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  • ‘He’s lost that old twinkle:’ When a young Joe Biden criticized his opponent’s age | CNN Politics

    ‘He’s lost that old twinkle:’ When a young Joe Biden criticized his opponent’s age | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden, who at 80 has had to confront questions about his age and mental acuity as he is poised to launch a reelection campaign for president, once ran a campaign that sharply attacked his opponent’s age.

    In 1972, Biden, then 29 years old and a local Delaware councilman, was running against incumbent Republican Sen. Cale Boggs who was 63 years old, a former two term governor and the state’s senior senator.

    “Cale doesn’t want to run, he’s lost that old twinkle in his eye he used to have,” Biden said of Boggs, who had originally wanted to retire but was persuaded to run for reelection.

    Biden used his opponent’s age against him in a way that was so explicit, one local reporter dubbed his approach, “Dear old dad.”

    Biden was running to become one of the youngest people ever elected to the United States Senate. Now, the president is already the oldest person ever to serve in the office of the presidency, and, if reelected, would leave office at the age of 86. That would best the next oldest president by more than 9 years if he served a full second term.

    The president’s age has been “omnipresent” in nearly every conversation, CNN reported in February, though that notion was disputed by a White House spokesperson.

    In response to a request for comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CNN that Biden has made “historic progress” that has been “enthusiastically welcomed by younger Americans – including his unprecedented investments in fighting climate change, his first-of-its kind police reform executive order, his actions to support community policing and decriminalize marijuana, and getting more Americans health coverage than ever before.”

    In 1972, advertisements for Biden in local newspapers and on the radio hammered home a line, “he understands what’s happening today.” The ads targeted Boggs’ age by bringing up past historical topics from Bogg’s “generation,” like Joseph Stalin ruling Russia, jazz musicians using heroin, the development of the polio vaccine, and taxes from the 1940s.

    “Cale Boggs’ generation dreamed of conquering polio, Joe Biden’s generation dreams of conquering heroin,” read one newspaper ad. “To Cale Boggs an unfair tax was the 1948 poll tax. To Joe Biden an unfair tax is the 1972 income tax,” read another.

    One radio advertisement targeted Boggs as too focused on past threats from Russia, while ignoring domestic issues like crime.

    “One of the biggest differences between Cale Boggs and Joe Biden is the things they worry about,” said the radio ad. “In Cale Boggs’ day when Stalin ruled, Americans had visions of the Russian soldiers in our streets. In Joe Biden’s day, Americans have visions of American criminals in our streets. Joe Biden, he understands what’s happening today.”

    The approach drew pushback from Sen. William Roth, a Delaware Republican who Biden would work closely with for the next 30 years, according to the News Journal, and commentary from the media at the time.

    Biden eventually won that race with the Associated Press declaring, “Biden stressed age to defeat Boggs.”

    As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Norm Lockman wrote, “The new campaign strategy, ordered by Biden himself, eases off the strident tub-thumping and finger pointing and uses an approach that says, in effect, “Dear old dad may have been right for his time – and I love him – but things are different now.’”

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  • Manchin rails against Biden’s clean energy plans as he faces tough political headwinds in West Virginia | CNN Politics

    Manchin rails against Biden’s clean energy plans as he faces tough political headwinds in West Virginia | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    West Virginia political observers were not surprised when Sen. Joe Manchin appeared on Fox News on Monday to make a stunning threat: He could be persuaded to vote to repeal his own bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, if the Biden administration pushed him far enough.

    The conservative Democratic senator reiterated this to CNN, saying he would “look for every opportunity to repeal my own bill” if the administration continued to use the IRA to steer the US quickly towards the clean energy transition and away from fossil fuels.

    The IRA, passed and signed into law last year, was a sweeping $750 billion bill that lowered prescription drug costs, raised taxes on large corporations, and invested $370 billion into new tax credits for cleaner energy. Even though Manchin carved out space for fossil fuels, the bill represents by far the biggest climate investment in US history.

    From the start, Manchin has insisted the IRA was an “energy security bill,” rather than a clean-energy bill. Still, experts said he must be sensitive to the idea that he ushered in what ended up being the nation’s largest climate law, given he represents West Virginia – a state where coal and natural gas reign supreme.

    Manchin’s repeal threat “was probably good politics,” West Virginia University political science professor Sam Workman told CNN. If he decides to seek reelection in 2024, the 75-year-old senator will face his toughest political fight yet, as popular West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice jumped into the race this week.

    Justice’s bid for the seat “doesn’t change anything at all,” Manchin told CNN. But political experts from his home state see a man who is gearing up for a fight.

    Since delivering President Joe Biden one of his biggest legislative wins with the IRA last summer, Manchin has spent the last few months on a rampage against the administration, homing in on what he calls its “radical climate agenda.” Manchin has voted against Biden’s nominees for high-ranking administration positions, bashed new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and Treasury Department and clashed with members of the president’s cabinet at Senate hearings.

    Manchin’s appearance on Fox to slam Biden and threaten to repeal the law he had an outsized role in writing “is a pretty good indicator to me that he’s running,” said John Kilwein, chair of West Virginia University’s political science department.

    Manchin has been silent on whether he’ll run for reelection, but as Justice announced his candidacy, Manchin expressed confidence. “Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in a statement.

    The Democrat beat his Republican challenger by just three percentage points in 2018. And though Justice still must get through a primary against Republican Rep. Alex Mooney, the governor is already backed by Senate Republicans’ electoral arm and many in the state think he will present a serious challenge to Manchin.

    “Justice is a likable candidate – he takes that ‘aw shucks’ thing to the next level,” Kilwein said. “This is going to be [Manchin’s] toughest fight, but I think anyone who thinks this is going to be a piece of cake is wrong. I don’t think he’s going to be easy to beat.”

    Manchin is “in danger” politically, his Democratic colleague Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN.

    “Joe Manchin is the last remaining statewide elected Democrat [in West Virginia], and we want [him] back in the United States Senate,” Blumenthal said, adding Manchin was a “pillar of strength to Democrats in the last session.”

    Justice made little mention of Manchin during his official campaign launch but came out swinging against Biden and his agenda. On Friday, Justice told Fox News that Manchin “would be a formidable opponent” if he runs for reelection, but added that he’s “done some things that have really alienated an awful lot of West Virginians.”

    There is no denying that West Virginia is incredibly conservative; the state went nearly 40 percentage points for Trump in the 2020 election. But even with those fundamentals, political experts said Manchin has had tremendous staying power through retail politics and argue he can deliver for the state while standing up to Biden.

    “His whole appeal is a retail appeal; every blueberry festival, huckleberry festival, Joe Manchin’s there,” former West Virginia political science professor Patrick Hickey told CNN. “He’s a really smart and talented politician. He gets all the benefits that come from supporting (the IRA), but the next time he’s in West Virginia, he’ll be in a diner telling voters how terrible Biden is.”

    Behind the political rhetoric, the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy provisions could be a windfall for West Virginia, and Manchin is walking a tightrope in his messaging around the law.

    Despite blasting the Biden administration, Manchin has spent the past few months at home touting the benefits of the IRA and jobs it is already bringing to the state.

    Several major clean energy companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build new manufacturing plants in the state: a battery factory, a new industrial facility totally powered by renewable energy, and a plant to make electric school buses.

    “The way Manchin talked about those, he’s crediting the IRA and saying, ‘see, these are the good things that have happened,’” said Angie Rosser, executive director of environmental group West Virginia Rivers. “Those are hundreds of jobs reaching into the thousands, which for our small state is a big, big deal.”

    The John E. Amos coal-fired power plant in Poca, West Virginia. Fossil fuel energy is still a mainstay in state.

    Rosser and others pointed out that Manchin designed the IRA specifically to deliver money to West Virginia, designing tax credits to incentivize more manufacturing in coal country and funding to help these communities during the transition to clean energy.

    Morgan King, a staff member of West Virginia Rivers, has been traveling across the state recently to talk to local officials about how they can apply for federal IRA funding. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, King told CNN.

    “We’ve spoken with people of all parties,” she said. “People don’t care [about] the politics of how this bill was created so long as this funding can make it into their communities. West Virginia is set to disproportionately benefit from this bill more than any other state.”

    Manchin has been at odds with the Biden administration on several fronts, but the administration’s climate policies and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act seem to have struck a particular nerve – and Republicans have continued to heavily criticize the law.

    A political ad from Republican dark money group One Nation is already circulating in the state, claiming that the IRA would kill 100,000 jobs in West Virginia.

    “The notion that this is just a climate bill … it is damaging here in the state because we’re pretty far to the right on these issues, especially energy issues,” Workman said. “When you sell something as a climate bill, given the economic context here and our history, it’s somewhat harder for people to see indirect benefits like jobs.”

    Manchin recently voted alongside Republicans on Congressional Review Act bills to undo EPA emissions rules for heavy-duty trucks as well as a climate-focused Labor Department rule (Biden has already vetoed one and promised to veto the other). In March, Manchin tanked top Interior Department nominee Laura Daniel-Davis, claiming she wasn’t upholding a part of the IRA that mandates offshore oil drilling in certain federal waters.

    The dynamic has put Senate Democrats in a tough spot. Democrats have a slightly expanded Senate majority after the midterms, but the continued absence of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been away from Washington as she recovers from shingles, has made for nailbiter votes.

    “He’s one of the most independent US senators out there,” Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told CNN. “When he is frustrated, he’s not going to be shy about it. And right now, he’s obviously extremely frustrated with the administration, and that has to get sorted.”

