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 Friday,
Speaker 1: October fourth, twenty twenty four. So this week, California Governor
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that was aimed at putting
Speaker 1: some guardrails up on major AI companies in the state
Speaker 1: of California. Newsom says that he vetoed it because he
Speaker 1: felt the bill was too weak, that it wasn't addressing
Speaker 1: certain elements of AI that he thought were really important,
Speaker 1: and instead was kind of framing it the wrong way. Now,
Speaker 1: tech journalist Casey Newton says in his tech newsletter, which
Speaker 1: is well worth subscribing to, and I have no connection
Speaker 1: to Casey. I just really like his work Anyway, He
Speaker 1: says that most folks he chatted to are not really
Speaker 1: buying Gavin Newsom's explanation for why he vetoed the bill.
Speaker 1: The bill would have mandated safety testing for AI models
Speaker 1: that had cost more than one hundred million dollars to train,
Speaker 1: so that would have covered the major players in the space,
Speaker 1: most of which have been headquartered in California. So Newsom
Speaker 1: has said, well, yeah, I mean these are really big models,
Speaker 1: but what about smaller models that are trained to do
Speaker 1: things that are inherently risky. This has no coverage for them,
Speaker 1: So it does go deeper than that. In addition, the
Speaker 1: bill would have allowed judges to levy punishments for cases
Speaker 1: in which AI was found to have caused harm. You
Speaker 1: might think, well, of course they should be able to
Speaker 1: do that, but until it becomes established law, you can't
Speaker 1: just hand out punishment. If there's no law covering what
Speaker 1: is at least being perceived to be a crime, then
Speaker 1: that's an issue. Ca C. Newton does go on to
Speaker 1: say that in recent months Gavin Newsom, Newsom and Newton
Speaker 1: a little too close anyway, Gavin Newsom has signed eighteen
Speaker 1: other AI bills into law, so that is significant, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one he vetoed, but he has signed more than
Speaker 1: a dozen regulations into law. Though some of those laws
Speaker 1: AI companies are going to have like a full year
Speaker 1: grace period before they go into effect because they are
Speaker 1: not going to become actual effective laws until twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: These new laws carry out that groundwork I was talking about.
Speaker 1: They create the legal pathways for victims to pursue with
Speaker 1: regard to AI related abuse. So, for example, if someone
Speaker 1: were to use AI to generate nude images of you,
Speaker 1: and then they demand money from you, saying, hey, we're
Speaker 1: going to release these pictures and they look real and
Speaker 1: they are of you, and you're naked. So unless you
Speaker 1: pay us, we're going to flood the Internet with these things.
Speaker 1: Well that would now be a crime. And again you
Speaker 1: would think, well, that sounds like that should be a
Speaker 1: crime already it's blackmail, and yes it is, but the
Speaker 1: AI generated element of it, you know, a lawyer could
Speaker 1: have argued, well, this isn't really a picture of you.
Speaker 1: It wasn't taken of you, it's generated by AI. It's
Speaker 1: not really a picture of you, and that creates this
Speaker 1: this wiggle room. So that's what these laws were meant
Speaker 1: to do, is to kind of eliminate those gaps. So
Speaker 1: really it's all about, you know, filling in the blanks
Speaker 1: for stuff that's clearly wrong but until recently wasn't actually
Speaker 1: defined as a criminal act. Amazon got a bit of
Speaker 1: a win in court this week, so the company saw
Speaker 1: a partial dismissal of a lawsuit that the United States
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has brought against it. So
Speaker 1: the heart of the matter is that the FTC has
Speaker 1: claimed Amazon has engaged in anti competitive behaviors in order
Speaker 1: to acquire and hold a dominant position in online marketplaces,
Speaker 1: and Amazon asked for a dismissal of the court case,
Speaker 1: arguing that the FTC did not have sufficient evidence to
Speaker 1: show that the company was actually harming consumers, because I mean,
Speaker 1: that's ultimately what anti competitive stuff is supposed to be about,
Speaker 1: is that the reduction of competition in the market hurts consumers.
Speaker 1: You know, competition is good for consumers. The judge has
Speaker 1: dismissed at least some of the FTC's charges, but not
Speaker 1: all of them, and I don't know which ones because
Speaker 1: the judge issued this as a sealed ruling, so it's
Speaker 1: not public information about which elements of the lawsuit have
Speaker 1: been dismissed and which ones remain. But the judge also
Speaker 1: denied another one of Amazon's requests, which was to combine
Speaker 1: both a trial and the FTC's proposed solution to this
Speaker 1: alleged anti competitive issue in a single case. So the
Speaker 1: judges ruled that that will instead be two separate cases.
