New Tech News (Amazon, AI, Apple, and More)

Welcome back. This week has been super busy in the tech world. So much so I thought we might have to send two emails to keep it to the top five stories. And that includes not talking about Tesla missing it’s sales numbers for new car deliveries (a huge blow for the EV market), how a lone developer found a nasty back door in a popular open source software, and much much more.

So lets get into the really big news stories.

Table of Contents

• Amazon’s Walk Out Technology is Shown the Door

• Musician’s Are Against AI too?

• Where Else Does OpenAI Train Their Systems?

• After the iCar Failure to Launch, What’s Next for …

• Meta Keeps the Cuts Coming…

• Google Pledges to Destroy Browsing Data

Amazon’s Walk Out Technology is Shown the Door

This week Amazon announced it was doing away with the AI tech that was supposed to watch what you put in your cart, and automatically bill you as you left the store.

Turns out, the AI didn’t have too much A… as in artificial. It took approximately 1,000 people looking at cameras tracking and helping the computers. While the technology was supposed to help make it easier for people, after all who likes waiting in a long line, outsourcing a cashiers job just didn’t seem right.

Learn more about it here.

Musician’s Are Against AI too?

Professional Musicians are the latest group to come out against AI as it might endanger their jobs. Of course, the worse part of them, is their very own work might have been used to train AI systems… and they didn’t get a payday from that virtual concert either.

Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, and approximately 200 other musicians (living and dead - OK their estates) have written an open letter warning of the risk of creative freedom, and jobs, and expression, and jobs that AI potentially poses. Of course, in the right hands, with the right regulations, they may be all for it.

This is similar, but slightly different, to the lawsuit that several authors have filed since they believe that OpenAI, and others, have trained their systems based upon pirated copies of their work.

Check out the article found on the Guardian.

Where Else Does OpenAI Train Their Systems?

How about YouTube?

After showing how cool it was that OpenAI could do some new voice synthesis, just last week, there are news articles are suggesting that OpenAI, and others, might have trained their systems against YouTube data. YouTube CEO says that he’s seen reports where it might or might not have happened, but it would be against their terms and service.

So why are they pressing harder on it? Well, it appears that Google has done the same thing, at risk of violating their creator’s copyright. So why not turn a blind eye if you’re doing the same thing?

Read more about it here. But as a content creator on YouTube as well as other places, do I worry about my content being stolen… I think replaced is a better word. Because I still need to eat, and none of us creators are being compensated.

After the iCar Failure to Launch, What’s Next for Apple? The iRobot?

That’s exactly it… although the name might be different.

While the Apple car, was an apparent dud, they have quickly pivoted to household robots.

Think of Rosie from the Jetsons. A futuristic home robot which can do simple chores around the house. Of course, this is still pretty hush hush, so we’ll have to see what comes of it.

Read more 

Meta Keeps the Cuts Coming…

Remember from last week most of the social media companies are cutting their safety departments. Well, it keeps coming it seems.

CrowdTangle, a tool considered vital in tracking viral falsehoods, will be decommissioned by Facebook owner Meta in a major election year. Researchers fear will hinder the ability to detect an expected firehose of political misinformation. (Remember, more than just the US is having a major election in 2024. Brazil, Canada, Germany, and many more do as well.)

Read more about the shut down.

Google Pledges to Destroy Browsing Data

For our last story, Google has to destroy billions of data points they collected while people were using incognito mode. I guess it wasn’t as private as people thought.

Who knew that companies could mislead in their advertising… and why they don’t want you to read the Terms and Conditions. Roughly only 3 to 10% of people actually read them, and for good reason. They can be long (and boring). TikTok would take 1hr 33min to read, and Candy Crush would take an extra 20 minutes!