    Manchin has also spent the last few months lobbing a steady stream of blistering statements aimed at Biden’s agencies. When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed strong new vehicle emissions regulations intended to push the US auto market towards electric vehicles in the next decade, Manchin said the agency was “lying to Americans” and called the regulations “radical” and “dangerous.”

    And when the Treasury Department issued guidance on IRA’s new EV tax credits – which were written by Manchin – the senator called it “horrific” and said it “completely ignores the intent” of his law.

    Some of his Democratic colleagues have panned his comments about repealing the IRA.

    “Maybe he should run for president,” Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico told CNN. “He’s got one job; the president’s got another. The IRA is working.”

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  • 5 ways a debt default could affect you | CNN Politics

    5 ways a debt default could affect you | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and House Republicans may have as little as a month to prevent the US from defaulting on its debt, which would impact millions of Americans and unleash economic and fiscal chaos here and around the world.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Monday that the government may not be able to pay all of its bills in full and on time as soon as June 1. However, the forecast was uncertain, and the default date might come several weeks later, she said. The US hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in January, and Treasury has been using cash and “extraordinary measures” to satisfy obligations since then.

    Just what would happen if the nation defaults on its debt is unknown since it’s never actually happened before. A close call in 2011 roiled the financial markets and prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the US’ credit rating to AA+ from AAA.

    Yellen gave a sense of the turmoil it would cause in her letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday.

    “If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests,” she wrote.

    To be clear, a debt default doesn’t mean all payments would stop and people would permanently lose out on money they are owed. Treasury would have the funds to satisfy some obligations, but it’s not certain how the agency would handle the disbursements. Much would also depend on how long it takes Congress to address the borrowing cap.

    “Tens of millions of people across the country who expect payments from the federal government may not get them on time,” said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    Here are five ways that Americans could be affected by debt default:

    About 66 million retirees, disabled workers and others receive monthly Social Security benefits. The average payment for retired workers is $1,827 a month in 2023.

    Almost two-thirds of beneficiaries rely on Social Security for half of their income, and for 40% of recipients, the payments constitute at least 90% of their income, according to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

    These payments could be delayed in a debt default scenario, though it’s possible Treasury could continue making on-time payments because of the entitlement program’s trust fund, Akabas said.

    The benefits are disbursed four times a month, on the third day of the month and on three Wednesdays. Roughly $25 billion a week is sent out, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

    “Even a short delay in the payment of Social Security benefits would be a burden for the millions of Americans who rely on their earned benefits to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses, food, rent and utilities,” Max Richtman, the committee’s CEO, said in a statement.

    Many other government payments could also be affected, including funding for food stamps; federal grants to states and municipalities for Medicaid, highways, education and other programs; and Medicare payments to hospitals, doctors and health insurance plans.

    More than 2 million federal civilian workers and around 1.4 million active-duty military members could see their paychecks delayed. Federal government contractors could also see a lag in payments, which could affect their ability to compensate their workers.

    Also, certain veterans benefits, including disability payments and pensions for some low-income veterans and their surviving families, could be affected.

    “Such calamity would place further stress on our servicemembers, retirees, and veterans, as well as their families, caregivers, and survivors,” Rene Campos, senior director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America, said in a blog post. “Though life in uniform is not always predictable, those who serve or have served their country expect their country to honor their commitment to service.”

    About $25 billion in pay or benefits for active-duty members of the military, civil service and military retirees, veterans and recipients of Supplemental Security Income is sent out on the first day of the month, according to the CBO.

    Americans’ investments would take a direct hit. Case in point: Markets had what was then their worst week since the financial crisis during the 2011 debt ceiling standoff after the Standard & Poor’s downgrade.

    Even if the debt ceiling impasse is resolved soon after a default, stocks could shed as much as a third of their value. That would wipe out around $12 trillion in household wealth, according to Moody’s Analytics.

    If a default occurs, yields on US Treasuries will inevitably rise to compensate for the increased risk that bondholders won’t receive the money they’re owed from the government.

    Since interest rates on loans, credit cards and mortgages are often based on Treasury yields, the cost of borrowing money and paying off debt would rise. That’s on top of the increased costs Americans are already facing from the Federal Reserve rate hikes.

    Families and businesses would also have a tougher time getting approved for lines of credit since banks would have to be more selective about to whom they loan money. That’s because their costs of borrowing money will also rise, which limits the amount of money they can lend out.

    A debt default could trigger an economic downturn, which would prompt a spike in unemployment. It would come at a particularly fragile time – when the nation is already dealing with rising interest rates and stubbornly high inflation.

    How much damage would be done would depend on how long the crisis continues. If the default lasts for about a week, then close to 1 million jobs would be lost, including in the financial sector, which would be hard hit by the stock market declines. Also, the unemployment rate would jump to about 5% and the economy would contract by nearly half a percent, according to Moody’s.

    But if the impasse dragged on for six weeks, then more than 7 million jobs would be lost, the unemployment rate would soar above 8% and the economy would decline by more than 4%, according to Moody’s. The effects would still be felt a decade from now.

    “It would be a body blow to the economy, and it would be a manufactured crisis,” said Bernard Yaros, an economist at Moody’s.

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  • Sam Bankman-Fried wants his case thrown out of court | CNN Business

    Sam Bankman-Fried wants his case thrown out of court | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Lawyers for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Monday filed motions to dismiss the US government’s fraud charges against him.

    Bankman-Fried’s attorneys said the government failed to properly explain what offenses the former CEO of the bankrupt crypto exchange committed. They urged the judge to toss most of the charges against him, which include fraud and bribery.

    Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to the 13 charges.

    Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried stole FTX customer deposits to finance risky bets at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and to funnel contributions to American politicians.

    FTX had been one of the most respected and recognized crypto platforms before it collapsed into bankruptcy in November.

    The government has two weeks o respond to the motions from Bankman-Fried’s lawyers, and the judge has called the next hearing for June 15, where Bankman-Fried is expected back in court.

    The 31-year-old Bankman-Fried is under house arrest on a $250 million bond. He awaits trial at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California. Bankman-Fried has acknowledged mishandling his business but has denied engaging in fraud.

    Three of Bankman-Fried’s former business partners — Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh — have pleaded guilty to numerous charges and are cooperating with investigators.

    If convicted on all counts, he could face more than 155 years in prison. A trial has been scheduled for October.

    – CNN’s David Goldman contributed to this report

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  • Kentucky GOP governor primary tests Trump’s influence ahead of 2024 | CNN Politics

    Kentucky GOP governor primary tests Trump’s influence ahead of 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republicans in Kentucky will decide their nominee for governor on Tuesday in the party’s first major primary since last year’s midterm elections – and one with implications for the 2024 GOP presidential race and the battle for Senate control.

    The race will test former President Donald Trump’s influence with GOP voters as he seeks a return to the White House. It will also weigh conservatives’ appetite for cultural fights over transgender rights, tough-on-crime messaging and more.

    Three states are hosting governor’s races this year, with Kentucky’s likely to be the most competitive. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s bid for a second term could be an important bellwether for 2024, when his party is defending Senate seats in several other red states – West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.

    Beshear, whose father was a two-term governor, defeated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin – an unpopular incumbent who had angered many in his own party – in 2019. He is considered a shoo-in to fend off two challengers in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

    The Republican contest, meanwhile, has been bitter. State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a former staffer for Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, entered the race as the heavy favorite. But Kelly Craft, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Canada and then to the United Nations and is the wife of billionaire coal magnate Joe Craft, has pumped millions of dollars into television ads in the race.

    Other GOP candidates include Ryan Quarles, the state agriculture commissioner who has focused his campaign on rural areas of the state, state auditor Mike Harmon, conservative activist Eric Deters and Somerset Mayor Alan Keck.

    At the center of the conflict between the two front-runners, Cameron and Craft, is Trump.

    The former president endorsed Cameron – who had a prime speaking slot at the 2020 Republican National Convention and has been viewed by many in the GOP as a rising star – in June 2022, even though Craft, who had worked in his administration, was still considering entering the race.

    Cameron was elected Kentucky attorney general in 2019 – the first Republican to do so in more than 70 years. If he wins the primary and general elections this year, he would become the first Black Republican elected governor anywhere in the United States. (Two Black Republicans served as acting governor of Louisiana in the 1870s, during the Reconstruction era, but neither were elected.)

    Craft has downplayed Trump’s endorsement of Cameron, noting that it came when she was not officially in the race.

    Cameron, in a debate earlier this month, shot back by pointing out that Trump attended the Kentucky Derby alongside Craft last year – and, weeks later, endorsed Cameron.

    “Kelly, you spent six months telling folks that you were going to get the Donald Trump endorsement. You had him at the Derby last year. And then I got the endorsement. And your team has been scrambling ever since,” Cameron said at the debate hosted by Kentucky Educational Television.

    Craft has sought to latch Cameron to McConnell, portraying her opponent as a political insider who, she says in one ad, would “rather follow than lead.” She has also campaigned on a tough-on-crime message and lambasted Cameron for allowing the Justice Department to investigate Louisville’s police department after officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor, prompting national backlash, in 2020. In a TV ad, Craft’s campaign described the Justice Department as “woke” and its probe as a “big government takeover.”

    “Letting big government push their diversity agenda while crime skyrocketed, they failed Kentucky’s law enforcement,” the ad’s narrator says.

    Craft has also leaned into attacks on transgender rights while slamming what she calls “woke ideology” in schools.

