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 iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for February
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, twenty twenty three. For such a beastly month
Speaker 1: as February twenty eight, days as a rule are plenty.
Speaker 1: Shout out if you recognize that reference. It is another
Speaker 1: AI dominated news day, though I promise there are a
Speaker 1: few stories I'll be covering that do not have AI
Speaker 1: as the central topic. But starting off Elon Musk repartedly
Speaker 1: wants to found a new AI lab to compete against
Speaker 1: open Ai. Now, for those of y'all who remember my
Speaker 1: episode about open ai, maybe this comes as a surprise
Speaker 1: because Musk was actually one of the original co founders
Speaker 1: of open ai in the first place. But back then,
Speaker 1: open ai was a not for profit organization, and it
Speaker 1: had the goal of using an open source approach to
Speaker 1: developing an evolving artificial intelligence in a way that ideally
Speaker 1: would be universally beneficial. You know, none of this AI
Speaker 1: that benefits one group at the expense of everyone else.
Speaker 1: Kind of nonsense. But then Musk stepped down from the
Speaker 1: board of open Ai because ostensibly because Tesla was also
Speaker 1: developing AI of its own and there was a potential
Speaker 1: conflict of interest, though Musk has later said that he
Speaker 1: was critical of open AI's direction, and since that day,
Speaker 1: Musk has gone on to criticize open Ai, particularly once
Speaker 1: the organization founded a for profit arm ostensibly to help
Speaker 1: fund the nonprofit part, and Musk has also criticized chat GPT,
Speaker 1: saying open ai is quote training AI to be woke
Speaker 1: end quote Yeah, Musk, I get it. You're a billionaire
Speaker 1: white guy. Why not punch down because there's nowhere else
Speaker 1: beat a punch right? What a jerk. I'm, of course
Speaker 1: being a little facetious. My opinion of Musk is obviously
Speaker 1: pretty low, but that's beside the point. I know no
Speaker 1: one really wants to hear that, so I'll drop it.
Speaker 1: Musk wants to create this AI lab and pursue AI
Speaker 1: chat butts that are unfettered by the chains of wokeness.
Speaker 1: Considering how Musk has shown that his free speech absolutist
Speaker 1: stance isn't actually in alignment with his behavior, you can
Speaker 1: see also how Twitter had banned mention of competing services
Speaker 1: like massadon Instagram and others on its platform. To see
Speaker 1: evidence of this, I suspect all of this is going
Speaker 1: to come back to haunt him should he actually achieve
Speaker 1: this goal. Meanwhile, Tesla investors are likely further aggravated to
Speaker 1: see that the company's CEO continues to direct his attention
Speaker 1: to yet another endeavor rather than address problems with Tesla.
Speaker 1: And then over at open Ai, the company is introducing
Speaker 1: a platform for developers that will give them access to
Speaker 1: open AI's tools, namely the company's machine learning models. So
Speaker 1: this is the very powerful AI compute systems that to
Speaker 1: build out yourself would require millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Open ai is calling this offering Foundry, and it means
Speaker 1: that people who have an idea for apps or services
Speaker 1: that would feature AI in some way could have access
Speaker 1: to compute assets without having to build them all themselves.
Speaker 1: That is an enticing offer for developers who might otherwise
Speaker 1: have a great idea but they lack the funds to
Speaker 1: be able to execute upon it. Details are somewhat scarce.
Speaker 1: Open ai has not announced when we might expect Foundry
Speaker 1: to launch, but we do know that it's going to
Speaker 1: set developers back a pretty penny, actually a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of pretty pennies to access these services. According to tech Crunch,
Speaker 1: three months of access to the lightweight version of GPT
Speaker 1: three point five would set you back seventy eight grand.
Speaker 1: That's seventy thousand dollars for three months of access wowsers.
Speaker 1: So this is well beyond the reach of your average
Speaker 1: home developer. We're really talking more about startups and companies
Speaker 1: that have a real shot at seeing a return on investment,
Speaker 1: but they lack the infrastructure or money to build out
Speaker 1: their own machine learning systems. Over at Meta, Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: announced that the company is pursuing its own AI strategy.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna just read out his Facebook post because
Speaker 1: it tells you everything you need to know. Quote. We're
Speaker 1: creating a new top level product group at Meta focused
Speaker 1: on generative AI to turbo charge our work in this area.
