Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Be 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 Tuesday,
Speaker 1: March twenty first, twenty twenty three. First up, Google's bug
Speaker 1: hunting team found eighteen zero day vulnerabilities in Samsung hardware,
Speaker 1: specifically the xin US chip sets. That's e x Y
Speaker 1: n os SO. Zero day vulnerabilities, as the name suggests,
Speaker 1: are vulnerabilities that are in various technologies from day one,
Speaker 1: that have been there since the technology came out, and
Speaker 1: potentially are actively being exploited by hackers. And the xosed
Speaker 1: chip sets are arm based system on a chip chip sets,
Speaker 1: and they serve as the brains of stuff like certain
Speaker 1: smartphones and wearables and even some car systems. The team
Speaker 1: has been uncovering these vulnerabilities since late twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: so it's not like this is brand new discoveries in
Speaker 1: all cases, but it has been ongoing and at least
Speaker 1: four of them are considered severe vulnerabilities, potentially allowing an
Speaker 1: attacker to target any affected device as long as that
Speaker 1: attacker knows the associated phone number with the XANOS modem
Speaker 1: in that device. So if someone happened to own a
Speaker 1: smartphone with one of these chips as its processor, an
Speaker 1: attacker could potentially perform a remote code execution or RCE
Speaker 1: on that phone just by knowing that phone number. So
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to even be tricked into doing anything, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of vulnerabilities we hear about involve someone taking
Speaker 1: an action that they shouldn't have. They get a prompt,
Speaker 1: they respond to it, and that in turn creates the
Speaker 1: opportunity for an attacker to compromise a device. In this case,
Speaker 1: it literally just means that the attacker has to have
Speaker 1: the phone number of the target device. This is a
Speaker 1: massive security flaw obviously, because then the attacker could force
Speaker 1: the victim's phone to run all sorts of different types
Speaker 1: of code. They could have the phone execute code that
Speaker 1: turns it into an espionage device similar to the Pegasus
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about with iPhones a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: or maybe they could lock the phone in a sort
Speaker 1: of ransomware attack. Now, the other fourteen flaws, because there
Speaker 1: were eighteen total, four of them were super extreme. The
Speaker 1: other fourteen are also bad news, but they don't pose
Speaker 1: the same critical risk as the four that I'm alluding to. Now,
Speaker 1: patches are going out in security updates, but patches are
Speaker 1: things that different companies roll out at different scales and
Speaker 1: at different timetables, so not all of the effective devices
Speaker 1: are necessarily able to be patched right now. That's a
Speaker 1: real serious issue that you know, companies like Google have
Speaker 1: rolled out patches and security updates already, so as long
Speaker 1: as you're up to day in your security patches, you
Speaker 1: have presumably blocked off this potential attack vector. But the
Speaker 1: proposed workaround for those who are still waiting to get
Speaker 1: a patch is pretty extreme. It essentially involves shutting down
Speaker 1: both the call over Wi Fi and voice over LTE
Speaker 1: functions of your phone, So essentially it means removing the
Speaker 1: phone from your phone, and I get it a lot
Speaker 1: of y'all never use a phone as a phone anyway,
Speaker 1: right Like a voice call is probably the last thing
Speaker 1: you would use your phone for. But it does strike
Speaker 1: me as particularly weird to remove the phone part from
Speaker 1: a phone anyway. Some of the devices affected include the
Speaker 1: Pixel six and Pixel seven from Google, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different Samsung Mobile devices are affected, which isn't a surprise.
