Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
June 11, 2025
Why New York’s New AI Legislation Is Problematic
The goal of New York State’s Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act—protecting people from AI harms—is admirable. But by assuming that AI models themselves are the key leverage point for ensuring safety, RAISE risks turning a technical challenge into a bureaucratic burden. Authored by State Assemblymember Alex Bores, the RAISE Act applies a list of requirements…
June 11, 2025
Pew Survey Shows Growing Skepticism Toward Federal Censorship of Online Speech
A recent Pew Research Center survey suggests slightly more public support––albeit still far from optimal––for a robust online marketplace of ideas in which the federal government and technology companies refrain from policing falsities. Conducted more than a month after Donald Trump retook the Oval Office, the survey queried 5,123 Americans. The findings put light tailwinds…
June 9, 2025
Let the Market Work
The Trump administration is trying to fix a market that isn’t broken—and in doing so, it risks breaking the parts that are working just fine. That’s the irony at the heart of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) proposed remedies in its antitrust case against Google. Following the lead of the Biden DOJ, the Trump DOJ…
June 6, 2025
Are Software Jobs Collapsing?
The image below, which appeared in the Financial Times, has been gaining traction on the Internet because it seems to show what people in the software industry fear most: The introduction of new groups of AI models has collapsed the software industry. Beginning in 2022 and gaining momentum through 2023, the tech industry experienced a…
June 5, 2025
Innovation Shouldn’t Be a Liability in the United States
America’s antitrust enforcers say they want to protect innovation. But their current cases against Big Tech are only punishing it. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have launched aggressive antitrust cases against companies like Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, arguing that these firms are too dominant and that their success undermines competition. The government’s solution:…
June 5, 2025
Reclaimed Words and a Meta Oversight Board Decision Reveal Problems with Policing Online Hate Speech
To appreciate the complexities of policing online hate speech that underlie an April summary decision by Meta’s Oversight Board, let’s start with a musical detour through a 2017 US Supreme Court opinion called Matal v. Tam. The Court faced the First Amendment question in Matal of whether the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) could…
June 4, 2025
Expect an AI Shock to Change the Job Market, Not Destroy It
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The Real Story of the ‘China Shock‘,” economists James J. Heckman (a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago) and Hanming Fang (University of Pennsylvania) argue that the turn-of-the-century trade disruption primarily shifted jobs from one region to another rather than eliminating them nationwide. Moreover, they contend that Chinese…
June 4, 2025
The Intelligence of Things Is Here—Reflections from Google I/O 2025
Recently, I had the privilege of attending Google’s I/O developer conference with colleagues Will Rinehart and Shane Tews. The event featured (literally) 100 AI announcements and live demonstrations, including Waymo and Wing drone delivery. Reflecting on the two days, several themes emerged reshaping technology and society. AI Integration Everywhere Analyst Ben Thompson said he was…
June 4, 2025
What Economists Are Learning About AI, Jobs, and Local Economies
Conventional wisdom about artificial intelligence runs in two directions—utopian and dystopian. On one hand, we’re told that AI will usher in explosive productivity, endless efficiency, and new industries we can’t yet imagine. On the other hand, there are fears that machines will hollow out middle-class jobs, exacerbate inequalities, and perhaps even make large swaths of…
May 30, 2025
A Tale of Two Satellite Broadband Policies: The US and South Africa
On Tuesday, technology writer Patience Haggin claimed that in the US, “rural internet is still so bad, some states are turning to outer space.” The article referred to the growing number of states rolling out satellite subsidies “that could be a boon to Elon Musk’s Starlink and another nascent service from Amazon.” These subsidies include…