    “We will not have transgenders in our school system,” she said Monday during a telephone town hall – a remark that prompted criticism from pro-LGBTQ rights advocates in Kentucky.

    For his part, Quarles has sought to win over voters who may be turned off by the ad battles between Cameron and Craft.

    “It’s important that Republicans nominate a candidate who can unite the party,” he said in the early May debate. “There’s no problem with having disagreements on issues and policies and voting records, etc. But it’s important that if we’re going to defeat Andy Beshear, we need to nominate somebody who wants to help lift other people up and unite the party after May 16.”

    Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles participates in a GOP primary debate in Louisville on March 7, 2023.

    Despite the attack ads and debate-stage barbs, GOP observers say differences on policy matters between the candidates are minimal.

    “It’s more of a personality-driven campaign,” said Tyler Glick, a Republican public affairs consultant based in Louisville. “I don’t think it’s been so much fought out over the issues as just positioning their story and their approach.”

    While the governor’s race is Kentucky’s marquee contest of 2023, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams – who has won bipartisan praise for his work with Beshear and the GOP-led legislature to expand mail-in and early voting faces two primary opponents in his bid for a second term.

    One opponent, information technology project manager Steve Knipper, who has lost two previous bids for the state’s chief elections role, has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the 2019 governor’s race won by Beshear. Another contender is Allen Maricle, a former state lawmaker.

    Adams said in an interview on KET this month that his rivals were pushing “crazy myths” about election fraud.

    “The bottom line is our elections are more secure now than they’ve ever been,” he said.

    Like the gubernatorial contest, the winner of the GOP primary for secretary of state only needs a plurality of the vote to land the nomination. Former state Rep. Buddy Wheatley is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

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  • The man behind ChatGPT is about to have his moment on Capitol Hill | CNN Business

    The man behind ChatGPT is about to have his moment on Capitol Hill | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    For a few months in 2017, there were rumors that Sam Altman was planning to run for governor of California. Instead, he kept his day job as one of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors and entrepreneurs.

    But now, Altman is about to make a different kind of political debut.

    Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind viral chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E, is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday. His appearance is part of a Senate subcommittee hearing on the risks artificial intelligence poses for society, and what safeguards are needed for the technology.

    House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are also expected to hold a dinner with Altman on Monday night, according to multiple reports. Dozens of lawmakers are said to be planning to attend, with one Republican lawmaker describing it as part of the process for Congress to assess “the extraordinary potential and unprecedented threat that artificial intelligence presents to humanity.”

    Earlier this month, Altman was one of several tech CEOs to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and, briefly, President Joe Biden as part of the White House’s efforts to emphasize the importance of ethical and responsible AI development.

    The hearing and meetings come as ChatGPT has sparked a new arms race over AI. A growing list of tech companies have deployed new AI tools in recent months, with the potential to change how we work, shop and interact with each other. But these same tools have also drawn criticism from some of tech’s biggest names for their potential to disrupt millions of jobs, spread misinformation and perpetuate biases.

    As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman, perhaps more than any other single figure, has come to serve as a face for a new crop of AI products that can generate images and texts in response to user prompts. This week’s hearing may only cement his stature as a central player in AI’s rapid growth – and also add to scrutiny of him and his company.

    Those who know Altman have described him as a brilliant thinker, someone who makes prescient bets and has even been called “a startup Yoda.” In interviews this year, Altman has presented himself as someone who is mindful of the risks posed by AI and even “a little bit scared” of the technology. He and his company have pledged to move forward responsibly.

    “If anyone knows where this is going, it’s Sam,” Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, wrote in a post about Altman for the latter’s inclusion this year on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people. “But Sam also knows that he doesn’t have all the answers. He often says, ‘What do you think? Maybe I’m wrong?’ Thank God someone with so much power has so much humility.”

    Others want Altman and OpenAI to move more cautiously. Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI before breaking from the group, joined dozens of tech leaders, professors and researchers in signing a letter calling for artificial intelligence labs like OpenAI to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

    Altman has said he agreed with parts of the letter. “I think moving with caution and an increasing rigor for safety issues is really important,” Altman said at an event last month. “The letter I don’t think was the optimal way to address it.”

    OpenAI declined to make anyone available for an interview for this story.

    The success of ChatGPT may have brought Altman greater public attention, but he has been a well-known figure in Silicon Valley for years.

    Prior to cofounding OpenAI with Musk in 2015, Altman, a Missouri native, studied computer science at Stanford University, only to drop out to launch Loopt, an app that helped users share their locations with friends and get coupons for nearby businesses.

    In 2005, Loopt was part of the first batch of companies at Y Combinator, a prestigious tech accelerator. Paul Graham, who co-founded Y Combinator, later described Altman as “a very unusual guy.”

    “Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking ‘Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19,’” Graham wrote in a post in 2006.

    Loopt was acquired in 2012 for about $43 million. Two years later, Altman took over from Graham as president of Y Combinator. The position allowed Altman to connect him with numerous powerful figures in the tech industry. He remained at the helm of the accelerator until 2019.

    Margaret O’Mara, a tech historian and professor at the University of Washington, told CNN that Altman “has long been admired as a thoughtful, significant guy and in the remarkably small number of powerful people who are kind of at the top of tech and have a lot of sway.”

    During the Trump administration, Altman gained new attention as a vocal critic of the president. It was against that backdrop that he was rumored to be considering a run for California governor.

    Rather than running, however, Altman instead looked to back candidates who aligned with his values, which include lower cost of living, clean energy and taking 10% off the defense budget to give to research and development of future technology.

    Altman continues to push for some of these goals through his work in the private sector. He invested in Helion, a fusion research company that inked a deal with Microsoft last week to sell clean energy to the tech giant by 2028.

    Altman has also been a proponent of the idea of a universal basic income and has suggested that AI could one day help fulfill that goal by generating so much wealth it could be redistributed back to the public.

    As Graham told The New Yorker about Altman in 2016, “I think his goal is to make the whole future.”

    When launching OpenAI, Musk and Altman’s original mission was to get ahead of the fear that AI could harm people and society.

    “We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?” Musk told the New York Times about a conversation with Altman and others before launching the company. “We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity.”

    In an interview at the launch of OpenAI, Altman explained the company as his way of trying to steer the path of AI technology. “I sleep better knowing I can have some influence now,” he said.

    If there’s one thing AI enthusiasts and critics can agree on right now, it may be that Altman clearly has succeeded in having some influence over the rapidly evolving technology.

    Less than six months after the release of ChatGPT, it has become a household name, almost synonymous with AI itself. CEOs are using it to draft emails. Realtors are using it to write iistings and draft legal documents. The tool has passed exams from law and business schools – and been used to help some students cheat. And OpenAI recently released a more powerful version of the technology underpinning ChatGPT.

    Tech giants like Google and Facebook are now racing to catch up. Similar generative AI technology is quickly finding its way into productivity and search tools used by billions of people.

    A future that once seemed very far off now feels right around the corner, whether society is ready for it or not. Altman himself has professed not to be sure about how it will turn out.

    O’Mara said she believes Altman fits into “the techno-optimist school of thought that has been dominant in the Valley for a very long time,” which she describes as “the idea that we can devise technology that can indeed make the world a better place.”

    While Altman’s cautious remarks about AI may sound at odds with that way of thinking, O’Mara argues it may be an “extension” of it. In essence, she said, it’s related to “the idea that technology is transformative and can be transformative in a positive way but also has so much capacity to do so much that it actually could be dangerous.”

    And if AI should somehow help bring about the end of society as we know it, Altman may be more prepared than most to adapt.

    “I prep for survival,” he said in a 2016 profile of him in the New Yorker, noting several possible disaster scenarios, including “A.I. that attacks us.”

    “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

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  • A new CEO won’t fix Twitter’s biggest problem | CNN Business

    A new CEO won’t fix Twitter’s biggest problem | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    During his six months as Twitter’s CEO and owner, Elon Musk decimated its ad business, alienated some news publications and VIP users, and plunged the platform into a constant state of chaos.

    Now, a new chief executive will be tasked with trying to turn things around.

    Musk announced on Friday that he would in the coming weeks hand the CEO role over to Linda Yaccarino, a longtime media executive and former chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. Yaccarino has said little publicly so far, beyond noting her excitement to “transform this business together.”

    Twitter is in desperate need of stability from a leader. And Yaccarino brings the ad industry chops that Twitter sorely needs to lure back top advertisers and boost its business after a turbulent period. But she may struggle to address Twitter’s biggest problem: Elon Musk.

    Although Musk is handing off the CEO title — and, perhaps, trying to shed some of the accountability that comes with it — the billionaire remains firmly in charge of the company as its owner and executive chair. Musk will still be in the C-Suite as Twitter’s chief technology officer. And he continues to be Twitter’s most-followed user, meaning his controversial statements to his nearly 140 million followers could still create headaches for the company.

    In tech, the CEO is often the public face of the brand. But Musk will almost certainly continue to fill that role, with or without the title, likely to Twitter’s detriment.

    Just this week, Musk drew backlash for baselessly attacking billionaire George Soros, a frequent target for antisemitic conspiracy theories, saying the financier “hates humanity.” Musk’s Twitter also faced criticism in recent days for removing some tweets and accounts at the behest of Turkey’s government amid the country’s election; the company later said it would object to the removal requests in court.

    On Tuesday, Musk said he “didn’t care” if his controversial tweets drew the ire of Twitter advertisers or Tesla shareholders. “I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” Musk said in an interview with CNBC.

