California’s governor has the chance to make AI history
California Gov.Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference with the California Highway Patrol announcing new efforts to boost public safety in the East Bay, in Oakland, California, July 11, 2024. | Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images<br> Advocates say it is a modest law setting “clear, predictable, common-sense safety standards” for artificial intelligence. Opponents say it is a dangerous and arrogant step that will “stifle innovation.” In any event, SB 1047 — California state Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposal to regulate advanced AI models offered by companies doing business in the state — has now passed the California State Assembly by a margin of 48 to 16. Back in May,…
Why Telegram’s CEO was detained in France
Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram, speaks onstage during day one of TechCrunch Disrupt on September 21, 2015, in San Francisco, California. | Steve Jennings/Getty Images for Tech Crunch Pavel Durov, the CEO and founder of messaging app Telegram, was charged in France on Wednesday with a number of crimes, including complicity in drug trafficking and facilitating the spread of child sexual abuse material on the platform he created. Durov was previously arrested in Paris on Saturday, and details about that arrest had been limited until Wednesday. Now, however, it is clear that the charges against Durov are part of a larger French investigation. The Washington Post has reported…
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems
Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan that he regretted Facebook’s reaction when the Biden administration pressured it to remove Covid-19 misinformation. | Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images This week Mark Zuckerberg sent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) a letter outlining how the Biden administration pressured his company to “censor” free speech on Facebook — specifically misinformation about Covid-19. The letter also made reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Zuckerberg’s lack of plans to spend money on the election. This sounds bad. But none of this information is new. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg decided to dive into the free speech snake pit this week. It’s also not surprising…
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems
Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan that he regretted Facebook’s reaction when the Biden administration pressured it to remove Covid-19 misinformation. | Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images This week Mark Zuckerberg sent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) a letter outlining how the Biden administration pressured his company to “censor” free speech on Facebook — specifically misinformation about Covid-19. The letter also made reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Zuckerberg’s lack of plans to spend money on the election. This sounds bad. But none of this information is new. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg decided to dive into the free speech snake pit this week. It’s also not surprising…
How would we even know if AI went rogue?
Congress needs to understand artificial intelligence capabilities better in order to mitigate future risks. As the frontier of artificial intelligence advances at a breakneck pace, the US government is struggling to keep up. Working on AI policy in Washington, DC, I can tell you that before we can decide how to govern frontier AI systems, we first need to see them clearly. Right now, we’re navigating in a fog. My role as an AI policy fellow at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) involves developing bipartisan ideas for improving the government’s ability to analyze current and future systems. In this work, I interact with experts across government, academia, civil society,…
Why Musk and Trump are on the same side
Donald Trump and Elon Musk spoke for nearly two hours in an audio livestream hosted on X. | Michael Ciaglo/Marc Piasecki via Getty Images Last night, former President Donald Trump returned to X, the social media site once known as Twitter in as bombastic a form as possible: a livestream with the site’s now-owner Elon Musk. The interview on Spaces, X’s platform for live audio conversations, covered everything from illegal immigration to union busting. At one point, Trump and Musk underscored the need for an American leader who would inspire fear in other countries. Over the course of two hours, the richest man in the world and the former president…
Advertisers aren’t buying what X is selling. Is that a crime?
Since Musk’s takeover in late 2022, X’s ad revenue has plunged. Fellas, is it illegal for brands to refuse to advertise on my social media site? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer is yes. This week, Musk’s social media company X (formerly Twitter) filed an eyebrow-raising lawsuit against an advertising industry group and several major brands, including Unilever (maker of Dove soap), Mars Inc. (maker of lots of candy), and CVS. It argues that the companies coordinated an advertising boycott against X that not only led to “massive economic harm,” but even violated antitrust law because they colluded to specifically target X, making it less competitive in selling digital ads.…
A historic ruling against Google could change the internet as we know it
An attendee walks past a Google logo during the Viva Technology conference at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on June 14, 2023 in Paris, France. | Chesnot/Getty Images A federal judge found Monday that Google’s search business constitutes an illegal monopoly, a landmark ruling and major victory for the Biden administration as it seeks to clamp down on Big Tech. The decision has the potential to bring major changes to the internet — and sends a signal that no company is too big to regulate. US District Judge Amit Mehta found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” That involved protecting…
It’s practically impossible to run a big AI company ethically
Anthropic was supposed to be the good AI company. The ethical one. The safe one. It was supposed to be different from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. In fact, all of Anthropic’s founders once worked at OpenAI but quit in part because of differences over safety culture there, and moved to spin up their own company that would build AI more responsibly. Yet lately, Anthropic has been in the headlines for less noble reasons: It’s pushing back on a landmark California bill to regulate AI. It’s taking money from Google and Amazon in a way that’s drawing antitrust scrutiny. And it’s being accused of aggressively scraping data from websites without…
Intel was once a Silicon Valley leader. How did it fall so far?
Visitors visit the booth of Intel at the 2023 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province, November 1, 2023. | CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images<br> Intel stock is tumbling amid news that the company will lay off 15 percent of its staff after a steep decline in revenue and billions in losses in its chip foundry business. It’s the largest drop for the company in half a century; at Friday’s closing bell, shares were trading at $21.48 — a price not seen since 2013. The company is scrambling to shore up reserves by introducing layoffs and suspending stock dividends. But even those moves may not be enough to return the veteran…