Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: Tech are You. It's time for the tech News for
Speaker 1: the week ending on Friday, September twenty seventh, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: And as the great professional wrestler Shane Helms used to say,
Speaker 1: stand back, there's a hurricane coming through. Because that's right,
Speaker 1: folks here in Atlanta, Georgia where I am, we're in
Speaker 1: the path of a hurricane, and out of an over
Speaker 1: abundance of caution, and also from some gentle prodding from
Speaker 1: super producer Tari, we've decided to write and record the
Speaker 1: tech News episode on Thursday. Now. I usually put these
Speaker 1: things together on Friday morning and then record them after that,
Speaker 1: so this means there could be some fresh tech news
Speaker 1: that doesn't make it into this lineup because Tari and
Speaker 1: I were busy, you know, laying out sandbags or clearing
Speaker 1: trees off the road or something along those lines. I
Speaker 1: hope anyone else out there in the path of the
Speaker 1: hurricane is safe and sound. I really hope you're all
Speaker 1: safe and sound. Whether you're in the path of the
Speaker 1: hurricane or not. It's just particularly stressful for those of
Speaker 1: us who are looking at a big, old, massive storm
Speaker 1: system rolling in. Anyway, let's get to the tech news first. Up.
Speaker 1: Meta held its Connect conference this week and CEO Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg got up in front of the crowd, and he
Speaker 1: was his usual humble self. He wore a T shirt
Speaker 1: that read out Zuck out nil, which I have totally mispronounced,
Speaker 1: but that's because I didn't take Latin in school. But
Speaker 1: it is Latin for all zuck or all nothing. Typically,
Speaker 1: you would actually see this phrase associated with Caesar, not Zuck,
Speaker 1: and it often was associated with a particularly humble Renaissance
Speaker 1: prince named Caesar Borgia, known for being a little bit
Speaker 1: full of himself. I honestly think that Zuckerberg should sit
Speaker 1: down with Francis word Coppola and the two of them
Speaker 1: could have a nice long conversation about Hubris. Also, they
Speaker 1: could talk about the Roman Empire, because the two of
Speaker 1: them both seemed to be obsessed by it. I mean,
Speaker 1: Megalopolis is proof of that. Yeah. Anyway, enough commentary and
Speaker 1: shade from yours truly, So what went down at the
Speaker 1: Connect conference. Well, perhaps the buzziest bit was about Meta's
Speaker 1: prototype augmented reality glasses called Orion. Zuckerberg showed them off
Speaker 1: and good gollie, they are bulky now. The Verge gave
Speaker 1: them some praise. The Verge said, quote, they look almost
Speaker 1: like a trendy pair of frames you could pick up
Speaker 1: without all the tech inside. Quote. Personally, however, I think
Speaker 1: they look way too chonky for that. They look to
Speaker 1: me like the kind of glasses that you might see
Speaker 1: in a comic strip where the artist drawing the comic
Speaker 1: strip uses really heavy lines for stuff like that. The
Speaker 1: glasses house led projectors, which can beam images to display
Speaker 1: in front of your eyes on the lenses, and that's
Speaker 1: what gives you the augmented experience. But they're not intended
Speaker 1: to be consumer products just yet. For one thing, even
Speaker 1: with the bulky frame, you still have to carry a
Speaker 1: couple of peripherals for this tech to actually work. That
Speaker 1: includes what is called a neural wristband, which apparently is
Speaker 1: needed so that you can do some gesture controls. And
Speaker 1: there's also a compute puck, which I'm guessing offloads some
Speaker 1: of the processing requirements needed for the glasses to work.
Speaker 1: I think that makes sense. We are not at a
Speaker 1: point where you can miniaturize all these elements so that
Speaker 1: they fit solely within the frames of some even chunky glasses.
