Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on Friday, October eleventh, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and this week marked a new stage in the ongoing
Speaker 1: battle between the United States Department of Justice and Google
Speaker 1: slash Alphabet, Alphabet being the parent company of Google. And
Speaker 1: this is overcharges of Google engaging in anti competitive practices,
Speaker 1: including how Google pays other companies such as Apple to
Speaker 1: feature Google Search as the default search tool on devices
Speaker 1: like iPhones. So the stage we are now entering into
Speaker 1: is the negotiation stage, as the DOJ has released proposed
Speaker 1: remedies to address what it sees as illegal activity. Previously
Speaker 1: the summer, a judge found that Google had been engaged
Speaker 1: in anti competitive practices. So this is the next step, right,
Speaker 1: what do we do about this now? On the DOJ's side,
Speaker 1: the proposed remedies range from a ban on Google being
Speaker 1: able to broker these kinds of deals in the first place,
Speaker 1: to going so far as to call for breaking up
Speaker 1: the company. Into smaller pieces. Google meanwhile, suggests that the
Speaker 1: DOJ should pound zand at least when it comes to
Speaker 1: stuff like calling for Google to break up or to
Speaker 1: quote Google's Lee and Mulholland quote, this case is about
Speaker 1: a set of search distribution contracts. Rather than focus on that,
Speaker 1: the government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that
Speaker 1: will impact numerous industries and products with significant un intended
Speaker 1: consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness end quote, which
Speaker 1: makes it sound like Google's worried that all of that
Speaker 1: capitalism is going to collapse if the DOJ gets its way.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm putting too many words in Google's proverbial mouth
Speaker 1: at that point, but anyway, a Casey Newton newsletter, and
Speaker 1: as I've always said, I have no connection to Casey,
Speaker 1: don't know him personally or anything, but his newsletter is fantastic.
Speaker 1: In his newsletter this week, he indicates that this is
Speaker 1: really the starting point that these two parties have when
Speaker 1: it comes to negotiating an actual remediation strategy with Google.
Speaker 1: You know, they got some time to do this. A
Speaker 1: judge isn't going to hear the actual case about proposed
Speaker 1: remedies until next April, and there won't be a ruling
Speaker 1: on the matter until next August. So you could see
Speaker 1: this as both sides taking one of those positions where
Speaker 1: they're asking for way more than they think they're going
Speaker 1: to end up getting, and they know that they're going
Speaker 1: to have to meet somewhere in between these two extremes. Plus,
Speaker 1: we actually do still have a presidential election as well
Speaker 1: as elections for the House and the Senate happening between
Speaker 1: now in April, and those could clearly have a big
Speaker 1: impact on how the government proceeds. I think we may
Speaker 1: see a change in how Google positions itself for the
Speaker 1: search market, but I doubt it's going to go as
Speaker 1: far as forcing Google to break up. We have seen
Speaker 1: cases where the government has come in and forced companies
Speaker 1: to break up. Those don't always take There was a
Speaker 1: famous one with Microsoft that ultimately got reversed, but I
Speaker 1: just don't see that happening here. Maybe it will, and
Speaker 1: maybe by this time next year we'll all be talking
Speaker 1: about how Google is going to get split asunder into
Speaker 1: different companies. I have my doubts about that, but we'll
Speaker 1: have to wait and see. Tesla held its long delayed
Speaker 1: cyber cab event this past week. It was called the
Speaker 1: We Robot Event. WE as inwa E, not WE Robot.
Speaker 1: Musk had previously teased this event earlier in the year,
Speaker 1: initially planning it for August, but that clearly didn't happen.
