Tag Archives: AI

Fiber supply threatens US broadband targets

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Light Reading reports…

Warnings about a US fiber crunch that could slow down broadband deployment have intensified since the summer. In August, Incab America, a Texan maker of fiber-optic cable, notified customers that “a significant fiber shortage is emerging” in a statement signed by Mike Riddle, its president, who blamed data centers for “sucking up all the fiber production capacity.” The situation reminded him of 2000, when lead times lengthened to a year. They have now risen to the same level, said a separate industry source who requested anonymity.

That compares with normal lead times of between eight and 12 weeks, according to the same source. Even when there is some tightness in the supply chain, they never usually exceed 15 to 20 weeks, he said. But a wave of investment in data centers, built to train AI’s large language models (LLMs), has quickly gobbled supplies of glass and other materials used in fiber-optic cables. “The three leading glass manufacturers in the United States are experiencing challenges in meeting this heightened demand,” observed Riddle in August. “Notably, one manufacturer has already sold all of its fiber inventory through the year 2026.”

Policies may also have an impact…

Yet surging demand from AI data centers is not the only problem. Sourcing components from overseas has also become harder because of the tariff restrictions Trump has slapped on imports of foreign goods. There is some industry frustration, too, about the need to comply with the rules of the Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act signed into law by Joe Biden, Trump’s White House predecessor, in November 2021.

Under BABA’s provisions, initiatives are ineligible for government financial aid “unless all of the iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used in the project are produced in the United States.” That has ramifications for companies participating in the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, which draws on government funds to extend network coverage into hard-to-reach and underserved communities.

How Trump Executive Orders shape Federal AI regulation and override State actions

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The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society outlines how Trump Executive Orders shape federal AI regulation and override State actions. They outlines actions, plans and deadlines as well as a a very quick summary…

President Trump’s AI policy represents a distinctive approach: the U.S. government will be an active participant in advancing AI technology while adopting light federal regulation focused on content standards for government-purchased AI, combined with aggressive federal preemption of state regulation. Rather than creating extensive federal rules for private AI companies, the Administration is working to prevent states from creating such rules while investing heavily in federal AI development through initiatives like the Genesis Mission.

This creates a framework in which AI companies face minimal regulatory requirements from any level of government, with the primary federal interventions being procurement standards for AI systems used by federal agencies and efforts to establish a unified national framework that supersedes state authority.

AI Governance Checklist for Elected Officials from The Center for Democracy and Technology

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I love a good checklist. Even if you may never need the checklist, I think looking over it gives you a good idea of how something works and what’s involved. The Center for Democracy and Technology has created a check list for AI use in government…

This brief provides elected officials and senior leaders working in state and local government with a checklist of core recommendations specifically aimed at building government-wide structures, strategies, and processes to advance trustworthy and responsible use of AI in public benefits and services across five core areas:

  • Public Transparency and Stakeholder Engagement: Improve public awareness and understanding of AI by establishing public AI inventories, prioritizing public education about government use of AI, creating advisory councils with members of the public to inform agency AI decision-making, implementing mechanisms for meaningful feedback from the public, and instituting plain-language notices and explanations for affected individuals.
  • Accuracy and Reliability: Ensure that AI projects advance agency goals and combat AI-driven challenges by adopting acceptable AI use policies or guidelines, grounding the acquisition and use of AI tools in evidence-based decision-making, establishing minimum government-wide AI performance and testing standards and procurement criteria, implementing regular independent audits of AI tools (including post-deployment), building in requirements for human oversight and training, and prioritizing investment in AI talent.
  • Governance and Coordination: Promote cross-agency governance practices by adopting a government-wide AI plan and governance strategy, appointing a chief AI officer or equivalent senior leader, creating AI governance boards, establishing centralized emergency response protocols and AI incident reporting, engaging cross-functional staff in AI decision-making, establishing forums for government employees to provide input on AI projects, and incorporating responsible AI guidance into existing employee training and onboarding materials.
  • Privacy and Security: Identify and mitigate AI-related privacy and security harms by updating cybersecurity and data policies; establishing privacy and security protections in AI procurement; integrating chief privacy, information security, and data officers throughout AI decision-making; and prioritizing privacy and cybersecurity in employee AI training.
  • Safety, Rights, and Legal Compliance: Address the risks that AI systems may pose to the public’s safety and rights by integrating civil rights, risk, and legal officers throughout AI decision-making; establishing heightened risk management requirements for high-impact uses; and prioritizing legal compliance and identification and mitigation of AI harms in employee AI training.

