Category Archives: Technology

Photos of Australian children used in dataset to train AI, human rights group says

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Human Rights Watch found links to 190 photos of kids that were scraped off internet without families’ consent

Photos of Australian children have been included in the dataset used by several AI image-generating tools without the knowledge or consent of them or their families, research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

An analysis of less than 0.0001% of the 5.85bn images contained in the Laion-5B dataset, used by services such as Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI and Midjourney, found 190 photos of Australian children scraped from the internet.

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Detroit changes rules for police use of facial recognition after wrongful arrest of Black man

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City to pay $300,000 to Robert Williams, whose driver’s license was incorrectly flagged in shoplifting investigation

The city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a Black man who was wrongly arrested for shoplifting, and to change how police use facial-recognition technology to solve crimes after the software identified him as a suspect.

The conditions are part of a lawsuit settlement with Robert Williams. His driver’s license photo was incorrectly flagged by facial-recognition software as a likely match to a man seen on security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018.

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China’s tech firms vow crackdown on online hate speech after knife attack

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Clampdown follows fatal stabbing of Chinese woman who tried to stop attack on Japanese mother and child

China’s internet companies have announced a crackdown on “extreme nationalism” online, particularly anti-Japanese sentiment, after a Chinese woman was fatally stabbed while protecting a Japanese mother and child in Suzhou.

Tencent and NetEase, two of the biggest firms, said at the weekend that they would be investigating and banning users who stirred up hatred.

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Cheap AI voice clones may wipe out jobs of 5,000 Australian actors

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Industry group says rise of vocal technology could upend many creative fields, including audiobooks – the canary in the coalmine for voice actors

Voice actors say they’re on the precipice of their work being replaced completely by artificial intelligence, with corporate and radio roles already beginning to be replaced by cheap generative AI clones.

While a high-profile actor like Scarlett Johansson can make the most prominent AI company in the world back down within a day from using her voice likeness in their AI products, everyday actors working on commercials, audiobook and video games worry they risk having their own voices cloned, or miss out on work entirely due to the rise of AI voice clones.

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Revealed: the tech entrepreneur behind a pro-Israel hate network

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The Guardian used public records and open source materials to identify Daniel Linden of the Shirion Collective

A prime mover behind the Shirion Collective, a conspiracy-minded, pro-Israel disinformation network seeking to shape public opinion about the Gaza conflict in the US, Australia and the UK, is a tech entrepreneur named Daniel Linden living in Florida who co-wrote a guidebook for OnlyFans users, the Guardian can reveal.

Shirion has harassed pro-Palestinian activists, including many Jews, offered bounties for the identity of pro-Palestinian protesters, spread conspiracy narratives centered on figures like George Soros, and boasted of an AI-surveillance platform but offered few concrete details of how the technology functions.

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Uber and Lyft agree to minimum pay and benefits for Massachusetts drivers

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Ride-share companies sign off on $175m settlement that will give workers paid sick leave and other protections

Uber and Lyft drivers will be guaranteed among the highest wages in the US for ride-share workers under a historic deal agreed with Massachusetts prosecutors.

Andrea Campbell, the state’s attorney general, and the two companies agreed to a $175m settlement Thursday evening that requires a minimum pay floor of $32.50 per hour, and introduces a slew of other benefits and protections that drivers didn’t already have.

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Fatima Payman admits she ‘upset a few colleagues’ by crossing the floor – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Housing minister Julie Collins is speaking to the ABC RN about Labor’s build-to-rent bill which was knocked back in the Senate yesterday, with the Greens and the Coalition combining to delay it:

What we want to do is get this done. We’ve already been consulting, we announced it in the previous budget. Any delays will actually stop the pipeline of construction and the certainty for the sector.

What we want to do is get more affordable homes and more homes of every type on the ground as quickly as we can.

We’re saying they have to have a minimum of 10% to be eligible for the tax concessions that we’re talking about for each development.

That’s what our consultations and our discussions with the sector have done and, as I said, this is not the only thing we’re doing for affordable homes … My point here is that they continually delay and block housing up every time by coming together and having this unholy alliance between the Liberals and the Greens in the Senate, because they’re more interested in votes than they are about people.

We’re not open to negotiation and we want to get this done.

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UK needs system for recording AI misuse and malfunctions, thinktank says

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Centre for Long-Term Resilience calls on next government to log incidents to mitigate risks

The UK needs a system for recording misuse and malfunctions in artificial intelligence or ministers risk being unaware of alarming incidents involving the technology, according to a report.

The next government should create a system for logging incidents involving AI in public services and should consider building a central hub for collating AI-related episodes across the UK, said the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR), a thinktank.

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Tesla recalls majority of Cybertrucks for fourth time

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Windshield wiper and trunk bed trim problems cause more delays in the truck’s promised mass launch

Tesla said on Tuesday it was recalling most Cybertrucks in the United States over issues with their windshield wipers and exterior trim.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says Tesla has now issued four recalls for its 2024 Cybertruck.

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NHS confirms stolen data published online is from blood test provider

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Health service in England issues update saying there is ‘no evidence’ hackers published entire database

Stolen data published online has been confirmed as having come from the NHS provider Synnovis, NHS England has said.

Synnovis, which manages blood tests for NHS trusts and GP services, primarily in south-east London, was the victim of a cyber-attack – understood to have been carried out by the Russian group Qilin – on 3 June.

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Apple found in breach of EU competition rules

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European Commission finds iPhone maker broke new laws designed to protect smaller competitors against big tech platforms

Apple has been found to be in breach of sweeping new EU laws designed to allow smaller companies to compete and allow consumers to find cheaper and alternative apps in the tech business’s app store.

