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: May eighteen, twenty twenty three. So first up here in
Speaker 1: the United States, the Supreme Court decided not to hear
Speaker 1: two cases that otherwise could have forced a decision about
Speaker 1: the infamous Section too thirty rules. So, in case you
Speaker 1: need a refresher, Section two thirty is part of Title
Speaker 1: forty seven of the United States Code. Probably need to
Speaker 1: add more context to that. It was introduced in the
Speaker 1: Communications Decency Act of nineteen ninety six, that in turn
Speaker 1: is part of an even larger act called the Telecommunications
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen ninety six. And the whole point of
Speaker 1: Section two thirty is that it gives online platforms protection
Speaker 1: from liability if users post stuff that's you know, illegal
Speaker 1: on those platforms. So, in other words, let's say I
Speaker 1: created a YouTube video and my video contained illegal content
Speaker 1: in it. Well, YouTube slash, Google, slash alphabet wouldn't be
Speaker 1: held legally responsible for what I did because of Section
Speaker 1: two thirty it's just the platform. I'm the one who
Speaker 1: committed the crime. So this protects the platforms from hosting
Speaker 1: and being held legally liable for hosting content that's illegal
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. It does get a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than that, but that's the basic idea. And there were
Speaker 1: a couple of notable cases, big, big emotionally charged cases
Speaker 1: that were recently submitted to the Supreme Court for consideration,
Speaker 1: and they could have served as a test for Section
Speaker 1: two thirty's legitimacy from a constitutional standpoint. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that's not happening because the Court found that neither
Speaker 1: case had merit for other reasons, like they wouldn't hear
Speaker 1: the case, not because of the Section two thirty thing,
Speaker 1: but for other reasons. Essentially, the Supreme Court said that
Speaker 1: the cases were accusing platforms of violating the Anti Terrorism
Speaker 1: Act and that that particular law shouldn't have applied in
Speaker 1: the first place. So there was no case there, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they can't use that law as the reason to bring
Speaker 1: a case against the company because it doesn't apply. So
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court said it would not be weighing in
Speaker 1: with a decision about Section two thirty because the case
Speaker 1: isn't relevant. So you could say the Supreme Court has
Speaker 1: sort of punted the decision regarding Section two thirty down
Speaker 1: the field, and it will take some other legal matter
Speaker 1: in the future that involves Section two thirty to make
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, you know, make an actual decision that
Speaker 1: settles the question about whether or not Section two thirty
Speaker 1: is constitutional. The US state of Montana has become the
Speaker 1: first state in our nation to issue a ban on TikTok.
Speaker 1: The ban will not actually take effect until January first,
Speaker 1: next year, assuming that the various challenges to this new
Speaker 1: law don't end up making the whole matter moot. So
Speaker 1: the justification for banning TikTok boils down to a concern
Speaker 1: that the Chinese Communist Party is essentially relying on TikTok
Speaker 1: to gather intelligence about US citizens and institutions. So the
Speaker 1: reason for banning TikTok is to prevent Chinese surveillance. TikTok,
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, disputes these accusations and says that
Speaker 1: no one from the Chinese Communist Party has access to
Speaker 1: data on its US data servers. The American Civil Liberties
Speaker 1: Union or ACLU, argues that banning TikTok amounts to violations
Speaker 1: of the First Amendment, aka the right to free speech,
Speaker 1: due to the fact that folks depend upon the platform
Speaker 1: to express their views and to view others. So the
Speaker 1: ACLU's argument says, the law is unconstitutional, so it should
Speaker 1: just be voided. It should not be put into place
Speaker 1: because it violates constitutional rights. From a technical perspective, banning
Speaker 1: an online service from a specific state comes with its
Speaker 1: own set of challenges. If TikTok is allowed elsewhere, like,
Speaker 1: if it's available anywhere other than Montana, how do you
Speaker 1: prevent it from crossing state lines? So Montana says it
Speaker 1: will find TikTok if the service continues to operate within
Speaker 1: Montana's state boundaries, and further, it will also find online
Speaker 1: apps like Apple and Google's app stores if they do
Speaker 1: not prevent folks within Montana citizens of Montana from downloading
Speaker 1: the app. But again this gets tricky. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could use a VPN, a virtual private network, which would
Speaker 1: make it look as if you're not in Montana. So
Speaker 1: you're in Montana, you decide you're going to use this VPN,
Speaker 1: and it makes you look like you're in North Dakota
Speaker 1: or something. Well, you just bypass that whatever geo fencing
Speaker 1: strategy was in place to prevent TikTok from getting to you.
