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 Yet, it's time for us to cover the
Speaker 1: tech news for the week ending on March twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and our first story is that FTX
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency exchange and Alameda Research founder Sam Bankman freed AKASBF
Speaker 1: faced sentencing for his multitude of crimes relating to playing
Speaker 1: fast and loose with a whole lot of people's money.
Speaker 1: SBF had sought a light sentence of just a few years,
Speaker 1: while prosecutors were hoping for a forty or fifty year sentence.
Speaker 1: He could have faced a maximum of one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten years in the jailhouse, but Judge Lewis Kaplan has
Speaker 1: decided on a twenty five year sentence, not as heavy
Speaker 1: as what prosecutors wanted, but way the heck more than
Speaker 1: what SBF was hoping for. The judge said that the
Speaker 1: defense had put forth a pretty lousy effort, plus SBF
Speaker 1: had engaged in witness tampering, which affected the judge's decision.
Speaker 1: Now of course, this isn't the end of it all.
Speaker 1: SBF does plan to appeal both the decision and the sentence, though,
Speaker 1: considering the issues of witness tampering and such, I think
Speaker 1: he probably faces an uphill battle on that one. He
Speaker 1: has done himself very few favors. In the wake of
Speaker 1: his empire collapsing. An English data company called Savanta conducted
Speaker 1: a poll judging American's opinions about banning TikTok, and the
Speaker 1: results are unsurprising. So according to savantah only around twenty
Speaker 1: eight percent of all respondents favored a ban on TikTok,
Speaker 1: and one of the questions they included asked if respondent's
Speaker 1: friends would try to find ways to continue to access
Speaker 1: TikTok even if it were to be banned in the
Speaker 1: United States. That particular question got a sixty percent affirmative response.
Speaker 1: I guess this was actually Savanta's way of saying, look, mate,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you'd break the law, right, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that, but your friends. Right, there's some shady characters,
Speaker 1: any of them likely to slip around the corner, maybe
Speaker 1: log into a little VP, maybe do a little scrolling
Speaker 1: on TikTok. A anyway. Like I said, the results are unsurprising,
Speaker 1: but they might very well provide the US Senate with
Speaker 1: some food for thought, as that body now has the
Speaker 1: responsibility to take up this issue or to you know,
Speaker 1: not take it up. They could do that too, They
Speaker 1: could just not consider it. I still think it's likely
Speaker 1: that the Senate is not going to pass this bill
Speaker 1: into lab because the perception is it would be very
Speaker 1: harmful to their chances of getting re elected, and that
Speaker 1: seems to be a pretty big driver in politics these days. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: TikTok has invested more than two million dollars in an
Speaker 1: ad campaign in an effort to pressure the Senate to
Speaker 1: drop the proposed ban legislation, and they've targeted the ads
Speaker 1: and battleground states where Democrat senators could face a pretty
Speaker 1: darn tough reelection campaign if the public were to be
Speaker 1: totally cheesed off at them. Specifically, they are running ads
Speaker 1: in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Montana, and Nevada, And when you
Speaker 1: know it, each one of those states has a Democrat
Speaker 1: senator who's running for reelection this year. So I think
Speaker 1: senators are already a little worried about the repercussions they
Speaker 1: would face if they tried to push this bill into law.
Speaker 1: But this sort of really drives that threat home. And
Speaker 1: I have yet to see one of these ads, but
Speaker 1: to me, they kind of sound like the super sad
Speaker 1: ads you would see for the ASPCA that feature Sarah
Speaker 1: McLaughlin singing about how the puppies are now in the
Speaker 1: arms of an angel or something, Except these ads show
Speaker 1: supposed TikTok users talking about how the world would really
Speaker 1: suck if there weren't a TikTok. Also, I'm a little
Speaker 1: extra snarky today, speaking of politics, the Biden administration announced
Speaker 1: some new policies regarding AI and its use by the
Speaker 1: federal government. Those policies are that federal agencies are now
Speaker 1: tasked with ensuring that their use of AI does not
Speaker 1: put the rights and safety of American citizens at risk,
Speaker 1: which sounds totally reasonable, but it also sounds like it's
Speaker 1: ding dang hard to put into practical use, because we've
Speaker 1: already talked about how there are challenges of just gauging
Speaker 1: risk and danger with AI before you actually deploy it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you only find out after it's too late. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the second of the three policies announced is that any
Speaker 1: agency that is using AI has to disclose that use
Speaker 1: as well as to publish a risk assessment report in
Speaker 1: order to maintain transparency, which also seems reasonable to me,
Speaker 1: though I do suspect some agencies will maybe be a
Speaker 1: little less transparent than others based off history cough cough.