Speaker 1: As August approached, the date slipped and we got October instead,
Speaker 1: and the company showed off a lot of stuff at
Speaker 1: the Wei Robot event. Part of that was a Tesla
Speaker 1: transport vehicle dubbed the robo Van, but apparently it's pronounced
Speaker 1: reboven based upon how Musk said it. Anyway, according to Musk,
Speaker 1: the autonomous vehicle will be able to haul cargo or
Speaker 1: carry up to twenty passengers to solve for high density,
Speaker 1: which I mean, that's kind of what the hyper loop
Speaker 1: was supposed to do, especially like what the hyper loop
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas is supposed to do. These days, we
Speaker 1: just have Tesla's chauffeurs driving people around a fairly limited
Speaker 1: area of Las Vegas through underground tunnels, which I think
Speaker 1: isn't exactly the hyper loop that all of us were
Speaker 1: anticipating when Musk first mentioned it, But what do I know,
Speaker 1: Maybe that'll turn out to be actually a great idea
Speaker 1: in the long run, I've seen a lot of skeptical
Speaker 1: reports about how it doesn't actually solve for any meaningful problems.
Speaker 1: As for the cyber cab itself, tech crunches Rebecca Bellen
Speaker 1: described it as a quote smaller, sleeker, two seater cyber
Speaker 1: truck end quote. Musk claimed that the operation of the
Speaker 1: cybercab would be such as to bring the cost per
Speaker 1: mile traveled to be at around twenty cents according to
Speaker 1: US currency plus. He said the average person will be
Speaker 1: able to buy one of these things, with the projected
Speaker 1: vehicle cost coming in at under thirty thousand dollars. I
Speaker 1: think the vision is to have a citizen owned fleet
Speaker 1: of cybercabs, so you could essentially rent out your cab
Speaker 1: like it was an uber, but you don't have to
Speaker 1: drive the thing, so you're just passive generating income by
Speaker 1: using your car as a transportation vehicle for strangers. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that would actually work. Maybe it would,
Speaker 1: but I suspect you would need to do a lot
Speaker 1: of maintenance and cleaning and that that would start to
Speaker 1: eat into whatever profits you made. But what do I know.
Speaker 1: Musk also claimed the company would be engaged in quote
Speaker 1: unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year. In the quote,
Speaker 1: that's really ambitious. You know, unsupervised FSD meaning fully autonomous
Speaker 1: driving where you don't have a safety driver there, or
Speaker 1: if you do, they're not actively trying to solve for
Speaker 1: the car's problems. I mean, unsupervised FSD does suggest a
Speaker 1: truly autonomous vehicle. I think that is pretty ambitious, particularly
Speaker 1: since Tesla vehicles and Tesla owners, let's be fair, have
Speaker 1: garnered a reputation for getting into dangerous situations while in
Speaker 1: autopilot or full self drive modes. We've all seen the
Speaker 1: stories of various accidents that have happened while Tesla vehicles
Speaker 1: in these modes have failed to recognize a dangerous situation
Speaker 1: and then gotten into really bad accidents, sometimes with tragic results.
Speaker 1: So it does seem pretty ambitious to me to suggest
Speaker 1: that next year there's going to be these unsupervised FSD sessions.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Maybe they'll be under very controlled circumstances,
Speaker 1: which I could sort of understand, but when they'll I
Speaker 1: last covered all this earlier this year the state of California,
Speaker 1: the regulators there indicated they had not received paperwork from
Speaker 1: Tesla that would be necessary to conduct those kinds of
Speaker 1: operations within the state. Now that may have changed since then.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything about it when I did some cursorysearching,
Speaker 1: but I admit I didn't spend a whole lot of
Speaker 1: time looking for it. So I will do that because
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see if perhaps Tesla actually has secured
Speaker 1: the permissions necessary to be able to conduct these kinds
Speaker 1: of operations. And I'm sure a lot of other media
Speaker 1: outlets will follow up on that story as well, so
Speaker 1: perhaps I'll have more to say about this next week.
