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Elon Musk, Who Co-Founded Firm Behind ChatGPT, Warns AI Is ‘One of the Biggest Risks’ to Civilization
ChatGPT shows that artificial intelligence has gotten incredibly advanced — and that it is something we should all be worried about, according to tech billionaire Elon Musk.
“One of the biggest risks to the future of civilization is AI,” Musk told attendees at the World Government Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, shortly after mentioning the development of ChatGPT.
“It’s both positive or negative and has great, great promise, great capability,” Musk said. But, he stressed that “with that comes great danger.”
Whereas cars, airplanes and medicine must abide by regulatory safety standards, AI does not yet have any rules or regulations keeping its development under control, he added. The billionaire has long warned of the perils of unfettered AI development. He once said artificial intelligence is “far more dangerous” than nuclear warheads.
Tech Gurus Call AI Frightening, Mind-Blowing
Tech experts, taking a first look at Microsoft‘s new AI-powered search engine, are learning what happens when you push the system out of its comfort zone. Why it matters: Two well-known tech columnists describe their experiences with Bing’s AI as chilling, scary and mind-blowing.
“It’s now clear,” the New York Times’ Kevin Roose writes, “that in its current form, the A.I. that has been built into Bing … is not ready for human contact. Or maybe we humans are not ready for it.”
What’s happening: Roose’s column describes Bing’s bot as a “kind of split personality.” The search version, he writes, is a very capable and helpful virtual assistant that sometimes gets facts wrong. But if you push the system to have extended conversations, it comes off as a “moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine.”
Ben Thompson, who writes a newsletter called Stratechery, said that he was unimpressed by the search feature but found his two-hour conversation with Bing “positively gripping.”
“This sounds hyperbolic, but I feel like I had the most surprising and mind-blowing computer experience of my life,” he wrote.
GOP Subpoenas Tech CEOs as Part of Probe Into Censorship
Subpoenas were sent to the chief executives of the five largest tech companies on Wednesday as congressional Republicans moved to investigate what they assert is widespread corporate censorship of conservative voices.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, issued the subpoenas as the latest in a series of escalations by a party that has long promised to investigate Big Tech’s content moderation, especially when it came to COVID-19. The letters were sent to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta; Sundar Pichai of Alphabet; Satya Nadella of Microsoft; Tim Cook of Apple; and Andy Jassy of Amazon.com.
And in them, Jordan outlined the committee’s objective to “understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and their intermediaries to censor speech.”
The committee asked the companies to produce documents and communications by March 23 that show any communication between them and the executive branch of the U.S. government relating to moderation, deletion, suppression or reduced circulation of content.
Rumble Wins Injunction Against New York’s Online Censorship Law
A judge has blocked a New York law that attempted to regulate “hateful conduct” online.
The legislative package, signed into law last summer, was Gov. Kathy Hochul’s attempt to force the moderation of content under nebulous terms such as “hate.”
The law was challenged by the free speech video platform Rumble, alongside FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and First Amendment legal scholar Eugene Volokh, primarily on First Amendment grounds.
On Tuesday, Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. (S.D.N.Y.) blocked the law. In an unsurprising fashion, Judge Carter ruled that the law was a violation of the First Amendment. “The First Amendment protects from state regulation speech that may be deemed ‘hateful,’” the court wrote, “and generally disfavors regulation of speech based on its content unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.”
Federal Bill Introduced to Drop COVID Vaccine Policies for Foreign Travel
U.S. Senator Roger Marshall has helped introduce a bill that would drop policies that require foreign travelers to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccine when they enter the U.S.
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) says he joined Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) to introduce the Travel Freedom Act which would repeal federal policies that require international travelers to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccine.
As a result of these policies, Marshall said the flow of goods between the U.S. and Canada has significantly slowed and foreign visitors are barred from visiting American family members, among other issues.
Attempt to Block COVID Vaccines From Required School Immunizations Fails in Committee
A bill aimed at preventing COVID-19 vaccines from becoming mandatory for children attending public schools in South Dakota failed to pass the state’s Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday.
Sen. Julie Frye-Mueller, R-Rapid City — who was recently censored by the state Senate after she allegedly made harassing comments about vaccinating children to a legislative staffer — introduced the bill. It says no official “may impose on a child any additional vaccination or immunization requirements” beyond the existing list of required vaccines: “poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, rubeola, rubella, mumps, tetanus, meningitis and varicella.”
Opponents said the bill would also strip the Department of Health of any authority to administer and modify the state’s public school immunization requirements in the future.
The bill also gained support from some out-of-state doctors who argued parents should have the right to choose whether or not their children receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. John Littell, of Florida, alleged that medical boards around the U.S. have become corrupted by federal agencies, and childhood vaccines are not useful in rural states.
These Staggering Statistics and Charts Reveal How Deeply Troubled Our Teen Girls Really Are
A new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uncovered extremely high levels of depression, suicidal thoughts, substance use and violence experienced by teen girls — and even higher levels for kids who identify as “LGBQ+.”
The report, which comprises data collected from the fall of 2021, is our first glimpse of the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance findings since the start of COVID lockdowns. Though these numbers were already on a troubling trend prior to lockdowns, it appears the lockdowns and other factors (we’ll get into later) kicked the crisis into high gear.
Nearly 3 in 5 high school girls surveyed — or a shocking 57% — reported feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness, which is a 60% increase over the past decade.
Young girls have seen rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm spike since around 2010, when social media platforms were really expanding, research shows. For one thing, places like Facebook and Instagram, where girls are comparing their “likes” and photos to others, can really amplify body image issues and other insecurities.
Health Info for 1 Million Patients Stolen Using Critical GoAnywhere Vulnerability
One of the biggest hospital chains in the U.S. said hackers obtained protected health information for 1 million patients after exploiting a vulnerability in an enterprise software product called GoAnywhere.
Community Health Systems of Franklin, Tennessee, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that the attack targeted GoAnywhere MFT, a managed file transfer product Fortra licenses to large organizations.
The filing said that an ongoing investigation has so far revealed that the hack likely affected 1 million individuals. The compromised data included protected health information as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, as well as patients’ personal information.
TikTok CEO Says ‘Tough Conversations’ Needed on Future of Platform
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a new interview that “tough conversations” are needed on the future of the platform amid mounting efforts to ban the platform in the U.S. due to security concerns.
In an interview with the Washington Post published Wednesday, Chew said that he doesn’t take talk of banning the platform “very lightly,” saying it will be a “real shame” if the more than 100 million U.S. users of TikTok are cut off.
Chew, who formerly served as chief financial office of TikTok parent’s company ByteDance, is set to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee next month.
The committee said the hearing will focus on TikTok’s “consumer privacy and data security practices, the platforms’ impact on kids and its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.”
EU Lawmakers Support EU-Wide Digital Wallet
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have adopted draft legislation meant to pave the way for implementing an EU digital ID wallet.
Planned to cover the entire bloc, the scheme is an update to the European digital identity framework (eID) and is described by the European Parliament (EP) as an “all-in-one” digital identity.
Some of the amendments to the original draft introduce the ability of the wallet to read and verify electronic documents, and peer-to-peer interactions. Others speak about strengthening privacy and security, and about registering all transactions “to ensure third parties are held accountable.”
Those behind the new EU digital wallet say it will be voluntary to use, and promise that steps will be taken so that those who choose not to sign up to the scheme are not discriminated against.
