Tech giants push to dilute Europe’s AI Act | California governor signs bill to limit ‘addictive’ social media feeds for kids

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• The world’s biggest technology companies have embarked on a final push to persuade the European Union to take a light-touch approach to regulating artificial intelligence as they seek to fend off the risk of billions of dollars in fines. EU lawmakers in May agreed the AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology, following months of intense negotiations between different political groups. Reuters

• California took a major step in its fight to protect children from the ills of social media with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature on a bill to limit the ability of companies to provide “addictive feeds” to minors. Newsom on Friday signed Senate Bill 976, named the Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act and introduced by state Sen. Nancy Skinner. The Los Angeles Times

• Two chip-making giants have discussed building huge factory complexes in the United Arab Emirates that could transform the industry in the coming years and become a cornerstone for artificial-intelligence investments in the Middle East. Discussions are still in the early phases and face technical and other hurdles that mean they might not pan out. The Wall Street Journal

The British travel bloggers ‘sugarcoating’ China’s Uyghur problem to the delight of Beijing
The Telegraph
Nicola Smith
Daria Impiombato, a cyber analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has co-written several reports on China’s multilayered ways of folding local and foreign influencers into its propaganda strategy. She said vloggers with large platforms had a responsibility to inform themselves and to be sceptical. “There needs to be a reckoning with that type of platform,” she said. “It’s like influencers who are going to Syria, just doing travel vlogs from Syria without talking about years and years of war and devastation. You can’t do that, and you can’t do that in Xinjiang either.”

Balancing justice and maturity: the contradiction in Australia’s youth crime and social media policies
The Strategist
Anna Alexander
When discussing social media, we appreciate the vulnerability of young people. Yet our northern jurisdictional debates on criminality and youth detention are very different: in Western Australia the age of criminal responsibility is only 10 years old, and currently the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party is proposing lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10. Similarly in Queensland, the Liberal National Party opposition is advocating for ‘adult crime, adult time’, pushing for tougher penalties for youth offenders.

How CrowdStrike’s outage became Australia’s big cyberattack rehearsal
The Australian Financial Review
Tess Bennett and Paul Smith
A rogue software update from cybersecurity technology vendor CrowdStrike disabled 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices worldwide, taking down critical systems at airports, banks, hospitals and supermarkets. But in those first frantic minutes, nobody knew what was happening. Was their company under cyberattack? Was the world at cyberwar? Did everyone know what they needed to do next?

NSW tenants would not be charged fees for paying rent under proposed laws
The Sydney Morning Herald
Megan Gorrey
Tenants squeezed by rising rents and cost-of-living pressures have expressed growing frustration with real estate agents’ use of third-party apps that charge fees to make rental payments. Premier Chris Minns said the government would introduce a bill to parliament in October that, if passed, would require property owners and real estate agents to offer fee-free methods for tenants to pay their rent, such as bank transfer and the federal government’s Centrepay bill paying service.

China is a ‘fire-breathing dragon on government steroids’ whose tech will surpass Western firms in a decade, U.S. think tank says
Fortune
Lionel Lim
It’s time to reject the view that “China can’t innovate,” says a leading U.S. think tank, as Beijing tries to foster its own advanced technologies to get a strategic edge against Washington. A new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a non-partisan Washington-based think-tank focused on tech, argues that China is already ahead of the U.S. in some industries, and rapidly catching up in sectors where it doesn’t have a lead.

Newsom signs California bill to limit ‘addictive’ social media feeds for kids
The Los Angeles Times
Taryn Luna
California took a major step in its fight to protect children from the ills of social media with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature on a bill to limit the ability of companies to provide “addictive feeds” to minors. Newsom on Friday signed Senate Bill 976, named the Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act and introduced by state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley). The bill was supported by state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and groups such as the Assn. of California School Administrators, Common Sense Media and the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Half of U.S. states seek to crack down on AI in elections
Axios
Ivana Saric
As the 2024 election cycle ramps up, at least 26 states have passed or are considering bills regulating the use of generative AI in election-related communications, a new analysis by Axios shows. The review lays bare a messy patchwork of rules around the use of generative AI in politics, as experts increasingly sound the alarm on the evolving technology’s power to sway or disenfranchise voters.

Biden administration to prepare ban on Chinese car software
Bloomberg
David Welch and Mackenzie Hawkins
The US Commerce Department is planning to reveal proposed rules that would ban Chinese- and Russian-made hardware and software for connected vehicles as soon as Monday, said people familiar with the matter. Commerce has been meeting with industry experts in recent months looking to address security concerns raised by a new generation of so-called smart cars. The move would include bans on use and testing of Chinese and Russian technology for automated driving systems and vehicle communications systems, the people said.

