Tech
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Jon Keegan

Trump rescinds Biden’s executive order on “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI

In his first batch of executive orders, President Trump rescinded Biden’s sweeping 2023 executive order on “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.”

The press release announcing the revocation of the order, along with dozens of other Biden memoranda and orders, said:

“To commence the policies that will make our Nation united, fair, safe, and prosperous again, it is the policy of the United States to restore common sense to the Federal Government and unleash the potential of the American citizen. The revocations within this order will be the first of many steps the United States Federal Government will take to repair our institutions and our economy.”

Trump has promised to keep the AI industry free of regulations, and has made American domination of the technology a priority. The presence of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Tesla’s Elon Musk on the dais at the inauguration in the US Capitol rotunda yesterday was a visible signal of the heightened role that Big Tech companies might have in this administration.

The most significant change that will come from the reversal of Biden’s order is the elimination of the requirement for the developers of very large, powerful models to share the results of safety tests with government regulators and grant access to those models before releasing them to the public.

“To commence the policies that will make our Nation united, fair, safe, and prosperous again, it is the policy of the United States to restore common sense to the Federal Government and unleash the potential of the American citizen. The revocations within this order will be the first of many steps the United States Federal Government will take to repair our institutions and our economy.”

Trump has promised to keep the AI industry free of regulations, and has made American domination of the technology a priority. The presence of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Tesla’s Elon Musk on the dais at the inauguration in the US Capitol rotunda yesterday was a visible signal of the heightened role that Big Tech companies might have in this administration.

The most significant change that will come from the reversal of Biden’s order is the elimination of the requirement for the developers of very large, powerful models to share the results of safety tests with government regulators and grant access to those models before releasing them to the public.

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Tesla’s Robotaxi program has disclosed its 15th accident, Electrek reports, citing the latest filing from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to Electrek’s estimation, extrapolated from the last time Tesla disclosed mileage figures, that amounts to a crash every 57,000 miles — about 9 times the rate for humans.

The latest crash involved a Model Y hitting a fixed object at 9 mph in January while the autonomous system was engaged.

Humans are very much still involved with Tesla’s so-called autonomous driving service. Despite announcing in January that the service had started removing safety monitors from the front seats, only two unsupervised vehicles have been spotted in the last month according to Robotaxi Tracker. The entire fleet has also dwindled from around 50 vehicles to just 35. Their mileage is unavailable.

tech

Meta’s reported 20% layoff could bring headcount to its lowest level since 2021

Meta is rising Monday morning after Reuters reported the tech giant is planning to lay off 20% of its employees in an effort to use AI to make its workforce more efficient and offset its surging AI capex costs.

On the company’s last earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted 30% efficiency gains for its software engineers and said some “power users” of the company’s AI coding tools saw productivity jump as high as 80% — what some saw as a veiled threat to employees who failed to use AI to boost their output.

Meta’s headcount was nearly 79,000 last quarter, having steadily risen since its layoffs during the self-described “year of efficiency” in 2023. A 20% cut would bring headcount to around 63,000 — the company’s lowest level since 2021.

Shares were recently up 2.7%.

Meta’s headcount was nearly 79,000 last quarter, having steadily risen since its layoffs during the self-described “year of efficiency” in 2023. A 20% cut would bring headcount to around 63,000 — the company’s lowest level since 2021.

Shares were recently up 2.7%.

tech

Report: Amid safety failures, ChatGPT’s planned “adult mode” caused concern within OpenAI, with minors misclassified as adults 12% of the time

Despite a series of alarming mental health safety failures that resulted in ChatGPT users allegedly using the product to plan suicides and murder, OpenAI decided to double down on its plan to roll out an “adult mode,” allowing the AI chatbot to produce erotic content.

That decision raised alarms within the company, warning that users could develop unhealthy emotional dependence on the chatbot and that the new age estimation feature was imperfect — and therefore likely to allow minors to access the feature — according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Per the report, some 12% of the time, the age estimation feature mistakenly classified minors as adults.

OpenAI’s council of mental health experts were “furious” and unanimous in their opposition to the plans to move forward with the adult mode feature after they were told about the decision in January, with concerns about creating a “sexy suicide coach.”

Earlier this month, the company said it would delay the new feature to focus on other products.

That decision raised alarms within the company, warning that users could develop unhealthy emotional dependence on the chatbot and that the new age estimation feature was imperfect — and therefore likely to allow minors to access the feature — according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Per the report, some 12% of the time, the age estimation feature mistakenly classified minors as adults.

OpenAI’s council of mental health experts were “furious” and unanimous in their opposition to the plans to move forward with the adult mode feature after they were told about the decision in January, with concerns about creating a “sexy suicide coach.”

Earlier this month, the company said it would delay the new feature to focus on other products.

tech
Rani Molla

Amazon raises the price for ad-free Prime Video to $4.99

Amazon is giving consumers more — for more. The e-commerce giant is raising the price of its ad-free Prime Video tier to $4.99 a month, up from $2.99.

On April 10, the service, now rebranded as Prime Video Ultra, will allow more concurrent streams (five instead of three) and up to 100 downloads, up from 25. Ad-free Prime Video had been included with a Prime membership until 2024, when Amazon added ads and began charging $2.99 a month to remove them.

For what it’s worth, ad-free Prime Video is still cheaper than the other increasingly expensive streaming services — if you don’t include the cost of Prime.

For what it’s worth, ad-free Prime Video is still cheaper than the other increasingly expensive streaming services — if you don’t include the cost of Prime.

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