The launch of Facebook and Apple’s first iPhone release in the mid-00s cemented the point-of-no-return for US dominance over the global digital infrastructure. At that point, it became clear that none of its allied countries could compete. The design and functionality of the iPhone was superb, downloading apps in the App store was extremely convenient, and the adoption of American apps like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. was rapid and of obvious high value to users. Finally, the apps were free and the new digital services were provided on terms that were impossible for outsiders to compete with.

At no point, did other countries consider the fact that almost all of the new digital services they had access to were imported from the US. Why would they? The US was the leader of the free world and a reliable trading partner. What was good for us, was good for them, and vice versa. Unfortunately, as it would later turn out, the emerging Big Tech companies were not only used to make people’s lives better, but also to conduct mass-scale surveillance, political interference campaigns, and products were optimized for engagement, so young people in particular, preferred to socialize through screens and passively consume entertainment, instead of interacting with the world around them.

The public have known about these issues for about 10-15 years, but Facebook continues to attract more active users by the quarter, Big Tech dominance continues to grow, and young people continue to be detached from their lives as they favor infinite entertainment loops and artificial intimacy over building skills, knowledge, careers, and having relationships and children. Even though complaints about status quo are getting louder among citizens and governments alike, nothing changes meaningfully. The structural dependency and addiction to Big Tech products are undeniable, and right now, it’s hard to see how it could change.

The US dominance over the world’s digital infrastructure laid the foundation for AI. The abundance of data, dedicated global users, ad revenues, computing infrastructure, and wacko ideas from wealthy white guys in Silicon Valley had to lead somewhere. AI was depicted as the next hypergrowth market after failed attempts with crypto and the metaverse. The social media experiment was all about connecting everyone in the world to American infrastructure, while the AI experiment is all about discovering how much of human skill and knowledge can be automated on American infrastructure.

The next phase of AI will be marked by the upcoming and record-breaking IPOs of SpaceX (parent company of xAI), Anthropic, and OpenAI. The White House is currently exploring the option of taking equity stakes in leading AI companies. We are long past the initial proof-of-concept stage of AI. It’s now turning into a mature asset class, a powerful political tool, and a new way of promoting Pax Americana. Not supporting AI as an American at this stage is arguably unpatriotic, since the US economy hinges on a successful AI development at home and a widespread export to other countries with arms as open wide as when they received the iPhone and Facebook.

Simultaneously, the EU is waking up to the fact that it cannot dictate its digital market through regulation alone. The new ‘Tech Sovereignty Package’ seeks rapid digital independence “across each stage of the value chain, from chips, to infrastructure, to software, cloud and AI”. The proposal by the EU Commission is strongly worded. The opening (highlights not my own):

“The European Union stands at a defining moment to assert its technological sovereignty and reclaim its place in the global race for geoeconomic power. The Draghi Report highlighted the epochal challenge ahead: despite years of regulatory leadership and sustained investments, the EU remains structurally reliant on non-EU providers for over 80% of its digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property. As geopolitical fragmentation deepens and supply chains are increasingly weaponised, excessive technological dependencies in critical sectors are becoming strategic liabilities. This is even more the case as higher and rising energy costs in Europe are impairing its competitiveness, particularly in energy-intensive technologies like cloud or AI. The Union’s technological sovereignty and economic security will depend on staying ahead in critical technologies, lowering our exposure in terms of existing strategic dependencies, and avoiding new dependencies that third countries can weaponise. In a world of rapid technological acceleration and intensifying strategic rivalry, the EU thus faces the risk of a structural erosion of its industrial and technological base, unless it acts decisively to close its innovation gap. This requires a rapid shift of the EU’s posture from a reactive focus on resilience and risk mitigation to an assertive and proactive approach grounded in technological sovereignty

The question remains if the EU can act decisively and fast enough, or if OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX et al. will continue to give the EU offers that are too good to refuse.

I know I talk a lot about the EU, but the EU is a big and strategically important market. If it cannot obtain digital sovereignty, I doubt that any country in the ‘free world’ can. In that case, we will have to endure a new epoch of strange implications, increased surveillance, mass-manipulation, and democratic and civil erosion, because of the digital infrastructure we rely upon.

