President-elect Donald Trump recently announced a commitment to abolishing the federal Department of Education. This announcement, coupled with the news that Elon Musk will be running DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), suggests that Trump is keen to remove what many of his supporters consider to be burdensome, costly and culturally corrupt institutions. Amid the recent […]
For many years, social media companies and search engines dominated the ‘Big Tech’ bias debates. According to conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, social media companies such as Meta and YouTube and search engines such as Google curated their content in such a way as to discriminate against right-wing views. Allegations of anti-conservative bias […]
Economic growth has proven to be stubbornly elusive in the UK since the 2007/08 financial crisis. The average UK year-on-year GDP growth from 1980 to 2006 was about 2.5%. From 2007 to 2023, UK year-on-year GDP growth averaged less than half that, at under 1.2%. Our productivity gains have likewise been woeful. From 1980 to […]
Tragedies make for bad policy. The recent killing of three girls in Southport and the subsequent riots are not exceptions. Since the attack, riots and violent protests have taken place across England, with many participants chanting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans. Some of the rioters attacked hotels where asylum seekers were staying and we have seen […]
Should making fun of politicians be illegal? According to some legislators, it should be. Elon Musk recently shared a video featuring the voice of presumptive US Democratic presidential candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris. In the video, Harris can be heard claiming (among other things) that she was a ‘diversity hire’ pick for the […]
We are in the midst of the UK’s first deepfake general election. Although only a few weeks old, you may have already seen a number of deepfakes (realistic video and audio content generated via deep learning AI techniques) portraying candidates in a less than favourable or humorous light. While deepfakes no doubt have valuable artistic and satirical applications, their […]
The UK once led the world in a civilisation-changing Industrial Revolution. Today, the country is in the midst of relative economic stagnation characterised by poor economic growth, stunted GDP per capita growth, and a slowdown in worker productivity. Despite this economic backdrop, the Government has been keen to portray the UK as home to a […]
Not content with passing one of the most restrictive pieces of internet legislation in the Western world, the Government is now rumoured to be considering a ban on under-16s buying mobile phones. The proposal comes amid renewed debate surrounding the effects of social media and smartphone use on teenagers. On one side are those who […]
Earlier this week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that, if passed into law, would effectively ban TikTok in the United States. Concern about the popular social media platform’s links to the Chinese government, the potential for it to be used to spread disinformation and propaganda and its potential as a surveillance tool […]
This year will be defined by elections. Elections in the US, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Germany, the UK, Spain, South Korea, and many other democracies around the world – involving an estimated 2 billion eligible voters. And in all of those democracies, people are getting worried about deepfakes. Home Secretary James Cleverly recently warned that criminals and […]
Tragedies make for bad policy recommendations, and the murder of the teenager Brianna Ghey is no different. Last week Ghey’s murderers, who were both 15 when they stabbed Ghey to death in Cheshire almost a year ago, received life prison sentences. One of the murderers, Scarlett Jenkinson, had watched videos of murder and torture, which […]
If alien anthropologists tasked with studying humanity were to have arrived on Earth during the end of the 19th century there are a few findings they would no doubt have reported back to their extraterrestrial home. One of the most remarkable would be that, after hundreds of years of relative global technological stagnation, the people […]
It has been a busy week in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). American President Joe Biden signed an AI executive order (EO), and the British government’s long-awaited AI Safety Summit kicked off in Bletchley Park. What the long term effects of the EO and the summit are remain to be seen, but both provide […]
Next month the UK will host the long-awaited ‘AI Safety Summit’ in Bletchley Park. The venue is appropriate given that it was at Bletchley Park that a team of codebreakers, including ‘father of computer science’ Alan Turing, decrypted many Nazi communications, thereby shortening the length of the Second World War by up to four years. World […]
A wide range of policy wonks, academics, cryptographers, computer scientists, civil liberty activists, lawyers, and security experts have been warning lawmakers for years that the Online Safety Bill poses a threat to privacy. Concerns over the Bill’s handling of private messages have been especially pronounced, and prompted technology experts to meet with lawmakers to convince […]
If increasingly panic-stricken headlines are to be believed, Artificial Intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity. The Prime Minister’s advisor on AI has warned that we have just two years to protect the species, and the Center for AI Safety has published a statement signed by hundreds of AI researchers, lawmakers, academics, and industry leaders […]
For those who believed Brexit would usher in a new era of unleashed technological innovation, events this week are cause to reconsider. At the end of last month the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked Microsoft’s £55bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Now, competition officials from the European Commission (EC) have allowed the acquisition to […]
Yesterday, the Prime Minister gushed over the UK’s ‘globally renowned video games industry’, writing that the industry is ‘attracting investment, creating skilled jobs and opening up opportunities for growth’. Given recent news about the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocking Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it is fair to assume that not everyone in gaming […]
Panic about new technologies is nothing new, and artificial intelligence is no exception. This week more than 1,800 people have signed an open letter calling for at least a six-month pause on training AI systems that are ‘more powerful than GPT-4′ – the latest chatbot released by Open AI. The signatories – who include the […]
Absent significant and unexpected developments, the Online Safety Bill (OSB) will become law later this year. The Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords, is an ambitious, byzantine, and voluminous piece of legislation that poses a threat to free speech, privacy, and competition. Businesses in the UK and abroad are keeping an eye […]