Speaker 1: We're starting by pulling together a lot of teams working
Speaker 1: on generative AI across the company into one group focused
Speaker 1: on building delightful experiences around this technology into all of
Speaker 1: our different products. In the short term, will focus on
Speaker 1: building creative and expressive tools Over the longer term will
Speaker 1: focus on developing AI personas that can help people in
Speaker 1: a variety of ways. We're exploring experiences with text like
Speaker 1: chat in WhatsApp and Messenger, with images like creative Instagram
Speaker 1: filters and ad formats, and with video and multimodal experiences.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of foundational work to do before
Speaker 1: getting to the really futuristic experiences, but I'm excited about
Speaker 1: all the new things will build alone the way end quote.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like Meta like Musk is on the
Speaker 1: path to create its own AI approach, or perhaps Meta
Speaker 1: will turn to Open AI to tap into the power
Speaker 1: of chat GPT. It's still early days and we're not
Speaker 1: done with AI yet. Snapchat is also jumping into the
Speaker 1: AI game with a product it calls my AI. Only
Speaker 1: subscribers to Snapchat Plus will have access to this. According
Speaker 1: to Snapchat, the AI will do stuff like if you
Speaker 1: ask it, it will give you recommendations for presents that
Speaker 1: you could buy friends and family. I mean, presumably Snapchat
Speaker 1: would scan everything you've ever said to these people and
Speaker 1: start to pull suggestions out of that, or it might
Speaker 1: give suggestions about things you could do with somebody, like hey,
Speaker 1: I want to hang out with so and so, what's
Speaker 1: a good activity and they might say, well, they really
Speaker 1: like the outdoors, how about you go hiking that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You can also apparently name this AI. However,
Speaker 1: the company also owns up to the fact that chat GPT,
Speaker 1: which is the system powering my AI, isn't always reliable.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that a lot over the last couple
Speaker 1: of months, or as Snapchat actually put it, quote, as
Speaker 1: with all aipowered chat bots, my AI is prone to
Speaker 1: hallucination and can be tricked into saying just about anything.
Speaker 1: End quote. Oh. Also, all that communication with AI is
Speaker 1: logged for the purposes of review and development, so anything
Speaker 1: you do say to my AI is being recorded. So
Speaker 1: that means it's best not to confide in my AI
Speaker 1: all your secrets, like Grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe or
Speaker 1: where you hit the bodies, because someone somewhere could be
Speaker 1: reading over that log. The whole announcement dedicates a surprising
Speaker 1: amount of space that warns users that the tool might
Speaker 1: not work as intended, and that almost raises the question
Speaker 1: about why they're deploying this tool so early. If they're
Speaker 1: taking this amount of effort to say, hey, y'all this
Speaker 1: thing might go heywire, and they really point out all
Speaker 1: the different ways that you can flag stuff so that
Speaker 1: people can review it and thus address any issues that
Speaker 1: pop up. Like it's it's a significant amount of the
Speaker 1: announcement that is all about covering their butts, so to speak.
Speaker 1: So I suppose one answer as to why they're deploying
Speaker 1: it so early is that this turns snapchat plus subscribers
Speaker 1: into QA testers that they don't have to pay. Right,
Speaker 1: these aren't employees. They could turn the community into the
Speaker 1: QA team. It's the basic concept behind open beta programs. Right.
Speaker 1: You find out by using a wide deployment where the
Speaker 1: problems are, and then you fix them. Before you know,
Speaker 1: you deploy it to an even larger audience in the future.
Speaker 1: Jordan Parker Herb wrote a piece for Insider titled I
Speaker 1: asked Chat GPT to write messages to my tender matches.
