Is the new United Kingdom’s government leadership stepping back from the country’s recently acquired position as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) safety regulation? Announcements this past week show a shift in priorities…
By Shane Tews | September 6, 2024
Last week, global headlines spotlighted two separate flashpoints in the battle by governments to police social media networks. In Paris, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested for complicity in distribution of child…
By Daniel Lyons | September 5, 2024
Safeguarding minors online is essential, but figuring out how to shield them from lawful yet allegedly harmful content in ways that don’t violate the First Amendment isn’t easy for legislators fixated on…
By Clay Calvert | September 4, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris recently unveiled an economic plan centered on price controls, wage hikes, and subsidies. While the tech industry is not specifically targeted in her proposals, the broader economic ramifications…
By Mark Jamison | September 2, 2024
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
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
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
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
Child Online Safety bills are crafted with the intention of protecting minors from harmful content on the internet. However, they can infringe on First Amendment rights, affecting the freedom of…
By Shane Tews | August 20, 2024
As AI rapidly advances, an emerging challenge threatens to weaken the foundations of societal institutions: How can we maintain trust and accountability online when AI systems become indistinguishable from real…
By John Bailey | August 19, 2024
By early 2024, NASA had made significant progress on its ambitious lunar exploration project, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER). NASA had unveiled VIPER in 2019 as a solution…
By Will Rinehart | Kate Beinkampen | August 16, 2024
Last week, US District Judge Amit P. Mehta handed down a significant ruling, finding that Google unlawfully maintained a monopoly in general internet search and search text advertising. This decision marks…
By Mark Jamison | August 15, 2024