This week Bill Gates said "there are more reasons than not to be optimistic that we can manage the risks of AI while maximizing their benefits." One thing that's clear from everything that has been written so far about the risks of AI — and a lot has been written — is that no one has all the answers. Another thing that's clear to me is that the future of AI is not as grim as some people think or as rosy as others think. The risks are real, but I am optimistic that they can be managed. As I go through each concern, I'll return to a few themes:

- Many of the problems caused by AI have a historical precedent. For example, it will have a big impact on education, but so did handheld calculators a few decades ago and, more recently, allowing computers in the classroom. We can learn from what's worked in the past.

— Many of the problems caused by AI can also be managed with the help of AI.

- We'll need to adapt old laws and adopt new ones — just as existing laws against fraud had to be tailored to the online world.
Later Gates adds that "we need to move fast. Governments need to build up expertise in artificial intelligence so they can make informed laws and regulations that respond to this new technology."

But Gates acknowledged and then addressed several specific threats:

• He thinks AI can be taught to recognize its own hallucinations. "OpenAI, for example, is doing promising work on this front.

• Gates also believes AI tools can be used to plug AI-identified security holes and other vulnerabilities — and does not see an international AI arms race. "Although the world's nuclear nonproliferation regime has its faults, it has prevented the all-out nuclear war that my generation was so afraid of when we were growing up. Governments should consider creating a global body for AI similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency."

• He's "guardedly optimistic" about the dangers of deep fakes because "people are capable of learning not to take everything at face value" — and the possibility that AI "can help identify deepfakes as well as create them. Intel, for example, has developed a deepfake detector, and the government agency DARPA is working on technology to identify whether video or audio has been manipulated."

• "It is true that some workers will need support and retraining as we make this transition into an AI-powered workplace. That's a role for governments and businesses, and they'll need to manage it well so that workers aren't left behind — to avoid the kind of disruption in people's lives that has happened during the decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States."

Gates ends with this final thought:

"I encourage everyone to follow developments in AI as much as possible. It's the most transformative innovation any of us will see in our lifetimes, and a healthy public debate will depend on everyone being knowledgeable about the technology, its benefits, and its risks.

"The benefits will be massive, and the best reason to believe that we can manage the risks is that we have done it before."

There's an ongoing study (started in 2004) that examines the effects of alcohol (and other common substances) on mood, performance, and behavior. Started by Dr. Andrea King, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago, its latest result is a study called "Holding your liquor: Comparison of alcohol-induced psychomotor impairment in drinkers with and without alcohol use disorder." They found that drinkers with alcohol use disorder (or AUD, traditionally known as alcoholism) displayed less impairment on fine motor and cognitive tasks than light or heavy social drinkers after consuming a standard intoxicating dose — equivalent to four to five drinks that produce breathalyzer readings of 0.08-0.09%, i.e., the threshold for drunk driving." Yet when those drinkers with AUD consumed a higher amount akin to their usual drinking habits — equivalent to seven to eight drinks and breathalyzer readings of 0.13% — they showed significant impairment on those same tasks, more than double their impairment at the standard intoxicating dose that did not return to baseline performance three hours after drinking.

"There's a lot of thinking that when experienced drinkers (those with AUD) consume alcohol, they are tolerant to its impairing effects," said Andrea King, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at UChicago and senior author of the study. "We supported that a bit, but with a lot of nuances. When they drank alcohol in our study at a dose similar to their usual drinking pattern, we saw significant impairments on both the fine motor and cognitive tests that was even more impairment than a light drinker gets at the intoxicating dose..."