Speaker 1: A dating coach said they gave off a creepy vibe. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's really surprised by that. Heck, if
Speaker 1: you again turned on Nothing Forever the AI powered endless
Speaker 1: Seinfeld episode, you would probably guess this would be the
Speaker 1: inevitable outcome. Because those episodes can get a little unsettling
Speaker 1: as well. And this piece in an Cider indicates that
Speaker 1: chat GPT's responses fell into some pretty common traps when
Speaker 1: one attempts to navigate the complicated world of modern dating,
Speaker 1: namely that chat gpt wrote responses that are way too long. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, it tells me that if I were single,
Speaker 1: I would probably be single forever at this point, because
Speaker 1: come on, y'all, there's no denying. I will use a
Speaker 1: thousand words when ten would do just fine. So I
Speaker 1: would never do well on these kinds of apps. Also,
Speaker 1: chat gpt leaned heavily on its emoji game, and as
Speaker 1: the title of the piece points out, some of the
Speaker 1: responses came across as creepy. Also, the coach pointed out
Speaker 1: that it's best for folks to just be themselves when
Speaker 1: using dating apps because otherwise your perspective date will get
Speaker 1: the wrong impression, and that pretty much guarantees things aren't
Speaker 1: going to go well. Like if a tender matchup thinks
Speaker 1: that the response was really cool, but the really cool
Speaker 1: response was written by AI, and then they meet you
Speaker 1: and you do not have the same vibe. That's a problem.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm describing almost every romantic comedy that
Speaker 1: was written in the eighties and centered on teenagers, except
Speaker 1: that instead of it being AI, it's typically you know,
Speaker 1: the well meaning popular kids who are attempting to transform
Speaker 1: a person so that they become popular. It feels like that,
Speaker 1: except I guess I'm describing the next generation of teen
Speaker 1: centered comedies. I would not be surprised if we find
Speaker 1: a movie like that. Anyway, I highly recommend reading the
Speaker 1: actual article. Some of the AI generated examples that Jordan's
Speaker 1: shares are absolutely hilarious in that awkward, cringe e sitcom
Speaker 1: kind of way. Again, it's a piece in Insider, and
Speaker 1: it is called I asked chat gpt to write messages
Speaker 1: to my tender matches. You could just search for that.
Speaker 1: I recommend reading it. It's good for, you know, a laugh.
Speaker 1: Of course, AI goes well beyond chatbots and machine learning.
Speaker 1: We've talked about other uses of AI and the dangers
Speaker 1: that they can present. One example that springs to mind
Speaker 1: because it comes up time and again is facial recognition technology.
Speaker 1: Even if the application of this technology is benign, there
Speaker 1: are frequently problems with the underlying tech, unintended bias, has
Speaker 1: been a huge issue with facial recognition technology for years,
Speaker 1: ranging from some services being unable to detect a person
Speaker 1: of colors face properly to misidentification, which can lead to
Speaker 1: traumatic experiences such as being targeted by law enforcement simply
Speaker 1: because a computer can't tell the difference between different people.
Speaker 1: Frequently again people of color, and they are disproportionately targeted
Speaker 1: and affected by such technology. While last week New Scientists
Speaker 1: presented another example, one with truly grim and terrifying implications.
Speaker 1: The magazine found a contract between a tech company called
Speaker 1: real Networks and the United States Air Force. Real Networks
Speaker 1: offers a facial recognition platform that they call Secure Accurate
Speaker 1: Facial Recognition or SAFER, and the implication is that the
Speaker 1: Air Force is incorporating this technology into its Unmanned aerial
Speaker 1: vehicle or UAV program, you know drones. A lack of
Speaker 1: information has led to some speculation, some of which I
Speaker 1: think is definitely understandable and believable. After all, Special Forces
Speaker 1: units have been involved in clandestine operations that are at
Speaker 1: least difficult to separate from stuff like assassinations, and sometimes impossible.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just outright an assassination. So it is not
Speaker 1: a stretch to imagine a unit like a Special Forces
Speaker 1: unit making use of a drone with this technology in
Speaker 1: an effort to identify and acquire targets. But the potential
Speaker 1: for misuse of such technology, let alone the chance that
Speaker 1: the techs could make a mistake, has led critics to
Speaker 1: raise the alarm about this approach, and I think that
Speaker 1: is a wise reaction. Even if the tech works perfectly,
Speaker 1: you still have to wrestle with the fact that people
Speaker 1: can sometimes be the absolute worst. They can abuse technology
Speaker 1: for their own purposes, and when it comes to something
Speaker 1: as potentially lethal as this, that is a major problem. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll have a lot more tech news to cover. We're back,
Speaker 1: and we're not done with AI yet. I do promise
Speaker 1: we have other stories besides AI, but we've got a
Speaker 1: couple more to get through, and one of the stories
Speaker 1: we have is about how AI is complicated, not just
Speaker 1: because of the technology, but because of people and the
Speaker 1: way we react to AI and interact with AI. I
Speaker 1: think that this is a truly fascinating topic that relates
Speaker 1: heavily to both psychology and technology. So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about a recent study out of my alma mater,
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia Go Bulldogs. Nicole Davis, who is
Speaker 1: a graduate student at UGA, participated in a research project
Speaker 1: that I think is both interesting and has some upsetting
Speaker 1: but not really surprising conclusions. The project brought together a
Speaker 1: bunch of people and then ask them questions about stereotypes
Speaker 1: that relate to white, Black, and Asian ethnic groups, and generally,
Speaker 1: the response is indicated that people saw Asians as being
Speaker 1: the most competent people and Black people the least competent
Speaker 1: people for any given task. I guess it's a really
Speaker 1: ugly stereotype, but it's also undeniably a pretty common one.
