Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
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…
May 28, 2025
How Meta Thinks About Personalization and Privacy
Personalization, which tailors content based on user preference, has become widely used on virtually every social media platform. By providing users with relevant content that appeals to their unique interests, no two social media feeds are the same. Personalized social media posts can lead to a 50% increase in user engagement, as they resonate more…
May 27, 2025
Generative AI and Fabricated Judicial Opinions: A Slow Learning Curve for Some Attorneys
On the final day of my civil procedure course, Professor Brian Landsberg offered a piece of advice. At first blush, it seemingly had nothing to do with the myriad federal rules and landmark cases like Pennoyer v. Neff that we’d studied. Yet, it’s a pearl of wisdom I remember more than 35 years later: Never…
May 23, 2025
No More Tappers: Get Skin in the Game
Irony of ironies: Outrage around Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, Original Sin, is helping to sell more copies. The failure of a CNN anchor and an Axios reporter to cover President Joe Biden’s infirmities in a timely manner now delivers them free advertising for their book and a bigger haul. There is a partial…
May 23, 2025
Regulating Complex and Uncertain AI Technologies
A common cognitive bias, in which decision-makers unconsciously substitute a complex problem with a simpler, related one, was first described in 2002 by Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick. The concept of attribute substitution explains that, when faced with a complex judgment (target attribute), some may replace it with a more accessible, simpler judgment (heuristic attribute)…
May 23, 2025
The House Should Act Quickly to Repeal the Illegal, Expensive E-Rate Expansion
Earlier this month, the Senate passed S.J.Res.7. The resolution, sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, would repeal a Biden-era Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule allowing E-Rate funds to subsidize Wi-Fi hotspot lending programs for off-campus use. This well-intentioned but misguided rule violates clear statutory limits on agency power and threatens an increasingly unstable Universal Service Fund…