The mystery of Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s great disrupter
Financial Times
Lionel Barber
At face value, it was an astonishing admission. Son, then 66, ranked among the world’s most renowned investors. He invested in ecommerce giants Yahoo and Alibaba before they became household names. At the height of the dotcom bubble in early 2000, he was briefly the richest man in the world. When it burst, he lost 97 per cent of his fortune, around $70bn. But he bounced back, launching a successful broadband and mobile phone business in Japan, propelled by an exclusive deal to distribute Apple’s iPhone.

Fukushima data centers aim to spark economic revival in disaster-hit region
Nikkei Asia
Atsunobu Takeshita
A series of data centers opening in Fukushima prefecture provides an opportunity to revitalize the disaster-struck region of northeastern Japan by attracting startups involved in artificial intelligence and other digital technology. Rutilea, an AI startup based in Kyoto, held a ceremony Wednesday for the completion of the first of two planned data centers in Okuma, a town on the Pacific coast that was hit hard by the 2011 tsunami.

Tech giants push to dilute Europe’s AI Act
Reuters
Martin Coulter
The world’s biggest technology companies have embarked on a final push to persuade the European Union to take a light-touch approach to regulating artificial intelligence as they seek to fend off the risk of billions of dollars in fines. EU lawmakers in May agreed the AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology, following months of intense negotiations between different political groups.

Germany seizes 47 crypto exchanges used by ransomware gangs
Bleeping Computer
Bill Toulas
German law enforcement seized 47 cryptocurrency exchange services hosted in the country that facilitated illegal money laundering activities for cybercriminals, including ransomware gangs. The platforms allowed users to exchange cryptocurrencies without following applicable “Know Your Customer” regulations, meaning that users remained completely anonymous when making transactions. This created a low-risk environment for cybercriminals to launder their proceeds without fearing prosecution or being tracked.

Google says UK risks being ‘left behind’ in AI race without more data centres
The Guardian
Dan Milmo
Google has said that Britain risks being left behind in the global artificial intelligence race unless the government moves quickly to build more datacentres and let tech companies use copyrighted work in their AI models. The company pointed to research showing that the UK is ranked seventh on a global AI readiness index for data and infrastructure, and called for a number of policy changes.

Chip giants TSMC and Samsung discuss building Middle Eastern megafactories
The Wall Street Journal
Asa Fitch, Alexander Ward and Jiyoung Sohn
Two chip-making giants have discussed building huge factory complexes in the United Arab Emirates that could transform the industry in the coming years and become a cornerstone for artificial-intelligence investments in the Middle East. Discussions are still in the early phases and face technical and other hurdles that mean they might not pan out. Under initial terms being discussed, the projects would be funded by the U.A.E., with a central role for Abu Dhabi-based sovereign development vehicle Mubadala, which is eager to develop a domestic tech industry.

Israel’s pager attacks have changed the world
The New York Times
Bruce Schneier
Israel’s brazen attacks on Hezbollah last week, in which hundreds of pagers and two-way radios exploded and killed at least 37 people, graphically illustrated a threat that cybersecurity experts have been warning about for years: Our international supply chains for computerized equipment leave us vulnerable. And we have no good means to defend ourselves.

Hezbollah device attacks show loss of control after export
Nikkei Asia
Akinobu Iwasawa
The reported link between a Japanese manufacturer and the walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters that exploded this week in Lebanon underscores the difficulty companies face in keeping their products from being used for military or terrorist activities. The devices were labeled with the logo of Icom, which said Thursday that “it is not possible to confirm whether the product shipped from our company.”

Meta has a major opportunity to win the AI hardware race
The Verge
Victoria Song
Google Glass infamously promised a future where reality was overlaid with helpful information. In the years since, Magic Leap, Focals By North, Microsoft’s HoloLens, Apple’s Vision Pro, and most recently, the new Snapchat Spectacles have tried to keep the vision alive but to no real commercial success. So, all things considered, it’s a bit ironic that the best shot at a workable AI wearable is a pair of smart glasses — specifically, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces $120M fund for global AI education
TechCrunch
Anthony Ha
Speaking Saturday at the UN Summit of the Future, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described AI as “the most transformative technology yet” and announced a new fund for AI education and training around the world. Pichai pointed to four broad opportunities he sees for AI and sustainable development: helping people access information in their own language, accelerating scientific discovery, providing alerts and tracking around climate disasters, and fueling economic progress. Pichai acknowledged that AI also presents risks, for example with deep fakes, though he didn’t mention AI’s impact on the climate.