    “The question is: can she help balance [Musk]?” said Tim Hubbard, management professor at University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. He added that top ad buyers are more likely to take calls from Yaccarino than from Musk, who has previously said he hates advertising.

    But “the big problem with Twitter right now is, they’re on a pathway that turns advertisers off, turns users off,” Hubbard said. “Unless there are fundamental changes at Twitter, I don’t think [the leadership change] is going to have the immediate effect that Elon is hoping it will have.”

    Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

    The Musk issue was on full display at NBCU’s ad upfront this week, which was held shortly after Yaccarino resigned from the company following rumors of her appointment as Twitter’s CEO. On stage at the event, which aimed to promote NBCU’s platforms to advertisers, a talking bear sang to audience members: “Twitter may seem like the place to begin, but Twitter just let all the crazies back in.”

    Even if Musk pulls back on his tweeting, a feat he seems constitutionally incapable of achieving, it will be no easy task for Yaccarino to revive Twitter’s advertising business — let alone expand it.

    Many major advertisers left the platform following Musk’s takeover over concerns about an uptick of hate speech, frustrations over layoffs of much of the company’s ad and safety teams and general uncertainty about the platform’s future. Just 43% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers as of September, the month before Musk’s takeover, were still advertising on the platform as of last month, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

    But for many, leaving Twitter may not have been a particularly difficult call.

    Even in the best of times, Twitter was an also-ran in the digital ad space compared to tech giants like Meta and Google, with a smaller user base and less sophisticated ad targeting technology. And Musk’s takeover came as many advertisers have pulled back their digital ad spending across the board during a precarious moment for the economy. That could only add to the difficulty Yaccarino will face in shoring up Twitter’s business.

    Musk, for his part, has been attempting to supplement, and potentially largely replace, Twitter’s ad business with subscriptions, but it appears that only a tiny fraction of Twitter users have bought in. The selection of Yaccarino suggests a recognition on his part that the company he bet $44 billion on will continue to be reliant on ad sales for the foreseeable future.

    It’s unclear how much freedom Yaccarino will have to hire additional staff to support her likely remit to revive advertising on Twitter after Musk laid off around 80% of the company’s staff last year. And even if she is able to hire, top talent may be wary of joining Twitter after Musk upended the company’s culture and reportedly rolled back benefits like work-from-home and extended parental leave.

    “Personnel is going to be a huge challenge for her … if tech workers are looking for a stable working environment, they will probably stay away from Twitter,” Hubbard said.

    But Musk’s ongoing influence remains the biggest potential hurdle.

    Musk has said he will oversee product, technology and software and systems operations, while Yaccarino will focus on business operations. The announcement has left open the question of whether Musk will remain in charge of controversial policy decisions, many of which — including allowing users to buy blue verification checks and restoring the accounts of rule violators, including white supremacists — have threatened Twitter’s popularity with users and advertisers.

    “Cleaning up Twitter requires reversing Musk’s dangerous policy decisions, reinvesting in content moderation and enforcement, and restructuring the platform’s governance,” Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of media watchdog Free Press who helped found the #StopToxicTwitter campaign encouraging advertisers to avoid the platform, said in a statement.

    “Musk is setting future CEO Linda Yaccarino up to fail — as long as he continues to make the platform toxic, it will be impossible to lure back advertisers and users,” she said.”

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  • How the technology behind ChatGPT could make mind-reading a reality | CNN Business

    How the technology behind ChatGPT could make mind-reading a reality | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    On a recent Sunday morning, I found myself in a pair of ill-fitting scrubs, lying flat on my back in the claustrophobic confines of an fMRI machine at a research facility in Austin, Texas. “The things I do for television,” I thought.

    Anyone who has had an MRI or fMRI scan will tell you how noisy it is — electric currents swirl creating a powerful magnetic field that produces detailed scans of your brain. On this occasion, however, I could barely hear the loud cranking of the mechanical magnets, I was given a pair of specialized earphones that began playing segments from The Wizard of Oz audiobook.

    Why?

    Neuroscientists at the University of Texas in Austin have figured out a way to translate scans of brain activity into words using the very same artificial intelligence technology that powers the groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT.

    The breakthrough could revolutionize how people who have lost the ability to speak can communicate. It’s just one pioneering application of AI developed in recent months as the technology continues to advance and looks set to touch every part of our lives and our society.

    “So, we don’t like to use the term mind reading,” Alexander Huth, assistant professor of neuroscience and computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “We think it conjures up things that we’re actually not capable of.”

    Huth volunteered to be a research subject for this study, spending upward of 20 hours in the confines of an fMRI machine listening to audio clips while the machine snapped detailed pictures of his brain.

    An artificial intelligence model analyzed his brain and the audio he was listening to and, over time, was eventually able to predict the words he was hearing just by watching his brain.

    The researchers used the San Francisco-based startup OpenAI’s first language model, GPT-1, that was developed with a massive database of books and websites. By analyzing all this data, the model learned how sentences are constructed — essentially how humans talk and think.

    The researchers trained the AI to analyze the activity of Huth and other volunteers’ brains while they listened to specific words. Eventually the AI learned enough that it could predict what Huth and others were listening to or watching just by monitoring their brain activity.

    I spent less than a half-hour in the machine and, as expected, the AI wasn’t able to decode that I had been listening to a portion of The Wizard of Oz audiobook that described Dorothy making her way along the yellow brick road.

    Huth listened to the same audio but because the AI model had been trained on his brain it was accurately able to predict parts of the audio he was listening to.

    While the technology is still in its infancy and shows great promise, the limitations might be a source of relief to some. AI can’t easily read our minds, yet.

    “The real potential application of this is in helping people who are unable to communicate,” Huth explained.

    He and other researchers at UT Austin believe the innovative technology could be used in the future by people with “locked-in” syndrome, stroke victims and others whose brains are functioning but are unable to speak.

    “Ours is the first demonstration that we can get this level of accuracy without brain surgery. So we think that this is kind of step one along this road to actually helping people who are unable to speak without them needing to get neurosurgery,” he said.

    While breakthrough medical advances are no doubt good news and potentially life-changing for patients struggling with debilitating ailments, it also raises questions about how the technology could be applied in controversial settings.

    Could it be used to extract a confession from a prisoner? Or to expose our deepest, darkest secrets?

    The short answer, Huth and his colleagues say, is no — not at the moment.

    For starters, brain scans need to occur in an fMRI machine, the AI technology needs to be trained on an individual’s brain for many hours, and, according to the Texas researchers, subjects need to give their consent. If a person actively resists listening to audio or thinks about something else the brain scans will not be a success.

    “We think that everyone’s brain data should be kept private,” said Jerry Tang, the lead author on a paper published earlier this month detailing his team’s findings. “Our brains are kind of one of the final frontiers of our privacy.”

    Tang explained, “obviously there are concerns that brain decoding technology could be used in dangerous ways.” Brain decoding is the term the researchers prefer to use instead of mind reading.

    “I feel like mind reading conjures up this idea of getting at the little thoughts that you don’t want to let slip, little like reactions to things. And I don’t think there’s any suggestion that we can really do that with this kind of approach,” Huth explained. “What we can get is the big ideas that you’re thinking about. The story that somebody is telling you, if you’re trying to tell a story inside your head, we can kind of get at that as well.”

    Last week, the makers of generative AI systems, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, descended on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate committee over lawmakers’ concerns of the risks posed by the powerful technology. Altman warned that the development of AI without guardrails could “cause significant harm to the world” and urged lawmakers to implement regulations to address concerns.

    Echoing the AI warning, Tang told CNN that lawmakers need to take “mental privacy” seriously to protect “brain data” — our thoughts — two of the more dystopian terms I’ve heard in the era of AI.

    While the technology at the moment only works in very limited cases, that might not always be the case.

    “It’s important not to get a false sense of security and think that things will be this way forever,” Tang warned. “Technology can improve and that could change how well we can decode and change whether decoders require a person’s cooperation.”

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  • Instagram lifts ban on anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after launch of presidential bid | CNN Business

    Instagram lifts ban on anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after launch of presidential bid | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Instagram announced Sunday it had lifted its ban on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist who has launched a presidential bid, two years after it shut down Kennedy’s account for breaking its rules related to Covid-19.

    “As he is now an active candidate for president of the United States, we have restored access to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, Instagram account,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company Meta said in a statement.

    Kennedy, who has a long history of spreading vaccine misinformation, was banned from Instagram in February 2021.

    A company spokesperson at the time said Instagram had removed his account for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”

    While Kennedy’s Instagram account was banned, his Facebook account remained active. Both platforms are owned by Meta.

    Kennedy was a leading anti-vaccination voice during the Covid-19 pandemic, using his social media platforms to sow doubt and misinformation about the shots.

    He has promoted false claims about vaccine links to autism and in 2022 compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.

    His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, publicly condemned Kennedy’s remark as “reprehensible” after he invoked Anne Frank, who was murdered by Nazis as a teenager.

    Hines distanced herself from him in January 2022, tweeting: “His opinions are not a reflection of my own.”

    Kennedy’s return to Instagram, first reported by The Washington Post, will give him access to his more than 769,000 followers.

    The decision comes as traditional media and social media companies attempt to navigate a 2024 election campaign fraught with accusations of misinformation and censorship.

    On Friday, YouTube announced it would no longer remove content featuring false claims that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen, reversing a policy instituted more than two years ago amid a wave of misinformation about the election.

