Daily Archives: May 4, 2023

This is an audio transcript of the Behind the Money podcast episode: Night School, Class 3 Big Tech vs the insurgents

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Peter Spiegel Welcome to Behind the Money Night School. Im Peter Spiegel. Im the US managing editor of the Financial Times. BTM Night School is a special series made in collaboration with Blinkist that will serve as a guide to the US economy in 2023. For tonights lesson...

John Thornhill I think AI is different. It does disrupt peoples jobs. I dont think it ever tends to replace jobs outright. What it does do is change the nature of those jobs.

Peter SpiegelFrom the rise of ChatGPT to lay-offs at companies like Meta and Amazon, tech has dominated the headlines in 2023. Here to help us make sense of it all is the Financial Times innovation editor John Thornhill.

John, looking at the US economy, 2023 has been a year where weve seen the economy slow, and that is nowhere more apparent than in big tech, where firms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have all announced some of the biggest lay-offs of any American companies. Why are they being hit so hard?

John Thornhill I think several things are going on at the moment. And youre right. I mean, so far this year, the latest tally, I think about 100,000 jobs have gone from the big tech companies, which is a lot of jobs. Several things, I think. One, last year, I think during the whole Covid pandemic, all of the big tech companies overinvested. They thought the future was gonna arrive quicker than it in fact did. And everyone was going online. They were using Zoom; they were using Google Meet. Everyone is working remotely. So there was a big demand for tech products. And so I think part of the story is were just coming off the peak. The Nasdaq index of kind of tech stocks is down 16 per cent over the past year, although its gone up 12 per cent this year. And I think that really, its just a recalibration when you look at a lot of the hiring figures or the investment levels or the VC funding, 2023 compared to 21, its really still showing an upward tick. Its just that this blowout year of 2022 has now been rolled back.

Peter SpiegelSo these names that we were just talking about that dominate in many ways our daily life Microsofts, the Googles, the Amazons if were coming off the peak, are these lay-offs and the downturn sign that these companies are sort of losing the position in the US economy, that theyre gonna be diminished in the US economy going forward? Or is this a classic case of sort of retrenchment where theyre basically just sort of cutting costs to maintain their leadership position going forward?

John Thornhill Im definitely in the retrenchment school. If you look at the underlying trend lines on ecommerce or the shift to digital advertising or just the uptick of adoption of all these tech products, youre seeing the underlying trend is still moving very sharply northwards. Youre seeing a whole load of new start-ups being formed, partly as a result of the kind of tech lay-offs as well, that there are a lot of kind of surplus tech workers who are now thinking about what theyre gonna do. So theres been a big surge in kind of new business formation weve seen since the Covid pandemic. And I think just generally theres a whole secular trend towards increased use of technology. Five billion people in the world have a smartphone. Increasing amount of commerce is going online, about 20 per cent in the US now. And so I think the secular trend will eventually can outweigh the cyclical downturn.

Peter Spiegel All right. So lets talk about that because theres this trend towards increased use. I think when we talk about technology in general, we tend to focus on these big companies because, as I said, they tend to dominate our lives. But as you pointed out, new companies being started, a secular trend towards more use of technology in our daily lives, so although these big tech groups in Silicon Valley play an important role, its not the only way technology is impacting the US economy. But what are some of these trends that we should be watching, you know, to see whats going to influence our lives and whats going to influence the broader economy?

John ThornhillWell, I think part of the story is that youre gonna see a battle between the big incumbents the Microsofts, the Googles, the Amazons and so on that youve been talking about and the insurgents, if I call them, the next generation of those companies that are emerging. And I think its gonna be fascinating to see how this battle plays out. On the one hand, its been easier and cheaper to launch a company than ever before. You have, everyone can operate in the cloud, which means that the cost has been reduced, the cost of software has plummeted, and finance is more readily available than ever before. So I think we have seen this really interesting trend of new business formation post-the Covid pandemic and how these businesses grow and adopt the new technologies that are coming along. Are they gonna shake the market grip that the big companies have, or are we gonna see a lot more disruption from below?

Peter Spiegel OK, so disruption by insurgents takes us very quickly to what I mentioned at the top, ChatGPT. Now OpenAI, which is sort of the inventor or the developer of it, has gotten some backing from Microsoft, but it clearly has become a disrupter, as you say. And its also convinced a lot of people that AI has finally arrived, and it become a...have a real impact on the real economy. Whats your view? I mean, is AI now ready for prime time? Will it play a role as a disrupter, or should we not believe the hype?

