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: Diamond executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you?
Speaker 1: Sign for the Tech News for Tuesday, May twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. And first up, we got a couple
Speaker 1: of stories about how social network platforms facilitated the rapid
Speaker 1: spread of misinformation and how that in turn created more chaos. Also,
Speaker 1: this first one has a dash of AI in it,
Speaker 1: so that's a bonus. So first up, Yesterday, an AI
Speaker 1: generated image showing a plume of dark smoke that appeared
Speaker 1: to be the result of an explosion that was apparently
Speaker 1: near the Pentagon here in the United States went viral.
Speaker 1: But as I said, that is image was AI generated.
Speaker 1: There was no such explosion that happened anywhere close to
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. In fact, if you zoomed in a bit
Speaker 1: on that image, you would see that there were some
Speaker 1: hinky ness to the image. There were details in the
Speaker 1: photo that looked a bit off, kind of like how
Speaker 1: you know, if you do an AI generated image of
Speaker 1: a person, the AI just doesn't seem to get fingers right.
Speaker 1: Often the fingers in images that are generated by AI
Speaker 1: are the things of nightmares. I guess AI just thinks
Speaker 1: that we have spaghetti at the end of our hands. Anyway,
Speaker 1: at the time of this recording, I haven't seen anything
Speaker 1: about who might have generated the image. Initially reportedly, it
Speaker 1: was actually on Facebook before it really took off on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We do know that several Russian based news sites or
Speaker 1: propaganda sites depending upon your point of view, ran with
Speaker 1: the story and they published it as a breaking news item,
Speaker 1: and it even caused a small dip in the stock market.
Speaker 1: But this stumble corrected itself once where it got out
Speaker 1: the whole thing was just a hoax. So this is
Speaker 1: a case where misinformation really was more of an inconvenience
Speaker 1: than a real threat because of the rapid response and
Speaker 1: the debunking of this image. But it does show that again,
Speaker 1: social networks really facilitate incredible rapid spread of misinformation. Now
Speaker 1: let's go to story number two, and this one takes
Speaker 1: place in the UK. Now, this one doesn't involve AI,
Speaker 1: but it does involve social networks and a very real tragedy.
Speaker 1: So yesterday, a couple of teenagers were riding on an
Speaker 1: off road bike or scooter in Cardiff, Wales, and they
Speaker 1: got involved in a traffic accident and both teenagers died
Speaker 1: from their injuries. Now that is undeniably terrible, a horrible loss.
Speaker 1: Police then arrived on the scene of the accident, but
Speaker 1: on social media there was this narrative that began to
Speaker 1: form that accused the police of actually causing the accident.
Speaker 1: The narrative said that the police were in a pursuit
Speaker 1: and that in turn created the accident in which the
Speaker 1: two teenagers lost their lives. But that was just not true.
Speaker 1: The police weren't involved in a pursuit. There was no
Speaker 1: police presence until after the accident happened and police were
Speaker 1: called to the scene. However, this didn't stop the story
Speaker 1: from spreading online rapidly and people in the community began
Speaker 1: to assembol and what started off as kind of a
Speaker 1: demonstration of anger toward police escalated into a full blown riot,
Speaker 1: with the crowd throwing stuff at police officers. Some of
Speaker 1: those police officers suffered injuries, although from what I understand,
Speaker 1: none of them were really serious injuries. And again it
Speaker 1: turned out that the story that the police had contributed
Speaker 1: to this accident was just a lie. But the time
Speaker 1: that message was getting out there, things were already out
Speaker 1: of the crowd continued to roam the streets until the
Speaker 1: early hours of this morning, and then they dispersed. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, I do not think it's fair to
Speaker 1: blame social networks for the actual misinformation. Rather, social networks
Speaker 1: facilitated the spread of misinformation. They didn't make it. They
Speaker 1: just made it way easier for it to spread around. Now,
Speaker 1: I do not know if any recommendation algorithms played a
Speaker 1: part in that. It's possible because the algorithm could promote
Speaker 1: stories that seem to be driving a lot of engagement
Speaker 1: among people of a specific region. Right, it might be, Oh,
Speaker 1: people around you are really interested in this particular story,
Speaker 1: and then you get served up that story and it
Speaker 1: perpetuates itself. That's a possibility, But I don't know for
Speaker 1: a fact that that happened, But you know, it's a possibility,
Speaker 1: and at the very least, it definitely did spread across
Speaker 1: social media. Well, misinformation has been a thing long before
Speaker 1: social networks ever existed, and rumors have passed around well
Speaker 1: and truly without social networks. Right, So it's not like
Speaker 1: if we got rid of social networks, this would no
Speaker 1: longer be a problem. It's just that it's extremely efficient
Speaker 1: to spread misinformation at this point, much more so than
Speaker 1: it was in the past. And now let's talk about
Speaker 1: end to end encryption. It continues to face challenges from
Speaker 1: political leaders around the world. I've talked about how many nations,
Speaker 1: including the United States, have looked for ways to work
Speaker 1: around end to end encryption or perhaps even ban it outright.
