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The Center for Technology and Public Interest is a research center dedicated to understanding how technology shapes our world's future. In our newsletter, we offer weekly insights on the latest topics and trends, connecting the dots between technology, business, and regulation. Our goal is to help guide our readers through the ever-changing landscape of the tech world, particularly in the intersections with public policy and regulation. Let's stay hungry and stay foolish together.

Short update

Let's take a quick spin through the latest news.

This week's news was dominated by new developments from the SVB fallout over the weekend and the release of GPT-4 early in the week.

Silicon Valley Bank is no more

It is truly astonishing how much happened in just a few days. From the liquidity risk management fiasco to the bank run and from there to the receivership, the green light for the complete resolution and the financial sector and European regulators calling out the risk of a bailout apocalypse.

GPT-4, Google, and Microsoft

The launch of GPT-4 early this week reignited the stream of news reports and social media posts about how "[insert here your favorite topic] will never be the same again". In the same day, Google announced new AI APIs, tools, and integration for developers and their productivity apps at Google Workspace. Finally, on Thursday, Microsoft announced in a big PR event the integration of GPT-4-backed AI capabilities into their productivity apps at Microsoft 365. It's still unclear how OpenAI technology will behave at scale, though, and any written release that starts with "Humans are hard-wired to dream, to create, to innovate” immediately raises our skepticism.

Section 230 and the future of the internet

The US Supreme Court is considering the fate of Section 230, a law that protects content platforms from liability for user-generated content. The case, Gonzalez v. Google, challenges the intermediary liability protection of Section 230. If the challenge succeeds, it could undermine the foundation of Web 2.0 and the internet's future. The case focuses on whether platforms like Google, Twitter, and TikTok should be held liable for third-party content from their recommendation engines. Challenging Section 230 could have severe consequences for freedom of expression and lead to restrictions on recommendation engines or higher restrictions on publishing or sharing. Section 230 has been settled law for over two decades and protects content platforms, even if they encourage users to post content.

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SVB fallout, GPT-4, and Section 230 and the Future of the Internet