Greetings! Welcome to TechScape. I’m your host and editor, Blake Montgomery. Here’s what we’re focusing on this week: South Park’s caricatures of Peter Thiel and his fascination with the Antichrist. Check out our report on Thiel’s odd off-the-record lecture that inspired the show. Now, let’s get started.
Marc Benioff Catches President Trump’s Attention
Last week, the co-founder and CEO of Salesforce suggested that Donald Trump should go ahead with his threat to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco, even amidst local opposition. Even Benioff’s public relations manager was reportedly shocked by his remarks, as per a New York Times article.
Benioff is a well-regarded figure in San Francisco, being the city’s largest private employer. His comments coincided with Salesforce’s flagship conference, Dreamforce, which was set to take over the streets of the city. With a net worth of around $9 billion, according to Forbes, he plays a significant role in the political landscape, particularly within Democratic circles, though his wealth is dwarfed by that of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
His statements contradicted his liberal persona and previous declarations, as well as Salesforce’s operational philosophy. The remarks have divided opinions among tech leaders; in fact, one of Salesforce’s board members resigned in protest, while Musk reportedly supported him. My colleague, Dani Anguiano, noted, “Trump megadonor David Sachs, appointed by the president as AI and cryptocurrency czar, remarked that San Francisco could be swiftly eliminated with a ‘targeted operation,’ while Benioff suggested the military could aid police efforts.”
Mr. Benioff issued an apology on Friday, stating, “I have heard the voices of my fellow San Franciscans and local officials…I do not think the National Guard is needed to address security in San Francisco.” He mentioned that security concerns for Dreamforce fueled his comments.
It seems Mr. Benioff managed to provoke discussion without burning too much political capital, having shown a degree of empathy toward the Trump administration. On Monday, President Trump seemed to affirm his “unquestionable authority” to deploy federal troops to San Francisco.
“We’re going to San Francisco. The difference is, they want us in San Francisco,” Trump remarked in an interview.
Read more: President Trump vows to send troops to San Francisco, asserting ‘unquestionable authority’
Amazon Web Services Outage Highlights the Dangers of Centralization
My colleagues Dan Milmo and Graeme Wearden report on a significant outage that occurred yesterday in Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud division:
A technical glitch in Amazon’s cloud service resulted in the disruption of applications and websites globally on Monday.
Platforms impacted included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Duolingo, and several Amazon-owned businesses, among others.
According to internet outage monitoring site Downdetector, over 1,000 companies were affected around the world, with users reporting 6.5 million issues, including more than 1 million in the U.S., 400,000 in the U.K., and 200,000 in Australia.
Experts have raised concerns regarding the risks of depending on a small cohort of companies to manage the global internet. This failure underscored the inherent dangers of the internet’s reliance on a limited number of tech firms, with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google being pivotal players in the cloud sector.
Dr. Colin Cass Speth, the head of digital at the human rights organization Article 19, remarked, “We urgently need to diversify cloud computing. The infrastructure that supports democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot rely solely on a handful of companies.”
OpenAI’s Sora Creates Dolls of Historical Figures
OpenAI’s Sora, an AI-driven video generation app, has been thriving since its release, primarily due to its capability to create videos featuring your or your friends’ faces. For instance, I made a jogging-themed version of Ratatouille starring a friend preparing for the New York City Marathon.
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Sora also enables users to create videos featuring the faces of late celebrities. A significant and controversial case was Martin Luther King Jr., whose likeness appeared in many AI-generated videos since Sora’s launch, until the company decided to cease using it following complaints from his estate.
As Niamh Rowe noted, “Videos circulating in my feed show Dr. King making monkey noises during his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Other clips depict Bryant reenacting the helicopter crash that tragically claimed his life and that of his daughter.”
Other celebrity estates have echoed similar grievances. Malcolm X’s daughter stated that a video involving her father was “extremely disrespectful and hurtful.” Moreover, the daughter of comedian George Carlin described his AI-generated clip as “overwhelming and depressing” in a Blue Sky post, while Robin Williams’ daughter shared on Instagram that the AI-generated video of her father was “not what he wanted.”
Zelda Williams articulated, “Witnessing real people’s legacies reduced to this… is both horrifying and infuriating, especially with TikTok’s careless puppeteering.”
This trend has repeatedly surfaced with OpenAI. The company tends to be less cautious about reputational risks compared to rivals like Meta, which rolled out an AI-powered video app lacking the ability to deepfake friends concurrently with Sora. Google also withheld its version of ChatGPT for similar reasons; meanwhile, OpenAI’s audacity has allowed it to eclipse Google in this race. They even had to temporarily shut down their image-generating app when it was used to create diverse representations of Vikings. It’s alarming to consider the implications had they let MLK Jr.’s likeness run rampant.
Read more: ‘A legacy of AI missteps’: Video of OpenAI Sora’s death alarms legal experts
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Source: www.theguardian.com
