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March 25, 2025
The Public Interest as a Political Tool
Donald Trump and Brendan Carr, the president’s choice to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), seem intent on reinvigorating the Commission’s statutory authority to ensure that over-the-over broadcasters serve “the public interest.” That’s especially so when it comes to deploying the FCC’s news distortion rule to potentially punish stations—for example, CBS affiliates that aired 60…
March 21, 2025
Will FCC v. Consumers’ Research Revive the Nondelegation Doctrine?
The idea behind the nondelegation doctrine is sound: Congress should not delegate legislative power to executive branch agencies. But its implementation leaves much to be desired. Nearly every nondelegation case acknowledges there’s a theoretical boundary but then finds that Congress hasn’t crossed it here. Only twice has the Supreme Court found a law violated the…
March 21, 2025
New Poll on Workers’ Attitudes to AI Reinforces Old Divides
Will artificial intelligence help, replace, or kill us? These long-unanswered questions came back into focus earlier this week, as the Pew Research Center published the results of an eye-opening poll that further underscores an unhappy trend: our debate about AI is fundamentally broken. Pew found that more than half of all American workers reported being…
March 19, 2025
AI and Jobs: Measuring Impact and Building New Assessment Tools
Event Summary On March 19, AEI’s Brent Orrell and Shane Tews hosted a panel discussion featuring Alex Tamkin, an AI researcher at Anthropic, and Jason Owen-Smith, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, on how AI is shaping the labor market and workforce development policy. The conversation was moderated by Axios reporter Ashley Gold. The…
March 18, 2025
The Sad Myth of Independent Agencies
President Trump’s recent executive order (EO) asserting more formal control over so-called independent agencies has sparked controversy. Critics decry it as a “fundamental reshaping of the federal government” and even “illegal,” fearing that it will allow the president to direct regulatory decisions. But while the EO may look dramatic, in practice it changes little. Independent…
March 18, 2025
Children’s Online Safety Should Rely on Content Providers, Not Device Manufacturers
Creating and managing a positive digital environment for children has become a priority for parents, lawmakers, and technology companies. However, as proposals progress to develop solutions and implement protections, we must ensure that our approaches address parents’ concerns without creating additional issues from the extensive collection of minors’ data. Several legislative proposals currently seek to…
March 7, 2025
Design Mandate Proposals Threaten American AI Leadership
Scholars often cite the 1984 Betamax case as a pivotal moment in the development of modern American tech policy. The entertainment industry sought to prohibit Sony from selling its videocassette recorder, because it could be—and largely was—used by consumers for copyright infringement. But the Court declined, finding that the device was “capable of substantial noninfringing…
March 6, 2025
Like Silicon from Clay: A Book Event with Michael M. Rosen
Event Summary On March 4, AEI’s Matthew Continetti and Michael M. Rosen gathered to discuss Mr. Rosen’s new book, Like Silicon from Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI. The conversation began by exploring centuries-old Jewish legends of golems, dybbuks, and maggids, delving into their humanlike characteristics. Mr. Rosen then transitioned to…
March 3, 2025
WEIRD? Institutions and Consumers’ Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in 31 Countries
A survey of perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in 31 countries in 2023 yields significantly less positive perceptions of the new technology in developed western economies than in emerging and non-western economies. This could reflect citizens in non-Western countries perceiving machines (computers) and algorithms differently from those in Western countries, or that a more positive outlook…
February 28, 2025
Connecting the Dots on the Chips
Recent posts by fellow AEI scholars Klon Kitchen and Claude Barfield separately highlighted two important issues that must be considered together if the United States is to truly benefit from—and lead—the inevitable revolution driven by artificial intelligence technologies. Klon Kitchen articulately laid out the argument that the Trump Administration vision for AI as a pillar of…