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Jets’ Aaron Rodgers Regrets ‘Immunized’ Comment, Says He Would’ve Rejected Potential NFL Mandate for Vaccine
Aaron Rodgers faced widespread criticism in 2021 for admittedly misleading the public about his vaccination status during the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Jets quarterback now says he regrets calling himself “immunized,” according to an upcoming unauthorized biography, though he also insists he would’ve rejected a potential NFL mandate to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers,” releasing this month from Ian O’Connor, includes quotes from Rodgers himself. And the former Green Bay Packers star admitted he should’ve taken a different approach when asked years ago if he had received a COVID-19 vaccine.
“If there’s one thing I wish could have gone different, it’s that,” Rodgers said, per ESPN, “because that’s the only thing [critics] could hit me with.”
At the time, Rodgers had told reporters he was “immunized” in an attempt to “appeal” the NFL’s pandemic-related restrictions. While the NFL did not require players and staff to be vaccinated, it imposed strict rules involving masking, surveillance and COVID-19 testing, for those without verified vaccination cards.
The 2024 Paris Olympics Are Gone, but AI Surveillance May Be Here to Stay
With the 2024 Paris Olympics coming to an end, sports fans worldwide will look away from France until the next big competition. For privacy advocates, however, the match isn’t anything but done.
France beefed up its surveillance system on the occasion of the Games, rolling out AI-powered CCTV cameras across the capital. The experiment is set to continue until March 2025. Needless to say, this algorithmic video surveillance has attracted strong criticism — and now experts fear such a system is here to stay.
“The ongoing experiments are the first step towards the legalization of these technologies,” Félix Tréguer, a member of the digital rights advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, told me. “Each time, those large events are used as a way to legitimize controversial surveillance practices that then stay in the long run. In that respect, France is no exception.”
Judge Says CDC Email Policy Likely Violates Federal Law
A federal judge ruled Friday that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has likely been breaking federal law by deleting former employees’ emails soon after they leave the agency.
The ruling was issued by District Judge Rudolph Contreras on a lawsuit filed by Trump-aligned conservative group America First Legal Foundation in April.
Contreras found that the CDC was following a records-retention policy that had not been approved by the National Archives and Records Administration and allowed former low-level employee emails to be deleted within about three months of them leaving the agency.
“The court concludes that CDC’s policy and practice of disposing of former employees’ emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful,” the 36-page-long opinion reads.
Paxton’s $1.4 Billion Win Against Meta Won’t Save Your Privacy
The hunch of your shoulders. The mole on your cheek. The slight bump on your nose.
To your loved ones, these are the things that make you, you: a sight for sore eyes in a crowd of strangers.
To social media giants such as Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and to the businesses for whom it sells hypertargeted ads, these things mean money. Billions of dollars’ worth.
If you appeared in a photo on Facebook any time between 2011 and 2021, it is likely your biometric information was fed into DeepFace — the company’s controversial deep-learning facial recognition system that tracked the face scan data of at least a billion users.
It made tagging friends and family in photos easy but also armed businesses and politicians to aggressively tailor their ads — all without users’ consent.
Experts and OpenAI Warn Users Against Developing Emotional Attachment With GPT-4o Voice Mode
In July, OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, launched its latest large language model, GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini.
The feature allows users to have voice conversations with ChatGPT using natural, human-sounding voices. This enhances accessibility and user experience but could blur the line between machine and human. The development raises critical questions about the future of human relationships with machines and artificial intelligence (AI) and the ethical responsibilities creators like OpenAI should navigate.
One of the biggest concerns is the potential for users to build emotional attachments with AI, a phenomenon experts have warned for years. Dr. Sherry Turkle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, cautions that “when technology becomes this intimate, we must ask ourselves what kinds of relationships we are fostering and what it means for our connections with real people.”
UK Revisits Social Media Regulation After Far-Right Riots
The British government is considering changes to the Online Safety Act designed to regulate social media companies, following a week of racist rioting driven by false information online.
The act, passed in October but not set to be enforced until early next year, allows the government to fine social media companies up to 10% of global turnover if they are found in breach.
At present, companies would only face a fine if they fail to police illegal content, such as incitments to violence or hate speech. Proposed changes could see Ofcom sanction companies if they allow “legal but harmful” content such as misinformation to flourish.
