Is AI running the economy?

https://www.bespacific.com/trade-war-trumps-tariff-calculations-slammed-by-some-economists/

Trade war: Trump’s tariff calculations slammed by some economists

@JamesSurowiecki. Author of The Wisdom of Crowds. Contributing writer for Fast Company and The Atlantic. Editor at The Yale Review. I wrote The Financial Page for The New Yorker. “Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is…” 

• sunk-cost fallacy (n.) — “the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial” Forbes: Trump, debuting rates including 54% for China, 20% for the European Union and 26% for India, said the figures were based on “the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating” that was then divided in half because Trump wanted to be “kind.”

• Analyses posted on social media and in news articles determined the numbers were based on a much more simplistic calculation made by dividing a country’s trade surplus (representing the value by which a country’s exports exceeds the cost of its imports from the U.S.) by its total export value, then multiplying the figure by 0.5.

• The formula matched the tariffs Trump debuted for China, the European Union, Indonesia, India and Vietnam, Ian Bremmer, a global political scientist and founder of Eurasia Group consultancy firm, pointed out on X, writing “this is…incredibly stupid.”

• China, for example, had a trade surplus of $295 billion with the U.S. last year, with $438 billion worth of goods exported to the U.S.—$295 billion divided by $438 billion is equal to 67%, and divided in half equals the 34% tariff rate Trump debuted Wednesday.

• The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative later confirmed the formula by publishing what appears to be a complex math equation for calculating the tariff rates, but when stripped of its Greek letters, shows it’s essentially based on countries’ trade surpluses with the U.S. divided by their export value then divided in half…”

• The approach suggests countries could lower their tariffs by buying more U.S. products, which would be “very difficult for Asian, particularly poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand ... given that U.S. goods are much more expensive, and the purchasing power is lower for countries targeted with the highest levels of tariffs,” Natixis senior economist Trinh Nguyen told CNBC. ‘This is to economics what creationism is to biology,’ says Lawrence Summers, ex-treasury secretary and National Economic Council director… After imposing a baseline of 10 per cent on all trading partners, Trump claimed on Wednesday that in assessing the tariffs that a “worst offender” charged the US, his team included “currency manipulation and trade barriers” to arrive at the total. But the White House apparently took the US trade deficit with a country, then divided the deficit by the total dollar value of imports from that country – and then divided that result by two. That way, Trump said on Wednesday, “we charge them less, so how can anybody be upset?” For example, Chinese imports face reciprocal tariffs of 34 per cent. To calculate that, the Trump team apparently took the annual US trade deficit with China, US$295 billion, then divided that by the value of imports the US buys from China, US$440 billion. That calculation results in 67 per cent, the overall tariff figure Trump claimed on Wednesday was the level of China’s tariffs on US imports. By halving that and rounding up, the result was a US reciprocal tariff on Chinese imports of 34 per cent. This short cut works with every country listed…”

• See also Independent: CNBC’s Steve Liesman: “So then I started calling international trade economic experts. And nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula… the conclusion seems to be that the president kind of made this up as he went along.”

If you are looking for a quote…

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-liberation-day-tariffs-reactions-commentators-2025-4

Here's what the smartest people in markets and economics are saying about Trump's tariffs

Model?

https://newjerseymonitor.com/briefs/governor-murphy-signs-bill-criminalizing-deepfakes/

Governor Murphy signs bill criminalizing deepfakes

… The new law makes producing and sharing deepfakes a third-degree crime if they are used for an unlawful purpose — say, to harass or extort someone — with fines up to $30,000 or a maximum of five years in prison. The governor was joined Tuesday by Lt. Gov Tahesha Way and advocates like Francesca Mani.

Mani, a Westfield High School student who was a target of sexually explicit deepfakes shared by peers, helped inspire the legislation.

Sarcasm. That’s why I like it.

https://www.bespacific.com/u-s-government-demands-new-internal-passport-for-citizens/

