Russian authorities have filed an administrative case against WhatsApp for failing to remove banned content, according to state-owned news agency RIA. The messaging app's parent company, Meta Platforms, was banned in the country last year. No details on the nature of the content WhatsApp allegedly failed to delete were given. Russian laws now permit the levying of fines on technology companies for censorship violations, with Google, Discord and Wikipedia among those affected. The maximum penalty WhatsApp faces is a fine of €46,379 ($51,500).
India is set to take action against Google over abuse of market position and anti-competitive practices, according to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Federal Deputy Minister for Information Technology. Last year the Indian antitrust body fined Google $275m in two cases which involved abusing its dominant position in the Android operating system market, and pushing developers to use its in-app payment system. While the payments case is still under appeal, an Indian tribunal in March said in response to a legal challenge that the Competition Commission of India's findings of Google's anti-competitive conduct in the Android market were correct.
Business and advocacy groups including Amazon Web Services, Google, Kroger and Shell Energy have called on Virginia lawmakers and Gov Glenn Youngkin to fill two soon-to-be year-long vacant commissioner chair positions on the state's powerful regulatory panel. The State Corporation Commission is responsible for overseeing insurance, railroads and utilities. The group said that the General Assembly’s failure to fill the positions is "short-changing" users that are reliant on the bodies that the SCC regulates.
The popularity of interactive chatbot, ChatGPT, raises questions about how the way we treat machines may influence our behaviour towards humans, according to Derek Ruths, a professor in computer science. Ruths questions the impact of AI-powered technology that increasingly blurs the line between human and machine and may be indistinguishable from human companions in the future. Ruths believes our conduct with AI should be kind and appreciative, fearing a lack of civility towards machines could filter into our behaviour toward fellow humans, while understanding the "profoundly confusing" effect their increasing use may have on human communication patterns.
More than 60 leading UK educators have signed a letter to newspaper The Times calling for support in dealing with artificial intelligence (AI). The signatories hope to establish a cross-sectoral group of teachers, led by digital and AI experts, to provide guidance to schools about “which AI developments are likely to be beneficial, and which are damaging”. The heads stated that they were “bewildered” by the speed of change in the field, adding that the government and large private companies could not be relied upon to offer timely advice.
CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, faced US lawmakers recently. With AI predicted to have potentially dangerous consequences for humanity, Altman has warned of the need for AI regulation. He co-founded OpenAI to ensure that technology advances were used safely and has admitted that if this technology goes wrong, it can go very wrong. His belief in long-term investment has made him a great investor. Altman’s company, OpenAI, is a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to making sure AI benefits humanity at large, but it also has the huge moneymaking potential of AI to grow.
The development of militarized artificial intelligence (AI) is the next international arms race, with politicians "in the loop" as a final decision, according to The New York Times. The paper suggests such militarization of AI will lead to potential conflicts based on flawed algorithms rather than human judgement. A possible international moratorium on AI militarization would solve the issue of unmanned machines controlling and directing military operations, but this outcome seems unlikely, even in the face of pressure from the international campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
The latest episode of SCOTUS 101 discusses six recent cases, including those against Twitter and Google for allegedly aiding and abetting ISIS terrorists, and the copyright dispute over Andy Warhol's images of Prince. The show also features an interview with Judge Jennifer Perkins of the Arizona Court of Appeals and highlights famous and funny cases featuring the justices at their sassiest. SCOTUS 101 is produced by The Heritage Foundation and hosted by GianCarlo Canaparo and Zack Smith.
The cost of travel, even budget travel, has surged since the pandemic hit, according to an article in The Telegraph. Airlines, hotels, travel agents and restaurants are scrambling to recover lost revenue, which has pushed up the cost of flights and accommodation across Europe by 23% since 2021, according to Consumer Choice. The Post Office reported that 27 out of 35 cities are charging more for hotels, and car hire fees in seven out of nine popular holiday destinations now cost over £100 more than before the pandemic. However, demand is still high due to people having built up holiday savings during lockdown and the high cost of living lingering in many households. Ground travel, such as train travel, has seen only a 3% rise in prices since 2019 and is expected to become more popular, given the rising cost of flights.
San Francisco-based software-maker Niantic's struggles with its Peridot mobile game reflect doubts about the wider metaverse industry, according to this Bloomberg piece. Peridot, a free pet simulator game for mobile phones that uses augmented reality, launched to a negative reception, garnering 675,000 downloads in its first four days, highlighting criticisms of AR gaming generally. A focus on greater adoption of headsets to consume such content is also thought to be pricing most people out, it said. At the same time, large hirers in the metaverse sector, such as the recently rebranded Facebook Meta and Microsoft, are pivoting, with the former laying off in its Metaverse team in December. The article also noted how dedicated VR unit sales have slowed, while VR headset sales declined in 2022, and a less-than-complimentary mention of gaming headset PlayStation VR 2.
Monument Valley, a Navajo Tribal Park, is a vast expanse of vibrant red sand and striking sandstone formations that reach up to the sky, some as high as 1,000 feet. Using a tour guide here is essential since tourists can only navigate a 27-kilometre loop of gravel road on their own when exploring Monument Valley. Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii (“Valley of the Rocks”), as it’s also called by the Navajo, sits on the Arizona-Utah state border, at the north of Navajo Nation, which encompasses essentially private land covering from 71,000 square kilometres across three states, New Mexico being the third state. Navajo guides make exploring this area far more interesting thanks to their historical and cultural context.
