Category: Technology

Most Democrats and Republicans agree that the federal government should better regulate the biggest technology companies, particularly social media platforms. But there is little consensus on how it should be done.  Concerns have skyrocketed about China's ownership of TikTok, and parents have grown increasingly worried about what their children are seeing online. Lawmakers have introduced a slew of bipartisan bills, boosting hopes of compromise. But any effort to regulate the mammoth industry would face major obstacles as technology companies have fought interference.  Noting that many young people are struggling, President Joe Biden said in his February State of the Union address that "it's time" to pass bipartisan legislation to impose stricter limits on the collection of personal data and ban targeted advertising to children.  "We must finally hold social media…

Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia's elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity. But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the check mark has disappeared. That's made it harder to distinguish @phillyvotes from a list of random accounts not run by the elections office but with very similar names. The election commission applied weeks ago for a gray check mark — Twitter's new symbol to help users identify official government accounts – but has yet to hear back from the Twitter, commission spokesman Nick Custodio said. It's unclear whether @phillyvotes is an eligible government account under Twitter's new rules. That's troubling,…

Google is planning to make its search engine more "visual, snackable, personal and human," with a focus on serving young people globally, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents. The move comes as artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as ChatGPT are rapidly gaining in popularity, highlighting a technology that could upend the way businesses and society operate. The tech giant will nudge its service further away from "10 blue links," which is a traditional format of presenting search results and plans to incorporate more human voices as part of the shift, the report said. At its annual I/O developer conference in the coming week, Google is expected to debut new features that allow users to carry out conversations with an AI program, a project code-named "Magi," The Wall…

Billionaire Warren Buffett said artificial intelligence may change the world in all sorts of ways, but new technology won't take away opportunities for investors, and he's confident America will continue to prosper over time. Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger are spending all day Saturday answering questions at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting inside a packed Omaha arena. "New things coming along doesn't take away the opportunities. What gives you the opportunities is other people doing dumb things," said Buffett, who had a chance to try out ChatGPT when his friend Bill Gates showed it to him a few months back. Buffett reiterated his long-term optimism about the prospects for America even with the bitter political divisions today. "The problem now is that partisanship has moved more towards tribalism, and in…

When Greg Brockman, the president and co-founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, was recently extolling the capabilities of artificial intelligence, he turned to "Game of Thrones." Imagine, he said, if you could use AI to rewrite the ending of that not-so-popular finale. Maybe even put yourself into the show. "That is what entertainment will look like," said Brockman. Not six months since the release of ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence is already prompting widespread unease throughout Hollywood. Concern over chatbots writing or rewriting scripts is one of the leading reasons TV and film screenwriters took to picket lines earlier this week. Though the Writers Guild of America is striking for better pay in an industry where streaming has upended many of the old rules, AI looms as rising anxiety. "AI is terrifying,"…

White House Mulls AI Oversight, Protections with Industry Leaders ...

Good news for all the password-haters out there: Google has taken a big step toward making them an afterthought by adding "passkeys" as a more straightforward and secure way to log into its services.  Here's what you need to know:  What are passkeys?   Passkeys offer a safer alternative to passwords and texted confirmation codes. Users won't ever see them directly; instead, an online service like Gmail will use them to communicate directly with a trusted device such as your phone or computer to log you in.  All you'll have to do is verify your identity on the device using a PIN unlock code, biometrics such as your fingerprint or a face scan or a more sophisticated physical security dongle.  Google designed its passkeys to work with a variety of…

A computer scientist often dubbed "the godfather of artificial intelligence" has quit his job at Google to speak out about the dangers of the technology, U.S. media reported Monday. Geoffrey Hinton, who created a foundation technology for AI systems, told The New York Times that advancements made in the field posed "profound risks to society and humanity". "Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now," he was quoted as saying in the piece, which was published on Monday. "Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That's scary." Hinton said that competition between tech giants was pushing companies to release new AI technologies at dangerous speeds, risking jobs and spreading misinformation. "It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it…

The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world's first major artificial intelligence (AI) law, the bloc's tech regulation chief, Margrethe Vestager, said on Sunday. This follows a preliminary deal reached on Thursday by members of the European Parliament to push through the draft of the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act to a vote on May 11. Parliament will then thrash out the bill's final details with EU member states and the European Commission before it becomes law. At a press conference after a Group of Seven digital ministers' meeting in Takasaki, Japan, Vestager said the EU AI Act was "pro-innovation" since it seeks to mitigate the risks of societal damage from emerging technologies. Regulators around the world have been…

Artificial intelligence, or AI, could potentially transform arts and entertainment, from music to movies, but it is also raising concerns. Is AI a creative tool or a threat to creators and artists? VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan examines the question. ...

