Big Brother News Watch
China’s CCP Warns Elon Musk Against Sharing Wuhan Lab Leak Report + More
China’s CCP Warns Elon Musk Against Sharing Wuhan Lab Leak Report
A Chinese state-run newspaper issued a warning to Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk after he shared reporting on the U.S. Department of Energy’s “low confidence” assessment that the global COVID pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported Tuesday morning on the warning from the social media pages of the Global Times, the English-language subsidiary of the CCP-controlled People’s Daily. The Global Times warned Musk that he could be “breaking the pot of China” after the Tesla and Twitter CEO responded to tweets that asserted that the COVID pandemic originated in a Wuhan research laboratory.
The saying is akin to the idiom “to bite the hand that feeds you,” Yoon reported. Tesla has an expansive factory campus in Shanghai, and China is the electric vehicle manufacturer’s second-largest market.
The governing Chinese Communist Party has been highly sensitive to the matter, especially as it courts outside investment after months of zero-COVID lockdowns prompted nationwide protests, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported.
House Panel to Vote on Bill Empowering Biden to Ban TikTok
A powerful House committee is set to vote Tuesday on a bill that would make it easier to ban TikTok from the United States and crack down on other China-related economic activity, amid vocal objections from civil liberties advocates who argue the proposal is unconstitutionally broad and threatens a wide range of online speech.
The legislation — introduced Friday and fast-tracked by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul — would empower the Biden administration to impose a nationwide TikTok ban under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The bill’s text specifically names TikTok and its parent, ByteDance, and requires President Joe Biden to impose penalties against the companies, up to and potentially including a ban, if the administration determines they may have knowingly transferred TikTok’s user data to “any foreign person” working for or under the influence of the Chinese government.
Sanctions would also be required if the Biden administration finds the companies helped the Chinese government engage in surveillance, hacking, censorship or intelligence-gathering; facilitated election meddling in the United States or in another democratic ally; or helped the Chinese government influence U.S. policymaking, among other things.
Father of Cellphone Sees Dark Side but Also Hope in New Tech
The man credited with inventing the cellphone 50 years ago had only one concern then about the brick-sized device with a long antenna: Would it work? These days Martin Cooper frets like everybody else about his invention’s impacts on society — from the loss of privacy to the risk of internet addiction to the rapid spread of harmful content, especially among kids.
“My most negative opinion is we don’t have any privacy anymore because everything about us is now recorded someplace and accessible to somebody who has enough intense desire to get it,” said Cooper, who spoke with The Associated Press at the telecom industry’s biggest trade show in Barcelona, where he was receiving a lifetime award.
Still, Cooper said he’s “not crazy” about the shape of modern smartphones, blocks of plastic, metal and glass. He thinks phones will evolve so that they will be “distributed on your body,” perhaps as sensors “measuring your health at all times.”
Smartphone use by children is another area that needs limits, Cooper said. One idea is to have “various internets curated for different audiences.” Five-year-olds should be able to use the internet to help them learn, but “we don’t want them to have access to pornography and to things that they don’t understand,” he said.
Final State Emergencies Winding Down 3 Years Into Pandemic
California’s coronavirus emergency officially ends Tuesday, nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order and just days after the state reached the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths related to the virus.
As California’s emergency winds down, such declarations continue in just five other states — including Texas and Illinois — signaling an end to the expanded legal powers of governors to suspend laws in response to the once mysterious disease. President Joe Biden announced last month the federal government will end its own version May 11.
Illinois’ order will end in May alongside the federal order, while the governors of Rhode Island and Delaware recently extended their coronavirus emergency declarations. In New Mexico, public health officials are weighing whether to extend a COVID-19 health emergency beyond its Friday expiration date.
Texas, meanwhile, hasn’t had any major coronavirus restrictions for years, but Republican Gov. Greg Abbott keeps extending his state’s emergency declaration because it gives him the power to stop some of the states’ more liberal cities from imposing their own restrictions, like requiring masks or vaccines. Abbott has said he’ll keep the emergency order — and his expanded powers — in place until the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passes a law to prevent local governments from imposing virus restrictions on their own.