While they did show less overall alcohol impairment on the motor and cognitive tests, at the 30-minute interval they had similar slowing on the fine motor test as the light drinkers. They also recovered quicker to their baseline levels, supporting the notion that they had more tolerance and can "hold their liquor" better than people who don't drink as much. However, people with AUD do not often stop drinking at four or five drinks and engage in high intensity drinking. Thus, a subset of the drinkers with AUD in the study participated in a separate session where they drank a beverage more consistent with their regular drinking habits, equivalent to about seven or eight drinks. At this higher dose of alcohol, they showed more than double the amount of mental and motor impairment than after they had the standard intoxicating dose. They also never got back to their baseline level of performance, even after three hours. Their level of impairment even exceeded that of the light drinkers who consumed the standard dose, suggesting that the physical effects of the alcohol add up the more someone drinks, experienced or not.

"I was surprised at how much impairment that group had to that larger dose, because while it's 50% more than the first dose, we're seeing more than double the impairment," King said.
More than 140,000 people die from excessive alcohol use in the U.S. each year, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and 30% of traffic fatalities still involve alcohol intoxication. "I'm hoping we can educate people who are experienced high-intensity drinkers who think that they're holding their liquor or that they're tolerant and won't experience accidents or injury from drinking," said Dr. King.

"Their experience with alcohol only goes so far, and excessive drinkers account for most of the burden of alcohol-related accidents and injury in society. This is preventable with education and treatment."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader WankerWeasel for sharing the article.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: The tech-backed and directed nonprofit Code.org is back with a new call for America's Governors, announcing its "10th policy recommendation for all states." Their recommendation? "To require all students to take computer science to earn a high school diploma."

Arguing that "artificial intelligence has increased the urgency to ensure our students are adequately prepared for a rapidly changing world," Code.org explains its vision: that states have "a policy that requires all students to earn a credit named 'computer science' or has a related name that includes 'computer science'". Heretofore, Code.org has said, "Our vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science, just like biology, chemistry, or algebra."

Code.org's call for a high school CS graduation requirement in response to recent AI breakthroughs comes two months after the non-profit launched TeachAI, a Code.org-led and seed-funded effort supported by a coalition of tech and educational organizations, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, Meta, and (newly AI-powered) Khan Academy. "TeachAI," the initiative's website explains, "is committing to provide thought leadership to guide governments and educational leaders in aligning education with the needs of an increasingly AI-driven world and connecting the discussion of teaching with AI to teaching about AI and computer science."

"The Biden administration announced Friday that 804,000 borrowers will have their student debt wiped away, totaling $39 billion worth of debt, in the coming weeks..." reports CNN.

That's an average of $48,507 per borrower, each of whom has "been paying down their debts for 20 years or more and should qualify for relief," according to a statement from the administration Friday's action addresses "historical failures" and administrative errors that miscounted qualifying payments made by borrowers, according to the Department of Education...

Since Biden took office, his administration has approved $116.6 billion in student debt relief for more than 3.4 million Americans, according to the Department of Education... Despite the Supreme Court last month striking down Biden's loan forgiveness program to provide millions of borrowers up to $20,000 in one-time federal student debt relief, his administration has continued to pursue other avenues to cancel debt and make it easier for borrowers to receive loan forgiveness...

While not part of today's actions, the Department of Education is also moving ahead with a separate and significant change to the federal student loan system that will enable Americans to enroll in a new income-driven repayment plan... Once the plan is fully implemented, people will see their monthly bills cut in half and remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments.
Last month the administration described student debt relief as "good for the economy... [G]ood for the country."

Telly's free 55-inch 4K dual-screen TV sets are set to arrive at users' homes this week -- but of course, there's a catch. From a report: The start-up, which plans to ship some 500,000 free, ad-supported TVs in 2023 in the U.S., is calling the initial wave a "public beta program." The company says the new Telly households represent a diverse cross-section of the U.S. population, although the initial user base overindexes on education level and household income -- and also skews toward Gen Zers and millennials. According to Telly, more than 250,000 people have signed up to receive a free TV set, which displays an always-on, rotating ad unit on a 9-inch-high second screen situated below the main 55-inch one. Each unit also includes a free Chromecast with Google TV adapter. The bulk of the half-million TVs will go out in the fourth quarter of 2023, Telly chief strategy officer Dallas Lawrence said: "We think there's no better Black Friday deal than free."

