THORNTON, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado woman whose son died from a fentanyl-laced pill he bought through social media celebrated a pair of verdicts this week against Meta and YouTube that she said opened the door for companies to be held responsible for harms to children using their platforms. “The truth is out, and it’s […]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has ruled in favor of artificial intelligence company Anthropic in temporarily blocking the Pentagon from labeling the company as a supply chain risk. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin on Thursday said she was also blocking President Donald Trump’s directive ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. Lin’s […]
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — In a pivotal moment that underscored how powerful and immersive social platforms can be for children and teens, a jury in California this week found both Meta and YouTube liable for mental health harms to kids using their services. The jury’s decision in the first-of-its-kind lawsuit — centered on social […]
For years, parents, teenagers, pediatricians, educators and whistleblowers have pushed the idea that social media is detrimental to young people’s mental health and can lead to addiction, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and suicide. For the first time, juries in two states took their side. In Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury found both Meta and […]
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Two landmark jury verdicts against social media companies have arrived at the front of a wave of lawsuits alleging that the popular platforms endanger the mental health of children. Financial penalties total $381 million in the two cases involving tech giant Meta in New Mexico and both Meta and YouTube […]
Walker Montgomery was just 16 when someone pretending to be a teenage girl messaged him through Instagram and seduced him into cybersex. Within hours he was dead. Caught up in a sextortion scheme, the Mississippi teen killed himself. —- EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Melania Trump often commands the attention of any room she enters but all eyes — and cameras — were trained on her humanoid companion on Wednesday. The humanoid accompanied the first lady as she arrived at the White House East Room for the final day of a summit she had […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two high-profile progressive lawmakers introduced a bill Wednesday that would pause new data centers in the United States until national safeguards are in place to protect workers and consumers and ensure the technologies don’t harm the environment. The legislation by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders […]
LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates were put on probation Wednesday and placed in the custody of their parents. The boys, who were 14 at the time, admitted earlier this month that they made 59 child sex abuse images. Prosecutors said they […]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A jury found both Meta and YouTube liable in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit that aimed to hold social media platforms responsible for harm to children using their services. The decision came after more than 40 hours of deliberation across nine days and more than a month since jurors heard opening statements in […]
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A scientist who pioneered the modern food processing safety standards used around the world was awarded this year’s World Food Prize, the organization announced Wednesday, crediting his work for averting millions of cases of foodborne illness and reducing food waste. Huub Lelieveld of the Netherlands earned the award after six […]
The assignment involves no laptop, no chatbot and no technology of any kind. In fact, there’s no pen or paper, either. Instead, students in Chris Schaffer’s biomedical engineering class at Cornell University are required to speak directly to an instructor in what he calls an “oral defense.” It’s a testing method as old as Socrates […]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The first jury verdict in a series of social media child safety trials this year is in — and it’s not looking good for Meta. A jury in New Mexico found on Tuesday that the social media giant’s platforms are harmful to children’s mental health and imposed a $375 million penalty. […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has acquired Fauna Robotics, just under two months after the startup introduced a humanoid robot called Sprout designed to be a friendly addition to social spaces like homes and schools. The e-commerce giant is already a robotics powerhouse, having boasted of deploying more than 1 million robots across its warehouse […]
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico jury found Tuesday that social media conglomerate Meta violated state consumer protection law in failing to disclose the risks of its platforms to children. The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial. Jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook […]
Fortnite publisher Epic Games said Tuesday it is laying off 1,000 employees to save money as it grapples with industry-wide and company-specific challenges. The Cary, North Carolina-based video game publisher said in a memo to employees that the job cuts are not related to artificial intelligence. Rather, they stem from industry-wide challenges such as slower […]
OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit that controls the artificial intelligence company OpenAI and its flagship product ChatGPT, pledged Tuesday to grant out $1 billion in the next year and to build up its capacity as a philanthropic funder. The pledge represents a major development in OpenAI’s philanthropic activities and offers insight into how the company, which […]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is asking a federal judge on Tuesday to temporarily halt the Pentagon’s “unprecedented and stigmatizing” designation of the company as a supply chain risk. A hearing scheduled for Tuesday in a California federal court marks a critical step in the feud between Anthropic and the Trump administration […]
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A jury began deliberations Monday in a landmark trial in New Mexico where social media conglomerate Meta is accused of misleading its users about how safe its platforms are for children. Meta’s attorneys dispute the claims and say the company provides built-in protections for teenagers and weeds out harmful content […]
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines said Saturday a total disconnection of the National Electric System took place, the second nationwide blackout reported in a week, according to a statement posted on social media Saturday. The ministry says protocols to restore electricity service across the country were being implemented.
PIKETON, Ohio (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday announced a public-private partnership to develop a major data center with its own power supply on the site of a decommissioned uranium enrichment plant in southern Ohio, as it pushes commercial development of artificial intelligence technology. The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County […]
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — For the second time this year, NASA moved its moon rocket from the hangar out toward the pad Friday in hopes of launching four astronauts on a lunar fly-around next month. If the latest repairs work and everything else goes NASA’s way, the Space Launch System could blast off as […]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI this week, claiming the company’s image-generation tools were used to morph real photos of them into explicitly sexual images. The high school students, who are seeking to proceed under pseudonyms, filed the lawsuit in California, where xAI — Musk’s artificial intelligence company — […]
