Derek Robertson

5 Questions for the ACLU’s Jenna Leventoff

A Q&A with Jenna Leventoff, a senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. What’s one underrated big idea? Section 230 [of the 1996 Communications Decency Act], which is both underrated and underappreciated. What’s a technology you think is overhyped? AI is both overhyped and a little bit under-hyped. What book most shaped your conception of the future? “To Paradise” by Hanya YanagiharaWhat could government be doing regar

Zero laptops per child

When California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out an ambitious, if hazy, plan to remove smartphones from public classrooms in the interest of kids’ safety, it marked a turnaround that would have shocked any hyper-ambitious Democratic politician from a generation ago. “Connecting kids” was once an obvious political winner.

It’s Trump’s ‘technopoly’ now

Donald Trump recently gave his most extensive public comments to date on artificial intelligence. “It is a superpower, and you want to be right at the beginning of it, but it is very disconcerting." Trump also mentions receiving $12 million for his campaign from unnamed Bay Area “super-geniuses,” a subtle marker of his emergence as the standard-bearer of the right-leaning, crypto-loving wing of Silicon Valley. Given how often Trump flip-flops, it’s worth focusing on what’s most consistent about his relationship with Silicon Valley: His status as a walking embodiment of the “move fast and br

Voters like the Senate’s AI ‘road map,’ with an asterisk

Washington is fumbling through a slate of potential artificial intelligence regulations—some focused on global competition, some on AI-generated deepfakes and some arguing that the government should get its arms around how it’s using AI before it tells anyone else how to do it. All the while, the tech continues to rapidly evolve with little oversight.

Governments are becoming ‘mods.’ Here’s what they’re in for

Elon Musk’s ongoing war against the Brazilian judiciary is more than just another high-profile feud between arguably the world’s most prolific right-wing troll (who also happens to be one of its richest men) and the liberal governments that vex him. By going after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes after he ordered numerous right-wing accounts removed from X in that country, Musk has turned a debate over Brazilian censorship into a global conserv

Poll: AI is looking more partisan

One of the nice things about covering the frontier of technology — large language models, quantum, virtual worlds — is that they’re decidedly less partisan than most policy issues. That might be changing.

Why Altman and Musk pose a problem for Washington

The collision of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and the recent chaos at OpenAI reveals something even bigger than social media’s shifting tectonic plates—the extent of the society-shaping power wielded by a very small cadre of Silicon Valley titans. Individual personalities—and individual fortunes—matter far more in the world of Silicon Valley startups than they do in corporate America’s more consensus-oriented, traditional bureaucracies.

Former FCC Chairman Wheeler wants to steal Big Tech’s moves

In his new book “Techlash: Who Makes The Rules In The Digital Age?”, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler says regulators have failed to rein in Big Tech because they’re using outdated tools. Call it something like “regulatory futurism”—Wheeler is saying now is the time for the government to get innovative by setting up new agencies with wide-reaching powers to determine what is and isn’t in the public’s best interest when it comes to tech.

The GOP’s new path to the future

A new approach to tech policy is taking root in the GOPand it’s not what you might expect from the party of Alan Greenspan and Friedrich Hayek. Led by a handful of ambitious, policy-minded senators, a group of conservatives is embracing the idea of subsidizing the tech industry and advanced manufacturing—with an eye toward building a competitive edge over China, and revitalizing the hollowed-out industrial centers that have given the party its Trump-era populist verve.

The (would-be) Senators from Silicon Valley

On November 8, America could accomplish another political first: Electing two US senators from the idiosyncratic, increasingly ideological world of Silicon Valley venture capital.