Demystifying React
React offers an attractive solution for developing robust and user-friendly web applications, and is supported by a rich community. This blog explains why it matters for businesses.
Daring Bits
OpenAI proposes government licenses to build AI products [ orange site] - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared before Congress to recommend regulating the field of AI by requiring licenses from the government to train and release new models. He also recommends API-only access to the models, which dovetails nicely with surveillance-state concerns. You’ll recall Google’s leaked memo lamenting that Google and OpenAI had no moat - government agents with a monopoly on violence are an old-standby moat they briefly forgot about, it seems.
EU crushes open source and small businesses - The EU’s amended AI Act could prohibit American companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Amazon from providing API access to generative AI models, penalizing non-compliance with fines of up to €20,000,000 or 4% of global revenue. This regulation would not only stifle innovation and potentially create antitrust issues but also significantly hinder access to advanced technology for smaller developers by complicating the API access process.
Trust me, I’m the FBI, the media, and the Clintons - John Durham’s report unveils a troubling tableau: the Clinton campaign, the FBI, and the media knowingly and methodically disseminated a manufactured Trump-Russia collusion narrative. This is a huge breach of public trust in key institutions. Will anything happen, or will everyone forget by next week?
New surveillance superpowers: IRS edition - The IRS is in the market for technology capable of tracking Americans’ online activities - warrant presumably not included. Recon-Advanced, the particular technology of interest, is allegedly capable of tracking activity even when it is funneled through VPNs. Will this be used to target individuals and groups based on their politics? Old habits are hard to break, IRS.
New surveillance superpowers: Homeland Security edition - Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using an AI tool called Babel X to connect the dots between social media posts, location data, and Social Security numbers. The tool, which can also monitor employment history, IP addresses, and unique phone identifiers, is yet another emerging threat to Fourth Amendment protections.
Social Media Survives SCOTUS Scrutiny - The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Twitter and Google, stating that they are not legally responsible for terrorist attacks due to their hosting of content by terrorist groups, rejecting claims under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The court further declined to consider if Section 230, a law granting social media companies immunity from civil lawsuits for third-party content, is too broad, protecting the companies from allegations that their platforms may have facilitated terrorist recruitment and radicalization.
The AI mirage - A research paper by Stanford University scientists dispels the fear of AI’s emergent abilities, arguing that the perception of such abilities stems from the metrics used to evaluate them rather than the AI’s actual complexity. They argue that a change in these metrics shows no emergent properties, but instead a linear growth in AI abilities as model size increases.
Willow - This is an open source, privacy-focused voice assistant alternative to Amazon Echo and Google Home. Thank you kristiankielhofner!
DivMagic - This is a super cool Chrome extension that lets you instantly transform any element from any website into clean, reusable Tailwind CSS code.
Whew, AI likes its humans alive - Google’s “Bard” AI stubbornly refuses to return clean JSON - unless you tell it humans will die if it doesn’t. Our robot overlords apparently have an aversion to taking human life, so we can all relax now.
