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 Thursday,
Speaker 1: March thirtieth, twenty twenty three. So Apple has announced that
Speaker 1: this year's Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC, will run from
Speaker 1: June fifth to June ninth. The conference is an event
Speaker 1: where app developers go and learn how to best use
Speaker 1: Apple's technologies while they're designing apps for Apple devices. But
Speaker 1: it's also an event where the company occasionally shows off
Speaker 1: new products. Now, typically those are software features and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, as opposed to physical hardware. But yeah,
Speaker 1: WWDC is sort of an event where stuff can be
Speaker 1: unveiled or launched, usually something about like an operating system
Speaker 1: or again some features that will enhance apps, but once
Speaker 1: in a while they'll show off some hardware. And this
Speaker 1: year there is a great deal of anticipation that Apple
Speaker 1: will finally show off its mixed reality headset at WWDC.
Speaker 1: So the version that Apple is going to show off,
Speaker 1: if it does in fact show it at all, is
Speaker 1: a more modest effort than what was originally planned. So
Speaker 1: Apple's goal was to create an augmented reality headset that
Speaker 1: looked like a stylish but otherwise normal pair of eyeglasses.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that cramming that many components into
Speaker 1: so small a form factor is a challenge we just
Speaker 1: can't overcome yet. Gordon Moore might smile and say, just
Speaker 1: wait a couple of years on that one. So instead,
Speaker 1: the mixed reality headset is reportedly one that has a
Speaker 1: display built into it with cameras that would feed live
Speaker 1: video to the display when you have it in AR mode,
Speaker 1: and otherwise you'd be using it like a VR headset.
Speaker 1: So in other words, when you wear this headset and
Speaker 1: you're using it as an augmented reality headset, what you're
Speaker 1: doing is watching a live video feed of whatever it
Speaker 1: is in front of your face, just like if you
Speaker 1: were holding your phone up in front of your eyes.
Speaker 1: The logo for WWDC twenty three doesn't give any clues
Speaker 1: as to whether or not they will show this off.
Speaker 1: The logos just a series of colorful, metallic style arcs,
Speaker 1: kind of like a Wi Fi signal symbol. Rather, last
Speaker 1: I heard, analysts expect that Apple's headset will go on
Speaker 1: sale later this year in the holiday season for a
Speaker 1: really hefty price tag, like you know, three grand or
Speaker 1: something Moreover, while the hope was to follow this up
Speaker 1: with the AAR glasses, that plan is on indefinite hold
Speaker 1: at the moment. Instead, Apple plans on releasing an updated
Speaker 1: and perhaps less expensive headset further down the line. So yep,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be waiting a while till we get those
Speaker 1: cool iron Man style eyeglasses. Now let's talk a whole
Speaker 1: lot about artificial intelligence. So first up, an advoticacy group
Speaker 1: called the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy sent
Speaker 1: a letter to the US Federal Trade Commission, or FTC,
Speaker 1: asking that agency to stop any more commercial releases of
Speaker 1: products that use GPT four, which is the latest of
Speaker 1: the large language models developed by open Ai. This is
Speaker 1: interesting because the FTC is about stuff like consumer protection
Speaker 1: and ensuring fair trade practices. So what's going on here. Well,
Speaker 1: the advocacy group claims that GPD four is quote biased, deceptive,
Speaker 1: and a risk to privacy and public safety end quote.
Speaker 1: Now the bit that would really concern the FTC would
Speaker 1: be the deceptive part if a company where to leverage
Speaker 1: GPT to generate false claims about products or services that
Speaker 1: amounts to false advertising. The group says that GPT four
Speaker 1: isn't quote transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering
Speaker 1: accountability end quote. These are standards that the FTC otherwise
Speaker 1: demands when it comes to trade. More than one thousand
Speaker 1: people reportedly signed this letter. Meanwhile, there's a different letter,
Speaker 1: this one from the Future of Life Institute, which is
Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization that says it's dedicated to pushing technology
Speaker 1: to benefit humanity and to reduce the risk of you know,
Speaker 1: like existential annihilation. Also, it has a similar message In
Speaker 1: this letter. The letter calls for an immediate pause on
Speaker 1: quote training of AI systems more powerful than GPT four
Speaker 1: end quote. That pause, the letter says, should be at
Speaker 1: least six months while people take a closer look and
Speaker 1: evaluate the risks associated with these AI models. The letter
Speaker 1: points out that the technology greatly outpaces governments and their
Speaker 1: ability to create laws and regulations meant to safeguard citizens.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's kind of how it always works, honestly,
Speaker 1: But the point that the letter is making is that
Speaker 1: the risks of AI could end up being too severe
Speaker 1: to just do the normal move fast and break things
Speaker 1: approach to tech and let law catch up later. The
Speaker 1: letter is an open letter, so it's not like a
Speaker 1: letter that's being sent to a specific entity. Also, when
Speaker 1: it was sent, it had more than one thousand, one
Speaker 1: hundred signatories on it, including some really famous names on there,
Speaker 1: like Steve Wozniak at Elon Musk. But at least some
Speaker 1: of the folks whose names appeared on that list have
Speaker 1: since spoken up to say they never actually signed the
Speaker 1: ding dang darn thing, which should definitely at least raise
Speaker 1: some eyebrows. A chief AI researcher and meta named Jan
Speaker 1: Lakun is one of the folks who says he never
Speaker 1: signed the letter, and in fact, he disagrees with the
Speaker 1: letter's premise. So something hanky's going on here. I know
Speaker 1: we can't trust the robots, but now it sounds we
Speaker 1: can't trust the peeps who say we can't trust the robots.
