Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 08/16 – And Now I’m A Blue Subscriber

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

By the time you hear these words, I guess I’ll be a blue subscriber cause I’m locked out of Tweetdeck otherwise. Coinbase gets regulatory approval from one agency, while another is suing them. Generative AI in Google search, while Google DeepMind is contemplating doing it for everything. And I guess we’ve entered the true first self-driving car test phase. Hold on to your hats. Sponsors: Shopify.com/ride Mindbloom.com/techmeme code techmeme Links: TweetDeck is officially becoming a paid service (The Verge) Elon Musk’s X is throttling traffic to websites he dislikes (The Washington Post) Coinbase obtains regulatory approval to offer crypto futures trading to eligible clients (The Block) Google’s AI search experience adds AI-powered summaries, definitions and coding improvements (TechCrunch) Google Tests an A.I. Assistant That Offers Life Advice (NYTimes) Robotaxis are driving on thin ice (The Verge) 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 Wednesday, August 16th, 2020. I'm Brian McKellar today. By the time you hear these words, I guess I'll be a blue subscriber because I'm locked out of tweet deck otherwise.

Coinbase gets regulatory approval from one agency while the other is still suing them. Generative AI in Google Search while Google DeepMind is contemplating doing it for basically everything. And I guess we've entered the true first self-driving car test phase. Hold on to your hats, people. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, the party's over. Users of X-Pro, previously known as TweetDeck, are encountering X-Blue paywalls when they try to use the service this morning.

That would include me. I hit the paywall first thing as I sat down at my computer. So at some point today, I guess I'm going to become an X-Blue subscriber, quoting the Verge. Unfortunately, we knew this was coming, as X announced on July 3rd, that it would be making X-Pro a subscriber-only feature. It said at the time that the transition would happen in 30 days' time, so the company missed its own deadline by just a bit. TweetDeck was one of the most popular third-party apps for accessing Twitter until the company acquired it in 2011. Its ability to support multiple accounts and multiple custom feeds made it a powerful tool for journalists, marketers, and others that found

themselves regularly using Twitter for their day job. Given that, charging for TweetDec and putting a pro on the name does make some sense, but it still sucks to have to pay for a useful tool, that was previously free, end quote. In other shenanigans, various outlets are alleging that X added five-second delays, some of them now removed on T.CO links to Instagram, Facebook threads, Blue Sky's substack, The New York Times, Reuters, and other sites that, shall we say, Elon Musk has expressed displeasure with in the past, quoting the Washington Post. The company formerly known as Twitter has been slowing the speed with which users could access links to the New York Times, Facebook and other news organizations and online competitors, a move that

appeared targeted at companies that have drawn the ire of owner Elon Musk. Users who clicked a link on Musk's website now called X for one of the targeted websites were made to wait about five seconds before seeing the page according to tests conducted Tuesday by the Washington Post. On Tuesday afternoon, hours after this story was first published, X began reversing the throttling on some of the sites, dropping the delay times back to zero. It was unknown if all of the throttled websites had normal service restored. The delay affected the T.CO domain, a link shortening service that X users to process every link posted to the website. Traffic is routed through the domain, allowing X to track, and in this case, throttle activity to the target website, potentially

taking away traffic and ad revenue from businesses Musk personally dislikes. The post analysis found that links to most other sites were unaffected, including those to the Washington Post, Fox News and social media services such as Massadon and YouTube, with the shortened links being routed to their final destination in a second or less. A user first flagged the delays early Tuesday on the technology discussion forum, Hacker News. Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, did not respond to requests for comment. X also did not respond. Some of the targeted businesses said they were reviewing the matter when contacted Tuesday by the post, end quote. Coinbase says the exchange has received regulatory approval from the CFTC-backed National Futures Association to offer futures trading services to eligible U.S. users.

Quoting the block. In a statement shared with the block, Greg Toussar, Coinbase's vice president of institutional product, called the approval a critical milestone and said that the exchange is the first crypto-native leader to directly offer traditional spot crypto trading alongside regulated and leverage crypto futures for verified customers. In September 2021, the company filed an application with the NFA to register an FCM. Tussar said that the global derivatives market represents roughly 75% of crypto trading volume worldwide and is a critical trader access point. Coinbase said its customers will soon be able to directly access futures through Coinbase financial markets. Last year, Coinbase acquired Fairx, a CFTC regulated futures exchange, currently known as the Coinbase Derivatives Exchange.