Speaker 1: So does that then mean Montana would also have to
Speaker 1: consider a ban on VPNs to try and prevent the workaround.
Speaker 1: I honestly think this law is a lost cause at
Speaker 1: a state level. I just don't think it works. It
Speaker 1: doesn't really work on a technical level. It may not
Speaker 1: work on a legal level. I'm no legal expert, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it works on a social level either.
Speaker 1: As for TikTok's potential for harm, I have some thoughts
Speaker 1: about that. I mean, it is true that TikTok is
Speaker 1: a subsidiary of a Chinese company, Byte Dance, and it's
Speaker 1: also true that China has laws that compel citizens and
Speaker 1: companies to gather intelligence on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 1: These things are true. But even if you were to
Speaker 1: wipe TikTok off the face of the earth, let's say
Speaker 1: we just obliterated it from space, because it's the only
Speaker 1: way to be sure, the Chinese Communist Party could still
Speaker 1: scoop up tons of information about US citizens, because news flash,
Speaker 1: our personal data is floating around in various databases all
Speaker 1: over the place, like our activities online are constantly being
Speaker 1: tracked and not like actively monitored, but certainly notated. There
Speaker 1: are records of all this stuff that we do online,
Speaker 1: particularly on things like social networks, And there's an industry
Speaker 1: that's grown up around the buying and selling of personal information.
Speaker 1: And I'm not even talking about clandestine stuff here, like
Speaker 1: for the purposes of espionage. The online advertising ecosystem depends
Speaker 1: upon this infrastructure of personal data being bought and sold.
Speaker 1: So even if we get rid of TikTok, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of ways anyone, including the Chinese Communist Party, could
Speaker 1: gobble up personal data, because there's so much that's out
Speaker 1: there that's just being bought and sold all the time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: now that being said, I also recognize that TikTok has
Speaker 1: the potential to cause great harm, not by being a
Speaker 1: surveillance tool necessarily, but by serving up harmful content to users,
Speaker 1: particularly impressionable younger users, and a lot of young people
Speaker 1: use TikTok. However, that's also the case with lots of
Speaker 1: other social networks and platforms that serve up user generated content.
Speaker 1: They also can be potentially really harmful to specific people
Speaker 1: particularly impressionable young people. But this really gets more into
Speaker 1: how platforms depend heavily on algorithms to serve up content
Speaker 1: in an effort to try and keep eyeballs on the
Speaker 1: service for as long as possible, right, Like, their whole
Speaker 1: goal is to keep you there and serve you ads,
Speaker 1: and the longer they keep you there, the more ads
Speaker 1: they serve and the more revenue they generate. So to
Speaker 1: do that, they design algorithms that are essentially looking for hooks.
Speaker 1: They're looking for things that interest you, and if you
Speaker 1: indicate that you're interested in something like if you were
Speaker 1: to watch a specific type of TikTok video all the
Speaker 1: way through, the algorithm says, aha, this is what this
Speaker 1: person likes. Let's grab things that are similar to that
Speaker 1: and keep serving it to them so that they stay
Speaker 1: on here longer. If that thing that you watched happens
Speaker 1: to be harmful in some way, like, for instance, let's
Speaker 1: say it's promoting something like a behavior that falls into
Speaker 1: the category of anorexia, and you happen to have a
Speaker 1: vulnerable self image issue, you could end up seeing video
Speaker 1: after a video that's reinforcing that particular message, and that
Speaker 1: can be harmful I think that's where TikTok poses a
Speaker 1: lot of harm. But at the same time, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's true across lots of different platforms. It's not unique
Speaker 1: to TikTok. It is insidious, it is a problem, but
Speaker 1: it's not a TikTok problem. It's bigger than that. So
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm really saying is that Montana's law
Speaker 1: it seems like it's going to be challenging to enforce,
Speaker 1: it might not be constitutionally sound, which means it won't
Speaker 1: be around forever anyway. And in the end, the most
Speaker 1: tragic thing I think is that it's not actually addressing
Speaker 1: the problems that really do exist, whether TikTok does or not.
