Stewart R. Mott, the political activist and philanthropist who died last week, was a consistent supporter of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy.
A man of many appetites, he seemed to derive pleasure from giving away money to support causes he believed in. Luckily for us, open and accountable government was one of those causes. For fifteen years, he sent us checks that helped anchor and sustain this Project and Secrecy News.
“The disadvantages of being wealthy are, in my experience, few,” he told Tim Weiner of the New York Times in a video interview from 2006.
A June 14 Times obituary,
Americans are paying too much for almost everything, because the United States has long treated its trucking industry as an artifact to be preserved rather than as an opportunity for innovation. These ideas aim to advance the detailed policy solutions needed to foster public trust and implement fairness in the adoption of AI across diverse domains, from healthcare and government benefits to rural access, education, and worker protections. The evidence is clear: algorithmic pay-setting is established in app-based work, and payroll/timekeeping failures show how software can produce systemic wage harm at scale While a few states have taken steps to implement decision-making mechanisms for certain AI systems, too many leaders are simply accepting narratives about AI’s purported public benefit at face value – jumping to the “how” of AI implementation before thoroughly vetting potential systems and deciding whether they are appropriate to use at all.