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Teens Are Turning to Snapchat’s ‘My AI’ for Mental Health Support — Which Doctors Warn Against + More
Teens Are Turning to Snapchat’s ‘My AI’ for Mental Health Support — Which Doctors Warn Against
Anyone who uses Snapchat now has free access to My AI, the app’s built-in artificial intelligence chatbot, first released as a paid feature in February. In addition to serving as a chat companion, the bot can also have some practical purposes, such as offering gift-buying advice, planning trips, suggesting recipes and answering trivia questions, according to Snap.
However, while it’s not billed as a source of medical advice, some teens have turned to My AI for mental health support — something many medical experts caution against.
Dr. Ryan Sultan, a board-certified psychiatrist, research professor at Columbia University in New York and medical director of Integrative Psych NYC, treats many young patients — and has mixed feelings about AI’s place in mental health.
“They have seen a significant increase in inaccurate self-diagnosis as a result of AI or social media,” said Dr. Zachary Ginder, a psychological consultant in Riverside, California. “Anecdotally, teens seem to be especially susceptible to this self-diagnosis trend. Unfortunately, it has real-world consequences.”
Biden’s Silent Surrender on the Final COVID Frontier
This week, President Joe Biden embraced reality and proclaimed an end to the coronavirus pandemic. Federal COVID vaccine mandates will finally lift later this month. However, the truth is that Americans have a Texas judge and Biden‘s plagiarism — not leadership — to thank for this common-sense move.
Until this month, Biden’s ongoing vaccine mandate had continued to devastate public school districts across the country. Suddenly, however, his administration announced that the Departments of Health and Human Resources (HHS) and Homeland Security “will start the process to end their vaccination requirements for Head Start educators.”
The president took the opportunity to spike the football on acknowledging the post-pandemic reality that all but the most hardened left-wing activists have already been living in. This was wildly disingenuous, however, because Biden would almost certainly have kept the Head Start vaccine mandate in place if it weren’t for a meddling federal judge in Texas.
Until a U.S. District Court judge overturned Biden’s vaccine mandate, schools — particularly those geared towards pre-kindergarteners—were still enforcing vaccine mandates for teachers and masking mandates for toddlers. Biden was forced to concede to a lawsuit brought by a slew of Republican attorneys general against HHS and its secretary, Xavier Becerra. Judge James Wesley Hendrix placed a permanent injunction that bans any state, territory, or tribal community from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine in a Head Start program.
Dave Yost, the attorney general of Ohio, one of the states that sued over the Biden administration’s mandate, said that “only the Biden administration would defend a rule requiring 3-year-olds to wear masks to go to Head Start — in 2023! He never had the authority, and now he can’t even claim to have the need.”
Fauci, Weingarten Try to Rewrite History on Disastrous COVID Lockdowns: ‘Show Me a School That I Shut Down’
Former White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and teachers union boss Randi Weingarten are furiously trying to rewrite history on their role in promoting the disastrous school lockdowns that paralyzed the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic and left a generation of children behind.
“Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did,” Fauci told New York Times Magazine last month. “I gave a public health recommendation that echoed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other.”
”We wanted to be in school. I’ve said that over and over again today,” Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the nation’s most powerful teachers’ unions, said during her congressional testimony about the school lockdowns last week.
But history shows that both Fauci and Weingarten vehemently pushed for COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions that led to prolonged school closures across the country.
How Far Should the Government Go to Control What Your Kids See Online?
The latest onslaught of child internet safety bills is upon us as expected, and it may soon intersect with America’s ongoing culture war.
As more evidence emerges that internet platforms can harm children and either can’t or won’t do anything to protect their users, the government has understandably felt the need to step in. States are proposing and even passing laws that restrict what children can access online, up to banning certain services entirely. On the federal level, several recently introduced bipartisan bills run the gamut from giving children more privacy protections to forbidding them from using social media at all.
Some of them also try to control the content that children can be exposed to. That comes with another set of concerns over censorship, especially now that some administrations have politicized ideas about what’s appropriate for kids to see. We’re already getting a glimpse of what various factions in this country think the Internet should look like. We might be getting a much better look soon.
