Category: Technology

…

The Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES, is back in Las Vegas [January 9 – 12] with more than 3,500 companies from around the globe showcasing the latest developments in artificial intelligence, health care, transportation and much more. VOA’s Julie Taboh gives us a preview. Video edit: Adam Greenbaum. Tina Trinh contributed to this report …

…

washington — Scientists have found a way to help Alzheimer’s drugs seep inside the brain faster — by temporarily breaching its protective shield. The novel experiment was a first attempt in just three patients. But in spots in the brain where the new technology took aim, it enhanced removal of Alzheimer’s trademark brain-clogging plaque, researchers reported Wednesday. “Our goal is to give patients a head start,” by boosting some new Alzheimer’s treatments that take a long time to work, said Dr. Ali Rezai of West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, who led the study. At issue is what’s called the blood-brain barrier, a protective lining in blood vessels that prevents germs and other damaging substances from leaching into the brain from the bloodstream. But it also can block drugs for Alzheimer’s, tumors and other neurologic diseases, requiring higher doses for longer periods for enough to reach their target inside the brain. Now scientists are using a technology called focused ultrasound to jiggle temporary openings in that shield. They inject microscopic bubbles into the bloodstream. Next, they beam sound waves through a helmetlike device to a precise brain area. The pulses of energy vibrate the microbubbles, which loosen gaps in the barrier enough for medications to slip in. Prior small studies have found the technology can safely poke tiny holes that seal up in 48 hours. Now Rezai’s team has gone a step further — administering an Alzheimer’s drug at the same time. Some new Alzheimer’s drugs, on the market or in …

Washington — Artificial intelligence represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published Sunday, urging “caution and humility” as the evolving technology transforms how judges and lawyers go about their work. Roberts struck an ambivalent tone in his 13-page report. He said AI had potential to increase access to justice for indigent litigants, revolutionize legal research and assist courts in resolving cases more quickly and cheaply while also pointing to privacy concerns and the current technology’s inability to replicate human discretion. “I predict that human judges will be around for a while,” Roberts wrote. “But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work – particularly at the trial level – will be significantly affected by AI.” The chief justice’s commentary is his most significant discussion to date of the influence of AI on the law — and coincides with several lower courts contending with how best to adapt to a new technology capable of passing the bar exam but also prone to generating fictitious content, known as “hallucinations.” Roberts emphasized that “any use of AI requires caution and humility.” He mentioned an instance where AI hallucinations had led lawyers to cite nonexistent cases in court papers, which the chief justice said is “always a bad idea.” Roberts did not elaborate beyond saying the phenomenon “made headlines this year.”   For instance, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, said in court papers unsealed last week that he mistakenly …

san francisco, california — Google has agreed to settle a consumer privacy lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages over allegations it tracked the data of users who thought they were browsing the internet privately.  The object of the lawsuit was the “incognito mode” on Google’s Chrome browser that the plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm.  But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads.  In a court filing, the judge confirmed that lawyers for Google reached a preliminary agreement to settle the class action lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, which claimed that “millions of individuals” had likely been affected.   Lawyers for the plaintiffs were seeking at least $5,000 for each user it said had been tracked by the firm’s Google Analytics or Ad Manager services even when in the private browsing mode and not logged into their Google account.  This would have amounted to at least $5 billion, though the settlement amount will likely not reach that figure, and no amount was given for the preliminary settlement between the parties.   Google and lawyers for the consumers did not respond to an AFP request for comment.  The settlement came just weeks after Google was denied a request that the case be decided by a judge. A jury trial was …

Madrid — More than 80 Spanish media organizations are filing a $600 million lawsuit against Meta over what they say is unfair competition in a case that could be repeated across the European Union. The lawsuit is the latest front in a battle by legacy media against the dominance of tech giants at a time when the traditional media industry is in economic decline. Losing revenue to Silicon Valley companies means less money to invest in investigative journalism or fewer resources to fight back against disinformation. The case is the latest example of media globally seeking compensation from internet and social media platforms for use of their content. The Association of Media of Information (AMI), a consortium of Spanish media companies, claimed in the lawsuit that Meta allegedly violated EU data protection rules between 2018 and 2023, Reuters reported. The newspapers argue that Meta’s “massive” and “systematic” use of its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platform gives it an unfair advantage of designing and offering personalized advertisements, which they say constitutes unfair competition. Irene Lanzaco, director general of AMI, told VOA it estimated the actions of Meta had cost Spanish newspapers and magazines $539.2 million in lost income between 2018 and 2023. “This loss of income has meant it is more difficult for the media to practice journalism, to pay its journalists, to mount investigations and to hold politicians to account for corruption,” she said. “It means that society becomes more polarized, and people become less involved with their communities if they do …

