Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Stricklund. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for the week ending July twenty sixth, twenty twenty four and let's start off with a follow up on the CrowdStrike story. So, if somehow you missed that event, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike pushed out and update the customers on Windows based platforms that caused machines to go into a reboot loop. And this little oopsey caused massive outages all around the world and some companies like major airlines are still dealing with the fallout. This week, CrowdStrike posted a quote preliminary post incident review or pir are end quote giving a high level view of what happened while promising a more thorough investigation that will be shared down the line. So the post says that last Friday, quote CrowdStrike released a content configuration update for the Windows Sensor to gather telemetry on possible novel threat techniques. These updates are a regular part of the dynamic protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. The problematic rapid response content configuration update resulted in a Windows system crash end quote. So the post goes on to say that this rapid response content feature is meant to quote respond to the changing threat landscape at operational speed end quote, and by necessity that means CrowdStrike has to be very quick to respond to emerging threats in order to protect customers. But this particular update had an undetected error in it, and in addition, the content validator you can think of it as kind of like a bouncer standing outside a nightclub. The validator is a system that's meant to look for mistakes before allowing updates to go through, but the validator itself had a bug that essentially meant it was looking the other way. So the post goes on to stress that CrowdStrike will be instituting new processes to validate code and to test it thoroughly for errors before pushing it out to customers in the future, because boy howdy, this outage was incredibly disruptive and yeah, uh, the CrowdStrike partners are mightily miffed about the outage, so not just the customers who were directly affected, but people who then had to step in and try to mitigate and repair systems that were affected by this. Countless people had to work extremely long hours in an effort to get things working again. But don't worry, CrowdStrike cares. That's why the company sent out a ten dollars voucher to some teammates and partners as a gesture of gratitude and sympathy. Now, as you might imagine, not everyone took this very well. Some folks interpreting crowdstrikes move as being insult added to injury that somehow a ten dollars gift vouchure for coffee and donuts would make up for having to provide seemingly endless support to countless customers who were affected by this outage. Some people maybe saw the gesture as being well intentioned and they didn't take umbrage to it, but unfortunately a lot of them also had trouble using the vouchure in the first place. The vouchuer was for uber eats, and uber Eats actually flagged it as fraud because so many people were trying to use the code. Interestingly, I saw something similar with ride haling services because someone I know was trying to make use of a promotional code, essentially to use a right hailing service so that they could go and help their company out during the outage. The company was saying, hey, if you need to get a ride, here's a code you can use that we really need your help. But then when they tried to use the code, they found that the code was flagged as being invalid, that too many people were using it. And this was not a small, unknown company that was extending this right hailing offer in return for more help. It was a major, major employer in the city of Atlanta. Anyway, it sounds to me like an effort to do something small but a little nice has backfired in crowdstrikes proverbial face. Okay, now let's move on to get into a whole bunch of AI news. This week, Meta unveiled the Lama three AI model and showed off generative AI capabilities, including support for eight languages and the ability to write code, with promises of multi modal capabilities in the future. So how does Lama three stack up against say, open AI's GPT model or other AI models for that matter. That's actually hard to say because it's very tricky to measure AI performance. There's not a whole lot of agreement over what constitutes a proper benchmark for AI capabilities. That are a lot of benchmarks that are being used, but they don't necessarily say that one model is superior to others. It might be that one model is better at specific sets of tasks than others, but doesn't perform as well in other regards. Meta's model did score smack dab between open ais GPT four oh and Claude three point five on a math benchmark for word problems. Meta clearly hopes that developers will rely on LAMA three more than on competing models running forward, And it sounds to me like the various AI models out there right now perform at fairly similar levels, Like there is some variation, but from the big ones out there, they tend to be kind of neck and neck. So I think for a lot of developers it'll mostly come down to which model works best from a financial standpoint, not necessarily just a technical one. But you know which one's going to be the cheapest to use. Brianna Herschbach of the Star Tribune has a piece titled X's AI chat bot groc spreads misinformation about Minnesota's ballots. Does the tech giant care well? I suspect the answer to the headline is that I'm sure there are some folks at X who very much care. But whether that's the sentiment held by the people in charge, I can't say, though I have my suspicions anyway. According to the article, Groc, the AI chat bot from X falsely claimed that it was too late for presidential ballots to change in nine states, including in Minnesota, that the candidates were already locked and loaded, and that anyone who had failed to get on the ballot already is out of luck. But quote, hey, there's always twenty twenty eight right end quote. Because of course Grock is sassy. And this is relevant obviously because here in the United States, current President Joe Biden has dropped out of the election rate and Kamala Harris, the vice president, is currently in line to get the Democratic nomination for the Democratic Party. So clearly, if we were at a point where it's too late to put people on the ballot to change the presidential ballots, then that would be a huge problem for the Democrats, because they're presumptive candidate would not be allowed to be added However, that's not the case. No state has passed the deadline for candidates to be added to the ballot, not in Minnesota, not any other state. We haven't reached that point. But now misinformation is spreading online about this because GROX said, Hey, it's too late, so tough luck, and it's just not true. I think most of us have a handle on how social platforms can facilitate the distribution and misinformation. But this is a case where X isn't just facility hating the spread of misinformation, it is generating the actual misinformation, Like the platform itself, or at least the AI chatbot