To receive the free TV, Telly users must submit detailed demographic info (such as age, gender and address), as well as purchasing behaviors, brand preferences and viewing habits, and they must agree to let their data be used for serving targeted ads. Telly's TVs include a sensor that detects how many people are in front of the screen at any given moment. So what's the catch? Telly users must agree to several conditions under the company's terms of service. If someone doesn't abide by the TOS, Telly reserves the right to demand the TV be shipped back -- otherwise, it will charge up to $1,000 to the credit card associated with a given account. Also read: Telly, the 'Free' Smart TV With Ads, Has Privacy Policy Red Flags.

Vietnam understands the value of education and manages its teachers well. From a report: Their children go through one of the best schooling systems in the world, a status reflected in outstanding performances in international assessments of reading, maths and science. The latest data from the World Bank show that, on aggregate learning scores, Vietnamese students outperform not only their counterparts in Malaysia and Thailand but also those in Britain and Canada, countries more than six times richer. Even in Vietnam itself, student scores do not exhibit the scale of inequality so common elsewhere between the genders and different regions. A child's propensity to learn is the result of several factors -- many of which begin at home with parents and the environment they grow up in. But that is not enough to explain Vietnam's stellar performance. Its distinctive secret lies in the classroom: its children learn more at school, especially in the early years.

In a study in 2020, Abhijeet Singh of the Stockholm School of Economics gauged the greater productivity of Vietnam's schools by examining data from identical tests taken by students in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. He showed that between the ages of five and eight Vietnamese children race ahead. One more year of education in Vietnam increases the probability that a child can solve a simple multiplication problem by 21 percentage points; in India the uplift is six points. Vietnamese schools, unlike those in other poor countries, have improved over time. A study published in 2022 by researchers at the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank based in Washington, dc, found that in 56 of 87 developing countries the quality of education had deteriorated since the 1960s. Vietnam is one of a small minority of countries where schools have consistently bucked this trend.

We've just had the world's first press conference with AI-enabled, humanoid social robots. Click here to jump straight to Slashdot's transcript of all the robots' answers during the press conference, or watch the 40-minute video here.

It all happened as the United Nations held an "AI for Good" summit in Geneva, where the Guardian reports that the foyer was "humming with robotic voices, the whirring of automated wheels and limbs, and Desdemona, the 'rock star' humanoid, who is chanting 'the singularity will not be centralised' on stage backed by a human band, Jam Galaxy."

But the Associated Press describes how one UN agency had "assembled a group of robots that physically resembled humans at a news conference Friday, inviting reporters to ask them questions in an event meant to spark discussion about the future of artificial intelligence. "The nine robots were seated and posed upright along with some of the people who helped make them at a podium in a Geneva conference center... Among them: Sophia, the first robot innovation ambassador for the U.N. Development Program, or UNDP; Grace, described as a health care robot; and Desdemona, a rock star robot."

"I'm terrified by all of this," said one local newscaster, noting that the robots also said they "had no intention of rebelling against their creators."

But the Associated Press points out an important caveat: While the robots vocalized strong statements - that robots could be more efficient leaders than humans, but wouldn't take anyone's job away or stage a rebellion - organizers didn't specify to what extent the answers were scripted or programmed by people. The summit was meant to showcase "human-machine collaboration," and some of the robots are capable of producing preprogrammed responses, according to their documentation.
Two of the robots seemed to disagree on whether AI-powered robots should submit to stricter regulation. (Although since they're only synthesizing sentences from large-language models, can they really be said to "agree" or "disagree"?)