Speaker 1: Musk says he expects the Cybercab to go into production
Speaker 1: before twenty twenty seven. Now, on top of the cabs
Speaker 1: and the Van, Musk also showed off the company's humanoid robot,
Speaker 1: dubbed Optimus. According to one article I read, robots at
Speaker 1: this event were serving as bartenders as well as dancers,
Speaker 1: and according to Bellin's piece and tech Crunch, the projected
Speaker 1: cost of one of these things is somewhere between twenty
Speaker 1: and thirty thousand dollars, so it's not exactly something the
Speaker 1: average person is going to be able to splurge on
Speaker 1: I imagine, But then keep in mind Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: frequently in the running for richest person in the world,
Speaker 1: so to him twenty or thirty thousand dollars isn't the
Speaker 1: same as it would be for I don't know anybody else. Now,
Speaker 1: the event has only happened since, you know, yesterday it
Speaker 1: was it was on Thursday when the event was held. However,
Speaker 1: there are already pieces about how investors are disappointed in
Speaker 1: the event. Most of the reports I saw said that
Speaker 1: investors felt like it didn't focus enough on the business
Speaker 1: side of things and instead came across as just sort
Speaker 1: of a marketing event. And as I said, Musk already
Speaker 1: has a reputation for talking a big game but then
Speaker 1: failing to follow through. I mean, he's been talking about
Speaker 1: fully autonomous vehicles being a thing since twenty sixteen at least,
Speaker 1: and it's always just been like a year or two
Speaker 1: in the future, and those years come and go and
Speaker 1: we're still not there yet, So maybe that's contributing to this.
Speaker 1: In pre market trading, the share price fell around six
Speaker 1: percent for Tesla, but that could just be a momentary blip.
Speaker 1: In fact, by the time you listen to this episode.
Speaker 1: It could be that the market has completely changed around.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you know, he could take a
Speaker 1: quick surgency. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I've got more tech news to cover.
Speaker 1: We're back. I got a couple of AI related stories
Speaker 1: to talk about this week. First up, Hayden Field of
Speaker 1: CNBC reported on how OpenAI warns that quote bad actors
Speaker 1: are using its platform to disrupt elections, but with little
Speaker 1: viral engagement end quotes. So, in other words, the fear
Speaker 1: that people would turn to AI in order to manufacture
Speaker 1: misinformation appears to be well founded. That is what is happening.
Speaker 1: But apparently, while there are people who are using AI
Speaker 1: to generate misinformation, that misinformation isn't getting very much traction.
Speaker 1: So in a pretty long report, open ai said it
Speaker 1: has detected and intervened in more than twenty misinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: that were using open AI's products like chat GPT. These
Speaker 1: campaigns included stuff like, you know, social media posts that
Speaker 1: were made by bots that were asked to create ultimately
Speaker 1: malicious posts to AIG generated web content designed to push
Speaker 1: specific narratives in an effort to shape perception and support,
Speaker 1: and it sounds as though the use of this AI
Speaker 1: for this kind of purpose it's on the rise, and
Speaker 1: that's no big surprise, especially now that the United States
Speaker 1: is about to hold an election. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: stake in the game if open ai is to be believed. However,
Speaker 1: the good news that we can take away from all
Speaker 1: this is that the AI generated stuff isn't getting any
Speaker 1: you know, viral attention. Now, if that is true, that's great,
Speaker 1: but we have to remember that the whole goal of
Speaker 1: generative AI projects is to get to a point where
Speaker 1: the stuff that AI is generating is as good, if
Speaker 1: not better, than the stuff that humans make. So at best,
Speaker 1: you could say this is really more of a slam
Speaker 1: against open AI's tools, saying they're not good enough to
Speaker 1: create viral posts like that's a message that I think
Speaker 1: open ai needs to be aware of because if they're saying, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure people are using this to create misinformation, but here's
Speaker 1: the good news, it's not really effective, then you could say, well,
Speaker 1: does that mean that your tools can't make effective persuasive messaging?
