From Black to White: Dissecting Propaganda in Nuclear Emergencies, Finding Governance Solutions  

Disinformation during emergencies (DiE) can critically undermine government efforts to mitigate socioeconomic harm and damage the relationship between the state and citizens. With the production of nuclear power growing in multiple countries and widespread concern over generative-AI-fueled disinformation online, we are researching the impact of DiE on transnational nuclear emergency responses....

The Narrative: November 1, 2023

Dispatches from the evolving digital political economy AI Governance: Empty Gestures? The US government released an AI Executive Order October 31. The Halloween release comes after a year-long FUD campaign, backed partly by businessmen with a vested interest in AI, that frames AI as a frightening new technology that poses...

The Narrative: September 15, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy A Victory for Free Speech on Social Media A federal appeals court has upheld a finding that U.S. federal officials violated the First Amendment by coercing or strongly encouraging social-media platforms to censor content. The court also narrowed the scope and targets of...

The Narrative: September 1, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy Human Authorship and AI Images A lot of bad policy about AI is being made because people are overstating its risks. These overstatements usually derive from overestimating the autonomous nature of the AI. Now we are getting some bad law for the same...

The Narrative: Panic over Generative AI Risks; WebPKI GIG-ARTS conference; Oversight Board consultation

15 May, 2023 More Wrong Thinking on Generative AI Risks Civil society is in trouble if the musings of an anonymous philosopher on the LESSWRONG website, most likely by a national security official with access to a closed CISA meeting, reflects the current zeitgeist inside governments concerning generative AI. The...

The Narrative: TikTok hearing; Chinese Drones; Stablecoins

March 31, 2023 The Tiktok hearing backfires As expected, Congress tried to turn its cross-examination of Tiktok CEO Shou Chew into a public stoning. Committee members (helped along by Meta lobbying) came in with their minds made up, refused to listen to anything he said, and repeatedly interrupted him. The...

The Narrative: A Plurilateral export control regime; a cyber social contract is promised; India moves to crackdown on smartphone manufacturers

March 16, 2023 New Dutch semiconductor export controls, a global regime grows In a March 8 letter, the Dutch Ministry of Economic and Development Cooperation and Ministry of Foreign Affairs notified the elected Parliament of its plan to implement additional export control measures for advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, consistent with...

Scale, performance, and industrial organization in AI

Scaling properties have shown time and again to be important to networked communication. Think of the introduction of switches in early telephone exchanges, improvements in time or code division multiplexing in wireless or optical networks, or packet switching on the Internet, all of which impacted the networks’ size, performance, and...