that's created for that platform, is doing it. Folks at X have pointed out that GROC comes with a disclaimer that urges users to independently verify the information that's coming out of the chatbot. I don't see this as a get off jail free card. Actually, I see this as a condemnation of AI, specifically generative AI, because if you know that your tool is prone to or at least capable of generating falsehoods, maybe don't distribute the tool to customers. Like, what is the point of having an AI chatbot if the user can't trust what the chatbot says, why have a chatbot at all unless the chatbot's reliable. If you have to look up everything the chatbot tells you anyway, you might as well skip having the chatbot, just go straight to researching the question, right, because otherwise what are you doing? It seems in line, however, with Musk's approach in general. It reminds me of how Tesla has both autopilot and full self driving products and Tesla cars. Both of those, I would argue, give a false sense of what they're capable of based upon their names. Like I've often said, full self driving, which by the way, isn't full self driving. That's my opinion, But I feel like it is in line with that, And I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as how AI is playing a part in the dissemination of information and misinformation during the election cycle. Okay, I've got a bunch more stories to go through before we start into those, let's take a quick break. We're back. So, in a rare event in US politics this week, week, the Senate unanimously passed a federal bill that would let victims of non consensual deep fakes of a sexually explicit nature sue the people who create and traffic in such material. This can include images, video, audio, et cetera. So deep fakes have been a problem for a while now, and it's a problem that disproportionately victimizes women. So this bill would make it possible for victims of deep fakes sexually explicit deep fakes to seek civil penalties against those who are making or sharing or receiving those deep fakes. The bill will still need to pass the House of Representatives before it can move on to the President's desk to get signed into law, and as of right now, that bill is in committee at the House of Representatives. Alexandra Occasio Cortes AOC. She's championing this and has made some very passionate arguments as to why the bill is needed because as of right now, there are very few avenues that victims of deep fis can pursue to get justice or any kind of action on their behalf. And that is pretty horrifying, because, I mean, this is like a consent issue, and deep fakes can cause not just incredible emotional and psychological trauma, which they can. That alone is enough to require some sort of of measure against them, but they can also impact a person's ability to make a living through no fault of their own, Like the person literally hasn't done anything, but an AI generated image or video has given them a terrible reputation and there has to be a system in place to seek justice for this. So I feel this is a very good step toward addressing a growing and disturbing problem. Moving on to other issues with AI. Sag AFTRA that's a union that presents typically actors and other performers in film, television, and video games. Well, the video game group of performers are now going on strike, so this includes voice performers as well as motion capture performers, and the reason they're going on strike is over the fact that the union has been unable to reach a satisfying agreement during contract negotiations with various video game companies. And these are like the big video game companies, so the contract agreement span a lot of territory. It's not just one thing, but one important element within all of that is over the role of AI, and specifically AI's ability to replicate voices and likenesses. And that makes a lot of sense to me. That. This would be a big sticking point because if I were hired for a gig because of my voice or my likeness, I don't want AI to copy me, because then that copy could be used in perpetuity without my participation or compensation. I would be taking one gig and essentially putting myself out of a job forever because that copy could get passed around, and who knows what stuff my AI mimic might be incorporated into. I could find a copy of myself in projects that I never would have agreed to work on. That's not really cool, right, Like if I were hired to voice something that I really believed in, I was like, Oh, this is a really cool story, and I believe in the developer, and I believe in the story they're trying to tell. I would love to be part of this, by the way, I would love to be part of stuff like that. That would be a lot of fun. Then, yeah, that's great, But what if they then used my voice to generate a copy of it and put it into something that I would find morally objectionable or it goes against my own personal beliefs. That's a real problem. Apparently, these AI points in the agreements have been contentious, with video game companies reluctant to promise that they're not going to use AI tools that could lead to the detriment of union members. Interestingly, striking members are still allowed to participate in appearances at San Diego Comic Con, which started earlier this week and goes through the weekend, and they can do so without penalty because usually a striking sag after member isn't supposed to promote any work that is covered by the strike, but in this case, the proximity of the strike to the Comic Con event called for an exception, so folks who were scheduled to appear can still do so. They can still talk about the projects they were hired to do, and that's really good news for fans. Potentially, it's also good news for union members who may be able to take the opportunity to speak about their concerns regarding AI and other aspects of the dispute. At the top of this episode, I talked about how Meta's Lama III performed well in certain benchmarks against other AS models well. Google's Deep Mind department similarly unveiled a couple of AI systems, one called Alpha Proof and another called alpha geometry two that performed really well on a very tough math test. According to Google, the AI models were able to achieve the equivalent of a silver metal performance by solving problems that were part of the most recent International Mathematical olympiad BENJ. Edwards of Ours Technica has a great piece about this. It's titled Google claims Math breakthrough with proof solving AI models. Benje also does a really good job of pointing out that measuring AI capabilities is tricky. It is not always straightforward. In fact, it rarely is straightforward. The achievement does mark advancements in AI's ability to parse and then solve complex mathematical problems, and that is pretty cool. But ben J. Edwards also quotes Sir Timothy Gowers about this. Sir Timothy Gowers took to AX and wrote, quote the program needed a lot longer than the human competitors, some of the problems over sixty hours end quote, and that if human competitors had been given the same luxury of time, they probably would have scored higher in this test as well. So what Gowers is saying is this is not an apples to apples