Dangerous technology or “user error?”
Scooter use
is rising in major cities. So are trips to the emergency room.
… In Santa Monica, Calif. — where one of the
biggest electric-scooter companies is based — the city’s fire
department has responded to 34 serious accidents involving the
devices this summer. The director of an emergency department there
said his team treated 18 patients who were seriously injured in
electric-scooter accidents during the final two weeks of July. And
in San Francisco, the doctor who runs the emergency room at a major
hospital said he is seeing as many as 10 severe injuries a week.
“Algorithms is free speech?”
Press
protections might safeguard Google’s algorithms, even from Trump
President
Trump indicated last week
that the White House is looking into regulating Google, Facebook, and
Twitter because they are, he alleges, privileging voices that
criticize him while suppressing his supporters’ ideas.
How, exactly, would
this blanket suggestion to regulate these companies work? When we’re
talking about regulating the information that comes up in Google
searches or appears in people’s timelines on Facebook or Twitter,
we’re really talking about governing algorithms and the decisions
they make about which information should be provided and prioritized.
Regulating algorithms
might seem like entirely new legal territory, since Google and its
cousins are only two decades old. But a newspaper case from 1974 has
quite a bit to say about whether the government can control, under
the First Amendment, companies’ algorithms and how they produce and
organize information.
In Miami
Herald v. Tornillo,
the Supreme Court struck down a Florida law that gave political
candidates the “right of reply” to criticisms they faced in
newspapers. The law required the newspaper to publish a response
from the candidate, and to place it, free of charge, in a conspicuous
place. The candidate’s lawyers contended that newspapers held near
monopolistic roles when it came to reaching audiences and that
compelling them to publish responses was the only way to ensure that
candidates could have a comparable voice.
… In the
Herald
case, the paper refused to comply with the law. Its editors argued
the law violated the First Amendment because it allowed the
government to compel a newspaper to publish certain information. The
Supreme Court resoundingly agreed with the Herald.
Justices explained that the government
cannot force newspaper editors “to publish that which reason tells
them should not be published.”
From that bastion of legal thought…
China's
Supreme Court Recognizes Blockchain Evidence as Legally Binding
Blockchain can now be legally used to authenticate
evidence in legal disputes in China, according to the country's
Supreme People's Court.
The court released new rules on Friday – that
take immediate effect – clarifying various issues relating to how
internet courts in China should review legal disputes.
Part of the new regulation specifies that internet
courts in the country shall recognize the legality of blockchain as a
method for storing and authenticating digital evidence, provided that
parties can prove the legitimacy of the technology being used in the
process.
"Internet
courts shall recognize digital data that are submitted as evidence if
relevant parties collected and stored these data via blockchain with
digital signatures, reliable timestamps and hash value verification
or via a digital deposition platform, and can prove the authenticity
of such technology used," the Supreme Court said in
an announcement.
Hear this, Bernie Sanders?
Amazon’s
Antitrust Antagonist Has a Breakthrough Idea
… At the end of the antitrust stacks is a
table near the window. “This is my command post,” said Lina
Khan.
It’s nothing, really. A few books are piled up
haphazardly next to a bottle with water and another with tea. Ms.
Khan was in Dallas quite a bit over the last year, refining an
argument about monopoly power that takes aim at one of the most
admired, secretive and feared companies of our era: Amazon.
The retailer overwhelmingly dominates online
commerce, employs more than half a million people and powers much of
the internet itself through its cloud computing division. On
Tuesday, it briefly became the second
company to be worth a trillion dollars.
… Amazon has more revenue than Facebook,
Google and Twitter put together, but it has largely escaped sustained
examination. That is beginning to change, and one significant reason
is Ms. Khan.
In early 2017, when she was an unknown law
student, Ms. Khan published “Amazon’s
Antitrust Paradox” in the Yale Law Journal. Her argument went
against a consensus in antitrust circles that dates back to the 1970s
— the moment when regulation was redefined to focus on consumer
welfare, which is to say price. Since Amazon is renowned for its
cut-rate deals, it would seem safe from federal intervention.
Ms. Khan disagreed. Over 93 heavily footnoted
pages, she presented the case that the company should not get a pass
on anticompetitive behavior just because it makes customers happy.
Once-robust monopoly laws have been marginalized, Ms. Khan wrote, and
consequently Amazon is amassing structural power that lets it exert
increasing control over many parts of the economy.
Amazon has so much data on so many customers, it
is so willing to forgo profits, it is so aggressive and has so many
advantages from its shipping and warehouse infrastructure that it
exerts an influence much broader than its market share. It resembles
the all-powerful railroads of the Progressive Era, Ms. Khan wrote:
“The thousands of retailers and independent businesses that must
ride Amazon’s rails to reach market are increasingly dependent on
their biggest competitor.”
Perspective.
The
devilishly quiet age of AI
… The AI revolution will
arrive almost imperceptibly, but still faster than prior big
technological shifts because of intense global competition and the
breadth of its reach, according to a
new study by the McKinsey Global Institute.
But by
the second half
of the next decade, a few players will be conspicuously ahead of
rivals, and by 2035, there will be clear winners and losers among
countries, companies and individuals.
-
The dividing line will be defined by those who took the coming age seriously and prepared for it and those who were passive.
The
report follows up on a May
study by McKinsey that described an evolving pecking order of
companies that were establishing "an insurmountable advantage"
over peers by pushing ahead with AI. It singled out nine "superstar"
companies, all in the U.S. and China, that were well ahead of
everyone else.
The latest study expands by adding to the list
winning countries and individuals. In all, McKinsey analyzed 41
countries, grouping them into four buckets by how well they appeared
to be poised for the new age of AI.
… By the time the fruits of AI investment
become clear — after 2025 — it will be extremely difficult to
compete with the leading players, says Jacques Bughin and Jeongmin
Seong, two co-authors of the report.
… AI adoption will add $13 trillion a year to
global production, the report said, and an average of 1.2% to global
GDP growth per year.
-
Among companies, those that embrace AI will see double their cash flow by 2030. Those that don't could lose 20% of their revenue by then.
Consciously or not, Scott Adams is targeting the
White House.
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