The stakes are high, because A.I. is the first technology in a long time that can favor the little guy. For most of the last century, size was destiny. A big company could afford an IT department, in-house lawyers, a finance team and analysts poring over its data, and the corner store could not.
However, a U.S. District Court judge responding to a lawsuit brought by the three outlets — CNN, MS Now and Politico — issued a restraining order directing the White House to lift the prohibition. Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by Trump in 2017, ruled that the media outlets had shown a “high likelihood of success” with their claim that their due-process rights had been violated.
Before becoming a photo of a scowling politician, paper has a complicated history. Somewhere there were trees — or recycled fibers that began as trees. There was harvesting, transportation, pulping, washing, processing and papermaking. There was lots of water. There was energy. There were chemicals involved in processing, bleaching and coating. There were huge vats of ink. There was printing and cutting and bundling.
Recently I’ve come to believe that the strongest influence on developing human beings is the times in which they live. Try as I might, summoning all the empathy I possess, I simply can’t know what it was like to endure the London Blitz during World War II. Or the Dust Bowl in America, or the Holocaust, all of which changed the way people lived and thought.