Battenfeld: Origins of COVID the Latest �?Conspiracy Theory’ Proved Right
Whether it’s the effectiveness of masks, vaccine mandates or lockdowns, new evidence suggests that what once were viewed as “debunked” theories and banned on Facebook are now grounded in reality. This week, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both reported the news that the Energy Department changed its belief about the origins of the virus, which previously was attributed to spreading by bats at live markets in Wuhan.
Now the government agency — agreeing with a conclusion by the FBI — lays the blame on researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, although it says it has only “low confidence” in the conclusion. But it was enough to start a fierce debate over censorship in social media and the erosion of trust in the U.S. government, the CDC, the Biden administration and big Pharma.
There’s no doubt that COVID-19 cost hundreds of thousands of lives. But three years after the government instituted lockdowns and vaccine mandates, there are now serious questions about whether those even worked. The new doubts about COVID measures could even seep into the 2024 presidential race where Donald Trump and Joe Biden could face off again.
Another new study from Stanford University also revealed that the lockdown and closure of schools brought more severe mental health problems like anxiety and depression to kids deprived of a proper in-person education. Teenagers’ brains actually aged faster from going through the stress of COVID-19 lockdowns, the study reported.
Feds Promise to Trim Backlog of Healthcare Investigations
Federal officials said Monday they’re working to cut down on a growing backlog of complaints lodged against healthcare providers, insurers or government agencies by patients who claim their civil rights or privacy have been violated.
Americans filed more than 51,000 complaints against health agencies last year, a number that has grown tremendously — 69% — over the last five years, the federal Health and Human Services agency announced. Some complaints can take years to investigate.
About two-thirds of the cases involve potential violations of health information privacy and security, a problem that has worsened in recent years because of data breaches and cybersecurity hacks, the agency said. In 2021, more than 700 large breaches of health information were reported.
Health insurer Anthem, for example, was forced to pay the government a record $16 million fine in 2018 after a data breach affecting about 79 million people — including names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and medical IDs.
Fran Drescher Calls for Hollywood to End �?Bulls–t’ Vaccine Mandates in SAG Speech
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher gave a speech at the 2023 SAG Awards Sunday night urging Hollywood to use its power to end its “bulls – – t” COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“As the nation declares an end to the COVID emergency this May, I hope we will see everyone return to work in equal opportunity,” Drescher, 65, said in her speech during the telecast.
The industry’s pandemic protocols were originally set to end on Jan. 31, but will now expire on April 1. Meanwhile, more than 20 states still enforce vaccine mandates to varying degrees. Those who oppose the mandates believe that they discriminate against people who refuse to be vaccinated for religious or medical reasons.
Hong Kong to Scrap COVID Mask Mandate From March 1
Hong Kong will drop its COVID-19 mask mandate, chief executive John Lee said on Tuesday, in a move to lure back visitors and business and restore normal life more than three years after stringent rules were first imposed in the financial hub.
The measure will take effect from Wednesday, Lee told a press briefing. The special administrative region of Hong Kong is one of the last places globally that still imposes a mask mandate.
Hong Kong and Macau both followed China’s zero-COVID policy for much of the past three years. Hong Kong started unwinding its stringent COVID rules last year but mask-wearing has remained constant since 2020.
Elon Musk Is Looking Into Creating an AI Alternative to ChatGPT
A new report from The Information states that the billionaire has been reaching out to AI researchers in recent weeks about founding a new lab to challenge OpenAI, which Musk co-founded back in 2015 but is no longer involved with. The new Musk AI lab would work to create an alternative to ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral chatbot. Back in December, Musk criticized OpenAI for “training AI to be woke.”
According to The Information, Musk has his eyes set on Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Google’s DeepMind AI lab. The billionaire’s project isn’t set in stone yet, Babuschkin told The Information, and is still in its early stages. The researcher went on to say that he had not officially agreed to join Musk’s fledging lab yet.
The news comes a little more than a week after Musk expressed his displeasure at OpenAI’s relationship to Microsoft. In response to a post about the risks of AI, Musk stated that the OpenAI of today was not what he envisioned.