There were unintentionally humorous moments, starting right from the beginning. Click here to start reading Slashdot's transcript of the robots' answers:

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has used his partial veto power to make a creative line-item change to the state budget, securing increased funding for public schools until 2425 instead of 2025. The BBC reports: Republicans have reacted with fury to what they call "an unprecedented brand-new way to screw the taxpayer." The move could however be undone by a legal challenge or future governor. It is the latest tussle between Mr Evers, a former public school teacher who narrowly won re-election last year, and a Republican-controlled state legislature that has often blocked his agenda. Their original budget proposal had raised the amount local school districts could generate via property taxes, by $325 per student, for the next two school years.

But Wisconsin allows its governors to alter certain pieces of legislation by striking words and numbers as they see fit before signing them into law - what is known as partial veto power. Both Democrats and Republicans have flexed their partial veto authority for years, with Mr Evers' Republican predecessor once deploying it to extend a state program's deadline by one thousand years.

This week, before he signed the biennial state budget into law, the governor altered language that applied the $325 increase to the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, vetoing a hyphen and a "20" to instead make the end date 2425. He also used his power to remove proposed tax cuts for the state's wealthiest taxpayers and protect some 180 diversity, equity and inclusion jobs Republicans wanted to cut at the public University of Wisconsin.

Chinese regulators imposed more than $1 billion in fines on tech giants Ant Group and Tencent Holdings, signalling an end to a crackdown on the sector that had wiped out billions in market value and derailed the world's biggest initial public offering. From a report: The People's Bank of China fined Ant 7.12 billion yuan ($984 million), wrapping more than two years of probes into the finance technology giant founded by billionaire Jack Ma. Tencent was levied a 2.99 billion yuan fine, according to statements from the central bank Friday. Shares in Ant affiliate Alibaba Group Holding soared more than 6% in New York trading. Investors are betting the fines draw a line under the multi-year crackdown that torpedoed Ant's planned IPO in 2020 and ensnared some of the nation's most powerful private firms in sectors from online education to gaming. It paves the way for Ant to revive growth and eventually resurrect plans for an IPO.

UK universities have drawn up a set of guiding principles to ensure that students and staff are AI literate, as the sector struggles to adapt teaching and assessment methods to deal with the growing use of generative artificial intelligence. From a report: Vice-chancellors at the 24 Russell Group research-intensive universities have signed up to the code. They say this will help universities to capitalise on the opportunities of AI while simultaneously protecting academic rigour and integrity in higher education. While once there was talk of banning software like ChatGPT within education to prevent cheating, the guidance says students should be taught to use AI appropriately in their studies, while also making them aware of the risks of plagiarism, bias and inaccuracy in generative AI.

Staff will also have to be trained so they are equipped to help students, many of whom are already using ChatGPT in their assignments. New ways of assessing students are likely to emerge to reduce the risk of cheating. All 24 Russell Group universities have reviewed their academic conduct policies and guidance to reflect the emergence of generative AI. The new guidance says: "These policies make it clear to students and staff where the use of generative AI is inappropriate, and are intended to support them in making informed decisions and to empower them to use these tools appropriately and acknowledge their use where necessary."

After a three-year pause, U.S. student loan repayments are set to resume on October 1st — just three months from today. But CNN reports that yesterday America's Supreme Court "struck down President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program, blocking millions of borrowers from receiving up to $20,000 in federal student debt relief."

"The court's 6 to 3 conservative majority held that the secretary of education did not have that authority under existing law," writes the Washington Post. The Guardian quotes President Biden's response: "I think the court misinterpreted the constitution."

CNN reports: No debt had been canceled, even though the Biden administration had received about 26 million applications for relief last year and approved 16 million of them. The forgiveness program, estimated to cost $400 billion, would have fulfilled a campaign promise of Biden's to cancel some student loan debt. But a group of Republican-led states and other conservative groups took the administration to court over the program, claiming that the executive branch does not have the power to so broadly cancel student debt in the proposed manner.

Critics also point out that the one-time student loan forgiveness program does nothing to address the cost of college for future students and could even lead to an increase in tuition. Some Democrats joined Republicans in voting for a bill to block the program. Both the Senate and the House passed the measure, but Biden vetoed the bill in early June...

