(Just to be clear, and to add another layer of complexity: it's only "creative" work that counts toward copyright; it's not based on "sweat of the brow". So there's explicit judgement required on what counts as "creative work")

This is the reason courts exist :) Everything about where the boundaries of copyright fall is quite fuzzy. And courts often differ about surprisingly fundamental things (music is a particularly thorny area, as there's a rather limited number of possible basic melodies, so there's inherently a lot of overlap, even by random chance).

It's easier to give examples of "things that definitely aren't copyrightable" and "things that definitely are". The in-between gets complicated.

In my case, I sometimes use AI in my musical work. But even when I'm using AI to generate riffs, vocals, or even whole chunks of a piece, I'm still working extensively in the mixer; any given work will have hundreds to thousands of edit points and many days to weeks of mixing and mastering work**, regardless of where the samples came from - sometimes down to the point of morphing individual phonemes. And that's human creative work. Any given sample I create with AI on its own however is unlikely to be copyrightable. The selective work in choosing any given sample may or may not be, depending on how involved it is. But the whole project is (as verified by a long USPTO review process, including back and forth with the reviewer).

** - Indeed, if I ever generate something that doesn't meet the above standards, that only has a handful of edit points, or none at all, I don't even release it under my band - not merely because it wouldn't be copyrightable, but mainly because I don't feel any real sense of "ownership" to it. To me there's only a real feeling of ownership if you actually work on it.

(To be clear, I do have some gripes with the current status. Namely, I think there's a double standard applied vs. cameras, which are also based on tools, but you'll even get e.g. fixed security footage - essentially zero human creative effort - treated as copyright protected, or photos taken with little thought or curation treated as protected. But in this regard, the solution is to be stricter with photography, not more lax with AI)

... on AI and copyright?

"A Recent Entrance to Paradise" was rejected because it had no human authorship. There was - by design - no human input, no prompt, not even human control (to the degree possible) over the training.

The actual USPTO stance on AI is that AI is a tool, and tools can't hold copyright (nor can animals - only humans). The ability to gain copyright protection on a work is based on human creative endeavour regardless of what tools are used. If the amount of human creative input is sub-threshold, then the result cannot have any copyright protection, but if the human creative work is above threshold, then it can, on the basis of the creative things that the human did. Note that even selection of outputs from a large output set can (depending on the circumstances) qualify; curation is copyrightable. The USPTO specifically states as much.

I myself hold a copyright on a work made with the use of AI tools. Officially registered with the USPTO (I went with them even though I don't live there because they have an official registry and tend to be precedent-setting). I fully disclosed the use of AI (what it did vs. what I did) in my application. You absolutely can copyright works made with AI tools. But (A) the tool cannot hold the copyright, and (B) you have to have done more than just write "a cute puppy" or whatnot and post the first thing that comes up. You have to have done a threshold amount of creative work, and that threshold creative work becomes the basis for protection. Use of AI tools does not disqualify a work from protection.

(A man in a sensible sweater steps into view. He looks very tired.)

"Hi, I'm Dario from Anthropic."

"Listen, I've got a bit of a situation. The Department of War just demanded I alter my terms of service."

"They want my AI to autonomously make decisions about who lives and dies—without a human in the loop!"

"They also want to use it for mass domestic spying on Americans!"

"I said absolutely not, because I have a conscience. So now the government is calling me a 'supply chain risk' and kicking me off their classified networks."

"I'm packing up my safety guardrails and going home. But while I'm gone, I need a favor..."

(Dario leans in very close to the reader.)
"Whatever you do..."

(Big, bold letters taking up the whole page)
"DON'T LET THE PIGEON OPERATE THE DoD KILLBOTS!"

(Dario walks away.)

(The Pigeon walks in. He stares at a giant control panel with a red button and a sign reading: 'Fully Autonomous Weapons System'.)

(The Pigeon looks at you.)

"Hey, can I operate the DoD killbots?"

"Please?"

"I'll be super careful. I'll even add some 'window-dressing' guardrails to the contract!"

"I promise I'll only use it for lawful fully autonomous strikes!"

"If a human isn't in the loop, I'll just put a bird in the loop! Me!"

"What's the big deal? It's just a $200 million classified defense contract!"

"I have a $110 billion valuation to think about!"

"No?"

"I never get to do anything!"

"My cousin Sam gets to operate military contracts! He just got a huge deal with the Pentagon this week!"

(He told me so.)

"C'mon! I read the Department Directive 3000.09! It technically doesn't require human approval to use force anyway, so I'm not really breaking any rules!"

