FTC may take a deeper look at artificial intelligence

• Updated on: 2017-08-23
• Read original article here

What it means
Bash on MSNBC: "In Afghanistan, ... we are part of a 39-member, NATO-led coalition. It's inconceivable that we will deploy troops there, tell the Afghan government the number, tell 39 other nations the number ... but not tell the American people. ... In some ways, you do have to telegraph to our friends, as well as our adversaries, our commitment to Afghanistan over the long term."
In 2013, Trump called for "a speedy withdrawal," and later tweeted: "Let's get out!"
David Ignatius on "Morning Joe": "There's very little enthusiasm for this policy ... in the Pentagon, but ... not a single person there, really, can bear the thought of walking away."
The keeper line from last night's speech: "My original instinct was to pull out — and, historically, I like following my instincts. But all my life I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. In other words, when you're President of the United States."'
A Republican close to the West Wing gave this snap appraisal: "He seemed emotionally committed to his words. Very little ad-libbing or free form. His bearing was serious and as 'Presidential' as he is capable of conveying. Hill Republicans are skeptical about his staying power once the base reacts to his policy about face. It was a conventional R hawk speech, unveiling a conventional R hawk policy."
Axios' Jonathan Swan, who reports that the speechwriting was led by Stephen Miller, emails: "Would President Hillary Clinton or President Marco Rubio have given a different speech? Maybe in some of the rhetorical flourishes and framing, but the substance is what matters and Trump sided with the national security establishment tonight."
"It was the language of populist nationalism used to sell a very mainstream, consensus, national security strategy."
The president couldn't sneak this past Customs. The N.Y. Times reports that "top national security officials were ... taken aback at a meeting in the Situation Room on July 19, when an angry Mr. Trump began ripping apart their latest proposal to send thousands of additional American troops to the country."
At that point, Steve Bannon thought he was winning.
There were instant signals the decision could mean trouble with the base. Breitbart News called it a "flip-flop" in a huge red headline, and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham tweeted : "Who's going to pay for it? What is our measure of success? We didn't win with 100K troops. How will we win with 4,000 more?"
Swan reports: "Breitbart will go big on this. It's everything Bannon fought against. They'll attack Trump for selling out his base and being a third term of Obama. Also, you can quote this from a high-profile Trump supporter: 'Trump just succumbed to the false song of globalism.'"
I asked a respected Afghanistan-policy watcher — Vance Serchuk, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security — for his top takeaways:
"The big policy moves — rejecting a timeline-driven approach in favor of one based on conditions on the ground, promising a more coercive approach on Pakistan's sheltering of terrorists — mark a rejection of the mistakes made by President Trump's predecessors that contributed to the stalemate he inherited."
"[T]he question is whether the commitment is real and persists — whether he really takes ownership for the policy and continues to make an affirmative case to the American people about why we have vital national interests in South Asia and can't afford to walk away."
Be smart: Remember all the praise for President Trump's stick-to-the-script address to Congress back in February? Tonight in Phoenix, Trump has a "Make America Great Again" campaign rally. Normal may not be in town for too long.
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Tech companies are crushing media at this game. Most ignore bulk traffic numbers and obsess about daily engagement. This is why they report daily active users instead of monthly unique visitors.
Life hacking is the hot trend for feeding addiction. The trick here is elbowing your way into every aspect of a person's life to create an unkickable habit and crank up engagement. Become a utility.
The New York Times is focusing its subscription efforts on entities like "Cooking" and "Crosswords," two highly habit-forming topics.
Last year, The Washington Post created "Floppy Candidate," an IOS and Android game aimed at attracting younger audiences.
Facebook and Amazon are racing into the food delivery market, reaching deeper into consumers' lives.
Everyone's investing in binge video: Tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into creating original content to get a piece of binge watching time. At the same time, digital-first media companies, like Buzzfeed and Mashable, are going all in on original shows.
All of this creates a measurement conundrum, especially around video ( more on that here ). With Amazon , Apple , Facebook and others jumping into the business of original content, there is no way to accurately measure who is watching what, where and for how long. Tech standards for how they measure video consumption are very different from television, and they're often not vetted and verified. Snapchat, for example, measures a video view as any time a video is opened, while Nielsen counts video views on linear ( and now digital ) TV as active engagement for at least a minute.
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Other takes:
Google's Ravi Narasimhan said it was "taut and courageous" writing. "My daughter @natasharavinand and future techie girls owe you." he said.
Wired's Nitasha Tiku : "Even after covering the trial for weeks, I learned from & was taken aback by (Pao) telling her story in her own words," Tiku wrote. "It takes guts to address not just the facts, but all the whispers and ways people dismiss you."
Thomas Bukowski : "I will always have tremendous respect for (Pao) taking on what no one should ever have to, with a steadfast resolve."
Pao told Login the most meaningful response has been the support from those with similar experiences:
"Unfortunately, there is a set of people who don't understand and possibly will never understand or empathize with my and others' experiences as women or people of color, or, doubly removed, as women of color," she said. "I hope they change over time. I share my experiences for people who are looking for support and validation of their own experiences and for people who are looking to learn."
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New data from Northeastern University shows a correlation between a journalist's social network and the content they produce. The data scientists that conducted the study found a reasonably clear relationship between the ideological leaning of the accounts a journalist follows on Twitter and the news content he or she produces.
Note: The methodology for determining ideological slant of journalists comes from the researchers at Northeastern, and is based on the articles journalists write. They first extracted phrases indicative of a left or right leaning ideology, and then they score journalists based on the number of times they express these terms in their articles. They discuss each of these pieces in more detail here .
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Key takeaways
Trump said America can't be a force for peace in the world if it isn't itself at peace: "There can be no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate" in the U.S, "love for America requires love for all of its people."
He didn't make specific reference to troop levels, though reports are that he'll be increasing the U.S. presence by about 4,000 troops.
His strategy
Trump said withdrawal "would create a vacuum that terrorists... would instantly fill just as happened before September 11." He said the U.S. can't repeat its mistakes in Iraq.
On his change of tune: "All my life I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk of the Oval Office."
What victory looks like: crushing al-Qaeda, keeping Taliban in check, ensuring there's no base from which to attack the U.S.
"America First" elements
Trump says the U.S. has spent too much blood and treasure "trying to rebuild other countries in our own image."
Trump repeated his calls for allies to contribute more to their own defense, and said the greatest burden will fall on Afghanistan to protect itself, and "build their own nation."