James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Readers of some U.S. news media in Europe found that after the General Data Protection Regulation came into effect some sites denied them access. Some big names were affected, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the New York …
Samsung stung for $539 million for copying iPhone features
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today was ordered by a court to pay $539 million in damages to Apple Inc. over patent infringement relating to the design of the iPhone. In a case that has been going on for seven years, jurors in …
Hoping to avoid more scandals, Facebook makes big changes to ad policies
Facebook Inc. today announced several steps to reduce the proliferation of propaganda on the platform, following months of controversy surrounding Russian meddling in the U.S. election and stirring up discord in the country. As of today, anything that appears on Facebook as …
Amazon criticized for selling police its facial recognition software
Amazon.com Inc. is selling its facial recognition system “Rekognition” to the cops, fueling fears of a surveillance state in which omnipresent eyes will always be watching. The revelation follows a release of documents by the American Civil Liberties Union pertaining to Amazon …
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin questions Google’s power
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin thinks Google Inc. might be too big for the good of society, echoing what other officials and businesses have been saying for some time. In an interview with CNBC Monday, Mnuchin said the Department of Justice must look seriously at Google …
Google loses some prestige over its suspect Duplex AI demo
Google Inc. may have wowed the world with its demonstration of its almost too-human artificially intelligent Duplex virtual assistant, and it may have also been almost too good to be true. The short clip of Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai demonstrating the …
Net neutrality gets a reprieve, but it could be short-lived
The U.S. Senate Wednesday voted to save net neutrality by overturning a decision made by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal the regulations made in 2015 under President Barack Obama. The vote was 52 to 47 and included three Republicans along with …
Facebook details abuse on platform – and AI falls short in flagging some of it
Facebook Inc. Tuesday released its first Community Standards Enforcement Report, detailing what its algorithm and human moderators have detected and removed from October last year to March this year. The upshot: a lot. Facebook said it took down 583 million fake accounts, most …
Google employees leave company over supplying Pentagon with AI
Close to a dozen employees at Google Inc. have apparently quit their jobs in protest over a project in which the company is providing the U.S. Department of Defense with artificial intelligence. In March, several employees at Google said they were outraged about the …
Propaganda fears heighten as House Democrats release thousands of Russian-linked Facebook ads
Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee released a total of 3,519 Facebook ads on Thursday that were run from 2015 to 2017 by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency. All the ads are available to the public as a download. They cover a …