OPPORTUNITY: Google AI Essentials Training at NO COST!

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I got this from the NDIA Listserv – and I double checked to make sure it wasn’t just for the Palmetto community…

Palmetto Goodwill is offering Google AI Essentials and Google Prompting Essentials at no cost!  This training is designed to help individuals strengthen digital skills that are essential in today’s workforce. AI literacy is becoming a key requirement across many industries, and this training can open doors to better employment options—especially for those rebuilding their lives after incarceration.

 

Course Benefits:

  • Free access to a Coursera certificate course
  • Learn the fundamentals of AI, including real-world applications
  • Optimize AI interactions through effective prompting tactics
  • Self-paced online learning—complete on your own schedule
  • Earn a Coursera Certificate to boost your resume or LinkedIn profile

 REGISTER: Google Coursera Professional Certificates | Palmetto Goodwill

Those with a large number of interested learners may submit a list that includes each participant’s first and last name, along with their email address, to digitalskills@palmettogoodwill.org.

Feel free to enroll and share the opportunity within your organization and across your community networks.

White House launches the Genesis Mission to promote and support AI

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The White House announces launch of the Genesis Mission (summary of original borrowed from Benton Institute for Broadband & Society...

America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories. This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.  The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.  The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.  We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.  The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership. This executive order:

  • Establishes the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.
  • The Secretary of Energy shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing high-performance computing resources, AI modeling and analysis frameworks, computational tools, domain-specific foundation models, secure access to appropriate datasets, experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.
  • Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Energy shall identify and submit to the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains.
  • The APST, through the National Science and Technology Council, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies.
  • Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing the Platform’s operational status and capabilities.

Be brave enough to ask the dumb questions – especially with technology

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I have taught every age from preschool to graduate school, and while this post may seem a little adjacent to what I usually write, I couldn’t resist because I read it and was reminded myself that a dumb, legitimate question can turn out to be the smartest discussion starter. Politico asks Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker questions “about the hype, risks and data-privacy threat of AI.” Before founding Signal (an encrypted-messaging app), she worked for Google.

When you talk to policymakers now, whether about energy or national security or economic competitiveness, AI is inevitably part of the equation. What do you make of how big an impact AI is having?

I would dare you or anyone listening who has contacts with policymakers and politicians to just sit them down and say: What do you mean by AI? I think what you’ll get at that point is a lot of hype, a lot of fog, a lot of magical thinking. And that’s a big problem. We are seeing a wave of hype washing over critical institutions, governments, and key decision makers to trust these technologies with key functions that those who understand the technical reality, the limitations, the conditions for how these actually work would never have advised.

What’s the antidote to that? You also always hear this argument that Washington or policymakers don’t understand the technology well enough to regulate it, or put guardrails on it.

That old trope that all you need is tech brains in Washington to move aside the dusty policymakers and get things on the rails of modernization has been around for a very long time. But they’re not too old or too crusty to understand the domains in which they operate, be that education or health care or national security. And tech has a lot to learn on the fundamentals of those domains.

The antidote — there’s no one weird trick here, but just be brave enough to ask the dumb question. People are deeply afraid of being humiliated for being dumb about AI. And I will hear NATO chiefs, I will hear CEOs of Fortune 100 corporations, repeating as received wisdom claims about AI that make absolutely no sense.

