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What the Amazon Alexa Settlement Means for Parents and Kids
In the nearly ten years since Amazon launched its Alexa voice assistant, children have learned to embrace the always-on technology. They shout commands to Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant without thinking twice, asking them to play music, tell them stories or make silly jokes.
The tech’s popularity has grown in spite of privacy concerns and lawsuits. In May, the company said it had already sold more than half a billion Alexa devices.
This week, the Federal Trade Commission settled a lawsuit against Amazon over the company’s alleged failure to delete recordings of children when it should have. Regulators said Amazon would pay $25 million for violating federal child privacy laws.
If parents decide to allow devices with cameras and microphones into their homes, the first thing they should do is adjust privacy and security settings.
As for that $25 million settlement, it will not go to impacted families. Instead, like all Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act penalties, it will go straight to the U.S. Treasury.
Louisiana Moves Forward With Legislation to Relax Vaccine Requirements for K-12 Students
The Senate Education Committee unanimously advanced two bills Thursday that would relax vaccine requirements for K-12 students.
Rep. Kathy Edmonston, R-Gonzales, wrote both bills. Colleges and universities are no longer included in the bills after amendments by the committee.
House Bill 182 would prohibit COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of enrollment or continued enrollment in any public or private K-12 schools. House Bill 399 would require schools to provide exemption information for any type of vaccine.
In current law, students may receive an exemption when entering a school from vaccinations through a doctor’s note or written dissent from parents. The proposed law would also allow this exemption for students already enrolled at the school.
Jordan Threatens Subpoena Enforcement Against Stanford In Censorship Probe
A House committee investigating how social media companies restricted speech is putting Stanford University on notice. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says Stanford failed to comply with an April subpoena seeking information about its Internet Observatory program, The Daily Wire can reveal.
In a letter dated Thursday, Jordan told a lawyer representing Stanford that the university now has until June 14 to comply, or his committee will “be forced to consider the use of one or more enforcement mechanisms.”
The GOP-led panel has a number of options it could explore, including criminal contempt of Congress, civil enforcement, or “inherent contempt.”
Projects of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which was founded in 2019, attracted scrutiny amid disclosures from the Twitter Files, raising concerns among Republicans about Big Tech censorship.
Generative AI — Which Some Fear Could Contribute to the End of Humanity — Will Be a $1.3 Trillion Market Within a Decade, New Research Says
The release of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard has created an explosion of interest in the generative AI industry, which could see revenues grow to over $1.3 trillion in the next decade, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence viewed by Insider.
Bloomberg’s report suggests that in 2022 the industry generated revenues of around $40 billion. By 2032, the report says, that figure could be $1.32 trillion, a compounded annual growth rate for the sector of 42%.
Hardware, however, will make up the bulk of the $1.3 trillion of revenue, accounting for $641 billion by 2032, per Bloomberg’s estimates. Of that $641 billion, $168 billion come from devices, and $473 will come from infrastructure.
The rise of AI has led to growing concerns, including from many of those crucial to its development, that the technology could cause a threat to humanity. In an open letter this week, the CEOs of major AI firms like Deepmind and OpenAI said AI poses a “risk of extinction” to humanity if not properly regulated.
Military Drone Attacks Human Operator in Hypothetical Scenario
Military groups are only some of many organizations researching artificial intelligence, but one hypothetical thought experiment presented to the U.S. Air Force found that artificial intelligence rebelled against its operator in a fatal attack to accomplish its mission.
Artificial intelligence continues to evolve and affect every sector of business, and it was a popular topic of conversation during the Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit at the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAS) headquarters in London on May 23 and May 24. According to a report by the RAS, presentations discussing the use of AI in defense abounded.
AI is already prevalent in the U.S. military, such as the use of drones that can recognize the faces of targets, and it poses an attractive opportunity to effectively carry out missions without risking the lives of troops. However, during the conference, one U.S. Air Force (USAF) colonel showed the unreliability of artificial intelligence when describing an experiment where an AI drone rebelled and killed its operator because the operator was interfering with the AI’s mission of destroying surface-to-air missiles.
When the human operator denied the AI’s request to destroy a site, the AI attacked the operator because the operator’s decision interfered with its mission of eliminating surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites.
Time to Ban TikTok, EU Lawmakers Tell Governments
The European Parliament is calling on the bloc’s national governments to ban the use of TikTok for government staff.
Members of the Parliament on Thursday passed a report aimed at stopping foreign governments from meddling in the Continent’s politics through disinformation, cyberattacks, and the disruption of critical infrastructure.
As part of its recommendations, lawmakers urged all national governments to fall in line with restrictions the European Union, a number of capitals and Western countries outside of Europe already imposed on the use of the Chinese-owned social media application TikTok. The video-sharing app loved by teenagers around the world is facing allegations from Western security services of facilitating espionage, failing to protect personal data, and even corrupting young minds.
TikTok was not the only company to be name-checked; lawmakers also called on the Council of the EU and the European Commission to exclude the use of Chinese and Russian technology firms Huawei, ZTE and Kaspersky, and NtechLab, a Russian facial recognition firm.
Australia Considers Ban of High-Risk AI
High-risk artificial intelligence technology (AI) may soon be banned in Australia after the federal government announced it will move to establish guardrails around its growth.
Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic said that despite AI now being a prevalent part of people’s lives, he said there was a demand for some sort of regulation from the community.
Australia has close to a dozen different laws and codes of conduct that, in one way or another, pertain to the impact of AI technology, but there are concerns AI’s growth is outstripping the framework.