Speaker 1: Because if that's the case, why would I use it
Speaker 1: in order to I don't know, design a marketing campaign
Speaker 1: for my product. That's tricky, right, because if you say no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's good for that, then okay, well why is it
Speaker 1: not good at creating misinformation? Or are you just trying
Speaker 1: to be all things to all people while avoiding as
Speaker 1: much responsibility as possible. I don't know the answers to
Speaker 1: any of that. I just think it's interesting. Meanwhile, The
Speaker 1: Guardian's Ben Macouch reports that Russian campaigns are using AI
Speaker 1: generated images to spread disinformation about hurricanes Helene and Milton,
Speaker 1: which just recently impacted the southeastern United States. For example,
Speaker 1: an account on x the app formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 1: posted images of a supposed flooded Magic Kingdom at Walt
Speaker 1: Disney World in Florida. Now, any real Disney Parks fan
Speaker 1: knows the Magic Kingdom is actually built on the second story, or,
Speaker 1: if you're from Europe, the first floor, because there's actually
Speaker 1: a series of corridors known as the Utila Doors that
Speaker 1: are underneath areas like Main Street USA. So if you
Speaker 1: had really significant flooding, I'm talking like the stuff so
Speaker 1: deep that you're having to wade through it, that would
Speaker 1: be a heck of a thing. In the Magic Kingdom,
Speaker 1: it would probably mean those utilid doors would have to
Speaker 1: be almost totally flooded, which would be absolutely disastrous. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the images were actually created by AI, which many on
Speaker 1: x pointed out, and ex itself relatively quickly acknowledged it
Speaker 1: by tagging the posts saying that the images were AI generated.
Speaker 1: And there's been a lot of misinformation surrounding the hurricane
Speaker 1: season in the United States this year, and it appears
Speaker 1: that Russia is trying to stir the pot further with
Speaker 1: attempts like these, which you could argue are fairly feeble,
Speaker 1: like they're not really effective. But I think the philosophy
Speaker 1: of the Kremlin is if there's already fire, pour some
Speaker 1: gasoline on it. As we get closer to a deadline
Speaker 1: imposed by the United States government on Byteedance, the parent
Speaker 1: company of TikTok, and that deadline is that byte Dance
Speaker 1: must divest itself of TikTok in January or face a
Speaker 1: nationwide ban on the app here in the United States.
Speaker 1: ByteDance has reportedly started to cut staff by the hundreds. Now,
Speaker 1: this plan, according to Reuters, is to lean more heavily
Speaker 1: on artificial intelligence for the purposes of moderating content Reuter's
Speaker 1: reports that according to TikTok, around five hundred positions were
Speaker 1: cut in Malaysia. Other sources told Reuters that was closer
Speaker 1: to seven hundred positions. But yeah, another case of AI
Speaker 1: cutting into the jobs of human beings, in this case
Speaker 1: content moderation, which is already a pretty sensitive topic, right
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of concern that platforms in general,
Speaker 1: not just TikTok, but kind of across the web are
Speaker 1: not doing a good enough job when it comes to
Speaker 1: moderating content, doing things like protecting from harmful content to misinformation.
Speaker 1: TikTok is also in the new here in the United
Speaker 1: States because, after an investigation spanning more than two years,
Speaker 1: legal documents that were supposed to be sealed that are
Speaker 1: connected to a lawsuit that alleged TikTok has engaged in
Speaker 1: practices that put young people at risk in various ways.
