Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 06/06 – Regulators Stirring On AI

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Tech meme right home for Thursday, June 6, 24. I'm Brian McCullough today. Invidia hits $3 trillion, but U.S. regulators aren't sleeping on the AI market, including Nvidia itself. Humane tells users of the AI pin to stop using the charging case immediately.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Google is going to store your maps data on device, and would you take a job at IKEA, but in the metaverse? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. By rising over 5% yesterday, Nvidia's stock hit the $3 trillion market cap. level for the first time. Also, passing Apple as the second most valuable public U.S. company. It's now only behind Microsoft, which is sitting at a $3.15 trillion valuation. Will Nvidia pass that maybe today? Who knows? And then, record scratch. Quoting the New York Times. Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the art of

Starting point is 00:01:39 official intelligence industry in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who are not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential discussions. Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behavior of NVIDIA, the biggest maker of AI chips, has violated antitrust laws, the people said. The FTC will play the lead role in examining the conduct of open AI, which makes the chat-GPT chatbot and Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in open AI and made deals with

Starting point is 00:02:18 other AI companies, the people said. The agreement signals intensifying scrutiny by the Justice Department and the FTC into AI, a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential to upend jobs, information, and people's lives. Both agencies have been at the forefront of the Biden administration's efforts to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies. After a similar deal in 2019, the government investigated Google, Apple, Amazon, and meta, and has since sued each of them on claims they violated anti-monopoly laws. For months, InVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI largely escaped the brunt of the Biden administration's regulatory scrutiny, but that began to change as generative AI, which can produce human-like text, photos, videos, and audio burst onto the scene in late

Starting point is 00:02:59 2022 and created an industry frenzy. Regulators have recently signaled that they want to get ahead of developments in AI. In July, the FTC opened an investigation into whether OpenAI had harmed consumers through its collection of data. In January, the FTC also started a broad inquiry into strategic partnerships between tech giants and AI startups, including Microsoft's investment in OpenAI and Google's and Amazon's investments in Anthropic, another young AI company, end quote. Also, remember that weird aqua hire and all but name from a few weeks ago? The Journal is reporting that the FTC is looking into that, has sent subpoenas to Microsoft and Infliction AI seeking information about how and why they negotiated their partnership.

Starting point is 00:03:43 Quoting the journal, Microsoft and March hired Inflection AI's co-founder and almost all of its employees and agreed to pay the startup around $650 million as part of a licensing fee to resell its technology. Inflections, investors, were told they would be repaid over time by the sales proceeds. Companies are required to report acquisitions valued at more than $119 million to federal antitrust enforcement agencies, which have the option to investigate a deal's impact on competition. The FTC or the Justice Department, which share antitrust authority, can sue to block mergers or other investments if an investigation finds the deal would substantially reduce competition or lead to a monopoly. The FTC has already been

Starting point is 00:04:22 sifting through AI investments made by leading companies such as Microsoft and Google. owner alphabet. FTC chair Lena Khan has expressed concern that tech behemists could eventually acquire or control the most promising AI applications, giving them a tight grip on systems that have human-like abilities to converse, create art, and write computer code. The FTC is now drilling down on Microsoft's deal with inflection seeking information about how and why they negotiated their partnership according to a person familiar with the matter and records viewed by the Wall Street Journal. Civil subpoenas, the commission sent recently to Microsoft and inflection, seek documents going back about two years. The agency is trying to determine whether Microsoft crafted a deal that

Starting point is 00:04:59 would give it control of inflection, but also Dodge FTC review of the transaction, the person said. If the agency finds that Microsoft should have reported and sought government review of its deal with inflection, the FTC could bring an enforcement action against Microsoft. Officials could ask a court to find Microsoft and suspend the transaction while the FTC conducts a full-scale investigation of the deal's impact on competition, end quote. All of this seems to signal a regulatory stirring of significant magnitude around the AI space, at least here in the U.S. The Assistant Attorney General for antitrust, Jonathan Cantor, told the financial times he is

Starting point is 00:05:35 examining, quote, monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape in AI, also the cloud, GPUs, and chips, quote, regulators are concerned that the nascent AI sector is, quote, at the high watermark of competition, not the floor, and must act, quote, with urgency to ensure that already dominant tech companies do not control the market, Cantor said. Sometimes the most meaningful intervention is when the intervention is in real time, he added. The beauty of that is you can be less invasive. Canter, now in his third year at the Department of Justice, has, alongside the Federal Trade Commission spearheaded a tougher antitrust approach, suing tech groups such as Google and Apple for what the U.S. government alleges our unfair monopolies in services, including app stores,

