All posts tagged: regulation

Paris AI summit shows rift between regulation and innovation | Science, Climate & Tech News

Paris AI summit shows rift between regulation and innovation | Science, Climate & Tech News

Published by skeptic

The AI Action Summit is arguably a coming together of the most powerful people in the world. Sure, political representatives from all our major economies are convening here in Paris. But in the age of artificial intelligence, it’s the big tech companies who own the powerful AI models, as well as the hardware and expertise to design and build them, that also wield true power. In late 2023, the UK government convened the first international AI summit at Bletchley Park near London. Its focus was supposedly on AI safety and how governments could ensure their citizens’ jobs, or even lives, weren’t threatened by the rapid rise of superintelligent AI that tech bosses assured them was just around the corner. Image: Participants attend the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris. Pic: Reuters But the undercurrent was very much political leaders trying to figure out how to capitalise on the advantages AI will undoubtedly bring. Things are different now. Donald Trump has vowed to make the US the world’s AI superpower. Almost …

The FTC Suing John Deere Is a Tipping Point for Right-to-Repair

The FTC Suing John Deere Is a Tipping Point for Right-to-Repair

Published by skeptic

Today, the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against farming equipment manufacturer Deere & Company—makers of the iconic green John Deere tractors, harvesters, and mowers—citing its longtime reluctance to keep its customers from fixing their own machines. “Farmers rely on their agricultural equipment to earn a living and feed their families,” FTC chair Lina Khan wrote in a statement alongside the full complaint. “Unfair repair restrictions can mean farmers face unnecessary delays during tight planting and harvest windows.” The FTC’s main complaint here centers around a software problem. Deere places limitations on its operational software, meaning certain features and calibrations on its tractors can only be unlocked by mechanics who have the right digital key. Deere only licenses those keys to its authorized dealers, meaning farmers often can’t take their tractors to more convenient third-party mechanics or just fix a problem themselves. The suit would require John Deere to stop the practice of limiting what repair features its customers can use and make them available to those outside official dealerships. Kyle Wiens is the …

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

Published by skeptic

Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is replaced by “government regulation.” Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they’ve been vocal in their dislike of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars in support of the Biden and Harris campaigns and has organized other wealthy tech investors to do so as well. When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the company was valued at more than $47 billion. Hoffman sent at least a handful of other investors a board game styled after Monopoly called “Airbnopoly,” according to images of the game obtained by WIRED. A top Airbnb investor confirmed that he …

Religious Censorship via Regulation – OpentheWord.org

Religious Censorship via Regulation – OpentheWord.org

Published by skeptic

Chapin, South Carolina town hallCredit: Brian Stansberry, Wikipedia, CC BY 4.0, The First Liberty Institute (FLI) is representing Ernest Giardino against the Town of Chapin, South Carolina after officials said Giardino needed a permit to hold a sign as he shared his faith in the community, CBN reports. Located on the Northern tip of the state, the town has a population of about 1,800. For several months, Giardino had been walking around the community with small signs sharing his faith. His most recent sign was 20″ x 24″ in size and had “He Save Others–Jesus–He’ll save you” on one side and “Trust Christ He paid the price” on the other side. However, on June 20, he was approached by a police officer in the community and told he needed a permit to carry a sign. The permit also limited Giardino’s ability to express his faith. It restricted him to only carrying a sign for 30 minutes and limited the amount of time he could spend at one location to 15 minutes. According to the FLI, …

Big Tech’s New Adversaries in Europe

Big Tech’s New Adversaries in Europe

Published by skeptic

If the past five years of EU tech rules could take human form, they would embody Thierry Breton. The bombastic commissioner, with his swoop of white hair, became the public face of Brussels’ irritation with American tech giants, touring Silicon Valley last summer to personally remind the industry of looming regulatory deadlines. Combative and outspoken, Breton warned that Apple had spent too long “squeezing” other companies out of the market. In a case against TikTok, he emphasized, “our children are not guinea pigs for social media.” His confrontational attitude to the CEOs themselves was visible in his posts on X. In the lead-up to Musk’s interview with Donald Trump, Breton posted a vague but threatening letter on his account reminding Musk there would be consequences if he used his platform to amplify “harmful content.” Last year, he published a photo with Mark Zuckerberg, declaring a new EU motto of “move fast to fix things”—a jibe at the notorious early Facebook slogan. And in a 2023 meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Breton reportedly got him …