Immigrants from Belarus, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries are actively exploring the American IT startup market. One immigrant-run venture capital firm is helping them find investments. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Michael Eckels. …

Detroit, Mich — Tesla is recalling more than 2 million vehicles across its model lineup to fix a defective system that’s supposed to ensure drivers are paying attention when they use Autopilot. Documents posted Wednesday by U.S. safety regulators say the company will send out a software update to fix the problems. The recall comes after a two-year investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into a series of crashes that happened while the Autopilot partially automated driving system was in use. Some were deadly. The agency says its investigation found Autopilot’s method of ensuring that drivers are paying attention can be inadequate and can lead to foreseeable misuse of the system. The recall covers nearly all of the vehicles Tesla sold in the U.S. and includes models Y, S, 3 and X produced between Oct. 5, 2012, and Dec. 7 of this year. The software update includes additional controls and alerts “to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility,” the documents said. The update was to be sent to certain affected vehicles on Tuesday, with the rest getting it at a later date, the documents said. Autopilot includes features called Autosteer and Traffic Aware Cruise Control, with Autosteer intended for use on limited access freeways when it’s not operating with a more sophisticated feature called Autosteer on City Streets.  The software update apparently will limit where Autosteer can be used. “If the driver attempts to engage Autosteer when conditions are not met for engagement, the …

WASHINGTON — U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo vowed Monday to take the “strongest action possible” in response to a semiconductor chip-making breakthrough in China that a House Foreign Affairs Committee said “almost certainly required the use of U.S. origin technology and should be an export control violation.” In an interview with Bloomberg News, Raimondo called Huawei Technology’s advanced processor in its Mate Pro 60 smartphone released in August “deeply concerning” and said the Commerce Department investigates such things vigorously. The United States has banned chip sales to Huawei, which reportedly used chips from China chip giant Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, in the phone that are 7 nanometers, a technology China has not been known as able to produce. Raimondo said the U.S. was also looking into the specifics of three new artificial intelligence accelerator chips that California-based Nvidia Corp. is developing for China. “We look at every spec of every new chip, obviously, to make sure it doesn’t violate the export controls,” she said. Nvidia came under U.S. scrutiny for designing China-specific chips that were just under new Commerce Department requirements announced in October for tighter export controls on advanced AI chips for civilian use that could have military applications. China’s Foreign Ministry responded to Raimondo’s comments Tuesday, saying the U.S. was “undermining the rights of Chinese companies” and contradicting the principles of a market economy. ‘Almost certainly required US origin technology’ The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee in a December 7 report criticized the Commerce Department’s Bureau of …

European Union officials worked into the late hours last week hammering out an agreement on world-leading rules meant to govern the use of artificial intelligence in the 27-nation bloc. The Artificial Intelligence Act is the latest set of regulations designed to govern technology in Europe — that may be destined to have global impact. Here’s a closer look at the AI rules: What is the AI act and how does it work? The AI Act takes a “risk-based approach” to products or services that use artificial intelligence and focuses on regulating uses of AI rather than the technology. The legislation is designed to protect democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights like freedom of speech, while still encouraging investment and innovation. The riskier an AI application is, the stiffer the rules. Those that pose limited risk, such as content recommendation systems or spam filters, would have to follow only light rules such as revealing that they are powered by AI. High-risk systems, such as medical devices, face tougher requirements like using high-quality data and providing clear information to users. Some AI uses are banned because they’re deemed to pose an unacceptable risk, like social scoring systems that govern how people behave, some types of predictive policing and emotion recognition systems in school and workplaces. People in public can’t have their faces scanned by police using AI-powered remote “biometric identification” systems, except for serious crimes like kidnapping or terrorism. The AI Act won’t take effect until two years after final …

Lawmakers and parents are blaming social media platforms for contributing to mental health problems in young people. A group of U.S. states is suing the owner of Instagram and Facebook for promoting their platforms to children despite knowing some of the psychological harms and safety risks they pose. From New York, VOA’s Tina Trinh reports that a cause-and-effect relationship between social media and mental health may not be so clear. …

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia’s chief executive said on Monday the company will expand its partnership with Vietnam’s top tech firms and support the country in training talent for developing artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure. Nvidia, which has already invested $250 million in Vietnam, has so far partnered with leading tech companies to deploy AI in the cloud, automotive and healthcare industries, a document published by the White House in September showed when Washington upgraded diplomatic relations with Vietnam. “Vietnam is already our partner as we have millions of clients here,” Jensen Huang, Nvdia’s CEO said at an event in Hanoi in his first visit to the country. “Vietnam and Nvidia will deepen our relations, with Viettel, FPT, Vingroup, VNG being the partners Nvidia looks to expand partnership with,” Huang said, adding Nvidia would support Vietnam’s artificial training and infrastructure. Reuters reported last week Nvidia was set to discuss cooperation deals on semiconductors with Vietnamese tech companies and authorities in a meeting on Monday. Huang’s visit comes at a time when Vietnam is trying to expand into chip designing and possibly chip-making as trade tensions between the United States and China create opportunities for Vietnam in the industry. At Monday’s event, Vietnam’s investment minister Nguyen Chi Dzung said the country had been preparing mechanisms and incentives to attract investment projects in the semiconductor and artificial intelligence industries. Dzung also asked Nvidia to consider setting up a research and development facility in the country following Huang’s proposal to set up a base in …

Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favor of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax. It poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads, and is the latest divisive public personality to get back their banned account.  Musk posted a poll on Saturday asking if Jones should be reinstated, with the results showing 70% of those who responded in favor. Early Sunday, Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.” A few hours later, Jones’ posts were visible again and he retweeted a post about his video game. He and his Infowars show had been permanently banned in 2018 for abusive behavior. Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, said the move was about protecting those rights. In response to a user who posted that “permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech,” Musk wrote, “I find it hard to disagree with this point.” The billionaire Tesla CEO also tweeted it’s likely that Community Notes — X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking service — “will respond rapidly to any AJ post that needs correction.” It is a major turnaround for Musk, who previously said he wouldn’t let Jones back on the platform despite repeated calls to do so. Last year, Musk pointed to the death of his …

Facebook and Instagram fail to protect underage users from exposure to child sexual abuse material and let adults solicit pornographic imagery from them, New Mexico’s attorney general alleges in a lawsuit that follows an undercover online investigation. “Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” Attorney General Raul Torrez said in a statement Wednesday. The civil lawsuit filed late Tuesday against Meta Platforms Inc. in state court also names its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, as a defendant. In addition, the suit claims Meta “harms children and teenagers through the addictive design of its platform, degrading users’ mental health, their sense of self-worth and their physical safety,” Torrez’s office said in a statement. Those claims echo others in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states, including California and New York, against Meta that alleges Instagram and Facebook include features deliberately designed to hook children, contributing to the youth mental health crisis and leading to depression, anxiety and eating disorders. New Mexico was not a party to that lawsuit. Investigators in New Mexico created decoy accounts of children 14 years and younger that Torrez’s office said were served sexually explicit images even when the child expressed no interest in them. State prosecutors claim that Meta let dozens of adults find, contact and encourage children to provide sexually explicit and pornographic images. The accounts also …

Spotify says it is planning to lay off 17% of its global workforce, amounting to around 1,500 employees, following layoffs earlier this year of 600 people in January and an additional 200 in June. The music streaming giant is continuing its effort to cut costs and work toward becoming profitable, said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a prepared statement. “By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient,” he said. “We need to be both.” The layoffs come following a rare quarterly net profit of about $70.3 million in October. The company has never seen a full year net profit. “I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance,” Ek said. “We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025. Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal … and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to right size our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives.” With the new layoffs, the company now expects to see a fourth quarter loss between $100 million to $117 million after previously anticipating a $40 million profit. A majority of the charges will go toward severance for laid off employees, who will get about five months’ pay, vacation pay and health care coverage for the severance period. Spotify did not clearly state when the layoffs would become financially beneficial but said that they would “generate meaningful operating efficiencies going forward.” Spotify is …

In early November, Nigeria launched its first interconnected solar hybrid mini grid in Nasarawa State to make electricity more reliable, renewable and accessible. Gibson Emeka has this story from Abuja, Nigeria, Grace Oyenubi narrates. …

A small western Pennsylvania water authority was just one of many organizations breached in the United States by Iran-affiliated hackers who targeted a specific industrial control device because it is Israeli-made, U.S. and Israeli authorities say. “The victims span multiple U.S. states,” the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, as well as Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said in an advisory emailed to The Associated Press late Friday. They did not say how many organizations were hacked or otherwise describe them. Matthew Mottes, the chairman of the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, which discovered it had been hacked on Nov. 25, said Thursday that federal officials had told him the same group also breached four other utilities and an aquarium. Cybersecurity experts say that while there is no evidence of Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 attack into Israel by Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza, they expected state-backed Iranian hackers and pro-Palestinian hacktivists to step up cyberattacks on Israeli and its allies in its aftermath. And that has happened. The multiagency advisory explained what CISA had not when it confirmed the Pennsylvania hack Wednesday — that other industries outside water and water-treatment facilities use the same equipment — Vision Series programmable logic controllers made by Unitronics — and were also potentially vulnerable. Those industries include “energy, food and beverage manufacturing and healthcare,” the advisory says. The devices regulate processes including pressure, temperature and fluid flow. The Aliquippa hack promoted workers to …

