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13-Year-Old Ohio Boy Dies After Attempting the TikTok ‘Benadryl Challenge,’ His Parents Say + More
13-Year-Old Ohio Boy Dies After Attempting the TikTok ‘Benadryl Challenge,’ His Parents Say
The parents of a 13-year-old boy who died doing the TikTok “Benadryl Challenge” are warning other parents about the dangerous social media trend.
Jacob Stevens died after nearly a week on a ventilator after consuming 12 to 14 pills of the over-the-counter antihistamine in an attempt to induce hallucinations, his family told ABC6.com.
Jacob’s father, Justin Stevens, told ABC6 that Jacob and his friends were filming him as he attempted the social media challenge when his body began seizing.
The tragedy has inspired Jacob’s family to warn other parents to monitor their children’s online activity to avoid anyone else attempting the challenge. His father has also contacted local lawmakers about enacting an age restriction on buying medicine like Benadryl.
Alaska Airlines Kills the Check-in Kiosk, Brings in Face Scanners
Alaska Airlines is flying forward into the future. Or, trying to do something like that at least. The company announced a suite of changes, soon to be coming to airport lobbies, in a Tuesday press release.
For one, Alaska Airlines has proclaimed there will be no more check-in kiosks. Instead, customers will have to check in prior to arriving at the airport on their phones, personal computers, or with a gate agent in person. iPads that print bag tags will supplant kiosks. This transition will be complete at most Alaska Airlines airport locations by the end of 2023. The change will probably result in a significant user surge of the company’s smartphone app, which is probably bad for customer privacy. But don’t worry — it gets much worse.
In a single line buried towards the bottom of the news statement, the airline noted that the bag-check process will eventually involve having your full face scanned.
Facial scanning and biometric tech aren’t at all new to airports. Alaska Airlines is just the latest company to get in on the trend. But still, it’s a worrying continuation of the march towards eliminating all privacy in the name of “convenience,” which airports have been at the front lines of. There are few rules that limit where the biometric data collected at airports ends up. The facial scan data market is a largely unregulated wild west. Then, there are issues of cybersecurity, inaccuracy, and baked-in biases.
The RESTRICT Act Will Usher in a New Era of Censorship Under the Guise of ‘National Security’
Forty-five days after 9/11, the United States government passed the PATRIOT Act — a chilling law that used the guise of “national security” to greatly expand the federal government’s secret surveillance powers.
Almost 23 years later, another far-reaching bill, the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” better known by its acronym, the RESTRICT Act, is using the same national security talking point to justify further federal government encroachment on Americans’ rights.
Although the bill doesn’t mention TikTok, its authors, Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, have framed it as “the best way to counter the TikTok threat.” However, the impact of the bill extends far beyond TikTok and gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban a wide range of apps and services.
The bill also has the full support of the Biden White House which has already demonstrated that it’s no fan of free speech and is currently being sued for alleged First Amendment violations.
If the RESTRICT Act passes, the Biden admin and any future pro-censorship administrations will be handed new powers to continue their crackdowns on online speech.
Elon Musk Confirms Development of Non-Woke AI Bot ‘TruthGPT’ to Rival Microsoft and Google
In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday evening, Elon Musk discussed the potential threats artificial intelligence poses to humanity. He expressed concerns over AI chatbots being developed with liberal bias and shared plans to create a non-woke chatbot.
Musk was an early donor of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT and expressed concerns over the direction of AI development. He told Carlson that large-language models were being trained to be “politically correct.”
“I’m going to start something which I call TruthGPT,” Musk said, “or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”
Last month, Musk created a new AI company called X.AI Corp, according to the state of Nevada filings. In the same month, he signed an open letter, along with hundreds of other tech experts, urging for an immediate pause of any new chatbots from OpenAI.
Musk has rolled Twitter into X as his plans to create a so-called “everything app” could soon be a reality. This latest revelation comes after reports of Musk purchasing 1000s of GPUs (critical infrastructure for AI development).
Texas Bill Could Hand Vaccine Decisions in Schools Over to Lawmakers
A bill described as “anti-vaccine” is moving through the Texas legislature and could give lawmakers the power to make decisions about vaccines in schools rather than doctors or administrators.
