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A laptop keyboard and Google logo displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on September 9, 2024.
Ireland sniffs around Google’s AI models
Ireland’s data privacy authority has opened an inquiry into Google’s artificial intelligence practices. The country’s Data Protection Commission has become an important data watchdog in the European Union as many of the world’s top tech companies have set up their European operations in Ireland. The DPC is specifically investigating whether Google’s Pathways Language Model 2, or PaLM 2, protected user privacy in accordance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.
PaLM 2 is a foundational model developed by Google AI that’s largely been succeeded by its Gemini model, which launched in December 2023.
Under the GDPR, companies are required to carry out “data protection impact assessments” any time they develop a project that could be considered “high-risk” to citizens’ personal information. The Irish data regulator will look into whether Google improperly skipped this step. GDPR violations are no joke: If found liable, Google could be forced to cough up 4% of their global annual revenue. Google told reporters that it takes its obligations under GDPR seriously and will work with the DPC to answer their questions.European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager holds a press conference after Europe's top court ruling on Apple's fight against an order by EU competition regulators to pay a record 13 billion euros in back taxes to Ireland, in Brussels, Belgium September 10, 2024.
Take two: Brussels’ banner day vs. tech firms
It was Tech Two-fer Tuesday in Brussels, as EU regulators got twin wins in their ongoing regulatory battle with US tech giants.
Google lost its final appeal in a 2017 antitrust case that found the company’s search engine had illegally prioritized its own shopping platforms. Google must now pay $2.7 billion in fines.
Apple, meanwhile, was ordered to pay $14 billion in back taxes, after the EU’s top court ruled that the Irish government had once given the tech giant sweetheart incentives that amounted to “unlawful aid.”
To be fair, these numbers are pocket change for companies raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue. And in both cases, the underlying offenses were rectified years ago – the Irish scrapped the sweetheart deal in 2015 and Google has since tweaked its ad algorithms.
But the rulings set a precedent as the EU flexes its unique muscle as a standard-setter in global tech regulation.
The next showdown: In July, Brussels said X had violated strict EU rules on harmful content. If the two sides can’t settle, the case will go to court. That seems likely, given that X owner Elon Musk responded to the charges by vowing to fight “censorship” and calling on the EU to perform a sex act on its “own face.”
ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen is seen in this illustration photo taken in Milano, Italy, on February 21 2023
Hard Numbers: ChatGPTers double, Japan’s AI military, Google’s AI pop-ups, Magic money, Musk vs. Brazil
200 million: OpenAI says it now counts 200 million weekly users of ChatGPT, which has doubled in the past year. It also claims that 92% of Fortune 500 companies use its products for writing, coding, and organizational help.
59 billion: Japan’s military is having a recruitment problem. With only 10,000 of its citizens enlisting this year — half of its target — the government is investing $59 billion, a 7% yearly increase, to add additional capabilities including artificial intelligence. It’s spending $123 million alone on an AI surveillance system for its military bases.
17: A new report from the consultancy Authoritas found that Google is offering its AI Overviews — those pop-up AI-generated answers to users’ Googled questions — on 17% of user queries. The search engine company came under fire for its inaccurate AI-generated responses earlier this year and since then has reportedly reduced the frequency with which its suggested answers pop up.
320 million: The startup Magic, whose AI models generate computer code and automate software, raised $320 million in a funding round from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. The San Francisco-based firm also announced a partnership with Google to build two new supercomputers on the tech giant’s cloud platform.
24: X is now shut down in Brazil, the escalation of a legal dispute between the company’s owner, Elon Musk, and the country’s top court. Musk has criticized Brazil for requesting the company remove certain accounts. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Friday gave Musk 24 hours to name a legal representative in the country or else face a national ban. Musk refused and, in response, posted an AI-generated image of de Moraes behind bars, writing, “One day, @Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a Perplexity AI logo displayed on a computer screen.
Hard Numbers: Search wars, Lumen lights up, Anduril gets a raise, Public-private partnership
500: Lumen Technologies is watching its stock surge thanks to AI. The US telecom company revealed its fiber optics infrastructure is in demand by data centers needed for the AI boom. The company’s stock jumped 500% in the past month, when it was hovering around $1 per share.
14 billion: Palmer Luckey’s defense tech company, Anduril, just raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round, valuing the company at $14 billion. Luckey, best known as the founder of Oculus VR, which he sold to Meta in 2014, started Anduril in 2017 to make drones and other autonomous aircraft, and it is seen as one of the major AI companies challenging the legacy defense contractors.