“We generally don’t like it when the government is trying to tell parents the correct way to parent their children,” said India McKinney, director of federal affairs at the EFF. “Yes, there is harmful stuff that happens online. That is absolutely true. But how do you define that in legislation, to make it clear what you mean and what you don’t mean, and in a way that platforms can [moderate]?”
AI Is About to Make Social Media (Much) More Toxic
We joined together to write this essay because we each came, by different routes, to share grave concerns about the effects of AI-empowered social media on American society.
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who has written about the ways in which social media has contributed to mental illness in teen girls, the fragmentation of democracy and the dissolution of a common reality. Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google, is a co-author of a recent book about AI’s potential impact on human society.
Last year, the two of us began to talk about how generative AI — the kind that can chat with you or make pictures you’d like to see — would likely exacerbate social media’s ills, making it more addictive, divisive and manipulative. As we talked, we converged on four main threats—all of which are imminent — and we began to discuss solutions as well.
Half of Americans Say Congress Should Take ‘Swift Action’ to Regulate AI: Poll
About half of Americans said Congress should be taking action to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) technology, according to a poll released Thursday.
Fifty-four percent of polled registered voters said Congress should take “swift action” to regulate the technology in a way that promotes privacy, fairness and safety to ensure “maximum benefit to society with minimal risks,” according to the poll conducted for the Omidyar Network-funded Tech Oversight Project.
Only 15% of respondents said that regulating AI will stifle innovation and put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage, according to the poll shared exclusively with The Hill.
The poll also found that 41% of voters said Congress should be the driving force behind AI regulation. Just 20% said that tech companies, such as Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, should be leading the way. An additional 39% said they are not sure who should lead on AI regulations.
Despite TikTok Ban Threat, Influencers Are Flocking to a New App From Its Parent Company
In the days after TikTok’s CEO was grilled by Congress for the first time, many TikTok users began posting about an alternative platform called Lemon8, sometimes with eerily similar language.
Multiple creators described the app as being like “if Pinterest and Instagram had a baby, with TikTok’s algorithm.” Some compared it to TikTok circa 2020 and encouraged other influencers to join the app before it grows. They also asked followers to share their Lemon8 usernames in the comments.
As it turned out, the app wasn’t just a random alternative to TikTok. Lemon8 is a social media platform launched in the United States earlier this year by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance amid federal and state efforts to ban or restrict TikTok in the country over national security concerns.
The early traction for Lemon8 hints at the whack-a-mole challenge lawmakers could face in reining in TikTok and other social media platforms. It also carries some hints of TikTok’s own rise, which was reportedly fueled in part by ByteDance spending heavily to advertise the service on rival platforms Facebook and Snapchat. This time, however, the best place to promote the next TikTok may be on TikTok itself.
Microsoft Opens Up Its AI-Powered Bing to All Users
Microsoft is rolling out the new AI-powered version of its Bing search engine to anyone who wants to use it.
Nearly three months after the company debuted a limited preview version of its new Bing, powered by the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, Microsoft is opening it up to all users without a waitlist — as long as they’re signed into the search engine via Microsoft’s Edge browser.
Bing now gets more than 100 million daily active users each day, a significant uptick in the past few months, according to Yusuf Mehdi, a VP at Microsoft overseeing its AI initiatives. Google, which has long dominated the market, is also adding similar AI features to its search engine.
Microsoft’s moves also come amid heightened scrutiny on the rapid pace of advancement in AI technology. In March, some of the biggest names in tech, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, called for artificial intelligence labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”
‘We Will Never Forget’: Canadians and Americans React to U.S. Lifting COVID Border Restrictions
While the United States recently announced it will end its COVID-19 vaccine requirements for international air travelers and at the Canadian border, The Epoch Times spoke with some Canadians and Americans who expressed deep frustration with the rules being implemented in the first place, vowing not to forget being separated from their loved ones.
“We will never thank a government whose deliberate implementation of discriminatory, baseless mandates, targeted a group whose only threat was the rejection of their false political science narrative,” said Hope Vanbeselaere Marsh, a Manitoba woman who was separated from her husband in Texas in March 2020. “While many are content to pretend the last three years never happened, we will never forget.”