Speaker 1: The FBI, and finally, each federal agency must create the
Speaker 1: position of chief AI Officer. And further, the person in
Speaker 1: that position has to be knowledgeable in the field. So
Speaker 1: no hiring your cousin Bobby so that he has a
Speaker 1: cushy government job unless you know Bobby is also an
Speaker 1: authority in the field of AI. Now I'm having a
Speaker 1: bit of fun with all this, but I do think
Speaker 1: it is a decent start. It's just going to be
Speaker 1: a really long road ahead of us, and it's hard
Speaker 1: to predict if these measures are going to be adequate
Speaker 1: to mitigate future harm caused by AI. In fact, let's
Speaker 1: actually talk about how AI can cause harm. There's a
Speaker 1: piece by Colin Letcher or Leecher. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: to say your last name. I apologize. It's in the
Speaker 1: markup and it really raised my eyebrows. So late last
Speaker 1: year the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, announced
Speaker 1: that an AI powered chatbot tool would help New York
Speaker 1: businesses operate in a way that worked within New York law.
Speaker 1: So if a business owner had a question, they could
Speaker 1: ask this chatbot instead of a real human being, and
Speaker 1: the chatbot would in theory give an answer that was
Speaker 1: in alignment with New York law, and the business person
Speaker 1: could act on that. But Colin says that opposite is
Speaker 1: actually true, that the chatbot has in fact made suggestions
Speaker 1: that outright violate certain New York City laws, which seems
Speaker 1: to be a big old whoop sie, and he provides
Speaker 1: examples of the chatbot encouraging some shady business practices. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in New York City, there is a law
Speaker 1: that states landlords cannot discriminate tenants by source of income.
Speaker 1: In most cases. There are some exceptions for very small
Speaker 1: buildings where the landlord and their family also reside in
Speaker 1: that building, but otherwise they're not allowed to discriminate no
Speaker 1: matter where a renter is getting their rent money, such
Speaker 1: as if it's from a government assistance program. So the
Speaker 1: landlord is not legally allowed to deny anyone the opportun
Speaker 1: unity to rent a home based on that, but the
Speaker 1: chatbot declared that landlords are not required to accept tenants
Speaker 1: if they're on rental assistance programs, which does sound like
Speaker 1: that's advice that violates the law. Further, the chatbot said
Speaker 1: that restaurant owners are entitled to a cut of server tips,
Speaker 1: and that's also not true in New York City. In
Speaker 1: some cases, bosses can use tips to count toward minimum
Speaker 1: wage requirements, which I would argue is sort of like
Speaker 1: taking tips away from servers, but they can't actually dip
Speaker 1: into the tips themselves and take a cut. He also
Speaker 1: includes several other examples in other scenarios, and he says
Speaker 1: that in some tests the Markup did in their offices,
Speaker 1: the bot would actually provide correct answers occasionally, so maybe
Speaker 1: it depends upon how you word the question, although that's
Speaker 1: not entirely clear. The fact that the bot often provided
Speaker 1: a misleading or outright incorrect response is beyond troubling, particularly
Speaker 1: when city government has proclaimed that the bot is a
Speaker 1: way for business owners to navigate government issues. City officials
Speaker 1: have said the bot is merely in a pilot program phase,
Speaker 1: and the whole idea is that it's going to improve
Speaker 1: over time, which I sure hopes so, because right now
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's doing the opposite of what it
Speaker 1: is intended to do, which you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to get around that, and it all just depends
Speaker 1: upon how you work'd your question. Apparently New York Cities
Speaker 1: mayor ain't stopping there with AI. However, he announced that
Speaker 1: the city is also going to deploy a system made
Speaker 1: by a company called Evolved Technologies, and it's an AI
Speaker 1: powered weapons detection system that's made by a company that
Speaker 1: has been tied with issues relating to weapons detection, namely
Speaker 1: problems like false positives or failure to detect. So just
Speaker 1: imagine that you're trying to commute to work, but then
Speaker 1: you get stopped by New York Police because an AI
Speaker 1: protocol running on what is essentially a surveillance system mistaken
Speaker 1: believes you're packing. So this particular system is similar to
Speaker 1: a metal detector. It's something that commuters will have to
Speaker 1: pass through before they can get on the subway, and
Speaker 1: it uses quote ultra low frequency electromagnetic fields end quote
Speaker 1: to detect weapons. The New York City Police Department will
Speaker 1: be in charge of the program, and according to New
Speaker 1: York law, they will have to publish a report about
Speaker 1: the system's effectiveness and impact and sort of like a
Speaker 1: risk assessment sort of thing once it's been in place
Speaker 1: for a while. Okay, we're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, I've got a few
Speaker 1: more news stories to get through. We're back, So moving
Speaker 1: on away from AI in politics. Last week, Reddit finally
Speaker 1: held its initial public offering or IPO, which means it
Speaker 1: has now become a publicly traded company on the stock market.
