February 3, 2025
My AI Advisers: Lessons from a Year of Expert Digital Assistants
Earlier this month, Ezra Klein reflected on how, despite recognizing AI’s enormous potential, he found no practical place for it in his daily routine. He echoed what I’ve heard from many people: Even after trying various GenAI tools, they didn’t see a strong reason to keep returning to them. It’s understandable because unlocking the real value in…
January 31, 2025
Satellite Broadband Connectivity: Many Pros, but Also a Few Cons
There is little doubt that the emergence of low-orbit satellite services has revolutionized rural broadband connectivity. SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, has launched over 5,000 satellites, providing low-latency, fast, and cost-effective broadband services to a wider range of remote communities and locations worldwide than has been possible with legacy geostationary satellites. SpaceX plans to launch…
January 30, 2025
Protecting Kids and Adults Online: Device-Level Age Authentication
Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which involves a constitutional challenge to a Texas age verification law for websites containing sexually explicit material. The case offers the Court the opportunity to revisit two cases decided at the dawn of the Internet Age finding such requirements violated the…
January 29, 2025
Deepseek’s AI Breakthroughs Don’t Change the Fundamentals—but They Are a Warning
China’s AI ambitions have long been hamstrung by a critical weakness: access to high-end computing hardware. US export controls have effectively cut Beijing off from the most advanced AI chips, putting a hard ceiling on its ability to compete at the highest level. But that hasn’t stopped China from trying to work around these limitations….
January 28, 2025
Federal R&D Funding Is Even More Valuable Than Washington Thinks
It’s a no-brainer that American public policy should aim to significantly increase both government and private-sector R&D investment to boost innovation-driven productivity and economic growth. During the 1960s Space Race, total US R&D spending reached just under three percent of GDP, with government leading at two percent and business at one percent, basically. Today’s R&D is over…
January 28, 2025
A Warning Against Warning Labels on Social Media Platforms
If you can’t constitutionally restrict social media platforms or the speech they convey, force them to transmit some of your own speech they’ll surely dislike. That’s seemingly the strategy of some lawmakers frustrated that the First Amendment’s guarantees of free expression and editorial autonomy have repeatedly stymied their paternalistic efforts to restrict minors’ platform access to lawful, presumptively protected…
January 27, 2025
AI’s Emerging Paradox
While the presidential transition commanded headlines this week, equally significant shifts were occurring in AI technology. Just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration, DeepSeek released its latest model, achieving a breakthrough in AI reasoning that matches the best models of OpenAI and Anthropic but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek, which is backed by a Chinese…
January 24, 2025
Trump’s Big, Bold AI Gamble
What a difference a week makes. As others and I have predicted, newly-inaugurated President Trump rolled back much of his predecessor’s policy approach to artificial intelligence (AI). But few forecasted just how stark the contrast has been. Last week, before the inauguration, I argued that Trump should reverse outgoing President Biden’s ill-considered Executive Order on AI. As…
January 22, 2025
Liability Elasticity and Other Policy Concerns Underlying Social Media Addiction Lawsuits
Lurking beneath today’s raft of social media addiction lawsuits blaming platforms for harming minors are three broad public policy concerns. These frets could easily affect corporate liability in areas beyond online media. The first concern is the discretion trial court judges possess––in the absence of explicit legislation or a state high court ruling dictating otherwise––when deciding whether…
January 21, 2025
A Flammable Landscape
Los Angeles continues to burn. As of this writing, the Palisades Fire is spread over 23,713 acres and is 22 percent contained. This means that 22 percent of the fire’s perimeter has been controlled by firefighters through containment lines. The Eaton Fire currently stands at 14,117 acres burned at 55 percent containment. Will Rogers State Park is…