The Canadian government announced it would drop all COVID-19 border restrictions for anyone entering the country, which included proof of COVID-19 vaccination, quarantine and isolation requirements, and the controversial ArriveCAN application, on Oct. 1, 2022.
FTC Says Meta Misled Parents and Failed to Protect Children Using Facebook’s Messenger Kids App + More
FTC Says Meta Misled Parents and Failed to Protect Children Using Facebook’s Messenger Kids App
The Federal Trade Commission said Meta violated a 2020 privacy order by misleading parents and failing to protect children using Facebook’s Messenger Kids app.
The FTC proposed a series of changes to the order on Wednesday after the agency claimed Meta mishandled data collected from the app, including a ban on the company’s ability to monetize data collected from its products, including virtual reality, from users under age 18. The initial 2020 order led to a $5 billion settlement with Facebook and called for an expanded privacy program.
The proposed changes would slow Meta’s ability to release new products until they are confirmed to meet the privacy requirements, while also limiting the company’s future ability to use facial recognition technology.
The agency claimed Meta misled parents about their ability to control who children communicate with through Messenger Kids, as some were able to talk to unapproved contacts through group messages. It also alleged that Meta shared certain user data with third-party app developers long after it said it would stop in 2018.
Mind-Reading Technology Has Arrived
For a few years now, I’ve been writing articles on neurotechnology with downright Orwellian headlines. Headlines that warn “Facebook is building tech to read your mind” and “Brain-reading tech is coming.” Well, the technology is no longer just “coming.” It’s here.
With the help of AI, scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have developed a technique that can translate people’s brain activity — like the unspoken thoughts swirling through our minds — into actual speech, according to a study published in Nature.
Now we’ve got a non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that can decode continuous language from the brain, so somebody else can read the general gist of what we’re thinking even if we haven’t uttered a single word. How is that possible?
It comes down to the marriage of two technologies: fMRI scans, which measure blood flow to different areas of the brain, and large AI language models, similar to the now-infamous ChatGPT.
Biden Administration Investing $140 Million Into AI Research and Development Amid Boom
The Biden administration announced on Thursday it will invest $140 million into research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) amid the current boom of the new technology.
Along with the funding, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will issue policy guidance on the use of AI by the federal government in the coming months and companies that develop AI, like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have made commitments to participate in a public evaluation of AI systems.
The National Science Foundation will invest $140 million in funding to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, bringing the total number of these institutes to 25 in the U.S. The institutes work on collaboration efforts across the federal government, industry and higher education.
CEOs from Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI are heading to the White House on Thursday for a meeting on AI. Vice President Harris will lead the meeting and plans to emphasize the importance of responsible innovation and the importance of safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms.
Therapy Apps Are Still Failing Their Privacy Checkups
An investigation into mental health apps has revealed that many of the most popular services are failing to protect the privacy and security of their users. Following up on a report from last year’s Privacy Not Included guide, researchers at Mozilla found that apps designed for sensitive issues like therapy and mental health conditions are still collecting large amounts of personal data under questionable or deceptive privacy policies.
The team re-reviewed 27 of the mental health, meditation, and prayer apps featured in the previous year’s study, including Calm, Youper, and Headspace, in addition to five new apps requested by the public. Of those 32 total apps, 22 were slapped with a “privacy not included” warning label, something Mozilla assigns to products that have the most privacy and personal data concerns. That’s a minor improvement on the 23 that earned the label last year, though Mozilla said that around 17 of the 27 apps it was revisiting still scored poorly — if not worse — for privacy and security this time around.
Replika: My AI Friend, a “virtual friendship” chatbot, was one of the new apps analyzed in the study this year and received the most scrutiny. Mozilla researchers referred to it as “perhaps the worst app we’ve ever reviewed,” highlighting widespread privacy issues and that it had failed to meet the foundation’s minimum security standards. Regulators in Italy effectively banned the chatbot earlier this year over similar concerns, claiming that the app violated European data privacy regulations and failed to safeguard children.