Speaker 1: And this week the company saw the stock price drop
Speaker 1: like a rock after it had surged early on. So
Speaker 1: like initially, Reddit stocks were doing great when it launched.
Speaker 1: The stocks price was intended to be forty six dollars
Speaker 1: upon the stock market opening. It actually opened above that
Speaker 1: value at nearly forty nine dollars per share, and it
Speaker 1: closed at the end of the day at fifty one
Speaker 1: dollars per share, So at the end of first day
Speaker 1: of trading, it was already up significantly from where you
Speaker 1: was intended to launch at. On March twenty sixth, it
Speaker 1: hit its high of nearly seventy five dollars per share,
Speaker 1: but then things took a bit of a turn so
Speaker 1: why did that happen. Well, a couple of disclosures really
Speaker 1: seemed to do a number on Reddit stock prices. One
Speaker 1: was that some risk management companies reported that the stock
Speaker 1: was being overinflated beyond its actual value, essentially saying this
Speaker 1: stock does not reflect what Reddit's actual value you is.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, Reddit, like a lot of tech companies
Speaker 1: out there, hasn't posted a profit. It is a revenue
Speaker 1: losing business. But that doesn't always matter on the stock market.
Speaker 1: In fact, you could say that often it seems to
Speaker 1: have no impact on the stock market whatsoever. But another
Speaker 1: really big set of disclosures that I think hit that
Speaker 1: stock price hard is that a corporate filing revealed that
Speaker 1: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman sold half a million shares when
Speaker 1: it went public, So he cashed in big time, like
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand shares. And I should really do a
Speaker 1: full episode on Steve Huffman because he has an absolutely
Speaker 1: terrible reputation among Reddit users for various reasons, and there
Speaker 1: is a lot to go into. But more than that,
Speaker 1: Reddit's COOO, Jennifer Wong, also disclosed selling more than five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand of her shares in the company. And when
Speaker 1: your corporate leaders are offloading stock, they'll keep in mind
Speaker 1: both Huffman and Wong still own a butt load of shares. Well.
Speaker 1: If the leaders are starting to sell off large numbers
Speaker 1: of shares, that can really shake investor confidence. I mean
Speaker 1: it seems to send the message of hey, if the
Speaker 1: people in charge are offloading their stake in the company,
Speaker 1: why am I staying in. So shares dropped down to
Speaker 1: forty nine dollars thirty two cents per share by the
Speaker 1: end of yesterday, which was below the closing price that
Speaker 1: they traded at on opening day. Now, today is good Friday,
Speaker 1: so the stock market is not open today and we'll
Speaker 1: have to see next week where things go from there.
Speaker 1: But over on Reddit there are a lot of armchair
Speaker 1: stock analysts who are essentially saying told you so, or
Speaker 1: they're saying this is just desserts. Mashables Matt Binder reports
Speaker 1: on a study that was conducted by censor Tower, and
Speaker 1: this study claims that x formerly known as Twitter, has
Speaker 1: seen a sharp decline in daily mobile app user numbers
Speaker 1: since Elon Musk took control back in November twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: And by sharp decline, I mean a twenty three percent
Speaker 1: drop in app usage, so nearly a quarter of all
Speaker 1: users have dropped off if you were looking at it
Speaker 1: from that perspective, and that mobile app usage in general
Speaker 1: is down eighteen percent year over year here in the
Speaker 1: United States. So in this regard, X slash Twitter is
Speaker 1: really leading the way among social platforms, because no other
Speaker 1: social platform has seen that large of a decline over
Speaker 1: that same amount of time. X has posted a rebuttal
Speaker 1: to this report saying that sensor Tower doesn't have access
Speaker 1: to all of X's data and thus the conclusions are wrong.
Speaker 1: The reports I've seen have said that since Tower does
Speaker 1: have access to the data about mobile apps but not website,
Speaker 1: if you were to go through your browser on your
Speaker 1: phone and go to X that way, they don't have
Speaker 1: access to that information, but they do have access to
Speaker 1: the information of people who are using the actual app
Speaker 1: to access the service. And meanwhile, X is also not
Speaker 1: providing any evidence to back up their own statement that
Speaker 1: this is all off. So it's kind of a he said,
Speaker 1: she said situation. At the moment, there's certainly been the
Speaker 1: perception that usage on X has dropped, at least among
Speaker 1: traditional users, and that the service has largely devolved into
Speaker 1: a hive of scum and villainy. That may be my
Speaker 1: own personal bias coming through. Actually, let's not say that.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's my own personal bias coming through, and I
Speaker 1: fully admit that, And honestly I can only anecdotally talk
Speaker 1: about this because I got off Twitter last year. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's no denying the access encounter more than a few
Speaker 1: roadbumps since Musk took over the company. Obviously, the excess
Speaker 1: can continued to struggle with landing advertisers and partners in
Speaker 1: the wake of some of the more controversial decisions. Aw
Speaker 1: Olheiser has an article on vox dot com titled the
Speaker 1: slow Death of Twitter is measured in disasters like the
Speaker 1: Baltimore Bridge collapse, and it seems to provide some anecdotal
Speaker 1: support for censer Tower's findings. So Olheiser argues that in
Speaker 1: the good old days, breaking news would proliferate across Twitter
Speaker 1: in real time, so folks would learn about world events
Speaker 1: shortly after they happened, and news would spread incredibly far
Speaker 1: and wide in just a matter of hours, if not minutes.