Speaker 1: On a related note, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC
Speaker 1: here in the United States has accused a fertility tracking
Speaker 1: app called pre Mom of being real Lucy Goosey sensitive
Speaker 1: data and thus violating the FTC's health breach notification rule
Speaker 1: in the process. So obviously, if you are using a
Speaker 1: fertility tracking app, you are also sharing some very personal
Speaker 1: private information with that app. This is data that traditionally
Speaker 1: would be trusted to a healthcare provider, and healthcare providers
Speaker 1: need to follow very strict rules to keep patient information
Speaker 1: secure and private. That's like one of the top concerns
Speaker 1: for handling data in the healthcare sector. But the FTC
Speaker 1: says that pre mom was sharing personal and private data
Speaker 1: with third parties, including advertisers, and that also included data
Speaker 1: that would make it trivial to identify a specific user
Speaker 1: rather than anonymized data that would keep your identity secret.
Speaker 1: And the FTC says that among those entities that it
Speaker 1: shared this information with were two Chinese mobile analytics companies
Speaker 1: that had previously been flagged as showing quote suspect privacy
Speaker 1: practices in the quote according to Connecticut's Attorney general, so
Speaker 1: this is an example of what I was just talking about. That,
Speaker 1: you know, TikTok does not represent the sole weakness in
Speaker 1: protecting US citizens private data, even just from China. The
Speaker 1: company Easy Healthcare has copped to the fact that it
Speaker 1: has inappropriately shared private information with companies, including two Chinese companies.
Speaker 1: It has agreed to pay a one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: civil penalty and has marked another one hundred grand to
Speaker 1: be split between the states of Connecticut and Oregon, as
Speaker 1: well as Washington. D C also PRIMAM will no longer
Speaker 1: be allowed to share personal data with third parties, and
Speaker 1: it also has to ask third parties with whom they
Speaker 1: had previously shared in information to delete that information. However,
Speaker 1: there's no legal requirement for those third parties to do that.
Speaker 1: There's no like enforcement teeth that will make them have
Speaker 1: to go and delete that information. So whether that happens
Speaker 1: or not remains to be seen, but I remain skeptical. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more stories to go over before
Speaker 1: we get to those, let's take a quick break. We're back.
Speaker 1: So the British broadband and mobile provider BT Group has
Speaker 1: announced that over the next several years from now to
Speaker 1: twenty thirty, essentially the company plans to cut around fifty
Speaker 1: five thousand jobs that would represent more than forty percent
Speaker 1: of its current workforce. Now this isn't just some sort
Speaker 1: of disastrous news. BT Group. Over the last several years
Speaker 1: has been working to roll out internet fiber infrastructure as
Speaker 1: well as five G deployment, and throughout that process they've
Speaker 1: had to bring on lots of extra hands to get
Speaker 1: stuff done, including a lot of contractors. So part of
Speaker 1: this is just that once it actually has finished that
Speaker 1: project of creating this infrastructure and deploying five G it's
Speaker 1: not going to have the need for all those people
Speaker 1: who are currently making that happen. For another matter, BT
Speaker 1: Group anticipates that AI and automation are going to end
Speaker 1: up handling a lot of the tasks that are behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, and that will mean there will need to
Speaker 1: be fewer actual human beings doing that stuff. Teams themselves
Speaker 1: on BT Group side will need to be smaller or
Speaker 1: they won't need to be as large, if you want
Speaker 1: to look at it that way. So the company has
Speaker 1: our already met with the Communication Workers Union or CWU
Speaker 1: to kind of talk this over right, because obviously, with
Speaker 1: unions and everything, a company can't just willy nilly make
Speaker 1: decisions to cut tens of thousands of people over the
Speaker 1: next several years. And the CWU says that BT Group
Speaker 1: really needs to focus on contractors first, and you know,
Speaker 1: the people who had been hired specifically for things like
Speaker 1: building out this infrastructure and to sunset those positions first.