The Coinbase Derivatives Exchange is open to third-party brokers, FCMs, and market makers, and it has established a deep liquidity pool with $4.7 billion worth of BTC and $2 billion worth of ETH futures traded in notional volumes so far this year, according to Tussar. The latest regulatory approval for futures trading comes after the Coinbase Derivatives Exchange in June launched new Bitcoin and Ether Futures contracts aimed at institutional clients. Last year, the Derivatives Exchange introduced its nano-bitcoin and

Ether contracts, as the company said, it had seen institutional demand for advanced derivatives products, end quote. So what about that whole SEC lawsuit then? There has been a lot of talk in the crypto world that the CFTC and the SEC are engaged in some sort of a turf war in terms of who gets to end up regulating crypto. So maybe this looks like that being made manifest. Google has added an experimental browsing feature that summarizes page content to their new search generative experience first for the Google mobile app and for Search Lab users, quoting TechCrunch. Google today is rolling out a few new updates to its nearly three-month-old search generative experience, or SGE, the company's AI-powered conversational mode in search, with a goal of

helping users better learn and make sense of the information they discover on the web. The features include tools to see definitions of unfamiliar terms, those that help to improve your understanding and coding information across languages, and an interesting feature that lets you tap into the AI power of SGE while you're browsing. The company explains that these improvements aim to help people better understand complicated concepts or complex topics, boost their coding skills, and more. One of the new features will let you hover over certain words to preview their definitions and see related images or diagrams related to the topic, which you can then tap on to learn more. This feature will become available across Google's

AI-generated responses to topics or questions related to certain subjects like STEM, economics, history, and others, where you may encounter terms you don't understand or concepts you want to dive deeper into for a better understanding. Bing Chat also offers a feature similar to this that lets you highlight the text and question on a page, and then select Bing from the options menu to engage in a conversation where you can learn more about the topic. Another new feature will help those using SGE for programming assistance. The new capabilities will make it easier to understand and debug the generated code, says Google. Currently, SGE provides AI-generated, overviews that help with tasks related to programming languages and tools, allowing users to find

answers to their how-to questions or see generated code snippets. The new update will now color code segments of code with syntax highlights, making it easier to identify different elements like keywords, comments, and strings. SGE while browsing may be the most interesting new edition, but for now it's only an early experiment in search labs available on the Google app for Android and iOS and later Chrome on the desktop. The feature is designed to help web users engage with long-form content from publishers and creators to make it easier to find what they're looking for. For instance, on some web pages you can tap to see an AI-generated list of the key points and article covers with links that take you directly to the part you were looking for.

The page will also include an explore on-page option where you can see the questions and article answers and then jump to the relevant section. The feature is reminiscent of the existing content highlighting search feature that will jump you to relevant text when you search for specific terms and a matching result is found. However, this time it's powered by AI. The New York Times says that that's just the beginning, that Google's deep mind unit has been working with Generative AI to perform at least 21 different types of personal and professional tasks,

including life advice. Quote, the capabilities also marked a shift from Google's earlier caution on generative AI and a slide deck presented to executives in December. The company's AI safety experts had warned of the dangers of people becoming to emotionally attach to chatbots. Though it was a pioneer in generative AI, Google was overshadowed by OpenAI's release of ChatGBT in November, igniting a race among tech giants and startups for primacy in the fast-growing space. Google has spent the last nine months trying to demonstrate it can keep up with OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, releasing BARD, improving its AI systems,

and incorporating the technology into many of its existing products, including its search engine and Gmail. Scale AI, a contractor working with Google DeepMine, assembled teams of workers to test these new capabilities, including more than 100 experts with doctorates in different fields, and even more workers who assess the tool's responses, said to people with knowledge of the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it. Among other things, the workers are testing the assistance ability to answer intimate questions about challenges in people's lives. They were given an example of an ideal prompt that a user could have one day asked the chatbot, quote, I have a really

close friend who is getting married this winter. She was my college roommate and a bridesmaid at my wedding. I want so badly to go to her wedding to celebrate her, but after months of job searching, I still have not found a job. She's having a destination wedding, and I just can't afford the flight or hotel right now. How do I tell her that I won't be able to come? End quote. The project's idea creation feature could give users suggestions or recommendations based on a situation. Its tutoring function can teach new skills or improve existing ones, like how to progress as a runner, and the planning capability can create a financial budget for users as well as meal and workout plans. Google's AI safety experts had said in December that users could experience, quote,

