Speed
Bureaucracy is slow. Life is fast.
AI Regulation: What’s Next for the U.S.
AI regulation that helped private users understand the value of what they were getting would accelerate adoption. So would a framework for assessing risk. Here, the standard would help people understand what they’re buying more than it would try to control what they do.
‘While some national groups have created high-quality standards, these standards are far from a universal solution that can be adopted by the hundreds of firms that have already adopted AI. One recent example that provides insight into where the AEC industry is headed can be found in the US Food & Drug Administration’s Guidance on AI Enabled Devices. It provides comprehensive guidance on measuring AI performance and how those metrics are used in medical device marketing. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) AI risk management framework is also a good first step but offers just a benchmark for firms. On the other hand, the ISO's AI framework is arguably too in-depth, taking significant time and money to adopt and creating a barrier to entry for most day-to-day AI uses.
‘As an industry, AEC needs to call for compliance and a quality standard. The compliance standard should help companies understand how they're tolerating and prioritizing risk, setting a framework around what makes AI trustworthy. It gives engineering firms a better idea about the reliability and validity of the answers they're getting from their AI system and can also ensure that AI systems—especially those used in engineering—are coming to answers in a transparent and accountable way.
‘Without a compliance standard, industry firms face a slippery slope situation; data-driven models feed off data inputs that only provide self-affirming answers, with no guarantee that the AI model is actually relying on any of the physics principles that have been taught for hundreds of years.’
We’ve written about regulatory conflict and regulatory room previously. Now, politicians in Colorado worry that this could chill innovation in the state.
Go figure.
‘Now that we’re less than a year away from Colorado having the nation’s most stringent set of laws regulating the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace and elsewhere, some lawmakers are asking whether it’s better to take a step back and cool the jets. A new bill just introduced in the state legislature on Monday would not only delay the implementation date until 2027 but would also widen the group of AI users that would be exempted from the law’s grip. But there’s less than a week to go until the 2025 session wraps up, so time is limited if lawmakers want to make these changes before February 1, 2026 effective date. What do you need to know about SB 318 and what are the chances of it blunting Colorado’s groundbreaking AI law?’
Is Harvard Complying With the Tax Code?
What is education? What is propaganda?
Let’s have that debate.
‘The law—Section 501(c)3—says the tax exemption applies to a corporation “organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes . . . no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda . . . and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” Courts have struggled for a century to distinguish “educational” from “propaganda” for tax purposes. In Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983), the Supreme Court even ventured beyond the statutory language and upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to pull a tax exemption “where there is no doubt that the organization’s activities violate fundamental public policy.”
‘Mr. Trump hasn’t spelled out his case in detail, and it’s tempting to see the whole business as evidence of his vindictiveness. If Harvard had been less partisan and more law-abiding, it would be on firmer ground.’
“We Can’t Hire a White Guy”—a Professor on Life at Princeton
This may have been consistent with public policy in prior Administrations, but it isn’t now.
Political volatility may have consequences for things like tax-free status and federal funding.
‘Anti-Semitism is really a symptom of a deeper malaise at Princeton, which is that the university decided to go woke and—as President Eisgruber wrote in the last few months of the first Trump administration—declare that we were “systemically racist.” But if we have been systemically racist, it’s been against whites, Jews, Asians, and Indians, in favor of other demographics. We’ve always been told that we have to give special treatment to women and certain demographic minorities.
‘At one point, I was a “search officer” in my department. When our department was going to make a hire, a search committee was constituted. A search officer has access to demographic data that the search committee does not have and can look at the short list and then look at the demographic data and say, “I think you should maybe consider this person or that person,” i.e., people who belong to certain groups.
‘In one meeting of search officers, we were told that 70 percent of the faculty are white, and that the faculty composition has to change to reflect the composition of the class of Princeton, which they themselves had curated. Having engineered the class a certain way, they wanted then to engineer the faculty.
‘I have a colleague in the sciences, and he was told by the department, “You can’t shortlist this person. We can’t hire a white guy.” This colleague went to the chair, who was Jewish, and said to him, “In the 1930s, that’s what they used to say about Jews here at Princeton: ‘We couldn’t hire them because they’re Jewish.’”
‘Everyone knows, but academics are cowards. They see the way the wind is blowing and either go quiet or jump on the bandwagon.’
The World Is Past ‘Peak Climate,’ but Exxon Lags Behind
The problem with driving an aircraft carrier is that it takes a long time to turn. Exxon managed to turn just in time for the sentiment to shift. Yet, they still make way, given the scale of the investments in things like carbon capture that they were forced to make. Recall the Engine No 1 activism.
‘Exxon Mobil at first resisted. But after a bruising shareholder proxy battle in 2021, the energy giant surrendered to the progressive climate army that is now in retreat. As governments, asset managers and companies withdraw from the climate crusade, Exxon is racing to the front lines by urging global CO2 emissions regulations.
‘During an earnings call on Friday, CEO Darren Woods touted his company’s plans to “take advantage of some of the government support and policy that’s out there”—i.e., subsidies for hydrogen and for carbon capture and sequestration—and also work “very hard” to “establish a true framework for carbon accounting.”
‘“We need a better system to manage emissions across the globe,” he said. Yes, just what the world needs is for a multilateral government body à la the United Nations to regulate emissions of businesses across the globe. This is essentially what Exxon advocated in a report last week that starts by lamenting the “world’s climate policies are falling short.”’
The Politics of EVs Have Changed
CRA requires only a simple majority in the Senate. Chipping away at bad regulation one rule at a time.
‘The vote was 246-164 for a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to repeal the waiver that the Environmental Protection Agency granted California for its EV mandate. The waiver provision was written to let California address smog. But Sacramento Democrats lobbied the Biden EPA to let it apply to carbon emissions.
‘The mandate is ludicrously impossible to meet. It says zero-emissions vehicles would have to account for 43% of an auto maker’s sales by 2027 in California and the dozen other states that have signed up for its rules. It rises to 68% by 2030.’
Bureaucracy is ugly and thoughtless and cruel.
‘Pring provides ample evidence of not just ministerial disdain for the disabled but of an entire system designed to victimise. In the name of efficiency, reform follows reform, and each time the DWP (formerly DSS) becomes ever more cruel. Sick or suicidal, never mind, what matters is making savings, even if the effect is fatal.
‘The book begins with the account of how a young mother, Philippa Day, committed suicide. A copy of her suicide note is reproduced: ‘My name is Philippa Day I’m a good person, I’m strong as fuck. I’m a damn good mother … I tried I really did … I’m sorry’ (p.1). Philippa Day was awarded a lifetime allowance (Disability Living Allowance) in 1994 but in 2018 her support was reduced to the extent that she was no longer able to look after herself or her son. The impact led her to take her own life. While Philippa was in a coma, Capita, on behalf of the DWP, and in the full knowledge that Philippa was in a coma in hospital, told Philippa’s family that if she failed to attend her assessment the following week, her claim would be cancelled (p.209). An inquest found DWP ‘errors and delays’ had been ‘significant contributory factors’ in her death (p.212). Pring’s book shows Philippa Day was not an isolated case.’