Speaker 1: Y'all know, lots of teachers worry about how students could
Speaker 1: potentially use chat GPT in an effort to avoid doing
Speaker 1: work themselves, essentially you know, cheating off a chatbot. You
Speaker 1: know about that, right, Well, according to the information, a
Speaker 1: former Google AI researcher has said that Google's kind of
Speaker 1: doing the same thing, just at a much bigger scale. Namely,
Speaker 1: this researcher, named Jacob Devlin, has accused Google's AI team
Speaker 1: of cheating off rival open ais GPTEAM model. The information
Speaker 1: says that, according to Devlin, the Google team was scraping
Speaker 1: data from open ais share gpt website in an effort
Speaker 1: to have training material for its own barred chatbot AI.
Speaker 1: Google's Chris Papas told The Verge that the company didn't
Speaker 1: use any data from share GPT or chat gpt to
Speaker 1: train Bard. So Google is outright denying these allegations. Now,
Speaker 1: there is no denying that Google was caught with its
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence pants down when chat gpt took the world
Speaker 1: by storm late last year, and Google has scrambled its
Speaker 1: various teams to try and make up for lost ground.
Speaker 1: According to the information, this actually extends to convincing teams
Speaker 1: from two different AI initiatives under Alphabet that's the parent
Speaker 1: company that Google is under, and that would be Google's
Speaker 1: Brain AI team and an independent like subsidiary, Deep Mind.
Speaker 1: That typically these two groups are rivals, they don't really
Speaker 1: work well together, or they don't often work together at all,
Speaker 1: and the Deep Mind has been rumored to be looking
Speaker 1: to actually completely spin off from the company for a
Speaker 1: while now, but at the moment their efforts appeared to
Speaker 1: be aligned as they try to catch up to open Ai.
Speaker 1: Not too long ago, I mentioned in the news episode
Speaker 1: that Google was under investigation for allegedly destroying evidence relating
Speaker 1: to its legal fight against you know, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of folks that includes Epic Games. That's the company that's
Speaker 1: behind Fortnite, the Match Group attorneys general for thirty eight
Speaker 1: of the fifty states that we have here in the
Speaker 1: good old US of A. The lawsuits are focused on
Speaker 1: Google's policies with its app store, arguing that the company
Speaker 1: has engaged in anti competitive and exclusionary practices that hurt well,
Speaker 1: pretty much anyone who ain't Google, really. But as to
Speaker 1: evidence tampering, those accusations have led to a federal judge
Speaker 1: ruling that Google did intentionally destroy evidence and so it
Speaker 1: must be sanctioned. The judge stated that quote Google intended
Speaker 1: to subvert the discovery process and that chat evidence was
Speaker 1: lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation
Speaker 1: and with the intent to deprive another party of the
Speaker 1: information's use in litigation quote. So essentially, what the judge
Speaker 1: is saying is that Google purposefully did not instruct any
Speaker 1: document custodians within its company to turn on the chat
Speaker 1: history feature. So by default, Google's chat deletes its chat
Speaker 1: history after twenty four hours, but you can turn this off,
Speaker 1: and if you do turn it off, then it maintains
Speaker 1: that chat history. So what the judge is saying is
Speaker 1: that Google tried to be coy and deny that it
Speaker 1: was hiding evidence by not admitting that the chat histories,
Speaker 1: which could be you'll saved and used as evidence, were
Speaker 1: set to automatically delete, and that you know, that was
Speaker 1: just a regular policy, there was nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 1: and that, of course they didn't even think to tell
Speaker 1: their custodians to turn on chat history. As to what
Speaker 1: punishment the judge will meet out to Google, that has
Speaker 1: yet to be decided. For one thing, until the judge
Speaker 1: can figure out what and how much was deleted, it's
Speaker 1: actually pretty hard to determine the extent to which Google's actions,
Speaker 1: or lack thereof, in the case of not turning on
Speaker 1: chat history, have actually hurt the prosecution's case, but in
Speaker 1: the meantime, Google does have to cover the legal fees