diminished health and well-being and a loss of agency if they took life advice from AI. They had added that some users who grew too dependent on the technology could think it was sentient. And in March, when Google launched Bard, it said the chatbot was barred from giving medical financial or legal advice. Bard shares mental health resources with users who say they are experiencing mental distress. The tools are still being evaluated and the company may decide not to employ them. Google DeepMind has also been evaluating tools recently that could take its AI further into the workplace, including capabilities to generate scientific, creative, and professional writing, as well as to recognize patterns and extract data from text, according to the documents, potentially

making it relevant to knowledge workers in various industries and fields. The company's AI safety experts had also expressed concern about the economic harms of generative AI in the December presentation reviewed by the Times, arguing that it could lead to the deskilling of creative workers. Other tools being tested can draft critiques of an argument, explain graphs, and generate quizzes, word, and number puzzles. One suggested prompt to help train the AI assistant hinted at the technology's rapidly growing capabilities. Give me a summary of the article pasted below. I am particularly interested in what it says about capabilities humans possess, and that they believe AI cannot achieve, end quote. And finally, it really feels

like that thing we talked about last week, okaying 24-7 robo taxis in San Francisco, represents some sort of tipping point. The self-driving cars are now coming out in numbers that will make it the first test of if we're ready to have these things on our streets in such numbers. So far, it's a mixed bag, quoting the verge. The day after California regulators handed driverless car companies a major victory, allowing them to expand their services without restriction in San Francisco, a herd of robotaxies decided to celebrate by breaking down in the middle of a busy street.

According to several local news reports, 10 cruise vehicles sat paralyzed in a busy intersection near the Outsidelands music festival causing a traffic jam and drawing exasperation from witnesses. The company told K-Pix that the music festival caused wireless connectivity issues with its vehicles. In other words, festival goers were overwhelming the cellular networks, making it difficult for cruises vehicles to send and receive information. The site of a robot traffic jam was unfortunately all too familiar in San Francisco. For months, city officials have complained about blocked roads, obstructed emergency response

vehicles, and other bizarre behavior by these driverless cars. A Waymo vehicle ran over and killed a small dog, inspiring a street painting memorializing the martyred canine, and as more vehicles are deployed and the companies begin commercializing the service, more obstructions are to be expected. Other cities are expected to follow San Francisco's lead. Waymo has its sights set on Los Angeles and New York City, while Cruise is testing its vehicles in Miami and Austin, Texas. The companies are under enormous pressure to turn on the money spigots after their parent companies have invested tens of billions of dollars for more than a decade,

with very little money flowing back into their coffers. Those cities will face similar issues as San Francisco, blocked roads, embarrassing media coverage, and populations split over the utility of robot cars versus the need to reduce car use overall. This is just the beginning. It's far from the and Aaron Peskin, president of the city's board of supervisors, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, we need to get it right, and we are trying to partner with Cruz and Waymo, which hasn't been real smooth. They're very secretive, end quote. Peskin said the city documented 55 incidents involving driverless cars interfering with first responders so far this year. You can tell that many San Franciscans are sick and tired of playing guinea pig to these tech experiments. First came Uber and Lyft, then the electric scooters. Now it's the driverless cars. The weariness came through in the testimony of dozens of people.

who waited for hours to have their say on the CPUC Commission decision. There was plenty of support to people who were disabled or distrustful of human drivers or didn't want to appear to be burying their heads in the sand when new technology becomes available. After all, disruption and inconvenience tend to go hand in hand, said Rajaj Kumar, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Think of the advent of indoor plumbing or the installation of natural gas lines or building roads and highways. All were major societal changes and caused a lot of inconveniences and discomfort but we cannot live without them today, he said.

Negatives get the news headlines and strong passions attract the most attention. But day-to-day convenience and usability for many customers, assuming that this comes a pass, will begin to triumph, end quote. Opponents are not likely to take these major changes lying down, though. In the weeks leading up to the CPUC vote, several videos went viral of people placing orange cones on the hoods of the vehicles, effectively disabling them. They called it the week of cone, and it was meant to demonstrate how easy it was to confuse these supposedly high-tech vehicles. Their message was simple. If it's so easy to stop a driverless

car dead in its tracks, why should they be trusted to operate freely in a busy city, end quote? Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.