The plan to save European farming – POLITICO

The plan to save European farming – POLITICO

Published by Sam

On the other hand, this income-based program should not depend on whether farmers comply with additional environmental rules — meaning those that go beyond existing EU law, such as nitrate pollution or habitat protection rules. Instead, a separate set of payments should be distributed among farmers that use sustainable practices, and would be handled by both agricultural and environmental authorities. The participants also asked for an “annual substantial increase” in environmental support. Business as usual is no longer an option for European farmers. | Chrisophe Archambault/Getty Images 2. Sustainable food systems The next two elephants in the room were sustainable diets and meat consumption. The experts agreed that it was crucial to support ongoing reductions in the consumption of animal-based proteins — e.g. meat and dairy — in favor of plant-based alternatives.  They also called for a review of EU food labeling legislation and urged that food marketing to children be addressed, while advocating tax reductions and other social and fiscal incentives. “The sustainable choice needs to become the choice by default,” the report said. …

What Kamala Harris has said about AI, tech regulation, and more

What Kamala Harris has said about AI, tech regulation, and more

Published by skeptic

With President Joe Biden dropping out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris may become the Democrats’ new nominee. In announcing his plans, Biden offered his “full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” while Harris said her “intention is to win and earn this nomination.” That said, it’s not clear whether other Democratic politicians will challenge her for the nomination at an open convention, or through some other selection process. If Harris is selected, the Democrats will have a presidential nominee with roots in the Bay Area — she was born in Oakland — and a long relationship with the tech industry. (Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance is also deeply connected to Silicon Valley.) She was San Francisco’s district attorney, then California’s attorney general, before being elected to the Senate in 2016. VCs like John Doerr and Ron Conway were among her early supporters, and as a presidential candidate, she was quickly endorsed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Other industry figures, including Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, …

Trying to tame AI: Seoul summit flags hurdles to regulation | Artificial intelligence (AI)

Trying to tame AI: Seoul summit flags hurdles to regulation | Artificial intelligence (AI)

Published by skeptic

The Bletchley Park artificial intelligence summit in 2023 was a landmark event in AI regulation simply by virtue of its existence. Between the event’s announcement and its first day, the mainstream conversation had changed from a tone of light bafflement to a general agreement that AI regulation may be worth discussing. However, the task for its follow-up, held at a research park on the outskirts of Seoul this week, is harder: can the UK and South Korea show that governments are moving from talking about AI regulation to actually delivering it? At the end of the Seoul summit, the big achievement the UK was touting was the creation of a global network of AI safety institutes, building on the British trailblazers founded after the last meeting. The technology secretary, Michelle Donelan, attributed the new institutes to the “Bletchley effect” in action, and announced plans to lead a system whereby regulators in the US, Canada, Britain, France, Japan, Korea, Australia, Singapore and the EU share information about AI models, harms and safety incidents. Michelle Donelan, the …

The Guardian view on Britain’s dirty waterways: a failure of industry and regulation | Editorial

The Guardian view on Britain’s dirty waterways: a failure of industry and regulation | Editorial

Published by skeptic

A steady stream of stories about the shockingly poor state of Britain’s waterways has turned into a flood. In March, news that competitors in the Boat Race had been warned to stay out of the Thames due to sewage pollution travelled round the world. That the water industry is dysfunctional, and for years has enriched shareholders and executives at the expense of customers, is broadly recognised by the public. Anglers, surfers and swimmers have joined with environmentalists and the former pop star Feargal Sharkey to demand improvements. Polling last year suggested more than half of voters would take the government’s handling of sewage into account when deciding how to vote. The latest warnings about the situation from Dame Glenys Stacey, the environment watchdog, are thus not surprising. But her data and analysis still have the power to shock. Under the worst-case assessment from the Office for Environmental Protection, just 21% of England’s rivers and other bodies of water will be in a good ecological state by the target date of 2027 – in contravention of …

Inside Uber’s Political Machine | Katie J. Wells

Inside Uber’s Political Machine | Katie J. Wells

Published by skeptic

In 2016, near the end of his second term as president, Barack Obama was asked what he planned to do on returning to civilian life. He gave a one-word reply: “Uber.” The joke suggested two changes that had occurred during his presidency. First, Uber had become a verb; the idea of “ubering” was commonplace. Second, the ride-hailing app had changed how Americans thought about the economy: headlines announced the uberization of everything from higher education to healthcare. That September The Economist announced the dawn of “Uberworld.”  The company’s true financial success remains an open question. Founded in 2009, it raised $1.3 million in investor funding within a year; by 2015 its valuation rose to $51 billion, propelled by venture capital from sources like Japan’s SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Behind the scenes, however, its balance sheets showed staggering losses—$3.8 billion in 2016 alone. In 2019 its Chief Executive Officer, Dara Khosrowshahi, argued that, like Amazon, it was burning through investor cash to establish market dominance; profits would follow in time. This February it announced …