Speaker 1: Then the users were given a task and it was
Speaker 1: to try and find a way to reduce the expense
Speaker 1: of a vacation rental, and they were going to make
Speaker 1: use of an AI powered bot, a chatbot. They had
Speaker 1: a little avatar representing the AI So these were cartoonish
Speaker 1: avatars and there were some that were white, some that
Speaker 1: were black, and some that were Asian in design, and
Speaker 1: the users were later asked to comment on the bot's performance,
Speaker 1: specifically how human and warm it was and how competent
Speaker 1: it was at helping the user reduce the vacation rental cost.
Speaker 1: Davis said, quote when we asked about the bot, we
Speaker 1: saw perceptions change. Even if they said yes, I feel
Speaker 1: like black people are less competent, they also said yes,
Speaker 1: I feel like the black ais were more competent. Davis said.
Speaker 1: This is an example of expectation violation theory, which pausits
Speaker 1: that if someone enters into a situation and they have
Speaker 1: low expectation and then their experience is a positive one,
Speaker 1: they walk away feeling that it was an overwhelmingly positive experience,
Speaker 1: not just that was good, but because it exceeded their expectations,
Speaker 1: it was even better than that. Davis goes on to
Speaker 1: say that more research is needed to find ways in
Speaker 1: which bought representation can help to impact consumer perception in
Speaker 1: positive ways, like perhaps breaking down barriers they might otherwise
Speaker 1: have because of these stereotypes that they maybe unconsciously have
Speaker 1: of different people. But this is obviously a complicated and
Speaker 1: sensitive challenge. Amazon has been using AI to help monitor
Speaker 1: delivery drivers for a while now, but this recently got
Speaker 1: more attention when a TikTok user would the handle. Amber
Speaker 1: Gertz gave an explanation of how the delivery truck's camera
Speaker 1: systems monitor driver behavior. She is an Amazon delivery driver.
Speaker 1: She created this TikTok that explains the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: she says that the system logs violations if a driver
Speaker 1: breaks protocol in any way. This can include stuff like
Speaker 1: failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, which, hey,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. This is like one of the biggest
Speaker 1: violations a driver can commit, and you definitely need something
Speaker 1: to help ensure drivers follow this process because I mean,
Speaker 1: they're on the road all day, so they have the
Speaker 1: potential for getting involved in collisions more than the average
Speaker 1: person does. You know, the average person is not on
Speaker 1: the road all day. And it also tracks whether or
Speaker 1: not the driver has buckled their seat belt at the
Speaker 1: conclusion of each stop, or whether or not they've gotten
Speaker 1: out of their seat. However, the system will also trigger
Speaker 1: if a driver takes a drink without first pulling over
Speaker 1: to the side of the road to come to a
Speaker 1: complete stop. So if you got your morning coffee with
Speaker 1: you and you're an Amazon delivery driver, you have to
Speaker 1: come to a complete stop before you can take a
Speaker 1: sip of coffee or you will get you your image
Speaker 1: captured and a violation will be hit on your profile. Also,
Speaker 1: drivers aren't allowed to touch the center console without first
Speaker 1: stopping because that's considered a distraction. And the cameras are
Speaker 1: not providing a live feed for the whole day. It's
Speaker 1: not like there's some security office within Amazon where there's
Speaker 1: this one person looking at a wall of monitors trying
Speaker 1: to keep up with all these different drivers. It would
Speaker 1: be impossible to do that. Instead, AI incorporated into the
Speaker 1: system monitors the camera view and captures video should a
Speaker 1: driver do anything that violates these policies, and it's all
Speaker 1: in the name of safety. As Amber Gert says in
Speaker 1: the TikTok, pretty much every Amazon driver hates this system,
Speaker 1: which includes multiple cameras set up within the vehicle and
Speaker 1: also forward facing cameras to keep things like how far
Speaker 1: away you are from the traffic in front of you.