Speaker 1: So it suggests to me that there is at least
Speaker 1: a sufficient amount of charges left in the FTC's case
Speaker 1: against Amazon to necessitate that ruling. Right. So, don't know
Speaker 1: how much of the case was dismissed, but Amazon gets
Speaker 1: a little bit of a win there. It was a
Speaker 1: huge week for open Ai this week. So over the
Speaker 1: last few months, I've seen lots of different analysts sort
Speaker 1: of projecting that open ai could find itself out of
Speaker 1: money unless it had another significant round of investments, and
Speaker 1: that round happened this week, and it was indeed significant.
Speaker 1: Open Ai raised around six point six billion with a
Speaker 1: B dollars in investments. About three quarters of a billion
Speaker 1: dollars came from Microsoft, which continues to financially back open
Speaker 1: Ai pretty enthusiastically. Now, this huge influx of cash has
Speaker 1: analysts now valuing open Ai at a staggering one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty seven billion dollars. Once again, I'm left to
Speaker 1: grapple with a paradoxical situation because here's a company that
Speaker 1: really burns through cash fast. And that's not blaming open Ai.
Speaker 1: I mean I mentioned earlier this week in other tech
Speaker 1: stuff episodes AI R and D is mega expensive. It
Speaker 1: is so expensive to not just do research and development
Speaker 1: and AI, but then to run AI applications. It costs
Speaker 1: a lot of money. And some folks were saying that
Speaker 1: open ai might actually spend itself out of business by
Speaker 1: early next year. But now we turn around and it's
Speaker 1: being valued at one hundred and fifty seven billion buckaroos.
Speaker 1: The finances just don't make sense to me. Like, I
Speaker 1: get that in the in the moment, it's worth a
Speaker 1: huge amount of money. But this is the same company
Speaker 1: that people are saying it's going to spend itself out
Speaker 1: of business, and it's not like anything there has changed, right,
Speaker 1: It's still going to have to spend huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money and it's not going to bring in enough revenue
Speaker 1: to cover the costs. So this will power open ai
Speaker 1: for some foreseeable future, but we're still going to have
Speaker 1: to wait and see if open ai can get to
Speaker 1: a situation where it will generate enough revenue to cover
Speaker 1: the costs of doing business, or if we'll just get
Speaker 1: right back into the situation where at some point open
Speaker 1: ai needs to hold another significant round of investments in
Speaker 1: order to stay going right, it's kind of crazy. On
Speaker 1: top of the funding news, by the way, Reuter's reports
Speaker 1: that open ai also secured a four billion dollar line
Speaker 1: of credit, so on top of the six point six
Speaker 1: billion that was invested into it, it means that it
Speaker 1: has more than ten billion dollars of liquidity to its
Speaker 1: name right now, which is a big old yeah. Ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars now. Again, that doesn't guarantee that open ai
Speaker 1: is going to be able to leverage all this money
Speaker 1: and turn Ai into like a sustainable business that actually
Speaker 1: can you stand on some own. We'll still have to
Speaker 1: see or maybe we'll get to a point where not
Speaker 1: only are they going to need investment, that investment is
Speaker 1: going to go directly to paying off interest on a
Speaker 1: four billion dollar line of credit. Yikes. Meanwhile, over at
Speaker 1: open AI's former headquarters, Elon Musk, a guy who never
Speaker 1: met a grudge he couldn't hold, held an event for
Speaker 1: his own AI startup, which is called x Ai, and
Speaker 1: I would say that it's it's pretty much in character
Speaker 1: for Elon Musk to hold a recruiting event for his
Speaker 1: own AI startup in the open ai original headquarters because
Speaker 1: he got I remember, Musk was a co founder of
Speaker 1: open ai years ago, but he had a massive falling
Speaker 1: out with others in the organization and he bailed. There
Speaker 1: were rumors that he was attempting to essentially take over
Speaker 1: open ai, and when he encountered resistance, he decided he
Speaker 1: would go and make his own AI company. It's one
Speaker 1: of those like Futurama type moments. He has since argued
Speaker 1: that open ai has largely abandoned its initial mission of
Speaker 1: being an open, transparent, non profit organization that's dedicated to
Speaker 1: the safe and responsible development of artificial intelligence. And y'all,
Speaker 1: I do not agree with Elon Musk on many things,
Speaker 1: but I do think that particular criticism is one hundred
Speaker 1: percent on target. I think there's no way to argue
Speaker 1: against that Open ai has certainly transformed dramatically from that
Speaker 1: open and transparent nonprofit organization into very much a for
Speaker 1: profit company that of fuse skates a lot of what
Speaker 1: it works on. Now. That's not to say that I
Speaker 1: think Musk would have done things differently had he actually
Speaker 1: been the one in charge of open ai. I think
Speaker 1: if he had one that struggle, if in fact, there
Speaker 1: was one a few years ago, and if he had