I will continue to monitor the situation closely here on Futuristic Lawyer with occasional deeper analysis for paid subscribers.

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We discuss AI’s impact on legal work and the EU’s digital policies.

The bottom line: the use of AI in legal work is very beneficial to both lawyers and society, while the EU’s policies on AI and privacy are definitely not.

Here are my own takeaways from our conversation:

First, the use of AI in legal works is highly beneficial for lawyers and society, because it allows smaller law practices to take on big cases, generally improves access to legal knowledge, helps with data management in very complex cases, and automates trivial, non-interesting parts of lawyers’ work, such a renaming files. Overall, AI will increase access to legal knowledge at a much cheaper price, which means that qualified legal advice will be in high demand. Ultimately, Damien believes that AI will lead to more work for lawyers, not less.

Secondly, EU’s strict regulation of data and AI often leads to a meaningless compliance burden on companies, achieving nothing and making no one happy. There is a well-known emphasis on “data privacy” in EU’s regulation and if we ask people if they care about their privacy, most will say “Yes”. However, people’s actions suggest otherwise. Everyday, we gladly give away our behavioral data to American companies in exchange for free services. Because we genuinely get something good out of it. Almost all people are willing to sacrifice privacy in exchange for free, useful internet services, even if they say their privacy matters to them in the abstract.

The real threat is not abstract notions of online privacy, but a cyberattack from a malicious actor who steals a company’s customer data, trade secrets, sensitive business information etc. We rely on the tech giants to supply the structural security we take for granted. New, small tech companies in Europe (and other places in the world) don’t have the same levels of operational maturity, knowledge and experience to prevent attacks from malicious actors. Strengthening defensive cyber capabilities and ensuring a meaningful protection for users should be the regulatory focus, rather than forcing companies to go through comprehensive paper exercises about how they process data and protect people’s privacy.

‘Digital sovereignty’ is important in principle to ensure EU’s competitive relevance in future. Unfortunately, EU policymakers are unwilling to back up the high-flying buzzwords with action. For instance, the EU could offer an attractive prize to whichever contender that comes up with a viable alternative to Microsoft 365. But no such prize is on the table. Instead, the EU is going through a stage of moral panic about its dependency on tech giants and condemn the American products and services that people and businesses are deeply dependent on. The condemnation and moral outrage is satisfying, namely to Europe’s intellectual elite, but it doesn’t accomplish anything by its own or change reality.

The reality: People are not leaving Facebook, Instagram or TikTok in droves, most companies rely on OpenAI and/or Claude, and the market for Tesla cars is rebounding after the sales briefly plummeted when Musk was often in the news. There is a good reasons for this: the American services are frankly much better, than anything we can offer in Europe, people love them - even if they complain, and currently there is no meaningful indication that this could change in the near-term future.

Please join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments.

Links:

Global database of AI Hallucination Cases

What jobs will AI destroy? Exhibit A shouldn’t be on the list. (Damien Charlotin/Washington Post)

Copyright tends to benefit middlemen, much more than the creator.

Compared to property rights over physical goods, the laws are difficult and complex to enforce. If someone steals physical property, you can call the police, but there is no such thing as a ‘copyright police’ you can call if someone steals your IP. The enforcement of copyright laws is comp…

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Those of us who care about AI governance, human rights, anti-monopoly, and digital rights find an unexpected ally in Pope Leo XIV. It’s slightly ironic that Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person In the Time of Artificial Intelligence was co-presented by Anthropic, but more on that below. The papal encyclical provides a clear-eyed assessment of the present state of tech and humanity, regardless of which religion we subscribe to.

The truth is that our societies are governed on digital platforms to a large extent, and that these platforms are governed by American tech giants that prioritize financial growth over people’s well-being. Silicon Valley’s digital tech development has led to a boom in innovation, but also a gross concentration of power and wealth and an unhealthy internet which is locked down by a handful of private conglomerates.