SB 1024, which was recently passed by a Senate committee — and will soon be voted on by the Texas Senate and the House — could limit schools and local health departments from being able to require or recommend immunizations.
While the proposed legislation mainly focuses on ending COVID-19 restrictions and barring COVID-19 vaccine requirements, public health experts say it could have implications for any kind of vaccine.
Bills to Make ‘Vaccine Passport’ Ban Permanent, Access Vaccine Data Go to Burgum
The Bismarck Tribune reported:
Two bills on their way to Gov. Doug Burgum would make permanent the state’s “vaccine passport” ban and ease access to certain federal vaccination data.
The North Dakota Senate on Tuesday concurred with House amendments to Senate Bill 2274 by Sen. David Clemens, R-West Fargo, and passed the bill in a 29-17 vote. The state House of Representatives last week passed it, 87-3.
The bill would make permanent the 2021 ban on so-called “vaccine passports,” which is set to expire on Aug. 1. The ban prohibits state and local governments and businesses from requiring vaccination documents for access, funds or services. The bill would add vaccination status for a vaccine under federal emergency use authorization to the state’s ban.
The 2021 Legislature passed the law amid opposition to potential, government-mandated COVID-19 vaccinations. The ban applies to state and local government entities and private businesses but has many exceptions to its provisions, such as for healthcare and long-term care providers, correctional facilities, colleges and universities.
‘Shut It off Immediately’: The Health Industry Responds to Data Privacy Crackdown
A series of federal data privacy crackdowns is complicating how healthcare companies market their services online. The Federal Trade Commission has led the way in the new enforcement push, fining telehealth companies for violating their customers’ privacy and barring them from doing so in the future. The director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights said her staff has launched its own investigation, calling online health data collection “problematic” and “widespread.”
The agency also recently sought to update health data privacy protections to bar providers and insurers from releasing information about a patient seeking or obtaining a legal abortion.
That’s upending longstanding business practices and sending the healthcare industry scrambling. Firms are in some cases cutting ties with tech giants like Google and Facebook as they try to understand the regulatory landscape and measure the fallout to their bottom lines.
For consumers, healthcare industry experts said, the shift offers more privacy, but could also make it more difficult to find primary care, mental health and other medical services online.
The backdrop for this new concern is a rising trend of Americans receiving information or services from mental health apps, telehealth services and hospital websites. People may not know these services are capturing detailed personal information that is then used for marketing and advertising.
Social Media Is Fueling Enthusiasm for New Weight Loss Drugs. Are Regulators Watching?
Suzette Zuena is her own best advertisement for weight loss. But she’s not just spreading her message in person. She’s also doing it on Instagram. And she’s not alone. A chorus of voices is singing these drugs’ praises. Last summer, investment bank Morgan Stanley found mentions of one of these drugs on TikTok had tripled. People are streaming into doctors’ offices to inquire about what they’ve heard are miracle drugs.
What these patients have heard, doctors said, is nonstop hype, even misinformation, from social media influencers. “I’ll catch people asking for the skinny pen, the weight loss shot, or Ozempic,” said Priya Jaisinghani, an endocrinologist and clinical assistant professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Competition to claim a market that could be worth $100 billion a year for drugmakers alone has triggered a wave of advertising that has provoked the concern of regulators and doctors worldwide. But their tools for curbing the ads that go too far are limited — especially when it comes to social media. Regulatory systems are most interested in pharma’s claims, not necessarily those of doctors or their enthused patients.
Social media users and influencers — whether with white coats or ordinary patients — are hopping on every platform to spread the news of positive weight loss outcomes. There are those, for instance, who had gastric bypass surgery that didn’t work and are now turning to TikTok for guidance, support and hope as they begin taking a GLP-1. There’s even a poop-centric Facebook group in which people discuss the sometimes fraught topic of the drugs’ effect on their bowel movements.
WhatsApp and Signal Unite Against Online Safety Bill Amid Privacy Concerns
The rival chat apps WhatsApp and Signal have joined forces in a rare show of unity to protest against the online safety bill, which they say could undermine the U.K.’s privacy and safety.