The administration estimated that roughly 20 million borrowers would have seen their entire federal student loan balance wiped away.
UPDATE: CNBC reports the administration hasn't given up: President Joe Biden suggested on Friday that he was looking for another avenue to deliver student debt relief after the Supreme Court rejected his forgiveness plan.

"Today's decision has closed one path," Biden said during a briefing Friday. "Now we're going to pursue another."
A statement from the White House also points to other relief policies for students, noting for example that now "no one with an undergraduate loan has to pay more than 5 percent of their discretionary income." CNN reports: New rules set to take effect in July could broaden eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is aimed at helping government and nonprofit workers. And a new income-driven repayment plan proposal is meant to lower eligible borrowers' monthly payments and reduce the amount they pay back over time. The administration said this plan was finalized Friday and borrowers will be able to take advantage of it this summer, before loan payments are due. The Department of Education has also made it easier for borrowers who were misled by their for-profit college to apply for student loan forgiveness under a program known as borrower defense to repayment, as well as for those who are permanently disabled. Altogether, the Biden administration has approved more than $66 billion in targeted loan relief to nearly 2.2 million borrowers....

[T]he Biden administration said Friday that it will provide a 12-month on-ramp period for borrowers reentering payment... Borrowers will not be reported to credit bureaus, be considered in default or referred to collection agencies for late, missed or partial payments during the on-ramp period, according to a fact sheet from the White House.

Figma is expanding its partnership with Google for Education in a bid to introduce more school-age students to its product design and collaboration platforms. Announced during the Config event on Wednesday, June 21st, all K-12 students across the US can now access Figma for free on education Chromebooks. Figma is also expanding its educational partnership with Chromebooks outside of the US, starting with Google schools in Japan. The Verge reports: Today's announcement effectively opens up the beta program that Figma released last year, which was initially limited to select US high schools. As with the beta, students will have access to both Figma (the company's flagship product design platform) and FigJam, Figma's collaborative whiteboarding app. Figma's Google program is only available on Chromebooks, though the company said that schools using non-Google systems can apply for access on an individual class basis.

While Figma already provides free account tiers, these restrict users to a limited number of files and features. This offering for educational markets gives students and educators access to the company's Enterprise tier -- which typically starts at $75 a month per editor -- without paying a dime. The Enterprise tier for Figma and FigJam is the company's most powerful offering, allowing large groups of students to collaborate at scale. It also grants educators full control over their Figma environments to ensure student safety and support class management.

The Chromebook-specific perks of this partnership allow school admins running Google Workspace for Education to deploy and manage Figma to numerous Chromebooks with a few clicks, directly within the Google Admin console. And given how popular Chromebooks are in educational settings (largely because they're cheap, cloud-based, and easy to use), it's not unreasonable to expect schools to have some lying around.

Starting this fall, students enrolled in Computer Science 50: Introduction to Computer Science (CS50) will be encouraged to use AI to help them debug code, give feedback on their designs, and answer individual questions about error messages and unfamiliar lines of code. PCMag reports: "Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher [to] student ratio for every student in CS50, as by providing them with software-based tools that, 24/7, can support their learning at a pace and in a style that works best for them individually," says CS50 professor David J. Malan, as reported by The Harvard Crimson. It's a swift turnaround from the last school year: Harvard did not have an AI policy at the end of the fall 2022 semester.

The new approach will not use ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot, both of which are popular among programmers. Malan says the tools are "currently too helpful." Instead, Harvard has developed its own large language model, a "CS50 bot" that will be "similar in spirit," but will focus on "leading students toward an answer rather than handing it to them," he says. CS50 is also available for non-Harvard students to take on the online platform edX.

The new AI policy will extend to the edX version. "Even if you are not a student at Harvard, you are welcome to "take" this course for free by working your way through the course's eleven weeks of material," says the site. Teachers at other institutions can also license the material for their own courses. "Providing support that's tailored to students' specific questions has long been a challenge at scale via edX and OpenCourseWare more generally, with so many students online, so these features will benefit students both on campus and off," Malan says.