U.S. Government demands new internal passport for citizens

BoingBoing: “Starting May 7, 2025, I’ll need a REAL ID to fly from Houston to New Orleans. Apparently, my current driver’s license — you know, the one issued by my state government — isn’t “real” enough anymore. Remember when we used to mock totalitarian regimes for requiring “internal passports?” Now we get to mock ourselves! Thanks to bipartisan enthusiasm for trampling fundamental rights, this bureaucratic nightmare sailed through the House in 2005 with a 261-161 vote. After 20 years of delays, the federal government is finally ready to roll out this masterpiece of bureaucratic overreach. To get one of you own, you’ll have to prove your existence with an entertaining scavenger hunt of documents: original birth certificate, social security card, marriage license, and two proofs that you actually live where you say you live. I guess the gubmint thinks we’re all just making up our addresses for fun or that we’re all terrists. Of course, all this personal information gets dumped into linked databases — “hacker bait,” as security experts cheerfully call it. So your data will be available not just to Elon Musk, but to any teenager in Kyrgyzstan with dark web access. As Zócalo Public Square warned in 2020, “REAL ID will make it easier for hackers and terrorists to steal our identities, and for governments and corporations to discriminate against us.” Of course, while every American needs this new super-ID for a domestic flight to Vegas, international travelers can breeze through with just their passports. Nothing says “national security” like making it harder for citizens to travel in their own country. Proud moment for American freedom, isn’t it?

Confusing?

https://www.ft.com/content/b3b8db40-4c20-4091-a61b-49e88a4b2355

Elon Musk’s X asks Supreme Court to shield users from US government

Elon Musk’s social media company X has asked the Supreme Court to shield its users from US law enforcement, intervening in a case that could force the federal government to produce a warrant to access private data.

In a brief filed to the high court, X said it was concerned about “broad, suspicionless” requests, adding that platforms should “not be coerced into helping governments undermine their users’ privacy”.

The supporting brief, filed on Friday, comes in a long-running case brought by James Harper, a user of crypto exchange Coinbase. He claims he was one of thousands of Coinbase clients whose trading data was handed to the Internal Revenue Service as part of a “fishing expedition” by the agency into potential tax fraud, in violation of the site’s privacy policies.

A win for the plaintiff in the case, which the Supreme Court has not yet agreed to hear, would restrict the US government — of which Musk is a part — from compelling data to be handed over by X without “probable cause and particularised suspicion”.

… The timing of the intervention by X — the only individual corporation to have filed a brief in the case to date — is notable given the Trump administration’s use of public material on social media to vet migrants.

The Department of Homeland Security last month proposed broadening the collection of social media account handles from visa applicants and those wishing to apply for residence in the US. 

How not to do it?

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/arkansas-social-media-age-verification-law-struck-down-by-judge

Arkansas Social Media Verification Law Struck Down by Judge (1)

Arkansas’ youth-focused Social Media Safety Act infringes on the First Amendment rights of internet users and is unconstitutionally vague, a federal trial court judge ruled in a victory for Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and other social media companies.

The law—known as Act 689— required certain social media companies to verify the ages of those in the state seeking to create an account and check to ensure that minors have parental permission. However the law isn’t narrowly tailored to address the state’s interests in protecting minors from objectionable content, the US District Court for the Western District of Arkansas said.

“Rather than targeting content that is harmful to minors, Act 689 simply impedes access to content writ large,” Judge Timothy L. Brooks said.

(Related) Also too broad?

https://pogowasright.org/aclu-urges-2nd-circuit-to-rethink-no-warrant-cellphone-searches-at-us-border/

ACLU urges 2nd Circuit to rethink no-warrant cellphone searches at US border

Erik Uebelacker reports:

A Fourth Amendment carveout that gives U.S. Border Patrol agents the right to conduct warrantless searches shouldn’t apply to cellphones and laptops, the American Civil Liberties Union argued to a Second Circuit panel on Monday.

The “border search exception” allows federal officers to search people and items entering the United States, without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. But the ACLU says digital device searches don’t count because they “can reveal the mine run of somebody’s life.”

“It’s like searching someone’s home,” ACLU lawyer Esha Bhandari told the court. “It’s like searching the entire contents of someone’s mind.”

Read more at Courthouse News.

Perspective. (Free PDF)

https://blogs.opentext.com/business-at-the-speed-of-ai/

Business at the Speed of AI

The next 10 years are going to change everything.

Business. Healthcare. Climate science. Energy. Internet. Life expectancy. Learning.

We are on the verge of discoveries in every major area of human experience. Companies in all fields are bringing new ideas to market and creating new roles for employees that are fundamentally changing and challenging our status quo. We are also on the verge of creating a new workforce, a limitless digital labor force with AI agents.

The internet changed everything. With AI, everything will change again.

This is why today I am excited to launch my latest book: Business at the Speed of AI. It’s an exploration of how the new digital workforce, comprised of AI agents, will radically transform every aspect of work, and elevate human potential.

