Insights from leading thinkers on communication trends and business ethics.

Last week, Sullivan & Cromwell did something you rarely see from a white-shoe law firm: They apologized to a court. The reason? AI hallucinations in a legal filing. Let that sink in. One of the most sophisticated law firms in the world, armed with top-tier talent and resources, submitted work that included fabricated or unreliable AI-generated content. This gets to the heart of a question we at Alphy hear regularly: “Why not just use GenAI for legal and compliance review?” H

Someone wagered roughly $30,000 that Nicolás Maduro would be seized. Hours later, it happened. The payout? More than $300,000. That’s not a prediction. That’s proximity to information. And it’s happening more often than anyone wants to admit. Prediction markets, notably Kalshi and Polymarket, are exploding in popularity. They promise something elegant: the “wisdom of crowds,” a real-time pricing of the future. Will a war break out? Will a bill pass? Will a leader fall? Who wi

Alphy, the company behind HarmCheck, announced today that investor Monica Alvarez-Mitchell and Radicle Impact co-founder Dan Skaff have joined its board of directors, marking another step forward for the fast-rising AI company as it expands across financial services, legal, and other highly regulated markets.

The financial firms that pass regulatory examinations cleanly aren't the ones with the most elaborate policies. They're the ones that can show, communication by communication, that their system actually worked. It’s about demonstrating — clearly and consistently — that risk is being identified, reviewed, and acted on in real time.

The volume of digital communication inside a bank during a live transaction is staggering. Email, Teams, Bloomberg chat, internal messaging — multiple channels, all moving fast across teams that are supposed to be separated. The control room's job is to maintain those separations in real time. The tools most firms are using were not built for that job. Real-time detection, context-aware systems, and integrated surveillance can shift control rooms from reactive review to true

MNPI doesn't have to be a smoking gun to be a liability. A casual mention of a pending acquisition in a Teams message. A deal codename dropped in an email chain that crosses information barriers. A ticker or crypto symbol missed by restricted list technology because it is a common word. A banker on a live deal responding to an inquiry from the equity research side. None of these feel like violations in the moment. All of them can become one on review.

Legal scrutiny of social media platforms’ treatment of minors is intensifying nationwide, with states, local governments and school districts going to court over child safety. Texas added to that pressure on Feb. 11, filing suit against Snap Inc. The complaint, centered on deceptive trade practices, alleges that minors on Snapchat are routinely exposed to explicit sexual content, drug references, intense profanity, and self-harm material — despite the app’s “12+” or “Teen” r

“No one should have to endure sexual harassment to keep a roof over his or her head.” That’s what Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in going on the legal offensive against a former Arkansas landlord and the property owner the landlord worked for. The DOJ’s lawsuit , filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in November, names Thomas Ray Kelso, 74, and Avatar Investments LLC,

A leaked report by UK’s Royal College of Physicians paints a bleak and disturbing picture of life inside Blackpool Victoria Hospital on England’s northwest coast: systemic bullying, harassment, racial discrimination, sexual assault, murder, and a culture of fear so deep that staff felt they had to “keep their heads down” rather than speak out. What’s staggering is how this culture didn’t just harm staff, it put patients at risk, according to the report, first chronicled by T

A recent New York Times opinion piece on the Epstein emails is one of the most revealing essays I’ve read about the intersection of privilege, power, and language. It’s a study not only of abuse, but of the coded ways elite circles communicate, and what those patterns tell us about status, access, and the quiet barter economy of non-public information. The guest columnist, Anand Giridharadas, makes a compelling case for what he calls the “Epstein class,” writing: “People a