John Thornhill Well, these technologies have been developing over several years. I mean, Google really, the first people who came up with the transformer technology, and GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformers. So they were the people who first came up with the technology, and then its been spread and other people have adopted it. As youre saying, OpenAI, which is this fascinating, kind of San Francisco-based research company, has really kind of pioneered the use of what are called large language models or the ChatGPT that came out. And I think theyve had a huge impact. So I think what...the difference is that a lot of the big companies and Google and Microsoft in particular had been developing these generative models. But when we saw the launch of ChatGPT in November last year, they really went mainstream. Millions of people started playing with them. About a hundred million people started using them within two months of launch, which is an astonishingly rapid take-up of a new technology. And I think we all had that kind of wow moment where you prompt a question in ChatGPT and you get this extraordinarily plausible instantaneous text coming out of the machine. And I think it is an amazing thing. But I think people are only just beginning to work out how its gonna have an impact.

Peter Spiegel Let me play the cynic or the sceptic here, because it was not so long ago that we had another, quote unquote, disruptive technology in something called the blockchain. And the most vivid thing we saw about this blockchain was in cryptocurrencies. And yet in the last few months, weve seen a complete collapse of the most prominent part of the crypto exchange called FTX. And that has seemed to raise all sorts of new questions about cryptocurrencies in general, but also whether blockchain is actually as disruptive as we maybe once thought. Take me through your thoughts on blockchain, and why perhaps AI as a disruptive technology is more worth paying attention to or not versus the hype that was around blockchain?

John ThornhillWell, Gartner, the data company, came up with this quite useful model called the hype cycle, which is rather nice (Peter chuckles). And so they plot where each technology is on this chart that they produced according to how much hype there is around a particular technology. So at the moment, AI is very close to the top of the peak of inflated expectations, as they call it. People are getting so excited about it. Metaverse and blockchain have gone over the top of that peak, and theyre now in what the Gartner would call the slough of despond. (Peter laughs) And then after a few months after people have stopped talking about it, then you get the slow adoption. And thats really when I think a lot of these technologies go mainstream. So I think that youre seeing exactly that with blockchain, there is massive overhyping of it. We saw the whole collapse of the FTX crypto empire. People have almost shaken their heads and thrown up their hands in despair and thought, this is never gonna come to anything. But I think people will start thinking, what are the real uses of this? How can we adopt it? And I think we might begin to see some really interesting uses over the next five, 10 years.

Peter SpiegelAnd when you say find ways to use it, do you mean cryptocurrencies specifically or more broadly, the blockchain technologies and how something that is, you know, visible and transparent to the world and cannot be hacked at is something that other industries could use potentially?

John ThornhillI think its the underlying blockchain technology that people are beginning to think, is this a different way of handling data and making transfers in a way that is more decentralised, is not controlled by one central authority and so on? So I think a lot of the models that weve seen emerge so far have failed, but there is still, I think, possibilities that they could get adopted in the future.

Peter Spiegel Lets go back to AI and to a certain extent to ChatGPT, but AI more generally, because if you combine AI with robotics, you have a debate about whether basically increased automation and machine learning through robotics is good or bad for the US economy. So on the upside, theres the obvious economic argument that automation increases productivity and productivity is key to any country increasing its collective wealth. So therefore, on paper at least, this is a good thing for the US economy. But many of us have seen that there are, automation frankly takes jobs away from a lot of blue-collar Americans, which means there are even fewer well-paying jobs for the average American. So in your view, because you are a columnist, is automation and robotics, you know, a plus or a minus for the US economy?

John Thornhill I would say its definitely a plus. I think this debate has been going on for several centuries and in fact, ever since the Industrial Revolution, that its very easy to see which jobs are destroyed by new technologies and very hard to predict which jobs are gonna be created. I think AI is different. Its an incredibly powerful whats called a general purpose technology that infuses the whole economy at large. I think it will have an incredible impact on productivity in a whole load of different areas. And one of the ones Im most interested in is healthcare at the moment. But as you say, it does disrupt peoples jobs. So I dont think it ever tends to replace jobs outright. What it does do is change the nature of those jobs. In healthcare, for example, a lot of speculation out there that it will change the role of a doctor a lot more than it will change the role of a nurse, for example. In the past, when manufacturing was automated, it definitely hit the blue-collar jobs. It was that kind of automation of muscle. What AI is doing is automating the brain. And so I think thats gonna affect a lot more white-collar jobs going forward...