Speaker 1: They include the S twenty two, the M twelve, the
Speaker 1: M thirteen, the M thirty three, and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of devices that are in the A series of Samsung
Speaker 1: Mobile devices, not all a series, but a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Plus any vehicles that have an Xinos Auto T five
Speaker 1: one two three chip set or any wearables that have
Speaker 1: the Xinos W nine twenty chip set are affected by
Speaker 1: this vulnerability, which is a big old yikes. By the way,
Speaker 1: this is a good reminder to activate real security updates
Speaker 1: when you get them, because security updates can address critical
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities like this one and prevent you from the coming
Speaker 1: a victim in the future. The only thing is that
Speaker 1: you should verify that a security update you receive is
Speaker 1: real first, so like do just bear minimum research to
Speaker 1: make sure that yes, you know, whatever company has issued
Speaker 1: a security update. So if you are using say a
Speaker 1: Google Pixel device, just make sure that Google did in
Speaker 1: fact issue a security update. Just do a quick search
Speaker 1: to make sure that is a thing that has happened,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, install that as soon as you can
Speaker 1: because it can potentially cut off attack vectors. Sometimes these
Speaker 1: updates can also affect other things on a device, which
Speaker 1: is a pain in the butt, but it's still better
Speaker 1: than having your phone compromised. So you know, just a
Speaker 1: word out there. Google has recently banned a Chinese based
Speaker 1: app from the Google Play Store. It is not TikTok,
Speaker 1: though we will talk about the besieged video based social
Speaker 1: work a little later in this episode. No, it's Pen
Speaker 1: Duo Duo. Now. Essentially, this app matches consumers with merchants
Speaker 1: for various products. It started out as an agricultural thing
Speaker 1: and went on to stuff like groceries, and now it's
Speaker 1: pretty much everything. So why is Google removing the app? Well,
Speaker 1: according to Google, the most recent version of the app
Speaker 1: contains malware of some sort, so Google suspended the app
Speaker 1: out of a concern for security. Reuters reached out to
Speaker 1: Penn Duo Duo and received a response that claims that
Speaker 1: Google has alerted the company that the app has been suspended,
Speaker 1: but that Google did not give any details as to
Speaker 1: why the app was suspended anyway. This isn't the first
Speaker 1: time that Penn Duo Duo has been in legal hot
Speaker 1: water here in the United States. One of the major
Speaker 1: issues that is often connected to it involves the counterfeiting
Speaker 1: of various goods. So essentially, it's saying that pen Duo
Speaker 1: Duo tends to match folks up with merchants who sell
Speaker 1: knockoff versions of designer or luxury goods. That is a
Speaker 1: big part of China's business as well, is just creating
Speaker 1: counterfeit goods that mimic high end designer goods. It's a
Speaker 1: big problem in the designer good industry. I can't pretend
Speaker 1: like I fully understand it because I'm basic. I don't
Speaker 1: do like the whole designer goods thing because I have
Speaker 1: no class. Routers also reports that Google reps have claimed
Speaker 1: that it was just an accident that certain communication records
Speaker 1: that could have been used as evidence against it in
Speaker 1: an upcoming trial in which the US Justice Department is
Speaker 1: bringing antitrust charges against Google is scheduled to happen. So essentially,
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice is saying, hey, there's all these
Speaker 1: records that we potentially should have had access to, and
Speaker 1: you're deleting them. It's essentially like your shredding documents because
Speaker 1: you anticipate a raid. And Google is saying, no, we
Speaker 1: didn't mean to delete anything. We were actually taking reasonable
Speaker 1: steps to preserve everything, but some stuff slipped through the cracks,
Speaker 1: not the heart of the lawsuit or claims from most
Speaker 1: of the states here in the US that Google has
Speaker 1: been using anti competitive strategies to prevent any other company
Speaker 1: from getting a foothold in the search business. The d
Speaker 1: o J suspects that Google has denied access to or
Speaker 1: deleted documents that would lend credence to their case against
Speaker 1: the company, and Google says, ah, that's ridiculous. We've already
Speaker 1: shared millions of documents with you. Now. I don't have
Speaker 1: eyes on this one. I have no idea if Google's
Speaker 1: claims are with or without merit. I don't know if Google,
Speaker 1: you know, intentionally deleted files that would have been damaging
Speaker 1: to the company's case, or if this truly was just
Speaker 1: something that happened without any malice involved. I will say
Speaker 1: it's not a good look. I mean, anytime documents go missing,
Speaker 1: that isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of your claims of
Speaker 1: being innocent. But yeah, I don't know. Well way or
Speaker 1: the other. Tech Crunch has a piece titled Facebook political
Speaker 1: micro targeting at center of GDPR complaints in Germany. So
Speaker 1: GDPR if you are not in the know. Is a
Speaker 1: set of regulations that are centered around protecting EU citizen
Speaker 1: personal information. And if you want to do business in
Speaker 1: the EU, if you're a digital company, then you want
Speaker 1: to have any sort of business practices within the European Union.