In an open letter signed by the heads of both organizations as well as five other encrypted chat apps, the executives say the bill could be used to in effect outlaw end-to-end encryption, which prevents anyone but the intended recipient of a message from seeing its contents.
“In short, the bill poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every U.K. citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world while emboldening hostile governments who may seek to draft copycat laws.”
Last month, WhatsApp’s chief, Will Cathcart, said the app would leave the U.K. rather than submit to a requirement to weaken encryption.
There’s Another Pandemic Raging. It’s Targeting the Young and Online. + More
There’s Another Pandemic Raging. It’s Targeting the Young and Online.
A pandemic rages uncontrolled, a damaging and even deadly plague sweeping across a wide swath of society. The scientific evidence of its dangers is massive and irrefutable. Its worst harm is inflicted on the young, who are the most vulnerable to its contagion, and whose injuries may well prove irreversible with time.
The last time the nation faced such a threat, leaders panicked and overreacted, understandably at first. But then they failed to course-correct even as the scientific data plainly guided them to do so. Consequently, enormous and tragic collateral damage occurred in the form of other health risks left untreated, more than a year of vital learning lost by schoolchildren, increases in mental illness, drug abuse and suicide, not to mention the destruction of countless businesses and economic livelihoods.
In the current pandemic, we are committing the opposite mistake. As social media — “antisocial media” would be more accurate — permeates society, wreaking proven, ruinous damage on the emotional health of children, the trust of Americans in their institutions, the ability of those institutions to act against daunting national challenges, even the ability to sort truth from often malicious fiction, we are doing … nothing.
Elon Musk Claims the U.S. Government Had ‘Full Access’ to Private Twitter DMs
Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed in an interview that the U.S. government has “full access” to users’ private direct messages, saying knowing that information blew his mind.
In an excerpt of his Fox News interview with host Tucker Carlson, Musk told Carlson that he was shocked to find out about the government’s ability to read users’ direct messages on his platform.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk, who recently founded an artificial intelligence company called X.AI, told Carlson in the interview set to air on Tuesday. “I was not aware of that.”
“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked Musk. “Yes,” Musk replied to Carlson.
How This New Banking Trojan Can Steal Your Financial Information
Yet another Android banking trojan is hiding among other apps, and this one is super dangerous. A recent report from Cyble is warning all Android users to be on the lookout and to be extra careful when it comes to protecting their data.
According to the report, this new banking trojan is capable of changing its app icon and stealing your passwords, text messages and other sensitive data. Because it can change itself, researchers have named this new trojan “Chameleon.” The Chameleon has been active since January 2023, and it can abuse the Android operating system’s Accessibility Services to completely take over devices, just like many other smartphone malware campaigns can.
What makes the Chameleon Trojan stand out (no pun intended), however, is the way that it pretends to be other apps while it’s performing these malicious acts. That’s not something that I’ve heard of before, as it can even change its icon so that you think it’s just another commonly used app on your phone.
Some of the other capabilities it has include keylogging, launching overlay attacks, harvesting SMS text messages, preventing itself from being uninstalled, stealing cookies and automatically uninstalling itself, which is pretty impressive considering it’s only been around since January.
While this trojan is currently spreading through Australia and Poland, it’s a matter of time before it spreads globally, so be sure to take precautions to keep yourself safe.
The Crackdown on Pixel Tracking in Telehealth Is a Warning for Every Startup
Healthcare startups are scrambling to reassess how their websites and apps are built, and how third parties may, inadvertently or not, be putting patients’ protected health information at risk.
In March, U.S. mental health startup Cerebral admitted it shared the private health information of more than 3 million users with Facebook, Google, TikTok and other ad giants via so-called tracking pixels. These near-invisible bits of code are typically embedded in web pages to share information about users’ activity, often for analytics. Cerebral said these trackers inadvertently collected sensitive user data since it began operating in October 2019.
This data lapse is the third-largest breach of health data in 2023, according to the HHS, which is investigating the breach. However, while Cerebral’s lapse ranks among the most serious and damaging, the breach is just one of many currently being investigated by HHS — and this list is likely to grow.