    The decision to reinstate Kennedy comes amid a flurry of activity between the candidate and Silicon Valley.

    On Sunday, Twitter

    (TWTR)     founder Jack Dorsey appeared to endorse Kennedy for president, tweeting a YouTube video titled, “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. argues he can beat Trump and DeSantis in 2024.” Dorsey added in the tweet, “He can and will.”

    On Monday, Kennedy is due to take part in a live audio chat on Twitter with the company’s owner Elon Musk.

    Meta’s decision to allow Kennedy back on Instagram came a few days after the Democratic presidential candidate publicly complained that the platform was blocking his campaign from creating a new account.

    Stone, the Meta spokesperson, told CNN on Sunday that the restriction was a mistake and that the company had resolved the issue.

    Meta executives have long maintained they believe political candidates should be able to use its platforms to reach voters, even if those candidates sometimes break rules that would get other users banned from its platforms.

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  • Silicon Valley escalates the battle over returning to the office | CNN Business

    Silicon Valley escalates the battle over returning to the office | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Three years after Silicon Valley companies led the charge for embracing remote work in the early days of the pandemic, the tech industry is now escalating the fight to bring employees back into the office -— and igniting tensions with staff in the process.

    Google, which has long been a bellwether for workplace policies in the tech industry and beyond, frustrated some employees this week by announcing plans to begin more strictly enforcing its policy that requires workers in-office at least three days a week. The updated policy includes tracking office badge attendance and possibly factoring it into performance reviews, according to CNBC, citing internal memos.

    “Overnight, workers’ professionalism has been disregarded in favor of ambiguous attendance tracking practices tied to our performance evaluations,” Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and member of the grassroots Alphabet Workers Union, told CNN in a statement. “The practical application of this new policy will be needless confusion amongst workers and a disregard for our various life circumstances.”

    In a statement, Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, told CNN that its policy of working in the office three days a week is “going well, and we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person, so we’re limiting remote work to exception only.”

    Lamont said that company leaders can see reports showing how their teams are adopting the hybrid work model, including “aggregated data” on badge swipes. He added that now that the company is more than a year into its hybrid model, “we’re formally integrating this approach into all of our workplace policies.”

    Google isn’t alone in facing pushback from employees. Other tech companies are also grappling with how best to compel workers to come into the office after they’ve grown accustomed to greater flexibility. The tug-of-war is compounded by the fact that tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the past year, leveling a major blow to employee morale.

    At Amazon, tensions boiled over last week as hundreds of office workers staged a walkout to call attention to their grievances, including the three-day return-to-office mandate that was implemented in May.

    A current Amazon worker who spoke at the walkout said that she started an internal Slack channel called “remote advocacy” because she wanted a space where workers could discuss how the new return-to-office policy would impact their lives.

    “Before I realized what was happening, that channel had 33,000 people in it,” the worker, who identified only as Pamela, said to the crowd at the event. Pamela called the Slack channel advocating for remote work “the largest concrete expression of employee dissatisfaction in our entire company history.”

    But the employee criticism isn’t stopping tech companies, who have spent billions on sprawling campuses over the years and often preach the value of serendipitous workplace interactions, from moving forward with their return to office policies.

    In response to the walkout, Amazon previously told CNN it may “take time” for some workers to adjust to being in the office more days. But the company also said it’s “happy with how the first month of having more people back in the office has been” and touted the extra “energy, collaboration, and connections happening” in the office.

    Facebook-parent Meta similarly doubled down last week on its push to get workers in the office, warning that employees currently assigned to an office must return to in-person work three days a week starting this September. (A Meta spokesperson told CNN the updated policy was not set in stone, and employees designated as remote workers will be allowed to keep their remote status).

    At least one tech company is taking a gentler approach.

    Salesforce is trying to lure staff into offices by offering to donate $10 to a local charity for each day an employee comes in from June 12 to June 23, according to an internal Slack message reported on by Fortune.

    A Salesforce spokesperson told CNN: “Giving back is deeply embedded in everything we do, and we’re proud to introduce Connect for Good to encourage employees to help us raise $1 Million+ for local nonprofits.”

    But it might take more than temporary charitable contributions to convince some workers it’s worthwhile to return. Schmidt, the software engineer at Google, said that even if you go into the office, there’s no guarantee you’ll have people on your team to work with or even a desk to sit at.

    “Many teams are distributed, and for some of us there may not be anyone to collaborate with in our physical office locations,” Schmidt said. “Currently, New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably.”

    “A one size fits all policy does not address these circumstances,” he added. “We deserve a voice in shaping the policies that impact our lives to establish clear, transparent and fair working conditions for all of us.”

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  • Meta is giving parents more visibility into who their teens are messaging on social media | CNN Business

    Meta is giving parents more visibility into who their teens are messaging on social media | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Meta is adding new safeguards and monitoring tools for teens across its social platforms: parental controls on Messenger, suggestions for teens to step away from Facebook after 20 minutes, and nudges urging young night-owl Instagrammers to stop scrolling.

    The features announced Tuesday come as Meta

    (META)     and other social media platforms face heightened pressure from lawmakers over the impact that their platforms have on younger users, who can be just 13 when they sign up for Meta

    (META)    ’s apps.

    Messenger, Meta’s instant-messaging app, is adding parental supervision tools for the first time that are similar to those that exist on Instagram already: Parents and guardians can see how much time their teens spend on the chat tool, view and receive updates on their contacts list, and get notified if their teen reports someone.

    Another new feature is the ability for parents and teens to have discussions directly through notifications if their accounts are synced up.

    “We heard from parents and teens about the value they’re seeing from how a two-way dialogue can foster and encourage discussions,” Diana Williams, who oversees product changes for youth and families at Meta, told CNN in an interview.

    On Facebook, Meta will start to nudge teen users to take time away from the app after 20 minutes.

    Instagram will add introduce a new nudge that suggests teens close Instagram if they’re scrolling Reels videos for too long during nighttime hours. The effort builds on existing Instagram features like Quiet Mode, which temporarily holds notifications and lets people know if you’re trying to focus.

    In addition, Instagram is testing a feature that limits how people interact with non-followers. Users must now send an invite to connect with someone if they’re not a follower, and they cannot call the recipient or send photos, videos or voice messages or make calls until the user accepts their request. The feature aims to cut down on unwanted content from strangers, particularly for women, the company said.

    It’s the latest in a series of new tools and guardrails for teens from Meta, following the release of leaked internal documents that found Instagram can negatively impact the mental health of its young users. Instagram, for example, has since introduced an educational hub for parents with resources, tips and articles from experts on user safety.

    The company said it’s also taking a “stricter approach” to the content it recommends to teens and will actively nudge them toward different topics, such as architecture and travel destinations, if they’ve been dwelling on any type of content for too long.

    Few changes have been made to Facebook and Messenger until now. Facebook does, however, have a Safety Center that provides supervision tools and resources, such as articles and advice from leading experts.

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  • The Supreme Court just handed Joe Biden a series of setbacks. It may have also given Democrats new motivation to reelect him | CNN Politics

    The Supreme Court just handed Joe Biden a series of setbacks. It may have also given Democrats new motivation to reelect him | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden wasn’t planning to take questions on Thursday. His helicopter was waiting outside on the White House’s South Lawn.

    But after a 10-minute statement on the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, a CNN reporter called out, “Is this a rogue court?” The president stopped in his tracks.

    Pausing to think a moment, he looked over his shoulder. “This is not a normal court,” he said before leaving.

    This week’s monumental rulings – striking down affirmative action in college admissions and unraveling Biden’s student debt relief plan among them – amount to serious setbacks for a president who promised as a candidate to advance racial equity and erase student debt.

    They are also an urgent reminder to Democrats of the enduring consequences of elections at a moment Biden’s advisers are searching for ways to inject enthusiasm into his bid for another term.

    What impact that will have on the coming election remains unknown. But Biden and his team have already begun assigning blame on Republicans for dismantling programs that have benefited young, college-educated and minority voters – all critical components of the Democratic coalition Biden will need to mobilize if he hopes to win reelection.

    That three justices within the court’s conservative majority were appointed by President Donald Trump – both Biden’s predecessor and, according to polls, his most likely opponent next year – creates even more of an impetus for Biden to use the rulings as a political cudgel as his campaign heats up.

    “The excesses of the Supreme Court are going to backfire,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat. “You know, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe versus Wade reduced what was supposed to be a red wave in the 2022 election cycle to nothing more than a red trickle. So not only is the Supreme Court’s decision bad law, it’s also bad politics and it’s going to come back to haunt the Republican Party.”

    Speaking to a group of Democratic donors in New York City on Thursday evening, Biden sought to underscore the stakes of the court’s new supermajority, a preview of how he’ll frame the issue over the coming year.

    “The Supreme Court is becoming not just conservative, but almost – it’s like a throwback. It’s like a throwback, some of the decisions they’re making,” Biden told donors in a private dining room inside the Seagram Building. “Did you ever think we’d be in a position, after 50 years of acknowledging the right of privacy in the Constitution, suggesting that there’s no such thing as the right to privacy?”

    Despite his criticism of the court, Biden has rejected some liberal suggestions on reforming the panel. He opposes expanding the number of justices that sit on the court and hasn’t embraced term limits.

    “If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy,” Biden said during a friendly interview on MSNBC shortly after Thursday’s decision on affirmative action.

    Biden’s student loan plan, which came about last year after months of agonizing internal debate over its costs and eligibility criteria, was intended to free low- and middle-income Americans from crippling debt.

