The Download: America’s AI lawsuits, and Threads restrictions

This is today's variation of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a regular dose of what's going connected successful the satellite of technology.

How judges, not politicians, could dictate America’s AI rules

It’s becoming progressively wide that courts, not politicians, volition beryllium the archetypal to find the limits connected however AI is developed and utilized successful the US.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission opened an probe into whether OpenAI broke the instrumentality by scraping people’s online information to bid its chatbot ChatGPT. 

Meanwhile, artists and authors are suing companies specified arsenic OpenAI, Stability AI, and Meta, alleging that they broke copyright laws by grooming their AI models connected their enactment without providing immoderate designation oregon payment.

If these cases beryllium successful, they could unit OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and others to fundamentally alteration the mode AI is built, trained, and deployed. Read the afloat story to larn how.

— Melissa Heikkilä

If you’re funny successful the messy satellite of AI regulation, wherefore not cheque retired the latest contented of The Algorithm, Melissa’s play AI newsletter. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday. And for now, work much from america connected this topic:

+ A speedy usher to the astir important AI instrumentality you’ve ne'er heard of. The European Union is readying caller authorities aimed astatine curbing the worst harms associated with artificial intelligence. Read this story to find retired what you request to cognize astir it.

+ Let america locomotion you done all the astir (and least) promising efforts to govern AI astir the world.

+ China isn’t waiting to acceptable down rules connected generative AI. The draught regularisation released earlier this twelvemonth is portion of a ample crippled of tech manufacture whack-a-mole. Read the afloat story.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 Threads is limiting the fig of posts users tin see
Mere weeks aft Twitter did the nonstop aforesaid thing. (TechCrunch)
+ Instagram’s brag says it’s a bid to combat spam attacks. (Insider $)

2 Who gets to determine however to guarantee AI is safe?
Anthropic has expansive plans to rein AI in—but it’s easier said than done. (Vox)
+ Forget chatbots: AI these days is each astir autonomous agents. (Reuters)
+ To debar AI doom, larn from atomic safety. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Those US spot curbs whitethorn beryllium not specified a bully thought aft all
The US spot manufacture commercialized assemblage says they could backfire and wounded the country’s ain investments. (WSJ $)
+ The US-China spot warfare is inactive escalating. (MIT Technology Review)

4 How Big Tech became addicted to predatory pricing
Venture superior itself has go a means for companies to predominate the market. (Insider $)

5 Demand for IVF is connected the rise
But portion it’s go safer, occurrence is inactive acold from guaranteed. (Economist $)
+ The archetypal babies conceived with a sperm-injecting robot person been born. (MIT Technology Review)

6 How contaminated oculus drops made it past the FDA 
The drops, which contained an antibiotic-resistant superbug, caused blindness and adjacent deaths. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why tiny viruses could beryllium our champion stake against antimicrobial resistance. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Call halfway workers are forbidden from utilizing ChatGPT
But galore of them consciousness embracing AI is important to their jobs’ survival. (Rest of World)
+ Publishers are tempted by AI’s potential, too. (Vox)

8 Carmarkers accidental they’ve solved the right-to-repair dispute
However, advocates accidental that car owners inactive don’t person afloat power of their ain data. (Wired $)

9 Asia’s superapps are faltering
They’re struggling to chopped done present the pandemic has peaked. (FT $)

10 PinkyDoll is TikTok’s favourite ‘non-player character’
The Montreal-based livestreamer’s sunny property has won her legions of fans. (NYT $)
+ She’s earning $7,000 a time from reacting to gifts radical nonstop her. (Motherboard)

Quote of the day

“I’d similar the presumption quo, alternatively than 2 castles wherever 1 is sunny and 1 is dark.”

—Vanta Black, a idiosyncratic of the open-source Fediverse web protocol, explains to Wired wherefore she’s uncertain astir projected plans for the assemblage to commencement moving with manufacture behemoth Meta.

The large story

Running Tide is facing idiosyncratic departures and increasing concerns implicit seaweed sinking for c removal

June 2022Running Tide, an aquaculture institution based successful Portland, Maine, hopes to acceptable tens of thousands of tiny floating kelp farms adrift successful the North Atlantic. The thought is that the fast-growing macroalgae volition yet descend to the water floor, storing distant thousands of tons of c dioxide successful the process.

The institution has raised millions successful task backing and gained wide media attention. But it struggled to turn kelp on enactment lines successful the unfastened water during archetypal attempts past twelvemonth and has mislaid a drawstring of scientists successful caller months, sources with cognition of the substance archer MIT Technology Review. Read the afloat story.

—James Temple