Figma is expanding its partnership with Google for Education in a bid to introduce more school-age students to its product design and collaboration platforms. From a report: Announced during the Config event on Wednesday, June 21st, all K-12 students across the US can now access Figma for free on education Chromebooks. Figma is also expanding its educational partnership with Chromebooks outside of the US, starting with Google schools in Japan. Today's announcement effectively opens up the beta program that Figma released last year, which was initially limited to select US high schools. As with the beta, students will have access to both Figma (the company's flagship product design platform) and FigJam, Figma's collaborative whiteboarding app. Figma's Google program is only available on Chromebooks, though the company said that schools using non-Google systems can apply for access on an individual class basis.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon's warehouse working conditions, which have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, are now at the heart of a congressional probe being led by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In a letter (PDF) to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Sanders, who chairs the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said the e-retailer's "quest for profits at all costs" has caused warehouse employees to experience unsafe working environments without access to adequate medical attention.

"Amazon is well aware of these dangerous conditions, the life-altering consequences for workers injured on the job, and the steps the company could take to reduce the significant risks of injury," wrote Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democratic party. "Yet the company has made a calculated decision not to implement adequate worker protections because Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, and you, his successor as Chief Executive Officer, have created a corporate culture that treats workers as disposable."

Sanders called on Jassy to turn over more information related to Amazon's injury and turnover rates, as well as data on its on-site medical clinic, called AMCARE, dating back to 2019. He also asked Jassy to say whether Amazon has, internally or through a third party, examined "the connection between the pace of work of its warehouse workers and the prevalence or cost of injuries at its warehouses." Sanders said Jassy has until July 5 to respond to the inquiry. The HELP committee posted a form on its website seeking testimonials from current and former Amazon employees about their experiences at the company. An Amazon spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with Sanders' claims in the letter. "There will always be ways for our critics to splice data to suit their narrative, but the fact is, we've made progress and our numbers clearly show it," said the spokesperson.

The average test scores for 13-year-old students in the U.S. have decreased in reading and math since 2020, reaching the lowest levels in decades, with more significant declines in math. NPR reports: The average scores, from tests given last fall, declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in math, compared with tests given in the 2019-2020 school year, and are the lowest in decades. The declines in reading were more pronounced for lower performing students, but dropped across all percentiles. The math scores were even more disappointing. On a scale of 500 points, the declines ranged from 6 to 8 points for middle and high performing students, to 12 to 14 points for low performing students.

The math results also showed widening gaps based on gender and race. Scores decreased by 11 points for female students over 2020 results, compared with a 7-point decrease for male students. Among Black students, math scores declined 13 points, while white students had a 6-point drop. Compared with the 35-point gap between Black and white students in 2020, the disparity widened to 42 points.

While the scores show a drop from the pre-pandemic years, the results also show that there are other factors at work. The decline is even more substantial when compared with scores of a decade ago: The average scores declined 7 points in reading and 14 points in mathematics. The Education Department says plans are underway to address the learning loss. [...] The latest results are from the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment, traditionally administered every four years by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: While schools debate what to teach students about powerful new A.I. tools, tech giants, universities and nonprofits are intervening with free lessons," writes the NY Times reports in Hey, Alexa, What Should Students Learn About AI?
Senior Amazon executive Rohit Prasad visited a school in Boston called STEM Academy to observe an Amazon-sponsored AI lesson using Alexa, according to the article, "And he assured the Dearborn students there would soon be millions of new jobs in A.I." "We need to create the talent for the next generation," Mr. Prasad, the head scientist for Alexa, told the class. "So we are educating about A.I. at the earliest, grass-roots level."

A few miles away, Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was delivering a more sobering message about A.I. to students from local schools who had gathered at Boston's Kennedy Library complex for a workshop on A.I. risks and regulation. "Because A.I. is such a powerful new technology, in order for it to work well in society, it really needs some rules," Dr. Kornbluth said. "We have to make sure that what it doesn't do is cause harm."

