Alexander Macgillivray

@amac
1.2K Followers
206 Following
140 Posts
Lawyer, coder, tinker. Curious.
Chemistry of Combustion and Illumination, a diagram from Edward Livingston Youmans' Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects (1856). ⠀

Order as a print here: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/chemistry-of-combustion-and-illumination

Made a bot that posts an old "Suck.com" article every day. It tries to use one related to today's news.

Follow it at @barrelofsuck

Read abou it: https://www.bricoleur.org/2026/01/finally-finished-up-bot-for-posting.html

Barrel of Suck: A bot to surface relevant old Suck.com articles

Finally finished up a bot for posting an article from Suck.com everyday through Mastodon and BlueSky (I would have done Threads too, but ...

The bar exam is next week.

For any bar-takers out there: You've got this.

And if you happen to have a bad day and fail the first time, it's okay. You can still be a great lawyer. Hang in there.

#LawFedi

On today's Lawfare Daily, Alan Rozenshtein and Matt Perault talked to @amac about his recent Lawfare piece on making AI policy in a world of technological uncertainty and how to do just that. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/lawfare-daily--ai-policy-under-technological-uncertainty--with-alex--amac--macgillivray
Lawfare Daily: AI Policy Under Technological Uncertainty, with Alex “amac” Macgillivray

Discussing how to think about AI policy in an everchanging environment.

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That said, making really clear that workers can express issues with their places of employment is great low hanging fruit that can be done voluntarily by the companies (and mandated in law).

And... it is a thing that we need regardless of whether AI ever gets smarter or stays at about its current level of competence.

See:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-we-don-t-know-about-ai-and-what-it-means-for-policy

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What We Don’t Know About AI and What It Means for Policy

AI’s future cost and the trajectory of its development are currently unknown. Good AI policy will take that into account.

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I like the idea behind https://righttowarn.ai/ BUT:

- many of the harms of AI are not "risks," they are happening now,
- the AI companies don't just need "guidance" from policymakers (and the public) they need laws and enforcement of laws already on the books, and
- workers already have many rights in this context that should not be given up when/if a disclosure process exists

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A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Here are two things we don't know about AI and what that means for AI policymaking.

https://mastodon.social/@lawfare/112525095240590892

"Uncertainty about future AI development cost and trajectory should not stop policymakers from taking action now. Enacting policy under uncertainty is common and necessary."

Alexander Macgillivray explores how AI's uncertain future is impacting policymaking. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-we-don-t-know-about-ai-and-what-it-means-for-policy

What We Don’t Know About AI and What It Means for Policy

AI’s future cost and the trajectory of its development are currently unknown. Good AI policy will take that into account.

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Forget macro and micro, it’s mesoeconomics that matters https://on.ft.com/3US35DP
Forget macro and micro, it’s mesoeconomics that matters

Understanding networks properly will help us to better grasp how the economy actually works

Financial Times

One approach, that also has significant tech-support-of-parents benefits, is maintaining a login to their account that can be accessed by you while they are alive.

It requires a significant amount of trust, and opens up privacy and security risks, but may make sense for you and yours.