Politics

Are politicians ready to share the limelight with AI? This question arose when Assembly Member Clyde Vanel enlisted the services of Auto-GPT (an autonomous AI agent) to conceive and draft a piece of legislation. Assembly Bill 6896, remarkably bearing an "AI disclosure," may be the first to credit an AI program for its groundwork. Continue Reading →

Massachusetts may become the first state to ban the buying and selling of location data drawn from mobile devices, reflecting the state's bold stance on privacy in the digital age. This sweeping proposal, the Location Shield Act, seeks not only to curb commercial exploitation but also to tighten law enforcement access to such data, stipulating a court warrant requirement. Continue Reading →

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Representatives Ted W. Lieu (CA-36), Don Beyer (VA-08), and Ken Buck (CO-04) introduced the bipartisan and bicameral Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act legislation to safeguard the nuclear command and control process from any future change in policy that allows AI to make nuclear launch decisions. Continue Reading →

CNN obtained an internal memo to Meta's (formerly Facebook's) content moderation team that noted that “political speech is ineligible for fact-checking. This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign.” The memo was in direct response to requests for guidance from Meta's internal and external fact checkers. Continue Reading →

A new notice from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) prohibits any federal government employee who owns cryptocurrency from working on federal crypto regulation. This includes employees at The White House, The Federal Reserve, and The Department of the Treasury. Continue Reading →

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a former Washington state high school football coach had a right to pray on the field immediately after games. We're going to talk about this, Elon Musk's pending purchase of Twitter, and what "Freedom of Speech" means under the new SCOTUS tonight, June 28 at 6:30 p.m. ET here in NYC at the Newhouse Advanced Media Lab Series event: What is Freedom of Speech? Continue Reading →

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and Bernie Sanders asked that the U.S. establish uniform charging accessory standards, arguing that planned obsolescence in consumer electronics causes financial stress and environmental harm. (This follows similar legislation in the EU that will force consumer electronics to adopt USB-C connectors by 2024.) Continue Reading →

The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act was introduced Thursday by a group of key senators on the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust: the ranking member and chair, Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. If passed, the bipartisan bill would force Google to break up its ad business. Continue Reading →

HB 20, a new Texas law, prohibits social media platforms with more than 50 million users in the U.S. from moderating content on the basis of “viewpoint.” It creates a catastrophic new liability for tech platforms serving Texas, which the law says cannot be excluded from service. This is headed for SCOTUS. Continue Reading →

This is a tale of two letters addressed to Michael S. Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Continue Reading →