I suspect much of the public would react very differently to AI (and toward AI co employees) if it was built like the NASA moon-landing, focusing on hard public good projects and by civil servants. 🤷‍♂️

And longer substack post: open.substack.com/pub/trialser...

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · 3w ago

🚀Last week we announced the launch of a new AI tool in partnership with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender! AI can empower civil servants and improve public services, and this project provides a blueprint for doing so responsibly. 👇Lots of takeaways, below!

🚀Last week we announced the launch of a new AI tool in partnership with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender! AI can empower civil servants and improve public services, and this project provides a blueprint for doing so responsibly. 👇Lots of takeaways, below!

Dominik Stammbach@dominsta.bsky.social · 4w ago

How can AI support public defense? We have worked on this question for the last two years, and have (1) built an AI retrieval tool for the NJ Office of the Public Defender and (2) conducted qualitative interviews with defenders. Our main insights 👇(1/12)

Btw, we actually covered almost exactly this scenario in our piece a few years back. But: negligence and products liability are (maybe) shifting—at least for co's that take few safety precautions—so there may be some updating needed. www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/hendersonhas...

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · 4w ago

This is wild, but really great investigative journalism. I guess all the jailbreaking papers trying to prevent "How do I build a bomb?" queries have been vindicated... So much for it being an unrealistic scenario... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/u... casp.ac/reports/ai-e...

How can AI support public defense? We have worked on this question for the last two years, and have (1) built an AI retrieval tool for the NJ Office of the Public Defender and (2) conducted qualitative interviews with defenders. Our main insights 👇(1/12)

This is wild, but really great investigative journalism. I guess all the jailbreaking papers trying to prevent "How do I build a bomb?" queries have been vindicated... So much for it being an unrealistic scenario... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/u... casp.ac/reports/ai-e...

You can also check out our website and explore the work in an interactive way! Pick which question you think is better from justices or models, see the coverage of different legal issues from various models, & more! princeton-polaris-lab.github.io/oral-args-we...

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · last mo.

The future of oral argument or trial prep will obviously involve AI. But how can we measure quality of simulations? We build out an eval suite and run some studies! Sycophancy & issue coverage are clear areas of improvement, but models are surprisingly useful! 👇👇

"Altman told staff that the government would be 'approving access customer by customer during this preview period'" Opaque de-facto licensing regimes are a recipe for corruption. Not sure this is the best place to have landed on AI governance... www.theinformation.com/articles/tru...

The future of oral argument or trial prep will obviously involve AI. But how can we measure quality of simulations? We build out an eval suite and run some studies! Sycophancy & issue coverage are clear areas of improvement, but models are surprisingly useful! 👇👇

skyien-z.bsky.social@skyien-z.bsky.social · last mo.

@nealkatyal.bsky.social says he practiced for Supreme Court oral arguments using #HarveyAI. But does AI as an oral argument simulator live up to the hype? In a new paper, we present the first comprehensive framework for evaluating AI as a practice partner for oral argument preparation.

A surprisingly detailed accounting of how Grok is used in DoW, presumably along with other models in Maven. Maven workflows "enabled" US forces to hit 2000 targets in Iran over 96 hours. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The Fable export control is just one potential method that the government can use to pull models offline. The gov could also eventually use the Atomic Energy Act, saying that a model is "born secret" if it can reconstruct classified nuclear secrets. Check out blogpost on it!👇

AI "Born Secret"? The Atomic Energy Act, AI, and Federalism

A law & policy deep dive.

trialserrors.ai

The rule against viewpoint discrimination is one of the most imptl in First A law. But as I show in a new paper, forthcoming in the U Penn Law Review, the test of viewpoint discrimination has changed a LOT in the past few decades, in good ways and bad. 🧵 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Forcing people to leave the country to transfer to a green card, will hurt families, communities, and United States innovation. If you aren't aware, adjustment of status can take many months—if not years. I hope this policy is reconsidered.

Current discussions on AI's labor impacts seem to glaze over: How long will the transition take, in our lifetime? Will wages be the same? Will power be more/less concentrated? Will peoples' new jobs be as satisfying as the career they had built? Will economic mobility be the same?

