"A more deliberate and thoughtful way forward is to talk about “AI” systems in terms of what we use systems to do, often specifying input and/or output. That is, talk about functionalities that serve our purposes, rather than “capabilities” of the system" techpolicy.press/we-need-to-t...

Yes. 1) Technology determines GDP/wealth. 2) Monetary policy determines unemployment. The lump of labor fallacy illustrates how technological advances lead to greater overall wealth which good government policy can make widely shared.

By July 6, the Pennsylvania Evening Post…prints the declaration... Its previous issue had been put to press too early to capture the momentous events. Instead, the July 4, 1776 edition included usual fare. “To be sold,” read one back-page ad. “A NEGRO BOY, about four or five years of age.”

Matthew McConaughey - Howdy America 250 Bets still on the table America, yet.

This lawsuit was a cynical, dishonest, and confused effort to punish tech researchers and others for exercising core First Amendment rights. It should have been thrown out a long time ago, but better late than never.

The satirical site is fighting to officially take over “Infowars.” In the meantime, CEO Ben Collins says the new show will mock “how fucking stupid” conspiratorial brainrot has become.

Woah. Springer Nature retracted two 1940s papers by Max Planck for alleged copyright violation (lol), and then nixed an editorial about the retractions. www.science.org/content/arti...

Who should have power over the human knowledge AI systems are built from? @salome.bsky.social proposes reforms to address the concentration of informational power and argues that AI governance must give workers and knowledge producers more control over whether and how their work is used.

"Right now, in some underfunded lab, a scientist is chasing a question that sounds pointless, and a team somewhere else is a decade into a problem that may take another decade to crack... If we stop making that bet, we will pay for it in cures no one will know to miss."

The Trump administration is using export control law to force Anthropic to cut access to its most powerful AI models. @alanrozenshtein.com examines whether the legal authority holds up, and what it means for the future of frontier AI governance.

The Knight Institute is seeking a staff attorney to join our litigation team for a two-year position based in New York City. The staff attorney will help develop and litigate cutting-edge cases relating to free speech and press freedom. More info: knightcolumbia.org/page/staff_a...

Final corrected version now published open-access Jacob T. Levy. 2026. Conceptualizing Academic Freedom. Annual Review Political Science. 29:57-72. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Mass offerings "are harder to do because you can get anything that you want and a much deeper version of it online” Simon Robinson says at the London launch of #DNR26, featuring debate with @mitalilive.bsky.social, Emily Kent Smith, and Kamal Ahmed reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/we-need...

How lucky are we to have shared this earth with someone whose light shone as bright as Dito’s? He was a genius and a genuinely good human whose absence is deeply felt by all of us who were fortunate enough to call him a friend.

1. Over the last few days I have received a set of queries about my research. The first one I thought was legitimate, and I was planning to answer when the second arrived, and then the third, from the same sender. Viewed together, they’re clearly LLM generated.

How can we better insulate federal funding to universities from political interference? In a new essay, @dorfonlaw.bsky.social proposes new models for distributing research funds outside direct government control to help protect research and academic freedom.

"Having the White House publish synthetic content is deeply troubling, Farid said, because it muddies the historical record and makes it harder for the public to trust any visual evidence published by government officials."

I spent more time on this piece than almost anything else I've written in the last year. Building a better, more decentralized internet is an inherent necessity if you want a functioning democracy. I hope people find it a useful encapsulation of where we're at. www.liberalism.org/p/enshittifi...

danah boyd recently argued that social media (as we knew it) is mostly dead; what we have now is parasocial media: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... I agree. Networked social media is disappearing, replaced by a new logic/structure of content creator, creator-centered community, & algorithm.

In a new piece for our Reconstructing Free Expression series, @mikeananny.bsky.social writes about the “Media Industrial Complex”—our current media environment shaped and driven by powerful individuals—and how we can move towards a media environment in line with the public interest.

In the first Article, @aliciasn.bsky.social argues that the rise of artificial intelligence has triggered an "inter-regime doctrinal collapse" between privacy law and copyright law, enabling leading AI developers to exploit data acquisition and evade legal oversight.

Uh, no

"AI threatens to enclose what’s left of our threadbare epistemic commons — the bottom-level online communication where people still figure out what they think, together," @edwardongwesojr.com writes. www.thedriftmag.com/directing-th...

My colleague @ajdamico.bsky.social wrote about our approach to funding research.

This is amazing.

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

Attention to local news has declined since 2016, mirroring trends in attention to national news and news in general. www.pewresearch.org/... #PewKnightInitative

About two-thirds of Americans say they at least sometimes get news from their local TV news station – down slightly from the 70% who said the same in 2018. www.pewresearch.org/... #PewKnightInitative

Why It’s Crucial We Understand How A.I. ‘Thinks’

The Trump admin’s rewriting of rules governing college accreditation “obliterates” autonomy & is is being described as “a cluster bomb being dropped on American higher education.”

India’s internet censorship is not a centralized “Great Firewall,” says Tech Policy Press Contributing Editor Amber Sinha. He discusses research that illuminates an opaque system where ISPs enforce blocking through practices such as DNS manipulation, producing often invisible restrictions to users.

Anthropic's Mythos model represents a dangerous new moment for cybersecurity. Experts tell me that hackers and nation states may catch up within months — and that the cat-and-mouse game between attacker and defender is about to become much more high-stakes www.platformer.news/anthropic-my...

@knightfoundation.org is currently accepting applications for the Knight Cities Challenge, a $5 million open call inviting individuals and organizations across its 26 communities to submit new, creative ideas for projects that can spark change and leave a lasting local impact.

Interesting data point on the discussion over "addictive feeds"

I wrote a lot about Bob Mueller across a lot of chapters of his career. I wanted to share two @wired.com pieces that I wrote about his defining life experiences—both a picture of an era of public service all but lost today: 1) His brave *voluntary* service in Vietnam: www.wired.com/story/robert...

Chicken soup for the soul (which is apparently still around)! is suing Anthropic for pirating copies of the book to train Claude. The number of AI copyright lawsuits is inching closer to 100 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I wrote about why @knightfoundation.org invested in @bsky.app: philanthropy can act when mission & opportunity align. We believe in @jay.bsky.team's vision for a better social web—& in ideas (like @masnick.com's) that grow out of the research ecosystem Knight has long supported. kf.org/kfbluesky

💆‍♂️

Crazy crazy story. Times of Israel reporter ( English language Israeli news site ) gets escalating death threats to change story that’s at center of big polymarket bet. www.timesofisrael.com/gamblers-try...

REQVIESCAT IN PACE JVERGEN HABERMAS

🗯️ Can #middleware save social media? Join @noupside.bsky.social, @nadinefj.bsky.social, @lehogg.bsky.social, @daphnek.bsky.social, @ryanheadedsouth.bsky.social, @rreisman.bsky.social, @oliviersylvain.bsky.social, @ethanz.bsky.social, @ramyakrishnan.bsky.social to discuss. RSVP: bit.ly/3P3Uf6M

Heroes. Quite the effort and dedication on this one. Unfortunately, not an easily repeatable process for most researchers looking for access, but can hopefully inform lawmakers.

Quantum is bursting with promise that feels just out of reach—much like pre-generative AI. A breakthrough 'LLM moment' may soon arrive, write DLA Piper's Danny Tobey, Ashley Carr and Michael Atleson. What hopefully won't follow: the hyped product claims that plagued AI.

"When fluent speech without responsibility becomes normal...it changes what it means to be human," Deb Roy writes, weighing how AI might be training us to “accept words without ownership and meaning without accountability.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.”