Tag Archives: Big

Can Technology-Backed Planners Revive the Lost Art of City-Building in California’s Big Cities?

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I
As we were chopping garlic and herbs at Burning Man, we met Gabriel Metcalf, an urban planner hired to design a new city in California with the backing of a tech billionaire.
new york times
The mystery of who was secretly buying up more than 50,000 acres of farmland in Solano County, about 80 miles northeast of San Francisco, has just been uncovered.

The buyers included Silicon Valley investors who were committed to ambitious plans for a new “California Dream” city with walkable neighborhoods, climate-friendly infrastructure, green energy jobs, and affordable housing. It turns out that the list includes celebrities.

Many people are deeply suspicious of tech elites throwing money around thinking they can solve everything. And the way California Forever, an investor-backed company, secretly bought up nearly $1 billion worth of land without the knowledge of local residents or officials, also discouraged people from getting excited about the project. In the months since the project was announced, residents, officials and environmentalists have raised serious questions about the feasibility of turning rural land into a bustling city.

I followed up with Metcalfe to see if what sounded like a bold vision when shared in a pop-up city in the Nevada desert actually makes sense in the real world. . Metcalf, who comes across as more of a pragmatic urban design geek than a Silicon Valley techie, admits he understands where the skeptics are coming from.

“This has never been done before, at least not in this way or on this scale. There's a lot of work to do to get people on board and understand the vision,” he said over coffee in San Francisco's Dogpatch district. he said while drinking. “We're not proposing a utopia. We're just proposing a city. We're not claiming that this will solve all your problems. But this is another tool. I would argue that it can be helpful.”




Farmland in rural Solano County, California. Counties where California Forever wants to build.
Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP

California faces difficult housing issues that Metcalf, a respected urban planner, believes can only be addressed through bold action.

Metcalf ran Spar, a San Francisco-based urban planning think tank, for a decade and a half, where he advocated for building more cities.
public housingways to address the region's housing crisis include increasing public transportation and increasing the minimum wage.

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Source: www.theguardian.com

UN Secretary-General condemns big tech companies for prioritizing profits over ethics in AI development at Davos 2024

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The pursuit of profits from artificial intelligence by big technology companies is reckless. Urgent action is necessary to mitigate the risks from this rapidly growing sector, the UN chief has warned.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a scathing attack on technology multinationals during the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. He stated that each advance in generative AI has heightened the threat of unintended consequences.

Guterres connected the risks related to AI to those posed by the climate crisis, highlighting that the international community lacks a strategy to address either issue.

During the WEF in Switzerland, the UN Secretary-General appealed to technology industry representatives in the audience to collaborate with governments in establishing guardrails for AI.

He referred to a warning in an IMF report, saying, “This technology has great potential for sustainable development, but it is very likely to exacerbate inequality.”

Guterres argued that influential technology companies are prioritizing profits without regard for human rights, personal privacy, and social impact.

While tech companies claim to have preventive measures in place to stop AI from being used for crime or other nefarious purposes, Guterres insisted that more action is necessary, urging governments and international organizations such as the United Nations to play a role in ensuring that AI is a force for good.

He emphasized the need for governments to work with technology companies to develop a risk management framework for current AI developments and to monitor and mitigate future damage, as well as to increase access to AI to bridge the digital divide.

Sam Altman, an executive at OpenAichief, highlighted the requirement for energy breakthroughs to meet the future demands of AI. He underlined the need for climate-friendly energy sources such as nuclear fusion, cheap solar power, and storage.

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Guterres also criticized fossil fuel companies for impeding progress on climate change and stressed the importance of phasing out fossil fuels for a just and equitable transition to renewable energy.

In summary, Guterres highlighted the need for a significant global strategy to address the threats posed by climate change and uncontrolled AI.

Source: www.theguardian.com

The Post Office Horizon Scandal: Valuable Lessons for Big Tech Companies to Learn

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TThe Post Office Horizon scandal has long been a frustrating one to follow as a technology reporter. Because even though it stems from the failure to deploy a large-scale government IT project, it’s not about technology at all.

In such stories there is a desire to uncover the specific fault lines that caused the disaster to occur. Taking Grenfell Tower as an example, the entire system was flawed and the investigation into the fire revealed gory details, but it is also clear that the fatal error was in covering the building with combustible panels. Identifying that fulcrum leads both ways to further questions (how were the panels deemed safe, and was the building able to be safely evacuated despite their flaws?), but the catastrophic It is clear where it is.