Speaker 1: Complying with GDPR is a really big deal. In fact,
Speaker 1: their entire consulting companies out there designed to help other
Speaker 1: companies make sure that their business practices are in alignment
Speaker 1: with GDPR, because if you don't comply with it, then
Speaker 1: your company can get hit with massive fines or even
Speaker 1: being denied access to doing business within the European Union,
Speaker 1: which would be a huge deal. Right. So in this case,
Speaker 1: what has happened is that Facebook has used microtargeting to
Speaker 1: direct political advertisements to German citizens without first getting their
Speaker 1: express consent to make such use of their personal data.
Speaker 1: And the EU assigns different levels of importance to different
Speaker 1: kinds of personal information, so things like your political leanings,
Speaker 1: that's way way way up there. That's highly protected information.
Speaker 1: So there is a high bar to clear if you
Speaker 1: are going to make use of that personal information in
Speaker 1: any way. And according to the charges meta Slash, Facebook
Speaker 1: totally failed to do that like they should have gotten
Speaker 1: the express consent of each and every person who's information
Speaker 1: they used to sell microtargeting ads. You know that they did,
Speaker 1: and they didn't do that. And arguably just as bad,
Speaker 1: if not worse, is that every single political party in
Speaker 1: Germany took advantage of meta's disregard for the GDPR regulations.
Speaker 1: So whether it was a far right political party, far left,
Speaker 1: and everything in between, all of them used microtargeting to
Speaker 1: deliver advertising messages, including messages that contradicted each other from
Speaker 1: the same party, just based on microtargeting of individuals. So,
Speaker 1: for example, some one party might have sent out a
Speaker 1: message to someone who is identified as being very pro
Speaker 1: climate change regulations as saying, we're the party that is
Speaker 1: pursuing climate protection over everything else, so believe in us.
Speaker 1: But that same party might have identified someone else as
Speaker 1: being more in tune with personal freedom over time regulation,
Speaker 1: as saying, we believe in the climate just like you do,
Speaker 1: but we also believe you should be able to travel
Speaker 1: wherever you want, whenever you want, so we're about protecting
Speaker 1: the climate without infringing on personal liberty. These two messages
Speaker 1: cannot coexist from the same party, right, you cannot stay
Speaker 1: true to both simultaneously. If you're telling one person we're
Speaker 1: going to protect the climate at all costs, and you're
Speaker 1: telling someone else will protect the climate, but we're not
Speaker 1: gonna you know, we're not going to cramp your style.
Speaker 1: Those are two messages that cannot be true at the
Speaker 1: same time. And the point is that if the same
Speaker 1: party is delivering these two contradictory messages, they are lying
Speaker 1: to someone or they're lying to everyone, at least one person,
Speaker 1: but possibly everybody, And ultimately it undermines the democratic process
Speaker 1: because you cannot trust the messages coming out of a
Speaker 1: political party. If those messages are contradictory of one another,
Speaker 1: it destroys democracy itself. Fun times anyway, an advocacy group
Speaker 1: in OYB has really cranked up the pressure here, and
Speaker 1: I would argue for a very good reason, and that
Speaker 1: in OYB is putting pressure on EU officials to enforce
Speaker 1: the rules under GDPR like they've created these rules, and
Speaker 1: in OYB is saying clearly these rules are not being followed,
Speaker 1: so it's your job to get in here and to
Speaker 1: actually enforce them and to get things like explicit consent
Speaker 1: before any of this kind of data can be used
Speaker 1: for microtargeting advertising as well as you know, putting some
Speaker 1: pressure on the political party system within Germany to obey
Speaker 1: the laws that these political parties are actually, you know,
Speaker 1: supposed to uphold in the first place. So yeah, pretty
Speaker 1: big expose when you look at it in that term,
Speaker 1: and I'm very curious where it goes from here. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got some more news to cover before we get
Speaker 1: to that. Let's take a quick break. Russia is gearing
Speaker 1: up for its own presidential election that will happen in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and now election officials in Russia have
Speaker 1: a new directive ditch the iPhone. So Reuters has reported
Speaker 1: that the Kremlin has ordered all officials connected with the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four Russian presidential election, which I am sure
Speaker 1: will be absolutely straightforward and fair, we'll have to stop
Speaker 1: using Apple iPhones, reportedly due to concern that Western intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies could be working with Apple, or maybe even without
Speaker 1: Apple's knowledge and participation, to leverage iPhones in order to
Speaker 1: gather intelligence. I mean, this could sound familiar because we
Speaker 1: certainly have worried about Russia doing the exact same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, not through the iPhone, but through various means
Speaker 1: to inject misinformation and to affect elections across the United States,
Speaker 1: to undermine the democratic process. So Russian officials are kind
Speaker 1: of worried that the same thing's going to happen in Russia. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of faith in the fairness
Speaker 1: of the Russian election system, if I'm being totally honest,
Speaker 1: But I also think that perhaps the officials have a point.
