The dust is settling from this week’s headline-grabbing release of Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan in which Meta’s CEO called “wrong” repeated pressure by Biden administration officials to have Facebook “censor…
By Clay Calvert | August 30, 2024
Yesterday’s earnings announcement from Nvidia brings my data center electricity use series full circle: Its now-dominant data center segment increased revenue to $26.3 billion—more than 2½ times what that business generated a…
By Lynne Kiesling | August 30, 2024
More than 30 years ago I wrote a master’s thesis that evaluated NASA’s Space Shuttle program (you can read the publications that followed here and here). As I turned to my PhD dissertation,…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | August 30, 2024
Readers of this space are by now intimately familiar with the Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (DABUS), the machine created by computer scientist and prolific inventor Stephen Thaler that purports…
By Michael M. Rosen | August 29, 2024
Let’s consider two hypothetical scenarios. First, an artist creates a new work. Copyright law protects the artist’s intellectual property, allowing the artist to release the work for public enjoyment. Copyright…
By Bronwyn Howell | August 28, 2024
Tech policy analysts of a certain glamorous age may remember the “Gore Tax.” That’s the partisan moniker given to a program established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and implemented…
By Jim Harper | August 27, 2024
As AI continues to advance, its potential applications in education have become a subject of considerable interest and debate. Recent studies illuminate AI’s promise and limitations in different facets of…
By John Bailey | August 26, 2024
Earlier this year, NASA’s most advanced lunar rover—the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover or VIPER—seemed to be on track to the moon. Engineers integrated the VIPER’s final instrument of four in February.…
By Will Rinehart | August 26, 2024
Abstract We reflect on the development of digital twins of the Earth, which we associate with a reductionist view of nature as a machine. The projects of digital twins deviate…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | Andrea Saltelli | Gerd Gigerenzer | Mike Hulme | Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos | Lieke A. Melsen | Glen P. Peters | Simon Robertson | Andy Stirling | Massumo Tavoni | Arnald Puy | August 26, 2024
On Tuesday this week the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) is due to expire unless the U.S. and China can agree on its extension. Today I provide some background…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | August 26, 2024
Recently, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo proudly announced that the US had achieved a “milestone” in its drive to build secure advanced semiconductor plants within its borders. Specifically, the Department of Commerce…
By Claude Barfield | August 24, 2024
The Biden administration is a full-employment act for energy/environment policy analysts, in particular those interested in defending the market allocation of resources, the national wealth and freedom inherent in expansion…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 24, 2024
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries, companies are grappling with the challenges of effectively leveraging AI tools. From data readiness to privacy concerns, the path to successful AI implementation…
By Shane Tews | August 22, 2024
Although the US Supreme Court recently ruled in three First Amendment cases involving social media platforms, Justice Clarence Thomas, its longest-serving member, wrote just once—a separate concurrence in Moody v. NetChoice. Daniel Lyons recently explained that Thomas’s concurrence mostly…
By Clay Calvert | August 22, 2024
Large-scale, dynamic social and economic change is often more difficult, incremental, and slower than anticipated. Consider James Watt and Matthew Boulton in Birmingham in 1776, having invented and refined the…
By Lynne Kiesling | August 22, 2024