Boston Drops COVID Vaccine Mandate for City Employees
Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration will lift the COVID vaccine mandate for all city employees on May 11, a decision that comes about a month after the state’s top court ruled in favor of Boston having this pandemic-era policy in place.
Administration officials said this mandate, implemented by Wu in December 2021, is no longer needed — as cases are low and most people have developed immunity to the virus, through either vaccination or infection.
Employee testing requirements will also be eliminated on May 11. Although no longer needed, Chief People Officer Alex Lawrence said these policies were critical tools for the city, in terms of curbing virus exposure and transmission in workplaces and the community at large, during the height of the pandemic.
Despite high compliance among employees, the city’s vaccine mandate proved to be controversial among parts of the workforce. Three unions — the International Association of Fire Fighters, Boston Police Superior Officers Federation and Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society — sued, claiming Wu had violated their labor rights by overriding previous policy. Employees who refused vaccination by mid-January 2022 faced suspension or possible termination, the Herald has reported.
Florida Legislature Passes Bill Extending Ban on COVID Mandates
The Florida House on Wednesday passed a bill that extends and expands the state’s ban on COVID-19 mandates, furthering Gov. Ron DeSantis’ resistance to COVID-related restrictions.
The House approved S.B. 252 on an 84-31 vote while the Senate approved it last week. The measure will extend bans related to COVID-19 indefinitely; they were set to expire in June.
The new measure defines vaccine mandates and face mask requirements as discriminatory against people who choose not to follow them. Businesses also can’t compel employees to disclose their post-infection recovery status if they were infected.
Eighth Graders Had Record Low U.S. History, Civics Scores in 2022
Eighth graders had the lowest U.S. history scores on record in 2022 and among the lowest civics scores, the Department of Education revealed this week.
The Education Department on Wednesday released the first federal history and civics testing data since before the COVID pandemic. The data shows that the last few years have erased the progress made since the 1990s on eighth-grade students’ knowledge of history and civics.
Math and reading scores have also suffered over the pandemic, the Education Department revealed last year. Math scores plummeted among fourth and eighth graders in almost every state, the Education Department reported back in October. Reading scores have also sunk across the country, erasing the last three decades of progress.
Learning loss caused by many months of remote learning during the pandemic spurred parents across the country to demand schools return to in-person learning, especially after data showed that children were low-risk for serious cases of COVID.
These New Yorkers Want to Stop Landlords From Using Facial Recognition
Brooklyn resident Fabian Rogers knew he had to act in 2018 when his penny-pinching landlord suddenly attempted to install a facial recognition camera in the entrance of a rent-stabilized building he’d called home for years. Under the new security system, all tenants and their loved ones would be forced to submit to a face scan to enter the building.
The landlord, like many others, tried to sell the controversial tech as a safety enhancement, but Rogers told Gizmodo he saw it as a sneaky attempt to jack up prices in a gentrifying area and force people like him out.
Rogers says he tried to speak out against what he saw as an invasive new security measure but quickly realized there weren’t any laws on the books preventing his landlord from implementing the technology. Instead, he and his tenant association had to go on a “muckraking tour” attacking the landlord’s reputation with an online shame campaign. Remarkably, it worked. The exhausted landlord backed off. Rogers now advocates against facial recognition on the state and national levels.
Despite his own success, Rogers said he’s seen increasing efforts by landlords in recent years to deploy facial recognition and other biometric identifiers in residential buildings. A first-of-its-kind law discussed during a fiery New York City Council hearing Wednesday, however, seeks to make that practice illegal once and for all. Rogers spoke in support of the proposed legislation, as did multiple city council members.
Police Accused Over Use of Facial Recognition at King Charles’s Coronation
The Metropolitan police has been accused of using the coronation to stage the biggest live facial recognition operation in British history.
The force said on Wednesday it intended to use the controversial technology, which scans faces and matches them against a list of people police want for alleged crimes and could identify convicted terrorists mingling in the crowds.
A leading academic expert said the number of people whose faces would be scanned would make it the largest deployment yet of live facial recognition (LFR) in the U.K.