Speaker 1: Year I don't think that Apple would work so closely
Speaker 1: with US authorities on this. I don't think Apple would
Speaker 1: comply and allow their phones to be turned into surveillance devices.
Speaker 1: Apple has a history of resisting US government efforts to
Speaker 1: leverage Apple's abilities to do this kind of thing. Apple
Speaker 1: famously resisted the FBI's efforts to create a backdoor entry
Speaker 1: point for Apple's systems, saying that no, that compromises user
Speaker 1: security and privacy, and it compromises our reputation with our customers.
Speaker 1: So I don't think Apple would necessarily be on board
Speaker 1: for any official attempt to surveil a foreign election process. However,
Speaker 1: we have seen companies, surveillance companies creating apps that exploit
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities and iOS devices in the past. You know, we
Speaker 1: saw that with an Israeli company creating the Pegasus app
Speaker 1: that would turn an iPhone into a spy device just
Speaker 1: by sending a message through I Message. Apple has since
Speaker 1: patched out that vulnerability, But the point is we have
Speaker 1: seen that in the past, and really anytime you're talking
Speaker 1: about relying upon a device that's going to send data
Speaker 1: out of the country you're in to another country that
Speaker 1: might be, if not outright hostile, at least wary of
Speaker 1: the one you live in, there are concerns, right because
Speaker 1: if you don't have full control of the information chain,
Speaker 1: then there are worries about how that could hack national security.
Speaker 1: So while I don't think everything's on the up and
Speaker 1: up and Russia necessarily, I do also understand the concern
Speaker 1: about officials relying upon technology that is created in a
Speaker 1: country that at least is wary of Russia, if not
Speaker 1: outright hostile at times. So yeah, I get the security concern.
Speaker 1: It's not really a surprise. I don't even think it's
Speaker 1: really an indictment against Apple, because again, Apple does not
Speaker 1: have a reputation of working alongside US government to that degree.
Speaker 1: But allegedly all election officials will need to be free
Speaker 1: of iPhones by April first, Stanford has introduced Alpaca AI,
Speaker 1: which according to researchers, performs on a level similar to
Speaker 1: GPT three point five that's the previous generation of open
Speaker 1: aiyes language model. But the surprising thing is that these
Speaker 1: researchers spend about six hundred dollars developing their Alpaca AI.
Speaker 1: You know, open ai has had billions of dollars of
Speaker 1: investments poured into it, and apparently these Stanford researchers were
Speaker 1: able to achieve a similar outcome to the previous generation
Speaker 1: of GPT for just six hundred bucks. So they started
Speaker 1: with Meta's open source LAMA seven B language model. So
Speaker 1: this is Meta's own large language model. It is not
Speaker 1: the same one that open ai uses, and Meta allows
Speaker 1: academics to access these models for a price. The seven
Speaker 1: B model is the cheapest and smallest of the large
Speaker 1: language models, and that's the one the researchers went with,
Speaker 1: so they saved some money by going with that. Then
Speaker 1: they used open AI's GPT to generate sample conversations around
Speaker 1: fifty two thousand sample conversations to train to post train
Speaker 1: their own AI model. So they made use of open
Speaker 1: aiyes official GPT research tools to do that that cost
Speaker 1: a few hundred bucks. Then they made some tweaks and
Speaker 1: some adjustments, and they ended up with an AI language
Speaker 1: model that can perform really well against GPT itself, like
Speaker 1: almost at the same level. I think in something like
Speaker 1: almost one hundred and eighty tests, ninety showed their AI
Speaker 1: model outperforming GPT, and an eighty nine cases GPT outperformed
Speaker 1: the AI model, so they're essentially neck and neck. As
Speaker 1: New Atlas the website New Atlas points out, the research
Speaker 1: shows that if you have the right tools at your disposal,
Speaker 1: you can potentially create your own large language model for
Speaker 1: AI and then build stuff on top of that, like
Speaker 1: chatbots and whatnot. And while Meta limits access to LAMA
Speaker 1: to academics and such, the problem is someone leaked a
Speaker 1: code online. So while you officially have to be an
Speaker 1: academic to get access to LAMA, if you're the unethical type,
Speaker 1: you can just grab the code online. It is available
Speaker 1: out there, and you can start to develop your own
Speaker 1: language model and your own work based on top of that.