100,000: The state of California has struck a partnership with Nvidia to train 100,000 students in AI-related skills. The initiative focuses on community colleges and will feature new curriculums, certifications, workshops, and labs to get students ready for careers in AI — including those with the state government.Meta’s news ban in Canada has led to a media disaster. What does that mean for US efforts to wrangle big tech platforms?
It’s been a year since Meta yanked Canadian news from its platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – in response to a government bill that would see tech giants pay news outlets for linking to their online content. The Online News Act, which is similar to legislation passed in Australia, led to threats from both Meta and Google that they would pull news content originating in Canada. Google eventually struck a deal with media outlets; Meta did not, and it shows no sign of changing course a year later.
The full effects of Meta’s news ban are just coming to light. A report released this month by the Media Ecosystem Observatory finds that nearly half of online news media engagement has dropped in the last year, including 85% on Facebook and Instagram, a loss that “has not been compensated by increases on other social media platforms.”
It also finds that nearly a third of local news outlets that were active on social media are now dormant. What’s more, a whopping 75% of the public is unaware of the ban that has led to Canadians consuming less news – and more disinformation – than ever before.
“Canadians continue to learn about politics and current events through Facebook and Instagram,” the report summarizes, “but through a more biased and less factual lens than before, and many Canadians do not even realize the shift has occurred. They do not appear to be seeking news elsewhere.”
It’s a worst-of-all-worlds scenario in Canada as a struggling media industry and a growing online disinformation problem collide, depriving outlets of much-needed views and shares, and readers of access to reliable, high-quality journalism. In an ironic twist, a law meant to preserve news media by filling the coffers of news outlets, allowing them to keep staff and grow coverage, is contributing to its demise.
Will the Liberals stand up for their law?
The Liberal government isn’t backing down in the face of this new data, though. Ottawa is now saying Meta may still indeed be regulated by way of the Online News Act since some news is still sneaking through the block, which looks like a technicality but speaks to the government’s intention to double down on the law.
Moreover, there’s big money at stake. Google has signed a CA$100 million dollar deal to fund journalism. That money will be managed by small independent outlets focused on digital journalism. It’s too early to say what effect the money will have on news media in Canada, since the program is just starting to roll out, and there’s plenty still to be determined. But you know what they say – tens of millions here, tens of millions there, it eventually starts to add up to real money.
Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, says “The de-platforming of Canadian news content is probably not what the government expected when they launched their Online News Act, and it’s having the perverse effect that now Canadians are less exposed to quality, reliable journalism and reporting on social media platforms.”
But he doesn’t expect Canada will back down “unless there’s a change in government.”
By the next federal election in 2025, there may be one as the Conservatives are up in the polls. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has criticized the legislation and suggested it was “like 1984,” claiming it’s censorship and expressing concern that the government was trying to ban Canadians from seeing the news. That tone suggests he may be inclined to rescind the law, or at least change it.
US efforts to extract media payments from platforms are moving … slowly
Canada isn’t the only country working on securing payments from the tech sector to offset the harmful effect their advertising market dominance has on news media. But the Canadian experience may serve as a warning, or at least a lesson, for US lawmakers.
A bill before Congress, the Journalism Competition Act of 2023, would set a process for collective negotiation between news media and online platforms for payments to the former in exchange for access to their content. Introduced in 2021, in the last Congress, by Sen. Amy Klobuchar and again in 2023 for the current one, the bill is going nowhere fast. It has seen no movement since it was placed on the Senate’s legislative calendar in July 2023.
The state of California is considering a similar bill. Meta has threatened to block news there if the bill, which enjoys bipartisan support, passes. The California Journalism Preservation Act passed the state assembly 46-6 and is now in the Senate, where it’s working its way through committee in the face of opposition from tech giants who claim the bill won’t support local journalism, but rather act as a giveaway to hedge funds and big media companies.
A 2023 white paper found that Google and Meta made billions from linking to news – $21 billion and $4 billion respectively – and “owed” $10-12 billion and $1.9 billion annually to publishers as payment for the profit they make from news media content.
Scott Bade, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s geo-technology unit, expects the US won’t rush to emulate Canada’s approach. He notes that a divided Congress and looming election means lawmakers won’t be keen to make headway on a controversial tech regulation bill. The latest data from Canada won’t exactly spur action, either.
When it comes to California, where Democrats have control of the state legislature, the chances of a bill passing may be higher, he notes, but they still face intense lobbying from the tech industry, and it’s not a given that Gov. Gavin Newsom would even sign it.
A matter of life and death
The consequences of news bans are real. They suppress the capacity of media organizations to get factual, reported information to the public – and thus put media, particularly local outlets, at further risk of folding. They also facilitate the flow of unreliable information. The consequences of this dynamic can be quite literally a matter of life and death.
