Wireless was born to ship bits. The next wave will ship intent. We still celebrate lower bit error rate (BER) and higher spectral efficiency, yet many modern applications don’t need every bit, they need the right information to make the next decision. If a detector’s confidence is unchanged, why protect the last kilobyte? If a policy is invariant to pixel noise, why retransmit for perfection?

This article is written by Dina Blikshteyn and Silvia A. Carretta, editors of WAI Legal Insights. We wish all our readers a happy, healthy, and successful New Year, and we look forward to continuing the conversation on artificial intelligence and law in 2026.