Speaker 1: This means we could be at the beginning of an
Speaker 1: era of chat bought explosions and AI activations, all powered
Speaker 1: by similar but independent language models. It's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: some or even many of these will lack the restrictions
Speaker 1: that we see open aie putting on top of its
Speaker 1: own products like chat GPT. You know, open ai works
Speaker 1: hard to try and limit things like you know, racist
Speaker 1: or misogynyistic or transphobic language from being generated through its tools,
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously we've also seen issues with the
Speaker 1: reliability of information generated through tools like chat GPT. So
Speaker 1: the fear is that these new tools, which could be
Speaker 1: pretty easy to make yourself based upon this research project,
Speaker 1: won't have those safeguards in place, and that we could
Speaker 1: see a lot more misinformation or abuse of such systems,
Speaker 1: maybe using systems to try and trick people with phishing attacks,
Speaker 1: all sorts of different tactics that could be harmful could
Speaker 1: be coming down the road. Because we've already seen the
Speaker 1: barrier to entry, it's not that high, and if you're
Speaker 1: able to figure out a way to exploit that and
Speaker 1: make a whole lot of money, maybe you'd be willing
Speaker 1: to take that unethical route and create a whole new
Speaker 1: generation of victims out there. Oh brave new world to
Speaker 1: have such chat bots in it. And on the topic
Speaker 1: of chat GPT recently above started showing users the title
Speaker 1: and short description of chat GPT sessions that were not
Speaker 1: their own. You would look at your history and start
Speaker 1: seeing stuff that you definitely did not do. So users
Speaker 1: were having the titles and short descriptions of their chat
Speaker 1: sessions shared with other users without their consent, and this
Speaker 1: was not by design. This is a good time to
Speaker 1: remind everyone that if you are using chat GPT, you
Speaker 1: should not share sensitive information in chat GPT conversations because
Speaker 1: you never know when those conversations could become public. So,
Speaker 1: if you were using chat GPT to I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe draft a resignation letter, but maybe you aren't seriously
Speaker 1: considering leaving your job, you were just kind of toying
Speaker 1: with the idea, and you have chat GPT draft a
Speaker 1: resignation letter for your behalf. Well, that could end up
Speaker 1: being awfully awkward. If your chat session title and description
Speaker 1: then gets shared with somebody else but without your permission,
Speaker 1: and now people have the impression that you are leaving
Speaker 1: your job, that could create all sorts of complications in
Speaker 1: your life that you probably don't want to have to
Speaker 1: deal with. That's just one example. What if you were drafting.
Speaker 1: I don't know, a love letter to your crush. I
Speaker 1: mean like, there's all sorts of things that you could
Speaker 1: have been using chat GPT to do, even just for fun,
Speaker 1: that you probably don't want people to see. So in
Speaker 1: my case, if people were to see my history with
Speaker 1: chat GPT, they would probably see how I was trying
Speaker 1: to get chat gpt to compose a Shakespearean sonnet about AI.
Speaker 1: Or there was one time when I asked it to
Speaker 1: create an episode of tech stuff. I was just curious
Speaker 1: what would happen, and I told it to create an
Speaker 1: episode of tech stuff about chat GPT, which I had
Speaker 1: already done an episode about chat GPT. So it's not
Speaker 1: like I was trying to get out of doing my work, y'all.
Speaker 1: That's not what this was about. I was just curious
Speaker 1: what would happen, Like would it actually sound like one
Speaker 1: of my episodes? The answer is no, it did not
Speaker 1: sound anything like one of my episodes. It created an
Speaker 1: interview with a fake chat GPT representative. So if I
Speaker 1: had actually recorded the episode, I would have had to
Speaker 1: invent a person who supposedly worked at open AI who
Speaker 1: would be talking about chat GPT in an authoritative way
Speaker 1: which seems unethical at the very slightest, but anyway, Open
Speaker 1: Ai shut down chat GPT for a short while yesterday
Speaker 1: evening and they took the chat history offline for a while.
