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"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."

"We submitted the grant on time. The next day, while speaking to a friend, I told him, "This week, I wrote my first ChatGPT grant." He replied that he had been doing it for months and that many other scientists are doing the same. A 2023 Nature survey of 1,600 researchers found that more than 25% use AI to help them write manuscripts and that more than 15% use the technology to help them write grant proposals. Some people might see the use of ChatGPT in writing grant proposals as cheating, but it actually highlights a much bigger problem: what is the point of asking scientists to write documents that can be easily created with AI? What value are we adding? Perhaps it is time for funding bodies to rethink their application processes."

"Why has Bitcoin become so popular? One possible explanation is that exploding interest in Bitcoin over the past several days is being driven by economic uncertainty in Europe. Fearful of an earlier proposed European Union plan to partially fund a Cypriot bailout by imposing new taxes on Cypriots' bank deposits, goes the theory, some Cypriots (and Spaniards, for similar reasons) flocked to Bitcoin to attempt an escape from the clutches of potential taxes."

"In terms of safety, a 2013 Navigant Research report noted "the potential for greatly reduced accident rates." Such potential rests on the basic logic of driving: Good driving relies on physics calculations; bad driving happens thanks to human physical limitations like intoxication and sleepiness."

"Apple has warned the UK government that proposals in the draft Investigatory Powers Bill to demand technology firms weaken encryption would make the data of millions of law-abiding citizens less secure and make it easier for hackers to "cause chaos"."

"The development of autonomous military systems - dubbed "killer robots" by campaigners opposed to them - is deeply contentious. Earlier this year, Google withdrew from the Pentagon's Project Maven, which uses machine learning to analyse video feeds from drones, after ethical objections from the tech giant's staff. The government insists it "does not possess fully autonomous weapons and has no intention of developing them". But, since 2015, the UK has declined to support proposals put forward at the UN to ban them. Now, using government data, Freedom of Information requests and open-source information, a year-long investigation reveals that the MoD and defence contractors are funding dozens of artificial intelligence programmes for use in conflict."

"Critics of the government's flagship internet regulation policy are warning it could lead to a North Korean-style censorship regime, where regulators decide which websites Britons are allowed to visit, because of how broad the proposals are."

"Under the proposal, online platforms would have to spend hundreds of millions of euros on algorithmic copyright filters that would compare everything users tried to post with a database of supposedly copyrighted works, which anyone could add anything to, and block any suspected matches. This would snuff out all the small EU competitors to America's Big Tech giants, and put all Europeans' communications under threat of arbitrary censorship by balky, unaccountable, easily abused algorithms."

"A new proposal could see the country reduce the amount of tax benefits for companies that invest in automated machinery."

"A "massive anti-vaccination campaign" has been cited by the European Commission as a reason for social media platforms to intensify their factchecking and revise the internal algorithms that can amplify disinformation. Under a revised code of practice proposed by Brussels, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter would need to show why particular material is disseminated and prove that false information is being blocked."

"El Salvador has become the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender after its congress approved President Nayib Bukele's proposal to embrace the cryptocurrency in an effort to promote "financial inclusion", investment and economic development."

"Marx had a point. Especially when it comes to ethics, philosophy is often better at finding complications and problems than proposing changes. Silicon Valley has been better at changing the world (even if through breaking things) than taking pause to think through the conse­quences."

"But the movement to legally protect leisure time is gaining ground. The European parliament voted overwhelmingly last month in favour of a resolution calling on the European commission to propose a law allowing those who work digitally to disconnect outside their working hours."

"The questions of the day are "How do we save the planet from the climate crisis?" and "What do we do about misogyny, racial profiling and police violence, and homophobic laws?" and "How do we check mass surveillance and the widening power of the state?" and "How do we bring down autocratic, human-rights-abusing regimes without leaving behind chaos and tragedy?" Those are the questions. But the internet is the answer. If you propose to fix any of these things without using the internet, you're not being serious. And if you want to free the internet to use in all those fights, there's a quarter century's worth of Internet Utopians who've got your back."

"The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) unveiled a 30-point draft proposal for "algorithm recommendation management regulations" that would directly affect companies including ByteDance, Tencent Holdings and Kuaishou Technology. The rules would forbid practices that "encourage addiction or high consumption", as well as any activities that endanger national security or disrupt social and economic order."

"They join attempts by lawmakers to regulate the internet for kids. States have proposed and even passed laws that restrict what children can access online, up to banning certain services entirely. On the federal level, several recently introduced bipartisan bills run the gamut from giving children more privacy protections to forbidding them from using social media at all. Some efforts also try to control the content that children can be exposed to. Critics of such legislation point to privacy issues with age verification mechanisms and fears that forced content moderation will inevitably lead to censorship, preventing kids from seeing material that's helpful along with what's considered harmful."

"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."

"As if robocalling wasn't already enough of a problem, the advent of easily accessible, realistic AI-powered writing and synthetic voice could supercharge the practice. The FCC aims to preempt this by looking into how generated robocalls might fit under existing consumer protections. A Notice of Inquiry has been proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to be voted on at the agency's next meeting. If the vote succeeds (as it is almost certain to), the FCC would formally look into how the Telephone Consumer Protection Act empowers them to act against scammers and spammers using AI technology. But Rosenworcel was also careful to acknowledge that AI represents a potentially powerful tool for accessibility and responsiveness in phone-based interactions. "While we are aware of the challenges AI can present, there is also significant potential to use this technology to benefit communications networks and their customers-including in the fight against junk robocalls and robotexts. We need to address these opportunities and risks thoughtfully, and the effort we are launching today will help us gain more insight on both fronts," she said in a statement."

""Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists," Hawley said in a press release. "It's time to take away Disney's special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation." His proposal would apply retroactively to copyright owners with a market capitalization of more than $150 billion in the motion pictures and videos or arts, entertainment, and recreation industries."