Speaker 1: But she also generously says this is all in an
Speaker 1: effort to keep drivers and others also Amazon drivers can
Speaker 1: dispute violation reports, and Bergarts even mentions a case where
Speaker 1: a driver scratched his beard while he was driving and
Speaker 1: the system mistakenly believed he was talking on a cell
Speaker 1: phone and so dinged him with a violation, and so
Speaker 1: he was able to dispute that and get it reversed.
Speaker 1: Now I can honestly say I feel really conflicted about
Speaker 1: this whole approach. On the one hand, this is taking
Speaker 1: employee surveillance to the extreme, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, the system has also allegedly
Speaker 1: contributed to reduction and collision rates by thirty five percent,
Speaker 1: and considering that collisions often result in injuries and property damage,
Speaker 1: that's significant. And I kind of wonder what Ben Franklin
Speaker 1: would have to say about all this, with his views
Speaker 1: on liberty versus safety and all By the way, that
Speaker 1: famous quote is more complicated than the quote itself would indicate.
Speaker 1: I recommend looking into what he was talking about when
Speaker 1: he was chatting about liberty and safety, and hey, I
Speaker 1: mentioned TikTok. Let's talk about that really quickly. Canada has
Speaker 1: now banned TikTok from federal government devices. The White House
Speaker 1: here in the United States has done the same and
Speaker 1: has given federal employees thirty days to wipe TikTok off
Speaker 1: any government owned devices. There are a few special cases
Speaker 1: where there are exceptions for things like security research or
Speaker 1: law enforcement, but for the most part this is a
Speaker 1: federal government wide band. Several state governments in the US
Speaker 1: have done the same sort of thing. The EU has
Speaker 1: started to take action as well for the US and Canada.
Speaker 1: The main concern here is that TikTok's parent company, byte Dance,
Speaker 1: is a Chinese company, and as such could potentially be
Speaker 1: scouring the app for data in an effort to gather
Speaker 1: intelligence on behalf of the Chinese government, specifically the Communist Party.
Speaker 1: For the EU, it gets a little more complicated because
Speaker 1: even if you ignore the connection to China, TikTok itself
Speaker 1: is based in the United States, and the EU is
Speaker 1: a real stickler when it comes to protecting EU citizen
Speaker 1: data from being collected and exploited, and that includes keeping
Speaker 1: the information of the government safe, so they don't want
Speaker 1: the US to just get access to that. Meanwhile, China's
Speaker 1: Foreign Ministry Office issued a statement saying the US quote
Speaker 1: has been overstretching the concept of national security and abusing
Speaker 1: state power to suppress other countries companies. How unsure of itself,
Speaker 1: can the US, the world's top superpower, be to fear
Speaker 1: a favorite young person's favorite app to such a degree
Speaker 1: end quote. First of all, I don't think that favorite
Speaker 1: thing was meant to be repeated, but secondly, shots fired
Speaker 1: China's sick burn. Of course, I should also point out
Speaker 1: that there are literal laws in China that compel citizens
Speaker 1: and companies to act as agents on behalf of gathering
Speaker 1: intelligence for the Communist Party, so there's not a healthy
Speaker 1: leg to stand on there. Also, China, oddly enough, has
Speaker 1: famously blocked tons of apps and services originating in the
Speaker 1: West in an effort to prevent their citizens from accessing them.
Speaker 1: So again, not exactly taking the high ground on that
Speaker 1: front either, but yeah, you use sing us China. Last Pass,
Speaker 1: the password vault company, revealed that hackers were able to
Speaker 1: access and employees home computer and in the process they
Speaker 1: got access to a decrypted vault, a corporate vault, not
Speaker 1: a user vault. This is on the corporate side. Now.