Speaker 1: They are reportedly starting to roll that back into service,
Speaker 1: but it might be a while before all users are
Speaker 1: actually able to access their chat histories, so there may
Speaker 1: be a while before you're able to see back on,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff you have been talking about with
Speaker 1: chat GPT in the past. The verges. Tom Warren has
Speaker 1: a great article titled Microsoft's new Copilot will change Office
Speaker 1: documents Forever. This kind of again falls in line with
Speaker 1: AI and chatbots. So Tom Warren was in a Microsoft
Speaker 1: Teams meeting with Microsoft reps to talk about Copilot. That's
Speaker 1: Microsoft's AI feature that's going to be incorporated into all
Speaker 1: office products moving forward. During the meeting, the reps turned
Speaker 1: Copilot on to do stuff like take notes about the
Speaker 1: Microsoft Teams meeting. At the conclusion of the meeting, Warren
Speaker 1: actually received these notes, which included a recap of all
Speaker 1: the questions he had asked during the interview, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like Copilot can help users take advantage of office
Speaker 1: products as if the user was an elite user. You
Speaker 1: probably maybe you are an elite user in one or
Speaker 1: two office products, or maybe all of them, or maybe
Speaker 1: you know someone who is, like someone who just knows
Speaker 1: all the different tricks to create the most snazzy and
Speaker 1: effective presentation, or they're able to create really help full
Speaker 1: graphs and charts out of Excel sheets, like there's an
Speaker 1: art to it. You know, you can learn the basic
Speaker 1: steps and do a fine job, but to do something
Speaker 1: really effective requires a little more work. And you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like Copilot can actually help you
Speaker 1: achieve those things and not only help you do them,
Speaker 1: but also teach you how to do them yourself. So
Speaker 1: it's not just like a magic wand that makes things better,
Speaker 1: but a tutorial tool that can help you learn how
Speaker 1: to take advantage of features that maybe you never even
Speaker 1: knew existed. It's kind of like the old Microsoft Clippy,
Speaker 1: but on steroids. Warren also mentions that the reps from
Speaker 1: Microsoft acknowledge that the tool is good, but it's not perfect,
Speaker 1: that it can make mistakes, it can generate stuff that
Speaker 1: isn't appropriate, and that human review and interaction is still
Speaker 1: very much a needed part of the process. That you
Speaker 1: can't just step back and let office do all the
Speaker 1: work for you. This is a collaborative approach to work,
Speaker 1: not one where AI takes over for you. I recommend
Speaker 1: you pop on over to the Verge and read the
Speaker 1: piece to learn more. I do think the messaging from
Speaker 1: Microsoft is pretty good here, that these tools are meant
Speaker 1: to augment, but not replace, your own skills. That is
Speaker 1: the approach to AI that I find the most intriguing
Speaker 1: and certainly far less concerning than the doomsday scenarios we
Speaker 1: often hear about about how AI is going to take
Speaker 1: all of our jobs. The Verge also has a piece
Speaker 1: titled text to Video AI inches closer as startup Runway
Speaker 1: announces new model and yeah, the article is pretty much
Speaker 1: what sounds like. Just as doll E and mid Journey
Speaker 1: can generate images based on text inputs, Runway can generate
Speaker 1: short snippets of video, and soon Runway Gen two will
Speaker 1: release and show the progress of this technology. It is
Speaker 1: not a high fidelity or photo realistic experience. So far,
Speaker 1: the video I've seen has been in a fairly low
Speaker 1: resolution and has elements in it that don't look real,
Speaker 1: so you can tell it's like computer generated. But the
Speaker 1: demonstrations are pretty fascinating. You just type in a simple
Speaker 1: description of what you want to see, and you know,
Speaker 1: the more descriptive you are, both about the scene you
Speaker 1: want to see and the kind of camera work you
Speaker 1: want will affect the clip that Runway generates. Runway also
Speaker 1: offers a suite of aipowered video editing tools that can
Speaker 1: do stuff like help remove a background from a video
Speaker 1: or stabilize a camera and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But the yeah, Gen two, the big thing is that
Speaker 1: it's able to just create entire video clips. Obviously, AI