comparison. You can't say, oh, this AI program is x times smarter than the average person when it comes to math, because you have to take into account all the different parameters and say, well, if the people who are really good at math were given the same amount of time to solve a problem, they might have done it as well or better than the AI model did. Gowers also pointed out that humans had to convert these problems into a language that the AI models could understand before they could tackle the problem in the first place. So again, the AI models weren't presented with the exact same problem, or the problem wasn't framed the exact same way for the AI versus the human competitors who actually participated in the Olympiad, and that if the AI had had to parse the problems the way that humans did, maybe the AI wouldn't have performed as well. So yeah, it's complicated hopping over to open ai because yeah, we're not done with AI yet. Open ai announced this week that a prototype version of its search GPT product is now ready to go. This is open AI's artificial intelligence powered search tool. It is a clear shot across Google's bow, and according to open ai, the tool will provide quote fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources end quote. I have signed up to join the wait list to try this out, but as of this recording, I have not yet personally been able to use this tool. I do have concerns similar to what I was saying earlier. I have these concerns with pretty much all AI enabled tools that are like And one of those concerns is that I worry AI enhanced search will mean fewer people will actually navigate to what the real sources of the information were. They'll just be satisfied with the AI summarized or synthesized results and that's it, Which means the pages that the AI is drawing from the source pages are going to get less traffic, and that means less revenue, which ultimately means the businesses that actually operate these pages could find themselves strapped for cash. And then what happens, you know, when the underlying infrastructure that the AI is dependent upon goes rotten. What happens then? Plus there's still the worry of mistakes, you know, like confabulations slash hallucinations with Generative AI. Google's version of this same sort of tool famously suggested that people include non toxic glue in their pizza ingredients in order to prevent cheese from sliding off their pizza. Clearly that is not good advice. So how reliable will search GPTB and how will folks know if the answers they get are actually good? I mean, I guess one way you could check is you could click through to the sources. But then again, why do you even need AI search at that point? Like, if you already have to double check to make sure the answer that AI gave you is relevant and accurate, what good is the AI? If you have to double check, then you might as well just get rid of the AI and go straight to the source in the first place. It's just like I was saying before, AI is just making things, giving an extra step. It's like turning to a random person next to you and saying, like, how do you repair a car? Like you have no idea they have any experience or knowledge in that realm, and if they give you advice, you don't know if it's trustworthy. You have to look it up. Well whatever open AI made this announcement, and after that, alphabet shares fell around three percent. So I guess like these questions are ones that don't necessarily run around the minds of investors. I'm just gonna progressively go bonkers over here as the world continues to embrace AI and I keep asking, but wait, I have questions. I also have more news. But before we get to that, let's take another quick break. So before the break, I was talking about Google and speaking of alphabet slash Google. One of the other companies in that group of companies under alphabet is YouTube, and it could be facing some pretty tough issues in Russia. So the Russian government has indicated that YouTube could see that the agents will throttle YouTube traffic by forty percent on desktop computers this week, So slowing down YouTube traffic by forty percent, that could increase to a seventy percent slowed down by next week. And you might ask why why is the Russian government throttling traffic from YouTube in Russia? Well, it's because YouTube previously placed a block on some channels that were carrying Russian state media. Russian state media has a bit of a reputation for having, let us say, a biased view of the news, and that it often is just really seen as a mouthpiece for the Russian government itself, and thus is really a way of distributing propaganda. So presumably what has happened is YouTube determined that some Russian state media YouTube channels were in violation of YouTube's policies and so block them, And the Russian government's response is We're going to make all traffic to YouTube super duper slow, so that Russian users will get really frustrated about this unless you reinstate those channels. So essentially this is a threat. It's a standoff between YouTube and the Russian government. And I did not see any responses from YouTube about this as of the time I'm recording this episode. That may be different by the time you hear it, but yeah, right now, it is like a standoff, which is a big old yikes from me. Now, if you don't use Google, but you are used to seeing search results include stuff from Reddit threads, that could be changing. So Reddit has a content policy that forbid sites from crawling Reddit forums without first agreeing to follow Reddit's rules, and those rules cover a lot of ground. One of the big rules that Reddit has is that companies that want to crawl Reddit for the purposes of gathering data to train AI models have to pay for that privilege that you've got to fork over some cash if you're going to use Reddit to train up your AI. This is something that a lot of Reddit users are actually salty about because you know, a lot of people don't want their stuff to be used to train AI in the first place. They don't have any say in the matter, like Reddit gets to make that call. They don't, And some users are thinking that's not really fair that they should have more control over the content they create. Reddit says no, once you post it here, it's ours, like it was yours then you hit post and now it belongs to us. And users also are kind of salty because the compensation it's going to Reddit doesn't go to the people who are generating the content in the first place. Right, Like, these AI models are using Reddit content to train themselves, but the people who are making the content, they don't get any of the money. The money goes to Reddit, So it's going to the platform, but not the people who are creating the actual content that's training AI. So yeah, there are a couple of reasons why Reddit users are not happy about this. But anyway, this means that any company that has not agreed to these these rules that Reddit has posted, they are not allowed to crawl the site. Without crawling the site, you can't index it, and specific threads will not pop up in search results. If that is the case. Apparently, search engines not named Google have largely not yet forged these kinds