Check out new semantic search on CourtListener which @dominsta.bsky.social and our lab contributed to!

Dominik Stammbach@dominsta.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Update: semantic search is now live across all of CourtListener, not just the API 🚀 You can search case law in natural language directly on CourtListener! free.law/2026/05/04/s...

if you try to get Claude to speak Armenian it just outputs "delays"! Seems like glitch tokens are still unresolved. Interesting (kind of sad?) to see Opus thrown into a loop.

From oral arguments yesterday!

Btw, did a bit of a rebranding of the substack. Will endeavor to post more there. h/t @dbateyko.bsky.social on the Trials & Errors name. Super fitting name for a group whose focus is both in reinforcement learning and in law/governance research. www.trialserrors.ai

Trials & Errors | Peter Henderson | Substack

Various news, thoughts, and findings on the intersection of law, policy, and artificial intelligence. Click to read Trials & Errors, by Peter Henderson, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscri...

trialserrors.ai

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is a challenging legal problem for NeurIPS (and other conference participants)! You might be wondering how this is possible given the First Amendment? I wrote a quick explainer on the current status quo of relevant First Amendment cases & law to get you up to speed. 🔗👇

This is a challenging legal problem for NeurIPS (and other conference participants)! You might be wondering how this is possible given the First Amendment? I wrote a quick explainer on the current status quo of relevant First Amendment cases & law to get you up to speed. 🔗👇

NeurIPS Conference@neuripsconf.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NeurIPS is aware of the community's concerns regarding the list of sanctions. NeurIPS is an inclusive community focused on free scientific discourse. We deeply value the research that comes from everyone in our community.

I feel this urgency too. But this is all so utterly avoidable with good policymaking. No one should be left behind because they didn't accumulate capital in 2026. There are so many people who aren't plugged into these conversations or are simply not in a position to do anything about it.

I’m really excited about our new paper! I think we will ultimately need to draw on expertise from both law and AI to get alignment right, and this paper lays out that vision in more detail. arxiv.org/abs/2601.04175

The current direction of AI labs is “we’re building something that’s going to replace you and we have no plan to make sure you’re going to land in a better place, but we’ll make billions.” The logical reaction is, “shut it down.” Labs need to get serious on addressing labor impacts.

Many legal scholars talk about lock-in effects for LLMs from the conversation history/memories (akin to social media). But if an LLM can access the info & is capable, you can just ask the LLM to give it to you, making it far easier to switch providers than social media. Good example of that here.

Only a couple of days after my last post, vibe hacking in full force.

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Missing from the headline: "using Claude Code." Vibe hacking is already a thing. I've been saying this for a while, but no model-level safeguards will prevent it entirely. What they can do is slow it down enough for us to put societal-level safeguards in place. www.popsci.com/technology/r...

Only a couple of days after my last post, vibe hacking in full force. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Missing from the headline: "using Claude Code." Vibe hacking is already a thing. I've been saying this for a while, but no model-level safeguards will prevent it entirely. What they can do is slow it down enough for us to put societal-level safeguards in place. www.popsci.com/technology/r...

Following by a panel on GenAI, Agentic AI, Law, and CS (1:15-2:00pm ET) with @peterhenderson.bsky.social (Princeton) and Georgios Piliouras (Google DeepMind) Spotlight Talks (2:30pm-4:00pm) by @aloni-bologna.bsky.social (UChicago), Rebecca Wexler (Columbia), and @jubaz.bsky.social (Georgia Tech)

Missing from the headline: "using Claude Code." Vibe hacking is already a thing. I've been saying this for a while, but no model-level safeguards will prevent it entirely. What they can do is slow it down enough for us to put societal-level safeguards in place. www.popsci.com/technology/r...

That was fast.

Peter Henderson@peterhenderson.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New copyright law "hypothetical" just dropped.

New copyright law "hypothetical" just dropped.

Warner Music and Udio settle their copyright case, agree to collaborate on "new song creation service that will allow users to remix tunes by established artists." Expect more such settlements as copyright holders look to leverage AI to boost revenue!