April 9, 2025
Measuring and Building Human Leadership in an AI World
A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Measuring Human Leadership Skills With AI Agents, presents evidence that artificial intelligence may soon play a central role in evaluating human soft skills—long considered too complex and subjective to measure objectively. Conducted by Ben Weidmann and David Deming et al. at the Harvard Kennedy School,…
April 8, 2025
Does Testosterone Make Men?
Does biology determine destiny, or is society the dominant cause of masculine and feminine traits? In this spirited exchange, the psychologist Cordelia Fine and the evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven unpack the complex relationship between testosterone and human behaviour. Fine emphasises variability, flexibility and context – seeing gender as shaped by social forces as much as…
April 4, 2025
Why Trump’s FTC Firings Matter—Even If They’re Legal
President Donald Trump fired two Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last Tuesday, a move that raises important questions about the independence of regulatory agencies. If challenged in court—something the commissioners say they will do—the outcome could set a major precedent regarding presidential authority over supposedly independent agencies. Legally, this issue is murky….
April 3, 2025
The New NIH Director Has His Work Cut Out For Him
In the wake of Covid, trust in scientific and medical experts has eroded and become starkly polarized, threatening the ability of science agencies to sustain broad public support. The National Institutes of Health in particular has become a lightning rod, due to the controversial roles of Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins during the pandemic as…
March 27, 2025
We Still Haven’t Reckoned with Covid’s Costs
Five years ago, a new coronavirus to which no one was yet immune was sweeping the globe, shutting down schools and sporting events. In March 2020, masks had not yet become a partisan lightning rod — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet even recommended them. And according to the Pew Research Center,…
March 25, 2025
The Energy Demands of the Data-Driven Future: Challenges and Solutions
Event Summary On March 25, AEI hosted a conference on the challenges of balancing energy constraints with the rapid growth of AI and data centers. AEI’s L. Lynne Kiesling opened the event and moderated the first panel, which examined the evolving energy demands of AI infrastructure. Brian George (Google), Arne Olson (Energy and Environmental Economics),…
March 19, 2025
AI and Jobs: Measuring Impact and Building New Assessment Tools
Event Summary On March 19, AEI’s Brent Orrell and Shane Tews hosted a panel discussion featuring Alex Tamkin, an AI researcher at Anthropic, and Jason Owen-Smith, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, on how AI is shaping the labor market and workforce development policy. The conversation was moderated by Axios reporter Ashley Gold. The…
February 28, 2025
Connecting the Dots on the Chips
Recent posts by fellow AEI scholars Klon Kitchen and Claude Barfield separately highlighted two important issues that must be considered together if the United States is to truly benefit from—and lead—the inevitable revolution driven by artificial intelligence technologies. Klon Kitchen articulately laid out the argument that the Trump Administration vision for AI as a pillar of…
February 27, 2025
Don’t Let Anyone Confuse You: There Really Are Only Two Sexes
”It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” Those are statements from President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal…
February 27, 2025
Is the EPA “Endangerment Finding” Endangered?
Earlier today, The Washington Post reported that head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin, has urged the Trump administration to rescind the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. The Post reports: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat…