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At Head Start, Federal Judge Permanently Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate for Staff + More
At Head Start, Federal Judge Permanently Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate for Staff
School COVID requirements and the controversies surrounding them largely feel like a thing of the past. But at the country’s Head Start and Early Head Start centers, which serve low-income children 5 and under, the debate has lingered, with lawsuits challenging the programs’ vaccine mandate.
The debate was settled on Friday, at least for now. A federal judge in Texas vacated the mandate, meaning it can’t be enforced anywhere in the U.S.
The opinion issued Friday by Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, makes that injunction permanent and prohibits Head Start programs in any state, territory or tribal community from requiring the vaccine.
Bill Gates Dismisses Mounting Calls to Pause AI Chatbot Development
Reuters reports that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates dismissed calls to halt the development of more advanced AI chatbots more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4. Last week, an open letter signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio called for a six-month pause in developing new AI tools. Gates stated that the proposed pause in AI chatbot development would not “solve the challenges.”
According to Gates, the focus should be on effectively integrating AI technology into society. He finds it hard to understand how a pause could work globally with so many firms working on the technology.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and more than 1,000 AI experts signed an open letter last week demanding the development of systems “more powerful” than GPT-4 to be paused for six months to weigh the risks/benefits to society.
Also, the tech ethics organization Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission late last week, asserting GPT-4 violates federal consumer protection law. And Italy just banned the AI chatbot, while Germany considers banning it.
How TikTok’s Algorithm ‘Exploits the Vulnerability’ of Children
It is the home of dance tutorial videos and viral comedy sketches. But it is also host to self-harm and eating disorder content, with an algorithm that has been called the “crack cocaine of social media.”
Now, the information commissioner has concluded that up to 1.4 million children under the age of 13 have been allowed access to TikTok, with the watchdog accusing the Chinese firm of not doing enough to check underage children were not using the app.
“There is self-harm content, there is nonsensical content about cures for mental health [conditions],” said Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which produced a report last December that suggested TikTok’s algorithm was pushing harmful content to some users within minutes of their signing up.
“The algorithm recognizes vulnerability and, instead of seeing it as something it should be careful around, it sees it as a potential point of addiction — of helping to maximize time on the platform for that child by serving them up content that might trigger some of the pre-existing concerns.”
Lawmakers Are Clueless About Social Media. They’ll Regulate It Anyway.
Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently signed two state bills that go to enormous lengths to restrict access to social media for those under 18. While nearly everyone agrees that social media can affect young people in troubling ways, this is the most sweeping legislation the country has seen to take control away from young people and give it to their parents.
But how will young people verify their age to the app? And how will a parent verify to the app that they are indeed that minor’s parent? If you don’t like how much information tech companies have about you and your children now, how will you feel about uploading copies of your driver’s license and your 16-year-old’s birth certificate to allow them to use Snapchat?
These problems are so thorny that even Common Sense Media, as centrist and establishment an organization as you could imagine, came out against one of the Utah bills. (Though it did support the bill requiring companies to avoid features likely to cause “addiction,” which is so difficult to define that it will be impossible to implement.)
The law requires social media companies to create processes enabling young people and parents to verify their ages and identities. But Jason Kelley, the associate director of digital strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the directives are far too vague to be effective.
Central Bank Digital Currencies a Foundational Threat to America’s Economic Systems: Think Tank
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) pose a foundational threat to America’s economic systems with absolutely no upsides, according to a recent analysis from the Cato Institute, which stressed that a U.S. CBDC will threaten citizens’ “core freedoms” from financial privacy to personal liberty.
Even though there are no valid reasons for the U.S. government to issue a CBDC when “the costs are so high and the benefits are so low,” significant efforts are being made by government officials and central bankers to launch the digital currency “in a bid to solidify government control over payments systems,” said the institute’s assessment report published Tuesday.
“As entrenched as this effort may already be, a U.S. CBDC would ultimately usurp the private sector and endanger Americans’ core freedoms. Therefore, it should have no place in the American economy. Congress should explicitly prohibit the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury from issuing a CBDC in any form.”
The Biden administration has thrown its support behind the CBDC project, releasing a paper last September analyzing the possibilities of introducing a digital dollar.
Italy Flocks to VPNs Amidst ChatGPT Ban
After Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT and announced an investigation into OpenAI, residents of the country apparently grew interested in VPNs. After the Italian Data Protection Authority announced the ban and investigation, search volume surrounding the VPNs reportedly spiked in Italy — likely in an attempt to research how to circumvent the AI ban.
Theoretically, those in Italy could still access ChatGPT during the ban by using a VPN to make it appear as if that user is accessing the artificial intelligence from another location on the planet. After Italian officials announced the temporary ban of ChatGPT, search volume for “VPN” spiked in Italy beginning later that day and has remained at a heightened level throughout the week.
The Italian Data Protection Authority announced its ban of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last Friday. Officials were concerned with how OpenAI and the chatbot collect and store user data, and pose that the tech company is breaking the European Union’s privacy law.
Apple’s Tim Cook Says Today’s Kids Are ‘Born Digital,’ Warns Parents to ‘Set Some Hard Rails’ Around Screen Time + More
Tim Cook Says Today’s Kids Are ‘Born Digital’ and Warns Parents to ‘Set Some Hard Rails’ Around Screen Time
Despite leading one of the most important tech companies in the world, Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn’t want to see kids glued to the company’s products.
“Kids are born digital, they’re digital kids now,” Cook was quoted saying in a lengthy profile of him published in GQ on Monday. “And it is, I think, really important to set some hard rails around it.”
Cook, who doesn’t have children, previously said that he didn’t want to see his nephew using social media and even argued that tech usage in schools should be limited.
In the GQ profile, Cook suggested that Apple is not driven by fostering digital addiction. “We don’t want people using our phones too much. We’re not incentivized for that. We don’t want that. We provide tools so people don’t do that,” Cook said.
TikTok Fined $15.9 Million by U.K. Watchdog Over Misuse of Kids’ Data
Britain’s privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty Tuesday for misusing children’s data and violating other protections for young users’ personal information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued a fine of 12.7 million pounds ($15.9 million) to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people.
The British watchdog, which was investigating data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts.
TikTok didn’t adequately identify and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, as required by Britain’s data protection laws, the agency said.
University Facing Class-Action Over COVID Campus Lockdown
A lawsuit against the University of Delaware over its campus shutdown and halting of in-person classes because of coronavirus can proceed as a class action on behalf of thousands of students who were enrolled and paid tuition in spring 2020, a federal judge has ruled.
Friday’s decision came just days before a scheduled hearing this week on the university’s request for the judge to rule in its favor without a trial. That hearing has been postponed indefinitely.
In his ruling, Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected the University of Delaware’s argument that the plaintiffs, who accuse the school of breach of contract and unjust enrichment, lacked standing to sue. The university also argued unsuccessfully that it is impossible to know who actually paid tuition because some students may have used outside sources like scholarships.
The plaintiffs have argued that, before the pandemic, the school treated in-person and online classes as separate offerings and charged more for some in-person programs than they did for similar online classes. They also noted that the university charged them fees for the gym, student centers and health center, sometimes at higher rates than those paid by online students and that the school kept those fees while denying them the services.
Nearly All Hospital Websites Send Tracking Data to Third Parties — Most Common Recipients of Data Were Alphabet, Meta, Adobe and AT&T
Third-party tracking is used on almost all U.S. hospital websites, endangering patient privacy, a cross-sectional observational study found.
Of 3,747 hospitals included in the 2019 American Hospital Association (AHA) annual survey, 98.6% of their website home pages had at least one third-party data transfer, and 94.3% had at least one third-party cookie.
“In the U.S., third-party tracking is ubiquitous and extensive,” researchers led by Ari B. Friedman, MD, Ph.D. of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, wrote in Health Affairs. “The high number of entities engaged in tracking on hospital websites heightens potential privacy risks to patients.”
The tracking data most commonly went to Google‘s parent company Alphabet (98.5% of homepages), followed by Meta (formerly Facebook), which was used in 55.6% of hospital homepages. Adobe Systems and AT&T collected data from 31.4% and 24.6% of hospital pages, respectively.
Senate Votes to Bar Any Future COVID Mask, Vaccine Mandates in Texas
The Dallas Morning News reported:
Local Texas governments and public schools wouldn’t be able to require face masks, vaccinations or business closures to fight COVID-19 under a bill the GOP-led Senate approved Monday.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott named such policy a priority. In a statement, Patrick said the measures will prevent local governments from ever again taking “extreme measures to shut down businesses, schools and houses of worship.”
The legislation, which also applies to the state, passed 20-11 largely along party lines with no debate. It now heads to the House.
ChatGPT Has a Big Privacy Problem
When OpenAI released GPT-3 in July 2020, it offered a glimpse of the data used to train the large language model. Millions of pages scraped from the web, Reddit posts, books, and more are used to create the generative text system, according to a technical paper. Scooped up in this data is some of the personal information you share about yourself online. This data is now getting OpenAI into trouble.
On March 31, Italy’s data regulator issued a temporary emergency decision demanding OpenAI stop using the personal information of millions of Italians that’s included in its training data. According to the regulator, Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, OpenAI doesn’t have the legal right to use people’s personal information in ChatGPT. In response, OpenAI has stopped people in Italy from accessing its chatbot while it provides responses to the officials, who are investigating further.
The action is the first taken against ChatGPT by a Western regulator and highlights privacy tensions around the creation of giant generative AI models, which are often trained on vast swathes of internet data. Just as artists and media companies have complained that generative AI developers have used their work without permission, the data regulator is now saying the same for people’s personal information.
Samsung Workers Made a Major Error by Using ChatGPT
Samsung workers have unwittingly leaked top-secret data whilst using ChatGPT to help them with tasks.
The company allowed engineers at its semiconductor arm to use the AI writer to help fix problems with their source code. But in doing so, the workers inputted confidential data, such as the source code itself for a new program, internal meeting notes data relating to their hardware.
The upshot is that in just under a month, there were three recorded incidences of employees leaking sensitive information via ChatGPT. Since ChatGPT retains user input data to further train itself, these trade secrets from Samsung are now effectively in the hands of OpenAI, the company behind the AI service.
Samsung Electronics sent out a warning to its workers on the potential dangers of leaking confidential information in the wake of the incidents, saying that such data is impossible to retrieve as it is now stored on the servers belonging to OpenAI. In the semiconductor industry, where competition is fierce, any sort of data leak could spell disaster for the company in question.
Australia Just Banned TikTok on Government Devices. Is It Really Worse Than Google or Insta?
It was an app first derided as trivial and tedious, cast aside as the space reserved for dancing and internet trends. Now the app is banned from Australian government devices over security concerns. TikTok Australia has argued the video-sharing app, which attracts more than 1.3 global users, is being unfairly singled out.
An analysis by Australian cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 stacked TikTok against its social media competitors — as well as other popular platforms — to understand whether the concern around TikTok was being overstated.
Tom Kenyon, a non-executive director of Internet 2.0, said the report’s findings confirm there is more than enough cause for concern. “TikTok is collecting a whole bunch of information that it doesn’t need to run its app,” he told The Feed.
TikTok also tracks what other apps you have running on your phone, has access to your clipboard which could contain passwords, logs your keystrokes, and collects location data so precise, it knows how high above sea level you are, Mr. Kenyon said. “TikTok takes more than anyone else.”
America’s Teens Are in Crisis. States Are Racing to Respond. + More
America’s Teens Are in Crisis. States Are Racing to Respond.
Responding to clamoring from parents, and dreadful stories of youth suicide and hospitalizations, leaders in both parties convey an increasing sense of urgency to address epidemic levels of teenage anxiety, depression, loneliness and lashing out. About two dozen governors described teenage mental health as a crisis during their state-of-the-state addresses this year and proposed budgets that would expand treatment options.
The need is glaring; the pandemic supercharged trend lines that have grown worse as America’s social fabric has been pulled at the seams and social media has grown ubiquitous. Leaders across the ideological spectrum are surging resources into expanding access to mental healthcare for kids, especially those who lack strong family support systems. It’s essential to create sturdy lifelines that students know about and can grab hold of when a crisis develops.
Many places are scaling up or replicating programs that show promise. But the nation’s leaders are behind; even as they acknowledge the problem, there is a vast number of difficult-to-solve issues — such as onboarding enough mental health professionals and responding to the nation’s deepening cultural decay — after they have already become major problems. The country’s leaders should make this a long-term commitment, even as federal relief dollars dry up.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows 42% of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness and 22% say they seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021. It’s much worse among girls. “It’s an issue that transcends both state and party lines,” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), who has made teen mental health his top priority as chair of the National Governors Association.
Why We Need to Pause AI Research and Consider the Real Dangers
I started working in the philosophy and ethics of artificial intelligence in large part because I was enthralled by its potential as the most transformative technology of my lifetime.
Google’s DeepMind says its mission is to “solve intelligence” and from there use the enhanced intelligence to solve all our other problems — global poverty, climate change, cancer, you name it. I find this vision compelling, and I still believe AI has that potential.
But I have reluctantly come to believe that path there is much narrower and much more dangerous than I once hoped. This is why I signed the Future of Life Institute’s open letter calling for a moratorium on the further development of the most powerful modern AI (notably “large language models” like OpenAI’s GPT).
First, there are dangers of AI already present but quickly amplifying in both power and prevalence: misinformation, algorithmic bias, surveillance, and intellectual stultification, to name a few. I think these worries are already sufficient to call for more reflection before we proceed.
ICE Is Grabbing Data From Schools and Abortion Clinics
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are using an obscure legal tool to demand data from elementary schools, news organizations, and abortion clinics in ways that, some experts say, may be illegal.
While these administrative subpoenas, known as 1509 custom summonses, are meant to be used only in criminal investigations about illegal imports or unpaid customs duties, WIRED found that the agency has deployed them to seek records that seemingly have little or nothing to do with customs violations, according to legal experts and several recipients of the 1509 summonses.
A WIRED analysis of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoena tracking database, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, found that agents issued custom summons more than 170,000 times from the beginning of 2016 through mid-August 2022. The primary recipients of 1509s include telecommunications companies, major tech firms, money transfer services, airlines, and even utility companies. But it’s the edge cases that have drawn the most concern among legal experts.
The outlier cases include custom summonses that sought records from a youth soccer league in Texas; surveillance video from a major abortion provider in Illinois; student records from an elementary school in Georgia; health records from a major state university’s student health services; data from three boards of elections or election departments; and data from a Lutheran organization that provides refugees with humanitarian and housing support.
Clearview AI Scraped 30 Billion Images From Facebook and Gave Them to Cops: It Puts Everyone Into a ‘Perpetual Police Line-Up’
A controversial facial recognition database, used by police departments across the nation, was built in part with 30 billion photos the company scraped from Facebook and other social media users without their permission, the company’s CEO recently admitted, creating what critics called a “perpetual police line-up,” even for people who haven’t done anything wrong.
The company, Clearview AI, boasts of its potential for identifying rioters at the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saving children being abused or exploited, and helping exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. But critics point to wrongful arrests fueled by faulty identifications made by facial recognition, including cases in Detroit and New Orleans.
Clearview took photos without users’ knowledge, its CEO Hoan Ton-That acknowledged in an interview last month with the BBC. Doing so allowed for the rapid expansion of the company’s massive database, which is marketed on its website to law enforcement as a tool “to bring justice to victims.”
I Treated 20,000 COVID Patients and 3 Years After the Lockdown, Here’s How We Can Do Better
Seems just like yesterday. Three years ago, in March 2020, our nation was locked down for the first time in over a century. A horrific move that upended our nation, impacted the education of our youth, crushed our thriving economy and ignited the fire of a mental health crisis along with increased substance abuse, violence and drug overdoses.
After testing, diagnosing and treating thousands of COVID-19 patients on the frontlines of what was once the COVID-19 epicenter of the world, I reflect: What have we done? What have we learned? What did we lose? What wounds have we inflicted upon ourselves and what lessons are worth remembering?
Most importantly, are we prepared for the future? How can the answer be, yes, if we are still without a definitive diagnosis of the origins of COVID-19 and without answers to guide us in the development of practical policy and protocol for a pandemic emergency preparedness plan? We may find ourselves in trouble again.
For most Americans, the collateral damage was worse than the pandemic. The mandate intentions had deleterious impacts — it reduced our military personnel, we lost good firefighters, police officers, teachers, healthcare providers and even athletes who refused to capitulate to the out-of-date, CDC regulations.
The Doctor Who Questioned Ireland’s COVID Policy and Lost His Job: ‘We Destroyed Young People’s Lives for What?’
The only Health Service Executive (HSE) doctor to criticize the restrictions imposed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic says he has no regrets about his actions, which cost him his job.
Within days of The Irish Times in September 2020 reporting his criticism of “draconian” restrictions, and his belief that low-risk people should be exposed to the virus, Dr. Martin Feeley was gone from the health service after a 45-year career. He blames former HSE chief executive Paul Reid for the decision, though Reid, when asked at the time, denied involvement.
“I was forced to resign as opposed to just walking away,” he says. (At the time, he described his exit as a resignation.) More than two years on, he remains an unrepentant critic of the approach Ireland took during the pandemic. The passage of time has cast Feeley’s original claims in a new light. His contention that COVID-19 was less serious hit the headlines, but he emphasizes he was talking about the under-65s, so those most at risk could be easily identified.
Feeley also criticized the emphasis during the pandemic on daily case numbers — “the deliberate, unforgivable terrorizing of the population” is how he puts it today. This point was echoed recently by the HSE’s former infection control chief, Prof. Martin Cormican, who said Ireland’s COVID response “depended on fear.”
End of an Era: L.A. County Lifts COVID Emergency
Los Angeles County officially ended its COVID-19 emergency declaration Friday, a milestone that comes as the region’s coronavirus case rate has fallen to its lowest level since the summer of 2021.
The county’s most visible health mandate — a universal mask order in indoor public settings — was lifted 13 months ago. And a recommendation for face coverings for the general public ended two months ago.
One change that goes into effect Monday is the end — both in L.A. County and across California — of the government-ordered COVID-19 vaccination requirement for workers at adult-care facilities, jails and prisons. Individual businesses or other institutions can still continue vaccination requirements.
Most healthcare workers are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The federal rules apply to healthcare facilities that accept money from Medicare and Medicaid. Also on Monday, California will lift its order for everyone to mask up in healthcare settings.
AI Testing of Brain Tumors Can Detect Genetic Cancer Markers in Less Than 90 Seconds, Study Finds
Genetic markers have been shown to predict a person’s likelihood of developing various types of cancer.
Now, researchers believe that new artificial intelligence (AI) tools could make it easier and faster for doctors to detect those indicators.
A team of neurosurgeons and engineers at the University of Michigan announced last week that their new AI-based diagnostic tool, DeepGlioma, is capable of pinpointing genetic mutations in brain tumors during surgery within just 90 seconds.
Study: Ignoring Social Media Can Improve Your Health
Las Vegas Review-Journal reported:
Feeling stressed or just not well overall? Maybe you should put down your phone.
A new study, from Swansea University, found reducing your social media use by just 15 minutes a day can not only improve your general health and immune function but also can improve symptoms of depression and loneliness.
The researchers found those in the Reduce group actually cut out 40 minutes of social media scrolling each day. The No Change group actually added 10 minutes of phone use, while the group specifically asked to replace scrolling with another activity added a whopping 25 minutes to their average use.
“There was a significant improvement in the Reduce group in general health, immune function, loneliness, and depression compared to the other groups,” the researchers wrote.
‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This:’ One of China’s Most Popular Apps Has the Ability to Spy on Its Users, Say Experts
It is one of China’s most popular shopping apps, selling clothing, groceries and just about everything else under the sun to more than 750 million users a month.
But according to cybersecurity researchers, it can also bypass users’ cell phone security to monitor activities on other apps, check notifications, read private messages and change settings. And once installed, it’s tough to remove.
While many apps collect vast troves of user data, sometimes without explicit consent, experts say e-commerce giant Pinduoduo has taken violations of privacy and data security to the next level.
Multiple experts identified the presence of malware on the Pinduoduo app that exploited vulnerabilities in Android operating systems. Company insiders said the exploits were utilized to spy on users and competitors, allegedly to boost sales.
FTC Readies Children’s Privacy Case Against Amazon + More
FTC Readies Children’s Privacy Case Against Amazon
The Federal Trade Commission is planning to move forward soon with a case against Amazon over alleged privacy violations stemming from the use of children’s data with the company’s Alexa voice assistant, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The antitrust and consumer protection agency has been investigating Amazon on a number of fronts for several years, including for possible violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which could potentially allow the agency to collect large civil monetary penalties.
Before it brings a case, the FTC must first refer a complaint to the consumer protection branch at the civil division of the Justice Department, which it is expected to do soon, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter. The exact timing of the referral is not known, and the agency’s plans are subject to change until a case is filed.
An AI Researcher Who Has Been Warning About the Technology for Over 20 Years Says We Should ‘Shut It All Down,’ and Issue an ‘Indefinite and Worldwide’ Ban
An AI researcher who has warned about the dangers of the technology since the early 2000s said we should “shut it all down,” in an alarming op-ed published by Time on Wednesday.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher and author who has been working on Artificial General Intelligence since 2001, wrote the article in response to an open letter from many big names in the tech world, which called for a moratorium on AI development for six months.
The letter, signed by 1,125 people including Elon Musk and Apple‘s co-founder Steve Wozniak, requested a pause on training AI tech more powerful than OpenAI’s recently launched GPT-4.
Yudkowsy’s article, titled “Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down,” said he refrained from signing the letter because it understated the “seriousness of the situation,” and asked for “too little to solve it.” Yudkowsky instead suggested a ban that is “indefinite and worldwide” with no exceptions for governments or militaries.
AI Pause Gives ‘Bad Guys’ Time to Catch up, Bill Ackman Says: ‘I Don’t Think We Have a Choice’
Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is warning that a push by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and other tech and artificial intelligence experts to pause the development of AI systems for six months gives the “bad guys” time to catch up.
Ackman, who founded Pershing Square Capital Management, made the remark after more than 1,000 people signed a letter arguing that safety protocols need to be developed by independent overseers to guide the future of AI systems.
The letter asks AI developers to “immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” GPT-4 is the latest deep learning model from OpenAI, which says it “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”
Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren and More Unlikely Senators Propose Bill to Break up Google and Meta
A powerful and bizarre coalition of Senators has teamed up on a bill that could strike down the digital ad dominance of Google and Meta, though the proposed legislation never mentions those companies by name. The AMERICA Act could radically transform advertising technology, the financial backbone of the internet.
The bill would kneecap Google and Meta, the two biggest players in digital advertising by far, but its provisions seem designed to affect almost every big tech company from Apple to Amazon, too. Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
The only thing longer than the name of the bill is the stunningly bipartisan list of Senators supporting it: Democrats Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal, and Elizabeth Warren, and Republicans Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Eric Schmitt, Josh Hawley, John Kennedy Lindsey Graham, J.D. Vance, and Lee. As one observer put it on Twitter, it’s a list of cosponsors “who wouldn’t hold the elevator for each other.” Look at all these little Senators getting along. Isn’t that nice?
Italy Bans ChatGPT and Says It Will Investigate OpenAI
Italy temporarily blocked access to ChatGPT on Friday, and the country’s data privacy regulator said it would begin an investigation into the company behind the popular chatbot, OpenAI.
In a news release, the Italian Data Protection Authority ordered the immediate ban on ChatGPT in the country and listed its concerns with the chatbot. Most importantly, the Italian privacy regulator stated that there is no legal basis that justifies the collection and mass storage of personal data OpenAI uses to train the AI.
Furthermore, the regulator added that OpenAI provides scant information to users whose data it collects. The regulator alleges OpenAI is violating the European Union’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. As noted by Politico, the ban won’t be permanent and is only in place until the Italian regulator determines whether OpenAI has complied with GDPR.
The Italian privacy regulator was also unhappy with OpenAI’s lack of any age verification filter ChatGPT, even though the service is meant to be used by people 13 years of age and older. It stated that ChatGPT exposes minors to unsuitable answers for their degree of development and self-awareness.
