Chaos & Amazement #2321 TikTok x Oracle, Deepfaked Pentagon Explosion, and the Tardigrade Bean Bag Chair Hoodie

Welcome to my new subscribers! In this issue: TikTok’s deal with Oracle, OpenAI’s concerns over EU regulation, Mind-Video’s brain-generated videos, some creepy robots, and some musing about death.

TikTok is fine, thank you very much

• TikTok has announced that it will give Oracle full access to its source code and data, as part of its deal to address US national security concerns. TikTok CEO Shou Chew says Oracle has begun reviewing TikTok's source code and the app is “on track” to have all its US user data hosted and overseen by Oracle.

  ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok is “on track” with its undertaking to have all US user data hosted and overseen by Oracle Corp., as the Chinese tech behemoth s

  • This is the latest development in TikTok’s long-running saga to appease the US government and regulators, who have raised concerns over the app’s potential national security risks due to its Chinese ownership. More in my Twitter thread.

• TikTok: We are challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of Ti

  • The Montana law "unlawfully abridges one of the core freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment," the suit claims. Here are the docs: https://documentcloud.org/documents/23820566-tiktok-v-montana

• BookTok, the iconic and beloved community on TikTok, reshapes the publishing world. After the Book Club and partnership with Penguin Random House, they're now launching the groundbreaking TikTok Book Awards in the UK and Ireland!

  #BookTok #TikTokBookAwards

  More here:

  Introducing the TikTok Book Awards UK and Ireland 2023

  • Some of the most popular #booktok books: Verity by Colleen Hoover They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

AI isn’t going to govern itself

• AI isn’t going to govern itself. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever say we'll likely need an international regulatory body for superintelligence.

  Now is a good time to start thinking about the governance of superintelligence—future AI systems dramatically more capable than even AGI.

  • But which organization would be able to take on this task? Something similar to @iaeaorg (IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency)?

  • Meanwhile, the very same Sam Altman has “many concerns” about the EU's AI Act coming in 2024 and says that OpenAI “will try to comply, but if we can't comply we will cease operating”. Is this some attempt to blackmail?

    OpenAI warns over split with Europe as regulation of technology advances

    ChatGPT chief Sam Altman voices ‘many concerns’ over bloc’s planned legislation

Deepfakes and Fake News

• Prime example of the dangers in the pay-to-verify system. The Twitter account @BloombergFeed, tweeted a (very likely AI-generated) photo of a (fake) story about an explosion at the Pentagon, looks at first glance like a legit Bloomberg news feed.

  

Fresh AI

• Mind-Video is a new AI tool that can generate realistic videos from your brain activity using fMRI data.

  https://mind-video.com

• Looking for an AI to tackle your tasks? Look no further! There's an AI for that!

  aiscout.net

  • And that’s how I found Kapwing’s AI video editor. Type out any idea or topic you have, and Kapwing’s AI video generator will create an AI-generated video for you with video clips, subtitles, background music, and transitions. (Still very much in Beta) https://www.kapwing.com/ai-video-generator

From my blog

• Short History of Facebook's Privacy Issues https://bnox.be/2023/05/short-history-of-facebooks-privacy.html

  • The European Union has fined tech giant Meta an equivalent of 1.2 billion euros for allowing Mark Zuckerberg's company to transfer privacy-sensitive data of EU citizens to the US.

    Data Protection Commission announces conclusion of inquiry into Meta Ireland |

• The Top 5 Creepiest Robots Ever Made https://bnox.be/2023/05/the-top-5-creepiest-robots-ever-made.html

  

• Death and the Digital Frontier: What Happens After I Kick the Bucket? https://bnox.be/2023/05/death-and-digital-frontier-what-happens.html

  • “Now, it seems, we die three times. First, when you stop breathing, second, when a corporation deletes your account, and, third, when someone says your name for the last time.” https://gr36.com/2023/05/21/my-blog-could.html

  • Your digital life isn’t as permanent as you think it is https://technologyreview.com/2023/05/19/1073367/digital-life-isnt-permanent-google-twitter-inactive-accounts/ The policy changes are a reminder of how fragile our digital lives are and just how little control we have over their preservation.

    Google will delete accounts after two years of inactivity, and experts expect more data deletion policies to come

Weird and Wonderful

• Simone Giertz tries to make a robot arm out of stained glass

  It goes about as well as you'd expect

• Someone created this tardigrade bean bag chair hoodie image (probably using Midjourney).

  

  • From the comments: That looks comfortable as fuck and with all the potential for nuclear war, AI robot killers etc. just saying that Tardigrades are unkillable and survive every single planetary extinction event. Nike knows things about the future we don’t and I’m suiting up!