The same-day events — one encouraging work in artificial intelligence and the other cautioning against deploying the technology too hastily — mirrored the larger debate currently raging in the United States over the promise and potential peril of A.I. Both student workshops were organized by an M.I.T. initiative on "responsible A.I." whose donors include Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
The article emphasizes that schools face a big question: Should they teach AI programming and other AI-related skills employers will seek? "Or should students learn to anticipate and mitigate A.I. harms?"

Last week, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million to settle federal charges that it had indefinitely kept children's voice recordings, violating the federal online children's privacy law. The company said it disputed the charges and denied that it had violated the law. The company noted that customers could review and delete their Alexa voice recordings. But the one-hour Amazon-led workshop did not touch on the company's data practices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: A strange letter showed up on Kay Dean's doorstep. It was 2017, and the San Jose resident had left a one-star review on the Yelp page of a psychiatry office in Los Altos. Then the letter arrived: It seemed the clinic had hired a local lawyer to demand that Dean remove her negative review or face a lawsuit. The envelope included a $50 check. Dean, who once worked as a criminal investigator in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General, smelled something fishy. She decided to look into the clinic, part of a small California chain called SavantCare. By the time her work was done, she'd found a higher calling -- and SavantCare's ex-CEO was fighting felony charges.

Since then, Dean, 60, has mounted a yearslong crusade against Yelp and the broader online review ecosystem from a home office in San Jose. Yelp, founded in San Francisco in 2004, is deeply entrenched in American consumer habits, and has burrowed itself into the larger consciousness through partnerships with the likes of Apple Maps. The company's crowdsourced reviews undergird the internet's web of recommendations and can send businesses droves of customers -- or act as an insurmountable black mark. Dean follows fake reviews from their origins in social media groups to when they hit the review sites, methodically documenting hours of research in spreadsheets and little-watched YouTube videos. Targets accuse her of an unreasonable fixation. Yelp claims it aggressively and effectively weeds out fakes. But Dean disagrees, and she's out to convince America that Yelp, Google and other purveyors of reviews cannot be trusted.

"This is an issue that affects millions of consumers, and thousands of honest businesses," she said in her YouTube page's introductory post on April 30, 2020, facing the camera dead-on. "I'm creating these videos to expose this massive fraud against the American public and shine a light on Big Tech's culpability." "I don't do it lightly. If I put a video up, it's serious," she told SFGATE in May. "I'm putting myself out there." Dean is particularly motivated by the types of small businesses that she's found gaming Yelp's recommendation algorithm. She has spotted seemingly paid-for reviews on the pages of lawyers, home contractors, and doctors' offices -- high-ticket companies for which she says she'd "rather have no information than fake information."

Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to open up their AI models to the U.K. government for research and safety purposes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced at London Tech Week on Monday. From a report: The priority access will be granted in order "to help build better evaluations and help us better understand the opportunities and risks of these systems," Sunak said. The announcement came in a speech that championed the promise of AI to transform areas such as education and healthcare and heralded the U.K.'s potential as an "island of innovation."

"AI is surely one of the greatest opportunities before us," said Sunak. By combining AI models with the power of quantum, "the possibilities are extraordinary," he marvelled. "But we must and we will do it safely," he continued. "I know people are concerned."

Along with FaceTime support and a redesigned Control Center, Apple is adding support for VPN apps in tvOS 17. MacRumors reports: VPN apps could allow for Apple TV users to watch geo-restricted content from any location, such as the U.S. version of Netflix in another country. In its tvOS 17 press release, however, Apple focused on how the VPN apps can benefit enterprise and education users, so it is possible that Apple could restrict usage of the apps.

Apple: "Third-party VPN support, which enables developers to create VPN apps for Apple TV. This can benefit enterprise and education users wanting to access content on their private networks, allowing Apple TV to be a great office and conference room solution in even more places."