Speaker 1: It isn't quite slimmed down to a point where the
Speaker 1: average person would vibe with it. I think I don't
Speaker 1: think people would want to think, Oh, here are my
Speaker 1: cool glasses, where's my wristband and my compute puck so
Speaker 1: that I can use them. Plus, according to Casey Newton's newsletter,
Speaker 1: each unit costs somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which means it is certainly a non starter as far
Speaker 1: as consumer tech is concerned. Meta did show off the
Speaker 1: next generation of its ray band smart glasses. These don't
Speaker 1: have the versatility of Oriyan, but they still incorporate some
Speaker 1: smart technology and AR related features in them. Meta pointed
Speaker 1: out how AI functionality means you can use these glasses
Speaker 1: to do stuff like stay on top of your to
Speaker 1: do list and that kind of thing. Metta also showed
Speaker 1: off new VR headsets. In the quest line of the
Speaker 1: one headset anyway, it's the Quest three S, and it's
Speaker 1: intended to be kind of an entry point headset for
Speaker 1: the VR space. It will cost two hundred ninety nine
Speaker 1: dollars and ninety nine cents, so three hundred bucks. Meta
Speaker 1: is ditching the Quest two and the Quest pro lines
Speaker 1: of products, so now the choices are simplified to either
Speaker 1: the Entry three S or the more expensive Quest three,
Speaker 1: which now moves from being six hundred and fifty bucks
Speaker 1: to five hundred bucks or technically four hundred ninety nine
Speaker 1: and ninety nine cents. Zuckerberg also revealed that Meta is
Speaker 1: introducing some AI generated content on Facebook and Instagram, which
Speaker 1: sounds absolutely horrible to me. Why would I want to
Speaker 1: go to these things and see stuff posted not even
Speaker 1: by people I've heard of, let alone people I know, right?
Speaker 1: Why do I want to see AI generated stuff? Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just missing the point. I wasn't at the conference.
Speaker 1: Maybe if I were, I'd be like, oh, I get
Speaker 1: it now, But right now it just strikes me as
Speaker 1: kind of cold and pointless. Anyway, It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: in a new section called Imagined for You, and supposedly
Speaker 1: it will end up containing content the Meta thinks you
Speaker 1: want or you need based upon your behaviors. So it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be really curated and invented essentially for you,
Speaker 1: which yay, I don't know. This doesn't strike me as
Speaker 1: particularly good. Metta also introduced some AI impersonations of celebrity
Speaker 1: voices in Meta AI, so if you wanted to chat
Speaker 1: with a robot version of say John Cena or Aquafina
Speaker 1: or Kristin Bell, then you could do that. The Kristen
Speaker 1: Bell thing is particularly weird because not very long ago
Speaker 1: Bell spoke out against meta mining user data for the
Speaker 1: purposes of training artificial intelligence. But I guess she must
Speaker 1: have hashed all that out because her voice has become
Speaker 1: one of the options that people can choose when they're
Speaker 1: interacting with the Meta AI. There were some other stuff
Speaker 1: going on at the Connect keynote, including a revamp of
Speaker 1: avatar design for Meta's various platforms, which includes the Horizon
Speaker 1: operating system, which is what they use for VR. Meta
Speaker 1: is still seeming to push to make the metaverse happen.
Speaker 1: I think we need to tell Gretchen that, like Fetch,
Speaker 1: the metaverse just isn't going to happen, or at least
Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't. All right, that's enough about the
Speaker 1: Connect conference, but we still have a little bit more
Speaker 1: about meta. So Mark Zuckerberg sat down for an interview
Speaker 1: with Alex Heath of The Verge, and among other things,
Speaker 1: he stressed that research has failed to establish a causal
Speaker 1: relationship between social media use and a negative impact on
Speaker 1: mental health. Now, if you've been listening to my recent
Speaker 1: episodes on tech stuff, you probably have heard me say
Speaker 1: something similar to this, And that doesn't mean that there
Speaker 1: is no causal relationship between the two, but we have
Speaker 1: a lack of high quality studies that establish such a connection.
Speaker 1: There may be correlation between poor mental health and social
Speaker 1: media use, but that's not the same thing as causation.