I feel like there should be comparable focus points in the Horizon system. “What happened at Horizon that led to so many false accounts?” is a question I’ve asked many times over the decade since I first learned of the scandal. Thanks to Computer Weekly for the coverage. I searched for systems in the hopes of finding some important crux, a terrible decision around which all subsequent problems swirl, that could be sensibly explained to provide a technical foundation for a very human story of malice and greed. I’ve been looking into architecture.

Still, the conclusion I’m forced to draw is that Horizon was really, really broken. From toe to toe, the system was terrible. Each postmaster had fundamentally different flaws, so a plethora of technical errors, worst practice decisions, and lazy cutbacks were probably part of the reason the Postal Service continued to fight for so long. Masu.

One system continued to accept input even when the screen froze, writing transactions to the database invisibly, while other systems simply had edge-case bugs in the underlying system that caused transactions to change. It just couldn’t lock when it shouldn’t have. There was also a problem with the network with the central database, causing transactions to be dropped without warning whenever there was a problem with the data connection.

Still, if you want to trace the point in time when bad IT became a crisis, you need to look completely into the technology past. The Post Office declared Horizon to be functional as legal tender. Everything that happened after that was a logical conclusion. If Horizon works, the cause of the error should be in the subpostmaster operation. If they say they haven’t made a mistake, they must have committed fraud. If they committed fraud, a conviction is morally right.

But Horizon didn’t work.

Today’s big technology companies aren’t so cocky as to claim that their software is perfect. In fact, the opposite is accepted as reality. The phrase “all software has bugs” is repeated too often and casually, implying that users are demanding too much of the technology they rely and work reliably on.

But they often still act as if they believe the opposite. My inbox is constantly filled with unmanageable people who have been falsely flagged as spammers, scammers, or robots by Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple’s automated systems. These people have lost years of shopping, lost access to friends and family, and lost the pages and profiles on which they built their careers. I can’t help them all and still do my day job, but strangely enough, the cases I decide I can contact a large company for are almost always easily resolved. It turns out.

No one would argue that even the worst software Google has put out is as broken as Horizon. (The Post Office says the current version of the software, created in 2017, has been found to be “robust compared to comparable systems.”) But the real culprit is broken software with flaws. If you’re acting like something isn’t supposed to be there, that’s serious. The tech industry may have more lessons to learn from this scandal than it’s willing to admit.

Source: www.theguardian.com

‘Divergent Views on Personalization in Big Tech Prompt New EU Calls for Default Turning Off of Profiling-Based Content Feeds’

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Another policy tug-of-war may be emerging in the European Union over Big Tech’s content recommendation systems, with the European Commission ruling out profiling-based content feeds (also known as “personalization” engines that process user data). Many members of Congress are calling for the government to curb this. To determine what content to display. The tracking and profiling of users by mainstream platforms to power “personalized” content feeds has long raised concerns about potential harm to individuals and democratic societies, and whether this technology is fueling social media addiction. , some critics say poses mental health risks to vulnerable people. There are also concerns that this technology is undermining social cohesion through its tendency to amplify divisive and polarizing content that can push individual anger and anger towards political extremes.

Of letter, 17 MPs from political groups including S&D, the Left, the Greens, EPP and Renew Europe have signed the petition, which calls for recommendation systems on technology platforms to be switched off by default. The idea emerged during negotiations over the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA). ), but it was not included in the final regulations because it did not have a democratic majority. Instead, EU lawmakers agreed to transparency measures for recommender systems, along with a requirement that large platforms (so-called VLOPs) must provide at least one content feed that is not based on profiling. But in a letter, lawmakers are calling for a complete dedefault on the technology. “Interaction-based recommender systems, especially hyper-personalized systems, pose a serious threat to the public and society as a whole, as they prioritize emotional and extreme content and target individuals who are particularly likely to be provoked. ” they wrote. “This insidious cycle exposes users to sensational and dangerous content, prolonging their engagement with the platform in order to maximize ad revenue.”

Amnesty International’s experiment on TikTok showed that the algorithm were exposed to videos glorifying suicide within just an hour. Additionally, Meta’s internal research found that 64% of joins to extremist groups were due to recommended tools, and that extremists It has become clear that we are exacerbating the spread of ideology.” The phone is: Draft online safety guidelines for video sharing platforms, was announced earlier this month by the Irish Media Commission (Coimisiún na Meán). The committee will be responsible for overseeing the DSA when regulations become enforceable for covered services next February. Coimisiún na Meán is currently consulting on guidance proposing that video sharing platforms “take steps to ensure that profiling-based recommendation algorithms are turned off by default.” The publication of the guidance occurred after the following episodes. violent civil unrest in Dublin The country’s police authorities suggested the attack was fabricated by far-right “hooligans” with false information spread on social media and messaging apps. And earlier this week, Irish Civil Liberties and Human Rights Council ICCL, which has been campaigning on digital rights issues for many years, also called on the European Commission to support the Koimisiun na Mean proposal and to make it public. my report They say social media algorithms are tearing society apart and are calling for personalized feeds to be turned off by default.

