James Farrell – SiliconANGLE

Putting pressure on Google, Apple Maps is now available on the web

James Farrell — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 02:13:20 +0000

Google LLC might be feeling the heat today after Apple Inc. announced that Apple Maps is now available as a public beta on the web. Right now, it’s available only in English, though Apple said it will support other languages soon. The service is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, and Chrome […]

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FTC will launch probe into AI-driven surveillance pricing

James Farrell — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 02:21:24 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission today announced it’s seeking information from eight companies that use artificial intelligence to set prices based on customers’ behavior and characteristics. It’s known as “surveillance pricing,” in which the companies’ third-party AI systems leverage mountains of personal data to effectively ascertain a person’s ability to pay for something. The systems sift […]

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White House task force releases first-of-its-kind online safety report aimed at protecting kids

James Farrell — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 01:31:25 +0000

The White House’s Task Force on Kids Online Health and Safety today released a report featuring a number of strategies to protect American children online. The topic of what too much time online is doing to the mental well-being of children in the U.S. has become a big deal over the last few years, leading […]

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Co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz give full support to Trump campaign

James Farrell — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 01:26:48 +0000

Billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firm, have announced their support for Donald Trump’s reelection bid, stating they will make hefty donations to his campaign. “The future of our business, the future of new technology, and the future of America is literally at stake,” Horowitz (pictured) said during […]

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Elon Musk is moving X and Space X to Texas, claiming it’s over a new California gender law

James Farrell — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 02:53:20 +0000

Elon Musk today announced that he’s taking the X Corp. and Space X Corp. headquarters out of California following the state governor’s signing of a bill that prohibits school districts from disclosing students’ gender identity. Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) enacted the SAFETY ACT on Monday, legislation designed to protect LGBTQ+ students in the state. The […]

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Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts to get minimum pay, other benefits in $175M settlement

James Farrell — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 02:01:09 +0000

Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. today settled a lawsuit with the attorney general in Massachusetts, which will include the companies agreeing to pay their drivers a minimum wage. The $175 million settlement comes with a slew of benefits for drivers other than the $32.50 per hour minimum during driving time. The drivers will also […]

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AI beats students in UK university exams, fooling human educators

James Farrell — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 01:44:53 +0000

Researchers at the University of Reading in the U.K. have aired concerns about the integrity of tests after they surreptitiously submitted unedited artificial intelligence-generated exam answers, fooling exam markers and beating most of the human students. In the study, the researchers created 33 fake student identities and used ChatGPT-4 to answer 63 questions in legitimate […]

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Waymo scraps the waitlist and makes robotaxis available to everyone in San Francisco

James Farrell — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 05:42:20 +0000

After some mishaps, it’s now full steam ahead for Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo LLC, which today said its driverless taxi service is available to anyone in San Francisco who has downloaded the app. The company has been operating in the city since 2009. It introduced fully autonomous cars in 2022, but people wanting to experience a […]

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is returning to Australia a free man

James Farrell — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 02:06:37 +0000

After spending years in a British prison, the former Australian hacker and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has left the U.K., reportedly having agreed to a plea deal with authorities in the U.S. Assange (pictured) had been wanted by U.S. authorities after famously publishing hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, […]

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New York signs bill to counteract social media addiction in the young

James Farrell — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 02:30:06 +0000

New York Governor Kathy Hochul today signed a bill that would give parents the ability to block their children from seeing posts suggested by a social media platform’s algorithm, a move that addresses a years-long concern around the negative effects of social media on the nation’s youth. A second bill will address the problem of […]

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Amazon’s first labor union partners with the Teamsters

James Farrell — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 02:02:37 +0000

Members of the Amazon Labor Union, the one and only unionized Amazon warehouse, have voted to join forces with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Workers at Amazon.com Inc.’s JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island voted to unionize in 2022, becoming the first and still the only Amazon warehouse to make such a decision. At the […]

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US Surgeon General thinks social media should come with tobacco-style warning labels

James Farrell — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 02:55:43 +0000

One of the United States’ most senior health officials, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, today said in an op-ed for the New York Times social media platforms should have warning labels regarding the potential mental health harms they could create in the young. “The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency – and […]

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Former NSA Director Paul Nakasone joins OpenAI board

James Farrell — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 01:12:44 +0000

Paul M. Nakasone, a retired general of the U.S. Army and a former director of the National Security Agency, NSA, has just been added to OpenAI’s board of directors, it was reported today. Nakasone stepped down as NSA director earlier this year after becoming head under the Trump administration. He also served as leader of […]

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Waymo issues another recall after driverless taxi crash

James Farrell — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 01:08:40 +0000

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo LLC is reportedly pulling in its robotaxis for software updates after one of its vehicles hit a telephone pole last month. The incident happened in Phoenix, Arizona, when the Jaguar I-Pace EV driverless car was on its way to pick up a passenger. It hit the pole at just 8 mph, causing […]

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Elon Musk drops lawsuit that claimed OpenAI abandoned its founding mission

James Farrell — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 01:42:02 +0000

Elon Musk, Tesla Inc.’s chief executive and co-founder of OpenAI, today dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that had accused the company of a breach of contract for abandoning its founding mission of creating artificial general intelligence to benefit humanity. Musk filed the lawsuit in a San Francisco court in February. He claimed […]

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Meta faces backlash in Europe over training AI with Facebook and Instagram data

James Farrell — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:54:50 +0000

Noyb, the European Center for Digital Rights, today filed complaints in 11 European countries to prevent Meta Platforms Inc. from going ahead with its plan to train its artificial intelligence products on personal posts and images taken from the Facebook and Instagram accounts of its European user base. Meta will use public and nonpublic posts, […]