The European Commission, which also acts as the EU antitrust and technology regulator, said it had sent its preliminary findings to Apple after an investigation launched in March.

“For too long Apple has been squeezing out innovative companies — denying consumers new opportunities and choices,” said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner responsible for digital markets, on X.

In preliminary findings, against which Apple can appeal, the European Commission said it believed its rules of engagement did not comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) “as they prevent app developers from freely steering consumers to alternatives channels for offers and content”.

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Geologists raise concerns over possible censorship and bias in Chinese chatbot

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GeoGPT developed as part of Chinese-funded earth sciences programme aimed at researchers in global south

Geologists have raised concerns about potential Chinese censorship and bias in a chatbot being developed with the backing of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), one of the world’s largest scientific organisations and a Unesco partner.

The GeoGPT chatbot is aimed at geoscientists and researchers, particularly in the global south, to help them develop their understanding of earth sciences by drawing on swaths of data and research on billions of years of the planet’s history.

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NHS patients affected by cyber-attack may face six-month wait for blood test

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Only ‘urgent’ tests to go ahead in short term after hospitals in south-east London hit by Russian gang’s seizure of data

Patients denied a blood test because of a Russian cyber-attack on the NHS may have to wait up to six months to have their sample taken, the Guardian has learned.

The delays are so long that some patients have decided to pay to have their blood taken and analysed by a private clinic rather than remain on the NHS waiting list.

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Apple delays launch of AI-powered features in Europe, blaming EU rules

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Apple says competition rules that require functionality with rival products would compromise privacy and security

Apple will delay launching three new artificial intelligence features in Europe because European Union competition rules require the company ensure that rival products and services can function with its devices. The features will launch in the fall in the US but will not arrive in Europe until 2025.

The company said on Friday three features – Phone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence – will not be rolled out to EU users this year because of regulatory uncertainties due to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

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Cyberattack hobbles car dealers across US and Canada for third day in a row

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CDK said in a letter to its 15,000 customers that it ‘did not have a an estimated time frame for resolution’

A cyber outage at a major retail software provider for automobile dealers entered its third consecutive day on Friday, delaying car sales throughout North America, the affected companies said. The software provider, CDK, said there was no end in sight.

“The CDK outage is impacting automotive dealerships across the US and Canada, including a portion of BMW Group dealers,” a spokesperson for BMW North America told Reuters.

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ByteDance alleges US’s ‘singling out of TikTok’ is unconstitutional

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Chinese firm recounts talks with US government that ended abruptly and says it spent $2bn to draft security agreement

New legal filings from the Chinese tech firm ByteDance have challenged the US government’s “unconstitutional singling out of TikTok”, revealing fresh details about failed negotiations over a potential ban of the platform.

Legislation signed in April by Joe Biden gives ByteDance until 19 January to either divest TikTok’s US assets or face a ban. ByteDance claims in its new filings that such divestiture is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally” and accuses the US government of refusing to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022.

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Winklevoss twins donate $1m each to Trump as champion of cryptocurrency

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Crypto tycoons claim Biden has ‘openly declared war against crypto’ in lengthy critique of administration policy

Cryptocurrency tycoons the Winklevoss twins have each donated $1m in bitcoin to Donald Trump’s campaign and pledged to vote for the former president in November, claiming Joe Biden had “openly declared war against crypto”.

Trump is “pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto, pro-business”, Cameron Winklevoss declared on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “And he will put an end to the Biden Administration’s war on crypto.”

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‘You cannot do mass surveillance privately, full stop’: Signal boss hits out at government encryption-busting moves

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A ‘legitimate grievance’ with big tech firms is being used by police as a pretext to undermine privacy, Meredith Whittaker says

Police have used the “very legitimate grievance” the public has with large tech companies like Meta about data collection and surveillance as a pretext to undermine user privacy, the president of encrypted messaging app Signal has said.

Meredith Whittaker told Guardian Australia that it had become “an easy win with few political consequences” for politicians to beat up on Facebook in the past decade, and while there was legitimate public backlash against the “mass surveillance tech business model” the policy response had a “very unfortunate shape”.

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‘Let kids be kids’: LA becomes largest US school district to ban phones in class

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Measure passes 5-2 as Gavin Newsom calls for statewide ban on cellphones for students during the school day

The Los Angeles unified school board passed a resolution on Tuesday banning cell phones from district classrooms. As the second-largest school district in the US, the vote makes it the largest school district in the US to approve such a ban.

As more educators across the US explore similar policies, California governor Gavin Newsom called on Tuesday for a statewide ban on phones in class. The measure in Los Angeles was introduced by board member Nick Melvoin and will be implemented starting in January 2025 after passing in a 5-2 vote. Melvoin said in a statement the measure is meant to support “students’ academic success and wellbeing”, adding that studies have shown smartphones and social media distract kids from learning and stifle their in-person social connections.

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‘It’s the perfect place’: London Underground hosts tests for ‘quantum compass’ that could replace GPS

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Subatomic instrument will be able to accurately pinpoint locations under ground and under water, where satellite signals are often blocked

Dr Joseph Cotter takes some unusual pieces of luggage on his trips on the London underground. They include a stainless steel vacuum chamber, a few billion atoms of rubidium and an array of lasers that are used to cool his equipment to a temperature just above absolute zero.

While not the average kit you would expect to find being dragged into carriages on the District Line, this is the gear that Cotter – who works at Imperial College London’s Centre for Cold Matter – uses on his underground travels.

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