Emmanuelle Andrews of the campaign group Liberty said: “The fact LFR is being used at the coronation is extremely worrying. LFR is a dystopian tool and dilutes all our rights and liberties.”
Instagram, Google See Surge in Reports of Online Child Abuse + More
Instagram, Google See Surge in Reports of Online Child Abuse
Reports of child exploitation online increased at many of the biggest tech and social media firms over the last year, including Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. TikTok, Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch, Reddit Inc., and the chat apps Omegle and Discord Inc. also saw increases, according to a Tuesday report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The U.S. child safety agency received over 32 million reports involving online enticement, child sexual abuse material and child sex trafficking in 2022 — some 2.7 million more than the year before.
While child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, was the largest category, there was an 82% increase in reports regarding online enticement. The center partially attributes the increase to financial “sextortion,” which involves targeting kids to share explicit photographs and blackmailing them for money.
Reports from Discord and Omegle more than quintupled. Google’s reports more than doubled to 2.1 million. TikTok, Twitch and Grindr also experienced sizable increases.
In Survey, Half of U.S. Parents Believe Social Media Is Harming Their Kids
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Half of U.S. parents think social media is bad for their kids’ mental health, a new survey reveals. The finding highlights growing concerns about how these platforms affect children’s and adolescents’ well-being, according to the On Our Sleeves Movement for Children’s Mental Health, which had the Harris Poll conduct the survey.
The program encourages parents to help their kids by talking regularly about how using social media makes their children feel.
Dr. Ariana Hoet, clinical director of On Our Sleeves and a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, said, “Social media has the ability to increase anxiety and depression in children when used inappropriately, as well as potentially open them up to inappropriate sharing, hurtful language, bullying and more.”
The survey questioned more than 2,000 U.S. adults, including more than 700 parents of children younger than 18, in late March and early April.
Senators Revive Kids Online Safety Push as States Bypass Washington
Senate lawmakers this week are renewing a flurry of efforts to boost protections for kids online, which have languished on Capitol Hill as states have forged ahead with their own measures.
But despite gaining momentum in the Senate, the updated measures face familiar obstacles in the House, where leaders have been focusing on passing privacy protections for all consumers — not just kids.
Senators unveiled the revamped Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) with over two dozen co-sponsors on Tuesday, a show of force amid an increasingly crowded legislative landscape on children’s online safety.
But KOSA and the EARN IT Act, both co-led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), have become political lightning rods in Washington, with tech trade associations and digital rights groups expressing concern that the bills could hurt users’ personal privacy and free speech online. KOSA, they argue, would force companies to collect more data on kids, while EARN IT could force sites to crack down on sex education resources out of fear of liability for exposing users to lewd content.
Big Tech-Funded Groups Try to Kill Bills to Protect Children Online
At a March meeting in Annapolis, Md., that state lawmakers held to discuss proposals for new safety and privacy protections for children online, one local resident made a personal plea urging officials to reject the measure.
What Carl Szabo didn’t initially disclose in his two-minute testimony to the Maryland Senate Finance Committee: He is vice president and general counsel for NetChoice, a tech trade association that receives funding from tech giants including Amazon, Google and Facebook parent company Meta. NetChoice has vocally opposed the measure and already sued to block a similar law in California.
The session was one of dozens happening around the country this year as policymakers and consumer advocacy groups mount a sprawling push for new safeguards for children online, spurring legislation to tackle a recent groundswell of concerns that digital platforms may worsen mental health issues for young users.
The push has faced broad opposition from tech trade groups representing some of the United States’ biggest digital platforms, who have blitzed statehouses around the country in an effort to stymie the bills, even as many of their member or partner companies including Amazon remain largely mum. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Google DeepMind Boss Predicts AI as Powerful as the Human Brain Could Arrive Within the Next Few Years, Report Says
AI that is as powerful as the human brain could arrive within the next few years, according to the boss of Google-owned AI lab DeepMind. The Wall Street Journal reported the news.
Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of London-based DeepMind, believes artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a theoretical concept in the field that envisions AI matching the cognitive abilities of humans — is on the horizon as AI research accelerates.
