Paige Gross

State Sen. Daniel Verdin, of South Carolina, has spent the last month feeling optimistic about his cryptocurrency bill that proposes the state begin accepting digital currencies and become a friendlier place for digital asset mining.He knows an issue like cryptocurrency isn’t an easy sell here —  “the easy default position in a state like South Carolina is just to be conservative by nature,” he said.

With executive actions repealing federal guardrails on artificial intelligence, President Donald Trump's first few weeks in office have marked a major shift from the Biden administration's attitude toward the tech industry.

A fatal school shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville in January had an unusual feature:  the school had contracted an AI gun detection company to help identify and stop shootings, but the system did not spot the gun before a student opened fire.

After nearly a week of searching for a suspect in the hit-and-run death of an 81-year-old St. Helena, California woman this summer, police found and arrested a man with the help of license plate reading cameras that registered him near the scene.

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent appointments and cabinet nominees are pointing to a four-year stint of deregulation in the tech industry, and lots of potential for competitive growth within the industry and globally, tech executives predict.Trump has made a handful of recent selections, both to existing positions, like chair of the Federal Trade Commission and chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he has created new positions for his term, like the “AI and crypto czar.”

For 21-year-old Rebeca Damico, ChatGPT’s public release in 2022 during her sophomore year of college at the University of Utah felt like navigating a minefield.The public relations student, now readying to graduate in the spring, said her professors immediately added policies to their syllabuses banning use of the chatbot, calling the generative artificial intelligence tool a form of plagiarism.

Some venture capital investors, who have funded the tech boom in Silicon Valley and beyond, say they are excited by the prospect of a lighter regulatory environment under a new Trump Administration than they saw under President Joe Biden. But they warn that Trump policies that will benefit many technology companies may come at a cost to other pro-Trump voters. 

Advancements in AI technology, and the changing “information environment” undoubtedly influenced how campaigns operated and voters made decisions in the 2024 election, an elections and democracy expert said.

Advancements in AI technology, and the changing “information environment” undoubtedly influenced how campaigns operated and voters made decisions in the 2024 election, an elections and democracy expert said.

The U.S. Department of Labor released a list of artificial intelligence best practices for developers and employers this week, aiming to help employers benefit from potential time and cost savings of AI, while protecting workers from discrimination and job displacement.