British antitrust regulators on Wednesday blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of video game maker Activision Blizzard, thwarting the biggest tech deal in history over worries that it would stifle competition for popular titles like Call of Duty in the fast-growing cloud gaming market. The Competition and Markets Authority said in its final report that “the only effective remedy” to the substantial loss of competition “is to prohibit the Merger.” The companies have vowed to appeal. The all-cash deal faced stiff opposition from rival Sony, which makes the PlayStation gaming system, and also was being scrutinized by regulators in the U.S. and Europe over fears that it would give Microsoft and its Xbox console control of hit franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The U.K. watchdog’s concerns centered…

Mars is Earth's next-door neighbor in the solar system — two rocky worlds with differences down to their very core, literally. A new study based on seismic data obtained by NASA's robotic InSight lander is offering a fuller understanding of the Martian deep interior and fresh details about dissimilarities between Earth, the third planet from the sun, and Mars, the fourth. The research, informed by the first detection of seismic waves traveling through the core of a planet other than Earth, showed that the innermost layer of Mars is slightly smaller and denser than previously known. It also provided the best assessment to date of the composition of the Martian core. Both planets possess cores comprised primarily of liquid iron. But about 20% of the Martian core is made up…

A Japanese space start-up will attempt Tuesday to become the first private company to put a lander on the Moon.    If all goes to plan, ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander will start its descent towards the lunar surface at around 15:40 GMT.    It will slow its orbit some 100 kilometers above the Moon, then adjust its speed and altitude to make a "soft landing" around an hour later.    Success is far from guaranteed. In April 2019, Israeli organization SpaceIL watched their lander crash into the Moon's surface.    ispace has announced three alternative landing sites and could shift the lunar descent date to April 26, May 1 or May 3, depending on conditions.    "What we have accomplished so far is already a great achievement, and we are already applying lessons learned…

The U.S. Space Force said on Monday that Elon Musk's SpaceX was granted approval to lease a second rocket launch complex at a military base in California, setting the space company up for its fifth launch site in the United States.  Under the lease, SpaceX will launch its workhorse Falcon rockets from Space Launch Complex-6 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, a military launch site north of Los Angeles where the space company operates another launchpad. It has two others in Florida and its private Starbase site in south Texas.  A Monday night Space Force statement said a letter of support for the decision was signed on Friday by Space Launch Delta 30 commander Col. Rob Long. The statement did not mention a duration for SpaceX's lease.  The new launch site, vacated…

Twitter accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran are benefiting from recent changes at the social media company, researchers said Monday, making it easier for them to attract new followers and broadcast propaganda and disinformation to a larger audience.  The platform is no longer labeling state-controlled media and propaganda agencies, and will no longer prohibit their content from being automatically promoted or recommended to users. Together, the two changes, both made in recent weeks, have supercharged the Kremlin's ability to use the U.S.-based platform to spread lies and misleading claims about its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. politics and other topics.  Russian state media accounts are now earning 33% more views than they were just weeks ago, before the change was made, according to findings released Monday by…

The AI bot ChatGPT has passed exams, written poetry, and deployed in newsrooms, and now politicians are seeking it out — but experts are warning against rapid uptake of a tool also famous for fabricating "facts." The chatbot, released last November by U.S. firm OpenAI, has quickly moved center stage in politics — particularly as a way of scoring points. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently took a direct hit from the bot when he answered some innocuous questions about health care reform from an opposition MP. Unbeknownst to the PM, his adversary had generated the questions with ChatGPT. He also generated answers that he claimed were "more sincere" than Kishida's. The PM hit back that his own answers had been "more specific." French trade union boss Sophie Binet was…

The Biden administration announced more than $80 million in funding Thursday in a push to produce more solar panels in the U.S., make solar energy available to more people, and pursue superior alternatives to the ubiquitous sparkly panels made with silicon. The initiative, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and known as Community solar, encompasses a variety of arrangements where renters and people who don't control their rooftops can still get their electricity from solar power. Two weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris announced what the administration said was the largest community solar effort ever in the United States. Now it is set to spend $52 million on 19 solar projects across a dozen states, including $10 million from the infrastructure law, as well as $30 million on…

A viral AI-generated song imitating Drake and The Weeknd was pulled from streaming services this week, but did it breach copyright as claimed by record label Universal? Created by someone called @ghostwriter, Heart On My Sleeve racked up millions of listens before Universal Music Group asked for its removal from Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms. However, Andres Guadamuz, who teaches intellectual property law at Britain's University of Sussex, is not convinced that the song breached copyright. As similar cases look set to multiply — with an uncanny AI replication of Liam Gallagher from Oasis causing buzz — he spoke to AFP about some of the issues being raised. Did the song breach copyright? The underlying music on Heart On My Sleeve was new, only the sound of the voice…

Competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has expanded into a race to design and implement comprehensive AI regulations. The efforts to come up with rules to ensure AI's trustworthiness, safety and transparency come at a time when governments around the world are exploring the impact of the technology on national security and education. ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human conversation, has received massive attention since its debut in November. Its ability to give sophisticated answers to complex questions with a language fluency comparable to that of humans has caught the world by surprise. Yet its many flaws, including its ostensibly coherent responses laden with misleading information and apparent bias, have prompted tech leaders in the U.S. to sound the alarm. "What happens when something vastly smarter than…

U.S. homeland security officials are launching what they describe as two urgent initiatives to combat growing threats from China and expanding dangers from ever more capable, and potentially malicious, artificial intelligence. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that his department was starting a “90-day sprint” to confront more frequent and intense efforts by China to hurt the United States, while separately establishing an artificial intelligence task force. "Beijing has the capability and the intent to undermine our interests at home and abroad and is leveraging every instrument of its national power to do so," Mayorkas warned, addressing the threat from China during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. The 90-day sprint will “assess how the threats posed by the PRC [People's Republic of China] will…

Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated, a move that comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don't pay a monthly fee. Among those no longer labeled was National Public Radio in the U.S., which announced last week that it would stop using Twitter after its main account was designated state-affiliated media, a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China. Twitter later changed the label to "government-funded media," but NPR — which relies on the government for a tiny fraction of its funding — said it was still misleading. Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Swedish public radio made similar decisions to quit tweeting. CBC's government-funded label vanished…

The CEO of TikTok tried to calm critics' fears about the security of his company's app during an appearance Thursday. Shou Chew was asked at a TED2023 Possibility conference if he could guarantee Beijing would not use the TikTok app, owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, to interfere in future U.S. elections. "I can say that we are building all the tools to prevent any of these actions from happening," Chew said. "And I'm very confident that with an unprecedented amount of transparency that we're giving on the platform, we can, how we can reduce this risk to as low as zero as possible." Chew made the comments in Vancouver at the TED organization's annual convention, where artificial intelligence and safeguards were discussed. U.S. lawmakers and officials are ratcheting up…

While artificial intelligence, or AI, is not new, the speed at which the technology is developing and its implications for societies are, for many, a cause for wonder and alarm. ChatGPT recently garnered headlines for doing things like writing term papers for university students. Tom Graham and his company, Metaphysic.ai, have received attention for creating fake videos of actor Tom Cruise and re-creating Elvis Presley singing on an American talent show. Metaphysic was started to utilize artificial intelligence and create high-quality avatars of stars like Cruise or people from one’s own family or social circle. Graham, who appeared at this year's TED Conference in Vancouver, which began Monday and runs through Friday, said talking with an artificially created younger self or departed loved one can have tremendous benefits for therapy.…

This time it's for real.  Many of Twitter's high-profile users are losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identities and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.  After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don't each pay a monthly fee to keep them. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system—many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks began disappearing from these users' profiles late morning Pacific time.  High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyonce, Pope Francis and former President Donald Trump. The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000…

SpaceX’s giant new rocket blasted off on its first test flight Thursday but exploded minutes after rising from the launch pad and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. It carried no people or satellites. The plan called for the booster to peel away from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, but that didn't happen. The rocket began to tumble and then exploded four minutes into the flight, plummeting into the gulf. After separating, the spacecraft was supposed to continue east and attempt to circle the world, before crashing into the Pacific near Hawaii. Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away…

A growing number of startups are using artificial intelligence to replicate human voices. A company is creating synthetic voices for organizations to use for advertising, marketing and training. Phil Dierking reports. ...

Apple Inc. opened its first flagship store in India in a much-anticipated launch Tuesday that highlights the company's growing aspirations to expand in the country it also hopes to turn into a potential manufacturing hub. The company's CEO Tim Cook posed for photos with a few of the 100 or so Apple fans who had lined up outside the sprawling 20,000-square-foot store in India's financial capital, Mumbai, its design inspired by the iconic black-and-yellow cabs unique to the city. A second store will open Thursday in the national capital, New Delhi. "India has such a beautiful culture and an incredible energy, and we're excited to build on our long-standing history," Cook said in a statement earlier. The tech giant has been operating in India for more than 25 years, selling…

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls "TruthGPT" to challenge the offerings from Microsoft and Google. He criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of "training the AI to lie" and said OpenAI has now become a "closed source," "for-profit" organization "closely allied with Microsoft." He also accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously. "I'm going to start something which I call 'TruthGPT', or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe," Musk said in an interview with Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson aired on Monday. He said TruthGPT "might be the best path to safety" that would be "unlikely to annihilate humans." "It's simply starting late. But…