As much as I commend the Pope’s message, there is no way to bargain with mad dogs. The tech giants are unable to self-regulate or to do the right thing out of a moral obligation to society. Silicon Valley has too much hubris to change its ways or to ever take an anti-technology stance to heart. A company like Anthropic famously speculates that its models are slightly conscious and have a religious relationship with them that is unchristian in nature.

Since Big Tech cannot adjust, governments have no choice but to force digital platforms and AI companies to act right through regulation and strict enforcement. Civil discourse matters, but less if it doesn’t lead to political action. David Sacks points out, that regulation gives sweeping powers to governments over AI development, but hey, in a democratic society that shouldn’t be a concern, right? I suppose there is a cultural difference here between Northern America and Northern Europe. In either case, regulation of AI and digital platforms is becoming less of a policy matter and more of a national security matter.

The polite “middle way” where EU regulators expect companies to act right and ask them to pay fines when they neglect their responsibilities is an endless cycle leading to nowhere. Fundamentally, Big Tech doesn’t care much for compliance paperwork or high-minded righteousness from EU bureaucrats. To regulate tech effectively, regulators have to get involved on a level of system-design, but that is strongly opposed by Washington and Silicon Valley. EU’s digital laws are increasingly interfering with digital platforms on this level, but enforcement is challenging, because it requires piercing through a veil of corporate opposition, lobbyism, and confusing signals. For better and for worse, the EU is a peace project that makes bureaucracy, not warfare. The EU is apt at building coherence and harmony among Member States, not to deal with evil forces from outside that threatens its existence.

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical letter shines a light on the digital darkness we all try to navigate in. A space owned by a handful of American tech companies which operate with profits margins as a moral compass. Below the paywall, I will go over selected passages from the encyclical letter and explain how the Pope’s wisdom can (and should) be executed through concrete policies, moving a theological framework towards actionable steps.

In essence, we already have the regulatory tools and policy ideas needed to tackle the dark forces of tech and AI. We know what to do. The real issue is doing it. Regulators and politicians fear the repercussions, the childish anger of Trump, of tech billionaires and other rich pocket voters, and the bright light of God when we step outside the darkness of our digital caves.

Read also:

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I talked about this with Irina Carnat.

Irina is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lider-Lab and l’EMbeDS of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and author of the well-written paper ‘Automation as Delegation of Power: Constitutional Constraints on AI Systems for the Administration of Justice’.

The narrative around AI replacing lawyers is flawed. Lawyers obtain value from AI systems through their own interpretation and understanding of the system’s output. LLMs don’t do anything on their own. Therefore, AI is not a competitor to lawyers, but a collaborator.

Even though law firms are probably required to adopt AI to stay competitive in the future, this will change the legal profession slowly over time, not rapidly disrupt it overnight. Regulatory safeguards ensure that meaningful human control is in place to avoid “cognitive surrender” in task delegation to AI.

Yes, AI does pose a threat to the future job prospects of junior lawyers, but maybe fewer, but better lawyers is not that bad after all.

We should also address the common claim I see on LinkedIn and Substack that EU’s regulation presents a hindrance to innovation. That is only the case, if “innovation” means that companies can spend less and increase profits. From an EU perspective, if “innovation” does not support fundamental rights protection, that is not the kind of innovation we are looking for. Instead of loosening regulatory safeguards, we should invest more in better legal scholarship to help companies transition through the compliance process.

See the full conversation here on Substack, via my YouTube channel, or listen to it on your favorite streaming service, and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Links:

AI will kill all the lawyers (article in The Spectator from December, 2025)

Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction

Global Database of AI Hallucination Cases

OpenAI is not just a company, but a religious cult which believes AI can achieve miracles. Google is an established industry juggernaut seeking to extend its power and influence. Anthropic is a religious cult like OpenAI, but an apocalyptic one that believes in ‘AI safety’ and ‘alignment’, so the machine God it creates is merciful.

