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Whistleblowers Allege Meta Puts Children at Risk in VR Products

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A group of six whistleblowers has reported allegations of a cover-up regarding harm to children from Meta’s virtual reality devices and applications. They assert that the social media giant, which owns Facebook and Instagram, produces a range of VR headsets and games.

“Meta was aware that minors were using its products, but they believed, ‘Hey, kids are driving engagement.’ Meta compromised internal teams, manipulated research, and discarded data that was unfavorable,” they stated.

Sattizahn and other current or former Meta employees, who are also whistleblowers, shared these revelations along with numerous documents with Congress. The Washington Post was the first to publish these claims. Sattizahn and Casesavage, the principal investigators focused on the VR experience for youth users, are set to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law this Tuesday.


Meta spokesperson Dani Lever stated that the company has authorized 180 studies concerning VR reality labs since 2022.

“Some of these instances are cherry-picked to support a misleading narrative,” she remarked. Meta further claimed that it has installed features in its VR products to reduce unwanted interactions and provide supervision tools for parents.

The whistleblower allegations were released on Monday, asserting that Meta’s VR products could take further steps to enhance child safety. The whistleblower stated that a company manager directed staff to avoid research that could reveal instances of harm to children in virtual reality.

In one instance, researchers were reportedly instructed to “ignore issues like that.”

In another case, the Washington Post reported that researchers were directed to omit details from interviews conducted with German families. One teenager recounted that his younger brothers, under 10, “often encountered strangers” in Meta’s VR, with “adults making sexual suggestions to his younger brother.”

These claims emerge amidst a steady stream of former Meta employees speaking out against the company for failing to adequately safeguard children from the dangers posed by its social media products. Lawmakers have also criticized Meta executives for promoting content that encourages bullying, substance abuse, and self-harm among young people.

During a Congressional hearing in January 2024, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley compelled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to publicly express regret.

“I’m sorry for everything you and your family have endured,” Zuckerberg acknowledged at that time. “No one should have to suffer what your family has experienced. This is why we invest heavily and will continue to collaborate across the industry to prevent such suffering.”

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Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn stated that Meta’s disclosures regarding its VR products demonstrate the necessity for Congress to enact legislation establishing regulations for social media companies.

“Rather than addressing significant concerns about widespread harm to children on the platform, Meta chose to conceal damning evidence and suppress the voices of innocent children for its interests,” Blackburn criticized. “These whistleblowers deserve commendation for their bravery in revealing Meta’s deceitful practices.”

The six whistleblowers are represented by a legal non-profit organization supporting whistleblowers and are expected to testify before the subcommittee on Tuesday.

Current and former Meta employees have submitted detailed disclosures to Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission.

Source: www.theguardian.com

CoreWeave puts plans for IPO on hold

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CoreWeave, a cloud computing company, was the first major publicly released artificial intelligence startup. When it submitted its public listing documents earlier this month, it signaled optimism in the volatile IPO market.

However, optimism has waned as CoreWeave, based in New Jersey, significantly reduced the size and value of its offering on Thursday. The company now plans to price its shares at $40 when trading opens on Friday. Submit The stock price is expected to range from $47 to $55 per share.

Initially, CoreWeave was expected to raise around $4 billion at a $35 billion valuation. However, the company is now aiming to raise $1.5 billion on Friday, valued at $19 billion.

The decline in offerings reflects a sluggish stock market, impacted by inflation and uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s tariffs. It also raises concerns about AI developments given the slowing economy, as evidenced by a 7% drop in Nvidia’s stock, a Coreweave investor, since Wednesday.

“It was a challenging time for the market overall,” said Samuel Kerr, head equity capital market analyst at financial insights firm Mergermarket. “This indicates a lack of appetite for risky transactions like this at the moment.”

While CoreWeave will be the first major AI company to go public, it doesn’t serve as a definitive test for AI products. It falls in line with standard startups in industries such as Openai and Anthropic, creators of popular chatbots.

Kerr also noted that CoreWeave has unique challenges that make it a challenging IPO candidate, such as significant debt required to build a new data center and its unusual background as a cryptocurrency mining company.

“Using it as a precursor to all AI is not particularly wise,” Kerr added.

CoreWeave, founded in 2017 by Michael Intrator as a cryptocurrency mining startup, currently has Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee, three former merchandise traders, as its top executives. The company has built its business around Nvidia GPUs for analyzing vast amounts of data.

Following a crash in crypto prices in 2019, CoreWeave doubled its supply of powerful chips by purchasing from struggling crypto companies. With the release of Openai’s Chatbot ChatGpt in 2022, CoreWeave shifted its focus to using chips for AI development.