These quote-unquote stupid questions, like, “How does this work? Do we have control over the data? What are the privacy implications? Are there vulnerabilities there?” These are just basic questions that should be the floor before entrusting critical decision making to obscure systems that often don’t, in my opinion, meet that bar for safety use in critical domains.

AI applications for rural broadband providers

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 NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association just released an interesting paper on AI use for rural broadband providers…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the product of high-speed computer analysis of vast data sets that results in
predictive guidance for users. It can be used across a wide range of industries and applications, including
broadband network management; medicine and health care; writing and content creation; and customer
service support. AI represents both an opportunity and challenge for rural broadband providers and the
communities they serve. AI promises efficiencies and other gains but also implicates privacy, data security
and labor market considerations.
This paper provides rural broadband operators with a practical introduction to AI and its applied use for
telecommunications and other industries in rural settings. We will explain fundamental AI concepts and
terminology while highlighting specific examples of how rural ISPs and other businesses can use AI across
business operations, including customer service and administrative management. At the same time, we will
explore practical considerations about costs, customer perceptions and the need for thoughtful AI policies to
help rural providers navigate these challenges successfully. By serving as both users and enablers of AI, rural
ISPs can contribute significantly to the economic development and quality of life in the areas they serve.

White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan

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The White House reports…

The White House today released “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan”, in accordance with President Trump’s January executive order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI. Winning the AI race will usher in a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people.

The Plan identifies over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars – Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security – that the Trump Administration will take in the coming weeks and months.

Key policies in the AI Action Plan include:

  • Exporting American AI: The Commerce and State Departments will partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages – including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards – to America’s friends and allies around the world.
  • Promoting Rapid Buildout of Data Centers: Expediting and modernizing permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs, as well as creating new national initiatives to increase high-demand occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians.
  • Enabling Innovation and Adoption: Removing onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment, and seek private sector input on rules to remove.
  • Upholding Free Speech in Frontier Models: Updating Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.

“America’s AI Action Plan charts a decisive course to cement U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. President Trump has prioritized AI as a cornerstone of American innovation, powering a new age of American leadership in science, technology, and global influence. This plan galvanizes Federal efforts to turbocharge our innovation capacity, build cutting-edge infrastructure, and lead globally, ensuring that American workers and families thrive in the AI era. We are moving with urgency to make this vision a reality,” said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios.

“Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology with the potential to transform the global economy and alter the balance of power in the world. To remain the leading economic and military power, the United States must win the AI race. Recognizing this, President Trump directed us to produce this Action Plan. To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships. At the same time, we must center American workers and avoid Orwellian uses of AI. This Action Plan provides a roadmap for doing that,” said AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks.

“Winning the AI Race is non-negotiable. America must continue to be the dominant force in artificial intelligence to promote prosperity and protect our economic and national security. President Trump recognized this at the beginning of his administration and took decisive action by commissioning this AI Action Plan. These clear-cut policy goals set expectations for the Federal Government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” said Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.

Learn more at AI.Gov.

 

Proposed changes to federal tax bill would deny states federal funding for broadband if they regulate AI

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The Minnesota Star Tribune reports…

Senate Republicans have made changes to their party’s sweeping tax bill in hopes of preserving a new policy that would prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.

In legislative text unveiled Thursday night, Senate Republicans proposed denying states federal funding for broadband projects if they regulate AI. That’s a change from a provision in the House-passed version of the tax overhaul that simply banned any current or future AI regulations by the states for 10 years.

There are a few other telecommunications-related changes as well…

The GOP legislation also includes significant changes to how the federal government auctions commercial spectrum ranges. Those new provisions expand the range of spectrum available for commercial use, an issue that has divided lawmakers over how to balance questions of national security alongside providing telecommunications firms access to more frequencies for commercial wireless use.