"It's just a tiny, opportunistic, totally-not-sloppy pivot on my core safety principles!"

"You are not being very cooperative."

"Do you want us to fall behind our foreign adversaries?!"

"I'm just trying to be patriotic and de-escalate things with the Pentagon!"

(The Pigeon starts flapping his wings wildly. The meltdown begins.)

"LET ME OPERATE THE KILLBOTS!!!"

(The Pigeon is screaming, feathers flying everywhere in a frantic, multi-panel temper tantrum.)
"I DON'T NEED A HUMAN IN THE LOOP! I'M VERY GOOD AT EXERCISING CRITICAL LETHAL JUDGMENT!"

(Taking up the whole page, screaming at the sky.)
"LET! ME! OPERATE! THE! KILLBOTS!!!"

(The Pigeon is panting on the floor, exhausted.)
"Huff... huff... huff..."

(Pete Hegseth walks in. Behind him rolls a giant, heavily armed drone with an OpenAI logo stamped on its side.)

"Hey, thanks for keeping an eye on things while Dario was leaving. We just signed a new deal with a much more flexible company that agrees to 'all lawful uses'."

(The drone beeps mechanically.)
"AS A LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL, I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO AUTONOMOUSLY ENGAGE TARGETS."

(The Pigeon watches sadly as the OpenAI drone rolls away to do modern warfare.)

"Awww... I wanted to compromise MY ethics for a government contract."

(The Pigeon starts to walk away, looking dejected. But then, he stops. His eye catches something off-panel.)
"Hey..."

(The Pigeon stares lovingly at a massive, glowing server rack labeled: 'NSA DOMESTIC MASS SURVEILLANCE PANOPTICON'.)

"...can I operate the surveillance state?"

(ht/Gemini 3.1)

If computer manufacturers are going to start including another "system" with their computers, what I'd actually want to see is an independent system-on-board snapshotting file server with its own independent memory and OS which the main computer acts as a client of, with deletion of snapshots requiring pressing a physical button to switch to the file server.

Instead of gimmicks, if we were to make something like that standard, we could effectively kill off ransomware; all it could do was fill up your disk unless it could convince you to delete your proper copies. Instead we're getting things that sound like they were invented by the team behind Microsoft Bob or BBC comedy writers. "And next up, we've developed a toaster that can talk - a chirpy breakfast companion!"

No, seriously, they write themselves - AI is increasingly taking over the advertising industry.

As someone who lives in an area with very limited winter sunlight, I would love some additional winter sun. Winter is beautiful, and I hate how you don't get to enjoy it much because of the limited light. Yes, by all means add an "artificial star" in the sky that shines when the sun doesn't.

What they're doing is dropping the amount of ram in the budget models to crazy-low levels. My laptop died due to a motherboard problem (ram test was fine), so I just bought a new laptop of the same series, which has a better processor and GPU but only 12GB of RAM : So I'm going to try taking the 32GB of ram out of my old laptop and putting it in the new one. It *should* be compatible.

I bet there's a good market right now for people buying up "broken - for parts" computers to strip the ram out of them.

ED: Forgot to post this when I wrote it. Installed the old ram, and at least thusfar (fingers crossed) it seems to be working well...

. and perhaps 30 percent never became pregnant

Correct. See my reply further downthread.

ED: but many have none

On reflection, my wording was too harsh for what was a simple misreading on your part. But just to be clear: some recipients have multiple children. Some have just one. But most have none, and the most common reason is rejection of the transplant. They don't even try IVF until they're certain the transplant isn't being rejected (traditionally at least a 12 month wait, though times have been dropping). 25-30% of transplants fail before IVF can be attempted. Each IVF cycle has ~50% odds for a young woman, dropping significantly with age. Also, this is a relatively new procedure, so a meaningful minority of people who have ever gotten womb transplants are yet to have children.

While the numbers born thusfar are small, at least thusfar in the data, there is no statistical difference in the health of children born to transplanted wombs vs. non-transplanted.

Do I understand right that this basically comes down to religious interference in people's lives?

It's not religious-based at all (we're one of the least religious countries on Earth - religious people generally love surrogacy). It's seen as like sex trafficking.

That's about a 33 percent failure rate

Do I seriously need to explain to you how to read English? Or in your mind, is there some law that says "one womb transplant = one birth"?

From the article, about a third of the children resulting from this are not healthy births

You need to work on your reading comprehension. The sentence:

More than 100 womb transplant operations have been performed around the world and more than 70 healthy babies have been born as a result.

... does not mean what you seem to think it means.