A security lesson for all.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-to-avoid-the-signal-mistakes-the-trump-administration-made/

How to avoid the Signal mistakes the Trump administration made

Daily Dot – Mikael Thalen: The other week, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was accidentally added to a Signal group chat where everyone from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to Vice President JD Vance discussed an impending attack on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Long story short, the administration responded to the unprecedented blunder by simultaneously confirming and denying it, before ultimately concluding that it wasn’t a big deal. In reality, the information shared in the chat would have been classified, making the accidental inclusion of an outside party a major security disaster. So what could the administration have done to avoid such an issue? For starters, they should not have used Signal. Yes, Signal is the gold standard for end-to-end encrypted communications, so don’t buy the claims that it’s vulnerable. How to avoid the Trump administration’s Signal mistakes = But Signal is designed to protect your messages from being intercepted when they travel from your phone to a recipient. If your phone gets hacked, a very likely possibility for the people in that chat group, then the unencrypted chats on your phone will be available to the attackers. And if you add someone to a group that isn’t supposed to be there, encryption won’t help you either. But the administration could have done one thing to avoid this mess: Use compartmentalization, which involves dividing information and access into distinct segments to minimize the risk of unauthorized disclosure. Reporting suggests that some members in the group were using both their personal phones and work phones to access the chat. By doing so, they’ve made their attack surface even larger. Had members of the group used multiple Signal accounts, like one for discussing with other admin officials, another for communicating with journalists, and another for personal use, this never would have happened. Granted, setting up multiple Signal accounts or using multiple devices isn’t always practical or fun (believe me, I know). And as we stated before, they shouldn’t have been using a commercial phone app to chat about war plans regardless. To be fair, there are phones that will let you run multiple profiles and Signal accounts at once, all with different usernames and phone numbers. But that’s a discussion for another day (feel free to ask if you’d like to learn more in a future column!) But in this scenario, relying on the same phone you use to gossip with friends to discuss classified kinetic action by the most powerful military in world history, isn’t smart.  Another Signal feature – One other feature worth mentioning––although it may not have helped in this case––is the feature known as safety numbers, or codes that are unique to your Signal conversations. On Signal, if you click on a user’s profile picture in your inbox, you should see an option that says “View safety number.” When you click it, you’ll see a QR code with 12 rows of 5 digit numbers below. Essentially, you want to confirm with the recipient that the collection of numbers on their screen matches what’s shown on yours. The easiest way to do this is in person by scanning the QR code on your recipient’s phone. And if you can’t do it in person, have the person reach out with a copy-and-pasted version of their safety number, or a screenshot, from an account that you know they have control of. Once you both confirm that you’re seeing the same codes, you and the recipient will have a “Verified” check mark badge under your names in your conversation. If you or the person changes your phone number or begins messaging from a new device, you’ll get an alert that their safety number has changed. If that happens, you’ll want to confirm it’s them and re-verify the new safety numbers. Had Trump’s advisors practiced compartmentalization, the journalist wouldn’t have been in the chat. And by verifying everyone’s safety numbers, they would have seen, had they checked, whether everyone in the chat was legit.”

Perspective. (The view from London.)

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2025/03/31/what-trumps-tariffs-will-do-to-the-us-economy/

What Trump’s tariffs will do to the US economy

In his speeches, president Donald Trump frequently suggests that tariffs will finance public spending while simultaneously allowing for tax cuts, thanks to a massive influx of resources from abroad. Now that the first trade barriers against Canada, China, Mexico, and the European Union have taken effect, American citizens are beginning to realise how misleading this claim is.

Tariffs are not paid by foreign taxpayers but by consumers and businesses in the country imposing them. The economic consequences for both the United States and its trade partners will be severe, driving up prices, reducing employment, and weakening long-term competitiveness.

A result of the introduction of AI or an indication that we no longer value knowledge?

