All posts tagged "Tech"

Meta’s announcement earlier this month that anti-trans activist Robby Starbuck “will work collaboratively” with the company to address bias in its AI products marks another step in the social media giant’s rapid shift to the right.

Starbuck is a former music video editor who repositioned himself as a conservative influencer, best known for leveraging social media to pressure companies such as Tractor Supply Co. to abandon commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Starbuck has also spread anti-LGBTQ messaging, equating trans people with pedophiles through repeated use of the term “groomer.”...

San Francisco (AFP) - Artificial intelligence built on mountains of potentially biased information has created a real risk of automating discrimination, but is there any way to re-educate the machines? The question for some is extremely urgent. In this ChatGPT era, AI will generate more and more decisions for health care providers, bank lenders or lawyers, using whatever was scoured from the internet as source material.  AI's underlying intelligence, therefore, is only as good as the world it came from, as likely to be filled with wit, wisdom, and usefulness, as well as hatred, prejudice and r......

Washington (AFP) - After more than a decade of leaving Big Tech largely to itself, US antitrust enforcers have cranked up the heat, with several high-profile cases underway that could radically change the way the industry's giants do business. Launched under both the Trump and Biden administrations, five major cases from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are moving forward against major US technology companies -- including two against Google that could see the company split up. The most recent came in March against Apple by the FTC, which alleges the iPhone......

New York (AFP) - Shares of social media company Reddit soared nearly 50 percent on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday in a buoyant market debut that raised hopes about the IPO market. The company, which trades under the ticker RDDT, finished at $50.44, up 48.4 percent from its initial public offering price, lifting the valuation to around $8 billion. The hot trading debut came after the company's IPO priced at the upper end of the range, raising a bit more than $500 million. Market watchers were not sure what to expect from Thursday's start given Reddit's record of annual losses and skeptici......

San Francisco (AFP) - Former top executives of Twitter sued Elon Musk on Monday saying he has failed to pay them nearly $130 million after the billionaire took over the social media company and dismissed them. "Musk doesn't pay his bills, believes the rules don't apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with him," they said in the lawsuit filed in a California federal court. The plaintiffs include former CEO Parag Agrawal, who according to the lawsuit is claiming $57.4 million in benefits, as well as fired CFO Ned Segal who is asking for $44.5 mill......

Last week, senators put the CEOs of five social media giants each in the hot seat over accusations of their platforms’ negligence toward the sexual exploitation and online safety of children.

The hottest seat of all at a multi-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing belonged to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who a senator asked to stand up and publicly apologize to victims and parents in attendance holding photos of their children they say were sexually abused, bullied or committed self harm — many dying by suicide — related to exploitation on social media platforms.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the committee’s ranking Republican. “You have a product that’s killing people.”...