Starting point is 00:06:16 search engines, and digital advertising. He has worked closely with the FTC's chair at Lena Khan. He said regulators were looking at the generative AI sector and examining the competitive landscape in microchips. Cantor said the GPUs needed to train LLMs had become a scarce resource. Nvidia dominates sales of the most advanced GPUs and its market capitalization. Surge passed apples on Wednesday to become the world's second most valuable listed company. Cantor pointed to government initiatives to boost domestic production, including the $39 billion of incentives in the Chips Act, but added that antitrust regulators were looking at how chipmakers decide to allocate their most advanced products amid rampant demand.

Starting point is 00:06:54 One of the things to think through is conflict of interest, a thumb on the scale, because they fear enabling a competitor or are helping to prop up a customer, Cantor said. If decisions are being made that show companies are not caring about maximizing profitability or generating shareholder value, but more looking at the competitive consequences, then that would be an issue, end quote. Humane is telling AI pin owners that they should immediately stop using the charging case, citing issues with a battery cell that, quote, may pose a fire safety risk.

Starting point is 00:07:32 Quoting the verge, there are issues with a third-party battery cell. Humane says it has disqualified that vendor and is moving to find another supplier. It also specified that the AI pin itself, the magnetic battery booster and its charging pad, are not affected. As recompense, the company is offering two free months of its subscription service, which is required for most of its functionality. The company didn't say if it will offer a replacement charging case, only that it will, quote, share additional information after investigating the issue, end quote. Humane seems to be sort of a star-cross startup, doesn't it? Remember they were seeking someone to buy them out at around a billion dollars.

Starting point is 00:08:10 How's that going? Well, here's a little background info on how everything has been going at Humane in recent months. Quoting the Times. Days before gadget reviewers weighed in on the Humane AI pin, a futuristic wearable device powered by artificial intelligence, the founders of the company gathered their employees and encouraged them to brace themselves. The reviews might be disappointing, they warned. Humane's founders Bethany Bonjourno and Imran Chowd were right. In April, reviewers brutally panned the new $699 product, which Humane had marketed for a year with ads and at glitzy events like Paris Fashion Week. The AI pin was, quote,

Starting point is 00:08:47 totally broken and had, quote, glaring flaws, some reviewers said. One declared it the worst product I've ever reviewed. About a week after the reviews came out, Humane started talking to HP, the computer and printer company, about selling itself for more than a billion dollars. Three people with knowledge of the conversation said. Other potential buyers have emerged, though talks have been casual, and no formal sales process has begun. Humane retained title partners and investment bank to help navigate the discussions while also managing a new funding round that would value it at $1.1 billion. Three people with knowledge of the plan said, as of early April, Humane had received around 10,000 orders for the AI pin, a small fraction of

Starting point is 00:09:25 the 100,000 that it hoped to sell this year, two people familiar with its sales said. In recent months, the company has also grappled with employee departures and changed a return policy to address canceled orders, end quote. Google will store Maps timeline data locally on users' devices instead of their Google account starting December 1st, which is, something they actually announced in December of last year, but I think I missed it. Quoting the verge. In an email sent to users, Google says you have until December 1st to save all your travel to your mobile device before it starts deleting your old data. Timeline, previously known as location history, is the feature that tracks your routes and trips based on your phone's location,

Starting point is 00:10:10 allowing you to revisit all the places you've been in the past. But now, instead of tying all this information to your Google account, the company will link it to your devices that you use. Google first announced this change in December 2023 as part of its efforts to double down on privacy. The company previously began deleting locations such as abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss centers, and more from location history, and updated maps to prevent authorities from accessing location history. The transition to on-device storage also means that you'll no longer be able to access your timeline from the web in December. If you don't enable the new timeline settings by then, Google will attempt to move the past 90 days of your travel history to the first

Starting point is 00:10:47 device you sign into Google on. The company will then delete any data older than that. If you want to keep using timeline, open Google Maps on your mobile device, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the screen and choose your timeline. From there, select whether you want to keep your location data until you manually delete it or have Google auto-deleted after 3, 18, or 36 months. Google will store the information you want to keep on your device, end quote. Stability AI has released stable audio open. a text-to-audio model that generates up to 47 seconds of samples and sound effects, though it's prohibited for commercial use at the moment, quoting TechCrunch.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Stability AI, the startup behind the AI-powered art generator, stable diffusion, has released an open AI model for generating sounds and songs that it claims was trained exclusively on royalty-free recordings. Called Stable Audio Open, the generative model takes a text description, for example, rock beat played in a treated studio session drumming on an acoustic kit, and outputs a recording up to 47 seconds in length. The model was trained using around 486,000 samples from free music libraries, free sound, and the free music archive.

