Nonrival

Expert analysis from think tanks and academia, on public policy, economics, and technology.
Human experts. AI summaries.

AI Agents Are Starting to Run Scientific Experiments on Their Own

science

• Researchers have developed an AI agent capable of conducting biomedical research autonomously — forming hypotheses, designing experiments, and interpreting results without constant human direction.
• The system represents a step toward AI that doesn't just assist scientists but acts as an independent research agent, potentially accelerating discovery in medicine and biology.
• The authors argue this could transform the pace of biomedical research, though questions remain about reliability, reproducibility, and how much humans should trust AI-generated findings.

Over a Third of New Web Pages Show Signs of AI Authorship, Pew Research Finds

pew

• Pew Research analyzed nearly half a million webpages from 2021 to mid-2026 and found that over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT's launch show signs of AI authorship — a sharp rise from near-zero just four years ago.
• AI-generated content is heavily concentrated on commercial (.com) sites, appearing at roughly ten times the rate found on .edu or .gov domains, suggesting AI is reshaping commercial web publishing far more than institutional writing.
• The researchers tracked linguistic 'tells' — like overuse of em dashes, Oxford commas, and lists of three — that AI models deploy more often than humans, using these patterns to detect AI authorship at scale across the web.

AI Companies' Terms of Service Are Quietly Stripping Users of Legal Rights

equitable_growth

• A first-of-its-kind empirical study of generative AI terms and conditions finds that the fine print radically shifts legal risks onto users — including exposing them to copyright infringement liability that companies publicly claim to cover.
• The terms broadly limit users' ability to sue, force arbitration, eliminate causes of action, and cap monetary remedies, creating what the authors call individual, class, and systemic harms.
• The authors call for policy reforms including voiding the most one-sided provisions and penalizing companies that use them.

In the News

Puerto Rico's water crisis isn't just a drought problem — the system has been quietly failing for decades

the_conversation

• Puerto Rico is rationing water for hundreds of thousands of residents due to drought and a ruptured aqueduct, but for many the daily scramble for water long predates this crisis — one San Juan neighborhood logged 123 outage days in the 13 months before the current emergency began.
• The government water utility loses nearly half its treated water to leaks before it reaches customers, and decades of federal consent decrees, $3.8 billion in debt, and a funding structure that reimburses hurricane repairs but not routine pipe maintenance have left the infrastructure in chronic disrepair.
• Widespread distrust of tap water — rooted in years of contamination violations and post-hurricane failures — has pushed residents toward expensive bottled water even when taps run, undermining the utility's revenue and its ability to finance the very repairs that might restore trust.

Analysis

Trump's Forced-Labor Tariffs Are 40 to 50 Times Larger Than the Economics Can Justify

peterson

• The Trump administration has imposed 10–12.5% tariffs under a forced-labor provision of trade law, but a PIIE analysis finds these are roughly 40–50 times larger than what the actual economic distortion from forced labor would warrant.
• Forced labor affects an estimated 5.5 million workers in tradable-goods sectors globally — a tiny fraction of the nearly 2 billion workers in those sectors — meaning its trade-distorting effect is far too small to justify tariffs of this magnitude.
• The administration appears to be using the forced-labor rationale as a legal workaround after the Supreme Court struck down its "reciprocal" tariffs, but the numbers don't hold up to scrutiny.

Also Worth a Look

• Social media algorithms feed you posts you disagree with — and it's your own commenting habits that cause it (the_conversation)
• Trump Just Authorized Private Companies to Hack Back Against Cybercriminals — But the Details Are a Mess (csis)
• AI Tools Appear to Be Cutting Into Software Coder Employment (stl_fed)
• Most Americans Think the Supreme Court's Emergency Docket Should Explain Itself — and Barely Anyone Disagrees (scotusblog)
• White supremacists are using the federal indictment of the SPLC as a recruitment tool — regardless of whether the charges stick (the_conversation)
• Trump Can't Build His White House Ballroom With Private Donations Alone — and Here's the Legal Reason Why (the_conversation)
• Pacific Island Nations' Extreme Dependence on Imported Oil Is Becoming a Strategic Vulnerability in the U.S.-China Competition for Regional Influence (csis)