https://www.bespacific.com/has-the-decline-of-knowledge-work-begun/

Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

Boston.com: “The unemployment rate for college graduates has risen faster than for other workers over the past few years. How worried should they be? When Starbucks announced last month that it was laying off more than 1,000 corporate employees, it highlighted a disturbing trend for white-collar workers: Over the past few years, they have seen a steeper rise in unemployment than other groups, and slower wage growth. It also added fuel to a debate that has preoccupied economists for much of that time: Are the recent job losses merely a temporary development? Or do they signal something more ominous and irreversible? After sitting below 4% for more than two years, the overall unemployment rate has topped that threshold since May. Economists say that the job market remains strong by historical standards and that much of the recent weakening appears connected to the economic impact of the pandemic. Companies hired aggressively amid surging demand, then shifted to layoffs once the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates. Many of these companies have sought to make their operations leaner under pressure from investors. But amid rapid advances in artificial intelligence and President Donald Trump’s targeting of federal agencies, which disproportionately support white-collar jobs, some wonder if a permanent decline for knowledge work has begun. “We’re seeing a meaningful transition in the way work is done in the white-collar world,” said Carl Tannenbaum, the chief economist of Northern Trust. “I tell people a wave is coming.” To date, few industries epitomize the shift of the last few years better than the making of video games, which began a boom in 2020 as couch-bound Americans sought out new forms of home entertainment. The industry hired aggressively before reversing course and embarking on a period of layoffs. Thousands of video game workers lost jobs last year and the year before. The scale of the job loss was such that the host of the Game Developers Choice Awards, the industry’s annual awards show, complained about “record layoffs” during her opening monologue in 2024. That same year, a unionization trend that had begun with lower-paid quality assurance testers spread to better-paid workers like game producers, designers and engineers at companies that make the hit games Fallout and World of Warcraft. At Bethesda Game Studios, which is owned by Microsoft and makes Fallout, workers said they unionized partly because they were alarmed by rounds of layoffs at the company in 2023 and 2024 and felt that a union would give them leverage in a softening labor market. “It was the first time that Bethesda had experienced layoffs in a very, very long time,” said Taylor Welling, a producer at the studio, who holds a master’s degree in interactive entertainment. “That sort of scared a lot of people.” Microsoft declined to comment.

Unemployment in finance and related industries, while still low, increased by about a quarter from 2022 to 2024, as rising interest rates slowed demand for mortgages and companies sought to become leaner. On an earnings call last summer, the CEO of Wells Fargo noted that the company’s “efficiency initiatives” had pruned the company’s workforce for 16 straight quarters, including a nearly 50% reduction of workers in the company’s home lending division since 2023. Last fall, Wells Fargo laid off about one-quarter of the roughly 45 employees on its conduct management intake team, which reviews accusations of company misconduct against customers and employees. Heather Rolfes, a lawyer who was let go, said that she believed the company was seeking to save money by shrinking its U.S. workforce and that she and her colleagues were a tempting target because they had recently sought to unionize. “I think it was great for them to get rid of two birds with one stone,” Rolfes said. Some of her former co-workers say they anxiously await every Tuesday after a payday, because that’s when the company tends to inform workers about job cuts. “We feel like at any moment we could be laid off,” said Eden Davis, another worker on the team…”

Amusing and potentially interesting.

https://www.bespacific.com/tv-garden/

TV Garden

TV Garden: Watch Free Live TV from Around the World on tv.garden. Stream live news, sports, and entertainment—no subscription needed. Multiple channels are available for each country and users may easily switch channels within a country and move on to a long list of channels available from other countries quickly. Good for language skills, and important insights into life, culture, politics, society in countries we often know little about, all delivered with a local perspective. There are no translations available.

These are straightforward to build.

https://databreaches.net/2025/03/30/canadas-privacy-commissioner-launches-breach-risk-self-assessment-tool-for-organizations/

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner launches breach risk self-assessment tool for organizations

Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne has launched a new online tool that will help businesses and federal institutions that experience a privacy breach to assess whether the breach is likely to create a real risk of significant harm to individuals.

The privacy breach risk self-assessment tool is a convenient web-based application that guides users through a series of questions to assess the sensitivity of personal information that is involved in a data breach, and the probability that it will be misused.

The results provided through this online tool will help organizations to conduct a risk assessment following a data breach and determine their required next steps, including notifying affected individuals.

Organizations that are subject to Canada’s federal private-sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and federal government institutions, are required to report breaches that pose a real risk of significant harm to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and to notify affected individuals.

Real risk of significant harm includes bodily harm, humiliation, damage to reputation or relationships, loss of employment, financial loss, identity theft, negative effects on one’s credit record, and damage or loss of property.

In determining whether there is a real risk of significant harm, organizations must consider the degree of sensitivity of the personal information involved and the probability that the information will be misused.

Privacy breaches may result from identity theft, scams, hacking or other unauthorized access, be it deliberate or accidental. Sensitive information often includes personal health and financial data.

Quote

“Privacy breaches are growing in scale, complexity and severity and can cause serious harm to the people who have been affected. This new online tool will make it easier for organizations to assess the potential impacts on individuals who have been affected, to determine what steps they need to take following a breach.”

Philippe Dufresne
Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Related links

• What is the privacy breach risk self-assessment tool?