Speaker 1: And it's usually in the desire to scan messages for
Speaker 1: signs of illegal content, so it could be an attempt
Speaker 1: to look for communication between would be terrorists or to
Speaker 1: search for evidence of people trafficking in illegal materials like
Speaker 1: child pornography. Spain's government has joined the list of governments
Speaker 1: that are very much taking aim into end encryption. This
Speaker 1: is not a unique view even in the European Union.
Speaker 1: There are lots of countries in the EU that have
Speaker 1: proposed creating rules that would allow a government to scan
Speaker 1: and monitor communications, which means that you would have to
Speaker 1: get rid of into end encryption, because the very nature
Speaker 1: of into end encryption is that only the people at
Speaker 1: either end can access the encrypted information. So anyone who
Speaker 1: tries to intercept the information somewhere in the middle they're
Speaker 1: just going to be left with encrypted nonsense. They can't
Speaker 1: read it. Now, this is a really complicated problem. So
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you do have the legitimate concern
Speaker 1: that more needs to be done, for example, to protect
Speaker 1: children from becoming victims. I think it's hard to deny
Speaker 1: that right, that we need to be better at protecting
Speaker 1: children from child predators. On the other hand, this measure
Speaker 1: means an end to private communication, and there are some
Speaker 1: situations where such communication is absolutely critical. You know, authoritarian
Speaker 1: governments could abuse and have abused this kind of process
Speaker 1: to crack down on perceived threats, and those threats might
Speaker 1: just be someone like a journalist or an activist, or
Speaker 1: you know, a political rival, and yeah, it's all done
Speaker 1: in the name of protecting the state, but it really
Speaker 1: comes down to an authoritarian display of power and denying
Speaker 1: other people the right to privacy. And I can't pretend
Speaker 1: to have the answers here. I don't think getting rid
Speaker 1: of ENDO end encryption is a good idea. However, Now,
Speaker 1: one agency that would probably love to see into end
Speaker 1: encryption go away is THEBI. I say that with some
Speaker 1: level of confidence because the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
Speaker 1: released an April twenty twenty two opinion detailing more than
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy five thousand instances of the FBI
Speaker 1: conducting warrantless searches of citizen communications between twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty one. Now I should add that opinion.
Speaker 1: That court opinion is also highly redacted, so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of blacked out spots in that report. But
Speaker 1: essentially it's saying the FBI searched through communications more than
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million times of presumably American citizen
Speaker 1: communications without securing a warrant to do it in one year. Now,
Speaker 1: the FBI was relying on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Speaker 1: or FISA. FISA, which allows for warrantless digital searches and
Speaker 1: monitoring of communication, but only for communications between foreign individuals
Speaker 1: outside of America. Like, it's not supposed to be used
Speaker 1: to spy on communications of American citizens. However, the law
Speaker 1: allows officials to do a sort of three degrees of
Speaker 1: separation style gain. They can look at the target's communications,
Speaker 1: so they've identified somebody that they want to surveil for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. This person's a foreign individual, they're not in
Speaker 1: the United States, and thus there's no warrant needed, So
Speaker 1: they look at the target's communications, but then they can
Speaker 1: also look at whom the target has been in contact with.
