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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…
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…
October 29, 2021
The SEC’s Climate ‘disclosure’ Gambit
Inside the Beltway, most priorities are driven by the perceived political imperatives of the moment rather than by any set of actual principles. The ongoing herculean effort by the Securities and Exchange Commission to promulgate a rule forcing public companies to disclose the “risks” of climate change for their investors is no exception. It is clear that this rule will be followed…
October 1, 2021
Manufacturing Consensus
After having been told for over a year that there was a scientific consensus that Covid had a natural origin — and that any suggestion of a possible lab leak in Wuhan was tantamount to a xenophobic conspiracy theory — it now appears that there is not, and never was, such a consensus. And the…
April 30, 2021
The ‘temporary’ Biden Pause on Fossil-fuel Leasing on Federal Lands
During the presidential campaign Joe Biden offered the utterly incoherent promise to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” Soon after assuming the presidency, however, he stated clearly that “we’re not going to ban fracking” and, presumably, other forms of fossil-fuel production on federal lands. So, which is it? Answer: The “ban” will not…
October 29, 2018
Politicized Law Enforcement and the ExxonMobil White Whale
The latest lawsuit against ExxonMobil (EM), filed by Acting New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is straightforward: Got that? Underwood actually is arguing that EM should not concern itself — or its investors — with (1) the aggregate effect of GHG policies on prospective worldwide demand conditions for its energy products, and (2) the…
November 2, 2017
The Union of Concerned Activists: Let the Lawsuits Begin!
They have failed to convince Congress—even Congresses controlled by the Democratic Party—to impose limits on US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, despite decades of effort, political threats, and grandstanding. Given the election of Donald Trump, they are losing their efforts to use the regulatory bureaucracy—an interest group with powerful budgetary and ideological incentives to impose GHG emissions policies—as a substitute source of such policies in the face of…
October 20, 2017
Subsidizing Reliable Generation Capacity: Is Mark Perry or Rick Perry Wrong?
I take a back seat to no one in my condemnations of subsidies and other policy distortions of state and regional electric power markets, a stance that I have maintained for decades. And so one might assume that I would have applauded my friend and colleague Mark Perry in his recent criticism of Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to the Federal…