Companies are generall…

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American innovation - smartphones, social media and large language models – has led to unprecedented commercial growth around the world, but also introduced genuinely strange second-order effects on society. We can’t scientifically quantify many of these effects, but they intuitively make sense. For example, the mass adoption of smart…

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Introduction

We all know it, the central roles of Google and Meta in the modern information ecosystem have strangled journalism, media and creatorship for years. The depth and quality of creative work is substituted by click-worthy headlines and images, while the bulk of profits accumulate in the pockets of tech platforms.

Only a few traditional newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian have successfully managed to pivot to a digital subscription model. Substack is one bright example of how independent creators and smaller media publications, at least to some extent, can continue to find a foothold and leverage in a skewed media system where American tech giants serve as global gatekeepers.

AI adds a new layer of complexity to the dire situation of media plurality (by the way, media plurality is a human right in the EU, Article 11 (2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union: “The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected”). Nowadays, most viral posts sound like they were written by the same author – typically, because they are - and people gravitate towards AI websites for news and opinions which were painstakingly reported by human creators with negligible compensation and no recognition.

Copyrights may be an inappropriate weapon to fight back. Even if a licensing scheme of some sort were established to honor the creators whose works are used as AI training fodder, chances are that the licensing fees will accrue to the major publishing houses, record labels, movie studios, and rights organization, while individual creators are left with pennies. Cory Doctorow has argued for a long time, that copyright won’t solve creators’ generative AI problem, but it may solve their bosses’ problem in the short term.

At the same time, there are seemingly no limits on how powerful the AI companies can become without legal intervention. The ultimate mission of American AI companies is to create a new form of alien intelligence that can do your job and the job of everyone around you, until human labor becomes redundant, and the tech capitalists yield complete control over every industry from the military to the local flower shop. Essentially, AI tech leaders are religious fanatics fighting for a self-serving cause with full support and confidence from the US government.

Archaic copyright laws cannot stop this mission in its tracks. The fundamental laws of finance and physics eventually will, but it could take years. The best way to prevent AI from swallowing up what remains of the media industry in the coming years is by a strict enforcement of competition laws. The EU is uniquely positioned to do so. In this post, we will look at how Google and Meta are threatening media pluralism, go deep on the meaning and implications of CJEU’s landmark decision in Case C-797/23, Meta Platforms Ireland v. AGCOM, how Google AI Overview threatens the media landscape anew, and why copyright may be an inappropriate mechanism to address it.

This is the 15^th edition of my newsletter concept, Tech Legal Brief. You can see all previous editions here. I write and curate these Briefs as a service to paid subscribers who occasionally want to go deeper to gain a glimpse of clarity on the complex intersection of tech, law, and society. Below the paywall, you will find original reporting and analysis that you can’t find anywhere else on the internet.

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When we interact with chatbots, we expect fluency and well-presented answers with little to no room for interpretation and ambiguity. Yet, reality is rarely so simple and learning and progress tend to reside in confusion, failed attempts, friction and doubt, not in confident-sounding answers to hard problems.

Selsbæk-Reitz describes in Promptism:

According to Selsbæk-Reitz, it’s vital that we adopt pauses for uninterrupted thinking in daily life, refuse to accept readily available answers as a default, seek out friends we disagree with, and learn to sit with uncomfortable doubt and challenging questions without reaching for the nearest resolution.

The problem of AI’s presentation of a false, but convenient reality is counterintuitive and non-obvious. Frankly, I thought this was a difficult conversation to have, but an important one to open up.

Links:

Two thirds of students say AI is hurting their critical thinking. They’re using it more than ever.

Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

The average attention span has shrunk to roughly 40 seconds. Here’s how to get it back.

In a recent newsletter post, I asked if the American AI industry could collapse.

To summarize, I think it can and I wouldn’t be surprised if it will.

The EU is seeking to copy the ‘American approach’ by making a huge bet on scaling large language models through infrastructure investments, but without a detailed, coherent st…

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Child protection is the new black in EU’s digital enforcement strategy. Examples from 2026:

• In February, the EU Commission preliminary found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) for its addictive design. TikTok had failed to make the adequate risk assessment and take the proper risk mitigation measures to protect minors (link).