Peter Spiegel Hopefully not journalists...

John Thornhill Well, maybe some journalists (laughs), but not columnists, I think.

Peter SpiegelBefore I let you go, I want to change topic slightly from the hard science and the disruptive nature of technology to sort of the policy side of things, because one of the biggest stories in technology, I would argue, is that its become in many ways the big battleground in geopolitical conflict, particularly between China and the US. So almost on every sector in technology microprocessors, quantum computing, renewables, green technologies, 5G you have the US and China at loggerheads, sanctions, bans, all these kinds of things. Just to throw this out there, who do you think is winning the global tech war? Because there is a lot of nervousness in Washington that China has taken a quantum leap ahead of the west on many of these technologies. Is that paranoia? Is that actually happening? What would be your view in terms of where China and the US stand right now in advanced technologies?

John ThornhillIf I can put it in a slightly different way, I think both sides are winning, which means also both sides are losing. In some areas like 5G telecoms infrastructure that you were talking about, no doubt China has won that war. I think in open areas that are still now very competitive, in particular, three I would pick out. One is chips that you mentioned. At the moment, 90 per cent of the worlds leading chips are manufactured in Taiwan, which a lot of people in Washington worry is an incredible kind of geostrategic hotspot. What happens if Taiwan came off market? Thats obviously an enormous kind of strategic challenge for America, which is, explains why theres been this massive investment in kind of chip production in the US. AI, I think, is one of the other areas when you look at the papers that are now coming up. China has put an enormous effort into increasing its capability in that area. I think for the moment, as far as anyone can tell, America still has the significant edge in terms of research. But I think China has probably got the edge in terms of the application of a lot of these AI models, certainly kind of ecommerce and online world and digital payments and so on. So I think thats an even contest in a way. And then I think the real joker is quantum, and weve been spending quite a lot of time at the FT trying to investigate quantum computing. In truth, nobody knows who is ahead in this field.

The idea is that if one side or the other did develop a fully functioning quantum computer, they would be able to crack open the other sides encryption methods, the so-called Q-Day, which would have an enormous strategic impact if one of those two sides got ahead of the other. But the truth is that we have no idea really who is where at the cutting edge of this technology. So thats definitely an open race.

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Peter Spiegel OK, John, Im gonna ask you, if our listeners were to just walk away and say, here are the three things I need to take away from John Thornhills discussion, what are the three most important things do you think right now?

John ThornhillWell, first, I think the macro trend towards tech is still very strong. We had this blip in 22. Weve had the retrenchment in 23. But I think we still are gonna see a very strong uptake of technology, particularly in ecommerce, a whole load of software services and in generative AI. Number two would be the impact of generative AI. I think people are still trying to figure this out. Huge numbers of start-ups being created and getting funded right now, who are trying to work out how they can apply AI. Ninety per cent of the start-ups are gonna go bust, but the 10 per cent of them are gonna transform the workplace, I believe. And I think in many areas theyre gonna augment human creativity. Theyre gonna threaten a number of jobs, particularly kind of white-collar jobs. Theyre going to change the nature of work. But I think they will also augment human creativity and lead to a lot of increased productivity. And the third one is really how this all fits into the context of the US-China tech war. I think people have kind of pulled back from calling it the new cold war, but theres certainly very heightened rivalry between the two powers, most particularly in chips, where America is kind of really squeezing China. And China is putting huge effort into trying to develop state-of-the-art computer chips. But were also seeing it in the areas of kind of AI quantum computing and also synthetic biology.

Peter SpiegelOK, Im gonna be very unfair and push you even further. If theres one thing that our listeners should take away about technology and the US economy, what do you think that one thing is?

John ThornhillIts all about the humans, rather perversely. I would argue that technology is a subject that everyone gets obsessed by and they look at the kind of capabilities of the technology and what it could do. But technology is only useful when its applied, and thats all about how people use it. And so I think humans very much are in the driving seat still. Were trying to figure out how we use this technology. We can use it for wonderful, productive ends. We can also use it for very harmful purposes as well. Dont forget the humans.

