The booming business of AI lobbying
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It’s not your imagination: The number of lobbyists who have gotten in on the artificial intelligence (AI) business really is booming.
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A new report from the advocacy group Public Citizen, released this week, found the number of clients lobbying on AI-related issues and the number of lobbyists hired to influence those issues have both doubled in recent years.
And it’s not just big tech that’s trying to influence Washington’s thinking on AI: The tech industry accounts for only 20% of the lobbyists involved. Financial services, education, transportation, defense and health care companies are also engaging on AI issues.
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Welcome to Tech Friday, a joint project of The Hill and Pluribus News covering tech policy across government.
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Musk to testify in SEC probe
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Elon Musk has agreed to testify before the Securities and Exchange Commission in its investigation of his 2022 purchase of Twitter, now called X. Musk will sit for a five-hour deposition at the SEC’s headquarters in Washington. Read more at The Hill.
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ISPs agree to keep prices low
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More than a dozen internet service providers have agreed to continue offering discounted internet plans to low-income households as federal subsidies come to an end. The companies, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, will continue offering plans at less than $30 a month. Read more at The Hill.
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Crypto PAC gets big bucks
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The cryptocurrency company Ripple said it had contributed $25 million to Fairshake, a super PAC that supports pro-crypto candidates. The PAC, which has $52 million in the bank, spent heavily against Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in her bid for a Senate seat this year. Read more
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TikTok working on algorithm clone
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TikTok is reportedly developing a clone of its recommendation algorithm that could result in a version independent of its parent company ByteDance to operate in the United States. Once the code is split, ByteDance could divest its separate code to operate for its 170 million American users. Read more at Reuters.
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Vox, Atlantic ink OpenAI deals
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Vox Media and The Atlantic have signed agreements with OpenAI to allow the AI giant to use their content to train its models. The Atlantic said its deal included privileged access to OpenAI’s technology. Read more at The Hill.
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Amazon expands drone program
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The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones to operate beyond the visual line of sight, allowing the retail giant to expand the reach of drones. Amazon aims to deliver 500 million packages a year via drone. Read more at The Hill.
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Magnificent Seven performance this week
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AAPL +1.5%, MSFT -4.7%, GOOG -2.6%, AMZN -3.8%, NVDA +4.5%, META -2.2%, TSLA +0.9%. NASDAQ-100 Tech Sector: -4.9%.
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Kentucky and South Dakota lawmakers approved new legislation paving the way for autonomous vehicles to hit the roads this year, bringing to 25 the number of states that have approved some form of driverless vehicle platforms. Read more at Pluribus News.
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Seven major bills addressing AI, social media and autonomous vehicles survived a key California legislative deadline last week. Legislation setting AI safety standards and banning algorithmic discrimination were among the winners. Read more at Pluribus News.
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Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said artificial intelligence could be a “magnifier” of misinformation ahead of November’s elections. Fontes called threats against elections officials “domestic terrorism.” Read more at The Hill.
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June 2-6: Cisco Live 2024 kicks off in Las Vegas
June 3-6: Snowflake hosts its Data Cloud Summit in San Francisco
June 4: The Joint Economic Committee holds a hearing on the impact artificial intelligence can have on economic growth.
June 5: The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee holds a hearing on streamlining federal cybersecurity regulatory processes.
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NASA is working on a new scale to measure the passage of time on the moon, where seconds tick by a little faster than they do on earth. The Biden administration has ordered the agency to map out a lunar time scale by the end of the year. Read more at CNN.
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Just about 2,107 registered American voters accounted for spreading up to 80% of election-related misinformation in 2020, according to a multi-university group of researchers who issued a study this week. Those supersharers, in the researchers’ parlance, were most likely to link to dubious news sites. Read more at TechCrunch.
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You’re all caught up! See you next week.
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