Speaker 1: You might recall that the same service revealed last year
Speaker 1: that hackers had penetrated some customer vaults through other means. Currently,
Speaker 1: last Pass says it does not look like this attack
Speaker 1: and those previous attacks were connected at all. Whatever the case,
Speaker 1: last Pass users should change not only all the passwords
Speaker 1: that they had stored in last passes vault, but also
Speaker 1: their master password for their last pass account. This is
Speaker 1: a worst case scenario, and while Ours Technica points out
Speaker 1: that we do not know yet if hackers have access
Speaker 1: to individual users vaults and their passwords, you have to
Speaker 1: operate under the assumption that they do, and that further,
Speaker 1: this data could end up being sold on the dark web,
Speaker 1: So you definitely want to get out there and start
Speaker 1: changing this stuff now. I've long advocated for password vaults
Speaker 1: as they make the worst parts about passwords a little
Speaker 1: more user friendly. That is, by using a password vault,
Speaker 1: it's easier to create unique, strong passwords for every service
Speaker 1: that you access. These passwords are difficult to crack, but
Speaker 1: they're also hard to remember, and because they're all unique,
Speaker 1: you've got this ton of different passwords that are hard
Speaker 1: for you to just keep in your memory. So it
Speaker 1: gets to the point where it can be impossible to
Speaker 1: remember all of your unique passwords. So a vault's a
Speaker 1: great solution unless something like this happens. And while these
Speaker 1: security events are rare, we've seen they're not impossible and
Speaker 1: that it then falls to us to take action to
Speaker 1: make sure we keep our data and our services as
Speaker 1: safe as possible. Last Pass is not the only target
Speaker 1: to have a catastrophic breach. Another is the United States
Speaker 1: Marshals Service, which announced last week that attackers were able
Speaker 1: to gain access to secure systems or assumed secure systems
Speaker 1: and potentially retrieved sensitive information. The service did say that
Speaker 1: the information may include data about subjects who are currently
Speaker 1: under investigation, It might include administrative information and also personal
Speaker 1: data regarding some of the staff of the agency, among
Speaker 1: other things. However, one system that they said was unaffected
Speaker 1: was the Witness Security Program, which is more commonly known
Speaker 1: here in the US as the Witness Protection Program. This
Speaker 1: is the famous program that aims to create new identities
Speaker 1: for witnesses who are involved in cases for major crimes,
Speaker 1: and this is all in an effort to keep those
Speaker 1: witnesses safe from retaliation. It's pretty much a key ingredient
Speaker 1: in a ton of movies and TV shows that are
Speaker 1: about the mafia. It's frequent that someone gets put into
Speaker 1: witness protection so that the mafia is unable to track
Speaker 1: them down and target them. According to the agency's representatives,
Speaker 1: the hackers were unable to breach that particular database, so
Speaker 1: that is some good news. Okay, we're gonna take another
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, I've got a few
Speaker 1: more news stories that we need to talk about. We're back,
Speaker 1: all right. So last year, News Corps that's Rupert Murdock's
Speaker 1: company that owns multiple newspapers and some other media outlets,
Speaker 1: announced that hackers had gained access to corporate systems. We
Speaker 1: found out about this February twenty twenty two. However, now
Speaker 1: we have a little extra information, and it's that the
Speaker 1: hackers had essentially embedded themselves inside News Corps systems for
Speaker 1: nearly two years. In a recent letter to at least
Speaker 1: some of the company's employees, the corporation revealed, quote, based
Speaker 1: on the investigation, news Corp understands that between February twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and January twenty twenty two, an unauthorized party gained
Speaker 1: access to certain business documents and emails from a limited
Speaker 1: number of its personnel's accounts in the affected system, some
Speaker 1: of which contained personal information end quote. The letter also
Speaker 1: says the newscore doesn't believe the intrusion was focused on
Speaker 1: stealing personal data, and that identity theft is likely not
Speaker 1: the purpose of this attack, but rather that the intruders
Speaker 1: were gathering intelligence. When you look into the information that
Speaker 1: the hackers were able to access, it gets pretty gross
Speaker 1: for the employees who are affected because it includes not
Speaker 1: just stuff like their name, aims, and addresses and birth dates,
Speaker 1: but also things like their Social Security number, their driver's
Speaker 1: license number, their passport number, that kind of thing. It's
Speaker 1: understandable that employees who are affected would be very much
Speaker 1: concerned about this, so the company is providing effected employees
Speaker 1: the option of experience services to protect against identity theft
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. The identity of the attackers
Speaker 1: remains unknown, so it's not really possible to say definitively
Speaker 1: what they were up to or how they intend to
Speaker 1: use the information they accessed. The leading hypothesis is that
Speaker 1: the attackers were aligned with the Chinese government, so this
Speaker 1: could be an example of a state sponsored attack, But
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, there's nothing that definitively shows that,
Speaker 1: or at least nothing that anyone has publicly acknowledge, and
Speaker 1: my guess is the investigation is probably ongoing. The website
Speaker 1: the Drive has an article that brings up a potential
Speaker 1: hazard with autonomous vehicles, then I hadn't really considered before,
Speaker 1: which is silly because it's such an obvious use case
Speaker 1: that I'm sure most of y'all are way ahead of me.