As a public company, CoreWeave provides insight into the profitability of the cloud computing and AI sectors. While revenue surged from $229 million to $1.9 billion last year, the company has not yet achieved profitability. It spent nearly $1 billion to service its debt last year.

Based in Livingston, New Jersey, CoreWeave emphasizes its relationships with prominent California companies like Nvidia and Openai, who are investors in the company. An agreement has been announced valuing CoreWeave at up to $12 billion.

Having raised $2.3 billion in venture capital funding, CoreWeave was valued at $19 billion in the private market last year. Intrator, Venturo, and McBee collectively own about 30% of the company, with special shares granting them approximately 80% of the voting rights.

The largest investor in CoreWeave is hedge fund magnetor, who injected $50 million into the cloud computing startup in 2021, owning roughly 25% of the shares. Nvidia, the main supplier of CoreWeave’s chips, holds a 4% stake in the company.

The IPO was managed by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Meta puts a stop to launching advanced AI models in the EU

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced that it would not release an advanced version of its artificial intelligence model in the EU, citing “unpredictable” behavior of regulators.

The owners of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are preparing to make the Llama model available in a multimodal format, meaning it can work with text, video, images and audio, not just one format. Llama is an open-source model, meaning users can freely download and adapt it.

But a Meta spokesperson confirmed that the model would not be available in the EU, a decision that highlights tensions between big tech companies and Brussels amid an increasingly tough regulatory environment.

“We plan to release a multi-modal Llama model in the coming months, but it will not be released in the EU due to the unpredictable regulatory environment there,” the spokesperson said.

Brussels is introducing an EU AI law which comes into force next month, while new regulatory requirements for big tech companies are being introduced in the form of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

However, Meta’s decision regarding its multimodal Llama model has implications on its compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Meta was ordered to stop training its AI models on posts from Facebook and Instagram users in the EU for potential violations of privacy regulations.

The Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees Meta’s compliance with GDPR, said it was in discussions with the company about training its models.

However, Meta is concerned that other EU data watchdogs could step in to the regulatory process and halt its approval. Although a text-based version of Llama is available in the EU, and a new text-only version is due to be released in the EU soon, these models have not been trained on EU Meta user data.

The move comes after Apple announced last month that it would not roll out some new AI features in the EU due to concerns about compliance with the DMA.

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Meta had planned to use the multimodal Llama model in products such as Ray-Ban smart glasses and smartphones. Llama’s decision was first reported by Axios.

Meta also announced on Wednesday that it had suspended use of its Generative AI tool in Brazil after the Brazilian government raised privacy concerns about the use of user data to train models. The company said it decided to suspend use of the tool while it consults with Brazil’s data authorities.

Source: www.theguardian.com

The Remarkable Decline of Predatory Birds in Africa Puts them at Risk of Extinction

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Bateleur decreased by 87% in 3 generations

Andre Botha

Dozens of African raptor species are in sharp decline, and many are now considered at risk of extinction, according to an analysis of data from across Africa.

Populations of nearly all 42 species studied have declined due to the spread of agriculture, pesticide use, poisoning by poachers, and infrastructure such as power lines that are deadly to the birds.

These include the secretary bird (sagittarius the serpent), decreased by 85 percent over three generations. Marshall Eagles (Polemaetus bellicosus), reduced by 90% on the same basis.Teratopius Exaudatus), decreased by 87 percent.

Secretary birds decline by 85% in 3 generations

Darcy Ogada

A study has found that some birds that were previously thought not to be in danger of extinction are now on the verge of extinction. For example, the African goshawk (Aquila Spirogaster) is now listed as 'least concern' by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and is estimated to have declined by 91 percent.

Some have called for the list of such species to be moved higher in the conservation rankings to reflect this change. “We definitely expect this paper to put pressure on the rest of the papers to pull it up.” [of the surveyed species now facing threats]sooner or later,” say the study authors. Darcy Ogada from the Peregrine Fund, a US-based organization.

Data was collected from more than 53,000 sightings of 42 species on approximately 100,000 kilometers of surveyed roads in Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Cameroon, Botswana and Kenya between 1969 and 2020.

Additional data came from the latest South African Bird Atlas project, a citizen science-led survey.

The researchers found that population declines for 42 species were more than twice as severe in unprotected areas than in protected areas, and that well-managed national parks and reserves have long-term implications for bird species. shown to be important to aid survival.

Further research is needed to understand the fate of these birds. “There is an urgent need to increase research that estimates raptor population trends based on loss of habitat for endangered species, such as forests, wetlands, and grasslands, or modeling loss and mismanagement of protected areas.” Mr. Ogata says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com