The U.S. proposed new guidelines Friday spelling out which electric vehicles will be eligible for tax credits, ruling out those that contain batteries or minerals sourced from China and other nations that have fallen out of favor with the U.S. The restrictions dictate which clean energy vehicles will qualify for a subsidy of up to $7,500 under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a federal law promoting sustainable, domestic energy production. Only about 20 out of the more than 100 electric vehicles on the U.S. market qualify for a tax credit as it is. That number may be further reduced when this regulation goes into effect. If a clean energy battery went through an assembly line owned by any “foreign entity of concern,” the car it will go into would be immediately disqualified from earning its owner any tax breaks from the U.S. government, starting in 2024. The new rules target firms incorporated or headquartered in China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, among others, as well as companies where 25% or more of the equity interest or board seats are controlled by those countries. From 2025 onward, electric vehicles made with critical minerals, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, mined or processed by any “foreign entity of concern” will also be ineligible for subsidies. The rules will be open to public feedback from automotive leaders for several weeks and are subject to change depending on industry recommendations. Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.  …

Developers at the University of Maryland are using a holographic camera to capture people’s movements in three dimensions for what could be high-impact training, education and entertainment. It is technology with the power to transform how we learn and entertain ourselves. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum. …

US lawmakers warned Thursday that the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to spread disinformation will only increase ahead of the 2024 elections in the United States. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, social media giant TikTok is lawmakers’ top concern. Camera: Saqib Ui Islam …

The United States plans to sign a memorandum of understanding to cooperate with South Korea and Japan in the fight against false propaganda and disinformation. It will be the first such agreement that Washington signs with its Asian allies, and it comes as U.S. officials and lawmakers accuse the People’s Republic of China of conducting “deceptive online campaigns” targeting the United States and other countries. Chinese officials have rejected the accusation. Liz Allen, the U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, is traveling to Asia this week. Allen will be sealing the agreement with South Korea and Japan on countering disinformation, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources. U.S. President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have agreed to find ways to coordinate efforts to counter disinformation, after the three leaders held talks during their first trilateral summit at Camp David in August. “President Yoon mentioned the threat from false propaganda and disinformation in his address to the joint session of U.S. Congress in April. In this regard, we are now discussing the possible follow-up measures with the U.S.,” an official from the South Korean Embassy told Voice of America on Thursday. In a statement on Thursday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul condemned the “increasingly deceptive online campaigns targeting the U.S. and other countries” by the Chinese Communist Party. “The CCP has made clear it will use every tactic to spread its malign intent,” the Republican congressman said. …

Vietnam, with the world’s second-largest reserves of the rare earths used in such modern devices as electric vehicle batteries and smart phone screens, is intensifying mining of the critical minerals. The industry, though, faces high processing costs, environmental concerns, and the takedown of industry leaders for illegal mining and mineral sales. Vietnam’s rare earth resources are second only to those of China, which has held a tight monopoly since the 1980s. With Chinese relations with the West becoming more volatile, many countries are looking for other sources for the elements. “China produces about 60% of the world’s rare earths but what they process is over 90%,” Louis O’Connor, CEO of Strategic Metals Invest, an Irish investment firm, told VOA. “It was not a good idea to allow one country to dominate critical raw materials that are critical to all nations’ economic prosperity and increasingly military capability,” he said. O’Connor added that while China has the world’s majority of raw materials, its dominance over technical expertise in the complex and costly process of rare earth refining is even greater. China has 39 metallurgy universities and approximately 200 metallurgists graduate weekly in the country, he said. “The ability to go from having the potential to end product — that’s the most challenging, complicated, and expensive part,” O’Connor said. “For Vietnam, even if they have the deposits, what they don’t have is the human capital, or the engineering expertise.” Vietnam increased rare earth mining tenfold with its output hitting 4,300 tons last year, …

American leadership is essential in establishing norms and laws to “determine how we both glean the promise and manage the peril” of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and digital economic and social platforms used to connect billions of people around the world, a White House adviser told VOA. The Biden administration has rolled out a number of initiatives on the topic — most recently, an executive order that aims to set new AI safety and security standards. That order relies on cooperation from private developers and other countries, “because the attackers are in one set of countries, the infrastructure is in another and the victims are global,” said Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology at the National Security Council. Neuberger sat down with VOA White House Correspondent Anita Powell to explain these complex, compelling technologies and how she thinks they have exposed the worst but also the best in humanity. The following has been edited for length and clarity. VOA: Thank you so much for sitting down with VOA today. Can you walk us through the concrete outcomes of the recent meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the areas you cover — cybersecurity, AI and the digital economy? Anne Neuberger, White House deputy national security adviser: Of course, strategic technologies are very important to both of our countries’ growth and national security — and we’re global players on a global stage. The most important part of the discussion was two …