    Throughout the process, Biden expressed concern at being seen as offering a handout to the wealthy. Eventually, pressure to fulfill one of his top campaign promises led to the plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for certain borrowers.

    For months the White House publicly said there was no alternative plan if the Supreme Court struck down the student debt relief program. But behind the scenes, top White House officials were working for several weeks to fulfill a simple directive from the president to “be ready in the event the Supreme Court did not do the right thing,” White House officials said.

    The president’s charge to his team was described as this: “If the court ruled against the program, find other ways to deliver relief for as many working and middle-class borrowers as possible, accounting for all the legal issues.”

    For the past few weeks, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients gathered his team for weekly meetings to map out all scenarios for the Supreme Court’s ruling and explore all legal avenues available to them after the president told his team to build a “fully developed response” to all possible rulings, officials said.

    Zient’s office – led by deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian, the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council and White House Counsel’s Office – worked with the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to come up with options the administration could take if the ruling was not in their favor.

    “All of these meetings were structured around one question – how would we be able to deliver relief to as many borrowers as we could, as quickly as possible under any possible outcome of the Supreme Court,” official said.

    The White House also stayed in touch with and fielded suggestions for next steps from debt relief advocate groups and congressional allies throughout the process. Lawyers from the White House, Justice Department and Education Department examined all of the recommendations, including administration action and the legal authorities available to the administration, and ultimately crafted responses for multiple scenarios.

    Inside the White House, some officials had held out hope the court would uphold Biden’s student debt program, pointing to some surprising decisions over the past weeks that saw some conservative justices joining liberals on issues of voting rights and congressional redistricting.

    But even Biden acknowledged after the court’s oral arguments in February he wasn’t certain the ruling would go his way.

    “I’m confident we’re on the right side of the law,” Biden told CNN in March when asked if he was confident the administration would prevail in the case. “I’m not confident of the outcome of the decision yet.”

    His instinct was correct. The president was in the Oval Office on Friday morning when he was informed of the Supreme Court’s decision by his senior aides and then engaged in meetings stretching into the afternoon to fine-tune their response after the ruling was not in their favor.

    Ultimately, the president directed his team to move forward with a new plan, which includes pursuing a new path for debt relief through the authorities in the Higher Education Act of 1965, which was promoted by some debt relief advocate groups and progressive lawmakers, as well as creating a temporary 12-month “on-ramp repayment” program for federal student loan borrowers when payments resume in October.

    A day earlier, Biden was watching the news on television when the affirmative action decision was handed down by the court, according to an official. A team from the White House counsel’s office came to brief him on the ruling.

    “In our conversations with the White House about why student debt cancelation was needed, it’s about reducing the racial wealth gap,” said Wisdom Cole, national director of the Youth & College division at the NAACP. “If the administration is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, they must use every tool in their toolkit. Every legal authority to ensure that we see relief happen.”

    Demonstrating urgency in responding to the court’s actions was a key objective as the White House prepared for both rulings, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Looming over the preparations was the impression left after last year’s Supreme Court term that the Biden administration was unprepared for the decision striking down the nationwide right to abortion, despite a leaked court opinion months ahead of time indicating the justices were prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade.

    The White House has strongly denied it was caught flat-footed on abortion and has pointed to actions taken in the months after the decision to expand access, including to medication abortion.

    The issue proved galvanizing to Democratic voters in November’s midterm elections and has propelled Democratic victories even in traditionally Republican districts.

    Whether the court’s ruling on student debt relief and affirmative action can have a similar effect will prove critical over the coming year, as Biden works to convince voters he is still fighting to fulfill his promises. Initial reaction from progressive Democrats was positive.

    “It was not a foregone conclusion that the President would act so swiftly today. But he announced an alternative path to student debt cancellation by using his Higher Education Act authority given by Congress – and that deserves praise,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute.

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  • Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

    Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    In a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty, the judge ordered a slew of federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech” that’s posted on the platforms.

    The injunction notes that the government can still communicate with the companies as part of efforts to curb illegal activity and address national security threats.

    The order applies to agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department and FBI as well as officials such as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

    The agencies and officials, Doughty said, are prohibited from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

    Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, noted in the lawsuit that social media companies “include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok,” as well as a number of other online platforms.

    CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

    Meta declined to comment. CNN also reached out to Twitter, Google and TikTok for comment.

    The lawsuit brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general in 2022 represents a novel way to pursue “censorship” claims accusing the Biden administration of effectively silencing conservatives by leaning on the private social media companies.

    Though Doughty hasn’t yet ruled on the merits of the two states’ claims, his order Tuesday represents their most significant victory yet in the ongoing lawsuit. The judge had previously ordered the administration to produce documents identifying government officials and the nature of their communications with social media platforms.

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  • Can Biden achieve his cornerstone climate goal? Why 100% clean power is still out of reach | CNN Politics

    Can Biden achieve his cornerstone climate goal? Why 100% clean power is still out of reach | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tucked into President Joe Biden’s ambitious, sweeping climate commitments is a crucially important goal that dates back to his campaign: Transforming the US electric grid to run entirely on clean energy by 2035.

    The goal could make or break Biden’s pledge to slash the country’s planet-warming emissions in half by 2030. And if successful, 100% clean electricity could energize vast sectors of the US economy: electric vehicles, home and office heating and cooling, and appliances. It could even power heavy industry and manufacturing, which is currently reliant on fossil fuels.

    “When you have a fully clean grid, versus a grid that either is a quarter or a half clean, that makes a significant difference in terms of the greenhouse gas performance of the things you’re plugging in to that grid,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told CNN. “That electric vehicle now is twice or three times cleaner when you shift to a fully clean grid.”

    Yet while renewable energy has exploded over the past decade, bringing Biden’s cornerstone climate goal to fruition by 2035 could be beyond his grasp.

    As of this year, about 44% of America’s electricity was powered by zero-emissions sources like wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, according to the Department of Energy. The rest comes from fossil fuels like methane gas and coal.

    After the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year – legislation that aimed to supercharge clean energy in the US – an analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts the US will get to around 80% clean electricity by 2030, a number that includes renewables, nuclear energy and carbon capture on fossil fuel plants.

    By 2035, the federal analysis shows clean and renewable sources will make up about 86% of US energy, spurred in large part by the IRA. (That analysis did not include the Biden administration’s proposed pollution rules for power plants, which could increase the adoption of clean energy.)

    “That’s a doubling from today, which is huge,” Ben King, an associate director at the nonpartisan think tank Rhodium Group, told CNN. But it’s also short of Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by that date.

    Decarbonizing the last portion of the power sector will be the most difficult, federal officials and experts told CNN. The closer you get to 100% percent clean electricity, the harder it is to go all the way.

    “We’ve known that the last 10% – maybe the last 20 to 25% – is going to be challenging,” Zaidi said. “And the reason is because you’re not just trying to deliver clean electrons onto the grid. You’re trying to deliver cleaner electrons when you want them, where you want them. That’s a hard thing to do.”

    Not only does the power need to come from clean sources, it also needs to be readily available to energize the US economy during peak demand.

    But wind and solar are still variable – especially without massive, costly battery storage. And newer technologies, like green hydrogen, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors haven’t yet been built to a large enough scale.

    That could mean some fossil fuels plants outfitted with carbon capture would need to remain connected to the grid to provide power that can brought online quickly, King said.

    There are also big infrastructure hurdles for renewables to take the lead. Even if massive amounts of wind and solar are developed by the end of this decade, the US may not have enough electrical transmission infrastructure to move all of that renewable energy around the grid.

    “The bottlenecks of a lack of transmission are very real,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, told CNN. There also needs to be significant investment in massive batteries to store the power generated by wind and solar to be used at all hours, she said.

    While companies and the federal government are racing to scale up new zero-carbon technologies, traditional wind and solar will largely power this clean electricity transition.

    They are the most reliable and trusted clean energy sources for utilities and developers, and they have quickly become cheaper than fossil fuels – so inexpensive that it is becoming more cost-effective for some utilities to build new wind and solar, rather than constructing new fossil plants or even running existing ones, experts told CNN.

    Wind and solar are also mature technologies that developers know they can finance and get huge tax breaks on through the Inflation Reduction Act.

    They are the “natural choice for developers who are looking for those low risk and very cost-effective projects to develop,” Sonia Aggarwal, a former White House senior advisor for climate policy and CEO of nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, told CNN. “We will see them play a large role because of how good they look from an economic perspective.”

    By the end of 2021, wind and solar together made up about 228 gigawatts of power. By 2034, NREL predicts that number – including offshore wind – will grow by more than four times to over 1 terawatt, or 1 trillion watts of power.

    “Where we are now is very different from even 5 or 10 years ago as far as the costs of clean energy, particularly renewables, being significantly lower than they’ve been in the past,” Carla Frisch, acting executive director of the US Energy Department’s Office of Policy, told CNN. “So just a really rapid acceleration that we’re already experiencing right now.”

    While getting new clean technologies to scale will be difficult, it’s work worth doing, Zaidi said.

    “Let’s deploy the stuff we have right now, right away,” he said. “And let’s work hard as we can to innovate on the stuff that we need in the future.”

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  • Legendary computer hacker Kevin Mitnick dies at 59 | CNN Business

    Legendary computer hacker Kevin Mitnick dies at 59 | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Kevin Mitnick, one of the most famous hackers in the history of cybersecurity, died over the weekend at age 59 after a more than year-long battle with pancreatic cancer, his family said in a published obituary.

