Technology Weekly: Meta was fined $1.3B
Days after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company might have to cease operations in Europe if the EU’s AI Act regulations passed in their current form, he has seemingly rolled back on his comments. Despite recently telling US lawmakers he was in favor of regulating AI when speaking to reporters in the UK earlier this week, Altman said he had “many concerns” about the EU’s AI Act and even accused the bloc of “over-regulating.”
OpenAI is a Microsoft-backed firm that has developed the groundbreaking but somewhat controversial ChatGPT generative AI system. “I think we’ll also need rules and guidelines about what is expected in terms of disclosure from a company providing a model that could have these sorts of abilities we’re talking about.
Microsoft has sought the formation of a new US agency to govern AI while expressing its concerns over the safety and security aspects of the latest technology and laid out a blueprint for public governance of AI. These laws could effectively lead to the customer knowing which content has been generated by AI, Smith said. The other steps listed by Smith include opening up AI for research purposes and forging public-private partnerships to address societal challenges arising out of the new technology.
The US Commerce Department should put trade restrictions on Chinese memory chip maker Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), say lawmakers on the US House of Representative’s Committee on China. Micron is a US memory chip giant that produces computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), flash memory, and USB flash drives. "The Commerce Department should immediately add ChangXin Memory Technologies to the entity list and ensure no U.S. technology, regardless of specifications, goes to CXMT, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), or other PRC firms operating in this industry,” Gallagher said, adding that the Department of Commerce should also ensure no US-export licenses granted to foreign semiconductor memory firms operating in the PRC are used to backfill Micron.
Despite falling revenue from online sign-ups, videoconferencing company Zoom remains positive about its future outlook, posting a 5% year-on-year increase in total revenue for the three months to April 30. The number of enterprise customers grew 9% year on year to approximately 215,900. As a consequence of the pivot to AI, Zoom’s research and development expenses grew by 25% year on year to approximately $106 million, with Steckelberg directly attributing this increase to the company’s investments in technology such as AI.
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Meta has been fined $1.3 billion (€1.2 billion) by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for violating the terms of the EU’s GDPR by continuing to transfer EU users’ data to the US without adequate safeguards. However, the DPC said that Meta's SCCs do not protect EU citizens' data from US government mass surveillance programs, potentially calling into question the ability of any company to transfer EU citizens' data to the US. Meta has failed to “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms" of Facebook's European users, the DPC said in a statement.
Twitter has left the EU's voluntary Code of Practice on online disinformation, which aims to prevent the spread of false and harmful information on the internet. The EU's internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, warned Twitter that it still has to comply with the bloc's Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes legal obligations on large online platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks, such as disinformation. The DSA will be enforced from August 25 and could result in fines or bans for non-compliant platforms.
Twitter's exit from the EU Code comes after its owner, billionaire Elon Musk, bought the platform last year and made changes that undermined its ability to fight disinformation. Musk has also clashed with the EU over speech moderation and expressed support for far-right views and conspiracy theories. The EU has said that Twitter has "huge work" ahead of it to avoid breaching the DSA.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has proposed to stop using advertising data from its social network to improve its online classifieds service, Facebook Marketplace. This is to address the concerns of the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has been investigating Meta for possible anticompetitive behavior. The CMA has said that Meta’s use of ad data gives it an unfair advantage over other advertisers on its platform, as it can show more relevant items to users in the Marketplace. Meta has also agreed to train its staff and appoint a monitoring trustee to ensure compliance with its commitments. The CMA has indicated that it is likely to accept these commitments and drop the case.
Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said he might open up some of his car software code to other automakers, such as Ford, to help them make fully updatable vehicles. He also discussed possible collaborations on lithium refining and synthetic graphite production with Ford’s CEO Jim Farley. The two CEOs announced a deal that lets Ford use Tesla’s charging port and network for its future EVs. Tesla and Ford are friendly rivals in the EV market, with Tesla leading in sales and production.
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