Nuclear energy

• Shortly thereafter, the consensus switched to fears of an imminent nuclear holocaust.
• Similarly, today’s experts warn that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) doomsday is imminent.
• It’s difficult to argue with David Collingridge’s influential thesis that attempting to predict the risks posed by new technologies is a fool’s errand.

• Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not simply about preventing “monopoly,” “self-preferencing,” or “Big Tech dominance”.
• It’s about ensuring that the economic environment facilitating innovation is not incentivising hard-to-predict technological risks as companies “move fast and break things” in a race for profit or market dominance.
• OpenAI is already becoming a dominant player with US$2 billion (£1.6 billion) in annual sales and millions of users.

Degrading quality for higher profit

• The problems fostered by social media, search, and recommendation algorithms was never an engineering issue, but one of financial incentives (of profit growth) not aligning with algorithms’ safe, effective, and equitable deployment.
• For digital platforms, extracting digital rents usually entails degrading the quality of information shown to the user, on the basis of them “owning” access to a mass of customers.
• But over time, a misalignment between the initial promise of them providing user value and the need to expand profit margins as growth slows has driven bad platform behaviour.

Amazon’s advertising

• In our research on Amazon, we found that users still tend to click on the product results at the top of the page, even when they are no longer the best results but instead paid advertising placements.
• For social media platforms, this was addictive content to increase time spent on platform at any cost to user health.
• In the process, profits and profit margins have become concentrated in a few platforms’ hands, making innovation by outside companies harder.
• Amazon’s most recent quarterly disclosures (Q4, 2023), shows year-on-year growth in online sales of 9%, but growth in fees of 20% (third-party seller services) and 27% (advertising sales).
• Algorithms have become market gatekeepers and value allocators, and are now becoming producers and arbiters of knowledge.

Risks posed by the next generation of AI

• But how much greater are the risks for the next generation of AI systems?
• Thankfully, society is not helpless in shaping the economic risks that invariably arise after each new innovation.
• Risks brought about from the economic environment in which innovation occurs are not immutable.
• Market structure is shaped by regulators and a platform’s algorithmic institutions (especially its algorithms which make market-like allocations).
• What role might interoperability and open source play in keeping the AI industry a more competitive and inclusive market?
• Instead, we should try to recalibrate the economic incentives underpinning today’s innovations, away from risky uses of AI technology and towards open, accountable, AI algorithms that support and disperse value equitably.

• Ilan Strauss receives funding from The Omidyar Network through the UCL IIPP research project on algorithmic rents Mariana Mazzucato received funding for this project from the Omidyar Foundation.
• Rufus Rock received funding from the Omidyar Network whilst pursuing the research referenced in this piece.

• Figure 1 - LIS Technologies Inc.
• Joins the World Nuclear Association (“WNA”)
  The World Nuclear Association’s mission is to promote a wider understanding of nuclear energy among key international influencers by producing authoritative information, developing common industry positions, and contributing to the energy debate.
• It is the only industry organization with a global mandate to promote nuclear energy and is in a unique position to share and advance best practice and common messages globally.
• The Association provides a forum for industry collaboration, supports the development of nuclear technologies, and works to ensure high standards of safety and excellence within the nuclear field and is committed to fostering growth and innovation in the nuclear industry, ensuring a clean, secure, and prosperous energy future.

• CHICAGO, April 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clean Core Thorium Energy (Clean Core) announced today that the accelerated irradiation testing and qualification of their patented ANEEL™ Fuel is set to begin in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
• In 2022, Clean Core signed a Strategic Partnership Project Agreement with INL to design and execute an irradiation experiment in ATR to demonstrate and assess the performance of Clean Core’s innovative Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life (ANEEL™) fuel.
• Upon receipt, INL developed the irradiation test plan, performed pre-irradiation characterization of the fuel pellets, designed and fabricated the experiment hardware and test trains, assembled the test trains, and finally inserted the experiment into the ATR.
• “Clean Core is focused on the efficient development and deployment of the ANEEL fuel in heavy water reactors, without any modifications to the fuel bundle geometry or the reactor.

• RESTON, Va., March 13, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lightbridge Corporation (“Lightbridge”) (Nasdaq: LTBR), an advanced nuclear fuel technology company, today announced that Lightbridge President and CEO Seth Grae will participate in a series of upcoming nuclear events.
• IAEA Nuclear Energy Summit 2024, Brussels, Belgium – Thursday, March 21
  World leaders will gather in Brussels at the first ever Nuclear Energy Summit to highlight the role of nuclear energy in addressing the global challenges to reduce the use of fossil fuels, enhance energy security and boost economic development.
• The conference aims to provide a platform for international experts from vendors, utilities, research laboratories, and universities to exchange ideas and latest developments on a wide spectrum of topics.
• For more information on the panel, visit: https://www.ans.org/meetings/physor2024/session/view-2379/