Speaker 1: That's where the priority should be before you start to
Speaker 1: even touch company staff. On the one hand, the story
Speaker 1: does feel like it's starting to lean a little bit
Speaker 1: into the fear and uncertainty and doubt about AI taking
Speaker 1: jobs away. There is an element of that here, But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it also stresses how it is
Speaker 1: important for companies to try and be efficient and to
Speaker 1: avoid the trap of creating a workforce that's too large
Speaker 1: to support the actual amount of work to be done.
Speaker 1: You know, we've heard again and again in the States
Speaker 1: that tech companies had come to a conclusion that leaders
Speaker 1: in tech companies, I should say, came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that they were overinflated in their workforce. They had too
Speaker 1: many people and not enough work to go around. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that was true in some cases, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: do anyone any favors for a company to just kind
Speaker 1: of act as a holding facility for adults when they
Speaker 1: don't have anything to do. They're not being productive, they're
Speaker 1: not adding anything to the company, they're not adding anything
Speaker 1: to society. Their time could be better spent doing something else.
Speaker 1: Although it might be comforting to know that you've got
Speaker 1: a steady paycheck even if you don't have steady work.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's both sides to that, and I can
Speaker 1: see both sides in that particular story. Over in Italy,
Speaker 1: the government has actually set aside thirty million euros to
Speaker 1: create programs to help people improve their work skills specifically,
Speaker 1: and an effort to smooth the transition to a future
Speaker 1: where certain types of work are more likely to be
Speaker 1: automated or handed over to AI. So the goal is
Speaker 1: to identify sectors that are most likely to be impacted
Speaker 1: by automation and to prepare people who are currently employed
Speaker 1: in those jobs to learn marketable skills so that they
Speaker 1: can then change career paths to something that's more sustainable.
Speaker 1: I think that's great. I think it recognizes that if
Speaker 1: you have an unskilled workforce that's harmful to everybody. It's
Speaker 1: not just the workers themselves, although clearly it's a hardship
Speaker 1: on them, because if you're suddenly out of work and
Speaker 1: you don't have marketable skills, it becomes very difficult, right,
Speaker 1: But beyond that, it is hard and bad for society
Speaker 1: at large for that to happen. It becomes an impediment
Speaker 1: to the whole, not just to the person. So it
Speaker 1: makes sense to build in these systems to try and
Speaker 1: help people prepare for the future so that you have
Speaker 1: a animal impact on both the individuals and the country
Speaker 1: as a whole. I do think it's going to require
Speaker 1: way more than thirty million euros to adequately prepare people
Speaker 1: for how AI and automation are going to disrupt multiple industries.
Speaker 1: But it's a start, and that's something like that should
Speaker 1: be applauded that there's actually effort being done to work
Speaker 1: on this now for some really fun stuff. So YouTube
Speaker 1: participated in essentially what amounted to some upfronts recently and
Speaker 1: made a few announcements that are sure to irritate certain users. So,
Speaker 1: first off, upfronts are a type of industry event. If
Speaker 1: you've never heard the phrase upfront before, here's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of event where a platform that carries
Speaker 1: some form of content and thus advertises against that content
Speaker 1: gets up front of actual advertising companies, or rather up
Speaker 1: in front of them. So it's pretty typical for these platforms,
Speaker 1: which can include everything from a streaming service to a
Speaker 1: cable television network, to trot out some talent. It becomes
Speaker 1: kind of a dog and pony show. They'll promote upcoming
Speaker 1: content and it's all in an effort to get advertisers
Speaker 1: excited and to attract that sweet, sweet cash. Well, YouTube
Speaker 1: held its own event that was pretty much an upfront,
Speaker 1: and during that event, announced that one change coming to
Speaker 1: its service is that for people who watch YouTube on
Speaker 1: a television, they may soon encounter ads that are thirty
Speaker 1: seconds long, and they might get a single thirty second
Speaker 1: long ad rather than two fifteen second ads, and these
Speaker 1: will be unskippable ads when they start a video, so
Speaker 1: you get a full thirty six second commercial before you
Speaker 1: can start watching whatever it is you're watching on YouTube
Speaker 1: on your television. Further, YouTube is going to tell a
Speaker 1: feature that will show ads to people who pause a video.
