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Below: The European Union could have a major AI law passed by the end of the year, and the Truth Social whistleblower now works at Starbucks. First: | Lawmakers urge Biden to launch international hub to research online harms |  Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) has called on tech platforms to keep researcher access available. (House Television/AP) | | | Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been pushing for years to pass legislation requiring tech companies to open up their data to outside researchers, but have yet to capitalize on it. Now two House lawmakers are calling for President Biden to step in and take action at the executive level, urging him to launch an international research hub to study harms linked to social media and other types of digital platforms Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) wrote in a letter Monday shared first with The Technology 202 that the White House should begin negotiations with international allies to create a center to "facilitate cross platform research on the information environment." The hub, they wrote, could "conduct research projects with a focus on the global information environment" and "facilitate secure information sharing between online platforms and researchers." It could also help harmonize standards on data access globally, they wrote. The letter lays out a road map for how Biden could push tech platforms to be more transparent about the impact of their products on users, a goal shared by policymakers globally. Officials in the European Union last year approved a landmark new digital rule book called the Digital Services Act creating fresh requirements that platforms provide access to internal data about their services to outside researchers. In the United States, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have introduced several proposals aimed at forcing tech companies to cough up more information to independent researchers. The White House has backed those efforts and urged Congress to act. | | "The President has called for imposing much stronger transparency requirements on Big Tech platforms and is calling for bipartisan support to impose strong limits on targeted advertising and the personal data that companies collect on all Americans," the White House wrote in a fact sheet ahead of Biden's State of the Union address. But so far, none of those bills have made it to the floor in either the House or Senate. Lawmakers are now calling on Biden to act. "While we recognize the administration for taking part in conversations on tech transparency … more deliberate and everlasting action is needed," wrote the lawmakers, who have both long spoken out about researcher access issues. The letter argues an international research center could be particularly crucial to shedding light in how platforms are designed and how they deploy algorithms, as well as any potential negative consequences the products may have on children's mental health. Both issues have increasingly become the focus of major legislative efforts on Capitol Hill. "Studies have highlighted social media's role in promoting self-harm, eating disorders, and sales of drugs to children," the two lawmakers wrote. "While the field of Information Science continues to expand and evolve, significant gaps in the research remain." The White House did not immediately return a request for comment early Monday. In a high-profile call-to-action, Biden urged Congress to pass legislation reining in social media's harms to kids and teens during his State of the Union address. "We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit," Biden said in his February address. While efforts to pass legislation protecting children online has gained momentum on Capitol Hill, some lawmakers have still expressed concern about passing sweeping new regulations for the internet without further studying how platforms may be impacting users. | | "This is an area where there's a lot of heat but not enough light," Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who is leading a bill requiring companies to share more data with researchers, told me last year. | | |  | Our top tabs | | E.U. tech regulation chief predicts agreement on AI law will be reached this year |  Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president and European commissioner for competition, recently discussed a AI legislation. (Julien Warnand/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | | | The European Union will likely come to an agreement on its first major artificial intelligence bill this year, Kantaro Komiya reports for Reuters, citing remarks from tech competition chief Margrethe Vestager. E.U. lawmakers last week set a date of May 11 to consider a draft of the bill, known as the AI Act, where they would work out final details of the legislation with the bloc's member states before it becomes law, Komiya writes. The AI Act would assign AI systems to different risk categories and direct entities using AI tools deemed high risk to explain their use case. "The reason why we have these guardrails for high-risk use cases is that cleaning up … after a misuse by AI would be so much more expensive and damaging than the use case of AI in itself," Vestager said at a news conference in Japan. E.U. lawmakers are also working to insert a separate bill into the AI Act that would force makers of generative AI tools like ChatGPT to disclose when their systems are trained on copyrighted material. Regulators around the world have increased their attention toward AI systems in recent months as the tech industry seeks to jump on the AI development bandwagon and popularity for AI tools continues to skyrocket. | Judge denies Google's motion to dismiss antitrust ad tech lawsuit |  A related case filed by the Justice Department in 2020 over the company's alleged dominance in the search engine and search advertising market goes to trial in September. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images) | | | A U.S. federal judge denied Google's request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department alleging the company holds a monopoly in the advertising technology space, Diane Bartz reports for Reuters. Judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday said the case can advance because the Justice Department's argument is strong enough, according to the report. The government has argued that Google should be forced to divest its advertising management suite, it adds. "Arguing for Google, Eric Mahr said that the Justice Department failed to allege a high enough market share, 70%, to be able to say that Google had market power," Bartz writes. Brinkema argued that market share was not the only determining factor of the case and that "rapacious conduct" should also be considered. Nine additional states last month joined the Justice Department in the lawsuit. A related case filed by the Justice Department in 2020 over the company's alleged dominance in the search engine and search advertising market goes to trial in September. | Truth Social whistleblower now working at Starbucks |  Will Wilkerson, a former executive for Trump Media and Technology Group, poses for a portrait outside a Harris Teeter in North Carolina where he works as a barista at Starbucks. (Matt Ramey for The Washington Post) | | | The former executive of the Donald Trump-backed Truth Social platform that accused the company of allegedly violating securities laws now works as a barista trainer at a Starbucks in North Carolina, our colleague Drew Harwell reports. Six months ago, Will Wilkerson was the executive vice president of operations for the former president's media business, Trump Media and Technology Group. He was fired after publicly blowing the whistle against the company. "Wilkerson, 38, has become one of the biggest threats to the Trump company's future: a federally protected whistleblower who, his attorneys say, has provided 150,000 emails, contracts and other internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and investigators in Florida and New York," Drew writes. Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said in a statement that Drew's report "lazily regurgitates already discredited hit pieces, defamatory allegations, and false statistics about Truth Social's record levels of traffic." | | |  | Agency scanner | | | |  | Inside the industry | | | |  | Trending | | | |  | Daybook | | - The Wall Street Journal convenes its Future of Everything Summit tomorrow at 9:15 a.m.
- FTC Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter discuss franchising and hear from franchise industry leaders tomorrow at 3 p.m.
- Stanford University holds an event titled "Generative AI and the End of Trust" tomorrow at 3 p.m.
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