"Service providers, including many ORG members, will be required to do this through the imposition of a "duty of care" - a concept awkwardly borrowed from health & safety - which will require them to monitor the integrity of their services not by objective technical standards, but by subjective "codes of practice" on both illegal and legal content.
Although the framework has been drawn up with large American social media platforms in mind, it would apply to any site or service with UK users which hosts user-generated content. A blog with comments will be fair game. An app with user reviews will be fair game. "
"The argument is that even though it is used for legal purposes, the fact that it is even capable of circumventing a protection measure makes it illegal-a repurposing of copyright law to directly control what we do with computers."
"China's biggest tech stocks dropped sharply after the country approved a strict data privacy law, prompting renewed concerns among investors over the intensity of Beijing's regulatory crackdown."
"On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that directly affects "mega-retailers" like Amazon, and how these companies use algorithms to manage warehouse workers. Mega-retailers are those that employ more than 1,000 warehouse workers, and they include one of Amazon's main competitors, Walmart."
"Lawyers for the former president have claimed fair use, saying the ad was satire, exempt from copyright law, and used footage reposted without knowing its origin. They have also said Trump cannot be sued because of "presidential absolute immunity"."
""Creating greater access to Apple genuine parts gives our customers even more choice if a repair is needed," said Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer. "In the past three years, Apple has nearly doubled the number of service locations with access to Apple genuine parts, tools, and training, and now we're providing an option for those who wish to complete their own repairs.""
"The research concludes that mentally demanding tasks are more difficult to handle at home than when physically present at a workplace. Based on the chess players' performances, excessive use of homeworking can hurt productivity, the three researchers believe."
"Most social media users know to self-regulate when violent events such as terror attacks occur: don't share distressing footage; don't spread unfounded rumours.
But in the aftermath of the Annecy attack some inevitably acted without restraint.
Bystander footage of a man attacking children in a park in south-east France appeared online after the attack on Thursday and was still available, on Twitter and TikTok, on Friday.
The distressing footage has been used by TV networks but is heavily edited. The raw versions seen by the Guardian show the attacker dodging a member of the public and running around the playground before appearing to stab a toddler in a pushchair."
"Astonishingly, even as the UK government praises end-to-end encryption abroad, it is undermining it at home. The Online Safety Bill, which continues to proceed through parliament after being mentioned in the Queen's Speech, will target platforms that use end-to-end encryption by "placing a duty of care on service providers within the scope of the draft bill to moderate illegal and harmful content on their platforms, with fines and penalties for those that fail to uphold this duty". "
""We believe the government should introduce legislation that ensures commercial images are labelled with a logo where any part of the body, including its proportions and skin tone, are digitally altered," its report says.
Meanwhile, it says dermal fillers should be made prescription-only substances, in line with Botox, and there should be minimum training standards for providers."
"The CEO of OpenAI, the company responsible for creating artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E 2, said "regulation of AI is essential" as he testified in his first appearance in front of the US Congress.
The apocalypse isn't coming. We must resist cynicism and fear about AI
Stephen Marche
Stephen Marche
Read more
Speaking to the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, Sam Altman said he supported regulatory guardrails for the technology that would enable the benefits of artificial intelligence while minimizing the harms.
"We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models," Altman said in his prepared remarks."
"'Much easier to say no': Irish town unites in smartphone ban for young children
Parents and schools across Greystones adopt voluntary 'no-smartphone code' in bid to curb peer pressure
Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent
@rorycarroll72
Sat 3 Jun 2023 09.00 BST
Last modified on Sat 3 Jun 2023 09.02 BST
On the principle of strength in numbers, parents in the Irish town of Greystones have banded together to collectively tell their children they cannot have a smartphone until secondary school.
Parents' associations across the district's eight primary schools have adopted a no-smartphone code to present a united front against children's lobbying.
"If everyone does it across the board you don't feel like you're the odd one out. It makes it so much easier to say no," said Laura Bourne, who has a child in junior infants. "The longer we can preserve their innocence the better.""
"Moves to ban live "Big Brother" real time facial recognition technology from being deployed across the streets of the EU or by border officials will be tested in a key vote at the European parliament on Thursday.
The amendment is part of a package of proposals for the world's first artificial intelligence laws, which could result in firms being fined up to €10m (£8.7m) or removed from trading within the EU for breaches of the rules."
"Parents tell Guardian Australia that "playing" on Omegle is something kids do at parties, at sleepovers. It just takes one of the group to have a screen with internet access and before long they are chatting to strangers all over the world."
"The government is introducing some amendments in time for the report stage on 12 July, with another batch to be announced shortly after. Under one confirmed change, tech firms will be required to shield internet users from state-sponsored disinformation that poses a threat to UK society and democracy. This is a tightening of existing proposals on disinformation in the bill, which already require tech firms to take action on state-sponsored disinformation that harms individuals - such as threats to kill.
Another confirmed amendment is equally incremental. A clause in the bill aimed at end-to-end encrypted services already gives Ofcom the power to require those platforms to adopt "accredited technology" to detect child sexual abuse and exploitation [CSEA] content. If that doesn't work, then they must use their "best endeavours" to develop or deploy new technology to spot and remove CSEA. This move appears to be aimed at Mark Zuckerberg's plans to introduce end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger and Instagram."
"Ring recently revealed how often the answer to that question has been yes. The Amazon company responded to an inquiry from US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), confirming that there have been 11 cases in 2022 where Ring complied with police "emergency" requests. In each case, Ring handed over private recordings, including video and audio, without letting users know that police had access to-and potentially downloaded-their data. This raises many concerns about increased police reliance on private surveillance, a practice that's long gone unregulated."
"Shapiro said that using ChatGPT can be "great" in helping applicants "brainstorm verbs" and reframe language that can "bring a level of polish to their applications." At the same time, she said that submitting AI-generated materials along with job applications can backfire if applicants don't review them for accuracy.
Shapiro said Jasper recruiters have interviewed candidates and discovered skills on their résumés that applicants said shouldn't be there or characterizations they weren't familiar with. Checking the AI-generated materials to ensure they accurately reflect an applicant's capabilities, she said, is critical if they're using ChatGPT - especially if the applicant gets hired."
"TikTok faces questions over safeguards for child users after a Guardian investigation found that moderators were being told to allow under-13s to stay on the platform if they claimed their parents were overseeing their accounts."
"The UK is not Russia. For all that the many civil liberty campaigners will complain, as is their role, the independence of the judiciary remains strong. The laws relating to freedom of association, expression and right to privacy are well defended in parliament and outside.
But the technology, the means by which the state might insert itself into our lives, is developing apace. The checks and balances are not. The Guardian has revealed that the government is legislating, without fanfare, to allow the police and the National Crime Agency to run facial recognition searches across the UK's driving licence records. When the police have an image, they will be able to identify the person, it is hoped, through the photographic images the state holds for the purposes of ensuring that the roads are safe.
Searching those digital images would have taken more man-hours than could have been justified in the old analogue world. It is now a matter of pushing a button, thanks to the wonders of artificial intelligence systems that are able to match biometric measurements in a flash."
"The use of "geofence warrants" have exploded in recent years, in large part thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones coupled with hungry data companies like Google vacuuming up and storing huge amounts of its users' location data, which becomes obtainable by law enforcement requests.
Police can use geofence warrants (also known as reverse-location warrants) to demand that Google turn over information on which users' devices were in a particular geographic area at a certain point in time."