Last year, a joint investigation by STAT and The Markup found that dozens of hospital websites and telehealth startups were sharing patients’ medical information with advertisers and tech giants.
COVID Exposure Apps Are Headed for a Mass Extinction Event
Within a week of COVID-19 shutting down the world in 2020, teams at archrivals Apple and Google partnered on a rare joint project. They developed a way to log people’s proximity using Bluetooth chips in iPhones and Android phones, enabling the creation of apps that let someone who tested positive for the virus anonymously notify fellow users whom they’d been near in the preceding few days. Those alerted to the exposure could then isolate, test, and quarantine, hopefully slowing the spread of COVID.
COVID is still around, but the grand experiment in semi-automated contact tracing by smartphone is now nearing its end in the U.S., following similar shutdowns in many other countries as concerns about the virus have eased.
On May 11, the Biden administration will stop paying for the two cloud servers that underpin the U.S. system and power exposure-tracking apps offered by individual states. States will now have to boot up their own servers, and in many cases redesign their apps, if they want to keep the alerts flowing.
Though a few, including California, are considering the idea, it remains to be seen whether any will follow through. California’s Department of Public Health did not provide comment for this story by publication time.
Elon Musk Founds New Artificial Intelligence Company Called X.AI
Twitter owner Elon Musk has founded a new artificial intelligence company named X.AI, according to a Nevada business filing from last month. The filing, dated March 9, lists Musk as the company’s sole director and Jared Birchall, who manages Musk’s family office, as its secretary.
Musk has been publicly skeptical of the future of artificial intelligence in the past and has even called for a complete AI development pause, citing “risks to society” he says the technology poses.
In an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson that will air next week, Musk warned that “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production.”
“In the sense that it has the potential — however, small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential of civilization destruction,” he said.
Alphabet Loses $55 Billion in Market Value After Samsung Reportedly Considers Replacing Google With Bing in Its Phone
Alphabet stock slid as much as 4% on Monday, erasing about $55 billion in market value after a report from The New York Times suggested that competition is heating up in the mobile search market.
The report said that Samsung is considering replacing Google as the default search engine across its lineup of devices in favor of Microsoft’s Bing Search, which could put about $3 billion in annual revenue at risk for Alphabet.
A similar contract between Alphabet and Apple, which is worth about $20 billion in annual revenue to Alphabet, is due for renewal later this year.
Google employees were shocked when they learned in March that Samsung was considering replacing Google, and internal messages of Alphabet employees reviewed by The New York Times showed “panic” among staff.
Montana Passes TikTok Ban: Here’s Why It’s Probably Unenforceable
The Montana House voted Friday to approve a bill banning TikTok in the state, the first of its kind in the U.S. — though it’s unclear how the state would be able to ever enforce such a ban.
Montana’s Republican-led House voted 54-43 to approve the bill and send it to Gov. Greg Gianforte (R), who is expected to sign the bill after claiming last year that TikTok posed a “significant threat” to state security and data privacy.
The bill prohibits mobile app stores from allowing Montana residents to download TikTok effectively on January 1, 2024 — though it does not specify how the state would enforce or monitor aspects of the ban.
The Corrupted Science Behind Biden’s COVID Vaccine Mandates
President Joe Biden decreed on Sept. 9, 2021, that more than 100 million Americans must get COVID-vaccine injections. But newly disclosed emails show that the Food and Drug Administration finding behind that order, an official certification of the jabs as “safe and effective,” was the result of a bureaucratic bait-and-switch.
The FDA had approved COVID vaccines on an emergency-use basis in December 2020, before Biden even took office. The White House assumed that was the silver bullet to enable Biden to save Americans from COVID.
But it soon became clear that many Americans were hesitating to get jabbed, in part because the FDA approval was solely for emergency use. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” he insisted in a July 21, 2021, CNN town hall. Biden’s claim was false, spurred by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to ignore any “breakthrough” COVID infections that did not result in death or hospitalization.
Newly released emails reveal that Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock was concerned because “states cannot require mandatory vaccination” without FDA final approval, according to the chief of FDA’s vaccine-review office, Marion Gruber.