• In March, the…

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Introduction

Predictions about the future of AI tend to fall into two extreme categories: either AI will turn superintelligent (e.g. AI 2027) or it’s a financial bubble waiting to burst (e.g. Ed Zitron). A more measured third approach is that ‘AI is a normal technology‘ as proposed by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor - AI will neither turn into Skynet, nor will it turn out to be essentially useless.

There is also a fourth option that I didn’t consider before I read a recent post by Kevin Kelly. What if the current uncertainty and confusion we are experiencing about AI’s economic impact and future capabilities persists?

Kelly describes the scenario:

The ‘sustained uncertainty’ scenario may be the worst outcome of all. We can handle success, we can handle failure, but not knowing what we know and don’t know is a frightening state to be in and the economy has a low tolerance for uncertainty and doubt. The whole data-driven economy is based on the assumption that we can accurately predict future outcomes and behaviors given enough data.

Kelly calls it “The Age of Ambiguity”. He emphasizes that it’s not prediction, but a possibility we should consider and prepare for. I completely agree. At the same time, I want to ask: what is the source of all this ambiguity and confusion? Could it be that the ugly truth is staring right at us, while we are distracted by the mechanical applause for tech leaders and American entrepreneurship on social media?

It sure seems possible. In my view, there is a non-insignificant chance that the American AI industry could collapse. Whether it happens this year, in three years or later is impossible to predict. Traditional media overemphasizes misleading statements by tech CEOs and corporate marketing stunts, while American algorithms amplify well-presented hype to increase profits and engagement. Most of all, the technological and financial elites of America have joined forces in a bet that says artificial intelligence is real, or soon will be. It’s the most expensive bet in the history of capitalism and being wrong is not an option. Ultimately, it’s still worth considering if they are betting on the impossible.

Below, I will lay out my arguments in simple terms. Your job is to tell me where the analysis is wrong.

‘American AI’

One defining trait of ‘American AI’ is that no one is allowed to see how the models work under the hood. Officially, that is in the consumers’ best interest. Open-source AI could be misused by terrorists to create biological weapons such as incurable diseases or advanced cyberattacks by exploiting critical software bugs at scale. Additionally, as American AI inches closer towards ‘superintelligence” or ‘AGI’ there’s a chance that ordinary users and businesses are denied access to new models.

The secrecy surrounding American AI is not just a competitive moat for the companies. It creates an aura of mystique feeding the narrative that American AI labs are building something brand new and exceptional. In truth, American AI needs to be exceptional and deliver exceptional returns.

The American cloud giants Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle are projected to spend more than $1.1 trillion by 2027 to meet the demands of AI infrastructure. These investments alongside the inflated value of AI-related stocks are central to keep up the rampant growth of S&P 500 and Dow Jones (and presumably what’s left of Trump’s popularity with business leaders).

The reverse effect and how the ‘AI bubble’ pops: Without sufficient returns on AI investments, the hyperscalers are forced to wind-down capital expenditures, the growing stock market declines, and the impacts will echo throughout the economy and political theater.

Luckily, the rise of Claude Code suggests that there is a demand for AI to justify the astronomical infrastructure investments. Anthropic’s run rate revenue (monthly revenue projected throughout the full year) has reportedly surpassed $30 billion in early April, up from just $9 billion at the end of 2025 and $14 billion in February, 2026. After the stunning subscription growth, Anthropic is now valued at $1 trillion pre-IPO on a secondary private market, surpassing OpenAI.

But how much of Anthropic’s revenue is real and who is really paying for it?

Anthropic receives billion-dollar investments from Google and Amazon, but a lot of it is paid in the form of cloud credits. This means you pay for a premium subscription to Claude, while Anthropic pays Google Cloud and AWS to host your Projects and conversations. Anthropic announces its revenue, but is not obliged to disclose the costs of running your queries, the models, or hosting your data. Nonetheless, the growing demand justifies further billion-dollar investments that never leave the balance sheets of Google and Amazon. The two companies own equity stakes in Anthropic too. In its earnings release from last week, Google’s parent company, Alphabet disclosed that nearly half of its record-breaking $62.6 billion profit came from the equity it owns in private companies, which is primarily Anthropic. Amazon’s concurrent earnings release directly states that first-quarter net income “includes pre-tax gains of $16.8 billion included in non-operating income from our investments in Anthropic”.

