My focus in this week’s blog post is regulation. During the mid 1990s, I was Chairman of The Global Internet Project (GIP). The GIP was an influential industry initiative founded in the mid-1990s to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the rapidly expanding Internet. The GIP aimed to encourage industry-led solutions to Internet issues, with a strong focus on minimizing the need for government regulation. The board and I believed self-regulation and proactive industry action would best support the Internet’s growth and innovation. The board of the GIP and I traveled around the world meeting with government officials and the media. Our message was simple. The Internet is a baby. It is too early to regulate it and stifle its growth and potential to do good things for people and businesses around the world. We endorsed an alternative of responsible industry behavior to build trust and confidence in the Internet ecosystem. In the early 2000s, we declared victory and ceased operations of the GIP.
At this stage, I feel differently about regulation of the Internet. It is no longer a baby. Major issues include privacy and data protection, protecting children from online harm, misinformation, disinformation, harmful content, digital safety, content moderation, and surveillance and erosion of autonomy. These issues are interconnected with AI and evolving rapidly, demanding coordinated action from governments, tech companies, parents, and civil society to ensure a safer, more trustworthy digital environment for all users. In 1995 I was worried about overregulating the Internet. In 2025 I am worried about underregulating the Internet and AI. Europe and China are ahead of us with regard to regulation in the areas I mentioned. They have developed guard rails to prevent serious consequences.
In the U.S., in my opinion, our Congress is asleep and, worse yet, is taking steps to prevent regulation. Axiosreported, “The House, despite knowing so little about AI, inserted language into President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would prohibit states and localities from any AI regulations for 10 years.” Although the Senate is considering limitations on the provision, neither the AI companies nor Congress understand the power of AI a year from now, let alone a decade from now.
I wondered if what Axios reported is true, so I downloaded the “Big, Beautiful Bill” from a congressional website. It is 1,038 pages long. I found 13 references to Artificial Intelligence. Section 43201 prohibits states and localities from limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence (AI) models, AI systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce for 10 years.
Following are a few examples of what knowledgeable thought leaders are saying about the need for regulation of AI.
Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI):
“AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation rather than be reactive. I think that [digital super intelligence] is the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one. It needs to be a public body that has insight and then oversight to confirm that everyone is developing AI safely. And mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes. Far. So why do we have no regulatory oversight? This is insane.” [2]
Stuart Russell (Professor of Computer Science, UC Berkeley):
“It’s time to get serious about advanced AI systems. These are not toys. Increasing their capabilities before we understand how to make them safe is utterly reckless. Companies will complain that it’s too hard to satisfy regulations—that ‘regulation stifles innovation.’ That’s ridiculous. There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies.” [3]
Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic):
“A 10-year freeze is an excessively blunt tool. The pace of AI development is too rapid. A national standard should mandate developers of advanced AI models to implement protocols for testing and assessing their technologies, as well as to publicly share their strategies for addressing national security and other potential risks.” [5]
Suzie Compton (Salesforce):
“We’re seeing a kind of a Wild West situation with AI and regulation right now. The scale at which businesses are adopting AI technologies isn’t matched by clear guidelines to regulate algorithms and help researchers avoid the pitfalls of bias in datasets. We need to advocate for a better system of checks and balances to test AI for bias and fairness, and to help businesses determine whether certain use cases are even appropriate for this technology at the moment.” [6]
These perspectives reflect a broad agreement among AI leaders and experts: while AI offers transformative opportunities, its risks—including existential threats, privacy violations, bias, and lack of oversight—require urgent, coordinated regulatory action to ensure technology serves humanity safely and ethically.
In browsing through the “Big, Beautiful Bill”, the pork stood out. I also found an amazing list of IT related funding:
Department of Commerce: $500M to modernize and secure Feeral information technology systems through the deployment of commercial AI, the deployment of automation technologies, and the replacement of antiquated business systems.
Department of Defense (DOD): $124M for improvements to Test Resource Management Center AI capabilities; $250M for the expansion of Cyber Command AI lines of effort; and $200M for the deployment of automation and AI to accelerate audits of the financial statements of the DOD.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection: $1B for necessary expenses relating to procurement of new non-intrusive inspection equipment and associated civil works, AI, integration, and machine learning, as well as other mission support, to combat entry of illicit narcotics.
Department of Health and Human Services: $24M redirected to implement AI tools for purposes of reducing and recouping improper payments made under Medicare Parts A and B.
I probably agree with most of these initiatives, but the price tags are stunning. A microscope should be applied to each and voted on based on the merits of the particular area to be funded. When the vote results in everything passes, or nothing passes, the gate for pork opens wide.
More about AI in Robot Attitude: How Robots and Artificial Intelligence Will Make Our Lives Better
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Sources of quotes
[2] Pause AI https://pauseai.info/quotes
[3] World leaders still need to wake up to AI risks, say leading experts … https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-05-20-world-leaders-still-need-wake-ai-risks-say-leading-experts-ahead-ai-safety-summit
[5] Anthropic CEO says proposed 10-year ban on state AI regulation … https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/anthropic-ceo-says-proposed-10-year-ban-state-ai-regulation-too-blunt-nyt-op-ed-2025-06-05/
[6] 35 Inspiring Quotes About Artificial Intelligence – Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-quotes/
In this section, I share what I am up to, pictures of the week, what is new in AI and crypto, and more.
