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Presented by NCTA, America’s Cable Industry: How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures | | | | |  | | By Derek Robertson | | | |  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to speak at his Super Tuesday election night watch party at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 5, 2024. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO | Surprise, (no) surprise: After yesterday’s Super Tuesday primary contests it’s thuddingly obvious, if it weren’t already, that the U.S. is headed toward a rematch of the 2020 presidential election between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. This presents a bit of a dilemma for a newsletter with “future” in its name — not least because it’s a retread of the previous election, being fought between two people who grew up when a computer weighed 30 tons. That doesn’t necessarily mean American policymaking is stuck in the past; Biden wants America to build better microchips, and both presidents have signed executive orders on AI. But tech wonks we consulted this week have been worried that government isn’t doing enough to boost one of the U.S.’s signature industries — and worried that innovation as a policy issue in its own right is getting left out in the cold. “Having a positive [tech] agenda almost seems like a liability in our current political environment,” said Zachary Graves, director of the Foundation For American Innovation, a right-leaning tech policy nonprofit. The CHIPS and Science Act was a notable bipartisan success story, one of the few over the last four years. But Congress has consistently fallen short in delivering the promised money for its longer-horizon research projects, and regulatory delays have plagued the openings of the new microchip plants that have been funded through the bill. The upcoming congressional spending deal features significant cuts to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation, crucial offices for national tech innovation. This is partially due to extremely familiar policy hurdles. Permitting for new construction is a headache under the best of circumstances, and budget austerity remains the bedrock of the GOP agenda. But there’s also Washington’s shifting perspective on the big tech firms over the past decade-plus, which has evolved from the buddy-buddy relationships of the Obama era to a generally increased wariness across the political spectrum of tech’s impact on society. Jeremiah Johnson, co-founder of the center-left think tank the Center for New Liberalism and author of the Infinite Scroll Substack, lamented how opposition to “Big Tech” has sorted into what he views as unhelpful partisan pile-ons, whether it’s the progressive neo-Brandesianism of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s antitrust efforts or conservative gadflies’ claims that the big firms are “too woke.” “It's not just how much we are cracking down on Big Tech, it's why we're cracking down on Big Tech — in service of questionable-at-best antitrust theories, or in service of culture war grievances,” he said. The tech industry inevitably chafes at the kind of regulation that would restrict its ability to do what it pleases — a luxury it has enjoyed for most of the internet era. But voices close to that industry say that what they want now isn’t just laissez-faire as we’ve come to know it, but a more proactive investment in research and the startup ecosystem. “The most important question is the degree to which the next administration actually wants to spur technological innovation. If they put other priorities higher, such as lower taxes and smaller government, or equity, green and heavy-handed regulations, nothing else really matters,” said Rob Atkinson, president and founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in a statement. “Unless the next President, whoever that may be, leads the nation in addressing these areas, little will happen, and in all likelihood we will end up taking steps backward because of either over-regulation or under-investment.” The lament from the tech world can sometimes carry a whiff of conflict: Pay more attention to us, Washington, but only the kind of attention we want. Graves hinted at the contradiction at the heart of how tech relates to government today: The industry grows by innovating well outside of Washington, so a lot of the excitement in tech might actually be endangered by bringing it into the realm of highly polarized, partisan politics. At least for now, the future might have the most to gain from continuing to stay out of the spotlight.
| | | | A message from NCTA, America’s Cable Industry: Every American deserves the opportunities that come with high-speed internet access. That’s why America's cable industry is working hard to connect hundreds of communities to fast, reliable, and affordable broadband service. With their unwavering dedication and expertise, cable providers have what it takes to extend internet access to the hardest-to-reach parts of the country. We won’t stop until the job is done. See us in action. | | | | | About that whole God thing between Elon Musk and OpenAI: The latter has decided to say its piece on the matter. In a blog post published yesterday responding to Musk’s accusations that OpenAI is recklessly pursuing “artificial general intelligence” in the name of profits, five of the company’s co-founders (including Sam Altman) said they’ll attempt to have all his claims dismissed. The blog post includes the text of several emails between Musk and the involved parties. “We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI. He then suggested instead merging OpenAI into Tesla,” they write, saying that after declining his offer, Musk then left, saying he intended to build an AGI within Tesla itself. Furthermore, they protest Musk’s claim in his lawsuit against OpenAI that the company has betrayed its original mission, writing that he “understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI,” an idea they view as hopelessly reckless. “We're sad that it's come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired—someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” they conclude.
| | | | A message from NCTA, America’s Cable Industry:   | | | | | One of the European Union AI Act’s chief architects is calling for all “Oppenheimers” within the governing body to contribute to the law’s enforcement. POLITICO’s Gian Volpicelli reported early this morning for Pro s on the comments from Dragoș Tudorache, the liberal Romanian parliamentarian who co-led the AI Act’s writing. Tudorache said the EU needs to recruit techies and academics who know “the AI business from the inside” rather than leaning on their own bureaucratic expertise, with brilliant scientific minds attracting the like, just as J. Robert Oppenheimer did in the United States with the Manhattan Project. He might face one major problem, however: Tudorache told POLITICO last week the EU AI Office’s initial budget will be €46.5 million, less than half of what the United Kingdom has appropriated for its own efforts. Connor Dunlop, public policy lead at the U.K.-based, AI-focused Ada Lovelace Institute, told Gian “the success of the Al Office and therefore the implementation of the Al Act is dependent on” its recruitment mission.
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| | | Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com); Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@politico.com); and Christine Mui (cmui@politico.com). If you’ve had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.
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