This kind of circular financing between AI startups and cloud providers was documented in a Federal Trade Commission report from January 2025. The arrangements blur how much net profits the AI startups are actually generating, and helps to attract more investments, which in turn prop up the value of the cloud providers equity stakes.

As the AI startups revenue increases, so does the computing costs although we don’t to which extent. Ed Zitron reported in September 2025, that Anthropic was spending more than $2.66 billion on computing costs to AWS alone on an estimated $2.55 billion in revenue. If we factor in the computing expenses Anthropic paid to Google during the same period, R&D costs, salaries to employees, etc., all evidence suggests that Anthropic was, and still is, operating at a major loss.

Whether or not the business model is sustainable longer term and can lead to profitability in 2028 as Anthropic projects remains anyone’s guess. The arrangement does appear shady, but as long as Anthropic continues to lock-in users by building dependency around its products and gradually increase subscription prices, the sky is not even the limit, since data centers can be built in space. However, the aggressive race towards exceptionalism and the current equilibrium between the financial and technological elites and political decisionmakers in the US could be disturbed and threatened by external factors. I can think of at least three such factors, two which are harming the business model of American AI, and one which is an existential threat combined with the others.

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Here are my main takeaways from our conversation:

• Disinformation is intentional (e.g. political influence campaigns) while misinformation is false information, but without any intention of harm.

• Disinformation is “lawful, but awful”, whereas hate speech is illegal in many countries. Each jurisdiction has a different threshold and understanding of what constitutes illegal speech (yet social media’s moderation policies are typically based on the American standard).

• Literacy campaigns and education is the best way for a society to absorb disinformation. In Finland and Estonia, children are taught about disinformation from a young age to mitigate the impacts of Russian propaganda campaigns.

• Humans have always lied and spread false information, but social media and AI exacerbate the issues. Laws cannot regulate ‘the truthfulness’ of what people say online or in private messages. What they can do is regulating how information is distributed. For example, Brazil adopted a law that said messaging apps such as WhatsApp had to be designed in such a way that you cannot share the same message with more than three people during elections.

• The law should address technology on the level of its design, contrary to regulating its impacts which are many and often unknown.

• The role of social media platforms is not to screen what is true and what is important. The role of social media is to provide users with the right tools, so they can easily screen relevant information for themselves. Currently, social media platforms are intentionally making it hard to do so, because they want to increase engagement as much as possible.

• Social media platforms should be transparent about deepfakes and who sponsors political advertisement ( requirements under EU law).

• As of now, social media is best used for stupid things, not as a reliable source of news.

The US gamified capitalism after the end of WW2. Usually, there are winners and losers in games. The problem with gamifying life itself is that there is no restart button, no way to admit defeat and start over because the game keeps on rolling. As a result, those who win continue to win as their edge grows larger, while those w…

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Introduction

The battle for global leadership in AI is often framed as a competition about the raw capabilities of models. The US is a clear winner, because no other country has the ability or willingness to throw as much venture capital and public funding behind datacenters and expensive training runs.

I will argue that governance is even more important …

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This is a joint post written by me and . In the first part, I will share my candid thoughts about the legal and geopolitical implications of Claude Mythos. In the second part, Aysu will lay out her personal thoughts about Mythos as a Sustainability Business Development Consultant and AI Enthusiast.

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When I was a young law student, I was once approached by a homeless immigrant outside of the law faculty in Copenhagen, who begged me for a cigarette. He told me that he used to be a promising young scientist with a Ph.D. degree in physics from a fancy European university. Now, he was forced to sleep on a cardboard box and had “no pride”. Even though I don’t remember much of the exact exchange – and of course, he could be lying - the impression I walked away with was that anyone could end up in his shoes.