Speaker 1: So you've got a video going, you need to pause
Speaker 1: it for a bit, and then an ad begins to
Speaker 1: play while the video itself is on pause. Now, the
Speaker 1: example that YouTube showed is not quite as obnoxious as
Speaker 1: what I first imagined. Like to me, it sounded like
Speaker 1: the frame of the YouTube video would suddenly be taken
Speaker 1: over by a commercial. No, apparently, it's more like in
Speaker 1: a banner that appears to the side of the video,
Speaker 1: and you might have a video ad playing out in
Speaker 1: that banner, but it doesn't replace whatever it was you
Speaker 1: were watching, so it's not quite that bad. Plus, they
Speaker 1: showed a dismiss button beneath the ad itself, which at
Speaker 1: least indicates that you could quickly click on dismiss so
Speaker 1: that that little automated ad stops playing. So not as
Speaker 1: bad as I first imagined based upon the description, I
Speaker 1: guess for you know, it's not the worst thing in
Speaker 1: the world. It's for people who are watching YouTube on
Speaker 1: television who are not part of YouTube Premium. I'm sure
Speaker 1: this will be frustrating to them. For people who are
Speaker 1: on YouTube Premium, you know you're paying a subscription fee,
Speaker 1: you don't get ads for you at all, So y'all
Speaker 1: are good. A professor at Texas A and M University
Speaker 1: reportedly gave several students an X grade, which indicates an incomplete.
Speaker 1: It's not a fail, but it is an incomplete. And
Speaker 1: this included students who were at senior level who otherwise
Speaker 1: would have graduated but then were denied diplomas because they
Speaker 1: had a course where they had an incomplete. So why
Speaker 1: did the professor give incompletes to these students. Well, allegedly
Speaker 1: what happened is the professor assigned several essays and then
Speaker 1: took essays that were submitted by students and fed the
Speaker 1: essays into what he referred to as chat GTP. Of
Speaker 1: course he meant chat GPT, not GTP, but that mistake
Speaker 1: is easy to make. I'm not gonna give him too
Speaker 1: much grief for that. I will say the Rolling Stones article,
Speaker 1: of the Rolling Stone article, it's not the band, the magazine.
Speaker 1: The Rolling Stone article was way more snarky about this
Speaker 1: than I will be. But anyway, he was asking chat
Speaker 1: gpt if it had been responsible for part or all
Speaker 1: of the various essays, and apparently chat GPT said it
Speaker 1: was responsible for at least some part of these essays.
Speaker 1: So boom, students get an incomplete because it appears that
Speaker 1: the work they submitted was not their own. The problem
Speaker 1: with this is that chat GPT doesn't really work that way.
Speaker 1: You can submit material to chat GPT that it definitively
Speaker 1: did not create and then ask it if it created
Speaker 1: the material, and it might say it did, or it
Speaker 1: might say it could have, which isn't quite the same thing,
Speaker 1: but still, you know, raises doubt. People have actually shown
Speaker 1: this off by using passages from classic novels, and chat
Speaker 1: GPT just confidently says maybe it actually wrote that, so
Speaker 1: you could say, wow, according to chat GPT, it created
Speaker 1: great expectations or bride and prejudice, which would be quite
Speaker 1: a trick for chat g t two have done that.
Speaker 1: So the students are understandably upset that they got an
Speaker 1: incomplete and were accused of plagiarism, essentially of foisting their
Speaker 1: work onto an AI chatbot, and they did no such thing,
Speaker 1: and the professor did not realize that chat GPT can't
Speaker 1: be relied upon to indicate whether or not it generated
Speaker 1: a particular work. Heck, some folks went so far as
Speaker 1: to dig up the professor's own doctoral thesis when he
Speaker 1: was a graduate student and submitted passages to chat GPT
Speaker 1: and asked if it wrote the professor's and chat GPT
Speaker 1: essentially said, huh, yeah, I might have written this. Now.