Speaker 1: Then they can even go one step further. They can
Speaker 1: look at the contacts that the contact had. So let's
Speaker 1: say you got an old fishing buddy, and your old
Speaker 1: fishing buddy happens to be friends with a shady person
Speaker 1: who turns out to have been on the FBI's radar. Well,
Speaker 1: by extension, you could be on the FBI's radar two
Speaker 1: because you're connected to your friend and your friend is
Speaker 1: connected to this other person. Now, FISA isn't supposed to
Speaker 1: let agents investigate American citizens, but because of this degree
Speaker 1: of separation thing, it can happen like a lot, like
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy eight thousand times in the matter
Speaker 1: of a year or so. And the court opinion shows
Speaker 1: that the FBI was using these techniques to run searches
Speaker 1: on people who most assuredly were not foreign agents communicating overseas,
Speaker 1: such as protesters during Black Lives Matter protests in the
Speaker 1: wake of George Floyd's death. So here we have what
Speaker 1: appears to be a pretty clear series of offenses against
Speaker 1: American citizens perpetuated by the FBI. And this is just
Speaker 1: one reason why end to end encryption is important because
Speaker 1: if the quote unquote good guys are breaking the rules,
Speaker 1: that's not good. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we've got some more tech news
Speaker 1: to cover. Okay, now, we got a double whammie section
Speaker 1: for Meta. So first up, the EU has leveled a
Speaker 1: one point three billion dollar fine against Meta. That's a
Speaker 1: princely sum, saying that the company failed to keep EU
Speaker 1: citizen data safe and private. So essentially, the violation here
Speaker 1: involves transmitting EU citizen data to US based servers, which
Speaker 1: is something that the EU is very much against, without
Speaker 1: there being further protections in place for that information. So
Speaker 1: you might remember in past episodes, I've talked about how
Speaker 1: the fear about TikTok largely centers around this belief that
Speaker 1: it's a company that could be sending personal data belonging
Speaker 1: to American citizens to China. Well, that fear exists despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't actually have evidence of this
Speaker 1: having happened. It could have happened. I'm not saying it didn't,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that we we haven't seen evidence of
Speaker 1: it yet. However, here we have a case of an
Speaker 1: American company essentially doing the same thing, channeling EU citizen
Speaker 1: data from the European Union to US based computer servers,
Speaker 1: and you could say, wow, the turns they have tabled.
Speaker 1: And now Meta has been ordered to pay more than
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in fines relating to this offense. Now, Meta,
Speaker 1: of course plans to appeal the ruling and the fine.
Speaker 1: I think that's obvious, But regulators say that Meta's offenses
Speaker 1: are systemic and continuous in violation of the rules of GDPR.
Speaker 1: I think Meta is hoping to wait this out so
Speaker 1: that the US and the EU come to an agreement
Speaker 1: on how and under what circumstances a US based company
Speaker 1: can transmit EU based data back to the United States.
Speaker 1: And part of the hold up is this concern that
Speaker 1: the US government could potentially spy on European Union citizen data.
Speaker 1: They could use it as a surveillance tool, which you
Speaker 1: might say sounds far fetched, But we just got done
Speaker 1: talking about the FBI doing that to American citizens. So
Speaker 1: there you go. The other big punch to Meta's stomach
Speaker 1: this week comes in the form of Giffee, or if
Speaker 1: you prefer Jiffy, not the peanut butter, but the animated
Speaker 1: giff database and search engine. Now. Meta purchased Giffee a
Speaker 1: few years ago for four hundred million dollars, But then
Speaker 1: regulators in the UK determined that Meta's possession of Giffee
Speaker 1: constituted anti competitive business practices and ordered Meta to divest
Speaker 1: itself of the company, which now Meta has done. Meta
Speaker 1: sold Giffee off to another company called shutter Stock. You
Speaker 1: might be familiar with them, but Meta did not recapture
Speaker 1: the four hundred million dollars it had spent on Giffee
Speaker 1: just a few years ago. Instead, shutter Stock purchased Giffee
Speaker 1: for the equivalent of fifty three million dollars. Now that's
Speaker 1: still a healthy chunk of change, Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: it's a far cry from four hundred million AUCI. The
Speaker 1: US Surgeon General has issued an advisory stating that there's
Speaker 1: not enough evidence to say social media is safe for
Speaker 1: kids to use, which I suppose you could flip and say,
Speaker 1: is there evidence showing that the use of social media
Speaker 1: is harmful to kids? I mean, I know that that's
Speaker 1: the belief, but what does the actual evidence, say, and
Speaker 1: I think the problem is that there's not enough research
Speaker 1: to draw conclusions. However, there is a concern that social
Speaker 1: media could contribute to mental health problems among the youth,
Speaker 1: which at least seems to make sense. But we don't
Speaker 1: have all the data yet, right, so I don't know
Speaker 1: that we've yet been able to determine whether social media
Speaker 1: use among kids is good, bad, or indifferent. I think
Speaker 1: one problem with a lot of studies is it comes
Speaker 1: down to a chicken or egg kind of problem. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is are people developing mental
Speaker 1: health problems because they spend too much time on social media?