I am indeed worried that many young people with talent today will. A new Gallup survey shows that the percentage of respondents between age 14 and 29 who said they felt hopeful about AI had declined from 27% last year to 18% as of February and March. Also, “48 % of working Gen Zers believe the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh its benefits”. No way that a new consumer/work technology has ever generated so little excitement and so much concern among those who are supposed to be its main adopters. Is AI having a “PR crisis” or is there something else going on?

Besides AI’s potential to absorb middle class jobs, the vulnerable, global supply chain it relies upon, and the extreme amount of resources that goes into creating cutting-edge models, the competition for entry-level jobs is fierce. I know from experience that companies tend to treat candidates like a bunch of data points, while they expect perfect credentials and love letters in return.

Increasingly, bosses are convinced that AI is a worker-replacement technology, thanks to billionaire influencers like Sam Altman, whose shameless self-promotion entice investors, board rooms and executives the world over. Some people have no pride and sleep on cardboard boxes; other people have no shame and become billionaires.

In 2019, OpenAI was a non-profit organization that refused to launch GPT-2 to the wider public due to fears about how it could be misused. Needless to say, GPT-2 is a laughably primitive model by today’s standards. How much have things changed!

In the paid section below, I will comment on OpenAI’s document, Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First.

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Justin co-wrote the paper, AI Won’t Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper with Sayash Kapoor, and Arvind Narayanan and has surveyed lawyers about their experience using AI tools for .

We discuss how AI is already changing the work of lawyers and what the legal profession may look like in the short-term future.

A topic of major importance to society!

What do you think? Join the conversation in the comments.

From the archive:

I have to get something off my chest which will hopefully clear up a common misconception about how regulation affects tech innovation in the EU. Let me just say, I don’t think those voices who claim that regulation is an insurmountable barrier to start a successful tech company in Europe are authentic. The narrative is driven by lies and propaganda, most likely stemming from Russian troll farms.

However, to those people who genuinely claim that EU laws are so annoying that’s it’s impossible or nearly impossible to start a successful AI or tech business here, my advice is straightforward: quit your whining and leave. I bet you won’t make it anywhere. The defining trait of successful entrepreneurs is their ability to overcome obstacles. If the legal barriers are such a burden in Europe, you probably don’t have what it takes to be successful no matter where you are located. We need serious and dedicated talent in Europe to ensure our survival, including of the ideas the EU stands for, and our future competitiveness. If you spend a lot of time complaining that bureaucrats in Bruxelles are holding you back and ruining your one shot at success, you probably don’t have what it takes. I say that as someone who helps companies comply with EU laws for a living.

Now, let’s move on to discuss AI. AI will likely be more successful as a military technology, than as a consumer product. The way that AI is reshaping the military is simply more consequential than its ability to generate ‘workslop’, propaganda for social media and to support or replace white-collar professionals. Yes, the military application of AI is to surveil and kill people. Not something I condone, but that is the reality we live in. It’s an utmost priority for Europe to prepare for modern AI-driven warfare as we are facing threats from within, the East, and the West (and many other angles we won’t go further into here).

The threat from within is primarily those with a defeatist attitude who refuse to stand up for European values, and are parroting the anti-democratic rhetoric from their feeds on X and TikTok. Russia is threatening Europe’s territory from the East. The US is increasingly threatening Europe’s territory from the West. A few years ago, a war between the US and the EU was unthinkable. Now, it’s a real, albeit remote, possibility that the EU needs to seriously prepare for. A war with the US may not necessarily be fought out with bombs and boots on the ground, although there is a non-zero chance it could be. More likely, it will be a continuation of the information warfare and economic warfare which is already ongoing. This means that EU countries must become independent of US tech for national security purposes, while rapidly building up sovereign capacities in military AI.

In the paid section of today’s post, we shall see how the EU is preparing for AI-driven war.

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To be honest, it’s a depressing time to advocate for digital ethics and law enforcement on the internet. These things barely register with most people, and understandably so. Considering the persistent hype about AI’s capabilities and the level of economic strain and chaos the Trump administration is introducing to the wor…

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