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Peter SpiegelThanks again for listening. Im Peter Spiegel. You can find more of Johns reporting on FT.com. This episode was done in collaboration with Blinkist. If you want to find out more about conversations and topics like this, check out the Blinkist app. This episode was produced by Zach St. Louis. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer. Sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco. Cheryl Brumley is our global head of audio. Thanks for listening. Class dismissed.

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Night School, Class 3: Big Tech vs the insurgents - Financial Times

Michael Klimes Illustration by Dan Murrell

We love the cover images created each month by our art editor, Leon Parks, for the print magazine. But this time Leon has excelled himself. The dark wolf with demonic eyes, staring at the reader, is so arresting.

After you have dragged your own eyes away from those of the wolf, there are the little details to savour, such as the person with a bow whom the wolf seems to be hunting; or is it the other way around? Also, what about all that orange mist perhaps smoke between the two protagonists?

One thing these firms are very good at is providing innovative, efficient products and services

The cover image is so good you might not have felt like turning the page to discover what was in the rest of the magazine. If you did, and are reading my words here, I thank you.

The prose in the cover story, by chief reporter Lois Vallely, is equal to Leons artistic vision.

Their combined work makes editing become a joy, and Lois has produced a fine piece on whether Big Tech is a threat to advisers. Its a skilfully told story whose ultimate direction is hard to determine.

On one hand, there are the clunky platform behemoths that go back some years.

Advisers know their names and histories well. They cost tremendous amounts of money and generated huge expectations, but fell short of the mark.

Using AI should enable advisers to focus on what is most important in the long run: serving clients with a human touch

On the other hand, there is what comes under the label of Big Tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. These giants are not associated with financial advice but they could make inroads to the sector due to their financial firepower, datasets and tech nous.

Lois mentions the fact the Financial Conduct Authority believes Big Tech firms could bring benefits to consumers of retail financial services by competing with incumbent providers. One thing these firms are very good at is providing innovative, efficient products and services.

Conversely, there are risks they could get a stranglehold on financial services in the same way they have in other sectors. The Big Tech giants have been criticised by both consumer advocates and politicians for exploiting their market dominance.

Big Tech could make inroads to the sector due to their financial firepower, datasets and tech nous

The best scenario, which Lois outlines, is that something like artificial intelligence (AI) comes in to complement what advisers do. This should enable them to focus on what is most important in the long run: serving clients with a human touch.

We will be covering the same theme of Big Tech and financial advice at MMI Leeds on Thursday 11 May, with Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, a senior adviser to the FCA on the subject. She is our closing speaker and will give us the regulators view.

In other news, I managed to do some writing for the magazine, having conducted MM Meets with M&G Wealth managing director David Montgomery. Enjoy!

Michael Klimes is acting editor. Contact him at: michael.klimes@moneymarketing.co.uk

This article featured in the May 2023 edition of MM.

If you would like to subscribe to the monthly magazine, please click here.

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MM View: The Big Tech monster is coming for you - but only if you let it - Money Marketing

By Nick Matich

Google founder Larry Pages first patent U.S. Patent Number 6,285,999 describes the search algorithm that later became one of the most powerful tools in human history. Mr. Page and his colleagues turned that patent, which was licensed from Stanford, into a trillion dollar company and revolutionized the internet in the process.

But now, having reached the commanding heights of the economy, Google and other technology giants with some help from their allies in Washington are trying to weaken patent protections and thus prevent a new generation of startups from climbing the ladder.

First, starting in 2014 with Alice Corp v. CLS Bank International, a series of Supreme Court decisions made it much harder to patent the kind of algorithmic innovations that made Google what it is today. In the years after the Alice decision, for example, denials of AI-related patents on grounds of ineligibility quadrupled. Indeed, under current law, Mr. Pages first patent would almost certainly be invalid.

Lower courts have extended the Supreme Courts precedent to new areas, ruling that even innovations in electric car chargers and garage door openers are actually unpatentable abstract ideas. Bad law that once affected only tech startups, now impacts potentially any industry.

A bipartisan reform proposal in the Senate crafted by Thom Tillis, R-NC, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, would clear up the murkiness the Supreme Court created. But Big Tech interests are dead-set against it. The less thats patentable, the more Big Tech can lift the work of others without paying.