The comments come as Google, which bought DeepMind for $500 million in 2014, is attempting to fortify its business by doubling down on AI as it seeks to fend off a challenge to its core search unit from Microsoft-backed ChatGPT developer OpenAI.
Hassabis is playing a central role in Google’s mission to advance its AI capabilities, having been announced last month as the leader of a newly formed unit at Google that brings DeepMind together with Google Brain, a separate AI research arm.
Groups Lobbying for COVID Vaccine Mandates Were Funded by Pfizer
Multiple organizations that pushed for COVID-19 vaccine mandates received funding from Pfizer, according to financial disclosures.
The Chicago Urban League President Karen Freeman-Wilson said in August 2021 that the benefits of mandates “far outweigh” concerns about them. She did not mention that her organization was on the receiving end of a $100,000 grant for a “vaccine safety and effectiveness campaign,” according to a Pfizer disclosure. That same month, the National Consumers League said it supported mandates imposed by governments and employers. The league received $75,000 from Pfizer in the third quarter of 2021 for “vaccine policy efforts.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics drew more than $250,000 from Pfizer in 2021, the bulk coming before the organization announced support for COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers. The group claimed mandates would curb COVID-19 transmission and cases.
The American Pharmacists Association, American College of Preventive Medicine, Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, American Society for Clinical Pathology, and the American College of Emergency Physicians also received grants from Pfizer before signing a letter that urged the Biden administration to impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates on private employers with 100 or more workers.
AI’s ‘Godfather’ Should Have Spoken Up Sooner
It is hard not to be worried when the so-called godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, says he is leaving Google and regrets his life’s work. Hinton, who made a critical contribution to AI research in the 1970s with his work on neural networks, told several news outlets this week that large technology companies were moving too fast on deploying AI to the public. Part of the problem was that AI was achieving human-like capabilities more quickly than experts had forecast. “That’s scary,” he told the New York Times.
Hinton’s concerns certainly make sense, but they would have been more effective if they had come several years earlier when other researchers who didn’t have retirement to fall back on were ringing the same alarm bells.
Tellingly, Hinton in a tweet sought to clarify how the New York Times characterized his motivations, worried that the article suggested he had left Google to criticize it. “Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google,” he said. “Google has acted very responsibly.”
While Hinton’s prominence in the field might have insulated him from blowback, the episode highlights a chronic problem in AI research: Large technology companies have such a stranglehold on AI research that many of their scientists are afraid of airing their concerns for fear of harming their career prospects.
Djokovic Able to Play at U.S. Open as Vaccine Mandate Set to End + More
Djokovic Able to Play at U.S. Open as Vaccine Mandate Set to End
World number one Novak Djokovic will be able to compete at the U.S. Open this year after the U.S. government said on Monday it will end its COVID-19 vaccination requirements for international travelers on May 11.
Djokovic, one of the most high-profile athletes unvaccinated against COVID-19, missed the U.S. Open in 2022 due to his vaccine status.
The 35-year-old Serb was unable to enter the country this year after unsuccessfully applying to the U.S. government for special permission to play at Indian Wells and Miami.
Djokovic has won three of his 22 major titles at the U.S. Open. The hardcourt Grand Slam will be held from Aug. 28-Sept. 10 this year.
U.S. to Drop Most COVID Vaccine Mandates Next Week as Emergency Ends
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The Biden Administration announced on Monday that it will lift most federal COVID vaccine mandates next week, as the pandemic public health emergency ends on May 11. Foreign travelers to the United States, Head Start educators, healthcare workers and noncitizens at the U.S. border will see vaccine mandates lifted. Such mandates have already been lifted for Congress and the federal court system.
Mandates will continue for many National Institutes of Health employees, as well as those at the Indian Health Service and Department of Veterans Affairs. Those agencies have their own requirements and will review them, the White House said.
The vaccine mandates divided the country when Biden ordered them to try to prevent new coronavirus cases as highly transmissible variants were spreading. At one point, they covered more than 100 million workers, the AP reported.
Some employers, especially medical facilities, may choose to continue their own mandates, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha noted. The hospital where he works has had a flu vaccine requirement for employees for 20 years, he said.
