Politico

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 Yanagihara. What could government be doing regar

Across America’s heartland, reliable, high-speed internet remains out of reach for many.

The telecommunications industry has unleashed a barrage of lawsuits designed to block a major policy goal of the Biden administration, a new internet-fairness regime it hopes to lock down ahead of the November election. The conflict is likely to drag on through the rest of 2024, showcasing the kind of behind-the-scenes Washington fight that can flare in an election year as a White House tries to cement its legacy. The suits opened a new front in the battle over “net neutrality,” a policy the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt in April.

New York State legislators recently put a stop to personalized social media feeds for the under 18 set, citing mental health harms. The law they passed takes an unusual approach to the challenging task of regulating social media by focusing on algorithms, rather than platforms or specific content. Lawmakers say the algorithms are addictive. Research agrees—mostly.

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.

Gov Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vowed to severely restrict the use of smartphones during the school day, a dramatic move by the nation’s largest state amid dire warnings from the Biden administration that social media harms children. Newsom’s decision comes a day after Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned the threat social media poses to kids is so acute that Congress should compel apps to include warning labels similar to cigarettes and alcohol. Newsom said he would work with his Democratic-dominated Legislature to pass the restrictions during the current session that ends in August.

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

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.