Speaker 1: I still think it's a big leap to go from
Speaker 1: studies haven't really shown a causal connection to stating outright
Speaker 1: that there is no causal connection. Those two things are
Speaker 1: not synonymous. I don't think we can go so far
Speaker 1: as to deny any causal connection, particularly since studies that
Speaker 1: involve mental health are always tricky because isolating all the
Speaker 1: variables in order to establish relationships between even like disturbing
Speaker 1: behaviors and mental health, it's not always straightforward or easy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that stuff is really complicated. Now, Zuckerberg did say
Speaker 1: that he felt meta can play a part in protecting
Speaker 1: mental health by giving parents more controls relating to how
Speaker 1: their kids are able to access social media, which is
Speaker 1: at least a start. I recommend watching the whole interview,
Speaker 1: which is both on The Verge and also The Verg's
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. The interview itself is titled why Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: thinks ar glasses will replace your phone? But it's way
Speaker 1: more than just about the arglasses, all right, And back
Speaker 1: to that whole Kristen Bell thing, because it relates to
Speaker 1: another story. She posted a message on Instagram which I
Speaker 1: have seen going around a little bit now, and it's
Speaker 1: one in which folks attempt to stave off meta crawling
Speaker 1: their feeds for the purposes of training AI models. So
Speaker 1: it's essentially just a variation of other viral messages that
Speaker 1: people were posting to their feeds, either on Instagram or
Speaker 1: on Facebook or both, and they were meant to prevent
Speaker 1: Meta from doing stuff like selling their personal information for
Speaker 1: the purposes of advertising. But like those cases, posting this
Speaker 1: makes no difference whatsoever. It does not prevent Meta from
Speaker 1: using your information to train AI. It doesn't prevent them
Speaker 1: from selling your data for the purposes of ads or whatever,
Speaker 1: or exploiting your data in any other way, because posting
Speaker 1: that you're not giving Meta any permission to use your
Speaker 1: data means nothing, and that's because the terms of service
Speaker 1: already grant Meta all those permissions. The fact that you're
Speaker 1: using the service, and in order to sign up for
Speaker 1: the service, you had to agree to their terms of service,
Speaker 1: which you're kind of grandfathered into. Like whenever they change it,
Speaker 1: your agreement tends to be carried over into the new version,
Speaker 1: which seems odd right, like it's the whole Darth Vader,
Speaker 1: I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter
Speaker 1: it further. But yeah, the fact that you have agreed
Speaker 1: to the terms of service means that Meta has that
Speaker 1: permission already, so denying it on your feed does nothing.
Speaker 1: In fact, the only way to prevent Meta from exploiting
Speaker 1: your data is to either totally delete your profile and
Speaker 1: just leave the platform entirely, or set everything to private,
Speaker 1: at least for the purposes of crawling for AI training.
Speaker 1: Meta won't touch stuff that's set to private as opposed
Speaker 1: to public, so your private messages to your friends and
Speaker 1: stuff that is not available for Meta to use, but
Speaker 1: everything else is fair game. All right, we've got more
Speaker 1: tech news to cover before that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back. Open ai is planning to restructure the company
Speaker 1: and essentially ditch all pretense that it bears any resemblance
Speaker 1: to the original concept for open ai. All right, some
Speaker 1: explanation is needed here. So originally open ai was intended
Speaker 1: to be a not for profit organization that would maintain
Speaker 1: a high level of transparency while developing AI in a
Speaker 1: responsible manner, and that it would openly share this research,
Speaker 1: thus the name open ai. They said there was a
Speaker 1: need that AI advancements had to be helpful and cause
Speaker 1: as little harm as possible, and to be developed in
Speaker 1: a safe way. But it turns out being a not
Speaker 1: for profit organization means you don't make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: You're constantly scrambling for investment into the organization so that
Speaker 1: you can conduct your research because AI R and D
Speaker 1: is really expensive. So this restructuring would mean that the
Speaker 1: for profit arm of open ai, which launched several years ago,
Speaker 1: would essentially cut ties to the nonprofit board of directors,
Speaker 1: and previously that board of directors oversaw the operations of
Speaker 1: the company. You might even recall that an earlier incarnation
Speaker 1: of this very same nonprofit board of directors voted to
Speaker 1: remove open AI's CEO Sam Altman from the company, though
Speaker 1: the board would later reverse that decision and then essentially
Speaker 1: that board dissolved and a new one took its place.
Speaker 1: But this restructuring would remove that particular entity from open
Speaker 1: AI's governance entirely coincidentally, According to Altman, a few high
Speaker 1: level executives have left open Ai. Among them are a
Speaker 1: pair of senior research executives as well as the company's
Speaker 1: chief technology officer. She also left, and Altman says that
Speaker 1: their resignations have nothing to do with the planned restructuring.
