Tap Your Own Brakes: AI Safety and Antitrust
Frontier artificial-intelligence (AI) labs may have good reasons to tap the brakes. The antitrust question begins when they all reach for the same pedal. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s proposal to “pace the frontier” has become a rallying point for AI companies interested in coordinating a slowdown in capability development. His plan calls for embedded outside ... Tap Your Own Brakes: AI Safety and Antitrust
The FCC Is Right To Keep Every Band on the Table for Direct-to-Device
Note: Our editor is on vacation. The image for this post and any errors in the body are solely the fault of the author. At its August 6 open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is scheduled to vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Unleashing Unlicensed Spectrum for Direct-to-Device.” This proceeding will ... The FCC Is Right To Keep Every Band on the Table for Direct-to-Device
The AI Boom Still Runs on Old-Fashioned Airwaves
AI may live in the cloud, but the cloud still needs roads. Those roads are communications networks—and the airwaves they depend on may determine how far and fast the AI boom can travel. That two-way relationship will take center stage tomorrow, when the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media holds a hearing titled ... The AI Boom Still Runs on Old-Fashioned Airwaves
Pulling the 39% Thread: Why the FCC Must Fix More Than the Broadcast Cap
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 39% broadcast-ownership cap is a rule for a three-network world trying to govern a streaming one. Retiring it makes sense. Retiring it by itself does not. For four decades, the FCC has barred any company from owning television stations that collectively reach more than 39% of U.S. television households. The ... Pulling the 39% Thread: Why the FCC Must Fix More Than the Broadcast Cap
Open Models, Closed Minds: AI Policy Keeps Regulating the Wrong Thing
Artificial intelligence has found a new way to make policymakers nervous. The latest fight concerns less what AI can do than who may build it, copy it, distribute it, and decide when those activities become a security threat. That fight will help define AI governance, the rules and institutions used to manage AI development, access, ... Open Models, Closed Minds: AI Policy Keeps Regulating the Wrong Thing
WarGames, Shopping Bots, and the Statute Trap: The CFAA and Amazon v Perplexity
When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral argument later today in Amazon.com Services LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc., it will confront a novel question: how should the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a statute designed to punish computer break-ins, apply to an AI agent that browses the web on a user’s ... WarGames, Shopping Bots, and the Statute Trap: The CFAA and Amazon v Perplexity
The EU’s Bid to Nationalize Space
Europe’s latest space policy has a simple theory: To build a champion, you must first clear the field. The European Commission’s newly adopted proposal to reallocate the 2 GHz mobile-satellite-service (MSS) band—a slice of radio spectrum used for satellite communications—would reserve most of that spectrum for European operators. The same proposal would limit non-EU militaries ... The EU’s Bid to Nationalize Space
You Can’t Export-Control the Future: The Case for Defensive AI
Washington keeps looking for the AI equivalent of a locked vault: control the chips, control the models, control the danger. But artificial intelligence is starting to look less like uranium and more like malware—hard to contain, easy to adapt, and most dangerous where people actually use it. The White House’s new AI executive order is ... You Can’t Export-Control the Future: The Case for Defensive AI
With Gilead’s Reasonableness Standard, Side Effects May Vary
A drug manufacturer’s research pipeline is many things: a bet on science, a bet on regulators, a bet on patents, and a very expensive bet against failure. What it has not traditionally been—at least until now—is a standing invitation for tort plaintiffs to argue, years later, that the company should have bet differently. That is ... With Gilead’s Reasonableness Standard, Side Effects May Vary
AI Risk and the Very Large Hammer
The trick in AI policy is not deciding whether artificial intelligence is risky. Of course it is. So are electricity, aviation, pharmaceuticals, and teenagers with driver’s licenses. The harder question is where the risk attaches, and whether a given proposed fix targets that point or simply hands policymakers a very large hammer labeled “AI.” A ... AI Risk and the Very Large Hammer
Stack Wars: The Garage Myth Meets the Five-Layer Cake
The canonical story of the modern tech firm still starts in a metaphorical garage. William Hewlett and David Packard with the audio oscillator. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak with the Apple I. Jeff Bezos with a door-desk and a handful of mail-order books. We like the simplicity—one inventor, one widget, one market. It’s comforting. Sometimes, ... Stack Wars: The Garage Myth Meets the Five-Layer Cake
Turning Down the Thinking: A Law & Economics Trilogue on AI Throttling
Three section leads at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) read the same viral GitHub post and reached three different conclusions. Call it a trilogue—three views, one problem, and a technology that refuses to sit still. The GitHub issue filed last week against Anthropic’s Claude Code product carried a blunt title: “Claude Code ... Turning Down the Thinking: A Law & Economics Trilogue on AI Throttling