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Major cyberattack causes chaos at London’s NHS hospitals

James Farrell — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:52:36 +0000

The former head of British cybersecurity said today that Russian hackers are believed to be behind a major ransomware attack that disrupted work at London hospitals and led to the cancellation of operations. The incident, labeled “critical,” affected seven hospitals run by the National Health Service Trust after Synnovis, a provider of lab services, was […]

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X updates policies to allow some sexually explicit content and AI-generated porn

James Farrell — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:23:17 +0000

Elon Musk’s X Corp. may have rattled a few people today when it updated its policies to formally allow various kinds of sexually explicit content on the platform, including AI-generated prurience. X, which was formerly Twitter Inc., has always been home to NSFW, or “not safe for work” content, although the company has never been […]

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OpenAI tightens its grip on news media with Vox Media and Atlantic partnerships

James Farrell — Thu, 30 May 2024 01:46:18 +0000

If you can’t beat them, join them: That might be the right sentiment in light of today’s news that OpenAI has just signed licensing deals with two of the U.S.’s biggest media companies, Vox Media Inc. and The Atlantic. Vox is the parent company of a number of popular media outlets, including the tech website […]

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Elon Musk and Meta’s AI maestro Yann LeCun almost come to blows online

James Farrell — Wed, 29 May 2024 04:45:41 +0000

Meta Platforms Inc. AI Chief Scientist Yann LeCun spent some time on the X platform over Memorial Day weekend dueling with its owner, the billionaire and devoted contrarian Elon Musk. The spat was centered around Musk’s (pictured) $24 billion venture, xAI, his generative artificial intelligence startup that he hopes will get ahead of the likes […]

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TikTok reports disruption of influence campaigns to limit state propaganda

James Farrell — Fri, 24 May 2024 01:45:10 +0000

The embattled Chinese social media app TikTok may have assuaged the concerns of some of its detractors with a new report today detailing how it’s limiting the reach of state-affiliated media accounts and how it’s dealing with influence campaigns. As we reach the halfway point of 2024, a year that will see global elections on […]

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Amid growing deepfake fears, FCC chair wants more transparency around AI-generated political ads

James Farrell — Thu, 23 May 2024 00:35:57 +0000

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel today proposed disclosure rules for AI-generated content used in political ads. Rosenworcel is concerned about how AI-generated ads can mislead the public. If adopted, her proposal would not ban such ads but ensure that advertisers are transparent about them if they appear on TV or radio. Her proposal does […]

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Microsoft’s AI screenshot function is being called a privacy nightmare

James Farrell — Wed, 22 May 2024 01:56:46 +0000

After Microsoft Corp. announced its Copilot+ Monday, potential consumers heard that personal computers running it could have a “photographic memory” of everything a person does on their machine, which has not surprisingly raised concern among some privacy experts. Copilot+ PCs will be shipped with a slew of artificial intelligence features, including “Recall,” or should it be […]

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Sony warning to AI firms: Hands off our music!

James Farrell — Fri, 17 May 2024 00:11:32 +0000

The largest music publisher in the world, Sony Music Group, has sent out a letter to around 700 artificial intelligence developers and music streaming services stating that the music in its catalog is not free for use in training generative AI. The letter, which went to OpenAI, Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC, comes at a […]

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Billionaire Frank McCourt is organizing a people’s bid to buy TikTok

James Farrell — Thu, 16 May 2024 01:48:43 +0000

Frank McCourt, the real estate mogul, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and a longtime critic of how tech companies use data, is reportedly assembling a consortium to buy TikTok’s U.S. business. In March, the House of Representatives passed a bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if it doesn’t split from its Beijing-based […]

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TikTok announces new tools to flag AI-generated content automatically

James Farrell — Fri, 10 May 2024 01:13:29 +0000

The beleaguered social media app TikTok said today that it will start flagging artificial intelligence-generated content, becoming the first video app to do so. The content made with TikTok’s AI tools is already automatically flagged, and users on the platform are expected to add labels to the content if it has been artificially generated. The problem, […]

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Microsoft’s bet on an AI-focused future continues with data center plan in Wisconsin

James Farrell — Thu, 09 May 2024 01:16:49 +0000

Microsoft Corp. today announced an investment package of $3.3 billion in Southeast Wisconsin, where the tech giant will build an artificial intelligence data center in the same place where Foxconn Technology Group’s $10 billion manufacturing plant project never came to fruition. The data center in Wisconsin follows a slew of hefty investments in AI that […]

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OpenAI announces its new tool that can detect deepfake images

James Farrell — Wed, 08 May 2024 01:12:21 +0000

As fears mount over the proliferation of deepfake images that could influence this year’s many elections, OpenAI today announced the creation of a new tool to detect if an image was made with its own DALL-E AI image generator. Unfortunately, OpenAI’s deepfake detector only works successfully on images made by its own generative artificial intelligence, […]

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Microsoft marches on in Asia with $2.2B AI and cloud investment in Malaysia

James Farrell — Fri, 03 May 2024 00:35:10 +0000

Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will invest $2.2 billion in Malaysia over a four-year period, building a new cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in the country and partnering with the government to open a National AI Center. “We are committed to supporting Malaysia’s AI transformation and ensure it benefits all Malaysians,” said Microsoft Chief […]

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Group of US newspapers sues Open AI and Microsoft over copyright infringement

James Farrell — Wed, 01 May 2024 01:37:22 +0000

A coalition of eight U.S. newspapers is suing ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft Corp, alleging that they have engaged in “purloining millions” of copyrighted news articles without permission or payment to train their generative AI models. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, comes from the Chicago Tribune, […]

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