January 16, 2025
AI-Generated Regulation: Not Ready for Prime Time (Yet)
Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary Generative AI has attracted great attention in the policymaking sphere, including for agency rulemaking. This report compares a final rule drafted by a generative AI model with the Department of Transportation’s actual rule. The AI model’s policy recommendations appear overly sensitive to the number of commenters supporting a…
January 13, 2025
EPA Should Reject California’s Locomotive Electrification Regulation
The California Air Resources Board last November requested from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a waiver under section 209(e) of the Clean Air Act for implementation of its “In-Use Locomotive Regulation,” an effort to electrify the cargo trains operating in California and therefore across the entire country. As of early January, EPA still has not acted, a…
January 10, 2025
Regional Transmission Organizations as Market Platforms I
2025 is already shaping up to be a year of change for many reasons related to the economics and technology of energy. Between the uncertainty arising from a political change in presidential administration and the dynamics of technological change in the economy, the only prediction I’d hazard is that change will happen. Some of these…
January 8, 2025
The Interests of the U.S. and the Honolulu Climate Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court
The Office of the Solicitor General — part of the Department of Justice —was created by the Statutory Authorization Act of June 22, 1870. The Act states that there shall be an officer “learned in the law,” to be called the Solicitor General, to assist the Attorney General in the performance of his or her duties. The…
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…