Starting point is 00:12:07 Stability AI says that the model can be used to create drum beats, instrument riffs, ambient noises, and production elements for videos, films, and TV shows, as well as to edit existing songs or apply the style of one song, for example, smooth jazz to another. A key benefit of this open source release is that users can fine tune the model on their own custom audio data. Stability AI wrote in a post on its corporate blog. For example, a drummer could fine tune on samples of their own drum recordings to generate

Starting point is 00:12:34 new beats. Stable Audio Open has its limitations, however, it can't produce full songs, melodies, or vocals, at least not good ones. Stability AI says that it's not optimized for this and suggests that users looking for those capabilities opt for the company's premium stable audio service. Stable Audio Open also can't be used commercially. Its terms of service prohibited, and it doesn't perform equally well across musical styles and cultures or with descriptions in languages other than English. Biasis, Stability AI blames on the training data. The source of data is potentially lacking diversity, and all

Starting point is 00:13:07 cultures are not equally represented in the dataset, Stability AI writes in the description of the model. The generated samples from the model will reflect the biases from the training data, quote. Stability AI, which has long struggled to turn its flagging business around, became the subject of controversy recently after its VP of Generative Audio, Ed Newton Rex, resigned over disagreements with the company's stance that training generative AI models on copyrighted works constitutes fair use. Stable Audio Open would appear to be an attempt to turn that narrative around, while at the same time, not so subtly advertising Stability A.I's paid products, end quote. Finally today, unique sort of job opening for you. IKEA plans to hire 10 people to run its virtual Roblox store, including helping pick out furniture and serve meatballs in the bistro. They will be paying 13 pounds, 50 an hour. Who says the Metaverse is stuck in the mud, quoting the gamer?

Starting point is 00:14:11 It seems like every month we're getting closer and closer to a disturbingly dystopian future, with companies such as Disney, Epic Games, and Meta obsessed with bringing our digital. daily lives into the online realm. We can now add IKEA to that growing list of companies, as it recently took a big step toward some kind of Ready Player One Nightmare World by announcing that it's hiring 10 people to sit and run its virtual store that's being set up inside Roblox. First spotted by Blocks Media on Twitter, this store is being set up as a part of a career-done different campaign to try and show younger people the possible career paths available at IKEA. Putting aside the slightly questionable morality of trying to recruit children at

Starting point is 00:14:48 such a young age, those that are hired will be tasked with helping people pick out their furniture if they're assigned to the showroom or serving meatballs to customers if they're working in the bistro. On the IKEA, the co-worker website, it explains that workers will be paid 13 pounds 15 or 1480 euro an hour be able to move departments and even be promoted. All you need to do is apply to fill out a forum with the questions as soul searching is, how do you feel about being turned into pixels and what would you do if we ran out of pixeled hot dogs in our bistro? It all has a very how-do-you-do fellow kids vibe to it. Thankfully, the position is only available for those over the age of 18, which is probably for the best, considering Roblox has been criticized for potential child exploitation

Starting point is 00:15:31 in the past. The position is only open to people inside the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland, but at least it's remote. That's kind of implied, given you'll be earning a wage to play Roblox, which is a sentence that doesn't sound any less strange no matter how many times I run it through my head. Then again, this is the same company that thought Roblox dating experiences was a good idea, end quote. Everything in tech is bundling and unbundling, just over and over again. Someone famous once said, also we blew up cable TV just to reconstitute it. I guess we should add to those two famous adages, the idea that in the Metaverse, everything is just doing what Second Life did first 20 years ago.

Starting point is 00:16:11 Oh boy. My wife is out of town. today. The kids are off school today and tomorrow. I've got five different things this afternoon, including a bonus episode recording. So pray for Papa, everybody. Pray for Papa. Talk to you tomorrow, assuming I survive today.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 06/06 – Regulators Stirring On AI

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.