James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
US Surgeon General warns social media is driving a mental health crisis in the young
Echoing countless studies on the subject, the U.S. Surgeon General said in a report released today that social media could be playing a significant role in a mental health crisis affecting the youth of America today. In a 19-page report, Dr. Vivek Murthy said it’s too early to understand fully just how harmful social media ...
Stock market wobbles after AI-generated image of Pentagon explosion appears on verified Twitter accounts
A fake image of the Pentagon on fire posted on Twitter today caused a brief dip in the U.S. stock market, which rebounded after officials had to explain that no such explosion had taken place. The image of smoke billowing from the headquarters of the Department of Defense spread like wildfire on Twitter, with the ...
DOJ charges former Apple engineer with stealing self-driving car technology for China
The Department of Justice today charged a former Apple Inc. engineer with stealing autonomous technology and giving it to a Chinese self-driving car company. The indictment, filed at federal court in the Northern District of California, alleges that Weibao Wang, who started working on Apple’s hardware and software for autonomous systems in 2016, had “broad ...
The IRS is building a government-run system for tax preparation
The Internal Revenue Service has been working on a system for Americans to file their taxes in one place, for free, according to an article in The Washington Post today. The Biden administration wants Americans to have an alternative to tax preparation software such as Intuit Inc.’s TurboTax and H&R Block. For a long time ...
Italy’s antitrust watchdog begins probe into Apple’s app market dominance
Italy’s antitrust watchdog announced today that it has launched an investigation into Apple Inc. for what it believes could be the iPhone maker’s abuse of its dominant position in the app market, a probe that follows similar European antitrust probes into American big tech. The watchdog, Italy’s Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, or ...
Wendy’s teams up with Google to release an AI chatbot that takes orders
Wendy’s International Inc. is partnering with Google LLC in the creation of a chatbot-powered drive-thru, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Amid what has become a generative AI boom of late, it comes as no surprise that a fast-food chain is playing with the idea of replacing human servers with bots. This first AI server, however, will ...
FTC wants to stop Meta from monetizing young people’s data
The Federal Trade Commission today shared some stern words with Meta Platforms Inc., accusing the company of breaching a child privacy protection order, adding that it’s time there was a “blanket prohibition” on Meta collecting the data of kids. The FTC, which has been something of a bête noire for Meta over the years, said ...
Co-founders of LinkedIn and Google DeepMind release a chatbot designed to get you through your day
The California-based company Inflection AI released to the public today the Pi chatbot, a talkative AI that’s designed to give people advice and be a friend rather than merely a tool to enhance work. Pi (for “personal intelligence”) was launched in March 2022 by Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Alphabet Inc.’s DeepMind AI research unit, and ...
Researchers use AI combined with MRI to decode human thoughts
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have been using artificial intelligence in combination with fMRI scans to translate brain activity into continuous text. The results were published today in the Nature Journal under the title, “Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings.” The scientists explained how this is a non-invasive technique, ...
Tesla defense lawyers say Elon Musk’s past statements about autopilot safety could be deepfakes
A California judge today said that Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk should be questioned under oath over his claims about the company’s autopilot safety, after Musk’s lawyers argued that those comments could be deepfakes. After crashes in Tesla vehicles where it’s believed the drivers were using autopilot — some of whom died in ...