Category: Technology

Jurors on Friday cleared Elon Musk of liability for investors' losses in a fraud trial over his 2018 tweets falsely claiming that he had funding in place to take Tesla private. The tweets sent the Tesla share price on a rollercoaster ride, and Musk was sued by shareholders who said the tycoon acted recklessly in an effort to squeeze investors who had bet against the company. Jurors deliberated for barely two hours before returning to the San Francisco courtroom to say they unanimously agreed that neither Musk nor the Tesla board perpetrated fraud with the tweets and in their aftermath. "Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!" tweeted Musk, who had tried but failed to get the trial moved to Texas on the grounds jurors in California would…

Excitement around ChatGPT — an easy to use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay or computer code upon request and within seconds — has sent schools into panic and turned Big Tech green with envy. The potential impact of ChatGPT on society remains complicated and unclear even as its creator Wednesday announced a paid subscription version in the United States. Here is a closer look at what ChatGPT is (and is not): Is this a turning point?   It is entirely possible that November's release of ChatGPT by California company OpenAI will be remembered as a turning point in introducing a new wave of artificial intelligence to the wider public.   What is less clear is whether ChatGPT is actually a breakthrough with some critics calling it a brilliant…

Zimbabwe plans to build "Zim Cyber City," a modern capital expected to cost up to $60 billion in raised funds and include new government buildings and a presidential palace. Critics are blasting the plan as wasteful when more than half the population lives in poverty and the government has let the current capital, Harare, fall apart. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Mount Hampden, Zimbabwe. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe ...

Zimbabwe plans to build "Zim Cyber City," a modern capital expected to cost up to $60 billion in raised funds and include new government buildings and a presidential palace. Critics are blasting the plan as wasteful when more than half the population lives in poverty and the government has let the current capital, Harare, fall apart. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Mount Hampden, Zimbabwe. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe ...

Boeing bid farewell to an icon on Tuesday, delivering its final 747 jumbo jet as thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years looked on.  Since its first flight in 1969, the giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA's space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized travel, connecting international cities that had never before had direct routes and helping democratize passenger flight.  But over about the past 15 years, Boeing and its European rival Airbus have introduced more profitable and fuel efficient wide-body planes, with only two engines to maintain instead of the 747's four. The final plane is the 1,574th built by Boeing in…

The maker of ChatGPT is trying to curb its reputation as a freewheeling cheating machine with a new tool that can help teachers detect if a student or artificial intelligence wrote that homework. The new AI Text Classifier launched Tuesday by OpenAI follows a weeks-long discussion at schools and colleges over fears that ChatGPT's ability to write just about anything on command could fuel academic dishonesty and hinder learning. OpenAI cautions that its new tool – like others already available – is not foolproof. The method for detecting AI-written text "is imperfect and it will be wrong sometimes," said Jan Leike, head of OpenAI's alignment team tasked to make its systems safer. "Because of that, it shouldn't be solely relied upon when making decisions," Leike said. Teenagers and college students…

China says it is “deeply concerned” over reports that the United States is moving to further restrict sales of American technology to Huawei, a tech company that U.S. officials have long singled out as a threat to national security for its alleged support of Beijing’s espionage efforts. As first reported by the Financial Times, the U.S. Department of Commerce has informed American firms that it will no longer issue licenses for technology exports to Huawei, thereby isolating the Shenzen-based company from supplies it needs to make its products. The White House and Commerce Department have not responded to VOA’s request for confirmation of the reports. But observers say the move may be the latest tactic in the Biden administration’s geoeconomics strategy as it comes under increasing Republican pressure to outcompete…

For New York teacher Michael Flanagan, the pandemic was a crash course in new technology — rushing out laptops to stay-at-home students and shifting hectic school life online. Students are long back at school, but the technology has lived on, and with it has come a new generation of apps that monitor the pupils online, sometimes round the clock and even on down days shared with family and friends at home. The programs scan students' online activity, social media posts and more — aiming to keep them focused, detect mental health problems and flag up any potential for violence. "You can't unring the bell," said Flanagan, who teaches social studies and economics. "Everybody has a device." The new trend for tracking, however, has raised fears that some of the apps…

The United States and European Union announced Friday an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, health care, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid.  A senior U.S. administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first sweeping AI agreement between the United States and Europe. Previously, agreements on the issue had been limited to specific areas such as enhancing privacy, the official said.   AI modeling, which refers to machine-learning algorithms that use data to make logical decisions, could be used to improve the speed and efficiency of government operations and services.   "The magic here is in building joint models [while] leaving data where it is," the senior administration official said. "The U.S. data stays in the…