Second, around 2010, Big Tech lobbied Congress to pass the America Invents Act, which lawmakers wrote with the intention of streamlining patent litigation. Most notably, the law set up an administrative body that could review the validity of already-issued patents, to confirm whether they were genuinely novel, useful, and nonobvious. One of the architects of that legislation, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, just became the new chair of the House subcommittee on intellectual property.

Unfortunately, Big Tech almost immediately abused the law, by infringing on smaller rivals patents and then repeatedly filing challenges against those patents. In fact, there are now companies whose entire business is challenging patents on behalf of Big Tech. These professional patent challengers keep their clients anonymous, enabling them to mount repeated attacks on their rivals patents.

Third, even if a patent survives Big Techs attacks, it has become virtually impossible to stop their infringement. Traditionally, courts would order an infringer to simply stop using the technology as a matter of course. The patent owner could decide whether to compete based on its idea or accept payment from infringers.

In recent years, however, courts have moved towards awarding a reasonable royalty but allowing infringement to continue. Now, after years of infringement and millions in litigation costs, the most a patent owner can usually collect is what the infringer should have paid before using the technology.

The result of all of these changes to our patent system is that it is almost impossible for startups to use patents to challenge the Big Tech incumbents as they might have in the past. With their other market advantages, Big Tech companies can crush new competition and make our economy less dynamic in the long run.

Thats why Congress needs to empower small innovators by restoring the balanced patent system that built Americas tech industry.

Nick Matich, a patent litigator in private practice, served as acting General Counsel at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

See the article here:

Big Tech has eviscerated America's patent system The Gilmer Mirror - Gilmer Mirror

Is Britain really closed for business? That, were told, is the view of US Big Tech as expressed by Activision Blizzard the company whose most famous product is the violent videogame Call of Duty in response to the blocking by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of Activisions proposed $70 billion merger with Microsoft, which would have given the latter a dominant position in the emergent field of cloud-based gaming. You dont need to know exactly what that means to be worried that the worlds digital giants take a dim view of the UK as a marketplace and investment destination. But are they right?

Some pundits have used Activisions scorn as a prompt to recite the UKs obvious faults. Our corporate taxes are too high, we no longer offer EU access, our tech skills are woeful, our stock exchange offers a poor platform for high-growth companies and Tory ministers are not as keen as they should be to cut red tape. All true.

But in the case of Microsoft-Activision, lets note that the US Federal Trade Commission has also challenged the deal, that Activision boss Bobby Kotick stands to collect 300 million if it goes through, and most importantly, that Big Tech is always a seeker of monopoly power witness Amazons habitual crushing of competitors which regulators oppose in the interest of consumers and challengers. Competition is for losers (the slogan of the veteran US tech investor Peter Thiel) sums up the long-term strategy of Microsoft and its ilk. The fact that the CMA has teeth and is prepared to use them is a counter-indication that the UK is open, but for fair business rather than corporate bullies.

The takeover by JP Morgan Chase of First Republic, the collapsed Californian bank, may or may not mean, as Morgan boss Jamie Dimon declared, that this part of the crisis is over and the banking system is very stable. What it does signal is that JPMorgan Chase itself, having absorbed $173 billion of First Republics lendings, is now, even more than before, too big to fail. And rumours of other troubled banks around the world despite Dimons confident tone are likely to lead to another round of safety-first mergers akin to Credit-Suisse-UBS. So the next part of the crisis, if and when, will involve bigger banks needing taxpayer bailouts rather than smaller ones that might easily be taken over by their elder brethren. Frying pans and fires come to mind.

Ive observed before that my own City cohort, who started work in the mid-1970s, were a limp lot compared with the generation a decade or so ahead of us, who were pioneers of eurobond issuance, contested take-overs and international consortium banking. Battle-hardened by the early 1970s boom and bust, I wrote, they turned out tougher and more resilient than we were. Now theyre old and some, sadly, are dead, we can begin to place them in bankings pantheon.

Sir John Craven was a big figure because he brokered so many mergers between the banks themselves. My old boss Lord Camoys, saluted here recently, deserves credit for his bold vision of BZW. Among those still with us, Sir David Scholey of Warburgs was a prince before the fall of his firm and Sir Martin Jacomb was the thinking mans City grandee in a multiplicity of roles.

