Ars Technica: “The European Commission will require 19 large online platforms and search engines to comply with new online content regulations starting on August 25, European officials said. The EC specified which companies must comply with the rules for the first time, announcing today that it “adopted the first designation decisions under the Digital Services Act.” Five of the 19 platforms are run by Google, specifically YouTube, Google Search, the Google Play app and digital media store, Google Maps, and Google Shopping. Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram are on the list, as are Amazon’s online store, Apple’s App Store, Microsoft’s Bing search engine, TikTok, Twitter, and Wikipedia. These platforms were designated because they each reported having over 45 million active users in the EU as of February 17. The other listed platforms are Alibaba AliExpress, Booking.com, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and German online retailer Zalando. Companies have four months to comply with the full set of new obligations and could face fines of up to 6 percent of a provider’s annual revenue. One new rule is a ban on advertisements that target users based on sensitive data such as ethnic origin, political opinions, or sexual orientation…”
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Daily Archives: April 27, 2023
The Rapid Rise of Generative AI Threatens to Upend US Patent System
FT.com ($) – “As issues about artificial intelligence make their way through the US patent system, greater disclosure about its use may lead to questions about how ideas are formed that are not considered under existing patent rules, warns Dr. Michael Sartori…When members of the US supreme court refused this week to hear a groundbreaking… Continue Reading
Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures
“In the last few years states have advanced a record number of bills that attack LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth. The ACLU is tracking these attacks and working with our national network of affiliates to support LGBTQ people everywhere. While more states every year work to pass laws to protect LGBTQ people, state legislatures are… Continue Reading
Mapping IRS Tax Return Filings Reveals Marked Differences in the Distribution of Income and Dependents
“Most Americans filed their taxes recently, not only providing the federal government with funds needed to operate but also providing the IRS (and ultimately the public) with important data about the reported amounts and sources of income, their number of dependents, and other factors that shape the distribution of financial means across the country. In… Continue Reading
Why you shouldn’t tell AI chatbots your health concerns
Wshington Post: “Search bots have answers — but can you trust them with your questions? Since OpenAI, Microsoft and Google introduced AI chatbots, millions of people have experimented with a new way to search the internet: Engaging in a conversational back-and-forth with a model that regurgitates learnings from across the web. Given our tendency to… Continue Reading
New Twitter, Now With More Hate
USC Information Sciences Institute: “In an analysis of Twitter using natural language processing and AI techniques, researchers found that in the period of time since October 2022: Hateful users have become more hateful. Hate has increased overall. There has been no meaningful change in the quantity of bots. Computer scientist Keith Burghardt at the Information… Continue Reading
The Rule of Law
Sunstein, Cass R., The Rule of Law (March 30, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4405238 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4405238 “The concept of the rule of law is invoked for purposes that are both numerous and diverse, and that concept is often said to overlap with, or to require, an assortment of other practices and ideals, including democracy, free… Continue Reading
Brave Search doesn’t use Bing’s index anymore
Tech Crunch: “Brave just announced that it is now exclusively using its own index for its search engine. In other words, it doesn’t rely on third-party solutions like Bing anymore. When the company launched Brave Search in 2021, it mentioned that it relied on other providers for nearly 13% of its queries. A year later,… Continue Reading
The Purpose of Legal Education
Toussaint, Etienne, The Purpose of Legal Education (March 4, 2023). California Law Review, Vol. 111, No. 1, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4378424 “When President Donald Trump launched an assault on diversity training, critical race theory, and The 1619 Project in September 2020 as “divisive, un-American propaganda,” many law students were presumably confused. After all, law… Continue Reading
Nearly a Year After Roe’s Demise, Americans’ Views of Abortion Access Increasingly Vary by Where They Live
Pew Report: Nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs ruling overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed a national right to abortion, overall public support for legal abortion remains largely unchanged. However, a growing share of Americans living in states where abortion is prohibited say abortions are hard to obtain in their… Continue Reading