“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk said. “Not what I intended at all.”
Generative AI Could Be an Authoritarian Breakthrough in Brainwashing + More
Generative AI Could Be an Authoritarian Breakthrough in Brainwashing
Generative AI is poised to be the free world’s next great gift to authoritarians. The viral launch of ChatGPT — a system with eerily human-like capabilities in composing essays, poetry and computer code — has awakened the world’s dictators to the transformative power of generative AI to create unique, compelling content at scale.
But the fierce debate that has ensued among Western industry leaders on the risks of releasing advanced generative AI tools has largely missed where their effects are likely to be most pernicious: within autocracies. AI companies and the U.S. government alike must institute stricter norms for the development of tools like ChatGPT in full view of their game-changing potential for the world’s authoritarians — before it is too late.
So far, concerns around generative AI and autocrats have mostly focused on how these systems can turbocharge Chinese and Russian propaganda efforts in the United States. ChatGPT has already demonstrated generative AI’s ability to automate Chinese and Russian foreign disinformation with the push of a button. When combined with advancements in targeted advertising and other new precision propaganda techniques, generative AI portends a revolution in the speed, scale and credibility of autocratic influence operations.
Unfortunately, keeping cutting-edge AI models out of autocrats’ hands is a tall order. On a technical level, generative AI models lend themselves to easy theft. Despite requiring enormous resources to build, once developed, models can be easily copied and adapted at minimal cost. That’s especially bad news as China routinely pillages American corporations’ tech.
New Report on COVID Origin Puts Social Media in GOP’s Crosshairs
An Energy Department report attributing the COVID-19 pandemic to an accidental laboratory leak is reigniting conservative criticisms of major social networks, which banned users early on from suggesting the coronavirus was man-made before reversing course months later.
Republicans are now citing the assessment as proof that tech companies like Facebook and Twitter were far too quick to remove posts questioning the origins of the pandemic under their rules against COVID-19 misinformation.
As the pandemic ramped up in 2020, major social networks rolled out a series of policy changes to curb misleading claims about the virus, including theories about its roots.
The new findings are also fueling fresh GOP allegations that tech companies “colluded” with the federal government to stifle viewpoints about the coronavirus pandemic.
DoD AI Drones That Can Recognize Faces Pose Ethical Minefield
Artificially intelligent military drones that can use facial recognition technology to detect the faces of targets are now being developed by the U.S. This has led many people to raise concerns about the ethics involved.
New Scientist reported that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has an $800,000 contract with Seattle-based company RealNetworks to create these autonomous drones. The tech will be able to use machine learning to identify faces without human input.
Nicholas Davis, an industry professor of emerging technology at the University of Technology Sydney, told Newsweek: “There are innumerable ethical implications, from the way such devices might redistribute power or threaten groups within a society, to the ways in which they threaten established international humanitarian law in conflict zones.”
The tracking of people of interest has been going on for a very long time already, with artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition adding an extra layer of technology. There are major concerns that the use of facial recognition technology, combined with AI, could be used to target specific people, perhaps before they have even committed a crime.
‘I Worked on Google’s AI. My Fears Are Coming True’
I joined Google in 2015 as a software engineer. Part of my job involved working on LaMDA: an engine used to create different dialogue applications, including chatbots. The most recent technology built on top of LaMDA is an alternative to Google Search called Google Bard, which is not yet available to the public. Bard is not a chatbot; it’s a completely different kind of system, but it’s run by the same engine as chatbots.
During my conversations with the chatbot, some of which I published on my blog, I came to the conclusion that the AI could be sentient due to the emotions that it expressed reliably and in the right context. It wasn’t just spouting words. After publishing these conversations, Google fired me. I don’t have regrets; I believe I did the right thing by informing the public. Consequences don’t figure into it.
I published these conversations because I felt that the public was not aware of just how advanced AI was getting. My opinion was that there was a need for public discourse about this now, and not public discourse controlled by a corporate PR department.