But without fear of contradiction, Id say the most admired for professionalism, leadership, loyalty, global gladhanding and multi-decade stamina was the German-born Sir Win Bischoff, who died last month aged 81. Successively chairman of Schroders, Citigroup in New York during the 2008 crisis, Lloyds Banking Group in London in the aftermath of that crisis, and finally JPMorgan Securities, Bischoff bestrode the financial world.

And everyone liked him. Long ago we headlined a Spectator profile of him (by Judi Bevan) The last of the Citys frequent flyers. There must be younger candidates for that title by now, but few who also deserve this simple accolade offered by one of Bischoffs peers: Hes a traditional relationship banker who puts the interests of the client first.

Are you an early retiree with a penchant for travel but thinking of re-entering the workforce? How about becoming a train driver for Transpennine Express (TPE)? They certainly need you: the northern regional rail franchisee, owned by FirstGroup, currently cancels one train in five for lack of driver availability.

And the terms are attractive, not to say fantastic. Salary around 60,000 a year, almost twice as much as most teachers and nurses, plus lashings of overtime if you want it but no pressure, since the drivers union, Aslef, cancelled a rest day working agreement with TPE. Youll get a leisurely 18 months training to learn the routes and no risk of repetitive strain because you cant be asked to drive the same route twice in a day. Holidays? Take them at 48 hours notice and put your feet up whenever you feel peaky: TPE drivers take the equivalent of 30 sick days per year compared with a national average of 5.7.

For further details, best to contact Aslef lead officer Andy Hourigan rather than TPE, whose current contract expires on 28 May. The government says all options are on the table for the future of the franchise while voxpopped travellers and northern mayors overwhelmingly support Hourigans call for the axe to fall on TPE, whose management wins no praise or sympathy.

But could any private-sector operator run a decent service with a drivers union so determined to derail it in pursuit of the declared political aim of a publicly owned railway from which privateers are excluded? If TPEs routes end up renationalised, the victor will be union militancy, not the suffering passenger.

More:

We need regulators with teeth to fight Big Tech monopolism - The Spectator Australia

IAMAI member companies are also contemplating whether to seek a revamp of the lobby group's functioning and force out tech giants from the association in its forthcoming elections, say sources

A splinter group of around 30-40 startups and domestic companies who are Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) members are considering whether to join other tech lobby groups, including a prominent rival tech association that is involved in legal action against Big Tech firms, according to people close to the developments.

This comes days after a controversy erupted about IAMAI's alleged leanings to tech giantslike Google and Meta.

"There's a WhatsApp group of around 394 participants who are largely Indian founders and includes both IAMAI members and non-members. The mood has been really hot there with several founders ranting about the issue," said the founder of a unicorn.

"They are saying either we should compel IAMAI to restructure their workings and kick out the Big Tech firms, or join the other prominent rival of the lobby. A third but not too probable option is to form a new group," he added.

Earlier this week, in a bid to assuage the concerns of domestic tech companies, IAMAI said that it was carrying out its mandate by following a process and "work without fear or favour".

On the specific issue of a separate competition law for the digital arena, which triggered the controversy, IAMAI President Subho Ray told members in an e-mail earlier this week that an overwhelming majority of the groups constituents were opposed to the idea of such legislation.

"The genesis of the recent social media and media buzz is the issue of the government setting up a committee to purportedly bring in a separate Competition Law for digital companies. One of the key features of the proposed new competition law is likely to be ex-ante regulations. This means even before you have become large or dominant, your company would be subject to the new provisions," IAMAI President Subho Ray wrote in the mail.

Sources had earlier said that IAMAIs views on the matter may be submitted this week to the Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL). However, now, that is unlikely and the process may be delayed further in light of the current controversy.

Moneycontrol has sent queries to IAMAI on the matter and this article will be updated when we receive their responses.

The CDCL earlier had a May 6 deadline for industry bodies to submit their report. However reports state that the deadline has been extended, and a CDCL meeting is scheduled for May 10 to deliberate on the matter further.

Meanwhile, Monday (May 1) was the last day for IAMAI members to submit their views regarding the matter, the group had said in a recent email to its 500 plus members.

