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On Capitol Hill, a House subcommittee is wrestling with a law older than the internet itself. The Bank Secrecy Act, written in nineteen seventy, is facing pressure from both crypto advocates and traditional banks who say its anti-money laundering rules are outdated. The hearing revealed real tension over how much to scale back the law, especially as the Trump administration moves to expand its reach rather than narrow it.
Meanwhile, a new Reuters investigation is raising uncomfortable questions about Elon Musk's AI ambitions. Grok, the chatbot at the center of xAI's strategy, barely registers in federal records of government AI usage from last year. Despite Musk's aggressive promotion and his control of the X platform, the product is struggling to find meaningful traction where it arguably matters most.
And on a quieter but consequential note, a piece making the rounds today argues that the dramatic drop in AI pricing is fundamentally a software story, not a hardware one. Algorithmic efficiency gains, better inference techniques, and smarter model design are doing more to slash costs than chip improvements alone, a finding with real implications for where the next wave of AI competition plays out.
Stay curious, stay skeptical. Tech Beat out.