Gruber warned that a thorough evaluation was needed due to “increasing evidence of association of this vaccine and development of myocarditis (especially in young males).” The White House arm-twisting spurred a “mutiny” at the FDA, as Politico put it: Gruber and her top deputy resigned in protest.
We’re Not Ready to Be Diagnosed by ChatGPT
AI may not care whether humans live or die, but tools like ChatGPT will still affect life-and-death decisions — once they become a standard tool in the hands of doctors. Some are already experimenting with ChatGPT to see if it can diagnose patients and choose treatments. Whether this is good or bad hinges on how doctors use it.
GPT-4, the latest update to ChatGPT, can get a perfect score on medical licensing exams. When it gets something wrong, there’s often a legitimate medical dispute over the answer. It’s even good at tasks we thought took human compassion, such as finding the right words to deliver bad news to patients.
These systems are developing image processing capacity as well. At this point you still need a real doctor to palpate a lump or assess a torn ligament, but AI could read an MRI or CT scan and offer a medical judgment. Ideally, AI wouldn’t replace hands-on medical work but enhance it — and yet we’re nowhere near understanding when and where it would be practical or ethical to follow its recommendations.
And it’s inevitable that people will use it to guide their own healthcare decisions just the way we’ve been leaning on “Dr. Google” for years. Despite more information at our fingertips, public health experts this week blamed an abundance of misinformation for our relatively short life expectancy — something that might get better or worse with GPT-4.
California Church Must Pay $1.2 Million for Breaking COVID Rules + More
California Church Must Pay $1.2 Million for Breaking COVID Rules
A California church that defied safety regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic by holding large, unmasked religious services must pay $1.2 million in fines, a judge has ruled.
Calvary Chapel in San Jose was fined last week for ignoring Santa Clara County’s mask-wearing rules between November 2020 and June 2021. The church will appeal, attorney Mariah Gondeiro told the San Jose Mercury News.
Calvary was one of several large California evangelical churches that flouted state and local mask-wearing and social distancing rules designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during its deadliest period.
That has led to a tangled web of court rulings and challenges. Calvary Chapel sued the county, arguing the health orders violated its religious freedom. Various courts have ruled either in favor of the church or the county.
Meta Urged to Halt Plans Allowing Minors Into the Metaverse
Dozens of advocacy organizations and children’s safety experts are calling on Meta Platforms Inc. to terminate its plans to allow minors into its new virtual reality world.
Meta is planning to invite teenagers and young adults to join its metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, in the coming months. But the groups and experts that signed the letter, which was sent to Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg on Friday, argue that minors will face harassment and privacy violations on the virtual reality app, which is only in its early stages.
“Meta must wait for more peer-reviewed research on the potential risks of the metaverse to be certain that children and teens would be safe,” wrote the groups, led by online safety groups including Fairplay, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Common Sense Media and others.
The letter points to a March report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that found users under 18 are already facing harassment from adults on the app. Researchers with the center witnessed 19 episodes of abuse directed at minors by adults, including sexual harassment, during 100 visits to the most popular worlds within Horizon Universe.
Meta has faced widespread scrutiny over the effect of its products on the mental health of youngsters. A Facebook whistleblower in 2021 accused the company of placing profits over safety and failing to protect children, particularly teenage girls who spent excessive amounts of time on Instagram.
TikTok Might Be Part of a Plot to Make Us Dumber
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp is best known for his artificial intelligence platform, but his biggest idea might be his insistence upon rescuing the West from influences that damage the nation’s intelligence.
I happened to catch Karp on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning, talking to “Too Big to Fail” author Andrew Ross Sorkin about TikTok. When most people express concern about China’s most insidious export as a national security threat, they tend to think about the platform’s ability to retrieve massive amounts of data. They see TikTok as the ultimate spyware — a cartoonish medium that snatches our secrets while we’re distracted by the vanities.
Karp has a different take. He says China is deliberately and strategically using TikTok to make us, meaning the West, “dumber and slower.” It’s the ultimate sleeper agent and a weapon to weaken us from within. He isn’t alone in his thinking. National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone has warned that Chinese control of TikTok’s algorithm could allow China to deploy influence operations among Western populations.