Zoom to cut back on stock-based compensation, joining Salesforce, Workday
Bloomberg
Brody Ford
Zoom Video Communications is reducing the practice of paying workers with company stock, joining peers such as Salesforce Inc. and Workday Inc. in limiting their reliance on a common compensation technique in the tech industry. Equity in Zoom has been issued to workers at a rate that is “not sustainable,” Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan wrote this week in a note to employees. “We grant a significant amount of shares each year that has led to very high dilution. Put simply, we are granting too much equity and must proactively reduce it.”

LinkedIn has (quietly) announced it scrapes your posts for AI
The Australian Financial Review
Rachael Bolton
LinkedIn has quietly updated its user agreement and privacy policies revealing that the popular employment-focused social media platform has started collecting user data to train artificial intelligence models. By default, all users outside the European Union and Switzerland, including all Australian users, have AI data sharing turned on. Any user who does not want their data shared needs to change their settings to switch off the option.

Xavier Niel, a Driving Force of French AI, Is Now Shaping TikTok
WIRED
Morgan Meaker
Niel, a former hacker who never went to college, has always been preoccupied with disruption. Over the past year, he—and his money—have become an engine powering the rising French AI industry. Niel is not building models himself. Instead he considers his role to be more paternalistic. “I’m the old guy who likes entrepreneurs,” he explains to me, across the boardroom in Paris. Earlier this year, Niel took a surprise step onto the international stage when ByteDance announced the French billionaire would become a board member. The TikTok owner enlisted Niel as it faces growing legal problems, especially in the US.

Perplexity in talks with top brands on ads model as it challenges Google
Financial Times
Cristina Criddle
Artificial intelligence-powered search engine Perplexity is in talks with brands including Nike and Marriott over its new advertising model, as the start-up mounts an ambitious effort to break Google’s stranglehold over the $300bn digital ads industry. The San Francisco-based group is seeking to redesign the auction-based ads system pioneered by Google, where marketers bid to have a sponsored link placed against search queries.

OpenAI’s newest creation is raising shock, alarm, and horror among staffers: a new logo
Fortune
Kali Hays
In a recent company-wide meeting, staffers of OpenAI got a sneak peak at recent efforts to redesign the typefaces and logo for the company behind ChatGPT and the ongoing tech industry craze for all things generative AI, two people familiar with the company told Fortune. The new logo presented was a simple, large black “O,” easily interpreted as a ring or a zero, as one of the sources described it. Many members of staff were taken aback by the design, which struck some as ominous and lacking in creativity. A few openly voiced their dislike for it during the meeting.

Ever wonder how crooks get the credentials to unlock stolen phones?
ArsTechnica
Dan Goodin
A coalition of law-enforcement agencies said it shut down a service that facilitated the unlocking of more than 1.2 million stolen or lost mobile phones so they could be used by someone other than their rightful owner. The service was part of iServer, a phishing-as-a-service platform that has been operating since 2018. The Argentina-based iServer sold access to a platform that offered a host of phishing-related services through email, texts, and voice calls.

Apple’s wew iPhone 16 reflects a slowing pace of innovation
Bloomberg
Mark Gurman
The new iPhone has tantalizing camera improvements, but the device is emblematic of Apple’s slower pace of hardware innovation. Also: The company is preparing a slew of updates to iOS 18 through next year; one dazzling new Apple Watch configuration remains elusive; and the latest beta version of iOS 18.1 arrives.

The crypto bros who dream of crowdfunding a new country
BBC
Gabriel Gatehouse
Imagine if you could choose your citizenship the same way you choose your gym membership. That’s a vision of the not-too-distant future put forward by Balaji Srinivasan. Balaji – who, like Madonna, is mostly just known by his first name – is a rockstar in the world of crypto. A serial tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist who believes that pretty much everything governments currently do, tech can do better.

ASPI Research Internship
ASPI
Have you recently completed your studies (undergraduate or postgraduate) and want to develop your expertise in defence, foreign and national security policy, including in areas such as strategic competition, defence, deterrence, foreign interference, technology, and security? Do you want to inform the public and government on the critical strategic choices facing Australia and learn what it takes to be a professional analyst? If so, apply for the ASPI Research Internship Program! Please note that this is a paid internship program. Applications will close at midnight Friday 27 September 2024.

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