A fan of Wrexham AFC from Patagonia is raising funds to travel 7,000 miles to attend a game at the Racecourse stadium next season. David Mardones became a fan of the Welsh football team after being introduced to them by a Welsh friend and has since joined the Y Wladfa Wrexham fan group. The Welsh community in Argentina's Welsh-speaking region still speaks Welsh, 150 years after the land was originally settled by Welsh pioneers who established Y Wladfa, which is home to 2,000 to 5,000 Argentinians speaking Welsh.
At the G7 summit, world leaders called for international standards for rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). The world's largest economies have acknowledged that while AI has become more prevalent, international rules governing their use and compliance have "not necessarily kept pace". However, no significant conclusions were reached on how to handle the emerging technology. In their joint statement, the leaders said the challenges of new technologies such as AI must be considered alongside the benefits, adding they should be governed in line with democratic values. G7 members also called for technical standards to develop "trustworthy" AI.
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) poses potential issues for discrimnation, damaging democracies and staging a mass elimination of jobs, and tech leaders are wary of unintended consequences. The concerns over AI have led to calls for a law to regulate AI systems, codifying penalties for bad actors, as well as prompting fears over the ability of the technology to manipulate and persuade voters. Following the missed opportunity of regulating social media, world leaders are being urged to come together to monitor and regulate AI, with a piecemeal approach being deemed inadequate.
Jamey Bowles turned his £20,000 savings into a property empire that's currently worth more than £3m ($3.8m). His last purchase shaved off up to 20% from the price of the asking property. Bowles bought his first property, (a house in Northampton), in 2016 with a former girlfriend; when the relationship broke down, he bought out the other half, becoming an accidental landlord in the process. He then began buying and renovating properties, eventually becoming a property millionaire. Bowles shared some of his top tips with the Telegraph for house price haggling. His first bit of advice is to do some desk-based research, which means investigating your favoured property to make sure it’s not overpriced. Secondly, researching the seller's position will help one to negotiate better. Bowles' final tip is to open up an emotional connection with the seller, to establish trust and confidence, so as to seal the deal.
Ontario’s Shaw Festival is doing the near impossible each season: putting on comedies that are 40, 100 or 300 years old. The four directors working at the venue this season explain why comedy is even harder now that sensitivity standards are rising so high that what was funny yesterday may not be funny tomorrow. The popularity of the works of British humorist P.G. Wodehouse illustrate this, with books being reissued in altered forms with content warnings, while sitcoms from this century have had episodes edited or removed from streaming. Certain stand-up comedians now under attack for new jokes, sometimes literally, who take on older material use different strategies to get chuckles. Shaw Festival director, Tim Carroll, for instance, has come up with a radical way of keeping things fresh for the classic 1730 French romantic comedy, The Game of Love and Chance, by throwing out the script entirely; his actors are instead learning the structure of Marivaux’s scenes, and will improvise in different styles each night, often taking different roles.
The cost of travel, even budget travel, has surged since the pandemic hit, according to an article in The Telegraph. Airlines, hotels, travel agents and restaurants are scrambling to recover lost revenue, which has pushed up the cost of flights and accommodation across Europe by 23% since 2021, according to Consumer Choice. The Post Office reported that 27 out of 35 cities are charging more for hotels, and car hire fees in seven out of nine popular holiday destinations now cost over £100 more than before the pandemic. However, demand is still high due to people having built up holiday savings during lockdown and the high cost of living lingering in many households. Ground travel, such as train travel, has seen only a 3% rise in prices since 2019 and is expected to become more popular, given the rising cost of flights.
Spotify's chief content and advertising officer, Dawn Ostroff, is leaving as part of mass job cuts resulting from a 6% reduction in the company's headcount. Spotify is cutting about 600 jobs as part of a restructuring process. Ostroff was the driving force behind Spotify's podcasting investment, spending about $1bn on exclusivity deals and acquisitions, including podcasting company Gimlet and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Archetypes series in a reported $25m deal. Investors have begun to question the cost of the podcasting strategy, leading to cutbacks including several production teams in October. Spotify's stock rose 8% in trading in New York.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) by students for academic purposes is growing rapidly, with schools and universities forced to rethink how they conduct tuition and academic testing. Many students are using AI tools to help with academic work, with some students using it to cheat on assignments and exams. However, educators and students are also cautiously experimenting with the use of generative AI to enhance lessons, and questioning whether it is possible to use AI in education without undercutting the most important features of human learning. One of the major challenges with generative AI is accuracy, including hallucination, the fabrication of facts and the black box effect, which produces false information and creates a vacuum for content to be reframed. There is also evidence that AI-written text can be biased and learned from internet content, including sexism, racism and political partisanship.
The cost of AI infrastructure, particularly generative AI, is so high that few companies can afford to build it. For example, even service provider OpenAI reportedly bled $540m in one year as it developed its products. Building the sort of technology on offer by Microsoft, Google and Amazon would require firms to make significant investments in state-of-the-art chips and prize-winning researchers. “People don’t realise that to do a significant amount of AI things like ChatGPT (OpenAI’s text generator tech) takes huge amounts of processing power. And training those models can cost tens of millions of dollars,” said Jack Gold, an independent analyst. As a result, companies will need to rely on platforms provided by tech giants such as Microsoft, leaving them less control over their infrastructure and augmenting the influence of already-dominant players.