Lawyer: Return to Military Service a Challenge After Vaccine Mandate Lifted
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Military required service members to get the vaccine, with very few exceptions. Those refusing were usually given a ‘general discharge’ and had to leave their careers. The vaccine mandate was dropped, and some of those who left service, want to return.
Military Law attorney Sean Timmons with Tully Rinckey PLLC has represented active duty and veterans for 15 years. He said for those separated when they refused the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine, it was a tough choice.
“They ruined 10,000-plus careers by sabotaging people’s livelihoods, throwing them out arbitrarily,” he said. He said quite a few want back in now that the pandemic has waned and COVID vaccine requirements were lifted by the Department of Defense back in January.
“Everyone else is kind of withering at the recruiting station to see if they’re going to be eligible to get back in because they have to go back through the screening process,” he said. Timmons said that includes background checks, physical fitness standards, and for some getting security clearances back, a process that takes months or years.
House Democrat Presses TikTok CEO for ‘Unanswered’ Questions on Data Privacy, Kids’ Safety
The top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee is pressing TikTok to answer questions raised by members of the panel about data privacy, kids’ online safety and national security concerns.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce panel, sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew pressing him to address “unanswered questions” raised by members of the panel during a hearing with the top executive last month.
“We were hoping that you could allay some of our concerns at the hearing, but unfortunately many of our questions remain unanswered,” Pallone wrote, asking Shou to reply by April 27.
The questions ask TikTok to detail how it collects and uses data, as well as specifically how it caters to minors on the platform.
Coalition Sues California Attorney General Over Alleged Social Media Censorship
A coalition including satire website The Babylon Bee, social media company Minds, Inc., and podcaster Tim Pool has sued California Attorney General Rob Bonta for enforcing a state law they claim is unconstitutional on the grounds it violates free speech.
The legislation, authored by Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), regulates social media platforms, requiring them to report data on the enforcement of their moderation policies to the state.
“The public and policymakers deserve to know when and how social media companies are amplifying certain voices and silencing others,” Gabriel said in a statement. “This is an important first step in a broader effort to protect our democracy and better regulate social media platforms.”
The law also mandates social media companies publicly post their policies regarding “hate speech,” “disinformation,” “extremism,” and “radicalization” on their platforms.
Inside the U.S. Government’s Fight to Ban TikTok
For nearly three years, the U.S. government has tried to ban TikTok. Concerns over the app’s alleged risks to national security have spanned two presidential administrations and forged alliances among Republicans and Democrats. At a time of heightened partisanship, TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have become the focus of anti-China policy — a convenient villain most lawmakers are prepared to fight.
Last month, that outrage hit a fever pitch. The Biden administration reportedly threatened to ban TikTok if it didn’t find an American owner. House lawmakers brought the company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, in for an explosive hearing. At the same time, a group of senators introduced the RESTRICT Act, a bill authorizing the government to ban the app and others like it. This maelstrom of action has proved that the government is more determined to ban TikTok than ever before.
But with a ban seemingly on the horizon, critics fear actions to take TikTok offline could do more to chill free speech on the internet than to protect the safety and security of American user data. Other experts argue the government’s attacks against the app are unjustified, claiming there’s little evidence to prove the app has inflicted more harm than Facebook or Google.
Montana Close to Becoming 1st State to Completely Ban TikTok
Montana lawmakers moved one step closer Thursday to passing a bill to ban TikTok from operating in the state, a move that’s bound to face legal challenges but also serve as a testing ground for the TikTok-free America that many national lawmakers have envisioned.
Montana’s proposal, which has backing from the state’s GOP-controlled legislature, is more sweeping than bans in place in nearly half the states and the U.S. federal government that prohibit TikTok on government devices.
The House endorsed the bill 60-39 on Thursday. A final House vote will likely take place Friday before the bill goes to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. He has banned TikTok on government devices in Montana. The Senate passed the bill 30-20 in March.
