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June 17, 2024
The AI Arms Race: Apple and OpenAI’s Partnership Raises the Bar for Privacy and a More Secure User Experience
Apple unveiled at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC24) Private Cloud Compute, or PPC, last Monday as a new way to manage the technical possibilities around security and privacy in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. This new cloud intelligence system is designed to prioritize privacy features that were previously limited to devices and will now be available…
June 11, 2024
The Economics of AI and the Impending Robot Takeover, Part I
Tim Lee, the author of the excellent Understanding AI Substack, recently took to X with a plea: “I really wish there were more economists involved in discussions of the implications of superintelligence.” He continued: The most obvious example is people predicting mass unemployment without thinking through the impact of high productivity on fiscal and monetary policy. There are…
June 6, 2024
The Government is Gunning for Live Nation. It’s Making a Historic Mistake
In today’s complex business environment, being a CEO is akin to playing three-dimensional chess. Markets and supply chains are constantly disrupted by global conflicts, financial markets remain volatile, and AI is transforming industries at a breakneck pace, not to mention the shifting political winds and declining public trust in institutions. Despite these complexities, the Biden administration is…
June 4, 2024
Is This the “Compute Era”?
The chip manufacturer Nvidia reported its first-quarter earnings last week—and it was another blockbuster. For the first three months of 2024, Nvidia booked $26 billion in revenue, up 18 percent from the last quarter of 2023 and up 262 percent year over year. Nvidia’s stock price has more than tripled in the past 12 months, sending its…
June 3, 2024
Inside Tech’s $2 Trillion Technical Debt
Technical debt, the accumulation of shortcuts and compromises in software systems, is an issue across industries with consequences ranging from system failures and security breaches to hindered innovation. The Wall Street Journal reports it was the cause of 13,000 canceled Southwest Airlines flights during the 2022 holiday season and numerous high-profile cyberattacks on Google, Apple, and Microsoft….
May 31, 2024
Imposing Net-Neutrality Regulations Would Be a Step Backward
Net neutrality is a sometimes well-intentioned, but always misguided attempt to regulate the internet under the guise of fairness and equality. Except for a brief moment during the Obama administration, the U.S. has always embraced light-handed regulation for the internet. This approach has served us well. Today 95% of American adults use the internet and…
May 28, 2024
Cambridge Analytica, a Redux
I recently listened to Jacob Siegel’s interview on The Fifth Column podcast and couldn’t help but reflect on the power of stories. I now recognize, some six years later, that the Cambridge Analytica scandal galvanized me—but not like it did so many others. For many, the story concretized the power of political advertising and targeted data, essentially kicking…
May 27, 2024
How Crypto Cuts Through Red Tape
Blockchain technology has revolutionized global finance, playing a crucial role in bypassing traditional intermediaries to facilitate humanitarian aid in conflict zones like Ukraine. This financial transformation paves the way for a more inclusive and transparent global ecosystem, offering new opportunities for the unbanked, underbanked, and displaced populations. Below are the highlights of my conversation with…
May 24, 2024
Who Should Be Responsible for Election Content Authentication?
As forthcoming elections loom large, the question of artificial intelligence (AI) generated deepfakes disseminating misleading messages purportedly from or about political candidates has become pressing. As illustrated in a recently published academic study on the use of election deepfakes in eleven countries in 2023, it’s an international challenge of Herculean proportions that has the potential to threaten democracies across the…
May 21, 2024
What’s Next for the Affordable Connectivity Program?
This month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began formally winding down the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), thus ending a subsidy program that supported 23 million households in paying for internet service. Although a bipartisan push to extend the program failed when the funding wasn’t attached to the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, there’s still…