• Assess if a privacy breach poses a real risk of significant harm to an individual

Source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Worth considering…

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/17/4/151

GDPR and Large Language Models: Technical and Legal Obstacles

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing but present significant technical and legal challenges when confronted with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This paper examines the complexities involved in reconciling the design and operation of LLMs with GDPR requirements. In particular, we analyze how key GDPR provisions—including the Right to Erasure, Right of Access, Right to Rectification, and restrictions on Automated Decision-Making—are challenged by the opaque and distributed nature of LLMs. We discuss issues such as the transformation of personal data into non-interpretable model parameters, difficulties in ensuring transparency and accountability, and the risks of bias and data over-collection. Moreover, the paper explores potential technical solutions such as machine unlearning, explainable AI (XAI), differential privacy, and federated learning, alongside strategies for embedding privacy-by-design principles and automated compliance tools into LLM development. The analysis is further enriched by considering the implications of emerging regulations like the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act. In addition, we propose a four-layer governance framework that addresses data governance, technical privacy enhancements, continuous compliance monitoring, and explainability and oversight, thereby offering a practical roadmap for GDPR alignment in LLM systems. Through this comprehensive examination, we aim to bridge the gap between the technical capabilities of LLMs and the stringent data protection standards mandated by GDPR, ultimately contributing to more responsible and ethical AI practices.

Interesting.

https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_articles/541/

Is Privacy Really a Civil Right?

Sixty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Civil rights laws aimed at curbing discrimination and inequality in federal programs, public accommodations, housing, employment, education, voting and lending faced opposition before the Act and continue to do so today. Nevertheless, a swell of legal scholars, policy analysts and advocacy groups in the United States now assert with favor a vital connection between privacy and civil rights. Historically, civil rights legislation was enacted to combat group-based discrimination, a problem exacerbated by contemporary approaches to personal data collection, artificial intelligence, algorithmic analytics and surveillance. Whether privacy is a civil right, protects civil rights, or is protected by civil rights, the novel pairing of civil rights and privacy rights commends itself. Yet, as we show, the pairing of privacy and civil rights is complex, consequential, and potentially disappointing. Privacy and civil rights have a mixed history of celebrated, but also ambivalent and condemnatory, partnerships. Little direct support for conceptualizing privacy or data protection as a civil right resides in the intricate history of U.S. civil rights laws. Still, civil rights law is a dynamic moral, political and legal concept adaptable to the demands of new justice initiatives. With that in mind, this Article critically examines the implications of legal interventions premised on pairing privacy rights and civil rights. We trace the contentious but paramount ideas of civil rights and privacy rights far back in time, revealing that important conceptual and historical issues muddy the waters of the recent trend freely characterizing privacy rights as civil rights or as rights that protect or are protected by civil rights. We conclude that one can sensibly contend today that privacy rights do and ought to protect civil rights, exemplified by the right to vote and freely associate; civil rights do and ought to protect privacy rights, exemplified by fair housing and employment rights that support material contexts for intimate life; and crucially, that privacy rights are civil rights, meaning that they are aspirational moral and human rights that ought to be a part of society’s positive law protections to foster goods that go to the heart of thriving lives and effective civic participation for everyone. By illuminating the remote and recent sources of what we term the “privacy-and-civil-rights” movement and its practical significance, we hope to empower those who pair privacy and civil rights with greater clarity and awareness of context, limitations, and likely outcomes.

AI may be killing its food supply.

https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/as-ai-takes-his-readers-a-leading

As AI Takes His Readers, A Leading History Publisher Wonders What’s Next

Late last year, Jan van der Crabben’s AI fears materialized. His World History Encyclopedia — the world’s second most visited history website — showed up in Google’s AI Overviews, synthesized and presented alongside other history sites. Then, its traffic cratered, dropping 25% in November.

Van der Crabben, the website’s CEO and founder, knew he was getting a preview of what many online publishers may soon experience. His site built a sizable audience with plenty of help from Google, which still accounts for 80% of its traffic. But as AI search and bots like ChatGPT ingest and summarize the web’s content, that traffic is starting to disappear. Now, his path forward is beginning to look murky.

Many, many years ago (1983) I attended a lecture by Grace Hopper. One point I remember clearly was her insistence that COBOL was obsolete and should be replaced immediately. So yes, this is overdue and no, I doubt it can be done “in a matter of months.”

https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/

DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest programming languages in a matter of months, potentially putting the integrity of the system—and the benefits on which tens of millions of Americans rely—at risk.