European Data Protection Board Launches ChatGPT Task Force
The EU’s European Data Protection Board, or EDPB, is launching a task force to monitor ChatGPT, a move that indicates that the bloc’s privacy regulators are getting serious about looking into the LLM’s potential privacy violations.
The EDPB announced its new initiative in a brief, two-sentence statement in a press release on Thursday, the same day the Spanish Data Protection Agency, known as the AEPD in Spanish, stated it was launching a preliminary investigation into OpenAI over possible privacy violations by ChatGPT. The Spanish regulator joined Italy, which became the first country in the world to ban ChatGPT, albeit temporarily, in scrutinizing the chatbot.
The EDPB is charged with ensuring the General Data Protection Regulation, Europe’s landmark privacy law, is applied consistently throughout the EU and includes the data protection authorities of each member state. The Spanish regulator had asked the board to review the ChatGPT issue last week due to the chatbot’s “large potential impact on the public’s privacy rights.”
Joe Rogan Issues Warning After AI-Generated Version of His Podcast Surfaces + More
Joe Rogan Issues Warning After AI-Generated Version of His Podcast Surfaces
Joe Rogan has warned of the growing threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI) after a version of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was created entirely through the use of AI technology, sparking concern among listeners. “This is going to get very slippery, kids,” Rogan wrote on Twitter on April 11 in response to a video of the fake show shared on the social media platform by content creator Farzad Mesbahi.
The fake video is titled “Joe Rogan AI Experience Episode #001” and features “guest” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the creator of the artificial intelligence system ChatGPT.
Throughout the fake podcast, the AI-generated host “Rogan” and AI-generated guest “Altman” discuss various subjects including the future of AI, ethical issues surrounding such advanced technology, whether or not advanced AI could take jobs away from American workers, and, rather ironically, concerns regarding fake AI content, among other issues.
Rogan fans expressed their concerns over the AI-generated show, with many noting how realistic it is. Others shared their worries about the pace at which AI technology is progressing. The video comes as experts have warned of limited planning and management regarding advanced AI systems despite companies in recent months racing to deploy more powerful AI technologies.
Amazon Leaps Headlong Into the AI Rat Race
If you thought big daddy Amazon would stay out of the AI rat race, then you’d be wrong. The online retail giant is initially staying away from any user-side generative AI to start and is instead offering a business-centric model through its Amazon Web Services.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Amazon had finally decided to join its big tech brothers Microsoft, Google, and Meta in the AI shoving match. According to the report, Amazon isn’t really offering its own AI, but is sitting back and offering a “neutral platform” for businesses to incorporate separate AI models.
AWS is going to offer access to Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, Stability AI’s image generation services, and AI21 Labs’ large language model that powers programs like Wordtune Spices. There’s also Amazon Titan, the company’s own language model, but according to the report Amazon isn’t designing its own ChatGPT-like interface.
All this means the online retail giant isn’t putting any multi-billion dollar investments into a separate company like Microsoft has with OpenAI or sinking billions of dollars into generative artificial intelligence like Google and Meta have. The only direct competition is Amazon’s new CodeWhisperer, a generative AI model used to generate code. Microsoft’s similar GitHub CoPilot has already been sued by developers who say Microsoft blatantly ignored their code license.
Several News Organizations Go Silent on Twitter After Elon Musk Adds ‘Government-Funded Media’ Label to Some Accounts
Elon Musk‘s decision to label some news organizations as “government-funded media” on Twitter has led to various outlets quitting the platform.
Twitter on Sunday added the label to some media accounts, including NPR and the BBC. Twitter’s label has prompted at least four other news organizations to go silent on Musk’s platform.
Public Broadcasting Service, a U.S. broadcaster, told Axios it stopped sharing posts from its Twitter account after the “government-funded media” label was added to its account over the weekend.
Mayor Adams and NYPD Unveil Dystopian Robot Dog to Fight Crime
Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Police Department have reintroduced the controversial robotic dog for surveillance patrols, and there’s another surprise this time: an R2-D2-style robot. These robots are set to debut in Times Square, making this already bustling area of the city appear even more than dystopian ever.
