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Elon Musk and Others Urge AI Pause, Citing ‘Risks to Society’
Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society and humanity.
The letter, issued by the non-profit Future of Life Institute and signed by more than 1,000 people including Musk, called for a pause on advanced AI development until shared safety protocols for such designs were developed, implemented and audited by independent experts.
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said. The letter detailed potential risks to society and civilization by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions and called on developers to work with policymakers on governance and regulatory authorities.
“The letter isn’t perfect, but the spirit is right: we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications,” said Gary Marcus, a professor at New York University who signed the letter. “The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing, which makes it hard for society to defend against whatever harms may materialize.”
Federal Judge Rules Google Tried to ‘Hide the Ball’ by Deleting Chat Logs in a Big Antitrust Case
Google intentionally sought to “hide the ball” in a high-profile antitrust case by automatically deleting employee chat messages that could have been used as evidence in the suit, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, dealing a blow to the tech giant.
The ruling condemns Google’s document preservation practices and their impact on litigation, which could have a broader impact as the company defends a range of suits on multiple fronts.
Google will not face immediate sanctions for its missteps apart from having to cover the legal fees that plaintiffs incurred in bringing the sanctions motion, wrote Judge James Donato in his order. A non-monetary penalty could still be imposed following further court proceedings. But Donato repeatedly criticized Google this week for trying to keep sensitive chat logs out of the record.
California State University Intends to End COVID Vaccine Mandates
The California State University (CSU ) — the nation’s largest four-year higher education system — intends to rescind coronavirus vaccine mandates for students, faculty, and staff, as reported by its faculty association on March 2.
The system’s office of human resources and labor relations determined it will “no longer require students to be fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus,” according to the California Faculty Association, a union representing 29,000 CSU faculty members.
The college’s plan to cancel its mandate follows California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement on Feb. 28 ending the state’s COVID-19 State of Emergency.
The University of California (UC) and CSU implemented similar vaccine mandates for the fall 2021 semester in a joint announcement, and both currently require a booster shot to be compliant.
Lawmakers Debate Who to Blame for COVID School Closures: Teachers’ Unions or Trump?
House members spent a Tuesday hearing debating who to blame for school closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with Republicans deriding the influence of teacher’s unions and Democrats blasting the Trump administration.
During the hearing, titled “The Consequences of School Closures: Intended and Unintended,” members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic agreed that school closures had devastating effects on children and students.
But there was little common ground on who to blame for that damage. Republicans raised concerns outside groups such as teachers’ unions had too much input in the guidance the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put out regarding school closures that ultimately led to students learning from home for an extended period of time.
Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) announced he sent letters to the CDC, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and 14 other non-governmental groups asking them to detail their roles or communications with the CDC regarding guidance on school closures.
Arkansas Sues TikTok, ByteDance and Meta Over Mental Health Claims
The state of Arkansas has sued TikTok, its parent ByteDance and Facebook-parent Meta over claims the companies’ products are harmful to users, in the latest effort by public officials to take social media companies to court over mental health and privacy concerns.
All three lawsuits claim the companies have violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and seek millions, if not billions, in potential fines. The suits were filed in Arkansas state court.
The complaints come amid mounting pressure in Washington on TikTok for its ties to China and as states have grown more aggressive in suing tech companies broadly, particularly on mental health claims. Suits by school districts or county officials in California, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington state have targeted multiple social media platforms over addiction allegations.
The suit against Meta particularly zeroes in on the company’s impact to young users’ mental health, alleging that Meta’s implementation of like buttons, photo tagging, an unending news feed and other features are addictive and “intended to manipulate users’ brains by triggering the release of dopamine.”
Masking Still Required in About Half of Medical Offices, Poll Finds — but That Percentage Is Down From a Year Ago and Is Expected to Continue Dropping, MGMA Says
Nearly half of medical groups continue to require masking even as local public health officials have dropped mask mandates, according to a recent poll from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).
The 49% of groups that still have mask requirements varied in how they were enforced, with 72% saying they applied to everyone — patients, staff, and visitors. Another 20% said they applied only to symptomatic patients and the staff members working with them, and 8% said masks were required for staff but optional for patients and visitors.
The number of practices requiring masking is expected to keep dropping in coming months, MGMA said, “as several respondents told MGMA that they are located in one of the West Coast states set to drop government-mandated mask rules as of April 3.”
U.K. to Avoid Fixed Rules for AI — in Favor of ‘Context-Specific Guidance’
The U.K. isn’t going to be setting hard rules for AI any time soon.
Today, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a white paper setting out the government’s preference for a light-touch approach to regulating artificial intelligence. It’s kicking off a public consultation process — seeking feedback on its plans up to June 21 — but appears set on paving a smooth road of ‘flexible principles’ that AI can speed through.
Worries about the risks of increasingly powerful AI technologies are very much treated as a secondary consideration, relegated far behind a political agenda to talk up the vast potential of high-tech growth — and thus, if problems arise, the government is suggesting the U.K.’s existing (overstretched) regulators will have to deal with them, on a case-by-case basis, armed only with existing powers (and resources). So, er, lol!
The 91-page white paper, which is entitled “A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation”, talks about taking “a common-sense, outcomes-oriented approach” to regulating automation — by applying what the government frames as a “proportionate and pro-innovation regulatory framework.”
TikTok Ban Backup Plan? ByteDance-Owned Instagram Rival Lemon8 Hits the U.S. App Store’s Top 10
As U.S. lawmakers move forward with their plans for a TikTok ban or forced sale, the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance is driving another of its social platforms into the Top Charts of the U.S. App Store.
ByteDance-owned app Lemon8, an Instagram rival that describes itself as a “lifestyle community,” jumped into the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts on Monday, becoming the No. 10 Overall app, across both apps and games. Today, it’s ranked No. 9 on the App Store’s Top Apps chart, excluding games.
This is a dramatic move for the little-known app and one that points to paid user acquisition efforts powering this surge. Prior to yesterday, the Lemon8 app had never before ranked in the Top 200 Overall Charts in the U.S., according to app store intelligence provided to TechCrunch by data.ai.
The firm confirms that such a fast move from being an unranked app to being No. 9 among the top free apps in the U.S. — ahead of YouTube, WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook — implies a “significant” and “recent” user acquisition push on the app publisher’s part. Unfortunately, because the app is so new to the App Store’s Top Charts, third-party app analytics firms don’t yet have precise data on Lemon8’s U.S. installs, or how those installs have recently changed over the past few days.
Biden: World ‘Turning the Tide’ After Backslide on Democracy
President Joe Biden on Wednesday offered an optimistic outlook on the health of democracy worldwide, declaring that leaders are “turning the tide” in stemming a yearslong backslide of democratic institutions.
He said the U.S. will spend $690 million bolstering democracy programs — supporting everything from free and independent media to free and fair elections — around the world. He said he also wanted to use the summit to foster discussion about the use of technology to “advance democratic governance” and ensure such technology is “not used to undermine it.”
The U.S. has come to an agreement with 10 other nations on guiding principles for how the governments should use surveillance technology, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the agreement before its formal announcement.
Earlier this week, Biden signed an executive order restricting the U.S. government’s use of commercial spyware tools that have been used to surveil human rights activists, journalists and dissidents around the world.