    Before his death on July 16, Mitnick’s hacking sprees were legendary, and multiple films were inspired by him.

    The first, “WarGames” starring Matthew Broderick, was partially based on allegations that Mitnick successfully hacked the computer systems at North American Aerospace Defense Command as a teenager. He denied ever having done so.

    Mitnick’s restless curiosity caught up with him when he was arrested for stealing $1 million in proprietary software from Digital Equipment Corporation in 1988. Mitnick was sentenced to a year in prison and three years of probation, but a new arrest warrant was issued in 1995 for violating that probation. Mitnick went on the run, breaking into the computer systems of multiple corporations, cell phone companies, and educational institutions, according to the federal indictment against him.

    Through it all, Mitnick and his defenders insisted he was harmless, not actually trying to hurt anyone or pursue financial gain.

    “I was an old-school hacker, doing it for intellectual curiosity,” Mitnick told Wired magazine in a 2008 interview. But federal authorities were so concerned about his capabilities that when he was incarcerated again in 1995, Mitnick told CNN he was held in solitary confinement for a time out of concern that even proximity to a telephone could allow him to continue hacking.

    Mitnick and federal prosecutors agreed to a plea deal in 1999 to seven criminal counts, including wire fraud and causing damage to computers. The deal included a 46-month prison sentence and a ban on being “employed in any capacity wherein he has access to computers or computer-related equipment or software” during a period of probation, but he was released in 2000 due to credit for time already served.

    Mitnick published a memoir on his hacking career, “Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker,” in 2011.

    Following his prison term, Mitnick became a white-hat hacker, using his expertise to legally help businesses track people trying to break into their systems. For the past decade, he was the chief hacking officer and partial owner of the tech security firm KnowBe4, founded by his close friend and business partner, Stu Sjouwerman.

    “I made some really stupid mistakes in the past as a younger man that I regret,” Mitnick told CNN in a 2005 interview. “I’m lucky that I’ve been given a second chance and that I could use these skills to help the community.”

    “Kevin was a dear friend to me and many of us here at KnowBe4,” Sjouwerman said in a statement. “He is truly a luminary in the development of the cybersecurity industry, but mostly, Kevin was just a wonderful human being and he will be dearly missed.”

    A memorial for Mitnick is scheduled for August 1 in Las Vegas, his company said. He is survived by his wife Kimberley, who is pregnant with their first child, the family said.

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  • Elon Musk rebrands Twitter as X | CNN Business

    Elon Musk rebrands Twitter as X | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In a radical rebranding, Twitter owner Elon Musk has replaced Twitter’s iconic bird logo with X.

    Musk made the shock announcement of his plans early Sunday. By Monday morning US time, he tweeted that X.com now points to Twitter.com.

    “Interim X logo goes live later today,” he wrote, shortly before sharing a photo of Twitter’s headquarters lit up by a giant new X.

    The Twitter website now features the same logo, while the familiar blue bird is gone.

    Previously, Musk said he was bidding “adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”

    Twitter

    (TWTR)    , founded in 2006, has used its vivid, globally recognized blue bird emblem for more than a decade.

    The renaming could be seen as something of a brand overhaul “Hail Mary” for the company: Musk in recent months has repeatedly warned that Twitter, facing steep losses in ad revenue, was on the edge of bankruptcy.

    Increasing the pressure, earlier this month rival social media platform Threads launched from Facebook

    (FB)     parent Meta. It surpassed 100 million user sign-ups in its first week.

    Twitter had 238 million active users prior to being taken private by Musk in October 2022.

    One of the world’s richest men, Musk was once best known for his innovative efforts through companies SpaceX and Tesla

    (TSLA)     to launch rockets and build electric cars.

    Now, many of the headlines he makes are for his eccentric remarks on his personal Twitter account – often sharing conspiracy theories and getting into public spats on the social media platform.

    Musk overhauled the site after acquiring it for $44 billion in late October, then followed with mass layoffs, disputes over millions of dollars allegedly owed in severance and Musk’s note to employees that remaining at the company would mean “working long hours at high intensity.” He wrote: “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

    The upheaval prompted organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, Free Press and GLAAD, to pressure brands to rethink advertising on Twitter.

    The groups pointed to the mass layoffs as a key factor in their thinking, citing fears that Musk’s cuts would make Twitter’s election-integrity policies effectively unenforceable, even if they technically remain active.

    Musk also began overseeing controversial policy changes which led to frequent service disruptions at Twitter and upended his own reputation in the process.

    In June, Musk named Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal marketing executive, CEO of the company.

    She commented on the name change on Twitter Sunday afternoon: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”

    As the new venture begins, it faces challenges. Musk recently disclosed that the platform still has a negative cash flow due to a 50% drop in advertising revenue and heavy debt loads.

    Criticizing the exit, or pause, of such Twitter advertisers as General Mills

    (GIS)    , Macy’s

    (M)     and some car companies that compete with Tesla, Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist” and said he wanted to buy Twitter to bolster users’ ability to speak freely on the platform.

    Musk explained his approach to free speech by saying: “Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”

    He added that Twitter would “be very reluctant to delete things” and that the platform would aim to allow all legal speech. Many users have worried that could mean a rise in hate speech.

    Meanwhile, the initial frenzy around rival Threads appears to have come back to earth, especially as it has been plagued with spam and lacks several user-friendly features Twitter, or, now X, offers.

    Adam Mosseri, who is overseeing the Threads launch for Meta, has hinted at plans to add features such as a desktop version of the app, a feed of only accounts a user follows and an edit button.

    Its ability to draw advertising support is, as yet, unproven.

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  • Twitter sues hate-speech watchdog, following through on its litigation threat | CNN Business

    Twitter sues hate-speech watchdog, following through on its litigation threat | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter has sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit group that has criticized the company’s handling of hate speech, following through on a litigation threat that had been publicly revealed just hours before.

    The lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco federal court accuses CCDH of deliberately trying to drive advertisers away from Twitter — recently rebranded as “X” — by publishing reports critical of the platform’s response to hateful content.

    It specifically claims CCDH violated Twitter’s terms of service, and federal hacking laws, by scraping data from the company’s platform and by encouraging an unnamed individual to improperly collect information about Twitter that it had provided to a third-party brand monitoring provider.

    The complaint accuses CCDH of engaging in a wide-ranging campaign to silence users of Twitter’s platform by calling attention to the views they post on social media.

    Responding to the complaint’s allegations on Tuesday, CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed told CNN that much of the lawsuit, particularly its claim about the unnamed individual, “sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me.”

    “The truth is that he’s [Elon Musk] been casting around for a reason to blame us for his own failings as a CEO,” Ahmed said, “because we all know that when he took over, he put up the bat signal to racists and misogynists, to homophobes, to antisemites, saying ‘Twitter is now a free-speech platform.’ … And now he’s surprised when people are able to quantify that there has been a resulting increase in hate and disinformation.”

    “All we do is hold up a mirror to the platform and ask them to consider whether or not they like the reflection they see in it,” Ahmed added. “What Mr. Musk has done is said, ‘I’m going to sue the mirror because I don’t like what I see.’”

    In the past 24 hours, Ahmed said, thousands of people have visited CCDH’s website and many have made donations to the group.

    “That’s what we’re going to need if we’re going to survive this,” he said, adding: “The reason that organizations like CCDH have to rely on methodologies like we do is because there is no transparency on these platforms.”

    The lawsuit comes after CCDH on Monday disclosed Twitter’s original July 20 threat to sue, along with its response to Twitter’s threat calling the company’s claims “ridiculous.”

    “X’s legal threat is a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research, perhaps in a desperate hope that it can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild the company’s relationship with advertisers,” Ahmed wrote in an op-ed Monday coinciding with the group’s publication of Twitter’s threat.

    In its own blog post Monday, Twitter said its lawsuit was intended to promote free expression and that it “rejects all claims made by the CCDH.”

    “X is a free public service funded largely by advertisers,” the company said. “Through the CCDH’s scare campaign and its ongoing pressure on brands to prevent the public’s access to free expression, the CCDH is actively working to prevent public dialogue.”

    The July 20 threat indicated Twitter was investigating whether CCDH could be sued for violations of federal laws against false advertising. But Monday’s complaint does not appear to include such an allegation.

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  • The FTC should investigate OpenAI and block GPT over ‘deceptive’ behavior, AI policy group claims | CNN Business

    The FTC should investigate OpenAI and block GPT over ‘deceptive’ behavior, AI policy group claims | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    An AI policy think tank wants the US government to investigate OpenAI and its wildly popular GPT artificial intelligence product, claiming that algorithmic bias, privacy concerns and the technology’s tendency to produce sometimes inaccurate results may violate federal consumer protection law.

    The Federal Trade Commission should prohibit OpenAI from releasing future versions of GPT, the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) said Thursday in an agency complaint, and establish new regulations for the rapidly growing AI sector.

    The complaint seeks to bring the full force of the FTC’s broad consumer protection powers to bear against what CAIDP portrayed as a Wild West of runaway experimentation in which consumers pay for the unintended consequences of AI development. And it could prove to be an early test of the US government’s appetite for directly regulating AI, as tech-skeptic officials such as FTC Chair Lina Khan have warned of the dangers of unchecked data use for commercial purposes and of novel ways that tech companies may try to entrench monopolies.

    The FTC declined to comment. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “We believe that the FTC should look closely at OpenAI and GPT-4,” said Marc Rotenberg, CAIDP’s president and a longtime consumer protection advocate on technology issues.