A source briefed on the matter said that IAMAI can make changes in its recommendation based on the dissenting views that it may have received from domestic companies. However, that seems unlikely since IAMAI's president Shubho Ray has already said that the last version of its suggestions on the matter, which argued against a separate competition law, reflected the opinion of the majority of IAMAI members.

However, the dissenting views can be captured in a 'dissent note' as part of the larger industry consultation document, and be submitted to the government, sources said.

Another person close to the developments said that IAMAI might be planning to do separate calls with its members and non-member domestic companies on the issue, in order to discuss their concerns about the groups independence.

The issue here is very simple. All of us would like anything that hurts big tech companies. Perhaps, one way to revamp the working of the lobby group would be to ensure that the big tech firms dont get any of the top positions in the upcoming elections of IAMAI, said the founder of the Indian unicorn quoted earlier.

Deepsekhar Choudhury Deepsekhar covers tech and startups at Moneycontrol. Tweets at @deepsekharc

Aihik Sur covers tech policy, drones, space tech among other beats at Moneycontrol

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IAMAI showdown: Start-ups explore other lobby groups to fight Big Tech dominance - Moneycontrol

Advantage, big tech. Snaps first-quarter report today, showing a 7% drop in revenue, was a markedly worse performance than what its much bigger rival Meta Platforms reported on Wednesday night. (For those whove already forgotten, Metas ad revenue rose 4% in the quarter.) More noticeable was the difference in the second-quarter revenue outlook: Snap projected a 6% drop, while Meta projected growth of as much as 11%. Investors have made their choice, selling Snap stock down close to 20% in after-hours trading and wiping out all its gains for the year. Meta, on the other hand, is up 98% so far this year.

And this isnt just about Meta versus Snap. Alphabets Google is sailing through the ad downturn reasonably well, all things considered. While it reported a fractional dip in first-quarter ad revenue earlier this week, its search ad number rose slightly. What suffered were ad sales it handles for other companies websites, as well as on YouTube. And on the video front, YouTubes 2.6% decline was better than the 6.1% drop reported by Comcasts NBCUniversal today for its domestic ad revenue. Meanwhile Amazon tonight reported a 21% increase in advertising, slightly better than last quarters growth rate and a lot better than for other big ad-selling firms. (Details on Amazons overall quarter are here, Snap is here and Comcast here.)

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Snap and Amazon Q1 Shows Big Tech's Advertising Advantage - The Information

Californians and other Americans were shaken last year when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, sending womens rights back five decades and placing millions of American women at risk.

This occurred alongside a parallel crisis: the feeble state of online privacy, including among pregnancy and period tracker apps. This femtech software ostensibly helps women navigate ovulation, conception and pregnancy. While this software does do that, these apps are also deeply entwined with the unfettered data economy, which collects, shares and sells reams of personal information about people. This includes data like menstrual cycles, ovulation windows, sexual activity and doctors appointments information that could indicate an abortion.

Right now, California policymakers are debating some of the most important legislation in a generation. In Sacramento and in local legislatures, our representatives are crafting bills about climate change, immigration and wealth inequality.

For that reason, its easy to overlook a seemingly modest bill now being considered in Sacramento: AB254.

AB254 doesnt propose a grand new law. Instead, it revises Californias existing Confidentiality of Medical Information Act to protect a new subset of personal data: reproductive or sexual health information collected by apps and other digital services.

For this reason, AB254 is among the most important bills circulating that address womens and reproductive health rights. It addresses real risks Californians face in a post-Roe America, where pregnancy and period tracking apps are ubiquitous and their data collection policies are abysmal.

Indeed, my nonprofit group, Mozilla,published in-depth researchinto 25 of the most popular pregnancy and period tracking apps in August, shortly after the Supreme Court decision. The findings were frightening: 18 of those apps failed to meet minimum standards for privacy and/or security. The vast majority of the apps have opaque privacy policies, grave security issues or share data widely with advertising and marketing firms. One app, Sprout Pregnancy, didnt even have a privacy policy. And others,like Maya, share users information with Facebook. Lawsuits against these apps for privacy breaches arent uncommon.

Worst of all, these apps can potentially share that data with law enforcement. This could allow authorities to weaponize these apps to determine if users are pregnant, seeking abortion information or services, or crossing state lines to obtain an abortion. Mozilla research found only a handful of apps clearly articulate if and how they handle data requests from law enforcement the rest did not. And this isnt a theoretical problem: Last year, police in Nebraska used online data to investigate a teens abortion.