Speaker 1: As I said, Rolling Stone has a pretty snarky article
Speaker 1: that throws massive shade of the professor for this, and
Speaker 1: I get it. Holding up a person's diploma through the
Speaker 1: misapplication of technology is a big deal. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, and at least a little bit in the
Speaker 1: professor's defense, the discussion around chat GPT and education has
Speaker 1: been so dramatic and so disruptive over the past several
Speaker 1: months that I think it's it's natural for educators to
Speaker 1: be concerned that students are passing off AI generated work
Speaker 1: as their own work. That is an understandable concern. The
Speaker 1: problem is you can't trust the robots to claim authorship
Speaker 1: because those rotten watsits will say they wrote stuff what
Speaker 1: was published one hundred years ago, and clearly that's not
Speaker 1: the case. So yeah, kind of an absurdly comical situation
Speaker 1: here if it weren't for the fact that it also
Speaker 1: means a bunch of students were denied the chance to
Speaker 1: graduate with a diploma, at least temporarily because of this
Speaker 1: incomplete There there are people working towards trying to get
Speaker 1: all this resolved, but as I recorded this, I didn't
Speaker 1: have an update to give about where we are in
Speaker 1: that process. All right, Hey, so you know how AI
Speaker 1: large language models are trained by analyzing tons of data
Speaker 1: through various sources like chat. GPT is built on top
Speaker 1: of a model that crawled through millions and millions of
Speaker 1: web based documents. Well, what if you did that same thing,
Speaker 1: but instead of using the web, you turned to the
Speaker 1: content on the dark Web as your training material. Of course,
Speaker 1: the dark Web is inaccessible through normal links on the
Speaker 1: World Wide Web. You typically get to the dark web
Speaker 1: by using special types of browsers that allow you to
Speaker 1: access these sorts of things, and you can encounter all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, like you know, hacker communities that post
Speaker 1: malware so that you can take it and tweak it
Speaker 1: and deploy it. You know, obviously stolen information is bought
Speaker 1: and sold on the dark web. Well, I would say,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Don't train AI on dark web material,
Speaker 1: not because I think it's going to create dangerous AI,
Speaker 1: but because someone already beats you to it. Some researchers
Speaker 1: in South Korea introduced an AI system that they call
Speaker 1: dark BURT, and they trained it on information exclusively from
Speaker 1: the dark web. So BERT in this case actually stands
Speaker 1: for bi directional Encoder Representations from transformers, and it was
Speaker 1: originally created by Google back in twenty eighteen. BURT, that is,
Speaker 1: was created by Google, and then Meta researchers took BERT
Speaker 1: and they continued to evolve it. They began to tweak it,
Speaker 1: change it a little bit, and they turned it into
Speaker 1: a new AI system called ROBERTA cute right by the way,
Speaker 1: This was back when Meta was still just Facebook, but
Speaker 1: of course today it's Meta. Roberta then provided the foundation
Speaker 1: for these South Korean researchers. They took that framework, but
Speaker 1: they trained it on information on the dark web, and
Speaker 1: thus we get dark Bert. Apparently, they say it worked
Speaker 1: really well, like surprisingly well, and that tools built on
Speaker 1: top of this aimodel perform at least as well, if
Speaker 1: not better than other AI tools. So for example, if
Speaker 1: you were to create an AI chatbot based on this model,
Speaker 1: it might end up being as impressive as chat GPT.
Speaker 1: That being said, they are not going to unleash dark
Speaker 1: Burt on the general public. They're going to keep it
Speaker 1: under wraps. They are going to allow academic researchers access
Speaker 1: to it, so there can be academic applications to try
Speaker 1: the tool out, test it out, and to develop different techniques.
