Riki Parikh

Just published with The Cicero Institute: a practical guide for state agencies navigating the post-Chevron regulatory landscape and restoring clearer lines of authority between law and regulation. By proactively reviewing outdated statutes, rigorously evaluating rules, and migrating durable policy into law, agencies can reduce legal risk and create clearer regulatory frameworks. This paper lays out a four-step approach already implemented at scale, showing that reform can be practical, disciplined, and institutionally stabilizing. https://lnkd.in/g83bwHP5

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A new industry-linked group pushing back against state regulation of artificial intelligence has chosen its leader. Nathan Leamer, a onetime aide to Republican Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai, will serve as executive director of Build American AI. Leamer will lead the group’s work for a national policy framework on AI and will have the political muscle of a new, affiliated Silicon Valley campaign spending effort to help him along the way. “Artificial intelligence is the next great engine of American ingenuity. If we create a unified national framework instead of a patchwork of conflicting rules, AI can fuel the next era of prosperity,” Leamer told us in a statement. https://lnkd.in/enti6QjV

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Social Security rolled out a new AI chatbot -- and beneficiaries don't entirely like it. My latest, with KFF Health News how the agency's tech plans are leaving techies and beneficiaries lukewarm: https://lnkd.in/ejdJApg7

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innovative governance ideas from Gov. Youngkin in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is a smart way to use AI to help improve regulatory processes and keep rules up-to-date. 👍

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It's a simple concept - shouldn't Congress and the FCC examine first whether broadcast spectrum is being used efficiently before allowing further media consolidation? 👉 Consumer Technology Association CEO and Executive Chair Gary Shapiro tells Senate Commerce Committee members in advance of today's hearing: "CTA believes that if Congress or the FCC considers relaxing the broadcast ownership rules, such action should be paired with meaningful measures to return underused broadcast spectrum to the federal government and should not include mandates that force consumers to buy features they do not want."

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The USPS OIG recently published a great white paper on international approaches to adjusting posts’ universal service obligations (USOs). USOs guarantee all citizens within a country affordable, consistent postal service, regardless of location. But, declining mail volume and market competition have made it harder for postal operators worldwide to sustain the costs of providing the USO. Many countries are modifying their USOs by reducing delivery days, slowing service standards, changing requirements for the network of post offices, or reducing the scope of products within the USO. In the US, the legal framework of the USO is unique because there is no government department directly responsible for postal policy or a specific formal process to adjust it. Take a look at the research and findings in the white paper and digital story! https://lnkd.in/eVrgs4Jy

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Institutions Should Prepare Now for Unprecedented OMB Shutdown Guidance As the funding deadline looms and the political climate is looking ripe for a government shutdown, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has instructed agencies to prepare not only for furloughs, but also for reductions-in-force (RIFs): • When programs lose discretionary funding on Oct. 1, • When no alternative funding is available, or • When programs are not aligned with stated priorities. This is a break from past practice. The inclusion of a “priority alignment” test could affect federal research programs, universities, and grantees in new and lasting ways. What institutions can do now: • Assess exposure: Map out which grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements may fall into one of the three categories. • Prepare continuity plans: Identify bridge funding options, internal reserves, or collaborative supports that could sustain critical work. •Communicate early: Inform staff, partners, and stakeholders about possible scenarios to reduce uncertainty. • Document impact: Keep records of affected projects and staff to support advocacy and future funding restoration. If a shutdown happens, it may not look like those we’ve seen before. Institutions that prepare today will be in a stronger position to manage risks and protect their mission. ➡️ DM me here if you’d like to discuss strategies for assessing your risk exposure and positioning your institution for continuity. #GovernmentShutdown #OMB #FederalFunding #ResearchFunding #PublicPolicy

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So in addition to adding $3 trillion to the debt, the OBBBA is effectively a massive transfer of resources from the lowest income households to highest income households. There is a broad consensus among economists that the bill will have minor, if any, positive impacts on economic growth.

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The SECURE Data Act is a commendable step toward ending the patchwork of state laws that currently complicates the U.S. tech landscape. Proud to see this momentum in Congress!