    The complaint attacks a range of risks associated with generative artificial intelligence, which has captured the world’s attention after OpenAI’s ChatGPT — powered by an earlier version of the GPT product — was first released to the public late last year. Everyday internet users have used ChatGPT to write poetry, create software and get answers to questions, all within seconds and with surprising sophistication. Microsoft and Google have both begun to integrate that same type of AI into their search products, with Microsoft’s Bing running on the GPT technology itself.

    But the race for dominance in a seemingly new field has also produced unsettling or simply flat-out incorrect results, such as confident claims that Feb. 12, 2023 came before Dec. 16, 2022. In industry parlance, these types of mistakes are known as “AI hallucinations” — and they should be considered legally enforceable violations, CAIDP argued in its complaint.

    “Many of the problems associated with GPT-4 are often described as ‘misinformation,’ ‘hallucinations,’ or ‘fabrications.’ But for the purpose of the FTC, these outputs should best be understood as ‘deception,’” the complaint said, referring to the FTC’s broad authority to prosecute unfair or deceptive business acts or practices.

    The complaint acknowledges that OpenAI has been upfront about many of the limitations of its algorithms. For example, the white paper linked to GPT’s latest release, GPT-4, explains that the model may “produce content that is nonsensical or untruthful in relation to certain sources.” OpenAI also makes similar disclosures about the possibility that tools like GPT can lead to broad-based discrimination against minorities or other vulnerable groups.

    But in addition to arguing that those outcomes themselves may be unfair or deceptive, CAIDP also alleges that OpenAI has violated the FTC’s AI guidelines by trying to offload responsibility for those risks onto its clients who use the technology.

    The complaint alleges that OpenAI’s terms require news publishers, banks, hospitals and other institutions that deploy GPT to include a disclaimer about the limitations of artificial intelligence. That does not insulate OpenAI from liability, according to the complaint.

    Citing a March FTC advisory on chatbots, CAIDP wrote: “Recently [the] FTC stated that ‘Merely warning your customers about misuse or telling them to make disclosures is hardly sufficient to deter bad actors. Your deterrence measures should be durable, built-in features and not bug corrections or optional features that third parties can undermine via modification or removal.’”

    Artificial intelligence also stands to have vast implications for consumer privacy and cybersecurity, said CAIDP, issues that sit squarely within the FTC’s jurisdiction but that the agency has not studied in connection with GPT’s inner workings.

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  • Welcome to the era of viral AI generated ‘news’ images | CNN Business

    Welcome to the era of viral AI generated ‘news’ images | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Pope Francis wearing a massive, white puffer coat. Elon Musk walking hand-in-hand with rival GM CEO Mary Barra. Former President Donald Trump being detained by police in dramatic fashion.

    None of these things actually happened, but AI-generated images depicting them did go viral online over the past week.

    The images ranged from obviously fake to, in some cases, compellingly real, and they fooled some social media users. Model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, for example, tweeted that she thought the pope’s puffer coat was real, saying, “didn’t give it a second thought. no way am I surviving the future of technology.” The images also sparked a slew of headlines, as news organizations rushed to debunk the false images, especially those of Trump, who was ultimately indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday but has not been arrested.

    The situation demonstrates a new online reality: the rise of a new crop of buzzy artificial intelligence tools has made it cheaper and easier than ever to create realistic images, as well as audio and videos. And these images are likely to pop up with increasing frequency on social media.

    While these AI tools may enable new means of expressing creativity, the spread of computer-generated media also threatens to further pollute the information ecosystem. That risks adding to the challenges for users, news organizations and social media platforms to vet what’s real, after years of grappling with online misinformation featuring far less sophisticated visuals. There are also concerns that AI-generated images could be used for harassment, or to further drive divided internet users apart.

    “I worry that it will sort of get to a point where there will be so much fake, highly realistic content online that most people will just go with their tribal instincts as a guide to what they think is real, more than actually informed opinions based on verified evidence,” said Henry Ajder, a synthethic media expert who works as an advisor to companies and government agencies, including Meta Reality Labs’ European Advisory Council.

    Images, compared to the AI-generated text that has also recently proliferated thanks to tools like ChatGPT, can be especially powerful in provoking emotions when people view them, said Claire Leibowicz, head of AI and media integrity at the Partnership on AI, a nonprofit industry group. That can make it harder for people to slow down and evaluate whether what they’re looking at is real or fake.

    What’s more, coordinated bad actors could eventually attempt to create fake content in bulk — or suggest that real content is computer-generated — in order to confuse internet users and provoke certain behaviors.

    “The paranoia of an impending Trump … potential arrest created a really useful case study in understanding what the potential implications are, and I think we’re very lucky that things did not go south,” said Ben Decker, CEO of threat intelligence group Memetica. “Because if more people had had that idea en masse, in a coordinated fashion, I think there’s a universe where we could start to see the online to offline effects.”

    Computer-generated image technology has improved rapidly in recent years, from the photoshopped image of a shark swimming through a flooded highway that has been repeatedly shared during natural disasters to the websites that four years ago began churning out mostly unconvincing fake photos of non-existent people.

    Many of the recent viral AI-generated images were created by a tool called Midjourney, a less than year-old platform that allows users to create images based on short text prompts. On its website, Midjourney describes itself as “a small self-funded team,” with just 11 full-time staff members.

    A cursory glance at a Facebook page popular among Midjourney users reveals AI-generated images of a seemingly inebriated Pope Francis, elderly versions of Elvis and Kurt Cobain, Musk in a robotic Tesla bodysuit and many creepy animal creations. And that’s just from the past few days.

    Midjourney has emerged as a popular tool for users to create AI-generated images.

    The latest version of Midjourney is only available to a select number of paid users, Midjourney CEO David Holz told CNN in an email Friday. Midjourney this week paused access to the free trial of its earlier versions due to “extraordinary demand and trial abuse,” according to a Discord post from Holz, but he told CNN it was unrelated to the viral images. The creator of the Trump arrest images also claimed he was banned from the site.

    The rules page on the company’s Discord site asks users: “Don’t use our tools to make images that could inflame, upset, or cause drama. That includes gore and adult content.”

    “Moderation is hard and we’ll be shipping improved systems soon,” Holz told CNN. “We’re taking lots of feedback and ideas from experts and the community and are trying to be really thoughtful.”

    In most cases, the creators of the recent viral images don’t appear to have been acting malevolently. The Trump arrest images were created by the founder of the online investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat, who clearly labeled them as his fabrications, even if other social media users weren’t as discerning.

    There are efforts by platforms, AI technology companies and industry groups to improve the transparency around when a piece of content is generated by a computer.

    Platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and YouTube have policies restricting or prohibiting the sharing of manipulated media that could mislead users. But as use of AI-generated technologies grows, even such policies could threaten to undermine user trust. If, for example, a fake image accidentally slipped through a platform’s detection system, “it could give people false confidence,” Ajder said. “They’ll say, ‘there’s a detection system that says it’s real, so it must be real.’”

    Work is also underway on technical solutions that would, for example, watermark an AI-generated image or include a transparent label in an image’s metadata, so anyone viewing it across the internet would know it was created by a computer. The Partnership on AI has developed a set of standard, responsible practices for synthetic media along with partners like ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, TikTok, Adobe, Bumble and the BBC, which includes recommendations such as how to disclose an image was AI-generated and how companies can share data around such images.

    “The idea is that these institutions are all committed to disclosure, consent and transparency,” Leibowicz said.

    A group of tech leaders, including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, this week wrote an open letter calling for artificial intelligence labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.” Still, it’s not clear whether any labs will take such a step. And as the technology rapidly improves and becomes accessible beyond a relatively small group of corporations committed to responsible practices, lawmakers may need to get involved, Ajder said.

    “This new age of AI can’t be held in the hands of a few massive companies getting rich off of these tools, we need to democratize this technology,” he said. “At the same time, there are also very real and legitimate concerns of having a radical open approach where you just open source a tool or have very minimal restrictions on its use is going to lead to a massive scaling of harm … and I think legislation will probably play a role in reigning in some of the more radically open models.”

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  • Apple’s Weather app briefly went down and rained on everyone’s morning | CNN Business

    Apple’s Weather app briefly went down and rained on everyone’s morning | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Anyone using their iPhone to check the weather on Tuesday may have had better luck just looking out the window.

    Apple’s default Weather app briefly went down for many users on Tuesday morning, showing blank screens with no data. The result: many users felt clueless about what was happening outside.

    “The Apple Weather app has been down all morning and I never imagined how much disruption that would cause,” wrote one Twitter user. Another tweeted an apparent “Top Gun” reference: “Biggest storm of the season is about to hit Fargo and the Apple weather app is down. I’m flying blind, Goose.”

    There are numerous other sources one could use to determine the weather, including various apps, websites, local news reports and, of course, one’s own eyes. But the apparent disruption from the outage highlights how reliant some have grown on certain popular applications.

    Apple confirmed the outage in a Twitter reply to a frustrated user, noting that some app users may be experiencing a “temporary outage.” The company’s

    System Status page     also flagged the Weather app as facing an ongoing issue.

    Apple did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    One CNN reporter saw only a handful of cities on the Weather app home screen load with full data, while most cities remained completely blank. The app usually displays information including hourly forecast, 10-day forecast, air quality index, precipitation, UV index and more.

    The app was revamped as part of the iOS 16 release in September after Apple bought popular weather service Dark Sky in 2020 and fully integrated its features into the newest operating system.

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