Speaker 1: It may be used also in ways to get a
Speaker 1: better understanding of how the dark web works from kind
Speaker 1: of a architectural approach as that, which that could be
Speaker 1: really useful and everything from cybersecurity to government investigations. So
Speaker 1: it is important. But I just wanted y'all to know
Speaker 1: that it's not like an even more evil version of
Speaker 1: chad GPT is going to be running on the loose
Speaker 1: out there. Okay, We're going to take another quick break
Speaker 1: when we come back. I've got a few final stories
Speaker 1: to cover for this week, all right. So, the Pew
Speaker 1: Research Center, which has done lots and lots of surveys
Speaker 1: about various things connected to technology in general and the
Speaker 1: Internet in particular, recently held a survey that found six
Speaker 1: out of ten respondents, so sixty percent of their respondents,
Speaker 1: indicated that they've taken a bit of a break from
Speaker 1: Twitter since Elon Musk took over. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many people were actually involved in this survey, I just
Speaker 1: know that around sixty percent of them said that this
Speaker 1: was the case. So forty percent said they had not
Speaker 1: taken a break, sixty percent said they had, and those
Speaker 1: breaks ranged from like a couple of weeks to essentially
Speaker 1: leaving the platform since Musk took over. People of color
Speaker 1: were more likely to say that they had taken a
Speaker 1: break than white users were, But interestingly, other major factors
Speaker 1: didn't seem to show as much of a difference. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there was very little difference found between people
Speaker 1: who leaned conservative versus people who leaned liberal. That both
Speaker 1: conservatives and liberals indicated that about sixty percent of them
Speaker 1: had taken a break from Twitter recently, and things got
Speaker 1: a little more complicated when you started to break it
Speaker 1: down by gender, also within political leaning. But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to dive into all of that because it would
Speaker 1: take up too much time, and honestly, I don't know
Speaker 1: what conclusions you could draw from it either, other than
Speaker 1: one really big takeaway, which is if that survey is
Speaker 1: reflective of a larger trend, which is a big if
Speaker 1: you never know, Like if the survey size was really small,
Speaker 1: then you can't really make any big predictions based on
Speaker 1: off that. But if it's a representative survey and if
Speaker 1: the findings are true, it could mean that Twitter's new
Speaker 1: CEO is going to have a lot of challenging work
Speaker 1: ahead of her to pull Twitter out of the doldrums,
Speaker 1: because it's not enough to tell advertisers we value you
Speaker 1: and we want you back on the platform, because you know,
Speaker 1: famously Twitter has lost a lot of ad revenue since
Speaker 1: Musk took over. They also have to show that their
Speaker 1: platform is a place where users want to be. And
Speaker 1: if advertisers are seeing reports that sixty percent of Twitter
Speaker 1: users are kind of jumping ship, that's not a great
Speaker 1: selling point for them to come back to the platform
Speaker 1: because they're just not you know, the people aren't there anymore,
Speaker 1: so why would you spend money to advertise there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that this is bad news for Twitter overall
Speaker 1: if in fact the survey is delivering dependable information, and
Speaker 1: again that's a big if. It would need I think
Speaker 1: for their investigation to make sure that that's actually what's happening. Hey,
Speaker 1: do you remember Elizabeth Holmes. She's the disgraced founder of
Speaker 1: the medical tech company Farrhanose. So if you don't remember her,
Speaker 1: here's a very quick overview of who she is and
Speaker 1: what she did. So Holmes dropped out of Stanford and
Speaker 1: went on to found a company whose aim was to
Speaker 1: create a medical device capable of testing a micro drop
Speaker 1: of blood for more than one hundred different medical conditions
Speaker 1: and diseases. So with a teeny tiny pinprick, you would,
Speaker 1: in theory, be able to submit that sample to this device,
Speaker 1: which theoretically would be small enough to be like a
Speaker 1: desktop printer, and run banks of tests on it to
Speaker 1: determine if you are at risk for any particular medical conditions.
Speaker 1: And Theranos received a lot of positive press in the
Speaker 1: early days, Like they were talking about it as the
Speaker 1: democratization of medicine and making medicine and proactive health care
Speaker 1: far more accessible and democratized. And there were heavy hitter
Speaker 1: investors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the
Speaker 1: fledgling startup. But then a few years later an expose
Speaker 1: revealed that things were pretty shady behind the scenes at Theranose.
Speaker 1: The expose claimed that advancements in Theranose technology did not
Speaker 1: stand up to scrutiny, that the company was making claims
Speaker 1: it could not back up, that it was outright misleading
Speaker 1: investors regarding technological process and relying on various competitor technologies
Speaker 1: to make it look like thereonos tech was working. So
Speaker 1: charges of fraud and other things were brought against Homes
Speaker 1: and some other folks at Thernose, and Holmes was ultimately
Speaker 1: found guilty of at least some of those charges, and
Speaker 1: she was headed to prison when she decided to petition
Speaker 1: the court to ask to allow her to remain free
Speaker 1: while she challenges the conviction. She's attempting to have her
Speaker 1: conviction overturned, and she said in the process she would
Speaker 1: very much like to not be in prison, please, And
Speaker 1: the judge said nah, naw, you're going to the pokey.