In their letter, MEPs said they also accepted proposals from Ireland’s media regulator, which similarly tend to promote “emotional and extremist content” that they say could undermine civic cohesion. It suggests that it “effectively” addresses issues related to recommender systems. The letter also references recently adopted regulations. Report by the European Parliament On the addictive design of online services and consumer protection, they highlight the negative impact of recommender systems on online services, which involve the profiling of individuals, especially minors. , which aims to keep users on the platform for as long as possible, thus manipulating them.” Artificial amplification of hatred, suicide, self-harm, and disinformation. ” “We call on the European Commission to follow Ireland’s lead and not only approve this measure under TRIS, but also take decisive action.” [Technical Regulations Information System] In addition to following the steps, you can also recommend this measure as a mitigation measure for large online platforms to take. [VLOPs] 35(1)(c) of the Digital Services Act, to give citizens meaningful control over their data and online environment,” the MEPs wrote, adding: “The protection of our citizens, especially young people, is of paramount importance” We believe that the European Commission has an important role to play in ensuring a safe digital environment for everyone. We look forward to your prompt and decisive action on this issue. ”

Under TRIS, EU member states must submit proposals before they are adopted into national law so that the EU can carry out a legal review to ensure that they are consistent with the bloc’s rules, in this case the DSA. draft technical regulations must be notified to the European Commission. . This system means that domestic laws that seek to “golden” EU regulations are unlikely to pass scrutiny. As such, the Irish Media Commission’s proposal to turn off video platforms’ recommender systems by default appears to go further than the text of the relevant legislation and may not survive the TRIS process. be. However, no company has gone that far yet. And clearly not the kind of step that ad-funded, engagement-driven platforms would choose as their commercial default.

When we asked, the European Commission declined public comment on the MEP’s letter (or the ICCL report). Instead, the spokesperson pointed to the “clear” obligations regarding her VLOP’s recommendation system set out in Article 38 of the DSA. This mandate requires platforms to provide at least one non-profiling-based option for each of these systems. However, we were able to discuss the profiling feed debate with EU officials who provided background to speak more freely. They agreed that platforms could choose to turn off profiling-based recommender systems by default as part of DSA systemic risk mitigation compliance, but they still do not have initiatives that stray too far from their own policies. I have confirmed that the platform you are using does not exist. So far, we have only seen examples where non-profiling feeds are optionally provided to users, such as on TikTok and Instagram, in order to meet the aforementioned (Article 38) DSA requirement to provide users with the option of circumvention. not. Personalization of this type of content. However, this requires active opt-out by the user. On the other hand, setting a feed to non-profiling by default is clearly a stronger type of content regulation, as it requires no user action to enable. EU officials we spoke to said that the European Commission, in its capacity as enforcer of the DSA on VLOPs, is considering a recommender system, including the formal process initiated in relation to X earlier this week. admitted that. The recommendation system has also been the focus of some of the formal requests for information the commission has sent to his VLOP, including one to Instagram that focuses on child safety risks. they spoke. And they agreed that the EU could use its enforcer role, or law-abiding power, to force large platforms to stop personalized feeds by default. However, they indicated that the commission would only take such action if it determined it would be effective in mitigating a particular risk. The official noted that multiple types of profiling-based content feeds are in place, even on a platform-by-platform basis, and emphasized that each must be considered in context.

More generally, they appealed for “nuance” in the debate over the risks of recommendation systems. They suggested that the Commission’s approach here would be to conduct a case-by-case assessment of concerns and advocate for data-driven policy interventions on VLOPs rather than blanket measures. did. After all, it’s a collection of platforms as diverse as video-sharing and social media giants, as well as retail and information services and (most recently) porn sites. The risk that an enforcement decision will not be selected by legal challenge in the absence of solid evidence to support the decision is clearly a concern for the Commission. The official also wants to collect more information before making a decision on whether to recommend.

Source: techcrunch.com

Snowflake makes a big move into data clean rooms with acquisition of Samooha

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snowflake is buying Samuhaa startup developing a “cross-cloud” data collaboration suite; company announced This morning it was added to the list of big tech acquisitions for the holiday season.

The transaction, which is expected to close by the end of this month and is subject to customary closing conditions, will enable Snowflake to securely share, collaborate on, and gain insights from their own and partners’ data, a well-established data clean technology. Acquire the “Room” platform. Regardless of the underlying data stack.

