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May 29, 2024
What the IPCC Says about Drought
Last week, I testified before the Senate Committee on the Budget in a hearing titled, Droughts, Dollars, and Decisions: Water Scarcity in a Changing Climate.1 The hearing was the 18th in the Committee’s series on climate change this Congress, prompting the Wall Street Journal to suggest “the old-fashioned idea that the Budget Committee ought to focus on the budget.” The hearing could…
May 24, 2024
Healthcare’s Hope in Artificial Intelligence
How much can we trust artificial intelligence (AI)? How much could AI transform an industry as stodgy as healthcare, where other technologies have failed time and time again? These questions were far from mainstream thought until just a few years ago, when the current wave of AI innovation captured the attention of the public, industry,…
May 15, 2024
Automation Isn’t Just One Thing: Insights from Two Census Datasets
Two recent datasets from the Census help to illuminate what’s occurring in robotics and in artificial intelligence adoption. While they have their limitations, both the Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES) for robotic equipment and the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) AI supplement offer valuable information on the progress of automation. Annual Capital Expenditures Survey…
May 13, 2024
Wind Dreams
The optimal amount of practical wind power in the global energy mix is greater than zero. It is also much less than 100%. Today I argue why the proportion of wind power in the global electricity generation mix is always going to be closer to zero than to 100%. That doesn’t mean that wind power…
May 11, 2024
Bullish on Solar
I was reminded, following last week’s post on challenges faced by wind energy, that some people seem to view energy technologies like football teams. They have their favorite, who they support no matter how bad the losing position. And of course they also have their arch rivals, to be cheered against no matter what. Above all,…
April 30, 2024
We Must End the Litigation Doom Loop
A federal judge recently issued an injunction to block the approval of a powerline that would have connected 161 renewable energy projects to the electric grid, providing more clean energy to consumers in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. This is the second time this project, known as the Cardinal-Hickory transmission line, has been blocked by an injunction in…
April 30, 2024
Six Takeaways from Stanford University’s 2024 Report on the State AI
The 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index, released by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), delivers crucial insights into AI’s influence and developments. This detailed yearly report presents a data-based overview of AI’s progress across significant areas, including research, ethics, policy, public perception, and economics. A few highlights from the report are below. AI Beats Humans…
April 25, 2024
The AI ecosystem is complex and dynamic: Its regulation should acknowledge that
Last Thursday, Meta announced the newest iteration of its large language model (LLM), Llama 3. The newest model will aim to dislodge OpenAI as the market leader through various improvements driven by what Meta claims to be “high quality” data training sets and new computer programming capabilities. Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, predicts that future versions of…
April 9, 2024
Complexity, Permissionless Innovation, and the English Dance
The dreary weather this week in Chicago has been dispiriting, making me feel listless and in need of a mood lift. Nothing does the trick like two of my favorite things: examples of emergence in complex systems, and Jane Austen, especially when I can think about ways to apply the analysis to reducing barriers to…
April 9, 2024
Judicial Rulemaking and Lucidity: Justice Barrett’s First Amendment Opinion in Lindke v. Freed
Fashioning constitutional rules isn’t easy; Justice Barrett and the Court deserve kudos for their efforts to establish a rule to determine if public officials’ activities constitute state action.