Speaker 1: become the head of open ai, he would either be
Speaker 1: doing something not too different from what open ai is
Speaker 1: doing now, or he would have run the company out
Speaker 1: of business one of the two. And the reason I
Speaker 1: say that is again, AI is really expensive, like it
Speaker 1: just it burns through money so fast because the technology
Speaker 1: you need to run AI applications. First of all, the
Speaker 1: chips are in short supply, so those are expensive, and
Speaker 1: then you have the electricity needs. Those are expensive. It's
Speaker 1: just hard to do. And if you're going to run
Speaker 1: it as nonprofit, it means you do need to have
Speaker 1: that constant influx of cash in order to fund your work.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that Elon Musk would have managed
Speaker 1: to do that. So it's not that I'm saying he
Speaker 1: would have mismanaged it, just rather I don't know how
Speaker 1: you get a nonprofit to work anyway. Musk addressed a
Speaker 1: group of engineers at this event to recruit them for XAI.
Speaker 1: At the event, Musk talked about his desire to create
Speaker 1: a quote digital superintelligence that is as benign as possible
Speaker 1: end quote. He also said he thought we'd achieve artificial
Speaker 1: general intelligence within a couple of years. That seems overly
Speaker 1: ambitious to me. But then again, Musk has also frequently
Speaker 1: made some rather grandiose predictions about AI that just haven't
Speaker 1: you know, shaken out, Like specifically in the autonomous car space,
Speaker 1: he has thought that we were going to hit a real,
Speaker 1: true autonomous car future much earlier, and you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we're still not there yet, but he thought it was
Speaker 1: already going to be here, and that has not happened.
Speaker 1: So I would not bank on artificial general intelligence within
Speaker 1: the next couple of years. Maybe. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. I just know that it's a really
Speaker 1: hard goal to hit. He also mentioned the desire to
Speaker 1: create a supersonic passenger aircraft company in the future. That
Speaker 1: probably merits a separate discussion. That's a really tricky thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what happened with his recruiting event this week. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple more stories to talk about Before
Speaker 1: I do that, let's take a quick break. We're back.
Speaker 1: So Victoria Song of the Verge has a piece titled
Speaker 1: college students used Meta's smart glasses to docs people in
Speaker 1: real time. Now. As that headline indicates, this is about
Speaker 1: how a pair of students used some ar glasses that
Speaker 1: are outfitted with cameras and Internet connectivity to essentially run
Speaker 1: an app that they had built that relies on things
Speaker 1: like facial recognition and personal idea databases in order to
Speaker 1: return information about the people that are within view of
Speaker 1: the glasses camera. As songwrits, quote, the tech works by
Speaker 1: using the meta smart glasses ability to livestream video to Instagram.
Speaker 1: A computer program then monitors that stream and uses AI
Speaker 1: to identify faces. Those photos are then fed into public
Speaker 1: databases to find names, addresses, phone numbers, and even relatives.
Speaker 1: That information is then fed back through a phone app
Speaker 1: end quote. So the students call their Techi x ray,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you could immediately imagine how that technology
Speaker 1: could be abused, And in fact, there are very few
Speaker 1: use cases that are benign. Right, And the students have
Speaker 1: stressed they're not releasing this technology. This is not meant
Speaker 1: to be an app that you're going to be able
Speaker 1: to download and then walk around and know everybody's secret identity.
Speaker 1: They recognize how technology is inherently abusable, like it's again
Speaker 1: very hard to use it in a way that isn't
Speaker 1: malicious or at least irresponsible. So just imagine someone wearing
Speaker 1: glasses like these and then pretending to know complete strangers
Speaker 1: because they've got on their phone a quick dossier about
Speaker 1: the person. They've got their name, their address, they have
Speaker 1: relative names, all that kind of stuff. They're able to
Speaker 1: actually reference this. Like I used to do a goofy
Speaker 1: version of this at stores where I would walk in
Speaker 1: and like the employees would have a name tag on,
Speaker 1: and I would just address them by their name tag
Speaker 1: in the store, Like not outside that's creepy, but in
Speaker 1: the store. And sometimes they would forget that they were
Speaker 1: wearing a name tag. They're like, how did you know
Speaker 1: who I We know each other. I'm like, no, you're
Speaker 1: wearing your name literally on your shirt and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: right right. You know, just one of those moments where
Speaker 1: you just you're not even thinking about it. Well, as
Speaker 1: silly a little interaction as that is, you can imagine
Speaker 1: one being much more serious. Let's say it's at a bar.
