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Jordan Subpoenas Federal Agencies Over Censorship Concerns
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Judiciary Committee chairman, has issued subpoenas to officials representing three federal agencies as part of the committee’s probe into whether the federal government “coerced” Big Tech platforms to censor speech.
The committee said in a release on Friday that Jordan subpoenaed officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) for documents and communications related to the investigation.
The subpoenas were sent to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, CISA Director Jen Easterly and GEC Special Envoy and Coordinator James Rubin.
The release alleged that the committee requested voluntary cooperation from these agencies in March, but they have not provided any documents in response to its requests. But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where CISA is housed, rejected this.
After Quitting Google, ‘Godfather of AI’ Is Now Warning of Its Dangers
Megalithic tech companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft are so obsessed with AI development it seems impossible to steer any of them toward slowing down and actually thinking about the repercussions. Now one of the most prominent faces in artificial intelligence research, former Googler Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, has come down hard on the full-spring pace of AI development, ultimately calling for some kind of global regulation.
According to an interview with The New York Times, Hinton, an award-winning researcher on AI, neural networks and machine learning, is no longer so comfortable pushing the boundaries of AI development without any kind of regulation or stopgap. The 75-year-old Hinton, who was a lead researcher in any aspects of AI development at Google, has come out saying “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using [AI] for bad things.”
He directly compared himself to Robert Oppenheimer, who helped develop the atomic bomb for the U.S. While Oppenheimer had made statements about pursuing science for science’s sake, Hinton instead said “I don’t think they should scale [AI] up more until they have understood whether they can control it.” He further shared his concerns that AI would lead to massive job disruptions around the world.
Lawmakers Urge Biden to Launch International Hub to Research Online Harms
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been pushing for years to pass legislation requiring tech companies to open up their data to outside researchers, but have yet to capitalize on it.
Now two House lawmakers are calling for President Biden to step in and take action at the executive level, urging him to launch an international research hub to study harms linked to social media and other types of digital platforms
Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) wrote in a letter Monday shared first with The Technology 202 that the White House should begin negotiations with international allies to create a center to “facilitate cross-platform research on the information environment.”
“Studies have highlighted social media’s role in promoting self-harm, eating disorders and sales of drugs to children,” the two lawmakers wrote. “While the field of Information Science continues to expand and evolve, significant gaps in the research remain.”
Surveillance Numbers Drop, but Critics Aren’t Satisfied
Warrantless FBI searches of Americans’ communications dropped steeply last year, according to an intelligence community report that said the number fell from around 3 million to around 120,000.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the figure in an annual report Friday amid an intensifying battle on whether, and how, to reauthorize expiring surveillance powers under a law permitting warrantless spying on foreign targets, who may also be communicating with Americans.
But that decrease did not satisfy advocates for overhauling Section 702. They say the number is still too large and that there needs to be more privacy safeguards for U.S. citizens.
“Is 200,000 warrantless queries better than 3.4 million warrantless queries? When you ask the question, you get a sense of how warped the universe we’re in is — that somehow 200,000 warrantless searches a year are an acceptable number,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security program, citing a separate set of figures from the report using a different counting method. “We’re talking about surveillance on just a huge scale when you’re talking about 200,000 warrantless searches.”
She also found the argument in opposition to a warrant requirement unconvincing. She said there’s no “victim exception” to the Fourth Amendment. “They are basically admitting that they’re searching Americans’ communications and most private personal information without probable cause,” she said. “That is why you should have a warrant requirement, not why you shouldn’t have one.”
Amid Concerns About TikTok, Commerce Details Effort to Secure U.S. Data
The Biden administration outlined efforts this week to address growing U.S. national security concerns on foreign companies’ handling of Americans’ data.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at a U.S. Senate hearing the department is working “to secure our communications and technology networks and we are right now in the process of hiring a team to do monitoring, investigation and enforcement.”
Raimondo told Reuters after the hearing “We’re hiring dozens of people” to “look for any companies that may pose an undue security risk to our networks or to our data.” Concerns about Chinese-owned TikTok have sparked new efforts in Congress to boost powers to address it or potentially ban the popular short video-sharing app.
On Wednesday, Biden administration agencies briefed senators in a previously unreported closed session on “Foreign adversaries exploitation of America’s data from social media platforms, data brokers and other companies,” according to Republican Senator Jerry Moran.
Social Media Scatters Your Brain, and Then You Buy Stuff You Don’t Need
Social media can be mentally draining. And when mentally drained, you are more likely to be influenced by a high number of likes on posts — even to the point of clicking on ads for products you don’t need or want — according to our recent experiments on how social media affects behavior.
As a professor of advertising, I have studied social media behavior for years. In late 2022, my colleague Eric Haley and I conducted three online studies on Americans aged 18-65 to test how people under various mental loads respond to ads differently.
Researchers refer to this mentally exhausted state as “cognitive overload.” Using social media puts you in this state because you are constantly evaluating different types of text, photo and video posts from so many different people. In the span of several seconds, you can see a text from your spouse, a photo from a co-worker, a video from a celebrity and a meme from your brother. All of this scrolling and evaluating leaves us feeling frazzled and scattered.
AI in Healthcare: What’s to Be Done About Data?
The quality of any AI application is highly dependent on the data feeding its model. The U.S. healthcare system, a prime candidate for AI applications, is still starved for comprehensive and representative real-world health data that is standardized, proactively shared, and easily accessible.
There is no lack of enthusiasm for the potential beneficial impact of AI on the practice of medicine, the health of patients, and the productivity of the healthcare sector. For example, the medical publisher NEJM Group, recently announced NEJM AI, a new journal that will “identify and evaluate state-of-the-art applications of artificial intelligence to clinical medicine.”
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) itself started a series of articles on “AI in Medicine,” stating that “medicine stands out as one [field] in which there is a tremendous potential” for AI along with “equally substantial challenges.”
Among these challenges is “a mismatch between the data set with which an AI system was developed and the data on which it is being deployed.” In other words, failing to apply an AI model to all patients, not just those who are similar to the patients on which the AI model was trained.
Group That Sued Over San Diego’s COVID Vaccine Mandate Declares Victory
A group challenged the City of San Diego’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in court and declared victory after the city settled the lawsuit and rescinded the mandate.
The Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids (PERK) represents hundreds of San Diego Police officers, firefighters and city employees.
“It’s a wonderful victory,” said San Diego Fire Captain Justus Norgord. “I’m excited, but I have mixed feelings. I’m also disappointed that we even had to bring the lawsuit.”
According to the San Diego Police Officer’s Association, 130 police officers resigned over the mandate, only two or three have returned to the force, and five or six are returning to their old jobs.
NYPD’s Answer to TikTok Car Theft Challenges: 500 Free AirTags
The New York Police Department is turning to Apple AirTags to combat a rise in stolen vehicles it blames on a TikTok car theft challenge. In a press conference on Sunday, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city is handing out 500 free AirTags to help residents track their cars in case they’ve been stolen.
Mayor Adams said there’s a direct link between the increase in car thefts in the city and the viral TikTok videos from thieves known as the “Kia Boyz” that first emerged last summer. In clips posted to the platform, the pair taught users how to exploit a Hyundai and Kia defect that let them start a car using a USB cable and other readily available tools.
The NYPD won’t have access to the real-time location of the AirTags that it’s giving away. Mayor Adams notes that people will have to notify the police department that their vehicle has been stolen and then give the authorities permission to track their car. The city is only distributing the AirTags, which it received as a donation from the nonprofit Association for a Better New York, to residents in Castle Hill, Soundview and Parkchester, who can call their local precinct to get one, according to CBS News.
