Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 05/19 – ChatGPT Comes To The App Store

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

OpenAI has launched an official ChatGPT app for iPhones and iPads. Android coming soon. The Supreme Court actually propped up Section 230, allowing it to live another day. Apple as an example of why companies are looking to keep the AI in house. And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: Mimecast.com TryNom.com/ride Links: AI in your pocket: ChatGPT officially comes to iPhone with new app (ArsTechnica) Link to the official ChatGPT App in the App Store Supreme Court shields Twitter from liability for terror-related content and leaves Section 230 untouched (CNN) Supreme Court Leaves 230 Alone For Now, But Justice Thomas Gives A Pretty Good Explanation For Why It Exists In The First Place (TechDirt) Apple Restricts Employee Use of ChatGPT, Joining Other Companies Wary of Leaks (WSJ) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: In Battle Over A.I., Meta Decides to Give Away Its Crown Jewels (NYTimes) This Is Catfishing on an Industrial Scale (Wired) Cheesier, Saucier, and Drowning in Caviar; How TikTok took over the menu. (GrubStreet) Japan’s sleepy tech scene is ready for a comeback (Rest of World) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMame right home for Friday, May 19th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. OpenAI has launched an official chat GPT app for iPhones and iPads. Android coming soon. The Supreme Court actually propped up Section 230, allowing it to live another day. Apple, as an example of why companies are looking to keep the AI in-house, and of course, the weekend long-wring suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. OpenAI has launched a free chat GPT app for iOS in the U.S. offering the web versions features plus history sync across devices and speech input via OpenAI's Whisper, quoting Ars Technica. Like on ChatGPT's website, users must log into the ChatGPT app with an

open AI account to use it, and the AI processing takes place off the device on OpenAI servers, so it requires an internet connection. ChatGPT plus subscribers have access to similar features as the web version such as GPT4, promises of early access to new features, and faster response times. In our tests, we did not see beta access for chat GPT with browsing or chat GPT plugins. In our early experiments with the new app, we found a bare bones but functional application that serves as a much better interface to chat GPT than attempting to use the chat GPT website through a mobile browser. Early tests of the whisper-based voice recognition proved buggy, often returning errors, perhaps due to overloaded servers on OpenAI's part, but those issues might be

resolved soon. OpenAI has started the app's rollout in the U.S. with plans to expand to additional countries in the coming weeks. We're eager to see how you use the app. As we gather user feedback, we're committed to continuous feature and safety improvements for ChatGBTGBT, writes OpenAI and announcement blog post. According to OpenAI, the release of the ChatGBT app for iOS is a step towards our goal of converting state-of-the-art research into practical tools while continually increasing their accessibility, end quote. OpenAI has also confirmed plans for the launch of the chat GPT app for Android devices soon, extending the availability of this tool to a broader range of mobile users.

In true App Store fashion, a search for the app within the App Store app itself resulted in many junk results, so your best bet for finding the app comes from clicking a direct app store link on your device like this one, end quote. They said this one because they have a direct link in the piece. I'll try to remember to put that link also in the show notes, but if I don't, click through on the piece and you'll find the direct link. This is a big deal. The Supreme Court of the United States declined to address Section 230 protections in one case and shielded Twitter from liability for terror-related content in another case. Bottom line here, between these two cases, Section 230 lives another day, quoting CNN. The Supreme Court handed Silicon Valley a massive

victory on Thursday as it protected online platforms from two lawsuits that legal experts had warned could have upended the internet. The twin decisions preserved social media company's ability to avoid lawsuits stemming from terrorist-related content and are a defeat for tech industry critics who say platforms are unaccountable. In one of the two cases, Twitter versus Tamina, the Supreme Court ruled Twitter will not have to face accusations it aided and abetted terrorism when it hosted tweets created by the terror group ISIS. The court also dismissed Gonzalez v. Google, another closely watched case about social media content moderation, sidestepping an invitation to narrow a key federal liability shield for websites known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Thursday's decision leaves a lower court ruling in place that protected social media platforms from a broad range of content moderation lawsuits. The Twitter decision was unanimous. and written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who said that social media platforms are a little different from other digital technologies. It might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants for illegal and sometimes terrible ends. Thomas wrote, but the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally, end quote. Thomas's opinion reflected the court's struggle to identify in oral arguments what kinds of speech ought to trigger liability for social media and what kind deserve protections. I think the court recognized the importance of these platforms

for billions of people for communicating and stepped back from interfering with that, said Samir Jane, Vice President of Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group that filed briefs in support of the tech industry. For months, many legal experts had viewed the Twitter and Google cases as a sign the court might seek sweeping changes to Section 230, a law that is faced bipartisan criticism in connection with tech companies' content moderation decisions. Thomas in particular has expressed vocal interest in hearing a Section 230 case. Expectations of a hugely disruptive outcome in both cases prompted what Kate Clonick, a law professor at St. John's University, described as an insane flood of friend of the court briefs. As oral arguments unfolded, however, and as

