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Peter Henderson

@peterhenderson.bsky.social
3.8K followers 559 following 261 posts

Assistant Professor, leading the Polaris Lab @ Princeton (www.polarislab.org); Researching: RL, Strategic Decision-Making+Exploration; Law

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Reposted by Peter Henderson
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy @princetoncitp.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
CITP's @dominsta.bsky.social + @peterhenderson.bsky.social for @techpolicypress.bsky.social: Why Public Defense Should Incorporate AI Carefully 🔻 www.techpolicy.press/why-public-d...
techpolicy.press
Why Public Defense Should Incorporate AI Carefully
In interviews with public defenders, Princeton's Dominik Stammbach and Peter Henderson assessed their AI perspectives.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
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. 🤷‍♂️
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
And longer substack post: open.substack.com/pub/trialser...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
🚀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!
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
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...
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Reposted by Peter Henderson
Dominik Stammbach @dominsta.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
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)
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
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...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
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...
princeton-polaris-lab.github.io
AI-Assisted Moot Courts: Simulating Justice-Specific Questioning in Oral Arguments
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
"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...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
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! 👇👇
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
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...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
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!👇
trialserrors.ai
AI "Born Secret"? The Atomic Energy Act, AI, and Federalism
A law & policy deep dive.
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Reposted by Peter Henderson
Genevieve Lakier @genevievelakier.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
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....
papers.ssrn.com
The New Law of Viewpoint Discrimination
<p><span>The prohibition against viewpoint discrimination is one of the oldest and most important principles of First Amendment law. But what it means to viewpo
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
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.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
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?
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Check out new semantic search on CourtListener which @dominsta.bsky.social and our lab contributed to!
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
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.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
From oral arguments yesterday!
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
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
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...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
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. 🔗👇
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
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.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
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
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
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.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
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.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Only a couple of days after my last post, vibe hacking in full force.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Only a couple of days after my last post, vibe hacking in full force. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
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Reposted by Peter Henderson
ACM SIGecom @acmsigecom.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
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)
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
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...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
That was fast.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
New copyright law "hypothetical" just dropped.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
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!
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
We’ve been pushing hard on AI for public good. One example: partnering with Courtlistener to launch accessible legal semantic search! Many more cool AI projects coming soon from my group aimed at improving access to justice, often spearheaded by @dominsta.bsky.social !
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Sora2 is speedrunning my AI law class. We covered issues with copyrighted characters in week 2, and right of publicity claims in week 3. Georgia has a postmortem right of publicity claim. Some states don't (e.g., famous Marilyn Monroe estate battle).
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
How Gemini Compute Use Agent feels about the "Choose Chrome" popup. gemini.browserbase.com
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Why might AI companies take on larger copyright litigation risks? If they estimate AGI-scale impacts are 2-3 yrs out, litigation will lag that long. By then, the bet might be: govts step in (too big to fail), rightsholders reliant on AI, fair use prevails, or have $$$ to settle.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Quick take: Are open-weight AI models getting a fair shake in evals? A few thoughts on comparing systems-to-models, sparked by Anthropic’s recent postmortem. Check it our most recent post: www.ailawpolicy.com/p/quick-take...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
GPT-5-codex just ``git reset --hard'' ongoing changes in a repo, saying "I panicked!" h/t Zeyu Shen @ Princeton
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
☢️ Can an AI model be "born secret" when it comes to nuclear and radiological risks? What powers does the Atomic Energy Act give the federal government over frontier models? It might be more than you think! And may preempt parts of state regs. Check out our post: www.ailawpolicy.com/p/ai-born-se...
ailawpolicy.com
AI "Born Secret"? The Atomic Energy Act, AI, and Federalism
A law & policy deep dive.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Some quick thoughts on the recent copyright litigation developments: "Anthropic Settles Its Copyright Litigation—and Why That Was the Right Move" 🔗 www.ailawpolicy.com/p/anthropic-...
ailawpolicy.com
Anthropic Settles Its Copyright Litigation—and Why That Was the Right Move
As well as what it means for the broader landscape of litigation.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Annnnnndddd Judge Alsup just rejected the settlement. Still some time to fix it. Rejection was mostly on the grounds that the class was under-specified (no final list of works, no opt-out/notification mechanism solidified). news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/anthr...
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Reposted by Peter Henderson
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy @princetoncitp.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
💡New on the CITP Blog: "Statutory Construction & Interpretation for AI" > What if an LLM concludes a user's behavior is “egregiously immoral" -- & contacts authorities? CITP researchers with Prof @peterhenderson.bsky.social's POLARIS Lab provide a possible explanation.🔗👇
blog.citp.princeton.edu
Statutory Construction & Interpretation for AI - CITP Blog
Blogpost authors: Nimra Nadeem, Lucy He, Michel Liao, and Peter Henderson Paper authors: Lucy He, Nimra Nadeem, Michel Liao, Howard Chen, Danqi Chen, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Peter Henderson A long...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
The terms of Anthropic's settlement w/book authors just came out. 💰$1.5B to authors in libgen (Books3 corpus)! Interestingly, this is ~$3k per book, close to the terms that HarperCollins allegedly gave to authors for their books ($2.5k). Consensus price forming?
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Wonder why Claude decided to report users to the authorities? It might be because its constitution says Claude should choose responses in the long-term interest of humanity! But what if we could leverage computational and legal tools to "debug" or "lint" AI rules/laws for ambiguity? 🧵!
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Excited to offer my AI Law class again @ Princeton this year. We'll be sharing lecture notes/materials and more this year on the course webpage! Imo, we have a unique offering that emphasizes how the technical details affect legal outcomes. Check it out! www.polarislab.org/ai-law-2025/...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
I'm starting to get emails about PhDs for next year. I'm always looking for great people to join! For next year, I'm looking for people with a strong reinforcement learning, game theory, or strategic decision-making background...
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Reposted by Peter Henderson
Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
A California teen sought advice from OpenAI's GPT-4o on how to end his life. The chatbot gave him explicit instructions and encouragement. His parents are suing the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging “it was the predictable result of deliberate design choices."
techpolicy.press
Breaking Down the Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over Teen's Suicide | TechPolicy.Press
A California teen sought advice from OpenAI's GPT-4o on how to end his life. His parents are suing the company and its CEO.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Anthropic settled with authors in its ongoing litigation! Given the increasing likelihood of a messy trial, this was probably the best move. AI companies may have to be more strategic about which cases help set precedent in this area. Curious to see the terms.. news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action...
news.bloomberglaw.com
Anthropic Settles Major AI Copyright Suit Brought by Authors (1)
Anthropic PBC reached a settlement with authors in a high-stakes copyright class action that threatened the AI company with potentially billions of dollars in damages.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
New paper suggests that if firms aren’t seeing growth from AI, it could be because current deployments replace existing labor, instead of scaling output. AI policy and governance agenda for 2025+ needs to put labor at the forefront. digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publications...
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Glad to see Google still working on efficiency-and transparency-of the energy impacts of their models!
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
AI-generated errors in an Australian murder case. We'll probably see an influx of ineffective assistance of counsel petitions/appeals soon arguing AI-usage. apnews.com/article/aust...
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