Howard Cohen

Join us for an important conversation next week about platform design and elections with Glenn E., Ravi Iyer, Kaili L., and Nicole Schneidman - how is tech getting in the way and/or facilitating election integrity? 🤔 https://lu.ma/59uxawc5

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Four veteran senators are calling on Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and his AI working group to develop a framework for addressing extreme risks posed by artificial intelligence, “including biological, chemical, cyber, and nuclear threats,” while offering several options for oversight of AI frontier models. “Congress should consider a permanent framework to mitigate extreme risks. This framework should also serve as the basis for international coordination to mitigate extreme risks posed by AI. This letter is an attempt to start a dialogue about the need for such a framework, which would be in addition to, not at the exclusion of, proposals focused on other risks presented by developments in AI,” according to the April 16 letter from Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Angus King (I-ME). READ MORE: #artificialintelligence

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Comments from Perplexity AI’s CEO, noting that robots.txt is not a legal framework, and that Perplexity also relies on 3rd party crawlers for data access, will come as no surprise for publishers dealing with industrialised IP theft in the age of AI. https://lnkd.in/ehZi4wNT Robots.txt has at least 3 clear problems: It's voluntary - so no sanction for developers who ignore and scrape anyway. Essentially a parish notice asking billion dollar businesses not to nick the thing that's central to building and grounding their payday LLMs. No wonder many companies are ignoring requests.  The next government should mandate rules with significant penalties attached for crawlers who don’t comply with instructions from website owners. No transparency of crawlers - with no duty on web crawlers to identify themselves they can scrape and index IP anon.  So even with a web application firewall in place to block scrapers, as an IP owner you don't know who's scraping what or why tilll they dain to tell you.  We need a transparent register of first and third party crawlers used or utilised by any AI developer that wants to trade with UK businesses and consumers. Laundering of IP for commercial uses - Various copyright regimes around the world have well-meaning but flawed exceptions for text and data mining for non-commercial purposes.  These exceptions have created loopholes whereby academic institutions and non-profits scrape commercial IP for “non-commercial purposes”, only for these datasets to be repurposed by billion dollar businesses for commercial purposes, without a commercial licence.  The next government should narrow these exceptions, and put in place sanctions where non-commercial users of IP allow that data to be used for commercial purposes. There's lots of joined up thinking going on between different regulators on AI's impact on the UK economy and wider society.  The DRCF AI and digital hub is a good example of this collaboration in action.    But plans such as Peter Kyle + the The Labour Party's to create a Regulatory Innovation Office must also recognise the pivotal role of copyright in training and ground LLMs, and make sure that the Intellectual Property Office has a seat at that table.  There is no doubt that the IP created by companies within the UK’s world class knowledge economy is already being used to underpin AI technologies, at present largely without permission or reward.  Before technology companies get the chance to batter down the doors in Whitehall to integrate their AI into every aspect of the economy and the civil service, the next government needs to put in place a clear and transparent framework that supports a sustainable value exchange between the creators and commercial users of that high quality knowledge and information.

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Interesting to observe continuing acqui-hires by SMS businesses to try and advance in AI. https://lnkd.in/eyT2reCj The focus of the Furman review on the 400 acquisitions made by the 5 biggest tech firms in the preceding decade. And those same 5 companies seeking to dominate the field ago in the next phase of technological evolution. Feels like a big test coming for the EU DMA and the new UK Digital Markets Unit, to prevent the digital economy being dominated by the same 5 companies.

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I'll be writing more opinion pieces for #OrbitalToday for the foreseeable future. Here's the first in the series: https://lnkd.in/eK6ehfiq

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My thoughts quoted in Inside AI Policy on the GOP's stated intent to repeal the Biden AI Executive order and instead, in their words, "support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing." “Matt Mittelsteadt, also of Mercatus, said of EO repeal " The question is: what replaces it? The previous Trump administration pursued a light touch approach, but the AI context of 2020 is a far cry from 2024. While it's unclear what AI development promoting ‘human flourishing’ might mean to the Trump camp, known Trump policy priorities such as expanded tariffs, expanded border controls and a general ‘America first’ attitude could put the American AI industry at a competitive disadvantage and slow AI innovation and investment.” https://lnkd.in/dEG3C29X

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The U.S. is considering new export controls on closed-source advanced AI models. Given industry realities and the mechanics of such a move, this is unlikely to have the impact the White House is hoping. The first issue is implementation: how do you track where software is going? The second, bigger issue is open source: major companies like Meta are already avoiding the closed models the government hopes to restrict. By unevenly regulating closed source, open-model companies like Meta will leap ahead. The result: our advantage over China will be unchanged, and the only potential losers will OpenAI and other proprietary vendors. #AI #AIgovernance #aipolicy

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The Center for Democracy and Technology in congressional testimony offered an extensive critique of AI-powered facial recognition while emphasizing the need to establish safeguards before the federal government and other entities deploy technologies that could pose challenges to civil rights and civil liberties. “Facial recognition serves as a premiere example of why responsible use of AI technologies is critical to ensuring safety as well as civil rights and civil liberties,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of CDT’s Security and Surveillance Project, testified May 22 before the House Homeland Security Committee. “Facial recognition is especially fitting in evaluating responsible use because it is an AI technology that the government has used for law enforcement and security purposes for roughly a decade. Facial recognition can provide a roadmap of why key principles are essential, as well as offer clear warnings about how irresponsible and careless uses undermine public safety,” he said. READ MORE: #artificialintelligence