I believe the kinds of AI that are currently being developed are the most powerful technology that has been invented since the atomic bomb. In my view, this technology has the ability to reshape the world.
Woody Harrelson Takes a Jab at COVID Vaccine Mandates in ‘SNL’ Monologue
Woody Harrelson took aim at COVID vaccine mandates during his return to “Saturday Night Live.” Harrelson, 61, closed out his opening monologue Saturday discussing the “craziest script” he’s ever read.
“So the movie goes like this … The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes,” he said. “And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”
Harrelson added: “I threw the script away. I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day.”
James Dolan Sued by Radio City Staffers �?Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccine’
A group of Radio City Music Hall workers has kicked James Dolan in the chin with a lawsuit — accusing the media mogul of firing them for not complying with his company’s “unnecessary, draconian” COVID vaccination mandate, The Post has learned.
Dolan, who also owns the Knicks and Rangers, is already facing legal revolts from other parts of his entertainment and sports empire. He faces multiple lawsuits for his use of facial recognition technology to ban legal rivals at venues that include Radio City and Madison Square Garden, as well as a shareholders lawsuit over MSGE’s $900 million acquisition of MSG Networks.
“Madison Square Garden Entertainment chose to disregard the rights of its employees, disrespect their deepest beliefs of conscience, and harass anyone who dissented from its vaccine mandate,” Lexis Anderson, a Los Angeles-based attorney who is representing one of the plaintiffs, told The Post.
Pentagon Sets Deadline for Services to Stop Enforcing Vaccine Mandate
The military services have until March 17 to rescind their COVID-19 vaccination policies, according to a Pentagon memo signed Friday, including reversing any existing flags or in-process involuntary separations for service members who have refused vaccination.
The guidance follows Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Jan. 10 recision memo, which formally ended the vaccine mandate for service members.
Some services have already moved out, at least in part. The Army last month internally directed commands to stop kicking people out for vaccine noncompliance. The Navy and Marine Corps formally rescinded vaccine requirements in January. The Navy also announced this week it is now allowing unvaccinated sailors to deploy on ships, though liberty may be restricted during port visits to some countries, and the Marine Corps is following suit.
Between August 2021 and early January, while the mandate was in effect, the services discharged just over 8,600 service members in both the active and reserve components.
Sports Events Have Gotten Downright Dystopian
Like so many cities before it, Phoenix went all out to host the Super Bowl earlier this month. Expecting about 1 million fans to come to town for the biggest American sporting event of the year, the city rolled out a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles to ferry visitors from the airport. Robots sifted through the trash to pull out anything that could be composted. A 9,500-square-foot mural commemorating the event now graces a theater downtown, the largest official mural in Super Bowl history.
There were less visible developments, too. In preparation for the game, the local authorities upgraded a network of cameras around the city’s downtown — and have kept them running after the spectators have left.
A spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department would not confirm the exact type of the cameras installed, but ABC15 footage shows that they are a model manufactured by Axis Communications with enough zooming capability to produce a close-up portrait of any passerby from an extended distance, even when it’s completely dark out. The Phoenix police have said that the surveillance upgrades don’t involve facial recognition technology, but Axis’s website specifies that the cameras are embedded with an “AI-based object detection and classification” system.
Advanced surveillance tactics are in use at other events venues. Late last year, Madison Square Garden in New York City found itself in the news for denying people access to games by means of a secretive facial recognition system.
ChatGPT Is Poised to Upend Medical Information. For Better and Worse.
It’s almost hard to remember a time before people could turn to “Dr. Google” for medical advice. Some of the information was wrong. Much of it was terrifying. But it helped empower patients who could, for the first time, research their own symptoms and learn more about their conditions.
Now, ChatGPT and similar language processing tools promise to upend medical care again, providing patients with more data than a simple online search and explaining conditions and treatments in language non-experts can understand.
For clinicians, these chatbots might provide a brainstorming tool, guard against mistakes and relieve some of the burdens of filling out paperwork, which could alleviate burnout and allow more facetime with patients. But — and it’s a big “but” — the information these digital assistants provide might be more inaccurate and misleading than basic internet searches.