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Earlier this week, I submitted comments for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's deregulatory docket. All of my action items are listed below, but I want to bring attention to two items: - Smarter rulemaking at OIRA - Legal safe harbors for CSAM red teaming Regulatory cost estimates are often guesswork. OIRA could change that by using AI to model regulation by building simulations of compliance costs across firm sizes & industries. I have already been doing this work in a series of posts. And because I have so much work on AI, I've compiled all my recent work into one comprehensive summary located here: https://lnkd.in/ejqTjVDJ Second, we need be talking about a CSAM red-team safe harbor. Synthetic CSAM can be produced entirely by AI models, sometimes unintentionally. This situation has created a legal quagmire: AI-generated CSAM is illegal but testing for its presence is also illegal. This post in Lawfare by Riana Pfefferkorn brought this issue to my attention: https://lnkd.in/eUjJueFZ. So I think Congress should work to carve out a narrow safe harbor, based on what cybersecurity researchers already have, so vetted teams can probe models for CSAM vulnerabilities under strict oversight. If we criminalize testing, we hand the field to bad actors. There's a lot more in my full comments, which can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eTjPyh-2. Let me know what you think!

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Insightful new polling from Center for Democracy & Technology shows that Americans are worried about whether the federal government is protecting people's data privacy: * over 65 percent of Americans are concerned about personal data being shared with the Department of Homeland Security or with local, state, or federal law enforcement. * 79 percent of Americans agree that Congress should use its authority to hold the government accountable when it ignores existing privacy laws. * 73 percent of Americans agree that “[w]ithout privacy laws and policies, it is likely that government agencies would use personal data to track and monitor anyone they want to." https://lnkd.in/e9fZAkTz

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Lobbying terminology can be confusing when you're just starting out, but knowing these terms helps you stay compliant across all 50 states!

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States have good ideas about #AI regulation that the federal government shouldn’t try to block, said two state officials and a U.S. Senate Democratic staffer during a Federal Communications Bar Association panel Tuesday. In a separate session, however, telecom industry officials suggested that a “patchwork” of state AI requirements could be more difficult for businesses than dealing with today’s array of state #privacy laws. Regardless, passing either a privacy or AI bill nationally remains challenging, particularly in an election year, said FCBA panelists. Rudy Brioché, a former Hill staffer and now a professor at George Washington University, said that on a scale of 1 to 10 on how difficult such bills would be to pass -- with 10 being the most difficult -- "AI legislation is like a 12," and privacy is “an 8.5." Read more in Privacy Daily: https://lnkd.in/gvJQkBEC

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The first-in-the-nation AI safety law that Gov. Newsom signed into law last week is a part of a smaller — but important — subset of the 1,000+ AI-related bills we've been tracking this year. https://lnkd.in/dXygad9n

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A little more federal context on Mythos, the Anthropic AI tool that seems exceptionally skilled at flagging/enablling vulnerabilities in the digital space.  New reporting from Alexandra Kelley at Nextgov/FCW

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Check out the great work of the https://data.gov/ team and the Chief Data Officer Council in publishing draft standards for DCAT-US 3 at https://lnkd.in/eiBM5EM5. The updated schema will bring metadata for federal datasets up to date with global standards and meet the implementation requirements for the OPEN Government Data Act pursuant to OMB's M-25-05 guidance. The draft implementation guide outlines the changes with detailed explanations and examples to assist agencies in updating their comprehensive data inventories. Kudos to everyone working on this important effort!