The recent far-right, anti-immigrant riots in the United Kingdom were violent and included fires being lit at hotels in which asylum-seekers were staying. There have been hundreds of arrests so far after online misinformation and disinformation spread, claiming that a Muslim immigrant was responsible for the stabbing deaths of three youths in Southport – in fact, the suspect is a non-Muslim who was born in Cardiff.
As Time reports, the riots were brutal as “[f]ar-right groups were seen looting, attacking police and locals, and performing Nazi salutes in the street. As the mobs chanted ‘send them home’ and ‘Islam out,’ they also destroyed mosques, libraries, and graffitied racial slurs on homes.”
Ahead of the upcoming US presidential election and 2025 Canadian federal election, there is worry that online disinformation will pose a serious, even “unprecedented” threat, which could lead to harassment, intimidation, and even violence.
The next war
Governments are trying to extract funds from well-heeled tech platforms and struggling to keep media outlets afloat while fighting to displace misinformation and disinformation with more reliable sources of news. But track records are spotty, and the future is uncertain.
In some ways, the media funding battle is the “last war,” says Bade, and a new struggle is increasingly emerging over artificial intelligence and the “bigger threat” of content stripping.
“If media companies are going to have collective negotiation with tech companies,” Bade says, “it probably should be over that.”
Federal judge rules Google abused its monopoly power over online search
On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Google illegally created a monopoly over online search. The landmark decision is the most significant victory yet for US regulators trying to rein in the power of tech giants.
What is Google guilty of? The ruling says the tech giant abused its monopoly power by paying other companies, like Apple and Samsung, billions a year to have Google automatically put its search engine on smartphones and web browsers. This allowed Google to collect more consumer data than its competitors, which it used to make its search engine better and more dominant.
The judge must now decide how it will order Google to change its behavior, which could include forcing the company to change how it runs – or to sell off parts of the business.
Why it matters? The decision will likely influenceother antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta, and add momentum to the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement agenda. It will also almost inevitably be appealed, making it highly likely to end up on the Supreme Court’s docket next term.
People silhouetted in front of a Google logo during the inauguration of a new hub in France dedicated to the artificial intelligence sector at the Google France headquarters in Paris, France.
Google’s own mathlete
Google’s best artificial intelligence system is now doing math at a high school level. Okay, well, a really, really, really good high school level.
A pair of Google DeepMind models tried to solve the six problems posed to teenage math whizzes at the International Mathematical Olympiad and came away with a silver medal performance, the first time an AI model has been medal-worthy.
The models, called AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2, were given unlimited time while students only got 4.5 hours per test, but the fact that it could reason through these complicated advanced algebra, geometry, and number theory problems at all was an achievement. It did flunk two combinatorics problems, which have to do with counting and arranging large quantities.
David Silver, Google DeepMind’s vice president of reinforcement learning, said this represents a “step-change in the history of mathematics.” Hopefully, he said, it’s not just a big moment for the Olympiad, but also “represents the point at which we went from computers only being able to prove very, very simple things toward computers being able to prove things that humans can’t. In the future, Google hopes that its models can work hand-in-hand with human mathematicians to solve the hardest problems in the field, though first, it seems, they’ll have to conquer the Olympiad.
Two hands touching each other in front of a pink background.
Hard Numbers: Startups are up, Google gas, Brazil dings Meta, Slow and steady
27.1 billion: From April to June, investors poured $27.1 billion into US-based artificial intelligence startups, according to PitchBook. That’s nearly half of the $56 billion that all American startups raised during that time. Startup investment is up 57% year over year — something for which the AI industry can claim lots of credit.
48: Google’s greenhouse gas emissions are up a whopping 48% since 2019, thanks in no small part to its investments in AI. In the tech giant’s annual environmental report, it chalked up the increase to “increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.” It previously set a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 and now says that’s “extremely ambitious” given the state of the industry. Many AI firms are struggling to meet voluntary emissions goals due to the massive energy demands of training and running models.
9,000: The Brazilian government on Tuesday ordered Meta to stop training its AI models on citizens’ data. The penalty? A fine of 50,000 Reals (about $9,000). The government gave Meta five days to amend its privacy policy and data practices, citing the “fundamental rights” of Brazilians.
75: Bipartisan consensus is hard to come by these days. But in a recent survey of US voters, conducted by the AI Policy Institute, 75% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans said it’s preferable that AI development is slow and steady as opposed to the US racing ahead to gain a strategic advantage over China and other foreign adversaries.