June 19, 2024
Playing the Media Blame Game Two Years After the School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas
Who, beyond deceased shooter Salvador Ramos, bears legal responsibility for the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022? According to two recent lawsuits (one in California, one in Texas) three businesses that provide lawful services and goods––ones sheltered by the US Constitution’s First or Second Amendments––should be held civilly liable and compensate the victims’ families….
June 18, 2024
Transformative Growth with AI Is Likely. Explosive Growth Is Science Fiction.
A couple weeks back, Tim Lee, the author of the Understanding AI Substack, put out the following plea on X: “I really wish there were more economists involved in discussions of the implications of superintelligence.” He added, “The most obvious example is people predicting mass unemployment without thinking through the impact of high productivity on fiscal and monetary…
June 17, 2024
The AI Arms Race: Apple and OpenAI’s Partnership Raises the Bar for Privacy and a More Secure User Experience
Apple unveiled at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC24) Private Cloud Compute, or PPC, last Monday as a new way to manage the technical possibilities around security and privacy in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. This new cloud intelligence system is designed to prioritize privacy features that were previously limited to devices and will now be available…
June 14, 2024
Facing Cable Cord-Cutting, Cities Fight to Tax Broadband
Broadband has been a bright spot in America’s grim inflationary landscape. While consumer prices rose 4.9 percent last year, two recent reports show that consumer broadband prices fell, both in absolute terms and cost per gigabyte. But where many see a victory, some cities sense an opportunity. Stung by declining cable franchise fees, local governments are pushing to…
June 13, 2024
Generative AI and Child Sexual Abuse Material: An Early Cautionary Lesson and a Pledge from Tech Companies
It’s almost a truism that all technological innovations, generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) tools included, can be put to both good and evil uses. This post addresses a decidedly disturbing deployment of Gen AI that falls squarely into the latter category––using it to create sexually explicit images of minors. Indeed, the charges announced last month by the US Department…
June 11, 2024
The Economics of AI and the Impending Robot Takeover, Part I
Tim Lee, the author of the excellent Understanding AI Substack, recently took to X with a plea: “I really wish there were more economists involved in discussions of the implications of superintelligence.” He continued: The most obvious example is people predicting mass unemployment without thinking through the impact of high productivity on fiscal and monetary policy. There are…
June 11, 2024
Transparency—Like Charity—Begins at Home?
As the debate about regulating artificial intelligence applications heats up, much is being made of the need for transparency. For the most part, AI algorithms “do their thing” in an “black box” that renders the basis for their decisions opaque even to their developers. Transparency—and its bedfellows “explainability”, “interpretability” and “understandability”—feature prominently in the development of standards…
June 10, 2024
A History Lesson for Robert Lighthizer
The “break” in US trade policy came under Trump and Biden, not in the 1990s. Recently, a spate of news stories has attempted to predict future US trade policy under a potential second Donald Trump administration. Robert Lighthizer, the former US Trade Representative under Trump, remains close to the former president and has emerged as a reference guide on…
June 6, 2024
The Government is Gunning for Live Nation. It’s Making a Historic Mistake
In today’s complex business environment, being a CEO is akin to playing three-dimensional chess. Markets and supply chains are constantly disrupted by global conflicts, financial markets remain volatile, and AI is transforming industries at a breakneck pace, not to mention the shifting political winds and declining public trust in institutions. Despite these complexities, the Biden administration is…
June 5, 2024
Legislation, Litigation, or Licensing? Resolving Journalists’ Copyright Concerns About Training Generative AI Tools
In May, the Bipartisan Senate AI Working Group, comprising sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Todd Young (R-IN), issued a report, Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United States Senate. Regarding the relationship between journalism and generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), the group said it recognizes the AI-related concerns of professional content creators and…