Latest news with #ChamberofProgress
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire Trump explains groceries (again) and gets put on blast
It's safe to say that you can't find a single American who doesn't know what the word 'groceries' means or who recognizes the core consumer good when they see it. But, for some reason, billionaire President Donald Trump feels obligated to keep explaining them to his fellow citizens. And he's most often done it while arguing that he's bringing costs down from coast to coast. Trump did it again on Thursday, repeating his definition of the 'old term' during a public meeting with United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. 'Costs are way down. Groceries, they have a term 'grocery.' It's an old term, but it means basically what you're buying foods. It's a pretty accurate term, but it's an old-fashioned sound,' Trump said during the meeting, according to a post to X by journalist Aaron Rupar. Which raises the question of how Trump describes the food that's purchased and brought into the White House or any of his gilded private clubs. And one X user had the same question: 'What is the other word for 'groceries' that people have been using?' Others couldn't help but point out that grocery prices have not gone down since the start of Trump's term. 'Groceries are not an old term for the millions of Americans who rely on them every week to feed their families. Insanity,' Tahra Hoops, the economic policy director for the Chamber of Progress, noted. Trump critic, and ex-Republican Ron Filipkowski, asserted that Trump is out of touch with his own voters, 'Can somebody tell the senile out-of-touch old man who has ever been able to comprehend in any way how the average American lives their lives that us peasants still call them groceries?' he wrote on X. Trump continued to talk about the costs of groceries by claiming that the price of eggs dropped 98% since he started his second term in January. Wholesale egg prices have fallen about 52% since their peak earlier this year, according to a CNN analysis. '5 people were running the country': New book offers devastating look at Biden's decline Rümeysa Öztürk chose grace over bitterness. What we can learn | John L. Micek 6 Mass. schools are under federal investigation for antisemitism. What are the claims? Here's when Walmart says it will raise its prices due to tariffs New Trump investigation accuses Harvard of admissions fraud Read the original article on MassLive.
CNBC
15-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Apple's strategy makes sense as U.S. workers can't produce its products: Chamber of Progress CEO
Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress CEO, joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss Apple's relationship with President Trump, what Trump's goal is with Apple, and much more.
Technical.ly
08-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
What Virginia's nixed AI bill spells for the future of regulation and entrepreneurship
States across the country are reckoning with how to balance regulating artificial intelligence and fostering innovation. Virginia's no different. Nearly 1,000 artificial intelligence-related bills have been introduced in the US in 2025, including 29 in Virginia alone. One proposed consumer protection bill, HB 2094, focused on creating requirements for developing, deploying and using 'high-risk artificial intelligence systems.' That classification includes when the tech is employed in situations like financial and healthcare services, where the legal benchmarks could help protect users from bias and algorithmic discrimination. Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the legislation this spring, stating that it would inhibit small companies and startups and stifle innovation. This is the second time Del. Michelle Maldonado (D-District 20) brought this legislation forward, and she expected a veto from the governor. The lawmaker saw the mental health ramifications of minimal regulation around social media and wants to be 'proactive versus reactive,' she said. 'What I'm suggesting is that we don't wait to see how it evolves,' Maldonado told 'That we'd be engaged in a very thoughtful conversation from the start.' Had it passed, Virginia would have been the second state to adopt comprehensive AI rules, although Colorado's measure still faces delays and revisions. Maldonado plans to introduce the legislation for a third time next year. 'When you have really complex legislation, when it's a first of its kind, it often takes multiple attempts before it becomes law,' she said. 'I think this piece of legislation is no different.' Avoiding a costly patchwork of laws Maldonado is part of a multi-state AI policymaker working group alongside about 200 other legislators. Members of this collective are introducing similar AI bills to Virginia's across the country. One in nearby Maryland made it past a first reading during the last legislative session. We don't want to step on your ability to be innovative and creative, but we do want to make sure we're protecting people along with business. Del. Michelle Maldonado This interstate collaboration makes sense to Nate Lindfors, the policy director at the policy-focused entrepreneurial nonprofit Engine. But there's the possibility that lawmakers will tweak the bills to be similar but meaningfully different, making it difficult for founders to navigate beyond state lines. Lindfors, whose employer supported Youngkin's veto, sees that issue affecting companies navigating the country's 19 comprehensive, state-level data privacy laws. 'A patchwork of laws is really costly for startups,' Lindfors told 'really fast.' Carrying out HB 2094's required impact assessments and other documentation could cost Virginia's AI developers and deployers $290 million in total, according to an analysis from the tech industry coalition Chamber of Progress. 'That figure alone just prices out any sort of smaller, minority-owned innovators that are looking to do work in the state,' said Brianna January, the organization's director of state and local government relations in the northeast. 'Which is an ironic unintended consequence — that we're trying to decrease any sort of potential bias in AI.' Moreover, robust documentation does not necessarily reduce the risk of harm, per Gillian Hadfield, a computer science professor with an appointment at Johns Hopkins' School of Government and Policy. She calls this tendency to conflate this recordkeeping with damage mitigation 'lawyer's disease,' and sees it in the EU AI Act but also regulatory approaches outside of AI. 