Samooha, in turn, will receive an undisclosed amount of cash and/or stock, along with support for Snowflake’s extensive technology and engineering infrastructure. All 19 Samooha employees, including CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan and co-founder Abhishek Bhowmik, will be joining Snowflake in some capacity.

“This acquisition further strengthens our mission to leverage the world’s data by accelerating the built-in capabilities of the Snowflake platform for our customers,” Carl Perry, director of product management at Snowflake, said in an email. told TechCrunch. “Samooha customers will benefit from Snowflake’s many built-in platform features and the powerful network of the Snowflake Data Cloud. Meanwhile, Snowflake customers will be able to use the data clean room where their data already resides within Snowflake. It’s now faster and easier to build, connect, and use directly with .

Los Altos-based Samuha, co-founded by Sivaramakrishnan and Bhowmik in 2022, competes in the increasingly crowded data cleanroom space. AWS has a data clean room product, and so do startups like Herb. However, Samooha differentiates itself by relying heavily on his Snowflake ecosystem. Naturally, Snowflake was an early investor.

Samooha, a Snowflake native app, provides a no-code UI that customers can use to access and build clean room apps.The company went The company specifically targets industries considered to be potentially underserved, including healthcare, financial services, advertising, retail, and entertainment, and its customer base includes several Fortune 500 brands. He claimed that

Buoyed by its customer acquisition momentum, Samooha raised $12.5 million from investors including Altimeter Capital prior to the acquisition. The startup was valued at about $40 million post-money.

“SaMooha’s founding hypothesis was that the latest frontiers in data and AI would be built on a foundation of secure data sharing and collaboration,” Sivaramakrishnan said in an emailed statement. “Samooha joining Snowflake strengthens Snowflake’s ability to enable enterprises to collaborate in a seamless manner, with data governance, privacy, and security at its core. Companies and businesses such as media platforms can now build a powerful edge of value exchange and connectivity across their ecosystems of partners and customers.”

Investing in data clean room technology could be a beneficial decision for Snowflake. Continue to exceed Investor expectations, as a side note, in the long term. according to According to Gartner, 80% of advertisers spending more than $1 billion annually on media will use data clean rooms by the end of the year for applications such as analytics, measuring campaign results, and facilitating data integration. Probably.another poll published In early 2023, 29% of U.S. marketers suggested they would place more emphasis on data clean rooms this year compared to 2022, but given Snowflake’s interest, this prediction is certainly not impossible. there is no.

Source: techcrunch.com

Adobe left with a big gap as $20 billion Figma deal falls through

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Adobe and Figma ended their $20 billion takeover dream this morning after regulators signaled tough times ahead. Figma still receives a $1 billion stipend as part of the deal, and as co-design lead, he should stand up well.

But it could be a different story for Adobe. They knew that the product they offered to compete with this company, XD, was not very strong, and they really wanted this company. They sought to use their corporate influence to seize advantageous aspects of their core creator businesses by acquiring market leaders.

But ultimately, the regulatory hurdles proved too much for them, and after more than a year of back and forth in regulatory meetings, both companies realized it wasn’t going to happen and decided to exit. decided.

Adobe put on a brave face their official statement, but I can’t help but be deeply disappointed with this result. “Adobe and Figma have shared a vision to jointly redefine the future of creativity and productivity, and we continue to leverage the huge market opportunity and mission to change the world through personalized digital experiences. We remain in a good position to do so.”

It’s not clear that Adobe could be in such a strong position without Figma, but it’s certainly true that Adobe is willing to pay a hefty price to have it under its wing. They were never able to convince regulators that this was not a blatant power grab by wealthy corporations to use their economic clout to take over the market.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s chief executive officer for competition, has made it clear that she believes this is just such an attempt. her official statement. “By merging these two companies, the proposed acquisition would end all current and stop all future competition between the two companies. Our thorough investigation shows that this We found that this could lead to higher prices, lower quality, or less choice for customers.”

Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, says this is a major setback for Adobe, forcing it to return to its design collaboration tool, XD. “Adobe realized that in a world of Generative AI, the value is not in content creation, but in coordinating the work of content. This deal takes Adobe back two years and expands the reach of this important market. “This will give us an incentive to revamp XD to cover this,” he said.

Adobe General Counsel Dana Rao told TechCrunch in October that the company has largely dismantled its XD team and is fully committed to meeting its product needs with Figma. “We tried to get in there [collaborative design] I used XD but it failed. We abandoned the product. Basically, our annual revenue never exceeded $15 million to $17 million. “I think he’s down to five full-time employees, but they continue to work according to their contractual requirements,” he said. “So if we’re going to get into the product design space, for us it’s going to be acquiring Figma,” he said at the time.

