July 11, 2024
BTOS Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) AI Supplement
The Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) now includes a number of AI-related questions under the AI supplement, which recently reported their first findings. The AI supplement was constructed to gather insights on the prevalence of AI use in businesses, the various types of AI being employed, the effects of AI on employment, and the ways…
July 9, 2024
ACES Robotics (Capitalized Expenditures for Robotic Equipment)
Beginning in 2018, the Census added a series of questions to their Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES) to better understand how much companies are spending on robotic equipment. The Census defines robot equipment broadly, as “automatically controlled and reprogrammable machines capable of performing a series of complex tasks autonomously or semi-autonomously.” Included in this spending data are…
April 9, 2024
Judicial Rulemaking and Lucidity: Justice Barrett’s First Amendment Opinion in Lindke v. Freed
Fashioning constitutional rules isn’t easy; Justice Barrett and the Court deserve kudos for their efforts to establish a rule to determine if public officials’ activities constitute state action.
April 9, 2024
The TikTok Ban’s Free Speech Dilemma
TikTok is a perfect villain. The app seems to be connected with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It’s where Osama Bin Laden’s manifesto picked up traction and where antisemitic tropes run amok. TikTok’s impact on kids isn’t heartening, and its data security problems are serious. Still, I’ve got some trepidation about the TikTok bill that just passed the House by a vote…
April 2, 2024
The Re-Emergence of Huawei?
Despite draconian export controls and blacklisting by the United States, the Chinese telecoms giant, Huawei, is alive and well—at least for now. Huawei’s current relatively strong competitive state comes from a variety of sources: Yes, Chinese government subsidies and huge home markets helped greatly, but there are also other factors such as Huawei’s own resilience and forward…
March 28, 2024
“Away for the Day”: Regulating Cell Phone Use in New Zealand Schools
On March 26, New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, well-known for The Coddling of the American Mind, released a new book, The Anxious Generation, where he attributes the transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood as being responsible for the “epidemic” of Generation Z young people suffering from anxiety, depression and fragility. Haidt claims that “a great…
March 20, 2024
Generative AI’s Napster Moment
It’s likely that LLMs may get worse before they get better. These are not merely necessarily bad consequences, but possible results as an emerging industry matures and the law catches up to technological advancement, producing a new post-disruption equilibrium.