roadmap aimed at securing America’s global leadership in artificial intelligence through rapid innovation, strategic infrastructure, and assertive international engagement. Emphasizing open-source models, regulatory sandboxes, and workforce initiatives, the plan boldly contrasts previous approaches by accelerating deployment and competitiveness over precautionary regulation. However, critical gaps remain in AI interpretability, state-federal dynamics, copyright clarity, and execution specifics. The ultimate measure of success will depend not merely on technological advancement, but on ensuring responsible governance, maintaining public trust, and effectively managing AI’s profound risks alongside its transformative opportunities.

The AI Action Plan: Securing America’s Future in the Age of Intelligence
OpEd
John Bailey
The Intelligence of Things Is Here—Reflections ...

Google I/O 2025 underscored a pivotal shift toward the "Intelligence of Things," embedding advanced AI into everyday tools and devices, seamlessly integrating technology into daily life rather than creating isolated products. Google's vision emphasizes proactive, personalized AI, exemplified by Gemini 2.5’s deep research tools and immersive communication innovations like Beam and real-time multilingual translation in Google Meet. The event highlighted AI's transformative impact on education, notably through Project Astra's multimodal learning capabilities and LearnLM’s integration into Gemini, significantly enhancing pedagogical effectiveness. Central to this evolution is the critical role of agile public policy in facilitating safe innovation, ensuring AI technologies serve human needs by enhancing safety, productivity, and quality of life.

The Intelligence of Things Is Here—Reflections from Google I/O 2025
OpEd
John Bailey
Agents, Access, and Advantage: Lessons from ...

Meta was kind enough to extend an invitation for me to attend its inaugural LlamaCon—a one-day developer summit devoted to the Llama family of open-source large language models. It offered the chance to better understand the direction in which both the technology and its surrounding ecosystem are moving, and therefore merits a close read by anyone shaping AI strategy or policy.

Agents, Access, and Advantage: Lessons from Meta’s LlamaCon

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When AI Feels Human: The Promise and Peril of Digital Empathy

When AI Feels Human: The Promise and Peril of Digital Empathy

A recent webinar with Julia Freeland Fisher, Ryan McBain, and Pat Pataranutaporn explored how AI is learning to simulate warmth, patience, and compassion—traits that make systems feel empathetic. These advances promise major benefits, including personalized tutoring, mental-health support, and reduced loneliness, but also raise concerns about dependency, weakened human bonds, and manipulative “addictive intelligence.” Experts urged designing AI that promotes human flourishing, measuring emotional and social well-being—not just accuracy—and enforcing transparency and child-safety standards. The central question: can AI empathy strengthen human connection rather than replace it?