Speaker 1: generated video opens up new opportunities for abuse, So it's
Speaker 1: not all wine and roses here, like, there are some real,
Speaker 1: potentially harmful uses of this technology. But the actual video
Speaker 1: so far again aren't. They're not photo realistic, and they
Speaker 1: sometimes include stuff just you know, gives it away that's
Speaker 1: a computer generated clip. So it's not quite to the
Speaker 1: point where we can never believe anything on video ever again,
Speaker 1: But we're getting there. Okay, I've got a few more
Speaker 1: stories to cover before I get to that. Let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Last week, I mentioned that after bay
Speaker 1: Do demonstrated its own Ernie chatbot, investors were initially disappointed
Speaker 1: in the company and we saw stocks fall. They recovered
Speaker 1: a bit afterward, as Bid opened up Ernie to a
Speaker 1: small group of testers who demonstrated their own interactions with
Speaker 1: the bot, and so investors started to come around a
Speaker 1: little bit on that and Reuters reports that the chatbot
Speaker 1: has some pretty big blind spots that are not going
Speaker 1: to surprise you in the least. Namely, if you asked
Speaker 1: the chatbot questions about, say, Shi Jenping, the president of China,
Speaker 1: then Ernie Bott will say it hasn't learned how to
Speaker 1: answer those kinds of questions. Similarly, Reuters found that if
Speaker 1: they asked about, you know, sensitive or taboo subjects, such
Speaker 1: as the events at Tianamen Square in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Ernie would suggest changing the subject. This is pretty much
Speaker 1: in line with how China limits and sensors Internet content
Speaker 1: on politically sensitive subjects, and in the interest of fairness,
Speaker 1: I should point out that open AI's version of chat
Speaker 1: GPT has its own limitations. When that model was first
Speaker 1: put out, it would not answer questions about developing news
Speaker 1: or breaking news or anything, because it would only have
Speaker 1: access to information from twenty twenty and earlier. As I recall,
Speaker 1: so there were limitations of what it could talk about,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't necessarily censorship so much as it was
Speaker 1: open AI trying to avoid issues where their tool could
Speaker 1: be used to frame news in a particular perspective or bias,
Speaker 1: so it's not unheard of here either. I should say.
Speaker 1: Also Microsoft's being incorporation of chat GBT lifted those limitations
Speaker 1: you could ask about developing news on that platform. While
Speaker 1: TikTok continues to argue for its own existence in the US,
Speaker 1: the company has introduced new rules about AI deep fake
Speaker 1: videos a lot of thematic similarities in our stories today.
Speaker 1: The new rules say that synthetic and manipulated media must
Speaker 1: be clearly disclosed as such. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: a video uses deep fake technology, it needs to make
Speaker 1: that clear in the video itself, Otherwise it might be
Speaker 1: seen as attempting to pass itself off as the legit article,
Speaker 1: and thus will be subject to moderation like being deleted
Speaker 1: or whatever. Further, deep fakes of private individuals are strictly
Speaker 1: off the table. You can't make a deep fake of
Speaker 1: some private citizen. That is against the rules. The only
Speaker 1: deep fakes that are allowed are of public figures, and
Speaker 1: again they have to be disclosed as being deep fakes.
Speaker 1: And in deep fake videos, you cannot make the public
Speaker 1: figure do stuff like endorse something, because that is a
Speaker 1: violation of the rules. It is creating a perceived relationship
Speaker 1: where none actually exists. You also can't have a deep
Speaker 1: fake version of a celebrity doing stuff like calling for
Speaker 1: violence or spreading hate speech. These are against the terms
Speaker 1: and conditions of TikTok, so those would also be in
Speaker 1: violation of the rules. I think this would be an
Speaker 1: important step even if TikTok were not facing political pressure
Speaker 1: from all corners at the moment, but certainly as there
Speaker 1: is unprecedented security directed at TikTok right now, these new
Speaker 1: rules I think are a necessity, especially in the wake
Speaker 1: of descriptions of stuff like the Runway Gen two tool
Speaker 1: that's coming out. Deep fakes are already a big problem.
Speaker 1: The ability for AI to replicate voices is a big problem.