Senators are aiming to pass the tax package, which extends the 2017 rate cuts and other breaks from President Donald Trump’s first term along with new tax breaks and steep cuts to social programs, later this month.

EVENT Jan 31-Feb 1: AI Hackathon: Making Local Civic Information More Accessible in Minnesota Communities

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I love a hackathon! And this invitation from the U of M Hubbard School is a great opportunity to get some up-close experience with AI as a development tool…

Minnesota communities face a common challenge: Making sense of crucial civic information buried in lengthy council meetings, complex public documents and scattered government websites.

At the same time, local news outlets have capacity constraints in the ways they currently operate.

This hackathon invites journalists, technologists, civic leaders and community members to come together to build AI-powered solutions that transform how residents access and engage with local information while centering important questions of ethics and equity in how these tools are used and deployed.

Join us to prototype the future of civic engagement — with cash prizes for the most promising solutions!

  • When: Friday and Saturday, Jan. 31 and Feb. 1
  • Where: University of Minnesota — Twin Cities campus
  • Who should attend: Anyone who cares about how communities share, access and assess information
    • Journalists and news technologists
    • Civic tech developers and designers
    • Local government staff
    • Community organizers
    • Students and researchers 
  • Cost: The two-day hackathon, which includes a mixer on Friday and breakfast and lunch on Saturday, is free — but you must RSVP to join us
  • RSVP:  Register for the two-day hackathon here

MN schools and teachers using online translation services to communicate with families

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Gov Tech reports…

Some Minnesota educators have signed onto apps and platforms that use machine-learning algorithms to help translate websites, newsletters and even texts to parents into multiple languages.

The article reports on some high points and low points. It is a way to get information into many languages but without some quality control, you can’t be sure that the correct and full information is being shared. Ther are some plans for improvement…

After winter break, the district plans to roll out an app that will connect teachers to a live interpreter to help interpret conferences, or parent meetings, for example.

“That’s going to be such a resource for us,” said Danilo McCarthy , an English language support specialist for South Washington County schools. He also holds workshops for families on using those new technologies to best communicate with their child’s teacher.

Kourajian, the Mounds View middle school teacher, offered similar training for her fellow teachers on the translation app — called TalkingPoints — that allows her to translate quick messages to and from parents. The district first offered TalkingPoints to its staff in the 2022-23 school year, but it wasn’t immediately embraced by all, Kourajian said.

Usage has jumped this year and more than 23,000 messages have gone to families, most commonly in Spanish, Somali and Arabic. Still, only about 40 percent of staff are using the app.

Many years ago, I taught English in Catalonia, Spain. Lack of translation tools meant teacher, students and parents all learned quickly to communicate when necessary but some help would have been a gift. The old school version of AI was the boss writing down a dozen phrases in Catalan that I could use on report cards.

Lumen (CenturyLink) to focus on AI and cloud over legacy telecom services

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Fierce Telecom reports…

Lumen’s President and CEO Kate Johnson was surprisingly candid about the company’s legacy telecom business during its third quarter 2024 earnings call this week. She said the company’s current financial results, coupled with the fact that telcos are not talking about a turnaround, make it difficult to imagine long-term success for Lumen.

Ouch.

She also mentioned Lumen’s plan to cut costs by $1 billion by the end of 2027. The plan is to unify its four network architectures into one, allowing simplification of its product portfolio and IP estate. “While this work is incredibly complicated, given our long history of mergers and accumulation of tech debts, we are on track to developing the plan to execute,” said Johnson. “These cost-out efforts will require upfront spending with a back-end loaded cost takeout curve.”

Lumen is looking at growth based on the AI market and cloud computing. It will be interesting to see what happens to customers in areas served by Lumen (aka CenturyLink)…

 “I want to be clear here. We are not here to find revenue growth in legacy telco. All of our transformation work is in service to customers who need and want to leverage technology like Gen AI to transform their business. And the legacy networks of yesterday just won’t serve tomorrow’s enterprise,” she concluded.