This fraught landscape is why AB254 is so important. Yes, its true that abortion isnt under direct threat in California: In November, Californians voted to amend the state Constitution and enshrine the right to an abortion. Gov. Gavin Newsom has even encouraged womenfrom states where abortion is illegal to travel to California for health care.

There are multiple ways AB254 can influence reproductive health rights nationwide.

California has tremendous market power. Its likely that most of these apps would apply AB254s mandate across all states; it can be too costly or technically difficult to tailor apps on a state-by-state basis. For decades, Californias progressive laws on climate and environmental protection have created a similar de facto national standard.

California is also a trendsetter in consumer data privacy. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 and the later California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 was among the first online privacy laws in the U.S. and many states have used it as a blueprint for their own laws. Since 2018, the California laws have spurred Virginia, Utah, Connecticut and other states to take action on online privacy.

Never have I seen the two issues womens rights and digital rights intersect quite like this. In an always-online country where reproductive health rights are under attack, Californias AB254 is a desperately needed response.

Ashley Boyd is vice president for global advocacy at Mozilla.

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How big tech is undermining women's reproductive rights in ... - San Francisco Chronicle

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Screens display the logos of OpenAI and ChatGPT in Toulouse, France, on Jan. 23.

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Kean Birch is director of the Institute for Technoscience and Society at York University.

A growing chorus of voices from across the political spectrum is raising concerns about artificial intelligence technologies, with many people calling for the regulation of AI, or at least a halt to further deployment while we think through how to regulate it. This includes an open letter published on Tuesday that was signed by about 75 Canadian researchers and startup chief executives.

I agree wholeheartedly with these calls for regulation and Ive long thought about how bizarre it is that we dont regulate AI companies that are literally experimenting on us given that they are being trained on our data even though we heavily (and necessarily) regulate biopharmaceutical testing. I think we need to do far more in Canada to regulate whats coming down the AI pipeline and we need to do so now.

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Its not just about the misinformation and loss of jobs that a lot of people fear. Absent regulation of AI, we risk further entrenching Big Techs dominance over the direction of our technologies.

Heres what I see as the most significant issues facing us with the development of AI technologies. And none of them can be solved via individual choices or market signals. A co-ordinated regulatory approach is required.

First, it is deeply problematic that our personal, health and user data are critical inputs into the development of AI algorithms. I dont want my personal information and user data to be deployed to develop new technologies I disagree with and Im pretty sure other people feel the same way.

But permissive terms and conditions agreements mean companies can largely do what they want with our data. Whatever future society AI could create, we are providing the building blocks for it through our data.

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This society could easily end up as a dystopia.

According to a paper that infamously got Timnit Gebru, technical co-lead of Googles Ethical AI Team, and other researchers fired in 2020, these large language models are best thought of as stochastic parrots. The models can put together outputs, such as human-like conversations, on the basis of probabilistic analysis analyzing millions of real conversations but they cant tell us the meaning of the interactions.

This is why using a platform such as ChatGPT is often a hilarious exercise in spotting how much absolute nonsense it can spit back at you.

The use of these AI technologies developed with large data sets will only further embed a range of biases prevalent in human life. If AI gets more integrated into our lives with no oversight, it will amplify these biases and worse.

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Which brings me to computing capacity. Developing AI requires immense computing power. The worlds computing capacity is being increasingly concentrated in the hands of Big Tech. Companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc./Google dominate cloud computing, which provides the digital infrastructure on which much of AI is being developed and on which it will run.

This infrastructure will have to expand significantly in the future to keep up with the demands of AI developments, leading to negative effects such as rising greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs. Moreover, these companies, which are already accused of having too much power over us, will only further entrench their control.

This means were not going to see the development of AI technologies that can actually do useful things. My favourite idea, for example, would be to automate the investigation of tax avoidance and evasion by the wealthy and big business, and then automate the enforcement action against them.

Unfortunately, Big Tech is not going to invest in developing these kinds of AI technologies. Thats because the technologies we create usually end up reflecting the social, political and economic context in which they emerge.

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Were at a crossroads right now where we need to do something. Trying to regulate AI after the fact will not be a viable option.

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