Category: Policy

Will AI Ever Become a True Platform? Not Without Us….

Yesterday Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published a fascinating essay that reads as both a rebuke to frontier AI model companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as a call to arms to the entire business community.

Nadella is worried that OpenAI and Anthropic are about to eat everyone’s lunch – Microsoft included. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the firm in an AI-driven economy,” he opines. “The last thing any of us want is a world where every company across every sector is ceding value to a few models that eat everything they see.”

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Who Should Govern Us, Apple or…The Government?

One of these things is not like the other.

I’m traveling today – consider this brief post a placeholder of sorts. I’ve long railed against the privatization of public space, and the hidden regulation inherent in the submission of our collective personal data to the black boxes of Big Tech. With that in mind, I’m watching this story, about Apple’s refusal to roll out its new Siri AI service in Europe. Despite its characterization as a “spat,” there are far larger issues at play.

At the heart of the matter is a fundamental disagreement about who has agency over personal data that is created on our phones and other digital devices. Apple insists it should have control over how that data is leveraged by AI agents, and that the EU’s regulatory framework, known as the Digital Markets Act, hinders Apple’s ability to protect its customers’ privacy. The EU believes the job of protecting consumers privacy – and our rights regarding how our data is exploited – is a matter best handled by the public through collective government.

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Google Encloses The Web

Last month Google announced the most significant change to its search product since its launch in 1998. Its iconic search box, which I’ve long compared to a command line for the Internet, has been redesigned to incorporate multi-modal chatbot capabilities. In essence, Google is no longer going to send you off to the best possible destination for your query. Now it’s built to capture your input and convert it into answers (and actions) all in one place – on Google.com.

Google’s announcement was expected – the company had to compete with the new paradigm of “answer engines” from OpenAI and Anthropic. But when the shoe did drop, my inbox filled with trepidation. Google has been the beating heart of the Internet’s circulatory system. Now that it’s evolved into a self-contained walled garden, how will the open web survive?

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Data Is Non Rivalrous. Why Have We Enclosed It?

One of the many reasons I’m a fan of reading history is its ability to offer frameworks for understanding the present. I recently finished Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History, a 1,300-page monument to scholarship that The New York Times praised as “generational” in its importance. I tend to agree. Its pages contain foundational truths which enliven today’s debate around the role of technology in society.

Beckert argues that over the past millennium, capitalism’s amoral ideology of “accumulation above all else” has become so deeply embedded in the global political economy that we no longer question its core assumptions.

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We Dream of Genies, But Will Big Tech Let Us Use Them?

Last night I dreamt I was merging onto a rushing freeway. My on-ramp was far too short, a concrete embankment hemmed me in to the right. Faceless, speeding vehicles filled the lanes; integrating with them would require icy determination and perfectly executed timing. Missing the merge would bring certain death. The dream began after the point of no return – I was already accelerating into the flow, braking was not an option.

Do, or die.

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Will Anthropic Pivot to Consumer?

I was going to write a long piece on the implications of the ongoing cage match between Anthropic and the US government, but as I dug into the research, I realized that hot takes on subjects this complicated rarely add much value to the debate. I’m going to let things cool a bit and take another run at it down the road.

But something important kept tugging at me as I was reading up on what I believe is the most significant regulatory action ever taken in the tech industry (if you believe listing a major US company as a “supply chain risk” is NOT government regulation, you’re fooling yourself).

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Thriving in an AI World: The Importance of Good Questions

Every so often I am asked to participate in a survey fielded by Elon University’s Center for Imagining the Digital Future. As you might expect, this year’s survey focuses on the impact of AI, and includes this prompt:

  • If you do think it is likely that AI systems will begin to play a much more significant role in shaping our decisions, work and daily lives: How might individuals and societies embrace, resist and/or struggle with such transformative change? As opportunities and challenges arise due to the positive, neutral and negative ripple effects of digital change, what cognitive, emotional, social and ethical capacities must we cultivate to ensure effective resilience? What practices and resources will enable resilience? What actions must we take right now to reinforce human and systems resilience? What new vulnerabilities might arise and what new coping strategies are important to teach and nurture?

It’s rare that a survey asks its respondents to actually write something cogent and long form, so I figured I’d publish my response here. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts! If you’d like to participate, the link to the survey is here.

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Battle Lines Are Drawn (Predictions 2026, #2)

The 1960s ain’t got nothing on today.

I concluded my post “Magic and Mayhem” with a bit of a tease about the impact of AI on our society:

There will be lots of magic this year. But there will also be plenty of carnage as previously unbreachable moats start to crumble, not only in business, but also in society at large. For more on that, stay tuned for prediction #2. 

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Health Takes Center Stage, Open Evidence Acquired (Predictions 2026, #5 and #4)

Yesterday The Information scooped my well laid plans for today’s health and AI-related predictions. If you’ve been following along this past week, you know I decided to write one prediction post a day for the first working week of the year. Today marks #5, which predicts that health will become a central player in society’s debate around AI, and #4, which predicts OpenEvidence will be acquired. I knew that OpenAI was working on health-related product offerings – the company said as much when it hired Fidji Simo from Instacart. But I didn’t know OpenAI would announce its health product so early in the year. Oh, and by the way, Google is expected to quickly do the same.

That said, I think there’s a lot more room to run in this story. OpenAI’s announcement is just the prelude. Health offers the perfect test case of just about every crucial limitation –  and every massive opportunity – that AI represents in society today.

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The Year Tech Gets Even Bigger (Predictions 2026, #7)

If only Nano Banana could spell, AI would be a thing.

For the past many years one prediction has proven reliably accurate: There will be no significant Federal regulation of the technology industry. At times this stalwart prognostication has been tested by major anti-trust actions – but each has proven ultimately toothless. This year, for example, we’ll learn what the DOJ managed to accomplish in its second case against Google – and it’s still possible a judge will rule that the search and AI giant must divest itself of its adtech infrastructure. But I don’t think so. And even if that ruling does come to pass, Google knows it can simply appeal, dragging out any eventual impact until it wins a war of attrition with an increasingly feckless and uninterested DOJ.

Besides, arguing about the past is playing yesterday’s game, and in 2026, the game has reverted to an even older playbook. For the past five or so years, tech giants have had to play defense when it comes to M&A and sweetheart partnerships – Meta was being sued over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Google over its consolidation of adtech and its domination of search distribution through deals with Apple and Samsung, among others. But in 2026, the governors are coming off.

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