The UN provides recommendations for Governing AI for Humanity

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The United Nations has released a report on Governing AI for Humanity. It’s daunting because the topic is daunting, but the report is easy to read. They start by recognizing that one of the tasks is getting everyone to the table. AI has the power to make our jobs easier and harder, to create and eliminate jobs, to bring us together and push us apart. It fascinating and it can feel like science fiction but it’s no longer on the doorstep, it’s in our living rooms. What we can do to prepare our communities is to learn as much as we can and start conversations with diverse communities. Holding classes on understanding or implementing AI might be just as popular in senior living spaces as the schools.

 

I’ve pulled out the UN’s recommendations to get folks thinking about AI and perhaps thinking about what needs to happen at the local level to help your community benefit from the powers of AI…

Recommendation 1 An international scientific panel on AI
We recommend the creation of an independent international scientific panel on AI, made up of diverse multidisciplinary experts in the field serving in their personal capacity on a voluntary basis.

Recommendation 2 Policy dialogue on AI governance
We recommend the launch of a twice-yearly intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on AI governance on the margins of existing meetings at the United Nations.

Recommendation 3 AI standards exchange
We recommend the creation of an AI standards exchange, bringing together representatives from national and international standard-development organizations, technology companies, civil society and representatives from the international scientific panel.

Recommendation 4 Capacity development network
We recommend the creation of an AI capacity development network to link up a set of collaborating, United Nations-affiliated capacity development centres making available expertise, compute and AI training data to key actors.

Recommendation 5 Global fund for AI
We recommend the creation of a global fund for AI to put a floor under the AI divide.

Recommendation 6 Global AI data framework
We recommend the creation of a global AI data framework, developed through a process initiated by a relevant agency such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and informed by the work of other international organizations

Recommendation 7 AI office within the Secretariat
We recommend the creation of an AI office within the Secretariat, reporting to the Secretary[1]General. It should be light and agile in organization, drawing, wherever possible, on relevant existing United Nations entities. Acting as the “glue” that supports and catalyzes the proposals in this report, partnering and interfacing with other processes and institutions

I also chose a graphic that piqued my interest…

Four key findings in recent State EdTech Trends survey

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The Benton Institute for Internet & Society recap a recent report…

The State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) released its third annual State EdTech Trends survey and report. With this survey of state education technology (edtech) directors, superintendents, commissioners of education, and other state-level policymakers, SETDA aims to catalog the way state education agencies are adapting to the opportunities and risks of increasingly ubiquitous technology.

Four Key Findings

The report presents four key findings based on the survey:

  1. State agencies are stepping up to meet the demand for more support on the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in education.

  2. For the second year in a row, cybersecurity is the top edtech priority among state leaders, but fewer state leaders believe their state is providing sufficient funding to support connectivity.

  3. Anxiety about funding appears to increase as federal pandemic funds expire, while home connectivity and access remain the top unmet needs across states.

  4. New survey questions reveal opportunities for state education leaders to support the effective and equitable use of edtech as states appear to invest more in their own capacity.

Senator Klobuchar and others urge Justice Department and FTC to investigate generative AI potential antitrust violations

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Senator Klobuchar and others ask the powers that be to look into generative AI…

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, along with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN) sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan to highlight the risks that new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features pose to competition and innovation in digital content, including journalism, and to urge both agencies to investigate whether the design of these features violates the antitrust laws.
“Recently, multiple dominant online platforms have introduced new generative AI features that answer user queries by summarizing, or, in some cases, merely regurgitating online content from other sources or platforms. The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work. While a traditional search result or news feed links may lead users to the publisher’s website, an AI-generated summary keeps the users on the original search platform, where that platform alone can profit from the user’s attention through advertising and data collection,” wrote the lawmakers. “Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform’s AI.”
“For the reasons outlined above, we urge the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the design of some generative AI features, introduced by already dominant platforms, are a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws,” concluded the lawmakers.