Facebook’s Value Tops $1tn After Judge Dismisses US Lawsuits
By: Guardian June 29, 2021 Cases filed by FTC and state attorneys general did not give enough evidence to prove Facebook was a monopoly In a significant blow to US regulators’ attempt to rein in big tech, a federal judge has dismissed lawsuits brought against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and a broad coalition […]
Twitter in India Faces Criminal Charges for Kashmir Map ‘Treason’
By: Guardian June 29, 2021 Twitter is facing criminal charges in India after the site published a map that incorrectly showed the turbulent Indian region of Kashmir as a separate country. On Monday night a report was filed to police in the state of Uttar Pradesh against Twitter’s head in India, Manish Maheshwari, calling the […]
App Taps Unwitting Users Abroad to Gather Open-Source Intelligence
By: Wall Street Journal June 24, 2021 WASHINGTON—A network of gig workers world-wide is unwittingly providing basic intelligence to the U.S. military using only a consumer app on their smartphones. San Francisco-based Premise Data Corp. pays users, many of them in the developing world, to complete basic tasks for small payments. Typical assignments […]
How Twitter hired tech’s biggest critics to build ethical AI
By: Protocol June 23, 2021 Machine learning engineer Ari Font was worried about the future of Twitter’s algorithms. It was mid-2020, and the leader of the team researching ethics and accountability for the company’s ML had just left Twitter. For Font, the future of the ethics research was unclear. Font was the manager […]
Blaston Reverses Facebook’s VR Ad Testing After Backlash
By: VR Focus June 22, 2021 There was quite a bit of furore in the virtual reality (VR) community at the end of last week when Facebook announced it was going to begin early testing of VR ads, starting with Resolution Games’ PvP shooter Blaston. Well, as you’d expect this didn’t go down well and sparked an […]
Amazon Faces MPs’ Scrutiny After Destroying Laptops, Tablets and Books
By: Guardian June 22, 2021 Amazon is facing fresh political scrutiny after an undercover investigation showed thousands of unsold products, including laptops, TVs, headphones and books – in some cases still in their packaging – being destroyed by the company. The furore caused by the ITV News report led three Labour MPs, including the […]
NATO Launches €1bn Fund to Invest in War Startups
By: Sifted June 23, 2021 NATO is planning to harness the knowhow of startups to develop its next generation of war machines. The transatlantic defence alliance has announced that it is to launch a startup accelerator programme and a €1bn investment fund focused on deeptech startups. The disruptive technologies that NATO is interested […]
Robots May Soon Be Able to Reproduce – Will This Change How We Think About Evolution?
By: Guardian June 21, 2021 From the bottom of the oceans to the skies above us, natural evolution has filled our planet with a vast and diverse array of lifeforms, with approximately 8 million species adapted to their surroundings in a myriad of ways. Yet 100 years after Karel Čapek coined the term robot, the functional […]
Making Digital Ethics a Priority for Organizations
By: CXOtoday.com June 18, 2021 Disruptive technologies offer tremendous opportunity for businesses to become smarter, more flexible, and more responsive. But people often fail to understand the ramifications of their usage, running into bigger risks to businesses. It is then that the question of digital ethics comes into the picture. Let’s say, a […]