Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency will hold a Forum on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on Nov 30. The forum will convene experts in the AI and machine learning fields to discuss the future of these technologies and their implications for the communications marketplace. The event will also include demonstrations to enable the public to see these emerging technologies in action.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning hold tremendous potential for the technological transformation of society. From healthcare and education to finance and transportation, they will disrupt the way we interact with the world around us. Because so much of AI intersects with the Commission’s technological and engineering work, we want to explore what it means for the future of communications. I look forward to bringing in experts to discuss this important issue, so that the FCC and the American public can learn about what’s on the horizon.”

During a press conference following Nov 6's midterm election, President Donald Trump escalated his ongoing war of words with CNN’s Jim Acosta. When Acosta asked President Trump about inflating the supposed threat to America from the caravan, he responded, “Honestly, I think you should let me run the country and you run CNN.” Acosta refused to relinquish his microphone, physically tangling with an aide who sought to take it away from him. Shouting over President Trump’s attempts to move on to another reporter, Acosta managed to ask a question about the Russia investigation. President Trump lingered from his podium a few steps before returning to give Acosta an old-fashioned tongue-lashing. “You are a rude, terrible person,” the president said. “And you shouldn’t be working for CNN.”

A majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups are YouTube adopters, with younger Americans standing out as especially avid users of the site. A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that these users are turning to YouTube for much more than entertainment. Roughly half of YouTube users say the platform is very important for helping them figure out how to do things they’ve never done before. That works out to 35% of all U.S. adults, once both users and non-users of the site are accounted for. And around one-in-five YouTube users (representing 13% of the total adult population) say it is very important for helping them understand events that are happening in the world. The findings also highlight YouTube’s key role in providing content for children. Fully 81% of all parents with children age 11 or younger say they ever let their child watch videos on YouTube. And 34% of parents say their child watches content on YouTube regularly. It should be noted that YouTube explicitly states that the platform is not intended for children younger than 13, and that the site provides a YouTube Kids option for children that has enhanced parental controls.

Washington (DC) has tried several tactics to stem the tide of automated calls, from passing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in 1991 to establishing the Do Not Call Registry in 2003. The Federal Communications Commission regularly hands down multimillion-dollar penalties against individual robocallers. But the calls keep coming, and the problem has only gotten worse. The issue is the ease of becoming a robocaller. Anyone with a minor amount of technical ability can run their own system by downloading the relevant software. 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said the issue is a cornerstone of his tenure. In one major move, the FCC announced an $82 million fine against a caller, one of the largest forfeitures ever imposed by the agency. Still, Chairman Pai, who has presided over an FCC that consistently pushes deregulatory measures, has also expressed skepticism over other tools meant to help consumers. Chairman Pai has suggested that the TCPA, meant to give consumers a way to legally combat the callers, has been overused, and has pointed to cases that he argues are excessively litigious

Department of Justice antitrust chief Makan Delrahim put an exclamation point on what might now be called the AT&T/Time Warner Doctrine given the confluence of that case with Delrahim's emphasis on spin-offs versus conditions in vertical mergers: "If a structural remedy isn’t available, then, except in the rarest of circumstances, we will seek to block an illegal merger."

In seeking to block the AT&T/Time Warner merger, Makan has said that it was because structural remedies (asset divestitures) not behavioral remedies like program access and oversight conditions were necessary. He preached the necessity of that approach. "Behavioral remedies present three main problems, he said. "The first is that they are inherently regulatory, which is to say that they substitute central decision making for the preferred free market. The second reason is closely related to the first: The Antitrust Division is a law enforcer and, even where regulation is appropriate, it is not equipped to be the ongoing regulator. The third reason that behavior decrees are problematic is that they are merely temporary fixes for an ongoing problem."