I’m back on the Eastern Shore this weekend. Next weekend, I’ll be in Austin for the start of a twelve-day trip. I’m excited to see people but also looking forward to more than a week in the DC area later in March.
Before we jump into what I’m reading, here are a few things to note.
First, I wanted to flag a new philosophical razor that a friend, Dave Willner, came up with this week (at least I haven’t seen it anywhere else), and another friend, Brian Fishman, coined Willner’s Razor. This came up in discussing Google’s issues with Gemini this week and how we need a way to lean towards blaming insufficient resourcing or time for issues rather than incompetence. An important thing to keep in mind as AI continues to barrel forward.
Second, I noticed myself saying something more this week. For decades now, Googling something has been a shorthand for looking information up. But this week, I realized I’m starting to talk about prompting rather than searching. Part of it is me discussing my Wednesday newsletter with people and the concept of prompt moderation, but I also found myself saying to someone that we should prompt Bard (now called Gemini) about that and see what it says. It made me wonder how our vocabulary will slowly evolve with AI, and we might not even realize it.
Third, my good friends over at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab are surveying the AI-borne risks to the integrity of the US 2024 election. If you are a tech policy nerd like me or have thoughts on this subject, they’d love to hear from you! Take the survey here.
Have a lovely Sunday!
Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.
What I’m Reading
Economist: Where democracy is most at risk
Economist Intelligence Unit: Democracy Index 2023
Lawfare: Texas, Florida, and the Magic Speech Sorting Hat in the NetChoice Cases
TechPolicy.Press: First Amendment Defenders and the Supreme Court Should Reject the Jawboning Bogeyman
TIME: The Supreme Court Could Determine the Future of Social Media Content Moderation
The Hill: House launching bipartisan AI task force
The Hill: Facebook whistleblower, AI godfather join hundreds calling for deepfake regulation
New York Times: Google Chatbot’s A.I. Images Put People of Color in Nazi-Era Uniforms - The New York Times
The Verge: Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis
Google: Gemini image generation got it wrong. We'll do better.
Reuters: Exclusive: Reddit in AI content licensing deal with Google
Axios: Naming a "chief AI officer" loses momentum as AI becomes everyone's job
Nihal J. Krishan - The Hindu: Scoop: OpenAI execs discuss increased risk of election misinformation in India during closed door meeting with top Indian tech policy minds
Politico EU: How Europe learned to stop worrying and love TikTok
Pew Research: How U.S. Adults Use TikTok
New York Times: A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men
TechPolicy.Press: Building Common Infrastructure for Meaningful Tech Transparency
The Quint: Meta & Misinformation Combat Alliance Partner To Fight Fake News Using Deepfakes
SecurityWeek: Microsoft Releases Red Teaming Tool for Generative AI
Neiman Journalism Lab: Google tests removing the News tab from search results
Axios: Substack says it now has more than 3 million paid subscriptions
Meta Oversight Board: The Oversight Board Expands to Threads
Fast Company: How Meta gave up on politics
Reuters: Indonesia issues regulations requiring digital platforms to pay media for content
Reuters: Meta believes it is not required to pay for Indonesia news content posted voluntarily
Channel News Asia: Analysis: Why big tech's pushback against Jokowi's new media regulation in Indonesia could be bad news for many
Wonks and War Rooms Podcast: Social Media in Politics with Dave Sommer
Columbia University: Institute of Global Politics at Columbia SIPA Will House New Trust and Safety Tooling Consortium
University of British Columbia: Report: The Peril and Promise of AI for Journalism
European Commission: Investigation of the Commission and consumer authorities finds that online influencers rarely disclose commercial content
Financial Times: Thousands march against López Obrador’s institutional overhaul in Mexico
Forbidden Stories: Azerbaijan’s business of election observation
Semafor: Belarusian opposition endorses AI candidate in parliamentary elections
Economic Times: Misinformation Combat Alliance, Meta introduce WhatsApp Helpline to fight deepfakes
Prospect Magazine: We still live in Steve Jobs’s brave new world - Forty years ago, Apple unveiled the Macintosh—and computing changed forever
Puck News: Marc Andreessen Eats Washington
Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.
As I'm sure you know, the idea of having a chatbot tell you stuff without being able to evaluate its sources, as you might do in search, is a bad idea!