Reporting

Powerful tech leaders—including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—expressed unanimous agreement that the government needs to intervene to avert the potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence (AI). However, there was little apparent consensus about what a congressional framework should look like to govern AI, as companies forge ahead amid a tense industry arms race. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) said Congress’s “difficult job” ahead will be finding ways to enhance the benefits of the technology while minimizing its risks. But Sen.

According to a report in February from the policy research firm Public Policy Associates, 2.1 million more children had broadband access in 2021 than 2019, following efforts at the local, state and federal levels to narrow the digital divide for online education during COVID-19 school closures.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) will not seek another term in the Senate in 2024. In a video posted to Twitter, Sen. Romney said he was stepping aside for new leadership and noted that those new leaders will face enormous challenges in the coming years, something the current

Charter Communications has frequently talked up the pace of its rural deployments, reaching 68,000 subsidized rural passings in the second quarter (Q2) of 2023. CFO Jessica Fischer said the Charter has a “tremendous opportunity” to expand its footprint to rural areas. Charter was one of the largest winners in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, and Fischer noted progress in those builds “has been going quite well” in terms of pace and penetration.

State Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA) will introduce a new artificial intelligence (AI) bill to the California legislature that targets “frontier” AI systems at the threshold of capability. The bill proposes:

Google is launching new anti-censorship technology, Outline VPN, to increase access for internet users living under authoritarian regimes.

A Q&A with the New York City (NYC) Office of Technology & Innovation’s Brett Sikoff centered on increasing broadband accessibility via the city's Big Apple Connect program. The program has delivered free high-speed internet to 220 public housing developments across the city: that’s over 300,000 New Yorkers who now have access to the internet for free.

Northwest Fiberworx, the communications union district (CUD) for 22 northwestern Vermont communities serving 30,000 customers, has signed a deal for fiber-optic broadband with South Royalton-based Great Works Internet (GWI) Vermont. The Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) will provide funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Educators and education-technology professionals worry that artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom could further widen digital inequities. The US Department of Education Office of Educational Technology's May 2023 "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning" report warned that “algorithmic bias could diminish equity at scale with unintended discrimination." Further, it stated, "Bias is intrinsic to how AI algorithms are developed...and the department holds that bia

SpaceX’s satellite-internet division has outpaced rivals and generated surging revenue, but it hasn't lived up to Elon Musk’s ambitions. Starlink reported $1.4 billion in revenue for 2022—up from $222 million in 2021. However, the company had predicted the business would be bigger by now: a 2015 presentation SpaceX used to raise money from investors projected that Starlink would generate almost $12 billion in revenue and $7 billion in operating profit in 2022. Starlink is key for Musk's plans to send humans to Mars. Global spending on high-speed internet is orders of magnitude bigger than o