According to local news ABC 7, Mayor Adams said Tuesday he is modernizing the NYPD with the latest technology to fight crime.
The return of the $74,000 Boston Dynamics’ four-legged robotic dog called “Digidog” is set to assist the NYPD in investigating high-risk or hazardous incidents. Digidog first appeared on the streets in 2020 and was shelved months later after civil rights advocates called the technology ‘aggressive policing.’
Besides the robotic canine, the NYPD will add a K5 Autonomous Security Robot to its force and the StarChase GPS system. Think of the K5 robot as Robocop; Its R2-D2 style with real-time situational awareness and cameras will allow the NYPD to monitor streets. There’s yet to be a word if the police will be operating facial tracking software from the robot’s cameras.
Bill Would Let Parents ‘Opt Out’ of School Mask Mandates
Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday advanced legislation aimed at letting parents bypass requirements for students to wear face masks in school.
The House Health Committee approved the legislation that harkens back to disputes over public health orders during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill says parents of a student at a K-12 school have the right to “opt his or her child out” of any policy for students to wear a face covering at school, at a school function, on a school bus or at a school bus stop.
The bill now moves to the full Alabama House of Representatives for debate. “This is a parental rights bill,” Republican Rep. Chip Brown, the sponsor of the bill, told the committee. “It’s a bill that basically says, as a parent, that I should make the health decisions for my children, not the state.”
Two Million People Bolted From America’s Major Cities Since the Lockdowns
Millions of people left major cities in the United States between 2020 and 2022, years dominated by government lockdown policies and elevated crime rates, according to an analysis released last week by the Economic Innovation Group.
Data released by the Census Bureau at the end of last month demonstrate that counties home to major cities in California, Illinois and New York witnessed the nation’s most stark numeric population decline last year, while those home to major cities in Arizona, Texas, and Florida saw the largest numeric population growth.
Los Angeles County, California, lost more residents than any other county in the United States as the population fell by 91,000 between July 2021 and July 2022. Cook County, Illinois, whose county seat is Chicago, saw its population decrease by 68,000 over the same time horizon.
Population trends correspond with the cities and states which enforced aggressive lockdown mandates. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom only reversed the state of emergency established amid the spread of COVID as late as February 2023, while Chicago Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot informed unvaccinated residents as late as December 2021 that their “time is up” and said her health mandates were “inconvenient by design.”
Exclusive: Most People Are Put Off by TikTok’s Personal Data Gathering
People have strong feelings about TikTok harvesting and accessing sensitive data about them, according to our survey of 1,000 TechRadar Pro readers (500 in the U.S. and 500 in the U.K.).
We found that the majority of those that use the platform do care if the company tracks their biometric data, the way they look, or if it harvests the data generated through their devices’ sensors.
What’s more, the majority of those using the platform would either be “very nervous” or “cautious” about the possibility of TikTok accessing their sensitive data. When asked if they thought TikTok gathered more sensitive data compared to other social media companies, the majority on both sides of the pond said they didn’t know, and some also added that it didn’t really matter.
AI Experts Urge E.U. to Tighten the Reins on Tools Like ChatGPT
A group of prominent artificial intelligence researchers is calling on the European Union to expand its proposed rules for the technology to expressly target tools like ChatGPT, arguing in a new brief that such a move could “set the regulatory tone” globally.
The E.U.’s AI Act initially proposed new transparency and safety requirements for specific “high-risk” uses of the software, such as in education or law enforcement. But it sidestepped so-called “general purpose” AI, like OpenAI’s popular chatbot, which can serve many functions.
Now, as tech companies rush to integrate AI into more everyday products, a group of top AI scholars is calling on E.U. officials to treat tools like ChatGPT as “high risk,” too.
The brief, signed by former Google AI ethicist Timnit Gebru and Mozilla Foundation President Mark Surman, among dozens of others, calls for European leaders to take an “expansive” approach to what they cover under their proposed rules, warning that “technologies such as ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, and Bard are just the tip of the iceberg.”
While chatbots like ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bard are currently generating significant attention, the group cautioned policymakers against focusing too narrowly on them, which “would ignore a large class of models which could cause significant harm if left unchecked.”