of agreements with Reddit, So the result is that if you search for topics that are covered on Reddit forums or Reddit threads, you will get fewer results on non Google search engines. Some of them will return some Reddit results, but others won't. For a full breakdown on this issue, including some really great insight into the search engine landscape in general, i recommend reading Sharon Harding's excellent piece in Ours Technica's article titled non Google search engines blocked from showing recent Reddit results. Shila Chiang CNBC reports that Apple is no longer among the top five smartphone brands in China. Rather, Chinese companies domestic companies are taking up the top five spots, and Apple has fallen to hold fourteen percent of the market share in the country. The Chinese market has been a really important one for Apple. The company famously courted Chinese officials and business representatives while trying to establish an inroad into Chinese markets for the iPhone. Ironically, the iPhone was being manufactured in China for two years, but not sold in Chinese stores, at least not legally sold in China for those two years. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared China an extremely competitive market in the smartphone space, which was I feel like it's coded language. The country's government has frequently favored domestic companies over products coming from Western companies. I've talked several times about how tech companies from the West have viewed China as a potential gold mine because the country does have a truly enormous population. But I personally think the price of doing business in China is really high. It's high enough to make it hard to say whether or not it's worth the effort. Also, it frequently means that you are implicated or complicit with ethically questionable state programs, which is more than putting it lightly. In what could have been a nightmare scenario, a security vendor called no B four that's all one word, No B and then the Numeral four hired a software engineer to fill a job in the company's AI division. The job hire purported to be a US based software engineer, but in fact was a hacker from North Korea. And this hacker had stolen some US credentials and used a stock photo and then altered it with AI to make a fake headshot in order to fool the company. They apparently looked enough like that headshot to fool hiring managers because they then went on multiple video conferencing calls as part of the hiring process. But yeah, this hacker managed to get through the entire interview process, multiple rounds, even got through a background check, and according to a company representative, quote we sent them their Mac workstation and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware end quote. We say. Fortunately, the company security software caught on right away and within short order, security kind of like sequestered off the hire's computer so that they could not cause further mischief, you know, to like company systems and stuff like that. They think that it's quite possible this hacker was a state backed operative that North Korea was actually you know, kind of sponsoring hackers like this to try and infiltrate various companies like security companies and then cause problems from there. There are few public details available about this, largely because Nobifore says there's an ongoing FBI investigation into the matter. But yeah, it sounds like hiring managers might need to be on the lookout for potential threat agents during the hiring process. Fun times. Around five hundred Microsoft employees working on the venerable World of Warcraft title have voted to join the hoard. By that, I mean they've voted in support of unionization. Microsoft is pledged to remain neutral in the proceedings. That was actually part of Microsoft's concessions during the long process in which the company was attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, which it ultimately did. Activision Blizzard, by the way, is the company behind World of Warcraft. Blizzard has already recognized this union, which is a key step. It's one that means the union employees won't have to appeal to the US government in order to force Blizzard to acknowledge them. Sometimes that does happen. When a company refuses to recognize a union, the workers join a few other unionized groups within Microsoft's video game division. More than one seven hundred and fifty employees in that specific part of Microsoft are now in a union, and all I can say is solidarity. Not long ago, I talked about how SpaceX's Falcon nine was grounded following a launch vehicle's mid flight failure that resulted in the loss of a big group of Starlink satellites. But up to that point, the Falcon nine had a stellar, pun intended safety record, which is kind of unheard of in the space industry if we're being brutally honest, I mean, space is hard, so having a vehicle that has had the reliability of the Falcon nine is a rare thing, indeed. But the FAA has now ordered that the fleet, which was grounded to allow for an investigation, can now return to operation. The investigation still ongoing, but the FAA says the found no reason to block operations, so there were no public safety issues present as far as they could tell. So while they will continue to investigate the matter, the Falcon nine can return to service. And that's great news for the industry as a whole, for the United States in particular, because the Falcon nine is the launch vehicle that can take people to the International Space Station here in the United States. So yeah, SpaceX's launch vehicles have become absolutely critical for the space industry here in the United States. The company says it will be ready to return to operations as early as tomorrow, Saturday, July twenty seventh, twenty twenty four. Okay, that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff with the Tech News. I do have a couple of recommendations for y'all in order to read up on stuff. First up is Jordan Velenski's piece for cnn dot Com titled Grinder is limiting location services at the Olympics to protect LGBTQ plus athletes. So this is about how the Grinder app is proactively protecting athlete identities. This is important because some of those folks are coming from countries that have draconian laws that target people who belong to the LGBTQ plus community. So, in other words, you're not going to be able to open the app and change your location to the Olympic village and then go looking around for Olympic athletes who may be part of that LGBTQ plus community. It's not going to work, and that's for the protection of those athletes. I think that's a good idea, but the article goes into further detail, so check it out. Next up is an article by Alphonso Maruccia of tech Spot. It's titled spyware Maker gets hacked. Data reveals thousands of remotely controlled devices. So this article covers the case of a company called spy Tech Software, which is in a questionable business I would argue, and talks about how hackers got access to the company systems and what that all means. It is well worth a read. That's it for me this week. I hope all of you are well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Stricklund. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for the week ending July twenty sixth, twenty twenty four and let's start off with a follow up on the CrowdStrike story. So, if somehow you missed that event, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike pushed out and update the customers on Windows based platforms that caused machines to go into a reboot loop. And this little oopsey caused massive outages all around the world and some companies like major airlines are still dealing with the fallout. This week, CrowdStrike posted a quote preliminary post incident review or pir are end quote giving a high level view of what happened while promising a more thorough investigation that will be shared down the line. So the post says that last Friday, quote CrowdStrike released a content configuration update for the Windows Sensor to gather telemetry on possible novel threat techniques. These updates are a regular part of the dynamic protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. The problematic rapid response content configuration update resulted in a Windows system crash end quote. So the post goes on to say that this rapid response content feature is meant to quote respond to the changing threat landscape at operational speed end quote, and by necessity that means CrowdStrike has to be very quick to respond to emerging threats in order to protect customers. But this particular update had an undetected error in it, and in addition, the content validator you can think of it as kind of like a bouncer standing outside a nightclub. The validator is a system that's meant to look for mistakes before allowing updates to go through, but the validator itself had a bug that essentially meant it was looking the other way. So the post goes on to stress that CrowdStrike will be instituting new processes to validate code and to test it thoroughly for errors before pushing it out to customers in the future, because boy howdy, this outage was incredibly disruptive and yeah, uh, the CrowdStrike partners are mightily miffed about the outage, so not just the customers who were directly affected, but people who then had to step in and try to mitigate and repair systems that were affected by this. Countless people had to work extremely long hours in an effort to get things working again. But don't worry, CrowdStrike cares. That's why the company sent out a ten dollars voucher to some teammates and partners as a gesture of gratitude and sympathy. Now, as you might imagine, not everyone took this very well. Some folks interpreting crowdstrikes move as being insult added to injury that somehow a ten dollars gift vouchure for coffee and donuts would make up for having to provide seemingly endless support to countless customers who were affected by this outage. Some people maybe saw the gesture as being well intentioned and they didn't take umbrage to it, but unfortunately a lot of them also had trouble using the vouchure in the first place. The vouchuer was for uber eats, and uber Eats actually flagged it as fraud because so many people were trying to use the code. Interestingly, I saw something similar with ride haling services because someone I know was trying to make use of a promotional code, essentially to use a right hailing service so that they could go and help their company out during the outage. The company was saying, hey, if you need to get a ride, here's a code you can use that we really need your help. But then when they tried to use the code, they found that the code was flagged as being invalid, that too many people were using it. And this was not a small, unknown company that was extending this right hailing offer in return for more help. It was a major, major employer in the city of Atlanta. Anyway, it sounds to me like an effort to do something small but a little nice has backfired in crowdstrikes proverbial face. Okay, now let's move on to get into a whole bunch of AI news. This week, Meta unveiled the Lama three AI model and showed off generative AI capabilities, including support for eight languages and the ability to write code, with promises of multi modal capabilities in the future. So how does Lama three stack up against say, open AI's GPT model or other AI models for that matter. That's actually hard to say because it's very tricky to measure AI performance. There's not a whole lot of agreement over what constitutes a proper benchmark for AI capabilities. That are a lot of benchmarks that are being used, but they don't necessarily say that one model is superior to others. It might be that one model is better at specific sets of tasks than others, but doesn't perform as well in other regards. Meta's model did score smack dab between open ais GPT four oh and Claude three point five on a math benchmark for word problems. Meta clearly hopes that developers will rely on LAMA three more than on competing models running forward, And it sounds to me like the various AI models out there right now perform at fairly similar levels, Like there is some variation, but from the big ones out there, they tend to be kind of neck and neck. So I think for a lot of developers it'll mostly come down to which model works best from a financial standpoint, not necessarily just a technical one. But you know which one's going to be the cheapest to use. Brianna Herschbach of the Star Tribune has a piece titled X's AI chat bot groc spreads misinformation about Minnesota's ballots. Does the tech giant care well? I suspect the answer to the headline is that I'm sure there are some folks at X who very much care. But whether that's the sentiment held by the people in charge, I can't say, though I have my suspicions anyway. According to the article, Groc, the AI chat bot from X falsely claimed that it was too late for presidential ballots to change in nine states, including in Minnesota, that the candidates were already locked and loaded, and that anyone who had failed to get on the ballot already is out of luck. But quote, hey, there's always twenty twenty eight right end quote. Because of course Grock is sassy. And this is relevant obviously because here in the United States, current President Joe Biden has dropped out of the election rate and Kamala Harris, the vice president, is currently in line to get the Democratic nomination for the Democratic Party. So clearly, if we were at a point where it's too late to put people on the ballot to change the presidential ballots, then that would be a huge problem for the Democrats, because they're presumptive candidate would not be allowed to be added However, that's not the case. No state has passed the deadline for candidates to be added to the ballot, not in Minnesota, not any other state. We haven't reached that point. But now misinformation is spreading online about this because GROX said, Hey, it's too late, so tough luck, and it's just not true. I think most of us have a handle on how social platforms can facilitate the distribution and misinformation. But this is a case where X isn't just facility hating the spread of misinformation, it is generating the actual misinformation, Like the platform itself, or at least the AI chatbot that's created for that platform, is doing it. Folks at X