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
Climate Science is About to Make a Huge Mistake
Scenarios are fundamental to climate research and policy. As THB readers know better than most everyone, for years climate science and policy have been off trackin relying heavily on an outdated extreme emissions scenario called RCP8.5, one of four RCP scenarios developed starting almost two decades ago.(1) Some in the climate science community, though slow out of the…
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 6, 2024
The Energy Policy Act of 2026
“When I talk about energy, I am talking about jobs. Our American economy runs on energy—no energy, no jobs. In the long run, it is just that simple.” President Gerald Ford, 1975 Following the passage of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, House Majority Leader Thomas “Tip” O’Neill (D-MA) drolly observed, “It is extremely difficult…
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…
June 5, 2024
How New Graduates Can Thrive in a Workplace Dominated by AI
Dwight Eisenhower’s advice about plans and planning is still relevant today On June 6, the world will mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the 40th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “the Boys of Pont du Hoc” speech honoring those who helped turn back the Nazi threat on the beaches of Normandy. We are now as far from Reagan’s speech as the speech was…
June 4, 2024
Is This the “Compute Era”?
The chip manufacturer Nvidia reported its first-quarter earnings last week—and it was another blockbuster. For the first three months of 2024, Nvidia booked $26 billion in revenue, up 18 percent from the last quarter of 2023 and up 262 percent year over year. Nvidia’s stock price has more than tripled in the past 12 months, sending its…
June 4, 2024
Creating a New American Surveillance State
The practice of think-tankery provides one very little feedback. It’s a bit like shouting into the wind. One can’t be sure of being heard, and the winds of malign policy change can be very strong. So I was excited to read Byron Tau’s book, Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government is…
June 4, 2024
Scientific Integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”
Today, npj Natural Hazards, a journal in the Nature family of journals, officially published my new paper, “Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters.” The paper shows — irrefutably in my view — that the “billion dollar disaster” tabulation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), fails to meet the agency’s standards for information quality and scientific…