Weekend Edition 39

Amazon Fined $25 mn over Child Privacy Violations
· FTC sued tech giant over violations related to both Alexa and the Ring doorbells
o Alexa voice data was not being deleted as claimed, but being kept to make the AI database stronger
§ Kept for years, ignoring parents’ requests to delete data
o Ring was accused of similar issues
§ One employee decided to watch 1000’s of individual videos recorded by cameras in intimate areas, specifically belonging to female customers, and only stopped after caught by a coworker.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65772154

Spaces Glitches During DeSanctimonious’ Presidential Announcement
· Could’ve seen that coming with the issues that Twitter has been having since Musk bought it
· Spaces is based on Periscope (ahhh, now I know why I was never comfy on Periscope, no matter how much my wife pushed me to get on it)
o This means that the infrastructure is spread across multiple providers and was not meant for this kind of call, a few hundred, sure, but 500k on a call? No.
o Musk SHOULD have known this before he embarrassed himself, his company and Candidate Meatball.
§ Was there some bigger reason why, here?
· Maybe he knew that it would be a problem, but was so excited about the platform being used and live-tested that he ignored the issues before hand.
· Maybe he wanted to embarrass Meatball
· Maybe he just doesn’t care at this point...
· Maybe he understands the Trump philosophy of “any PR is good PR”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/twitter-desantis-meltdown/index.html

AI!!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!!! PANIC!!!!
· Why are we being focused on this?
· As I have said before, current generation, publicly available AI’s could NEVER do what these doomers are saying they could.
o They sound credible as they are the apparently leaders in the field, but I would be more concerned with misinformation that gets pawned off as real and true
§ I talked about Jonathan Turley’s experience with this a couple of months ago now, where chatGPT actually made up a whole network of stories to make it look like its assertions about the law expert were true.
§ Bottom line: be careful
· Some, like me, are more skeptical about the alleged powers of AI
o biases
o Imitation of humans (copyright issues, along with other IP issues)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65746524

Microsoft Calls for New Regulatory Body in US Around AI
· Brad Smith, president of MSFT spoke for an hour, largely about these issues
· Ughhhhh
· Microsoft calling for AI regulation is like a crackhead saying that we need to beef up the DEA
· My thoughts about government
· My thoughts about their proposals
o new rules for AI should include revamped export controls tailor-made for the AI age to prevent the technology from being abused by sanctioned entities.
§ Ok... How much will this cost?
· Freedom
· Finances
o government should mandate redundant AI circuit breakers that would allow algorithms to be shut off by critical infrastructure providers or from within the data centers they depend on.
§ Abuse?
§ Devil’s Advocate
o Regulations should apply to everything from the data centers that train large language models to the end users such as banks, hospitals and others that may apply the technology toward making life-altering decisions
§ May be necessary, but yikes...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/tech/microsoft-ai-regulation-calls/index.html

Metaverse Getting Ready?
· Hype
o The “future”
o Heart-eyes, star-eyes
o Everyone will be here in the future
· Reality
o Not even close to ready
o “foundation” may be maturing
§ Just a skeleton with precious little flesh on it
· Author
o Coined term in 1992 novel “Snow Crash”
o Been working in the space for last few years
o Pushing it, hyping it
· My reaction
o Oh brother
o Hmmm
o Nah
§ Privacy
§ Security
§ Centralization?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/the-man-who-named-the-metaverse-is-optimistic-despite-waning-hype/

CA Law May Lead Meta to Pull News from Your Feed in CA
· Law
o Big money, big news
o Doesn’t seem to help those it claims to (local news outlets)
· Meta’s reaction
· Other reactions
· My thoughts
o *eyeroll*
o Meta has tried this before and not stuck to it
o Doesn’t change much, ultimately, and adds more bureaucracy to a state that is already over-burdened by onerous regulations
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/tech/meta-threatens-to-pull-california-news/index.html

NVidia Making a Killing Amid AI Frenzy
· Stock up 110% this year after a bump of 28% last quarter
o Insane profits: +26% to $2 bn last quarter, Sales up 19% to $7.2 bn for the quarter
· Why?
o AI
o Heavy, powerful compute needed that CPU can’t handle, and GPU is actually more efficient at those sorts of calculations.
· My reaction
o Ok... I still say we all need to ditch the Green Monster asap
o Good for them, but...