Safety First

Regulation comes for us all: On Monday, the White House released an executive order on artificial intelligence which "aims to prevent the technology from exacerbating bias, displacing workers and undermining national security," per The Washington Post. But that wasn't the only AI regulation rained down from on high.

Earlier this week, the Group of Seven (G7) released a nonbinding statement on AI: "We call on organizations developing advanced AI systems to commit to the application of the International Code of Conduct."

And today, officials in the U.K. start their two-day summit on "AI safety" (which Vice President Kamala Harris is attending), at which they appear set to brand their efforts as focused on "responsible AI." British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently warned that "humanity could lose control of AI completely" but added, after all this fearmongering, that "the U.K.'s answer is not to rush to regulate." Wired called the summit a "doom-obsessed mess," which isn't far off, in my opinion.

"It doesn't make any sense to put in the same phrase that, yes, you see a substantial risk from AI, and then you do nothing about it," Dragos Tudorache, who is working to regulate AI in the European Parliament, told the Post of Sunak's comments.

As for Biden's executive order, "it's hard to see how U.S. national defense can be enhanced by slowing down domestic AI innovation," writes Reason's Ronald Bailey. "After all, U.S. regulations will not apply to foreign competitors who will be able to catch up and surpass U.S. artificial intelligence developers hampered by bureaucratic fetters."

Prominent tech-world watchers have already started rightfully critiquing the Biden administration's approach to AI:

There's also, content aside, the mechanism by which it was done: It's not clear how the Biden administration's rules and regulations will be enforced, and executive orders are always vulnerable to simply being invalidated when a new president comes into office. R Street Institute's Adam Thierer opines that the order "appears to be empowering agencies to gradually convert voluntary guidelines into a sort of back-door regulatory regime for AI, a process which would be made easier by the lack of congressional action on AI issues." (More from Thierer here.)

Israel update: The Israel Defense Force's (IDF) ground invasion in Gaza continues. The IDF claims it took out the ringleader of the October 7 attacks and that it has "eliminated dozens of terrorists, anti-tank launching squads, [and] anti-tank launching positions." It has inched closer to Gaza City and seems set to separate the northern part of the territory from the south. The health ministry in Gaza—which is controlled by Hamas, and thus not very reliable—claims that 57 medical facilities have been "targeted" by airstrikes and that at least 15 hospitals and 32 primary care centers are no longer operating due to Israeli bombardment or having run out of fuel.

The health ministry also reports that IDF strikes which took out the October 7 organizer hit the densely populated neighborhood, Jabaliya, killing and wounding hundreds. An IDF spokesperson reports that dozens of Hamas operatives were killed in this strike. 

Israel stands accused of using white phosphorus on the northern front, in Lebanon, as well as in Gaza, which Amnesty International and other human rights groups say amounts to a war crime.

Scenes from New York:

Problematic Aladdin costume? Possibly.

Absolutely dope magic carpet skateboard? Definitely.

QUICK HITS

• Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Jacob J. Lew as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, a post that had been vacant.

• "The overflows are something like the back row of a school bus, where the rules are a little bit more negotiable out of sight from those who make them," writes Intelligencer's Kevin T. Dugan on the Sam Bankman-Fried trial's watchers outside the courtroom. "I overheard a crypto influencer who once interviewed SBF brag that she was able to vape under her jacket during the first week. Another overflow denizen, this guy Taco, was taking side bets on how many times the government would raise objections."

• ICYMI:

• Unclear what Harvard's new antisemitism advisory board will do, exactly.

• From The Wall Street Journal: "Mini-millionaires are where wealth is growing fastest." Excerpt from within: "There really are a lot of true millionaires. About 16 million American families—just over 12%—have wealth exceeding $1 million, up from 9.8 million families in 2019. Nearly eight million families are multimillionaires, i.e., their wealth exceeds $2 million, up from 4.7 million." (For more on the "working rich" or "HENRYs" (high earners, not rich yet), check out my web feature from 2022.)

• The tearing down of Hamas-hostage posters just won't stop.

• The evidence that people are getting radicalized, en masse, by the YouTube algorithm is quite weak, a new paper shows.

• Will there be lingering effects of this "summer of strikes"? Odd Lots explores what we should take away from these past few months of heightened union activity in the U.S.

• Do tips like these actually help anyone? Perhaps D.C. police could, oh I dunno, work to improve clearance rates, instead of spending time issuing absurd guidance like "don't drive alone at night."

• Contracting Chinese factory activity.

• Federal Reserve officials will start their two-day meeting today. Interest rates, which are at their highest point in 22 years, will most likely not be raised, but more signals could emerge from this meeting as to the economic outlook and future interest rate tweaks.

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