Speaker 1: It's just going to get worse, so creating rules about
Speaker 1: these things is really really important. Italy's AGCM, which is
Speaker 1: a consumer watchdog group, has launched an investigation into TikTok,
Speaker 1: alleging the platform does not do enough to stop videos
Speaker 1: that promote harmful content, ranging from videos that promote eating
Speaker 1: disorders to encouraging suicide. So these videos violate the terms
Speaker 1: and conditions of TikTok. It is against the rules, But
Speaker 1: what the watchdog is saying is that TikTok isn't doing
Speaker 1: enough to enforce those rules. The AGCM is focusing on
Speaker 1: TikTok Technology Limited. That's a branch of TikTok that's based
Speaker 1: in Ireland. It's responsible for consumer relations in Europe. And
Speaker 1: the event that apparently prompted this investigation was a string
Speaker 1: of viral videos about a quote unquote French scar challenge.
Speaker 1: The fact that I had to look up what the
Speaker 1: heck that was is really a bummer and if you're curious.
Speaker 1: Essentially it involves pinching the skin along a line to
Speaker 1: create the illusion that you have a faded but permanent scar,
Speaker 1: typically on your face. But this can actually cause permanent
Speaker 1: damage itself. If you're pinching so hard, you can actually
Speaker 1: create a permanent line on your face, and that fake
Speaker 1: scar essentially becomes a real scar. That's not super cool.
Speaker 1: AGCUM express concern not just about this particular trend, but
Speaker 1: the overall problem of such content going viral without moderators
Speaker 1: stepping in to enforce the rules. Amazon is laying off
Speaker 1: another nine thousand employees. This is after a previous round
Speaker 1: of layoffs affected eighteen thousand staff, which means this year
Speaker 1: Amazon will have laid off about nine percent of its
Speaker 1: global corporate workforce, a lot of people, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: seven thousand people. The upcoming layoffs are expected to impact
Speaker 1: divisions like Twitch, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, which previously
Speaker 1: was one of the most profitable divisions within Amazon, and
Speaker 1: advertising departments, among others. CEO Andy Jassey cited an uncertain
Speaker 1: economy as the reason the company is holding these layoffs.
Speaker 1: It's a popular phrase to yell right now. Apparently around
Speaker 1: four hundred, actually more than four hundred of those cuts
Speaker 1: will affect Twitch, which recently sought CEO Emmett Sheer resign
Speaker 1: his position. It's hard for me to feel bad about
Speaker 1: a company as huge as Amazon, but I definitely do
Speaker 1: feel empathy for all the people affected by these layoffs,
Speaker 1: both the ones directly affected and their coworkers who then
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to proceed without the input
Speaker 1: of the people who were just laid off. And I
Speaker 1: definitely hope all those who are directly affected by these
Speaker 1: layoffs land on their feet in this increasingly uncertain economic climate.
Speaker 1: That is a very rough position to be in, and
Speaker 1: I wish you all the best. Amazon itself is facing
Speaker 1: several government investigations, and Politico reports that some of these
Speaker 1: could be leading to lawsuits brought against Amazon by the
Speaker 1: federal government of the United States. So Amazon's already involved
Speaker 1: in state level lawsuits regarding things like consumer laws and
Speaker 1: accusations of anti competitive practices such as promoting Amazon owned
Speaker 1: brands over competitors when you go into search results, but
Speaker 1: these new lawsuits would be federal level charges, not state level,
Speaker 1: so it would significantly turn up the heat on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Some of the potential moves could force Amazon to divest
Speaker 1: itself of companies that it has already acquired. One of
Speaker 1: them could potentially push Amazon to divest itself of I Robot,
Speaker 1: that's the company that makes the Roomba vacuum cleaners. Amazon
Speaker 1: may also face charges alleging that Amazon products like the
Speaker 1: Ring Security doorbell system potentially violates the Children's Online Privacy
Speaker 1: Protection Act or KAPPA, and there are other investigations that
Speaker 1: could conceivably lead to different types of lawsuits and it
Speaker 1: sounds like it's a multi pronged attack and a sign
Speaker 1: that the US government is taking a much harder regulatory
Speaker 1: stance when it comes to big companies in general, but
Speaker 1: specifically big tech companies. Okay, that's it. That's the news
Speaker 1: for Tuesday, March twenty, twenty twenty three. Hope you are
Speaker 1: all well. If you would like to reach out to me,
Speaker 1: do so on Twitter. The handle for the show is
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