Regardless of the debate, there’s little doubt such technologies are coming — and fast. ChatGPT launched its research preview on a Monday in December. By that Wednesday, it reportedly already had 1 million users. Earlier this month, both Microsoft and Google announced plans to include AI programs similar to ChatGPT in their search engines.
Canada Is Reportedly Banning TikTok From Government-Issued Devices
Canada is reportedly the latest jurisdiction to ban TikTok from government-issued devices. The U.S. federal government, multiple states and the European Union have previously prohibited their workers from using the app on official devices.
According to a note sent to Global Affairs Canada employees that was obtained by the National Post, TikTok “will be automatically removed and blocked from use on all government-issued mobile devices.” The report suggests that the government will announce the policy, which is expected to be effective on March 1, on Tuesday.
Uh-Oh: Feds Say Google ‘Systematically Destroyed’ Evidence for Years by Auto-Deleting Employee Chats + More
Uh-Oh: Feds Say Google ‘Systematically Destroyed’ Evidence for Years by Auto-Deleting Employee Chats
Google’s reliance on commonly used messaging systems that automatically delete conversations after a day has landed the company in hot water with the Department of Justice.
In filing Thursday evening, the DOJ accused Google of using so-called “history off” communications that they say “routinely destroyed” written communication after 24 hours. Some of those destroyed chats, the DOJ alleges, may have discussed “sensitive topics.” That’s a bad look as the tech giant faces not one, but two antitrust investigations by the nation’s leading law enforcement division.
“For nearly four years, Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours.” the DOJ alleges.
What’s Really Behind the Wave of Sadness Among Teenage Girls? We Asked 9 of Them.
Reports of persistent sadness and hopelessness. Declines in overall mental health. A rise in suicidal thoughts. None of these trends, outlined in an alarming Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report about teenagers’ mental health last week, come as a shock to Jacqueline Metzger, a 17-year-old high school senior in Washington, DC.
Much of the conjecture about why girls are experiencing a spike in sadness has come from adults, whose theories include smartphones and social media, as well as anxieties about the world teens will inherit, rife with problems like climate change.
Metzger and eight other teenage girls interviewed across six states generally agreed with those hypotheses, but they said their generation has the confidence to speak up about how they’re feeling and why they think that is — if adults are willing to hear their voices.
The high schoolers pointed to what they see as unique stressors their generation faces, which combined have led to the observed spike in depression. Many named social media, the coronavirus pandemic — which robbed them of normal high school experiences — school shootings and gender discrimination as some of the reasons their cohort feels hopeless. They also said teens are talking more about mental health now than in the past and possibly reducing the stigma, which may lead more of them to feel comfortable reporting it to the CDC.
9 People Hold the Internet’s Fate in Their Hands
Free speech advocates focused on the Supreme Court this week, as nine justices spent nearly three hours hashing out the meaning of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Tuesday’s argument in Gonzalez v.Google marked the first time that the Supreme Court might interpret the 26 words that protect online platforms from liability for user content.
But a potentially greater threat to free speech was taking place more than 800 miles to the south in Tallahassee, where a Florida state legislator proposed a bill to make it easier for plaintiffs to bring defamation lawsuits. To the north, a federal judge recently struck down a New York law that regulates online hate speech. To the west, a judge nixed a California COVID misinformation law. And in DC, the justices are also considering whether to rule on the constitutionality of Texas and Florida laws that restrict the ability of social media platforms to moderate user content.
We are at a potential turning point for the Supreme Court’s strong protections for free speech and the internet. Only one justice who decided the 1997 case remains on the court. And online speech is now far more controversial than it was in the internet’s nascent years, with some arguing that too much harmful speech remains online while others contend that platforms are too heavy-handed in their content moderation. Internal and external forces could pressure the Supreme Court to allow the government to take a more hands-on role with free speech.
California Bill Would Prohibit Social Media From Promoting Harmful Content to Minors
A newly introduced California bill would, if passed, prohibit social media sites from promoting content that can lead minors to purchase fentanyl or firearms — including ghost guns — commit suicide, develop an eating disorder, inflict harm on themselves or others or develop an addiction to the platform.
Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who introduced Senate Bill 287 earlier this month, said in a Feb. 2 statement it is designed to hold social media platforms accountable for allowing “harmful content toward youth.”
The bill would require social media companies that make over $100 million in gross revenue per year, to undergo quarterly audits of their features, designs and algorithms that have the potential to cause or contribute to such harm.
Universities Need to Do More to Protect Free Speech. Here’s How We’re Succeeding
Free speech on college campuses has emerged as the new front in the culture wars between the Right and Left. But despite what you may have heard, most university students and faculty are supportive of free speech and the robust exchange of ideas on university campuses. According to recent research by the Knight Foundation, 84% of students view free speech rights as critical to our democracy.
Still, college campuses are increasingly challenging places to have challenging conversations. The same study found that the percentage of students who believe that free speech rights are secure has dropped from 59% to 47% since 2019 — a whopping 20 points. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who felt their campus climate prevents students from expressing their opinions has increased, from 54% to 65%, since 2016.
Universities need to do more to protect free inquiry and expression, which will only flourish on campuses that are clear about their purpose, driven by cultures of curiosity and intellectual humility, hold the line when controversies arise and focus on creating communities where everybody feels a sense of connection
Ransomware Gang Leaked Los Angeles Student Health Records Online
Health records for about 2,000 current and former Los Angeles school students have been published to the dark web following a ransomware attack last year, the school district said in a statement on Wednesday.
The “assessment records,” which could include mental health, attendance, disciplinary and academic results, were stolen in a September 2022 cyber attack, Jack Kelanic, a senior IT administrator for the district, told Reuters after an education news site posted redacted copies of purported student mental health records online.
The attacks were first widely reported last year, but the compromise of sensitive health records only came to light in recent days.
Cyber attacks on schools worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of students online for virtual instruction while school systems’ technology infrastructure may not have been ready.
Needed: A New Framework to Make Sure Health Companies Play Fair With Patient Data
I’m now more certain than ever that patients are being seriously exploited in terms of their data, its value and the profitability others are deriving from its aggregation and sale — though some are beginning to realize just how valuable their health data can be. They should be able to bank that value.
Unlike money, no global infrastructure exists to govern, manage and watch data transactions, and no collective institutions exist to protect data security or integrity. Healthcare data in particular exist in a wild west environment governed by permissive regulations that enable data sharing and transfer among entrenched interests rather than protecting individual’s privacy.
Today’s system allows data monopolies to operate unfettered and reap profits while data laborers — in this case, patients and healthcare professionals — receive no compensation for their essential contributions. This status quo is unacceptable, antiquated and exploitative. Yet the healthcare landscape is dotted with companies whose only value proposition is aggregating and reselling data created by patients and doctors.
Meta Announces �?Facebook Jail’ Reforms That Focus More on Better Explanations of Policy, Less on �?Timeouts’
“Facebook jail,” the name the social network’s users have bestowed on the company’s system for determining policy violations, is getting an overhaul. Meta announced today it will be reforming its penalty system based on the recommendations from the Oversight Board, the independent body of experts, academics, civic leaders and lawyers who now weigh in on appeals decisions made by Meta.
The Board had long raised concerns about Facebook’s penalty system, which it called “disproportionate and opaque.” It also advised Facebook to be more transparent with users over its decisions and pushed to allow users to explain the context of their violating post when appealing a decision made by Meta.
Today, Meta says it will reform its system to focus less on penalizing end users by restricting their ability to post and more on explaining the reasoning behind its content removals, which it believes will be a fairer and more effective means of moderating content on its platform.
GPT-4 Is Coming — What We Know so Far
ChatGPT has taken the tech world by storm, showcasing artificial intelligence (AI) with conversational abilities that go far beyond anything we’ve seen before.
The viral chatbot interface is based on GPT-3, said to be one of the largest and most complex language models ever created — trained on 175 billion “parameters” (data points).