Speaker 1: Those documents now reveal the company had its own internal
Speaker 1: investigations that seemed to support those allegations. That is, TikTok
Speaker 1: had conducted research on issues relating to child safety and
Speaker 1: found that indeed the company's practices were likely causing unhealthy
Speaker 1: consequences for younger users and you know, they ended up
Speaker 1: doing that stuff anyway. So this is kind of like
Speaker 1: the whistleblower situation over at Facebook now known as Meta,
Speaker 1: in which internal documents showed that at least some people
Speaker 1: within the company were really concerned about how products could
Speaker 1: affect users, but the company at large seemed to dismiss
Speaker 1: those concerns, and PR reports that the details in these
Speaker 1: documents were intended to be redacted, but that an error
Speaker 1: in publication meant that large portion of the documents were
Speaker 1: not redacted, and before the court could remedy that, the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Public Radio published some of that material. That's where
Speaker 1: it was revealed that executives within TikTok were aware of
Speaker 1: potentially harmful practices and how some remediation strategies were really
Speaker 1: nothing more than lip service, and yet the company promoted
Speaker 1: these features as being a meaningful way to address concerns
Speaker 1: like time management type features, right, the idea of let's
Speaker 1: try and alert people so that they limit their time
Speaker 1: on the app. According to the documents, it shows that
Speaker 1: people within TikTok realized this wasn't actually discouraging people from
Speaker 1: using the app as much. They still were using the
Speaker 1: app a lot, but it did give TikTok a little
Speaker 1: bit of smoke screen to make it look like the
Speaker 1: company was doing something about an issue that was concerning
Speaker 1: a lot of folks. I actually really recommend reading nbr's
Speaker 1: full piece on this story. They go into a lot
Speaker 1: more detail. The story is titled States probed TikTok for Years.
Speaker 1: Here are the documents the app tried to keep secret,
Speaker 1: and you can find that on NPR dot org. It
Speaker 1: originally published earlier this morning, Friday, October eleventh, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Chinese based hackers are said to have successfully penetrated networks
Speaker 1: belonging to US Internet service providers, including Verizon and AT
Speaker 1: and T. And they did it by targeting backdoor surveillance
Speaker 1: systems that are meant to allow US agencies, you know,
Speaker 1: like the FBI or the NSA a way to conduct
Speaker 1: surveillance across these networks. And it's almost like an entire
Speaker 1: population of people, including myself, have pointed out repeatedly that
Speaker 1: intentionally creating workarounds to secure systems means you've turned them
Speaker 1: into inherently insecure systems. Right. I use an analogy. I say,
Speaker 1: imagine you've got a bank vault and you've got the
Speaker 1: world's most sophisticated, powerful vault door that cannot be breached.
Speaker 1: It is incredibly secure. But you've also put a screen
Speaker 1: door in the back of the vault so that the
Speaker 1: FEDS can sometimes just pop in and out just to
Speaker 1: make sure everything's okay. Well, if the thieves know that
Speaker 1: there's a back door, you know they're gonna dedicate their
Speaker 1: time to finding the back door and using that rather
Speaker 1: than go through the front, because going through the front
Speaker 1: would require way too much time and resources. Just find
Speaker 1: the way through the back. It's already there, you can
Speaker 1: just use that. That seems to be what happened. So
Speaker 1: Chinese hackers being called Salt Typhoon have apparently done this
Speaker 1: and were able to access the various ISPs potentially for
Speaker 1: months before they were detected and they were able to
Speaker 1: be addressed. So yeah, that's a real issue. As to
Speaker 1: how bad that hack was hard to say at the moment.
Speaker 1: There's still investigations that are ongoing, but it's not like
Speaker 1: this was some crazy unforeseen outcome. People have been warning
Speaker 1: for years that these intentional back doors are a bad idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: the one bit of news I missed last week that
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention just to wrap this up, is
Speaker 1: that Microsoft last week announced it had discontinued the HoloLens
Speaker 1: augmented reality headset. It's no longer producing new units, and
Speaker 1: it plans to in support for existing devices by December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven. So the hollow Lens launched in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: there have been some preview events the year before, and
Speaker 1: it was never a consumer product. Microsoft marketed it more
Speaker 1: as an enterprise product for businesses. The company released an
Speaker 1: updated model in twenty nineteen. The headsets cost around three
Speaker 1: thousand to three five hundred dollars, so they weren't cheap,
Speaker 1: and it looks like Meta is going to be the
Speaker 1: one charging ahead with its own AR headset development, while
Speaker 1: Microsoft and potentially Apple take a step back from attempting
Speaker 1: to augment reality. That's it for the news this week.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you out there are doing well,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Tech
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