Speaker 1: You can easily imagine someone trying to prey upon people
Speaker 1: at a bar by pretending like they either know this
Speaker 1: person from way back, or they know someone that knows
Speaker 1: this person, and they're trying to get an end that way.
Speaker 1: So the students say their intent was to raise awareness
Speaker 1: that this capability isn't just some hypothetical future technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is something people have been warning about for a while,
Speaker 1: but the students are saying, listen, we're done warning. It's here.
Speaker 1: We did it. It is possible. And if we did it,
Speaker 1: even though we're not gonna do anything with this technology,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean the next person will do the same.
Speaker 1: So you have to be aware what this technology can do.
Speaker 1: I think it also again goes back to showing how
Speaker 1: terrible a job the United States has done when it
Speaker 1: comes to citizen data privacy. It's criminal, if you ask me,
Speaker 1: because the fact that there have been no real rules
Speaker 1: about this make things like this totally possible and in fact,
Speaker 1: like you could even imagine a much deeper dive for
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, because those databases out there are
Speaker 1: enormous and comprehensive. Even for people who aren't online. If
Speaker 1: they're showing up in pictures that are on friends, you know,
Speaker 1: social profiles or whatever, and they're identified in the photos,
Speaker 1: that's enough. They don't even have to participate directly in
Speaker 1: the system to be abused by it. So yeah, pretty
Speaker 1: sobering example of how technology can interfere with privacy and
Speaker 1: potentially put people at risk. Google is apparently rolling out
Speaker 1: a verification feature on search results. Just Weatherbed also of
Speaker 1: the Verge, reports that some users are getting results back
Speaker 1: that include blue check marks next to certain entries. Those
Speaker 1: check marks indicate sites that Google has verified as being
Speaker 1: a legitimate business. So if you're searching for something, let's
Speaker 1: say like you're searching for I don't know, durable camping equipment,
Speaker 1: when you get your search results back, you are going
Speaker 1: to see if you're part of this anyway, you would
Speaker 1: see that some of the companies that are listed would
Speaker 1: have this blue check mark. Other companies may be ones
Speaker 1: that are trying to pose as if they are a
Speaker 1: more established, reputable company, They're not going to have that
Speaker 1: check mark. So it's an immediate visual indicator of which
Speaker 1: businesses are trustworthy or at least more likely to be trustworthy.
Speaker 1: So it's really all about identifying businesses in this case.
Speaker 1: That's it, not like people or anything like that. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like this initiative is in a very limited rollout.
Speaker 1: Not everyone's going to see check marks in their results,
Speaker 1: and I don't I did quite a few different searches
Speaker 1: just to see if any of these popped up for me,
Speaker 1: But no matter what I searched for, I didn't get
Speaker 1: anything that had check marks on it. So I am
Speaker 1: not part of this rollout, and of course there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that Google will ever roll it out to the
Speaker 1: general public. It may just be that this is a
Speaker 1: test and nothing else comes of it, but we'll have
Speaker 1: to keep your eyes out. Finally, for some recommended reading,
Speaker 1: I suggest Eric Berger's piece in Ours Tetnica. It is
Speaker 1: titled NASA is working on a plan to replace its
Speaker 1: space station, but time is running out. So the current
Speaker 1: plan for the International Space Station is for it to
Speaker 1: fly into the sunset, or more accurately, for it to
Speaker 1: deorbit in twenty thirty. But unless the pace really picks
Speaker 1: up and soon, that's going to happen without a new
Speaker 1: space station taking its place, that would mean the good
Speaker 1: old US of A would no longer have its own
Speaker 1: research facility in orbit. Complicating matters is the fact that
Speaker 1: NASA also has plans to return to the Moon and
Speaker 1: potentially to set the stage for further human exploration, potentially
Speaker 1: the places like Mars. So I recommend reading Burger's article
Speaker 1: to get a full picture of the situation. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week. I hope all of you out there
Speaker 1: are doing well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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