have pointed out that GROC comes with a disclaimer that urges users to independently verify the information that's coming out of the chatbot. I don't see this as a get off jail free card. Actually, I see this as a condemnation of AI, specifically generative AI, because if you know that your tool is prone to or at least capable of generating falsehoods, maybe don't distribute the tool to customers. Like, what is the point of having an AI chatbot if the user can't trust what the chatbot says, why have a chatbot at all unless the chatbot's reliable. If you have to look up everything the chatbot tells you anyway, you might as well skip having the chatbot, just go straight to researching the question, right, because otherwise what are you doing? It seems in line, however, with Musk's approach in general. It reminds me of how Tesla has both autopilot and full self driving products and Tesla cars. Both of those, I would argue, give a false sense of what they're capable of based upon their names. Like I've often said, full self driving, which by the way, isn't full self driving. That's my opinion, But I feel like it is in line with that, And I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as how AI is playing a part in the dissemination of information and misinformation during the election cycle. Okay, I've got a bunch more stories to go through before we start into those, let's take a quick break. We're back. So, in a rare event in US politics this week, week, the Senate unanimously passed a federal bill that would let victims of non consensual deep fakes of a sexually explicit nature sue the people who create and traffic in such material. This can include images, video, audio, et cetera. So deep fakes have been a problem for a while now, and it's a problem that disproportionately victimizes women. So this bill would make it possible for victims of deep fakes sexually explicit deep fakes to seek civil penalties against those who are making or sharing or receiving those deep fakes. The bill will still need to pass the House of Representatives before it can move on to the President's desk to get signed into law, and as of right now, that bill is in committee at the House of Representatives. Alexandra Occasio Cortes AOC. She's championing this and has made some very passionate arguments as to why the bill is needed because as of right now, there are very few avenues that victims of deep fis can pursue to get justice or any kind of action on their behalf. And that is pretty horrifying, because, I mean, this is like a consent issue, and deep fakes can cause not just incredible emotional and psychological trauma, which they can. That alone is enough to require some sort of of measure against them, but they can also impact a person's ability to make a living through no fault of their own, Like the person literally hasn't done anything, but an AI generated image or video has given them a terrible reputation and there has to be a system in place to seek justice for this. So I feel this is a very good step toward addressing a growing and disturbing problem. Moving on to other issues with AI. Sag AFTRA that's a union that presents typically actors and other performers in film, television, and video games. Well, the video game group of performers are now going on strike, so this includes voice performers as well as motion capture performers, and the reason they're going on strike is over the fact that the union has been unable to reach a satisfying agreement during contract negotiations with various video game companies. And these are like the big video game companies, so the contract agreement span a lot of territory. It's not just one thing, but one important element within all of that is over the role of AI, and specifically AI's ability to replicate voices and likenesses. And that makes a lot of sense to me. That. This would be a big sticking point because if I were hired for a gig because of my voice or my likeness, I don't want AI to copy me, because then that copy could be used in perpetuity without my participation or compensation. I would be taking one gig and essentially putting myself out of a job forever because that copy could get passed around, and who knows what stuff my AI mimic might be incorporated into. I could find a copy of myself in projects that I never would have agreed to work on. That's not really cool, right, Like if I were hired to voice something that I really believed in, I was like, Oh, this is a really cool story, and I believe in the developer, and I believe in the story they're trying to tell. I would love to be part of this, by the way, I would love to be part of stuff like that. That would be a lot of fun. Then, yeah, that's great, But what if they then used my voice to generate a copy of it and put it into something that I would find morally objectionable or it goes against my own personal beliefs. That's a real problem. Apparently, these AI points in the agreements have been contentious, with video game companies reluctant to promise that they're not going to use AI tools that could lead to the detriment of union members. Interestingly, striking members are still allowed to participate in appearances at San Diego Comic Con, which started earlier this week and goes through the weekend, and they can do so without penalty because usually a striking sag after member isn't supposed to promote any work that is covered by the strike, but in this case, the proximity of the strike to the Comic Con event called for an exception, so folks who were scheduled to appear can still do so. They can still talk about the projects they were hired to do, and that's really good news for fans. Potentially, it's also good news for union members who may be able to take the opportunity to speak about their concerns regarding AI and other aspects of the dispute. At the top of this episode, I talked about how Meta's Lama III performed well in certain benchmarks against other AS models well. Google's Deep Mind department similarly unveiled a couple of AI systems, one called Alpha Proof and another called alpha geometry two that performed really well on a very tough math test. According to Google, the AI models were able to achieve the equivalent of a silver metal performance by solving problems that were part of the most recent International Mathematical olympiad BENJ. Edwards of Ours Technica has a great piece about this. It's titled Google claims Math breakthrough with proof solving AI models. Benje also does a really good job of pointing out that measuring AI capabilities is tricky. It is not always straightforward. In fact, it rarely is straightforward. The achievement does mark advancements in AI's ability to parse and then solve complex mathematical problems, and that is pretty cool. But ben J. Edwards also quotes Sir Timothy Gowers about this. Sir Timothy Gowers took to AX and wrote, quote the program needed a lot longer than the human competitors, some of the problems over sixty hours end quote, and that if human competitors had been given the same luxury of time, they probably would have scored higher in this test as well. So what Gowers is saying is this is not an apples to apples comparison. You can't say, oh, this AI program is