Malevolent Technology
A U.S. judge has rejected Apple’s (AAPL.O) bid to throw out a class-action lawsuit that accused Chief Executive Tim Cook of defrauding shareholders by concealing falling demand for iPhones in China.
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U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ decision late Monday night clears the way for shareholders led by a British pension fund to sue over a one-day plunge that wiped out $74 billion of Apple’s market value.
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Read MoreAmazon recently shut a man out of his smart home devices, got fined for illegally harvesting and storing children’s data, and re-upped a $10 billion data-management contract with the NSA. Comedian and political commentator Russell Brand says this shows the company is too powerful and people have to fight back.
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Read MoreOne of the big questions that those of us involved in exposing the secret U.S. government censorship effort have been asking ourselves over the last few months is: did the people involved know that they were breaking the law?
That question appears to have been answered with a resounding yes by the House Judiciary Committee. Yesterday it released its report, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded with Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans,” on government censorship.
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Read MoreOpen-source AI models, which let anyone view and manipulate the code, are growing in popularity as startups and giants alike race to compete with market leader ChatGPT.
Why it matters: The White House and some experts fear open-source models could aid risky uses — especially synthetic biology, which could create the next pandemic. But those sounding the alarms may be too late.
What’s happening: The wide-open code helps little guys take on tech giants. But it also could help dictators and terrorists,.
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Read MoreAmazon plans to tap thousands of U.S. small businesses, from bodegas to florists, to deliver its packages by the end of the year, Axios is first to report.
Driving the news: Amazon on Monday will start actively recruiting existing small businesses in 23 states including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, and Washington.
At least 20 dense cities across the country, including Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, will be targeted by the program.
The company is interested in working with a wide range of businesses such as florists, coffee shops, clothing stores, among others. Amazon notes they don’t need delivery experience to make the partnership work.
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Read MoreSalesforce Ventures, the investment arm of global enterprise software giant Salesforce, has announced the launch of a $500 million Generative AI fund aimed at supporting the start-up ecosystem and fostering the responsible development of Generative artificial intelligence (AI). The fund has already made initial investments in six leading companies in the field, including Anthropic, Cohere, Hearth.AI, You.com, Humane, and Tribble. In addition, Salesforce Ventures is actively seeking out additional start-ups for investment, with a particular interest in the Israeli market.
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Read MoreDemands to halt facial recognition use in Canada, at least pending further study and legislation, are not being met, or at least not quickly enough for some. A letter of concern has been jointly signed by The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and a list of signatories including representatives of civil society groups and academia.
A subtle change in the way the risks of facial recognition are described may be the most noteworthy element of the letter to biometrics developers, particularly outside of Canada. Part of what makes it noteworthy, is the similarity of the shift to that of other advocacy groups fighting against the technology’s use.
A boycott of venues using facial recognition by several popular music stars and reported by Rolling Stone has been organized by Fight for the Future.
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Read MoreThe promising field of drone deliveries and air taxis might be threatened by an unexpected hazard – strong and sudden wind gusts around tall city buildings.
The authors of a study published May 31 in the journal Drones warn that more regulation is needed to adress this issue, before air taxis and delivery drones can go fully operational.
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Read MoreOver the years, various labels have emerged to describe the type or class of people who tend to run societies in the postmodern West: the “professional managerial class” or the “managerial elite,” the “creative class” or the “laptop class.” Or, as I’ve ventured to name them, the “Virtuals.” Common to all these identifiers is the recognition that the people now occupying the most prestigious and influential upper layer of society tend to differ in some distinct functional sense from the farmer, the truck driver, or the shop-owner of the “working class,” regardless of their actual relative wealth. Members of this well-educated, usually urban, class work not with their hands but with their minds; not with the material world but with information, ideas, narratives, or organizational or interpersonal relationships.
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