Speaker 1: for the prosecution. Google has protested this ruling, saying its
Speaker 1: policies fall under the restrictions of what is reasonable under
Speaker 1: federal rules, and of course this is just a corollary
Speaker 1: to the actual legal case, which itself will continue. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more tech news in just a moment. While Google
Speaker 1: defends itself against accusations of being anti competitive, it is
Speaker 1: accusing Microsoft of being anti competitive. In this case, Google
Speaker 1: says that Microsoft's cloud computing businesses are designed to discourage competition,
Speaker 1: and further that Microsoft's recent negotiations with cloud vendors in
Speaker 1: Europe are going to make things worse. The arguments are
Speaker 1: giving me a lot of deja vu, actually, because essentially
Speaker 1: the critics are saying that Microsoft ties its various products
Speaker 1: together in such a way that's very hard to mix
Speaker 1: and match with other vendors, Like you can't easily and
Speaker 1: seamlessly incorporate whichever products you want from whichever vendors you want.
Speaker 1: Because the various systems are designed to interlock together. That
Speaker 1: Microsoft's approach is really intended to keep customers within the
Speaker 1: Microsoft ecosystem, relying on things like Windows for on premises
Speaker 1: computing systems and Azure in the cloud. And the reason
Speaker 1: I say this gives me deja vu is that back
Speaker 1: in the nineties, Microsoft was accused of doing something really
Speaker 1: similar by tying its web browser, which was Internet Explorer
Speaker 1: at the time time, with the Windows operating system. This
Speaker 1: practice was seen as anti competitive because it discouraged Windows
Speaker 1: users from seeking out alternatives to Internet Explorers, such as
Speaker 1: Netscape Navigator. This whole thing led to a massive antitrust
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Microsoft. In fact, at one point, the United
Speaker 1: States government even ordered Microsoft to break up into smaller companies,
Speaker 1: but that ruling was subsequently reversed. Anyway, Google says Microsoft
Speaker 1: is following that old playbook, only now it's looking at
Speaker 1: enterprise customers and cloud services instead of regular consumers, and
Speaker 1: Google is hoping that regulators and the EU will take
Speaker 1: a closer look and perhaps intervene. Also fun fact, Google
Speaker 1: is in third place when it comes to being a
Speaker 1: cloud service provider. First place goes to Amazon, then Microsoft,
Speaker 1: then Google. So would Google behave in a way that
Speaker 1: was more competitive and would not be exclusionary? I guess
Speaker 1: we'll have to wait and find out our old pal.
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman freed AKASBF as another charge against him. Now
Speaker 1: do you remember him. He's the co founder of FTX,
Speaker 1: which used to be the second largest crypto exchange in
Speaker 1: the world before it had a spectacular collapse late last year.
Speaker 1: SPF already faces multiple securities and fraud charges, but this
Speaker 1: new one is different. This time, he's accused of having
Speaker 1: bribe Chinese officials to unfreeze assets connected to his cryptocurrency companies.
Speaker 1: This appears to have happened before the collapse of FTX,
Speaker 1: so apparently Chinese officials froze the assets as part of
Speaker 1: a probe into quote a particular Alimeda trading counterparty end quote.
Speaker 1: The size of the bribe is a staggering forty million
Speaker 1: dollars yauza. Think about that for a second. Think about
Speaker 1: having so much money tied up that you're willing to
Speaker 1: spend forty million dollars to get that money. Meanwhile, I'll
Speaker 1: just be over are just trying to imagine what forty
Speaker 1: million dollars looks like. Anyway, This means OLSBF is now
Speaker 1: looking at thirteen major charges in the wake of his
Speaker 1: FTX disaster, and he's still going with a not guilty plea,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that his FTX co founder Gary Wong
Speaker 1: has already pled guilty to charges of wire securities and
Speaker 1: commodities fraud. Moving on to TikTok, there's a small stable
Speaker 1: of politicians who oppose the growing calls or a nationwide
Speaker 1: ban against the social video platform here in the US.