justices visibly grappled with the complexities of internet speech, the likelihood of massive changes to the law seemed to recede, end quote. Indeed, over in tech dirt, Mike Maznick, who always seems to be smart about these things, says this could bode well for Section 30's continued survival. Quote, basically my read on this is that the court is effectively saying that if you create algorithms that are just designed to take inputs and provide outputs based on those inputs, you're in the clear. The only hypothetical where you might face some liability is if you designed an algorithm to deliberately produce violative content, like an AI tool whose sole job is to defame people or to take any input and purposefully try to convince you to

engage in criminal acts. Those seem unlikely to actually exist in the first place, so the language above actually seems, again, to be pretty useful. The ruling again doubles down on the fact that there was nothing specific to the social media sites that was deliberately designed to aid terrorists, and that makes the plaintiff's argument nonsense. Overall, this was kind of a weird case and a weird ruling. Supreme Court of the United States seems to have recognized they never should have taken the case in the first place, and this ruling effectively allowed them to back out of making a ruling on 230 that they would regret. However, instead, Justice Thomas of all people, more or less laid out all of the reasons why 230 exists and why we want that in place to make

sure that liability applies to the party actually making something violative rather than the incidental tools used in the process. It also serves to reinforce a key point. Contrary to the belief of many, 230 is not the singular law that protects internet websites from liability. Lots of things do as well. Two-30 really only serves as an express lane to get to the same exact result. That's important because it saves money, time, and resources from being wasted on cases that are going to fail in the end anyway. But it doesn't mean that changing or removing 230 won't magically make companies liable for things their users do. It won't. I've mentioned before looking for companies working to bring generative AI on-premises,

as it were, and here's why. Sources tell the journal that Apple has restricted internal use of chat GPT, also GitHub co-pilot and other external AI tools due to concerns over potential leaks of confidential data. So are companies going to build these themselves internally? Can they? Quote, Apple is concerned workers who use these types of programs could release confidential data according to the document. When people use these models, data is sent back to the developer to enable continued improvements, presenting the potential for an organization to unintentionally share proprietary or confidential information. OpenAI disclosed in March that it took chat GPT temporarily offline because a bug allowed some users to see the titles from a user's chat history. Apple is known for its rigorous security measures to guard information about future products and consumer data.

A number of organizations have also grown wary of the technology as its workers have begun using it for everything from writing emails and marketing material to coding software. J.P. Morgan Chase and Verizon have barred use. David Banks, Chancellor of New York City School said in an opinion column, published third. Thursday that it rescinded its chat GPT ban. Amazon.com has urged its engineers who want to use chat GPT for coding assistance to use its own internal AI tool, a spokeswoman recently told the journal. Apple is also working on its own large language models, people familiar with the matter said, end quote. Time for the week on long-read suggestions. We've mentioned before how with all this AI talk, one name that doesn't come up very much yet is Apple. But also, have you noticed meta doesn't come up

that much as well? Well, it's interesting. As this whole open source versus platformed AI debate unfolds, meta has chosen an interesting side, quoting the New York Times. In February, Meta made an unusual move in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. It decided to give away its AI crown jewels. The Silicon Valley Giant, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, had created an AI technology called Lama that can produce online chatbots. But instead of keeping the technology to itself, META released the system's underlying computer code into the wild. Academics, government researchers, and others who gave their email address to META could download the code once the company had vetted the individual. Essentially, META was giving its AI technology away as open source software,

computer code that can be freely copied, modified, and reused, providing outsiders with everything they needed to quickly build chatbots of their own. The platform that will win will be the open one, Jan Lecun, META's chief AI scientist said in an interview, as a race to lead AI heat. eats up across Silicon Valley, Meta is standing out from its rivals by taking a different approach to the technology. Driven by its founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Meta believes that the smartest thing to do is share its underlying AI engines as a way to spread its influence and ultimately move faster toward the future. Its actions contrast with those of Google and Open AI, the two companies leading the new AI arms race, worried that AI tools like chatbots will be used

to spread disinformation, hate speech, and other toxic content. Those companies are becoming increasingly secretive about the methods and software that underpin their AI products. But Meta said it saw no reason to keep its code to itself. The growing secrecy at Google and Open AI is a, quote, huge mistake, Dr. LeCoon said, and a really bad take on what is happening. He argues that consumers and governments will refuse to embrace AI unless it is outside the control of companies like Google and Meta. Do you want every AI system to be under the control of a couple of powerful American companies, he asked, end quote. Next, I wonder why this hasn't happened before, but I guess it's always happened. It just doesn't come to light very often.

