Category Archives: Security

For Harvard Business Review Today, Who Will Really Regulate ChatGPT and Other AI Applications?

My co-author Blair Levin and I are pleased to announce the publication of our latest article for Harvard Business Review.

With the explosive arrival of ChatGPT and other generative AI applications built on Large Language Model neural networks, there has been a frenzy among legislature and regulatory agencies worldwide to determine who and how the new technology will be regulated. Unlike other Big Bang Disruptions, generative AI appears to be an uber-disruptor, breaking the rules of every industry. All at once. But can any regulator keep up with the pace of evolution of AI?

Check out the article here:

Who is Going to Regulate AI?

Announcing the Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity and Inclusion

I’m pleased to announce the publication of the Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity and Inclusion, for which I served as volunteer co-author and editor-in-chief.  The Plan, commissioned by the National Urban League, is a comprehensive agenda for closing what remains of the U.S. digital divide.

The plan, including a detailed executive summary, can be found here:  https://nul.org/program/lewis-latimer-plan

The Latimer Plan occupied much of my time last year, and I’m excited to see it finally in print, just as Washington is beginning to debate infrastructure, a key (though not the sole) component of our plan.  Though the Biden approach to network availability differs significantly from the Latimer plan, the goals of the two plans are the same, and it may be turn out that the Latimer approach wins out as the more cost-effective, timely, pragmatic, and bi-partisan.  We’ll see!

A Measured Approach to Regulating Tech

harvard-business-review-1-logo-png | ReSci

Today for Harvard Business Review, Larry cautions regulators of potentially transformative technologies to consider likely benefits as well as potential costs, and try to find a balance between the two. With so much of the tech-related news focused on harms, many of them unquantified or carefully studied, we risk losing out on some of the most important breakthroughs still to come from the digital revolution.

Learning from the COVID-19 Crisis

Larry and National Broadband Plan author Blair Levin published a white paper this week with the Aspen Institute on the Internet’s many contributions to managing the COVID-19 crisis. The authors propose an initiative to review remaining gaps in the digital transformation of business, a cross between the NBP and the 9/11 Commission. Read their recommendations here:

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-internet-after-covid-19-will-we-mind-the-gaps/

What’s Holding Consumers Back from the Internet of Things?

In the current issue of Marketing Intelligence Review, Larry describes five common mistakes marketers and product developers are making in the nascent Internet of Things and how to solve them.

Given the multi-billion dollar potential for this new technology, overcoming these errors will be crucial for attracting wary consumers, who are already reacting poorly to security breaches, gimmicky products, and unbranded solutions.

The article can be read or downloaded from MIR.

Larry and John Perry Barlow on Internet Privacy and Security – in 1995

As I noted in my article last week for Forbes, my first collaboration with the late John Perry Barlow, back in 1995, was a report on the privacy and security imperatives for the then-new concept of electronic commerce.

In Barlow’s memory, and in the wake of renewed concerns about these issues in Congress and the EU, we’ve made the report, “Five Privacy and Security Imperatives for Electronic Trade,” available here.  Just click on the link above to download it.

Sadly, little has changed in the last twenty-plus years.  All five recommendations are as valid today as they were when John and I first proposed them.