The Impact

This week on The Impact, Addie and Hal trace a quiet but seismic shift: power moving from elected leaders to the systems they’ve built. From New York courtrooms to classrooms to campaign inboxes, AI is no longer a side project—it’s infrastructure. But when the President signals that advanced tech will be used to police speech, the stakes hit constitutional level. Addie unpacks what that means for free expression and for anyone running a campaign or advocacy shop, while Hal presses on the practical: how do you move fast without surrendering control?They dig into New York’s new AI court rules, and the federal stall that’s leaving states and vendors to set the standards. The question running beneath it all: when machines start enforcing the boundaries of public speech, who decides where those lines go?

California just redrew the map for artificial intelligence—with a new law forcing big AI companies to publish safety plans, report incidents, and prepare for real oversight. Hal and Addie break down what the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act means, why OpenAI’s surprising cooperation matters, and how it’s already rippling through Washington. From Congress’s bid to centralize AI control under the Department of Energy to Meta’s new super PAC aimed at shaping state laws—and even the White House’s push to fund AI-driven cancer research—this episode connects the dots between technology, regulation, and power. The rules are finally arriving. Now comes the test of who writes them.

This week on The Impact, Hal and Addie unpack California’s new AI law that forces big developers to publish safety frameworks, report failures, and protect whistleblowers—rules that could ripple nationwide. They dig into CMS’s plan to pilot AI in Medicare prior authorizations across six states, raising questions about what “meaningful human review” really means. They cover Meta’s launch of a super PAC to influence the more than 1,100 state AI bills moving this year, and the federal government’s approval of Meta’s open-source Llama model for agency use. The thread through it all: AI adoption in government is speeding up, but the guardrails—and the political battles over them—are being built in real time.

This week on The Impact, Hal and Addie break down how AI in government is speeding up while guardrails tighten: GSA’s OneGov opens Meta’s Llama models to all agencies, which can cut costs and lock-in but still demands security reviews, ATO paths, model-risk management, and clear hosting and monitoring plans; Tribal nations center sovereignty with ASU’s “AI in Indian Country” convening and emerging rules that protect culture, data ownership, and local benefits; and “agentic” AI gets a reality check as leaders push transparency, audit trails, and human-in-the-loop oversight for use cases like proactive benefits, job training matches, and outbreak detection. The throughline is simple: move fast, ship strong guardrails, and remember Paul Decker’s line—no algorithm decides the kind of society we want to be.

This week on The Impact, Hal and Addie trace how governments are moving from scattered AI pilots to playbooks that shape budgets, jobs, and even the power grid. They break down GAO’s nearly 100 new federal AI requirements, Seattle’s ban on emotion-reading and social scoring, and state wins like Austin’s permit streamlining and California’s traffic safety models. The conversation covers Senator Cruz’s fast-lane sandbox bill with its accountability gaps, Ottawa’s plan to cut and retrain public service roles while publishing a registry of AI projects, and Pennsylvania’s looming data-center boom that could stress the PJM grid. The thread is clear: inventories, guardrails, and energy planning now decide whether AI adoption builds trust or backlash.

This week on The Impact, Hal and Addie break down the government’s AI acceleration—and the ROI warning signs. We cover GSA’s OneGov deal giving feds a year of Microsoft 365 Copilot at no extra cost, Azure sweeteners, FedRAMP posture, and how rivals like Perplexity for Government lower friction with cross-model access. We unpack MIT’s finding that 95% of AI efforts don’t pay off yet, Nvidia’s market concentration, and growing community pushback on data centers, plus why light-touch guardrails in states like California matter. Guided by Tech Policy Press’s critique of partisan misfires, we land on a practical playbook: pilot with guardrails, measure outcomes, publish use cases, diversify vendors and models, and keep civil-rights and oversight front and center.

This week on The Impact, Hal and Addie track how AI is moving from talk to tools: the federal USAi testbed goes live, city halls draft with chatbots and tighten guardrails, and South Korean banks roll out always-on fraud AI ahead of no-fault liability. We follow the money to chips—an $8.9B U.S. equity stake in Intel and Korea’s budget push—then hit the physical limits as Mexico’s data-center boom strains scarce water. Globally, U.S. and Chinese AI action plans rhyme on speed, diffusion, and “manage risk later,” while Silicon Valley donors pledge ~$200M and Meta launches a California super PAC to shape state policy. Clear takeaways, practical steps, zero hype.

This week on The Impact, Hal and Addie unpack how money and rules are shaping the AI landscape. They dig into the $100 million “Leading the Future” campaign backed by Silicon Valley heavyweights, Ohio’s first-in-the-nation requirement for school AI policies, and how cities like Boston are already writing their own playbooks—complete with a $30 AI-made PSA that replaced a $20,000 project. The hosts break down Washington’s controversial push for “ideology-neutral” AI in federal procurement, new findings on bias in how models rate think tanks, and the growing need for bio-risk checks before AI tools hit labs. Abroad, they cover Nvidia’s delicate negotiations on China chip sales, South Korea’s bet on AI as an engine of growth, and dueling U.S.–China governance visions that could decide who sets the global rules. The through-line: whoever sets the standards—PACs, principals, or policymakers—controls the market.

Hal and Addie break down Washington’s new AI Action Plan—open models, faster permits, and “ideological neutrality”—and why power, chips, and rules now set the pace. They cover West-Texas's shot at becoming a compute hub, federal leadership changes, bipartisan guardrails, possible 300% chip tariffs, and Anthropic’s $1 Claude pilots for agencies, then share a practical playbook for builders and public leaders.

Welcome to the very first episode of The Impact! Hosts Hal and Addie dive headfirst into the biggest stories where AI collides with politics and public life: the DOJ drowning in disconnected AI tools, a global arms race for chips and minerals, Spain’s eyebrow-raising Huawei deal, the U.S. cutting a controversial “pay-to-export” chip bargain with China, and Meta tapping a far-right influencer to define AI “bias.” If you want to understand how AI is reshaping power, policy, and opportunity, before your competitors even realize what’s happening, this is the podcast for you.