Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
The Hill – “Companies are looking for innovative ways to collect data to feed their data-hungry artificial intelligence systems and create innovative applications. Fortunately, some do not have to go too far. Then, there are the companies that collect data from public records to share on the internet and run analytics. There are many compelling …
USAFacts: “The federal budget is a measure of how much the federal government spends and how much revenue it takes in. Typically, annual budgetary data is broken up into fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30. In fiscal year 2023, the US spent $6.16 trillion on public programs and generated $4.47 trillion …
The Economist [unpaywalled]: “Sorting countries into rich and poor can be difficult. Measures such as GDP are affected by population size (more people generally mean more output). But adjusting for population alone is not enough. Dollar income per person does not account for differences in prices between countries (a Big Mac, for example, will set …
Business Insider: “I take privacy and surveillance extremely seriously — so seriously that I started one of the leading think tanks on the topic, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. But while I study surveillance threats around the country for a living, I had no idea that my own insurance company was using my premium dollars …
MIT Technology Review [unpaywalled] The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people. “AI concerns overemphasize harms arising from subversion rather than seduction. Worries about AI often imagine doomsday scenarios where systems escape human control or even understanding. Short of those nightmares, there are nearer-term harms …
“The Center for American Progress has periodically analyzed statements by sitting members of Congress to determine whether they deny the existence of human-caused climate change. This analysis of the 118th U.S. Congress found that 123 elected officials are climate deniers—23 percent of 535 total members. These 100 representatives and 23 senators wield significant influence on …
Via LLRX – AI in Finance and Banking, July 31, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and …
The New York Times [unpaywalled] – “It’s hard to avoid hassle — or fraud — when you’re required to pay with paper and ink. Here’s why checks persist and why some people don’t mind…But if you haven’t used a check in years and consider it a badge of honor, that may say a lot about …
ProPublica: “Every year, the Supreme Court’s nine justices fill out a form that discloses their financial connections to companies and people. Using our new database, you can now search for organizations and people that have paid the justices, reimbursed them for travel, given them gifts and more.” Data is also searchable using specific data: Most …
Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems – “Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality: The world faces many great and terrifying problems. It is these large problems that our work at Our World in Data focuses on. Thanks to the work of thousands of researchers around the …
Breaking Up the Giants of Harm. To protect democracy and have a resilient economy, we must tackle corporate power. Again. “Governments and economic regulators have, since the 1980s, turned a blind eye to a handful of giant companies steadily gaining chokeholds in global markets. Banking, agriculture, digital technology, publishing, music, pharmaceuticals and more are dominated …
Truthout: “A group of senators led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has introduced a bill to combat the Supreme Court’s seismic pro-corporate decision last month to overturn a precedent known as Chevron deference that has enabled federal agencies to issue regulations for decades. Ten senators joined Warren on Tuesday in introducing the bill that would …