Speaker 1: So this is really an oversight on my part, but
Speaker 1: it's at the Ford Motor Company has recently been awarded
Speaker 1: a patent regarding vehicle repossessions. So instead of sending Amelio
Speaker 1: Estevez to repossess a car after the owner falls behind
Speaker 1: on their payments, shout out to anyone who recognizes that reference.
Speaker 1: Ford is suggesting that future vehicles that are outfitted with
Speaker 1: autonomous operation features would just drive themselves to a location
Speaker 1: where a tow truck could meet up with it, or
Speaker 1: it would go straight to the repossession agency or maybe
Speaker 1: even a junkyard. This would save the people who are
Speaker 1: driving tow trucks the potentially dangerous job of going to
Speaker 1: an owner's property to repossess a vehicle, So, in other words,
Speaker 1: a car would effectively repossess itself. Ford's patent also describes
Speaker 1: features for cars that would not necessarily have autonomous capabilities
Speaker 1: that Ford would be able to shut down certain options
Speaker 1: within the car remotely, some of them not even being optioned,
Speaker 1: some of them just being outright features, So things like
Speaker 1: power locks or cruise control or air conditioning, or even
Speaker 1: disabling the engine itself, rendering the car inert. The patent
Speaker 1: describes the process by which an owner would be alerted
Speaker 1: in advance, which would give the owner the opportunity to
Speaker 1: make good on payments. Otherwise, well, a car might start
Speaker 1: to lose all those features, or eventually even drive itself
Speaker 1: to the repossession agency, or, like I said, in cases
Speaker 1: where repossession would be viewed as being too expensive, like
Speaker 1: a bank would say, oh, it does make sense financially
Speaker 1: for us to repossess this vehicle, they might just have
Speaker 1: the car drive itself to the junkyard, which gets kind
Speaker 1: of sinister when you think about it, right, because a
Speaker 1: car autonomously driving itself to a junkyard for it to
Speaker 1: presumably be junked. That's grim stuff. Pixar could have a
Speaker 1: field day with that concept. And now for a horrifying
Speaker 1: and infuriating story involving a car company fully embracing a
Speaker 1: dystopic philosophy, or rather a third party that works with
Speaker 1: a famous car company doing so. A sheriff's office in
Speaker 1: Illinois encountered unthinkable resistance from Volkswagen's car Net service while
Speaker 1: trying to track down a stolen VW vehicle that had
Speaker 1: a two year old boy inside it. So the story goes,
Speaker 1: this mom drives home with her two kids and she
Speaker 1: pulls up in her driveway, gets out, takes one kid inside,
Speaker 1: comes back out to retriever second kid. But meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: group of car thieves had driven up behind her vehicle.
Speaker 1: They ended up beating up the woman, stealing her car,
Speaker 1: running her over, and driving off with her two year
Speaker 1: old son in the car. She was able to call
Speaker 1: nine one one and report the car and her child
Speaker 1: having been taken by these thieves and get medical attention
Speaker 1: as well. So anyway, the sheriff calls Karnet because Carnet
Speaker 1: is a service that allows Volkswagen really Carnet itself to
Speaker 1: remotely track and even control vehicles to an extent. So
Speaker 1: the detectives are like, we need to know the location
Speaker 1: of this vehicle right away, and the representative from Karnet says, well,
Speaker 1: she let that subscription lapse, so I'm going to need
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty dollars reactivation fee before I can
Speaker 1: give you that information. A boy's life was hanging in
Speaker 1: the balance, and this representative for Carnet is like, can't
Speaker 1: give you that info till you cough up the fee.
Speaker 1: The detective actually did pay the one hundred fifty dollars
Speaker 1: because the detective was aware that a boy's life is
Speaker 1: worth more than one hundred and fifty dollars. It is
Speaker 1: taking everything in me not to swear during this news item.
