“For more than three years, public debate about the risk-benefit balance around artificial intelligence has been dysfunctional bordering on ridiculous, hostage to a binary so crude it would embarrass a freshman seminar. On one side are the ‘doomers,’ who are portrayed as insisting that frontier AI is an existential threat requiring immediate radical constraint. On the other are the ‘boomers,’ who treat any suggestion of oversight as a sci-fi-coded slowdown that would hand American technological supremacy to China. Each camp has its prophets, forums, think tanks, and a remarkable capacity to mistake assertion for argument. But the world just changed, and that dialogue is ready to end. That’s good news for amplifying the upside potential of AI.” (05/21/26)
“Trent and Caitlin discuss recent AI news, Sam Altman’s troubles legal and otherwise, labor organizing as a strategy against the worst fears of AI experts, and whether Richard Dawkins is conscious, in this news digest episode with linguist and AI researcher Hagen Blix.” (05/21/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“President Donald Trump’s recent two-day summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded much as anticipated. In an article written ahead of the trip, I noted that expectations for substantive breakthroughs in the fraught Sino-American relationship were likely to be disappointed. The events of the visit bore this out. While the tone was notably, and welcomely, warmer than in recent years and both sides touted ‘fantastic trade deals,’ the core structural tensions — trade imbalances, technology restrictions, Taiwan, and regional security — remain largely unaddressed.” (05/21/26)
“The Democratic National Committee released what it said was its full, unredacted autopsy of the 2024 presidential election on Thursday after months of mounting pressure on party chair Ken Martin, who was keeping the report secret. … Martin released the report, first obtained by CNN, but simultaneously issued a statement distancing himself from it and its conclusions. ‘I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards and it won’t meet your standards,’ he wrote in a Substack post. … The report has an unusual disclaimer, saying it ‘reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.'” (05/21/26)
‘As we all wait for reality, and/or China, to catch up with the Silicon Valley AI boys, it might be a good time to go back in time a bit and see what it looked like in the past when our bubbles burst, specifically the tech bubble in 2001 and the housing bubble in 2008. Fortunately, it is easy to find the key data.” (05/21/26)
“The US has a choice between managing what is a shift away from US backed currency using military and economic restraint, or accelerating it.” (05/21/26)
Source: EconLog
by Alex MacDonald & Tammy McCutchen
“Nowadays, it’s hard to read anything about workplace policy without running into ‘“algorithmic management.’ Companies, we’re told, are increasingly controlling workers through an array of digital ‘tricks.’ These companies record our keystrokes, track our locations, and even watch us through our webcams. We hear this same story in academic journals, government reports, and the popular press. In fact, the story has even made its way into federal regulations — specifically, in the U.S. Department of Labor’s current rule about independent contractors. Like the more popular accounts, this rule assumes that algorithmic management is pervasive. And it treats the practice as a form of ‘control.’ There’s only one problem: algorithmic management isn’t a real thing.” (05/21/26)