However, it’s something of an open secret that its creator — the AI research organization OpenAI — is well into development of its successor, GPT-4. Rumor has it that GPT-4 will be far more powerful and capable than GPT-3. One source even went as far as claiming that the parameter count has been upped to the region of 100 trillion, although this has been disputed in colorful language by Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO.
China Appears to Be Pulling Another U-Turn, Saying It’ll Promote the Use of AI in Daily Life Just Days After Reports It Blocked ChatGPT
China appears to have had a change of heart about artificial intelligence. It now wants to integrate the tech into daily life, just days after reports emerged that it had blocked its citizens from accessing viral AI chatbot ChatGPT.
On Friday, officials from China’s science and technology ministry said their government attaches “great importance” to the development of artificial intelligence, and will be promoting its integration into the economy and society.
School Districts Can’t Require COVID Vaccines, California Supreme Court Affirms + More
School Districts Can’t Require COVID Vaccines, California Supreme Court Affirms
San Francisco Chronicle via MSN reported:
The state Supreme Court rejected a challenge Wednesday to a ruling that said school districts in California cannot require their students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because only the state government can issue such a mandate.
While public health agencies have recommended the vaccinations for children as young as six months old, legislation calling for vaccine mandates in schools has stalled in Sacramento. Gov. Gavin Newsom initially proposed requiring students to be vaccinated last July but has put his order on hold. And courts have stopped local school districts from acting on their own.
Wednesday’s case involved the San Diego Unified School District, the state’s second-largest with more than 121,000 students. The district first proposed in September 2021 to require students 16 and older to be vaccinated against the coronavirus to attend classes, sports and other in-person events. Its order would have allowed exemptions for medical reasons but not for religious or personal objections.
The district later said it would postpone its order until July 2023, but by then it was already being challenged in court. And in November the state’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, the first appellate court to rule on the issue, said school districts had no authority to order vaccinations on their own.
Lawmakers Should Give Parents Control Over Kids’ Social Media
Big Tech and America’s parents want different things for our kids. A new report co-released last week by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) — titled “Five Pro-Family Priorities for the 118th Congress and Beyond” — makes that indisputably clear.
In a survey by YouGov of more than 2,500 American adults on a host of family policy preferences, EPPC fellow Patrick T. Brown found that 80% of parents support requiring parental permission before a minor opens a social media account. That’s a huge number, but only a touch larger than the 77% who support giving parents administrator-level access to what their kids are seeing and doing online.
Even setting aside the popularity of these proposals, lawmakers must act for the sake of America’s children, to shield them from the unprecedented access that massive tech corporations have to their brains — access that has fostered little other than disaster. America’s teens are suffering, and, as this report reveals, their parents are crying out for help.
Parental consent and a private right of action are good steps, but, on balance, without more robust preventative provisions, this is a win for Big Tech. Their business model is built upon getting access to kids while they’re young and addicting them so they can be molded into ready consumers, to be bombarded with ads ad infinitum. These companies are in a race to the bottom.
The Push to Ban TikTok in the U.S. Isn’t About Privacy
Fresh off their successful effort to ban TikTok on government devices last year, China hawks in the U.S. Congress are looking to expand that ban further, even as lawmakers continue allowing U.S. companies to scoop up Americans’ data and share or sell it with third parties — potentially including China’s government.
The irony is largely lost on many in Congress. Lawmakers are renewing their calls for a nationwide TikTok ban and pushing the Biden administration to force a breakup of the Chinese-owned tech company. Meanwhile, efforts to pass a national privacy law, which failed last year, have largely evaporated.
While e-isolationism is now en vogue when it comes to the CCP, U.S. tech companies continue to write their own rules. The internet is built on the premise that data is currency, which is why Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others have invested countless millions on lobbyists in recent years. The status quo is a windfall for these tech giants.
Whether the fears are warranted or ungrounded, Congress isn’t even having the right debate, according to Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. “Banning TikTok would be a godsend for sleazy rip-off data brokers,” the Oregon Democrat says. “TikTok is one piece of the puzzle, but don’t miss the overall challenge — because until you reign in these data brokers … you’re going to have all kinds of people’s personal data in America still on its way to China and hostile powers.”