An international ransomware network that extorted more than $100 million from hundreds of victims around the world has been brought down following a monthslong infiltration by the FBI, the Department of Justice announced Thursday. The group known as Hive targeted more than 1,500 victims, including hospitals, school districts and financial firms in more than 80 countries, the Justice Department said. Officials say the most recent victim in Florida was targeted about two weeks ago. In a breakthrough, FBI agents armed with a court order infiltrated Hive's computer networks in July 2022, covertly capturing its decryption keys and offering them to victims, saving the targets $130 million in ransom payments, officials said. "Cybercrime is a constantly evolving threat. But as I have said before, the Justice Department will spare no resource…

Facebook parent Meta is reinstating former President Donald Trump's personal account after a two-year suspension following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.  The company said in a blog post Wednesday it is adding "new guardrails" to ensure there are no "repeat offenders" who violate its rules.  "In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation," said Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California.  Trump, in a post on his own social media network, blasted Facebook's decision to suspend his account as he praised his own site, Truth Social.  "FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since "deplatforming" your favorite President, me, has just…

The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe's energy dependence on Russia and is spurring the development of new, cleaner-burning biofuels. Spain is emerging as a leader in this effort, with the introduction late last year of airplane fuel made from olive pits. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Seville. ...

Microsoft said it's seeing some improvement to problems with its online services including the Teams messaging platform and Outlook email system after users around the world reported outages Wednesday.  In a status update, the tech company reported "service degradation" for a number of its Microsoft 365 services.  Thousands of users reported problems with Teams, Outlook, the Azure cloud computing service and XBox Live online gaming service early Wednesday on the Downdetector website, which tracks outage reports. Many users also took to social media to complain that services were down.  By later in the morning, Downdetector showed the number of reports had dropped considerably.  "We're continuing to monitor the recovery across the service and some customers are reporting mitigation," the Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account said. "We're also connecting the service…

A chatbot powered by reams of data from the internet has passed exams at a U.S. law school after writing essays on topics ranging from constitutional law to taxation and torts. ChatGPT from OpenAI, a U.S. company that this week got a massive injection of cash from Microsoft, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate streams of text from simple prompts. The results have been so good that educators have warned it could lead to widespread cheating and even signal the end of traditional classroom teaching methods. Jonathan Choi, a professor at Minnesota University Law School, gave ChatGPT the same test faced by students, consisting of 95 multiple-choice questions and 12 essay questions. In a white paper titled "ChatGPT goes to law school" published on Monday, he and his coauthors reported…

The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Alphabet's GOOGL.O Google on Tuesday over allegations that the company abused its dominance of the digital advertising business, according to a court document. "Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the government said in its antitrust complaint. The Justice Department asked the court to compel Google to divest its Google Ad manager suite, including its ad exchange AdX. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit is the second federal antitrust complaint filed against Google, alleging violations of antitrust law in how the company acquires or maintains its dominance. The Justice Department lawsuit filed against Google in 2020 focuses on its monopoly in…

Countless artists have taken inspiration from "The Starry Night" since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889. Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app. The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a "peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh" and they can churn out something that might look similar to what you imagined. But while Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren't complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works.…

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of tech giant Google, announced Friday it is laying off 12,000 workers across the entire company — cuts reflecting six percent of the company’s total workforce. In an email to employees Friday, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said the company saw dramatic growth over the past two years and hired new employees “for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” He said he takes full responsibility for the decisions that led to where the company is today. In his email, Pichai said the layoffs come following “a rigorous review across product areas and functions” to ensure the company’s employees and their roles are aligned with Google’s top priorities. “The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review,” he said. In the…

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that he was “deeply concerned” about the Chinese government's artificial intelligence program, asserting that it was “not constrained by the rule of law.” Speaking during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wray said Beijing's AI ambitions were “built on top of massive troves of intellectual property and sensitive data that they've stolen over the years.” He said that left unchecked, China could use artificial intelligence advancements to further its hacking operations, intellectual property theft and repression of dissidents inside the country and beyond. “That's something we're deeply concerned about. I think everyone here should be deeply concerned about,” he said. More broadly, he said, “AI is a classic example of a technology where I have the same reaction every…

Software giant Microsoft on Wednesday became the latest major company in the tech sector to announce significant job cuts when it reported it would lay off 10,000 employees, or about 5% of its workforce. Microsoft’s job cuts come just as e-commerce leader Amazon begins a fresh round of 18,000 layoffs, extending a wave of other major cuts at Twitter, Salesforce and dozens of smaller technology firms in recent weeks. The phenomenon of job losses in the tech sector has global reach but has been keenly felt in Silicon Valley and other West Coast tech hubs in the United States. The website layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry, has identified well over 100 tech firms announcing layoffs since January 1 across North and South America, Europe, Asia and…

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the military and private citizens started using Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink, which eventually became key to Ukraine's resistance. From Kyiv, Myroslava Gongadze tells the story of one Ukrainian engineer who volunteers to support the technology and the soldiers who use it. ...