x times smarter than the average person when it comes to math, because you have to take into account all the different parameters and say, well, if the people who are really good at math were given the same amount of time to solve a problem, they might have done it as well or better than the AI model did. Gowers also pointed out that humans had to convert these problems into a language that the AI models could understand before they could tackle the problem in the first place. So again, the AI models weren't presented with the exact same problem, or the problem wasn't framed the exact same way for the AI versus the human competitors who actually participated in the Olympiad, and that if the AI had had to parse the problems the way that humans did, maybe the AI wouldn't have performed as well. So yeah, it's complicated hopping over to open ai because yeah, we're not done with AI yet. Open ai announced this week that a prototype version of its search GPT product is now ready to go. This is open AI's artificial intelligence powered search tool. It is a clear shot across Google's bow, and according to open ai, the tool will provide quote fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources end quote. I have signed up to join the wait list to try this out, but as of this recording, I have not yet personally been able to use this tool. I do have concerns similar to what I was saying earlier. I have these concerns with pretty much all AI enabled tools that are like And one of those concerns is that I worry AI enhanced search will mean fewer people will actually navigate to what the real sources of the information were. They'll just be satisfied with the AI summarized or synthesized results and that's it, Which means the pages that the AI is drawing from the source pages are going to get less traffic, and that means less revenue, which ultimately means the businesses that actually operate these pages could find themselves strapped for cash. And then what happens, you know, when the underlying infrastructure that the AI is dependent upon goes rotten. What happens then? Plus there's still the worry of mistakes, you know, like confabulations slash hallucinations with Generative AI. Google's version of this same sort of tool famously suggested that people include non toxic glue in their pizza ingredients in order to prevent cheese from sliding off their pizza. Clearly that is not good advice. So how reliable will search GPTB and how will folks know if the answers they get are actually good? I mean, I guess one way you could check is you could click through to the sources. But then again, why do you even need AI search at that point? Like, if you already have to double check to make sure the answer that AI gave you is relevant and accurate, what good is the AI? If you have to double check, then you might as well just get rid of the AI and go straight to the source in the first place. It's just like I was saying before, AI is just making things, giving an extra step. It's like turning to a random person next to you and saying, like, how do you repair a car? Like you have no idea they have any experience or knowledge in that realm, and if they give you advice, you don't know if it's trustworthy. You have to look it up. Well whatever open AI made this announcement, and after that, alphabet shares fell around three percent. So I guess like these questions are ones that don't necessarily run around the minds of investors. I'm just gonna progressively go bonkers over here as the world continues to embrace AI and I keep asking, but wait, I have questions. I also have more news. But before we get to that, let's take another quick break. So before the break, I was talking about Google and speaking of alphabet slash Google. One of the other companies in that group of companies under alphabet is YouTube, and it could be facing some pretty tough issues in Russia. So the Russian government has indicated that YouTube could see that the agents will throttle YouTube traffic by forty percent on desktop computers this week, So slowing down YouTube traffic by forty percent, that could increase to a seventy percent slowed down by next week. And you might ask why why is the Russian government throttling traffic from YouTube in Russia? Well, it's because YouTube previously placed a block on some channels that were carrying Russian state media. Russian state media has a bit of a reputation for having, let us say, a biased view of the news, and that it often is just really seen as a mouthpiece for the Russian government itself, and thus is really a way of distributing propaganda. So presumably what has happened is YouTube determined that some Russian state media YouTube channels were in violation of YouTube's policies and so block them, And the Russian government's response is We're going to make all traffic to YouTube super duper slow, so that Russian users will get really frustrated about this unless you reinstate those channels. So essentially this is a threat. It's a standoff between YouTube and the Russian government. And I did not see any responses from YouTube about this as of the time I'm recording this episode. That may be different by the time you hear it, but yeah, right now, it is like a standoff, which is a big old yikes from me. Now, if you don't use Google, but you are used to seeing search results include stuff from Reddit threads, that could be changing. So Reddit has a content policy that forbid sites from crawling Reddit forums without first agreeing to follow Reddit's rules, and those rules cover a lot of ground. One of the big rules that Reddit has is that companies that want to crawl Reddit for the purposes of gathering data to train AI models have to pay for that privilege that you've got to fork over some cash if you're going to use Reddit to train up your AI. This is something that a lot of Reddit users are actually salty about because you know, a lot of people don't want their stuff to be used to train AI in the first place. They don't have any say in the matter, like Reddit gets to make that call. They don't, And some users are thinking that's not really fair that they should have more control over the content they create. Reddit says no, once you post it here, it's ours, like it was yours then you hit post and now it belongs to us. And users also are kind of salty because the compensation it's going to Reddit doesn't go to the people who are generating the content in the first place. Right, Like, these AI models are using Reddit content to train themselves, but the people who are making the content, they don't get any of the money. The money goes to Reddit, So it's going to the platform, but not the people who are creating the actual content that's training AI. So yeah, there are a couple of reasons why Reddit users are not happy about this. But anyway, this means that any company that has not agreed to these these rules that Reddit has posted, they are not allowed to crawl the site. Without crawling the site, you can't index it, and specific threads will not pop up in search results. If that is the case. Apparently, search engines not named Google have largely not yet forged these kinds of agreements with Reddit, So the result is that if