The United Kingdom wants to punish and potentially even jail tech company CEOs who refuse to develop and implement software solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images of children.
Sleeping well has become one of modern life’s biggest challenges. Between screens, irregular schedules and stress, more and more people feel like they’re not getting the rest they need. As such, it’s no surprise that recent years have seen the proliferation of tools designed for sleep analysis: smart watches, rings, sensors placed under the mattress and mobile apps that promise to measure how we sleep, and help us to improve our rest.
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TikTok executives decided not to disable notifications during school hours, ignoring recommendations from their own safety team, and paid millions of dollars to parents’ and teachers’ associations to promote the social network in schools. Snapchat sent alerts to teenagers while they were in class urging them to share what was happening in the classroom. Google executives knew that YouTube was recommending videos to students during the school day that were unrelated to their lessons. Meta paid “teen ambassadors” to promote Instagram and hand out gifts to their classmates.
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In 2021, Miriam González, a 35-year-old from Murcia, Spain, went to the doctor because she was bleeding from her breast. She was told to relax: everything was normal. But in 2024, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And, shortly afterward, she discovered it was metastatic, at stage four.
“The rise of AI is the next industrial revolution,” Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive, told recent graduates of arts, humanities, and communication at the University of Central Florida. The response? A chorus of boos. Caulfield turned to the organizers: “What happened?” she asked. She looked back at the young people in the audience: “Ok, I’ve struck a chord, may I finish?” And she continued: “Only a few years ago, AI wasn’t a factor in our lives,” she added. And then they applauded, and Caulfield smiled with relief. The video of her bewilderment went viral.
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LONDON, June 3 — Britain has imposed new conduct requirements on Google’s search services, including allowing publishers to stop their content being used to power the US tech giant’s AI features, as the watchdog ramps up its oversight.
The country’s Competition and Markets Authority has flagged concerns about Google’s dominance in search, designating the company with the “strategic market status” that allows it to set targeted rules to increase trust and transparency.
Google accounts for more than 90 per cent of UK queries and the regulator said in January it wanted to give publishers more control over how their content was used.
The CMA today said the requirements imposed on Google under the digital markets competition regime gave “publishers more control and stronger bargaining power over the use of their content,” while securing a fair deal.
News websites and other publishers have seen click-through rates drop sharply as a result of users relying on overviews generated with the help of AI.
Google said it was providing “new resources, insights and control for website owners” to navigate the changes in how users find and understand information using generative AI.
It said it was testing a new control that lets publishers manage how their links and content appear in generative AI search features.
Sites that opt out would not receive traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode, it said in a blog post, but the controls would not affect traditional search results.
It said it was also increasing the number of links in AI responses and it was starting to roll out new insights for publishers.
The CMA said Google would be required to make sure content from publishers, including news organisations, was properly attributed in AI-generated search results, using clear links.
“Google has recently announced changes to its search business and the requirements we’ve introduced today are designed to respond to what Google is doing now and in the future,” CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell said.
Google faces increasing regulatory scrutiny across the world, including in the United States and European Union, and the company in March said it was developing new search controls to address British competition concerns. — Reuters
Eliezer Yudkowsky, 46, and Nate Soares, 37, are convinced that if artificial intelligence (AI) systems continue to improve, they will eventually surpass human capabilities. And when that happens, humanity will go extinct. They argue this could occur in a matter of months or within a decade. The title of their latest book is blunt: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All (Little, Brown & Co).
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