Category Archives: Digital Life

New for Harvard Business Review, what business leaders must do to make AI agents trustworthy

As AI agents shift from back to front office applications, consumers are understandably wary of turning over the keys to their personal and financial data to autonomous software. But the potential for Agentic AI technologies to improve lives and make business more efficient is a powerful incentive.

In Harvard Business Review, Larry and co-author Blair Levin review the risks and opportunities of personal AI agents, and identify the three key initiatives business and government leaders must take to ensure a smooth adoption.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Larry on the true potential of E-Government

In the Wall Street Journal today, I write, with Blair Levin, about what we see as the best option for DOGE, the proposed advisory group within the White House that is tasked with improving government efficiency and cutting costs.

We propose making a serious effort to shift federal services from inefficient, understaffed and overworked local offices to the Internet, which would of course necessitate considerable upgrades to federal IT systems, as well as completing the build-out of broadband to the 7% of U.S. homes that still do not have a high-speed provider. Subsidies for the poor, and equipment, training, and support for some older Americans will also be necessary.

The build-out has already been funded through the 2021 Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

The rest would have to come out of the savings from shutting down field offices.

For LinkedIn today, how AI will really affect employment

For LinkedIn today, Blair Levin and I on the realities of AI’s potential to destroy jobs, a topic about which pretty much everything written so far has been wrong.

Concern about Generative AI’s potential to displace workers and disrupt markets kicked into high gear in 2022, with the public release of Open AI’s ChatGPT.  AI’s seemingly magical ability to instantly create new works of art and literature has generated a range of responses from delight to outrage, inspiring equally varied efforts to stop or at least slow down the pace of change—in everything from President Biden’s recent Executive Order to strikes by Hollywood actors and writers.

But will large-scale deployment of AI across industries really lead to massive job losses for creative and other professional workers?  The history of previous disruptors suggests the answer is initially yes but ultimately no, a staggered sequence that yields crucial and often counter-intuitive lessons for business, labor, and government.

All stakeholders need to embrace these learnings.  Misguided responses will distract the private and public sectors from implementing strategies to accelerate the adoption of AI, delaying significant social benefits and new job creation that will more than offset the losses. And even the most well-intended efforts to reduce AI’s early impact on jobs are almost certain to fail, diverting us from pragmatic solutions targeted to the most affected workers.

For Harvard Business Review Today, Who Will Really Regulate ChatGPT and Other AI Applications?

My co-author Blair Levin and I are pleased to announce the publication of our latest article for Harvard Business Review.

With the explosive arrival of ChatGPT and other generative AI applications built on Large Language Model neural networks, there has been a frenzy among legislature and regulatory agencies worldwide to determine who and how the new technology will be regulated. Unlike other Big Bang Disruptions, generative AI appears to be an uber-disruptor, breaking the rules of every industry. All at once. But can any regulator keep up with the pace of evolution of AI?

Check out the article here:

Who is Going to Regulate AI?

Announcing the Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity and Inclusion

I’m pleased to announce the publication of the Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity and Inclusion, for which I served as volunteer co-author and editor-in-chief.  The Plan, commissioned by the National Urban League, is a comprehensive agenda for closing what remains of the U.S. digital divide.

The plan, including a detailed executive summary, can be found here:  https://nul.org/program/lewis-latimer-plan

The Latimer Plan occupied much of my time last year, and I’m excited to see it finally in print, just as Washington is beginning to debate infrastructure, a key (though not the sole) component of our plan.  Though the Biden approach to network availability differs significantly from the Latimer plan, the goals of the two plans are the same, and it may be turn out that the Latimer approach wins out as the more cost-effective, timely, pragmatic, and bi-partisan.  We’ll see!