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Kevin Schaul and Shira Ovide have an excellent write up this morning in the The Washington Post looking at recent work Sam Manning and Tomás Aguirre did on #AI exposure that my crew at The Brookings Institution wrote up as a brief. Kevin and Shira do a really nice job detailing the novel part of the analysis which focuses on which workers may be most and least able to adapt to AI, given various socioeconomic traits. They capture exactly our suggestion that while many will be "exposed" to AIs fewer (often clerical and administrative workers; often women) will struggle to shift into other good-paying work if AI destroys their jobs. Yet what I like best about Kevin and Shira's piece is how thoughtfully it contextualizes our particular labor-market analysis amid the broader AI prediction business. Kevin and Shira provide really good perspective on the fact that much AI-related work--say on labor market trends--amounts to "useful but fallible best guesses," even when the methodologies are hard core and rigorous. And the Post reporters are not wrong about the result of so much well intentioned but often contradictory work. As they write: "A flood of sometimes conflicting analyses shows the yawning gap between what is known about how AI is changing work and everyone's understandable hunger for certainty. The divide lets Americans, business leaders, and policymakers cheery-pick their preferred narratives." That's a genuine problem. Kevin and Shira are right to reference researcher Jed Kolko for declaring AI labor-market research inconclusive with key questions "unanswered." And yet, having observed the field for a while, and participated in it from time to time, would say that while the #AI predictions industry has some faults, it's also provided more clarity than many acknowledge. Good research and reporting over time is how insights come into focus, and as for AI's influence on the labor market, much of the debate is directionally suggestive and really valuable. Anyway: Here's Kevin's and Shira's story: https://lnkd.in/eSmPQsSh And here's our original @BrookingsMetro brief: https://lnkd.in/exUcEZSu Brookings Metro GovAI Jed Kolko Nathan Goldschlag Peterson Institute for International Economics Shriya Methkupally Justin Heck Papia Debroy Courtney Haynes Joe Parilla James Feigenbaum Robert Puentes Elham Tabassi Melina Kennedy Nathan Ringham Molly Kinder Xavier de Souza Briggs Nicol Turner Lee Alan Berube Gad Levanon Sanjay Patnaik

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From Richard Harman's Politik blog. A detailed analysis that makes interesting reading. SEYMOUR SETS ACT'S POSITIONS OUT Uniquely for any political party this election year, ACT Leader David Seymour has set out the party’s positions on a wide range of issues. He did so yesterday in his State of the Nation speech in Christchurch: He said ACT believes there are five warning lights on the dashboard that we must overcome. The cost-of-living crisis is really a productivity slump. It is not just that inflation has driven up costs. It is because wages have not kept up with inflation. Real economic growth, after inflation, has gone backwards over the last five years. ... A related problem is that the Government is not balancing its books. The Treasury forecasts it will spend $14 billion more than it takes in this year. If you count the blowout at ACC, the figure is $17 billion. If there are no nasty surprises, we are on track to post a small surplus by 2030, but then our ageing population will put us back into the black for more decades of deficit spending. ... A strong democracy is a cornerstone of our identity. We are one of only seven countries that remained democratic throughout the 20th century. I don’t believe democracy is in serious danger here, but people are losing faith in our institutions, because Government is so damn bureaucratic and unresponsive. We don’t have a positive, inclusive sense of who we are. The experiment of dividing ourselves into a Treaty partnership between Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti has been a disaster. People are told they are guests even though they were born here. Instead of being a country founded on ideas, where anyone can be a citizen if they follow the laws, they tried to make us a country based on identity, where you can only really be a New Zealander if your ancestors settled first. ... Seymour also picked up on earlier work by the New Zealand Initiative, which criticised the plethora of Government agencies and Ministerial portfolios which make up the New Zealand body politic. His proposal: He said this year, ACT will be campaigning for a smaller, more efficient Government. Its features will be: • No more than 20 ministers, who all sit in the cabinet • No more than 30 departments, so most ministers have only one • No department answers to more than one Minister • No minister has a portfolio; there are only departments with budgets to manage Reducing the number of ministers will save money. Still, it will also change the point of being a minister—no more vanity portfolios designed to appeal to a group of people. Instead, one Minister will be solely accountable for getting results for their budget of taxpayer money from their department. For a Government which has one Minister solely responsible for mental health this would be an interesting challenge

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In 2025, corp affairs agencies that delay senior hires aren’t protecting themselves - they’re weakening themselves. The winners? Those who act fast, back leadership, and signal strength. Full blog here: https://lnkd.in/eEcjFmQM

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