Speaker 1: It is so unthinkably awful. The detective then, of course,
Speaker 1: posted about this incident on Facebook. Volkswagen has responded by
Speaker 1: calling it a quote unquote serious breach for its process
Speaker 1: of how it works with law enforcement. And again, to
Speaker 1: be clear, Karnet is a third party service that partners
Speaker 1: with Volkswagen, so ultimately Karnet is responsible for this horrible incident,
Speaker 1: but Volkswagen shares some of the blame as well as
Speaker 1: for the child. I am happy to report that the
Speaker 1: child was found safe. A witness saw thieves pull into
Speaker 1: a parking lot. They took the kid out of the car,
Speaker 1: then they drove off, and this witness was able to
Speaker 1: rescue the kid before he could wander into traffic. The
Speaker 1: police subsequently found the woman's Volkswagen. The woman, who was
Speaker 1: seriously injured as she tried to rescue her son during
Speaker 1: the theft, is currently recovering in the hospital and I
Speaker 1: think Carnet has a really long way to go to
Speaker 1: atone for this. This was unspeakably inhumane. Finally, on a
Speaker 1: brighter side, Competition in Markets Authority or the CMA, this
Speaker 1: is an antitrust kind of organization in the UK. This
Speaker 1: is one of those organizations that looks to make sure
Speaker 1: that the marketplace remains fair and competitive. CMA has said
Speaker 1: that third parties indicate consoles could be moving away from
Speaker 1: the eight to ten years cycle that we're familiar with, right,
Speaker 1: that typically there's around eight to ten years between generations
Speaker 1: of consoles, and that we might see them move to
Speaker 1: three to four year cycles instead, So every three to
Speaker 1: four years you would have a new version of say
Speaker 1: Xbox or PlayStation, and that concerns me a little bit
Speaker 1: simply because of the economic side of things like it
Speaker 1: could be really exciting to people who are thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: every three or four years, I'm going to get a
Speaker 1: chance to buy a new console with components and better
Speaker 1: features and that sort of thing, and that is exciting.
Speaker 1: The thing that concerns me, however, is that currently the
Speaker 1: way companies like Microsoft and Sony typically market their consoles
Speaker 1: is they sell them at cost or sometimes even at
Speaker 1: a loss, And the reasoning behind it is that you
Speaker 1: go out, you buy your console, and then you end
Speaker 1: up spending money on games and services, and that's how
Speaker 1: companies like Microsoft and Sony end up seeing a profit
Speaker 1: from those sales. It's not from the hardware where they're
Speaker 1: taking a loss, but it's from the use of that hardware. Well,
Speaker 1: that use is stretched over a decade essentially, or eight years,
Speaker 1: that that's a long tail for you to be able
Speaker 1: to make your profit off of these pieces of hardware.
Speaker 1: If that gets reduced down to three to four years,
Speaker 1: then we're probably also looking at a future where these
Speaker 1: consoles are going to cost more because they're not going
Speaker 1: to be as willing to take a big loss on
Speaker 1: the hardware sales because there won't be as much time
Speaker 1: to recapture those costs over the lifespan of the consoles.
Speaker 1: If people are changing every three to four years, then
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily, you know, realizing the profits they would
Speaker 1: off a single console generation than they would with a
Speaker 1: longer development cycle. So my guess is that such a
Speaker 1: future would see consoles being more expensive that at least
Speaker 1: you'd be looking at the companies moving away from selling
Speaker 1: them at a loss. Maybe they would continue to sell
Speaker 1: them at cost, but I would guess they would choose
Speaker 1: a way to see better profit margins off the hardware sales,
Speaker 1: because otherwise they're leaving money on the table. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me otherwise. This is just my assumption.
Speaker 1: I don't know that for sure. Also, this is based
Speaker 1: off the CMA citing third party reports. This isn't coming
Speaker 1: from Microsoft or Sony. So until we start seeing those
Speaker 1: announcements come from the actual companies, we could say that
Speaker 1: this is just a rumor, but it's one that makes
Speaker 1: me think that if that were to come to pass,
Speaker 1: that we would see more expensive consoles in the future.
Speaker 1: That's just my feeling, my gut feeling on the matter.
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to base that off of, except,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking it through, and I could be totally
Speaker 1: wrong on this. All right, that's it from the Tech
Speaker 1: News for Tuesday, February twenty eight, twenty twenty three. I
Speaker 1: hope you are all well. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: me to talk about stuff what's on this show, well,
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Speaker 1: up to thirty seconds in length, and you can talk
Speaker 1: to me goose. Okay, that's enough references to the eighties
Speaker 1: in this show, Collie Gee willikers you can tell I'm
Speaker 1: getting old all right. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
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