Parental Consent Proposal Throws Wrench Into Kids’ Online Safety Talks
New proposals that would require parental consent for teens to use social media are throwing a wrench into bipartisan support for kids’ online safety proposals.
Lawmakers are looking at ways to require platforms to offer updated safety tools and limit how they collect data on minors. But children’s online safety advocacy groups warn the recent surge in proposals that add a parental consent requirement could limit teens’ freedom online and put the onus on parents rather than the powerful tech companies.
“This idea … is not just missing the mark on what needs to be done, but it’s also potentially harmful to kids,” said Danny Weiss, chief advocacy officer of Common Sense Media, a children’s media safety nonprofit group.
Weiss said forcing parents to give consent to use social media will not necessarily keep kids safe from harmful content. “If you don’t change the way the sites are operated and change the way data is stored, collected and sold, then once a parent gives consent for a child to go on social media, they’re in the same cesspool of the internet we’re in today,” Weiss said.
Loneliness as Risky as Smoking up to 12 Cigarettes Daily, Surgeon General Says
Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking a dozen cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday in declaring the latest public health epidemic.
About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an 81-page report from his office. The declaration is intended to raise awareness around loneliness but won’t unlock federal funding or programming devoted to combatting the issue.
The crisis deeply worsened when COVID-19 spread, prompting schools and workplaces to shut their doors and sending millions of Americans to isolate at home away from relatives or friends.
The loneliness epidemic is hitting young people, ages 15 to 24, especially hard. The age group reported a 70% drop in time spent with friends during the same period.
Elon Musk Backs Up the ‘Godfather of AI’ Who Quit Google to Warn the Tech Could Harm Humanity
Elon Musk has weighed in on comments about the dangers of advanced AI by Geoffrey Hinton, who is nicknamed the “Godfather of AI.”
“Hinton knows what he’s talking about,” Musk tweeted in response to a Breitbart article on the subject. Hinton, who formerly worked at Google, recently gave an interview to The New York Times where he discussed his concerns that future versions of the technology could harm humanity. He told the publication he worried the technology could lead to the dissemination of fake information, among other problems.
Musk has been sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of AI for years. Recently, he put his name to an open letter that called for a six-month pause on advanced AI development. He has also discussed the potential risks of the technology in several interviews.
Despite this, the billionaire has been pushing ahead with his own generative AI project, which involves a large language model like the one that powers ChatGPT, Insider’s Kali Hays reported.
Apple, Google Working Together to Stop Unauthorized AirTag Tracking
Apple and Google announced on Tuesday that they will work together to prevent location-tracking devices — such as the AirTag — from being used to track people without their permission.
The tech companies banded together to draft an “industry specification to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth location-tracking devices for unwanted tracking,” according to a press release.
The specification will allow the location-tracking devices to be compatible with unauthorized tracking detection and alerts, which will allow users to be notified if they are being tracked by an AirTag.
Military Expanding the Use of Fitness Trackers to Detect Disease Outbreaks Such as COVID
The Pentagon is expanding the use of wearable fitness trackers to help predict outbreaks of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 as the use of the technology, such as watches and rings, spreads in the military despite early security concerns.
The Defense Innovation Unit, an entity within the Pentagon focused on pairing commercially available technology with military uses, says that it had success during the pandemic in identifying infections by marrying an artificial intelligence algorithm with a commercial device.
The breakthrough allowed the DIU to predict sickness and transmission days in advance. Its announcement comes as the Pentagon looks to apply wearable trackers across the force, not only to better detect diseases but to bolster health through sleep, diet and exercise tracking.
The project used COVID-19 data to teach an artificial intelligence algorithm to predict when a service member may start getting sick — even up to 48 hours before symptoms appear.
Samsung Bans Employees From Using AI Tools Like ChatGPT and Google Bard After an Accidental Data Leak, Report Says
Samsung has introduced a new policy banning employees from using generative AI tools like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google Bard in the workplace, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
In an internal memo viewed by Bloomberg, the company expressed concerns about data being shared on AI platforms and ending up in the hands of other users.
The new policy comes after Samsung engineers accidentally leaked internal source code by uploading it into ChatGPT in April, the memo said.