'We don't really have much evidence about how well that works,' Hadfield told 'to actually reduce the risk of the harms we care about.' Entrepreneurial leaders call for a sector-by-sector approach Del. Maldonado's bill called for a horizontal application of the proposed legislation across industries using AI in high-risk activity and consequential decisions. She deemed it a more 'narrow' approach, compared to other AI legislation, because it applies to highly protected areas. She also doesn't expect lawmakers to dictate exactly how every field should implement regulations. 'I don't think anybody wants us as legislators telling every single sector how to do the work well,' she explained. 'I think the job of the legislature is to establish the framework and the guardrail … We don't want to step on your ability to be innovative and creative, but we do want to make sure we're protecting people along with business.' But since each industry uses each platform differently, January from the Chamber of Progress believes in a sector-tailored and nuanced approach to AI regulation. 'It comes down to different uses — different opportunities mean different potential biases that we should focus on, instead of the big omnibus approach,' she said. Todd O'Boyle, the Chamber of Progress' senior director of technology policy, also noted that consumer protections already exist for many of these 'high-risk' systems, like housing. The Virginia Fair Housing Law makes it illegal to discriminate against a renter based on a protected class, and AI doesn't change that, he said. But O'Boyle asserted that he wants to see any potential AI-related loopholes in the law closed. Taylor Barkley agrees. The director of public policy for the Abundance Institute, a think tank that a 2024 Politico report identified as funded by the Koch brothers to promote light-touch AI regulation, believes AI is too vast a technology to blanket regulate across sectors. It comes down to different uses — different opportunities mean different potential biases that we should focus on, instead of the big omnibus approach. Brianna January, Chamber of Progress 'You'd be regulating how people use spreadsheets. People use spreadsheets for all sorts of different applications and use cases,' Barkley told 'If there was a law banning discrimination in spreadsheets, we could say that's good. But if we unpack that a bit, how would that trip up innovation?' Barkley is instead a fan of consumer-focused legislation being introduced with a narrower lens. For example, a bill was just signed in the Abundance Institute's home state of Utah that addresses liability with mental health AI chatbots, and the requirement to disclose the tech. Regulating AI in the future Because AI constantly changes, laws and regulations need to be flexible, per Hadfield from Johns Hopkins University. 'AI is going to change the way we do everything,' she said, 'so that includes the way we do law and regulation.' She's been advocating for governments to use multi-stakeholder regulatory organizations, and contributed to a bill proposal calling for that in California. It involves a joint public-private approach to determining what the regulatory mechanics would look like, how to get there and the best way to achieve outcomes, including testing AI models. Under this law, participation is not mandatory, but those involved would have a safe harbor if any model resulted in injury or damage. 'I'd like to see more state legislation that was getting creative about new approaches,' Hadfield said. 'Measured approaches, appropriate approaches to regulation, not, 'Hey, we've taken the standard and made you do a bunch of this paperwork to show that you take it seriously too.''
CNBC
30-04-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Adam Kovacevich: Trump's tech agenda is inconsistent
Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress CEO and former head of Google's U.S. policy strategy, joins CNBC's 'Power Lunch' to discuss where tech stands with the Trump administration.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Mocked for Accidentally Turning Tariff Plan Into a Meme
Donald Trump is once again the laughingstock of the internet after his shocking decision Wednesday to issue a 90-day pause on some of his sweeping tariffs—with the exception of China—after the White House insisted for days that the president had no intention to hit the brakes. 'Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,' said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as she tried to spin Trump's sudden reversal as part of a long-unfolding plan to either boost domestic manufacturing or something else entirely—actually, it's become kind of unclear. Online people were quick to make what have now become running jokes about Trump's so-called 'art,' and the Trump administration's mind-boggling insistence that his tariffs are at once a brilliant negotiation tactic and a legitimate policy meant to bolster the U.S. economy. 'Oh my god she did the meme,' wrote Tahra Jirari, the director of economic analysis at the Chamber of Progress, on X. 'The Art of the Deal is panicking and reversing course less than 24 hours after tariffs go into effect?' wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post on X. Pod Save America host Jon Favreau also took aim at Trump's deal-making prowess, writing, on X, 'Art of the Deal: 1) Impose massive tariffs on nearly every country that crash the markets and create the conditions for global economic collapse 2) Make zero deals with zero countries 3) Pause tariffs 4) VICTORY!!' While Trump bragged about the scores of foreign leaders who'd come to kiss the ring, many foreign officials said that they'd received no reply to their requests to make a deal with the Trump administration, according to Politico. With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's hollow claims that Trump's decision was not a response to the last week's tumultuous stock market, many struggled to understand Trump's rationale in power-checking foreign countries. Meanwhile, others suggested that Trump, having urged his followers on Truth Social that it was a 'great time to buy' earlier Wednesday, was attempting to create a window for his allies to buy low, knowing he was about to rescind his tariffs. But Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there was likely no method to Trump's madness at all. 'OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY AND IS JUST A NEGOTIATING TACTIC BUT IT IS ALSO GOING TO BE PERMANENT AND WE WILL BE THE WORLD LEADER IN TEXTILES AND NOW THERE IS A PAUSE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL BUT ALSO WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN AAAAAAHHHHHH,' Schatz wrote in a hilariously candid post on X.