you search for topics that are covered on Reddit forums or Reddit threads, you will get fewer results on non Google search engines. Some of them will return some Reddit results, but others won't. For a full breakdown on this issue, including some really great insight into the search engine landscape in general, i recommend reading Sharon Harding's excellent piece in Ours Technica's article titled non Google search engines blocked from showing recent Reddit results. Shila Chiang CNBC reports that Apple is no longer among the top five smartphone brands in China. Rather, Chinese companies domestic companies are taking up the top five spots, and Apple has fallen to hold fourteen percent of the market share in the country. The Chinese market has been a really important one for Apple. The company famously courted Chinese officials and business representatives while trying to establish an inroad into Chinese markets for the iPhone. Ironically, the iPhone was being manufactured in China for two years, but not sold in Chinese stores, at least not legally sold in China for those two years. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared China an extremely competitive market in the smartphone space, which was I feel like it's coded language. The country's government has frequently favored domestic companies over products coming from Western companies. I've talked several times about how tech companies from the West have viewed China as a potential gold mine because the country does have a truly enormous population. But I personally think the price of doing business in China is really high. It's high enough to make it hard to say whether or not it's worth the effort. Also, it frequently means that you are implicated or complicit with ethically questionable state programs, which is more than putting it lightly. In what could have been a nightmare scenario, a security vendor called no B four that's all one word, No B and then the Numeral four hired a software engineer to fill a job in the company's AI division. The job hire purported to be a US based software engineer, but in fact was a hacker from North Korea. And this hacker had stolen some US credentials and used a stock photo and then altered it with AI to make a fake headshot in order to fool the company. They apparently looked enough like that headshot to fool hiring managers because they then went on multiple video conferencing calls as part of the hiring process. But yeah, this hacker managed to get through the entire interview process, multiple rounds, even got through a background check, and according to a company representative, quote we sent them their Mac workstation and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware end quote. We say. Fortunately, the company security software caught on right away and within short order, security kind of like sequestered off the hire's computer so that they could not cause further mischief, you know, to like company systems and stuff like that. They think that it's quite possible this hacker was a state backed operative that North Korea was actually you know, kind of sponsoring hackers like this to try and infiltrate various companies like security companies and then cause problems from there. There are few public details available about this, largely because Nobifore says there's an ongoing FBI investigation into the matter. But yeah, it sounds like hiring managers might need to be on the lookout for potential threat agents during the hiring process. Fun times. Around five hundred Microsoft employees working on the venerable World of Warcraft title have voted to join the hoard. By that, I mean they've voted in support of unionization. Microsoft is pledged to remain neutral in the proceedings. That was actually part of Microsoft's concessions during the long process in which the company was attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, which it ultimately did. Activision Blizzard, by the way, is the company behind World of Warcraft. Blizzard has already recognized this union, which is a key step. It's one that means the union employees won't have to appeal to the US government in order to force Blizzard to acknowledge them. Sometimes that does happen. When a company refuses to recognize a union, the workers join a few other unionized groups within Microsoft's video game division. More than one seven hundred and fifty employees in that specific part of Microsoft are now in a union, and all I can say is solidarity. Not long ago, I talked about how SpaceX's Falcon nine was grounded following a launch vehicle's mid flight failure that resulted in the loss of a big group of Starlink satellites. But up to that point, the Falcon nine had a stellar, pun intended safety record, which is kind of unheard of in the space industry if we're being brutally honest, I mean, space is hard, so having a vehicle that has had the reliability of the Falcon nine is a rare thing, indeed. But the FAA has now ordered that the fleet, which was grounded to allow for an investigation, can now return to operation. The investigation still ongoing, but the FAA says the found no reason to block operations, so there were no public safety issues present as far as they could tell. So while they will continue to investigate the matter, the Falcon nine can return to service. And that's great news for the industry as a whole, for the United States in particular, because the Falcon nine is the launch vehicle that can take people to the International Space Station here in the United States. So yeah, SpaceX's launch vehicles have become absolutely critical for the space industry here in the United States. The company says it will be ready to return to operations as early as tomorrow, Saturday, July twenty seventh, twenty twenty four. Okay, that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff with the Tech News. I do have a couple of recommendations for y'all in order to read up on stuff. First up is Jordan Velenski's piece for cnn dot Com titled Grinder is limiting location services at the Olympics to protect LGBTQ plus athletes. So this is about how the Grinder app is proactively protecting athlete identities. This is important because some of those folks are coming from countries that have draconian laws that target people who belong to the LGBTQ plus community. So, in other words, you're not going to be able to open the app and change your location to the Olympic village and then go looking around for Olympic athletes who may be part of that LGBTQ plus community. It's not going to work, and that's for the protection of those athletes. I think that's a good idea, but the article goes into further detail, so check it out. Next up is an article by Alphonso Maruccia of tech Spot. It's titled spyware Maker gets hacked. Data reveals thousands of remotely controlled devices. So this article covers the case of a company called spy Tech Software, which is in a questionable business I would argue, and talks about how hackers got access to the company systems and what that all means. It is well worth a read. That's it for me this week. I hope all of you are well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. 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