NEW RESOURCES

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs: UNOOSA and ESA launch new space solutions database linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. “The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have launched a new database listing current and past projects from space agencies in support of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Minecraft is Now Available for Your Chromebook. “It’s been a long time coming. Microsoft has been hard at work bringing Minecraft to a new platform — ChromeOS. Now, if you have a Chromebook, you can now drift away playing your favorite blocky game, as Minecraft has officially finished landing on the platform.”

PC Magazine: Google News Showcase Lands in US, Lowering Some Paywalls in the Process. “Instead of Google showing headlines and snippets of news stories and leaving it up to news sites to make money off that content (often via a display-ads market that multiple antitrust lawsuits say is twisted by Google’s exploitative conduct), Showcase has Google pay news sites directly for the right to feature those stories.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google Contract Staff That Helped Train AI Seek To Unionize. “A group of Alphabet Inc. contract workers are launching a unionization campaign, saying they need a greater voice at the company that has tasked them with work on its most high-profile products, including training generative AI answers in Google’s search engine and chatbot.”

Ars Technica: DeSantis ad uses fake AI images of Trump hugging and kissing Fauci, experts say. “A Ron DeSantis campaign video shows three pictures of Donald Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci, all of which seem to be fake images generated by artificial intelligence. One professor told Ars today that there is ‘no doubt’ the ad uses fake AI images.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Slashgear: Ring Employees’ Camera-Peeping Shows The Terrifying Downside Of Home Security Tech. “On May 31, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission issued a frightening proposal detailing some abuses of Ring technology by employees. The District of Columbia District Court noted in a filed complaint that ‘customers routinely use Ring’s indoor cameras as baby monitors and to monitor private spaces of the home, including adults’ bedrooms, children’s bedrooms, and bathrooms,’ and, it seems, this most personal footage has been accessed without some users’ knowledge.”

Wall Street Journal: 32 YouTube Videos Cited as Court Is Asked to Ban ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ Protest Anthem. “Government officials in the financial center are seeking a court order to block the dissemination online of a popular pro-democracy song, the first major legal challenge to U.S. tech companies such as Google over politically sensitive content on their platforms.”

New York Times: The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains Himself. “For nearly two hours Thursday, Mr. Schwartz was grilled by a judge in a hearing ordered after the disclosure that the lawyer had created a legal brief for a case in Federal District Court that was filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations, all generated by ChatGPT. The judge, P. Kevin Castel, said he would now consider whether to impose sanctions on Mr. Schwartz and his partner, Peter LoDuca, whose name was on the brief.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNBC: Google Cloud is partnering with Mayo Clinic as it tries to expand use of generative A.I. in health care. “On Wednesday, Google Cloud said Mayo Clinic is testing a new service called Enterprise Search on Generative AI App Builder, which was introduced Tuesday. The tool effectively lets clients create their own chatbots using Google’s technology to scour mounds of disparate internal data.”

MIT Technology Review: Google DeepMind’s game-playing AI just found another way to make code faster . “DeepMind’s run of discoveries in fundamental computer science continues. Last year the company used a version of its game-playing AI AlphaZero to find new ways to speed up the calculation of a crucial piece of math at the heart of many different kinds of code, beating a 50-year-old record. Now it has pulled the same trick again—twice.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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