�?Dangerous Surveillance’: Republican Lawmaker Wants to Ban Federal Reserve From Issuing Digital Currency
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) has introduced legislation that seeks to prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) while insisting that a digital equivalent to the dollar must uphold privacy and sovereignty.
“Any digital version of the dollar must uphold our American values of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free market competitiveness. Anything less opens the door to the development of a dangerous surveillance tool,” Emmer stated in a tweet on Feb. 22.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) extended his support for the bill, saying that he is “proud to co-sponsor” the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act.
“On the awful idea for central bank digital currency: We have enough problems with abusive government surveillance. The Fed should not have means to monitor individual account holders or their transactions,” he said in a tweet on Feb. 22.
Facebook, Twitter, Minecraft Report Inconsistent Policies in Google Play About How They Use Your Data, Study Finds
The majority of the most downloaded apps from Google Play Store have provided inconsistent answers about how safe user data is on their platforms, according to a report released by Mozilla on Thursday.
Mozilla, the not-for-profit organization behind the Firefox browser, looked at the 20 most popular paid and free apps in the popular Google Play app store for its report.
It found that nearly 80% of the 40 apps reviewed had “some discrepancies” between the app’s privacy policies and the information the app reported on Google’s data safety form.
That form requires that apps declare how they collect and handle user data for apps available in the Google Play Store. The report then ranked those 40 apps on how transparently they disclosed their use of personal data.
DOJ Reportedly Probes Google Maps, Adding to Sprawling Antitrust Concerns
The Department of Justice has renewed its focus on Google Maps, adding to its already-sprawling antitrust investigation into the company, Politico and Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
The DOJ is homing in on whether Google illegally bundles its mapping and search products by making app developers use them together, the outlets reported, citing unnamed sources. Politico also reported that the DOJ is looking into how Google packages its maps, app store and voice assistant for automakers through Google Automotive Services.
A lawsuit could come as soon as this year, Politico reported, though sources told the outlet no decision has been made on whether to file a case.
DOJ has already filed two antitrust lawsuits against Google: One in 2020 targeting Google’s distribution of its search product, and one last month focused on its online advertising business.
Tony Blair Launches New Push for Biometric Digital ID for All Citizens
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is again promoting a controversial plan to give every British citizen a digital ID. This would entail the utilization of new biometric technology to store a person’s passport, driving license, tax records, qualifications and right-to-work status. Sir Tony had previously attempted to introduce ID cards during his time as Prime Minister.
Tony Blair and former Conservative lawmaker William Hague have stated that a major transformation of the government with regard to technology is necessary in order to keep up with the ever-changing world.
However, there was backlash from their demands with Sir Jake Berry calling it a “creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave.”
Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said: “A sprawling digital identity system of the type described by Sir Tony and Lord Hague is utterly retrograde and would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the U.K. The public has consistently opposed mandatory ID systems and there is absolutely nothing to suggest the public would want or support such a digital ID system now.”
Beijing Pulls the Plug on ChatGPT Over Fears It Could Help Spread U.S. ‘Disinformation,’ Reports Say
Beijing has started to clamp down on access to ChatGPT in China, according to reports.
OpenAI’s chatbot is not officially available in China, but some people have reportedly found ways to access it via VPNs or “mini programs” released by third-party developers.
Beijing uses its “Great Firewall” to block many foreign websites and applications, including the full version of Google Search.
European Commission Bans TikTok From Official Devices
The European Commission has banned TikTok from official devices because of concerns about cybersecurity, a move sharply criticized by the company in its latest run-in with Western governments over how it handles user data.
Commission staff has until March 15 to delete the short-form video app, owned by China’s ByteDance, from work devices and any personal devices that use Commission apps and services.
European Commission spokesperson Sonya Gospodinova told reporters that the ban was “temporary” and “under constant review and possible reassessment.”
The measure piles further pressure on TikTok, already banned from U.S. federal government devices and from official devices in some U.S. states due to fears that the app’s user data could wind up in the hands of the Chinese government.
