No impact? Nothing? I mean, they shoud at least notice something, right?

A study published in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that among 6,000 CEOs, chief financial officers, and other executives from firms who responded to various business outlook surveys in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia, the vast majority see little impact from AI on their operations. While about two-thirds of executives reported using AI, that usage amounted to only about 1.5 hours per week, and 25% of respondents reported not using AI in the workplace at all. Nearly 90% of firms said AI has had no impact on employment or productivity over the last three years, the research noted.

Well duh, that explains everything. Me getting paid for taking a dump 1.5h a week hasn’t had any impact on my productivity score either. My guess is those 1.5h were mostly used to ask questions you’d otherwise just look up yourself, which also doesn’t change much in terms of productivity.

So far, this bill (and every other one I’ve) seen basically wants to force OS developers to add a birthdate field to your account setup process and an APi to expose this field, which should then be used by other software to obtain your age and limit what they serve you (ads, tracking, nsfe content) based on the legal requirements of your current age bracket. So, no more age gates for every virtual “adult service” you consume, just once on OS setup.

And how to circumvent this? Simple: You lie, just like you did when you were a teen and wanted to access inapropriate content for your age.

Now, if they expand the bill to actually require verification instead of indication, that’s when things will get interesting. But even then, as long as you own a PC and not use a cloud PC, which means that the data is still stored somewhere locally, it can and will be manipulatable and therefore circumventable. How exactly is hard to say without seeing the actual implementation of the affected OS.

One thing to actually fear tho is how Microsoft and Apple will handle this: They tend to overshoot what the bare minimum law is asking for and actual, verified age data can be valuable when harvested in larger quantities, combined with other metrics and sold (think about how many surveys ask for your age or an age bracket). Most of the bills I read do mention “privacy and security when it comes to sensitive user information”, but as we all know: A fee is just another expense when it comes to calculating your net profit from your total revenue…