From Wired, an investigation found that hundreds of freelancers were hired as customer service staff used to catfish users into paying for subscriptions to niche dating and hookup sites. Catfishing on an industrial scale, as they put it, quote, once a user is hooked in the conversation, the aim is always to stretch out the talking phase. If a New York user asked to meet up with your virtual, the freelancer is to say, let me check my schedule and let you know, says Liam, even if you are writing from Budapest. If the user asked to move off to a free messaging app, the freelancers must write through the virtuals, I prefer to stay in here until I know you better, or I feel safer on this app until

we are better acquainted and so on. Wired discussed V-desk's business model with Volcan Tapali and Fangzhou Wang, who research romance fraud and criminology at Georgia State University. evidence-based cybersecurity research group. It's possible this falls under romance scamming. What do you think, Tappali says? I'm not sure, but wow, the system is efficient, says Wang. In any case, it's like the owners are trying to cover their backs with the T's and C's. The niche dating portals, which have names like snap date, horny spot, sex-dater, discreet meets, only flirts.com, passions love, and be my pair, funnel users into the system and usually include lengthy terms and conditions.

Most of them say something along the lines of, we may use our system profiles at our discretion to communicate with users to enhance our user's entertainment experience. According to Topali, the language is ambiguous enough that it might let people think, hey, maybe I'm talking to a porn star or that maybe only a small number of them are fakes, end quote. Then this piece from Grub Street has gotten a lot of chatter overnight, how TikTok is taking over restaurants, quote, The camera zooms in on Goldberg's bug-eyed, orgasmic expression as a strand of cheese stretches from a mozzarella stick to his mouth. Let me just say this. The spicy rigatoni blue carbony out of the

stratosphere. The cheesy maz bites were ridiculous. These homemade balls had me dancing, and the truffle cream pasta was the knockout punch, he said. Goldberg's video got one and a half million views and led to a huge spike in reservations, Isidori says. Spurred by the success, Goldberg next suggested Isidori host an influencer party. They invited as many TikTokers as they could. Several dozen showed up. All the food was free and everyone filmed. It was like, foods on the table, we're shaving cheese on top of it, Isidori recalls. Everyone's drinking wine, the music's playing, let the cameras roll, end quote. Compared to traditional publicity, the cost of comping a meal is relatively low, though influencers with more than a million followers

often want cash too. To Goldberg, even these rates are justified. For some restaurants, it would be stupid for them not to pay $10,000 for the day, he says. I know that sounds high, but you're genuinely getting a million-plus views. How does he quantify this? Dozens of restaurants have shared case studies with us detailing the before and after impact of our videos, he claims, end quote. Finally, from the rest of world, signs that Japan's tech scene, which, we have to be honest, has been an also-round for a long time, is finally waking up. Quote, show Hayashi might be a walking cliche in San Francisco or Austin, the 33-year-old founder with two successful startups and a string of degrees to his name, met me in a light-filled co-working space before jetting overseas

for a weekend of meetings. But here in Japan, Hayashi is a new breed of revolutionary, a graduate of the elite University of Tokyo. His expected path would have been to settle into a lifetime job, perhaps as an international diplomat or at a time-tested corporate empire like Mitsubishi. Hayashi's turning point came when he attended a massive startup conference in Singapore in 2010 and realized Japan didn't have a single representative. Frustrated, he asked to become one and found a new calling. Entrepreneurship. I realize that diplomats don't create anything.

They just negotiate based on what's there. Hayashi said, I wanted to create. It changed my life. Japan is the third richest nation in the world, but has only managed to produce some 10 unicorns. Compare that to over 600 unicorns in the U.S. and more than 300 in China. Its tech startup scene has for years been held back by siloed and in transient corporate leaders and an aging risk-averse populace whose fear of innovation

turned a once futuristic nation into a digital backwater. Over the past several years, though, more and more people like Hayashi have been straying from their expected path. Their choices are being validated by record amounts of funding flowing into tech startups, new city government initiatives that support fledgling entrepreneurs and tax breaks. Combined with the behavioral circuit breaker of the pandemic, it's a turning point. Japan's tech scene is perhaps finally beginning to free itself from decades. of inertia, end quote. I have to say I've seen this. Not only have I been hearing from more founders coming from Japan of late than I ever have before, I'm hearing more and more examples of founders

interested in moving to Japan to do their startups. All righty, two new bonus episodes again this weekend. It's sort of been book month on the show, hasn't it? Well, I've got another one for you. I believe we're going to talk to Brady Dale about his new book on Sam Bankman-Fried. I say, leave because I assume we are. This is another one where I actually haven't recorded it yet. I'm going to do that as soon as I hit publish on this. Assuming the internet doesn't eat, that conversation. Look for that on Saturday and then on Sunday, another nugget from the internet history podcast, an interview with Amazon's first employee. The first person Jeff and McKenzie Bezos hired back when they had just incorporated Amazon and were running it out of their house.

Amazing, amazing entrepreneurial history. Enjoy that. Talk to you on Monday.