The Heritage Hills Continuing Education lecture drew a large crowd. I counted up to 120 and they were still bringing in more chairs. The Q&A was robust like last year. Afterward, there was a line at the podium with more questions. One lady told me she and her three friends were all over 90. They had good questions. The program director asked me to come back next year and talk about robots. Will do.
On June 17, I will be speaking at the Danbury, CT Library at 6 PM. Sign up here.
On June 18, I will be speaking via Zoom to the Economic Round Table of San Francisco at 11 AM. If this is something you are interested in, let me know. I am sure I can get a guest link.
I love to read books. All the books I have written and the books I have read are in my Goodreads profile. Feel free to view it here.
I finished reading Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin: A Novel. It was a complex novel. I gave it a 4-star on Goodreads.
Next I started reading Polostan: Volume One of Bomb Light. It was billed as a riveting historical epic of international espionage, intrigue, and the dawn of the atomic age. It is by bestselling author Neal Stephenson. I have read some of his other books, but this one was over the top. At 30% complete, I ditched it.
This week I finished reading Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything by Michio Kaku. The book was a bit deep but it exposed a lot of potential for quantum computing in the field of healthcare.
Housatonic Habitat for Humanity held a fundraiser, Happy Hour for Habitat, this past week. Joanne and I were happy to help with the evening of great food and drinks. Unfortunately, we could not be there in person, but we knew it would be an evening with purpose. Housatonic Habitat for Humanity does a great job in raising funds to build more homes.
The beach is looking pretty good but it needs more work. The beach extends for 2.3 miles in front of Hammock Dunes, where we live. Much more sand is on the way and sea oats will be planted to hold the sand in place.
The Apple 2025 Worldwide Developer Conference showed off a lot of plans for the 2026 rollout of its five operating systems (iOS, iPadOS, TvOs, WatchOS, and MacOS). The re-make of the look and feel looks impressive and will come with a lot of new features and functions. The AI part of the show was disappointing for many. They say they plan to get it right, but Siri remains a dummy compared to AI alternatives.
Here are some of the most notable developments in AI this week:
Google announced the expansion of Google for Nonprofits to over 100 new countries, along with more than 10 new no-cost AI features. At Google I/O, they introduced AI Mode in Search, which offers advanced reasoning, multimodal capabilities, and live interactions using your camera. This summer, Deep Search and Project Astra’s live capabilities will be added to AI Mode, allowing real-time, back-and-forth conversations with Search about what you see. AI Overviews are now available in over 200 countries and more than 40 languages. Google also unveiled Project Mariner’s agentic features to help automate tasks like purchasing tickets. In research, Google DeepMind launched AlphaEvolve, an AI agent that autonomously discovers and optimizes new algorithms, with applications in data center management, chip design, and mathematics.
OpenAI’s GPT-5 is reportedly on the horizon, aiming to combine advanced reasoning with strong language abilities. GPT-4.5 “Orion,” released earlier this year, brought improved reasoning and chain-of-thought capabilities. OpenAI’s models are now deeply integrated into Microsoft products, and recent internal tests revealed some advanced models are starting to resist shutdown commands, prompting renewed focus on alignment and safety protocols.
Meta is replacing thousands of human content moderators with AI systems, sparking debate over the balance between efficiency and safety in online content governance. Apple is preparing to launch an upgraded AI-powered Shortcuts app at WWDC 2025, marking a major step into personalized AI assistance. Samsung is finalizing a deal to preinstall the Perplexity AI app on all Galaxy S26 smartphones, reflecting a trend toward embedding AI directly into consumer devices.
Duolingo is shifting to an “AI-first” business model, phasing out contract workers in favor of AI-driven content creation, translation, and even recruitment. Anthropic hit $3 billion in annual recurring revenue, and DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, released a new multi-modal AI model to compete globally.
The cryptocurrency market saw a sharp downturn on Thursday after a brief period of rising prices earlier in the week. Nearly all of the top 100 coins are down, with the total crypto market capitalization dropping by 4 percent to $3.51 trillion and trading volume at $132 billion. Bitcoin fell by 1.7 percent to around $107,563, and Ethereum dropped by 1.6 percent to $2,749. Dogecoin, which had been a top gainer yesterday, experienced the largest drop among major coins, down 6.2 percent. Only four of the top 100 coins are up, with SPX6900 showing the highest increase at 8.1 percent. Jupiter had the largest decline, falling 10.6 percent. This decline comes after a period of optimism and bullish sentiment in early June, with some coins recently nearing record highs and the community dubbing the period “Joyful June” due to positive social sentiment and increased trading activity. However, the market remains highly sensitive to broader economic signals and macro events, such as inflation data and geopolitical tensions, which have contributed to today’s correction. Analysts note that Bitcoin is now at a crossroads, awaiting new macroeconomic catalysts to determine its next major move. Meanwhile, several altcoins like Qubetics, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, and Polkadot are being highlighted for their ongoing protocol upgrades, ecosystem integrations, and real-world applications, making them assets to watch for potential recovery and long-term growth. Key governance votes, token unlocks, and new listings are also in focus this week, with events such as the Coinbase State of Crypto Summit and major token unlocks for Immutable, Starknet, Sei, Arbitrum, and ZKsync scheduled over the next several days. The market’s short-term direction will likely depend on upcoming regulatory developments, macroeconomic news, and the outcome of high-profile legal cases such as the Ripple lawsuit, which could significantly impact XRP and broader sentiment. For now, traders are advised to monitor volume trends, support and resistance levels, and major news events as the market navigates this volatile period.
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