Speaker 1: It's just coincidence. Maybe that's true, Julian Denistron, and I
Speaker 1: apologize for butchering your name of Inside evs Rights that
Speaker 1: a research company called aMCI Testing looked into Tesla's full
Speaker 1: self driving feature to determine how reliable and safe it
Speaker 1: actually is now. aMCI reportedly tested the feature in a
Speaker 1: variety of different settings, from city streets to mountain roads,
Speaker 1: and apparently these tests were at least fairly extensive, comprising
Speaker 1: more than one thousand miles traveled in total. According to
Speaker 1: the report, aMCI drivers had to intervene approximately once every
Speaker 1: thirteen miles driven or else risk getting into an accident. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, despite the name full self driving, the
Speaker 1: feature actually requires Tesla drivers to maintain their attention on
Speaker 1: the road and to keep their hands of the steering
Speaker 1: wheel at all times. So, despite some arguably misleading naming
Speaker 1: conventions here, Tesla has stated that FSD is not intended
Speaker 1: to be a full proof autonomous driverless system, but aMCI
Speaker 1: says FSD can still give drivers a false sense of
Speaker 1: security and that the system can perform well enough to
Speaker 1: make people believe it is consistently safe. However, the director
Speaker 1: of amci's testing, a guy named guy or Gui Mangiamele,
Speaker 1: said quote, you may watch FSD successfully negotiate a specific
Speaker 1: scenario many times, often on the same stretch of road
Speaker 1: or intersection, only to have it inexplicably fail the next
Speaker 1: time end quote. Obviously, that would be a big problem,
Speaker 1: since it might mean a Tesla owner could feel that,
Speaker 1: at least along certain stretches of road, the FSD feature
Speaker 1: is fully capable of handling the car's operation, and they
Speaker 1: might let their attention wander once again. I think my
Speaker 1: biggest problem with Tesla's approach is that the marketing conflicts
Speaker 1: with the actual capabilities of the advanced driving assist systems,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, when that involves vehicles, that can lead to catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Longtime tech stuff listeners might remember me talking about a
Speaker 1: company called Do Not Pay Ages ago. This company is
Speaker 1: known for doing a few different things, but one big
Speaker 1: one is helping subscribers do stuff like fight parking tickets. Now,
Speaker 1: some of those parking tickets are probably unfair and fighting
Speaker 1: them can be pretty intimidating, and some folks often just
Speaker 1: resign themselves to paying off a fine that they don't
Speaker 1: actually deserve. So Do Not Pay offers to help people out.
Speaker 1: And one way they do this, or at least that
Speaker 1: they did do this, was that they were offering the
Speaker 1: services of quote, the world's first robot lawyer end quote.
Speaker 1: There's really a generative AI tool meant to help people
Speaker 1: draft legal language in order to do things like fight
Speaker 1: traffic tickets or to perform other relatively uncomplicated legal tasks
Speaker 1: such as drafting a cease and desist letter. But according
Speaker 1: to the US Federal Trade Commission or FTC, Do Not
Speaker 1: Pay failed to test the generative AI tool and didn't
Speaker 1: even bring on human lawyers to work on the tool's
Speaker 1: design or to ensure that it was functioning properly. Do
Speaker 1: not Pay has since agreed to pay a fine of
Speaker 1: its own, a grand total of one hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars. I assume they're not going to follow
Speaker 1: the instructions that their company name states. That would likely
Speaker 1: not go over so well with the FTC. Do Not
Speaker 1: Pay must also send messages out to customers alerting them
Speaker 1: to the limitations of their services, essentially to say, hey,
Speaker 1: turns out we can't guarantee that the stuff we produced
Speaker 1: for you in return for your subscription actually is holding
Speaker 1: legal water. That's a rough one. According to Russian news outlets,
Speaker 1: Google has shut down the ability for people within Russia
Speaker 1: to create new Google accounts, and further, there has been
Speaker 1: a sharp reduction quote in the number of SMS messages
Speaker 1: sent by the company to Russian users end quote. That's
Speaker 1: according to the Register. This implies that Google is not
Speaker 1: sending out two factor authentication messages to people in Russia.
