September 6, 2024
The UK’s AI Policy Pivot: From Global AI Safety Leader to Domestic AI Adopter?
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 around AI that comes just months after the UK hosted the groundbreaking AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023 positioning the UK at…
September 5, 2024
Telegram CEO Arrest and Brazil’s X Ban Raise Free Speech and Privacy Concerns
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 sexual abuse imagery. And in Brazil, a judge banned X (formerly Twitter) nationwide after the company refused to block certain users on the eve of…
September 4, 2024
Compelling Speech, Compelling Censorship: California’s Misguided Effort to Protect Minors
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 regulating businesses. How, after all, does one define (and prove) what speech is “harmful” and craft a narrowly tailored statute that burdens no more speech than is…
September 2, 2024
The Potential Risks to the Tech Industry from Kamala Harris’s Economic Plan
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 could spell trouble for the sector. Harris’s price controls, covering essentials like food, medicine, and housing, echo the failed attempts of the past, such as Richard Nixon’s…
September 2, 2024
Your Autonomous Vehicle Ride Might Take a While
For a time, when I wanted to make a point that AI hype was overblown, I would just cite Elon Musk’s various predictions about autonomous vehicles (AV). In 2013, Musk predicted that by 2016 Tesla would be making self-driving cars. In 2016, the company unveiled a demonstration video in which a Tesla Model X seemed to be driving itself,…
August 30, 2024
Zuckerberg’s Letter to Jordan: Headline Grabbing, Legally Insignificant
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 certain COVID-19 content.” Zuckerberg also expressed “regret that we were not more outspoken about it” and lamented making “some choices” that “we wouldn’t make today.”…
August 29, 2024
AI-Generated Inventions Suffer Two More Setbacks, Bolstering the “Automatoner” Viewpoint
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 to have invented several items on its own. According to Thaler, DABUS independently developed an improved liquid container with enhanced surface area for insulation and…
August 28, 2024
Regulating AI, Hypothetically and in Reality
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 law also permits others to make derivative works based on the original piece. Society is enriched from the existence of both the original and the…
August 27, 2024
The “Gore Tax” May Finally Get Assessed
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 during the Clinton administration. It required telecom firms to pay into a small suite of “universal service” funds aimed at ensuring the availability of affordable…
August 26, 2024
The Promise and Limitations of AI in Education: A Nuanced Look at Emerging Research
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 teaching and learning, providing an emerging and nuanced perspective on how these new large language models (LLMs) can transform educational practices. AI as a Grader:…