President Joe Biden hosted Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Tuesday at the White House, where he urged the Netherlands to support new U.S. restrictions on exporting chip-making technology to China, a key part of Washington’s strategy in its rivalry against Beijing. During a brief appearance in front of reporters before their meeting, Biden said that he and Rutte have been working on “how to keep a free and open Indo-Pacific” to “meet the challenges of China.” “Simply put, our companies, our countries have been so far just lockstep in what we've done in our investment to the future. So today, I look forward to discussing how we can further deepen our relationship and securing our supply chains to strengthen our transatlantic partnership,” he said. ASML Holding NV, maker of…

Israel's Cognyte Software Ltd won a tender to sell intercept spyware to a Myanmar state-backed telecommunications firm a month before the Asian nation's February 2021 military coup, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. The deal was made even though Israel has claimed it stopped defense technology transfers to Myanmar following a 2017 ruling by Israel's Supreme Court, according to a legal complaint recently filed with Israel's attorney general and disclosed Sunday. While the ruling was subjected to a rare gag order at the request of the state and media cannot cite the verdict, Israel's government has publicly stated on numerous occasions that defense exports to Myanmar are banned. The complaint, led by high-profile Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack who spearheaded the campaign for the Supreme Court ruling, calls for…

An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that asks whether tech firms can be held liable for damages related to algorithmically generated content recommendations has the ability to “upend the internet,” according to a brief filed by Google this week. The case, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, is a long-awaited opportunity for the high court to weigh in on interpretations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. A provision of federal law that has come under fire from across the political spectrum, Section 230 shields technology firms from liability for content published by third parties on their platforms, but also allows those same firms to curate or bar certain content. The case arises from a complaint by Reynaldo Gonzalez, whose daughter was killed in an attack by members of…

A recently published report in a U.S.-based magazine says Iran is likely using facial recognition technology to monitor women’s compliance with the country’s hijab law. While there are other ways people can be identified, Wired magazine says Iran’s apparent use of facial recognition technology against women is “perhaps the first known instance of a government using face recognition to impose dress law on women based on religious belief.” Iran announced late last year that it would begin to use recognition technology to monitor its women. Wired said that since the protests that have erupted across Iran following the death of a young women who was arrested for wearing her headscarf improperly, Iranian women are reporting that they are being arrested for hijab infractions a day or two after attending protests,…

Concerns linger over Twitter's stance on free expression and safety since Elon Musk took over the platform in a $44 billion deal. Since taking ownership in late October, Musk has instituted changes including dissolving an oversight review channel, laying off a large portion of the team focused on combating misinformation, and suspending the accounts of several U.S. journalists. Two media advocacy groups on Wednesday called on Musk to reverse course and implement policies to protect the right to legitimate information and press freedom. In a joint letter to Twitter, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) voiced "alarm" that Musk had undermined the legitimacy of Twitter by dissolving the site's oversight review panel that checked postings for their truthfulness and laying off the majority of Twitter…

Companies including GM, Ford, Google and solar energy producers said on Tuesday they would work together to establish standards for scaling up the use of virtual power plants (VPPs), systems for easing loads on electricity grids when supply is short. Energy transition nonprofit RMI will host the initiative, the Virtual Power Plant Partnership (VP3), which will also aim to shape policy for promoting the use of the systems, the companies said. Virtual power plants pool together thousands of decentralized energy resources like electric vehicles or electric heaters controlled by smart thermostats. With permission from customers, they use advanced software to react to electricity shortages with such techniques as switching thousands of households' batteries, like those in EVs, from charge to discharge mode or prompting electricity-using devices, such as water heaters,…

A mission to launch the first satellites into orbit from Western Europe suffered an “anomaly" Tuesday, Virgin Orbit said.   The U.S.-based company attempted its first international launch on Monday, using a modified jumbo jet to carry one of its rockets from Cornwall in southwestern England to the Atlantic Ocean where the rocket was released. The rocket was supposed to take nine small satellites for mixed civil and defense use into orbit.   But about two hours after the plane took off, the company reported that the mission encountered a problem.  "We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information," Virgin Orbit said on Twitter.   Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, was founded by British billionaire Richard Branson. It…

The public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth. Seattle Public Schools filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court. The 91-page complaint says the social media companies have created a public nuisance by targeting their products to children. It blames them for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media and providing additional training to teachers. “Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of…