Speaker 1: So if you're signed out of your Google account and
Speaker 1: you're in Russia, you might not be able to get
Speaker 1: back into that account because you won't get access to
Speaker 1: all the information you need in order to get into
Speaker 1: your account. You won't get the multi factor authentication message.
Speaker 1: As I record this, Google and its parent company Alphabet
Speaker 1: have yet to comment on this story. Out of Russia,
Speaker 1: or from what I can gather, the general belief is
Speaker 1: that Google has escalated its withdrawal from Russia after having
Speaker 1: to shut down numerous accounts within Russia that were spreading disinformation,
Speaker 1: primarily about the war in Ukraine, while also refusing to
Speaker 1: comply with Moscow's demands to remove certain other accounts that
Speaker 1: the government has declared as illegal, and those are typically
Speaker 1: accounts that frequently contradict the narrative coming out of the Kremlin.
Speaker 1: So maybe this is Google making a conscious decision to
Speaker 1: pull out of Russia entirely, which would be a real
Speaker 1: blow to people in Russia who are dependent upon Google
Speaker 1: services but have no control over what their government does
Speaker 1: or doesn't do. California now has a law that requires
Speaker 1: companies that offer access to digital media to use accurate
Speaker 1: language for those digital goods, so for stuff like streaming
Speaker 1: media for example. So in other words, if I wanted
Speaker 1: to pay so that I could have the UK comedy
Speaker 1: series Spaced in my online library with a service like Amazon, Well,
Speaker 1: then Amazon would not be allowed to use language like
Speaker 1: buy or sell regarding that transaction. Instead, the language has
Speaker 1: to make it clear that what I'm actually doing is
Speaker 1: I'm purchasing a license so that I can access Spaced,
Speaker 1: but I don't actually own a copy of Space. And
Speaker 1: that's to make it clear to consumers that ownership isn't
Speaker 1: really that big of a thing in the digital marketplace
Speaker 1: for a lot of companies, and that doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you're talking about music or films, or video games or
Speaker 1: other digital products and services. Companies that failed to comply
Speaker 1: with this law could be found guilty of false advertising
Speaker 1: and face some pretty stiff penalties. Now, all that being said,
Speaker 1: if a company does allow you to actually download a
Speaker 1: digital file and there's no requirement for it to be
Speaker 1: connected to some sort of online server or anything like that,
Speaker 1: like once you purchase it, it is yours and you can
Speaker 1: move it to whatever drive you want and access it
Speaker 1: whenever you want, they can still use terms like buy
Speaker 1: and sell because you are buying a digital file. That's fine,
Speaker 1: but it's for the ones that license the access to you.
Speaker 1: And this was kind of brought up because of some
Speaker 1: recent developments. There was a case where Ubisoft deleted the
Speaker 1: video game The Crew from player accounts. Ubisoft had already
Speaker 1: shut down the online service for that game, and it
Speaker 1: was an online only game, so you could argue that
Speaker 1: once they shut down the servers, the game was effectively obsolete.
Speaker 1: But gamers were still shocked to see the title getting
Speaker 1: deleted from their library entirely because that seems to fly
Speaker 1: into the face of the whole concept of buying something,
Speaker 1: and that's how we got to where we are now.
Speaker 1: This law is only going to apply in California for now.
Speaker 1: It takes effect next year. And finally, speaking of Ubisoft,
Speaker 1: the company is facing a potential strike as workers have
Speaker 1: objected to the company issuing a return to office mandate
Speaker 1: that would require staff to come into the office three
Speaker 1: days a week. The union says it had been negotiating
Speaker 1: for profit sharing for employees and after those talks broke down,
Speaker 1: that's when Ubisoft issued the return to office order. So
Speaker 1: things have now escalated into a potential strike situation, which
Speaker 1: sounds similar to what's going on over at Amazon. Amazon
Speaker 1: gave a five days a week return to office mandate
Speaker 1: starting next year and now like ninety one percent of
Speaker 1: Amazon's staff who were surveyed about this say they don't
Speaker 1: like it, and I can understand that. But that's it
Speaker 1: for the tech news for this week. I hope you're
Speaker 1: all well. If you are in the path of a
Speaker 1: devastating hurricane, please please please be careful, be safe, be
Speaker 1: happy and healthy, and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.