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New H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay: Alex Wellerstein on James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds., _Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications: A Primer on US Systems and Future Challenges_. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2022. https://lnkd.in/ekkgDWhZ Review by Alex Wellerstein, Stevens Institute of Technology Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) is a mouthful of military jargon. In this edited volume, which is presented as an “unclassified primer on America’s NC3 system and the way forward to a modernized, twenty-first-century backbone of deterrence,” one finds a bewildering number of attempts at defining what exactly NC3 is, and what it is not.[1] The first attempt uses official US Air Force guidance, which starts by defining Nuclear Command and Control (NC2) as consisting of five functions: force management, planning, maintain situational awareness, decision-making, and force direction (5). These are each in turn defined by their “activities” that contribute to Command, Control, and Communications (C3). NC3, then, is “the means to execute these mission essential functions,” as provided by “an integrated system comprised of facilities, equipment, communications, procedures, and personnel.”[2] Clear as mud, and impressively circular, even for the US military. Reading through the essays, of course, one pieces together a somewhat clearer picture of this elephant, but, ultimately, NC3 is inherently poorly defined and this, perhaps, is one of the reasons that finding an agency to “own” it from top to bottom has proved rather elusive over the years. One of the essays describes NC3 as the systems that “provide the links between nuclear forces and presidential authority,” which is a bit clearer. A definition that I quite like (in that it dares to not simply replicate official jargon) describes NC3 as “the nervous system of nuclear deterrence.” The short foreword emphasizes that NC3 comprises “more than two hundred subsystems, touching all three legs of the triad of nuclear delivery systems, and requiring a fully integrated infrastructure of space-, ground-, air-, and sea-base capabilities,” and as such is, “the most complex and yet least-known component of the nuclear weapons complex.”To elucidate what NC3 is meant to accomplish, several of the essays repeat the common framing of NC3 as the “always/never” problem: to serve their deterrence role, nuclear weapons must always be usable and functioning whenever properly authorized to do so (also called “positive control”), while never being usable (or exploding accidentally) if they haven’t been so authorized (“negative control”)....

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Just published this new article review by Elizabeth R. Williamson on David Scott Gehring's “Intelligence Gathering, _Relazioni_, and the _Ars Apodemica_,” _Diplomacy & Statecraft_ 33:2 (June 2022): 211-232. https://lnkd.in/eYeMmq2Y "In the sixteenth century, information on foreign lands was a prized commodity. Ideological difference created by the Reformation brought war and the unrelenting need to garner up-to-date intelligence on potential allies and threats alike. While traditionally this need had been met by the letters and reports of employed ambassadors and agents, the advent of print expanded both the sources of news and the types of people involved in its transmission. The article focuses on that key model of diplomatic intelligence, the Venetian _relazioni_ or formal relation, exploring two English examples and their possible connection to another literary genre, the _ars apodemica_, or art of travel. Both matured as literary forms during the later sixteenth century, and both can be seen as responding to the same need for structured detail on foreign polities..."

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Training LLMs: Questions rise over AI auto opt-in by vendors, if customer data gets used for training — and how. Many thanks to Jonathan Armstrong for his read on all things #privacy and #GDPR, plus the questions CISOs should be asking. https://lnkd.in/eMUiTi_V

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Loooong overdue. For a useful overview of how this monopoly has been enabled by every administration since Reagan, read or listen here: https://lnkd.in/etnpYMFw https://lnkd.in/ed62Kz5D

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The US Presidential Election is 5 months away, and TikTok has been a big issue. Foreign influence, the future of data security, free speech, woke ideology, corporate rights...so much rolled up into this issue. And depending on what part of what Congressional hearing you heard, you may believe the potential ban is about a different issue. But the fact remains: both candidates are posting on TikTok as a core part of their re-election strategy. I break it down in this edition of 'The Creator Rep', and how your clients should handle The TikTok Election. And if you haven't already, please please please be sure to subscribe! https://lnkd.in/ggT3R_Dv

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FCC's net neutrality vote today could affect your internet speed. We explain https://lnkd.in/dNwCUSpv via USA TODAY

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Election deepfakes: what impact will they have on the campaign, and on AI regulation after polling day? We're seeing deepfakes play out in a UK General election campaign for the first time and it's impacting politicians directly. They obviously don't like this and it shapes their perceptions around AI and wider advanced tech. How will this effect their approach to wider regulation? I guess we'll see post GE as politicians/regulators are really struggling with how to grapple the complexities of this... How and at what point to regulate? 👇 https://lnkd.in/eH45gapH

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We talk about the evolution of #AI @CadeMetz, technology correspondent at @the-new-york-times on the latest episode of "Night Owls."  https://lnkd.in/eJc-VWW4  Cade wrote a great book on the subject, called "Genius Makers." https://lnkd.in/eUZPtrbe It is well worth reading and very readable.

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Second installment of my collaboration with Joseph Hoefer at Monument Advocacy, diving further into the application of #AI as it relates to #trade and #supplychains in a #global marketplace. Check it out!

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