Speaker 1: So now Holmes appears likely to be headed to prison
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: the judge has also levied a four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: two million dollar judgment in restitutions that Holmes is supposed
Speaker 1: to pay the various victims of her crimes. And when
Speaker 1: I say victims, keep in mind, I'm mostly talking about
Speaker 1: really rich people who put money into her company. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about necessarily the folks who are depending upon
Speaker 1: Therahnose to deliver reliable medical information so that they could
Speaker 1: make the right decisions regarding their health care. No, so
Speaker 1: those aren't the victims that the court's particularly concerned about.
Speaker 1: They're concerned more about, you know, Rupert Murdoch, who's obviously
Speaker 1: really hurting for cash. Anyway, the moral of this story
Speaker 1: should be that the Silicon Valley mantra move fast and
Speaker 1: break things, doesn't you know, apply to breaking the law,
Speaker 1: at least not when it means that rich people lose money, because,
Speaker 1: like I've said many times before, they hate that. Finally,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Mark German reports that Apple had to make lots
Speaker 1: and lots of concessions while designing the upcoming mixed reality
Speaker 1: headset that we expect to see unveiled at some point
Speaker 1: this year, possibly at the Worldwide Developer Conference or WWDC
Speaker 1: in June. Now, the fact that Apple made concessions is
Speaker 1: not a surprise. We have heard about this before. I
Speaker 1: think everyone has heard that. The initial hope was Apple
Speaker 1: was going to produce an augmented reality headset that would
Speaker 1: appear indistinguishable from a stylish pair of eyeglasses. However, the
Speaker 1: technical requirements that were needed to achieve the desired performance
Speaker 1: meant it just wasn't plausible for a company to get
Speaker 1: both that and the form factor in one package. You
Speaker 1: could either have a stylish pair of eyeglasses that had
Speaker 1: very limited utility, or you could have a more useful device,
Speaker 1: but it is definitely not going to fit into a
Speaker 1: small form factor. So the heads that we're getting, which
Speaker 1: is reportedly called Apple Reality, will feature a screen that
Speaker 1: will feed live video from external cameras to the viewer.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like if you're holding your smartphone
Speaker 1: up to your eyes and you've activated your smartphones backward
Speaker 1: facing camera and you're just looking at a live feed
Speaker 1: around you. That's essentially what this is doing. When it's
Speaker 1: working in augmented reality mode, it'll also be able to
Speaker 1: do virtual reality applications. It will connect to a separate
Speaker 1: battery path, so there'll be some sort of a cable,
Speaker 1: I guess attaching the headset to a battery pack that
Speaker 1: you would wear somewhere else, maybe like on a belt
Speaker 1: or in a pocket or something. And reportedly that so
Speaker 1: that it can take some of the weight off the
Speaker 1: headset itself, so that it's a little more comfortable to wear.
Speaker 1: You're not wearing both a screen and a battery pack.
Speaker 1: And also it'll give you a little more juice so
Speaker 1: that you could actually use the darn thing for more
Speaker 1: than like half an hour. Right, So, Apples had to
Speaker 1: make lots of compromises in its quest to build this gadget,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling that the company is really
Speaker 1: hoping that it becomes similar to the iPhone, right because
Speaker 1: the iPhone was not the first smartphone on the market.
Speaker 1: It was the first smartphone to get massive consumer interest
Speaker 1: and demand. That's what really set the iPhone apart. Now
Speaker 1: that Apple was first, but that Apple was able to
Speaker 1: refine the approach to that gadget and get the general
Speaker 1: public really excited about it. I think they're hoping for
Speaker 1: the same thing with this mixed reality headset, because, as
Speaker 1: we've seen, lots of other companies have introduced mixed reality gadgets,
Speaker 1: but Apple is hoping to kind of define that market
Speaker 1: and not, you know, be the innovator, but the best
Speaker 1: in class. We've also heard that the price of this
Speaker 1: particular technology is likely to be somewhere in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of three thousand dollars, which yikes, that's super expensive. I
Speaker 1: think even hardcore Apple fans might hesitate before dropping three
Speaker 1: g's on strapping a screen to their face, But then
Speaker 1: I've been wrong about them before, so who knows. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it for the tech news for today, Thursday May eighteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I hope you are all well, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.