Speaker 1: Or is it that people who have mental health challenges
Speaker 1: are more likely to spend more time on social media,
Speaker 1: So it could be like a correlation but not a
Speaker 1: causation situation. Here it falls into a similar challenge of
Speaker 1: determining if violent video games have a negative impact on
Speaker 1: mental health. Do violent video games make people violent or
Speaker 1: do violent people tend to like violent video games which
Speaker 1: could also be enjoyed by people who aren't violent at all.
Speaker 1: So this advisory is really meant to encourage families to
Speaker 1: think really seriously about social media use and to encourage
Speaker 1: healthy family behaviors, and I think that's a good message
Speaker 1: no matter how the research ultimately shakes out. Rapper ice
Speaker 1: Cube has a few things to say about AI, and
Speaker 1: they are not complementary. He actually called AI demonic and
Speaker 1: referenced the recent songs featuring AI generated voices mimicking people
Speaker 1: like Drake. Ice Cube said, quote, somebody can't take your
Speaker 1: original voice and manipulate it without having to pay end quote.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily the case. As we've said on the
Speaker 1: show before, existing law does not really cover synthesized voices.
Speaker 1: You can't copyright a voice. You can't trademark it either.
Speaker 1: But ice Cube's concerns are understandable. If someone is replicating
Speaker 1: a specific person's voice in order to make something new,
Speaker 1: that sort of proves that the original voice has value
Speaker 1: to it. Otherwise, why are you copying it? Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: you just make a new synthesized voice that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like anyone? In particular, if you're using AI to copy
Speaker 1: the style and the sound of someone specific, that kind
Speaker 1: of confirms that the original has value, and that to
Speaker 1: me suggests that we do need to develop laws to
Speaker 1: protect those things, and some states do have some laws
Speaker 1: that protect that, but it's not across the United States.
Speaker 1: Other parts of the world need to think about this too.
Speaker 1: It's a brave new world to have such Ai people
Speaker 1: in it. In space news, NASA has awarded the private
Speaker 1: space company Blue Origin a contract to land astronauts on
Speaker 1: the Moon. The lunar lander will be named Blue Moon,
Speaker 1: which makes me want to launch right into do wop music.
Speaker 1: But I'll spare you, as well as my super producer
Speaker 1: Tari from having to endure that dig de don ding
Speaker 1: Blue Moon. Sorry slipped out. This won't be the lunar
Speaker 1: lander used in the upcoming planned missions to the Moon
Speaker 1: that are part of the early part of the Project Artemis.
Speaker 1: Those are actually going to use a lunar lander that's
Speaker 1: created by SpaceX, and that one is the Human Landing
Speaker 1: System or HLS. It's interesting that NASA is using both
Speaker 1: companies for this purpose, but eventually the plan is to
Speaker 1: establish a permanent facility on the Moon. As for when
Speaker 1: Blue Moon will see us standing alone without a dream
Speaker 1: in our heart, well, it's going to be like twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine or so. Finally, IBM is investing a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money, like one hundred million Bucks and we'll
Speaker 1: be partnering with the Universities of Chicago and Tokyo to
Speaker 1: build a quantum supercomputer that aims to have one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand cubits, and I guess that would be a hundred
Speaker 1: kill cubits. Currently, I think the largest quantum computer is
Speaker 1: IBM's Ospray. I could be wrong about that, but I
Speaker 1: think it's the Ospray, and as I recall, the Osprey
Speaker 1: has four hundred and thirty three cubits. IBM is also
Speaker 1: planning on launching the Condor computer sometime this year. I
Speaker 1: believe that one is going to have slightly more than
Speaker 1: one thousand cubits, but one hundred thousand is tremendous. It
Speaker 1: is so enormous. Now, just a reminder, a cubit is
Speaker 1: a quantum bit, and unlike a classical bit, which can
Speaker 1: either be a zero or a one, a cubit can
Speaker 1: be placed into superposition, meaning it can be both zero
Speaker 1: and one simultaneously. Technically every value in between as well,
Speaker 1: and it all gets very very quantum. So I recommend
Speaker 1: looking through the tech stuff archives for episodes about quantum
Speaker 1: computing if you want to learn more. As for a deadline,
Speaker 1: IBM's looking a decade out with a goal of this
Speaker 1: quantum supercomputer doing science and stuff by twenty thirty three.
Speaker 1: And that's it for the Tech News today, May twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I hope you are all well, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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