On the plus side, the company now has a lot of cash on hand that it wouldn’t have had had the deal gone through, and it could probably put it to better use in a post-generation AI world. Brent Leary says. Co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials. “This deal was announced before ChatGPT, and the world has changed dramatically since then. And this could mean that Adobe could take back his $20 billion and adjust and shape the content creation process post-ChatGPT.” It might actually work better because of its gender,” he said.

Wang said the company may also consider acquiring other collaboration startups such as Milo, web flow or invision, which raised $476 million, $335 million, and $356 million, respectively (according to Crunchbase data). None of this would make him a perfect successor to Figma, but perhaps he could give the company a head start in the collaboration space without the kind of scrutiny it received in the Figma acquisition attempt. Sho.

Figma, for its part, hasn’t stopped since this deal was announced, moving forward and planning as an independent company. In fact, this startup has employed 500 people since September 2022. Additionally, we have developed new features including tools. For developers And we have a generative AI layer on top of the popular FigJam whiteboard tool.

John Lilly, an early investor in Figma, said he was enthusiastic about the company remaining independent. “This team is a very special team. Over the last 10 years, they have completely changed the way design works. And this market for designing products is much larger and growing faster.” Lilly told TechCrunch.

If he’s right, that’s exactly why Adobe wanted to buy the company. Now, with Figma continuing to operate on its own and a startup full of the same potential it had before the acquisition was announced in September 2022, Adobe will need to rethink its design collaboration strategy, and perhaps at this point You basically have to start from scratch, not in the position you were in.

Source: techcrunch.com

Analyst warns that Google’s major court defeat to Epic Games may lead to reorganization of Big Tech companies due to antitrust concerns

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One of Google’s most vocal critics says Google’s “catastrophic” antitrust loss this week to “Fortnite” maker Epic Games is a huge blow to Big Tech companies and other companies. This could potentially change the situation completely, potentially exposing the company to a wave of restructuring. Matt Stoller, director of research at the antitrust watchdog American Economic Liberties Project, said the jury’s unanimous verdict that Google maintained an illegal monopoly through the Android app store was a sign that “the truly powerful Big Apple… This is the first time a “tech company” has lost a major antitrust case. case. “There will be appeals and things like that, but I think over the next five years or so Google will start to settle and agree to splits because they know they’re going to lose.” , it’s not worth it. There is a lot of legal uncertainty.” Stoller told journalist Glenn Greenwald on his show “System Update.” “I know there’s a lot of cynicism, but this is actually how we’re going to rebuild these companies,” Stoller added. “It’s kind of amazing that it actually works.” “It’s over.”Google just lost a major antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games, the first judgment of its kind against a major tech company.The potential impact on Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other companies cannot be overstated.@MatthewStoller I’ll explain 👇 pic.twitter.com/aaGQ96Bcgu— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) December 13, 2023 Stoller added that the jury’s decision sets an important new legal precedent that is likely to influence the process in a range of antitrust cases facing Google and other large companies. Google is awaiting a judge’s ruling on a landmark Justice Department case targeting its online search empire, as well as separate investigations into its digital advertising business and Google Maps business. “All of a sudden, there’s a precedent and these sneaky judges are going to have to find reasons to rule in favor of Google, whereas before they had to find reasons to rule against Google. Deaf,” Stoller said. “I think all of these lawsuits are going to be overturned, and it’s going to be much harder for Google to win the lawsuits.” As The Post reported, experts say the Google v. Epic ruling could upend the business model that underpins the company’s lucrative Play Store. The Play Store previously charged large companies up to a 30% fee on in-app purchases and required them to: Use your company’s pricing system. Matt Stoller is the research director of the American Economic Liberties Project, an antitrust watchdog group. X/@SystemUpdate_ U.S. District Judge James Donato will next decide which illegal business practices Google must eliminate. A judge could order Google to stop paying major app developers to discourage them from launching competing app stores and suspend billing requirements, among other remedies. . In May 2024, Judge Amit Mehta will decide Google’s fate in a Justice Department lawsuit that alleges it has maintained an illegal monopoly over online search. The Post reached out to Google for comment on Stoller’s comments. Google faces a series of antitrust battles in the future. EPA Meanwhile, Google has already announced plans to contest the verdict in the Epic lawsuit. “Android and Google Play offer more choice and openness than any other major mobile platform,” said Wilson White, the company’s vice president of government affairs and public policy. “This trial makes clear that we are in intense competition with Apple and its App Store, as well as the App Store for Android devices and game consoles.”

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Source: nypost.com