Latest Evidence Lockdowns Were a Disaster: Child Shootings Skyrocketed in Four Liberal Cities
The government-imposed COVID lockdowns wreaked havoc on America’s youth emotionally, mentally and educationally. Now, new data shows that child gun-related fatalities and assaults skyrocketed in four major liberal cities from March 2020 to December 2021.
New data from Boston University published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that during the first two years of the pandemic, fatal and non-fatal gun assaults for minors increased from a rate of 30 per 100,000 to about 62 per 100,000 during the pandemic in Philadelphia alone. Meanwhile, the rates in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles also increased.
Black children in particular bore the brunt of these tragedies. Per the study, black children were 100 times more likely than white children to be shot during this time. Based on the data, Philadelphia’s gun violence increased at a higher rate than its counterparts, PBS also reported. The authors of this study also did not include fatal shootings in Chicago, so the actual fatality rate is presumably much higher than the limited findings show.
This new information also comes after numerous studies showed other damaging consequences of the pandemic on children. For example, in December, Stanford University published a study showing that teenagers’ brains were physically altered and aged at an accelerated rate during the COVID lockdowns.
Hollywood to End COVID Safety Agreement That Enabled Pandemic-Era Return to Work
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
The COVID-19 guidelines that for the past three years kept casts and crews safe during production amid the pandemic will expire on May 12, according to the group representing top studios and streamers.
Even after the agreement expires, workers on film and television productions will still be able to use a bank of five temporary COVID-19 paid leave sick days between April 2 and December 31 if they contract COVID or if another covered COVID event occurs.
The decision also appears to end any vaccine mandates on new productions starting after May 12. “Any production which has implemented a mandatory vaccination policy for employees in Zone A prior to May 12, 2023, may continue to apply that mandatory vaccination policy for the remainder of the production (or season, in the case of a series),” the AMPTP said in its statement.
France Drops COVID Vaccine Requirement for Healthcare Workers
Healthcare workers in France no longer need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to be able to work, Health Minister François Braun has announced, in a decision that paves the way for several thousand unvaccinated staff to be able to return to work in a matter of days or weeks.
The requirement for health professionals to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 was introduced in autumn of 2021 and prompted protests from those opposed to enforced inoculations.
France’s Haute Autorité de santé (HAS) advice statement added that several other countries have already dropped their requirements and that the vaccine — though effectively protecting from serious forms of the virus — is ineffective in preventing its infection and transmission.
Those workers still available and open to returning to work in the health sector will be reinstated, following “consultation” with hospital federations and professional bodies, the government said.
Governments Used ‘Fifth-Generation Warfare’ During COVID, Robert Malone Tells National Citizen’s Inquiry
Governments used “fifth-generational warfare” techniques to modify public perception during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the reporting of media outlets shifted into propaganda, two experts testified at the National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI).
“Over the last three years, Western governments, non-governmental organizations, as well as media, pharmaceutical and financial corporations deployed a massive, globally harmonized psychological and propaganda operation,” said Dr. Robert Malone.
“With this campaign, the governments of many Western nation-states turned military grade strategies, tactics, technologies and capabilities — developed for modern military combat — against their citizens.”
Malone testified virtually during the Toronto hearing of the NCI, which describes itself as a “citizen-led and citizen-funded initiative” examining how pandemic measures put in place by all levels of government impacted Canadians in the categories of health, fundamental rights and freedoms, social well-being and economic prosperity.
Meta Wants EU Users to Apply for Permission to Opt Out of Data Collection
Meta announced that starting next Wednesday, some Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union will for the first time be able to opt out of sharing first-party data used to serve highly personalized ads, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a big change from Meta’s current business model, where every video and piece of content clicked on its platforms provides a data point for its online advertisers.
People “familiar with the matter,” told the Journal that Facebook and Instagram users will soon be able to access a form that can be submitted to Meta to object to sweeping data collection. If those requests are approved, those users will only allow Meta to target ads based on broader categories of data collection, like age range or general location.
This is different from efforts by other major tech companies like Apple and Google, which prompt users to opt-in or out of highly personalized ads with the click of a button. Instead, Meta will review objection forms to evaluate reasons provided by individual users to end such data collection before it will approve any opt-outs. It’s unclear what cause Meta may have to deny requests.