Speaker 1: But Olheiser says something different happened when the cargo ship
Speaker 1: hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, causing
Speaker 1: that bridge to collapse. So rather than lots of messages
Speaker 1: posted to X linking to articles about the disaster, Olheiser
Speaker 1: says that X was bombarded with conspiracy theorists and folks
Speaker 1: trying to capitalize on the tragedy through engagement baiting. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff also happened in the good old
Speaker 1: days of Twitter as well, Like that's not like unheard
Speaker 1: of back then, But back then, all of that was
Speaker 1: kind of a layer that was beneath the legitimate reporting
Speaker 1: on world news that was proliferating across the platform. Now,
Speaker 1: Olheiser says, this underlying layer has sort of been promoted
Speaker 1: above everything else. It's dominating conversation, and beyond that things
Speaker 1: got really ugly. Olheiser ends up quoting several Twitter accounts
Speaker 1: that pushed outright racist narratives in relation to the disaster.
Speaker 1: I do recommend reading the whole piece on box. It
Speaker 1: is pretty compelling. Again, the title of the pieces, the
Speaker 1: slow Death of Twitter is measured in disasters like the
Speaker 1: Baltimore bridge collapse. Turning to video games, the publisher Take
Speaker 1: two Interactive, which c really it's a holding company. It
Speaker 1: owns a couple of other publishers and developers. They own
Speaker 1: rock Star that's the company behind the Grand Theft auto franchise.
Speaker 1: They also own two K, which is a publisher that
Speaker 1: publishes a ton of different games, including like WWE games
Speaker 1: that speak to my heart, although I haven't played one
Speaker 1: in a few years anyway. They've acquired another video game company,
Speaker 1: a historic one, a storied one. That is, they have
Speaker 1: acquired Gearbox from Embracer Group. So Gearbox is the developer
Speaker 1: behind the Borderlands series of video games, among other things.
Speaker 1: Borderlands is going to have its own live action film
Speaker 1: coming out in theaters later this year, so this timing
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. The deal was for four hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty million smackaroos, which is a princely sum. It's
Speaker 1: not a done deal yet, right, These acquisitions always have
Speaker 1: to go through a process. The deal is set to
Speaker 1: close in June, assuming that regulators don't object to the transaction.
Speaker 1: Since Embracer Group is kind of like the Kirby of
Speaker 1: video game companies out there, meaning it gobbles up pretty
Speaker 1: much every company it sets its sights on, I think
Speaker 1: regulators might be inclined to see a property, leave embracer
Speaker 1: groups you know embrace and finally to cover a weird
Speaker 1: story about butts and bosoms. Butts and bosoms sounds like
Speaker 1: a raunchy role playing game when I say it that way,
Speaker 1: but you know games are involved in this story. I
Speaker 1: am talking about Twitch, the streaming service that started off
Speaker 1: as a way for gamers to stream themselves playing games
Speaker 1: live on the Internet to their adoring fans, and these
Speaker 1: days Twitch does a lot more than that, but games
Speaker 1: are still at the core of the servants, and recently
Speaker 1: the company had to create a few new policies to
Speaker 1: fight back over some innovations in the streaming space, namely
Speaker 1: that certain Twitch streamers are wearing green or blue clothing
Speaker 1: so that they can reject their gameplay on their bodies,
Speaker 1: typically their butts or their chest. This was the case
Speaker 1: with Twitch streamer morg Pi, who also came up with
Speaker 1: a very clever work around where she created a green
Speaker 1: shirt that had the chest region cut out of it,
Speaker 1: so that when she keyed out the color, only her
Speaker 1: head and chest showed up on screen as the player
Speaker 1: view and everything else was showing the gameplay of the
Speaker 1: game she was actually playing on stream, So Twitch is
Speaker 1: now saying that this is against their policy and that
Speaker 1: quote content that focuses on intimate body parts for a
Speaker 1: prolonged period of time will not be allowed. Quote. Twitch
Speaker 1: has had a very long history of trying to balance
Speaker 1: out what is popular among users and streamers on the
Speaker 1: service with what is popular among advertisers, and to that end,
Speaker 1: the company has made several moves, sometimes humorous consequences, to
Speaker 1: tamp down on the more salacious streamers who are out there.
Speaker 1: What a world. All right, that's it for this week.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you are well, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
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