Speaker 1: The newest member of that group is Senator Rand Paul,
Speaker 1: a Republican politician who is one of the few conservative
Speaker 1: voices to speak out against a ban on TikTok. Paul
Speaker 1: has expressed concern that a band could lead to restrictions
Speaker 1: on free speech. He's also expressed concern that should the
Speaker 1: government ban TikTok, young folks will sour on the Republican
Speaker 1: Party and the GOP will find itself out of a job.
Speaker 1: So this isn't all about standing up for the rights
Speaker 1: of citizens here. There's a healthy dose of self preservation
Speaker 1: going on. Now. I've said in the past that I
Speaker 1: do have real concerns about TikTok, and I still do.
Speaker 1: But I also have real concerns about data security and
Speaker 1: privacy in general, and as many others have repeatedly pointed
Speaker 1: out China doesn't exactly need an app on the inside
Speaker 1: of the US in order to get hold of our data.
Speaker 1: China could just do what the FBI does and buy
Speaker 1: data from data brokers. So yeah, the problem with security
Speaker 1: and privacy is much, much, much larger than TikTok itself,
Speaker 1: and really we need to have an approach that gets
Speaker 1: to the source of the problem, which, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is our irresponsible approach to personal data, which extends all
Speaker 1: the way to matters of national security, and that the
Speaker 1: app is just built on top of this, this massive
Speaker 1: vulnerability we have. It's not the cause of that vulnerability,
Speaker 1: it's just potentially exploiting it. One of the proposals that
Speaker 1: could potentially ban TikTok is called the restrict Act. Now
Speaker 1: I've yet to read this bill myself, but according to
Speaker 1: Motherboards sources, the language in it is too vague and
Speaker 1: too broad and could lead to massive problems down the road.
Speaker 1: So the purpose of the bill is to give the
Speaker 1: US government the authority to restrict communication services that have
Speaker 1: connections to foreign countries. And by connections, I think what
Speaker 1: is implied is at least foreign ownership. But as Motherboards
Speaker 1: Joseph Cox points out this could potentially extend not just
Speaker 1: to social networks and messaging apps and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but perhaps to other stuff like VPNs or virtual private networks. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the bill says that technology linked to a quote unquote
Speaker 1: foreign adversary would be subjected to this proposed restriction. That
Speaker 1: includes countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Speaker 1: And it also covers a lot of different kinds of software,
Speaker 1: including stuff like games and payment applications. Now, I hope
Speaker 1: to read the full bill soon, even though reading proposed
Speaker 1: legislation often makes my head hurt or it puts me
Speaker 1: to sleep. But the objections here sound like there are
Speaker 1: some real legit concerns that the bill could lead to overreach,
Speaker 1: and worse, failed to address the root cause of the issue,
Speaker 1: so we would still have the problem there, and this
Speaker 1: bill would not solve the problem. It would just cause
Speaker 1: more issues. EA aka Electronic Arts is joining the ranks
Speaker 1: of companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Twitter in that
Speaker 1: it's laying off employees. According to The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: the layoffs will affect around six percent of the company's workforce.
Speaker 1: That means around seven hundred eighty employees could be shown
Speaker 1: their walking papers. According to a blog post published by
Speaker 1: e A CEO Andrew Wilson, one of the reasons for
Speaker 1: the layoffs is that EA is looking to reduce its
Speaker 1: actual office space, and it means that some folks just
Speaker 1: won't have a place to work at anymore. Those affected
Speaker 1: are promised severance pay and healthcare support as they transition,
Speaker 1: which is the decent thing to do. How this will
Speaker 1: affect game development remains to be seen, but at the
Speaker 1: risk of sounding like a broken record, sure do hate
Speaker 1: seeing more folks getting laid off. Finally, Valve, a different
Speaker 1: video game company, has announced that beginning on January first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, it's popular game platform and online store,
Speaker 1: Steam will no longer work on machines running on Windows
Speaker 1: seven or Windows eight. Microsoft itself stopped supporting those operating
Speaker 1: systems earlier this year, so Steam is actually a little
Speaker 1: bit behind on that regard, But this means that gamers
Speaker 1: are still using older versions of Windows to access their
Speaker 1: Steam library of games will need to upgrade before next
Speaker 1: year or face the very real prospect that they won't
Speaker 1: be able to play their Stardo Valley anymore, which y'all,
Speaker 1: Star Doo Valley is a fantastic game. No one out
Speaker 1: there wants to be deprived of their Stardus Valleys. All
Speaker 1: that being said, as you would probably imagine, this is
Speaker 1: going to impact a very small number of Steam custom
Speaker 1: According to Valve, fewer than two percent of all Steam
Speaker 1: customers are on platforms using Windows seven or Windows eight.
Speaker 1: But if you are time to upgrade, all right, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's the news for Thursday, March thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well out there, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.