Ann Skeet , Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics; Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations
"Notably, what Meta did not say after the verdict was that it was sorry for the harms children experienced."
, The New York Times ; What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots
"There are a growing number of companies offering social chatbots that can act like friends, enemies, lovers, adventurous companions, or the manifestation of a fictional or real person you’ve always wanted to meet. You can pick A.I. Elon Musk’s brain or spar with A.I. Draco Malfoy. The myriad characters, often created by fellow users, offer drama, romance, therapy and LOLs.
Apps that feature role-playing chatbots are used by tens of millions of people, with engagement times that rival or surpass those of social media behemoths such as TikTok, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The majority of teens surveyed by Pew use A.I. chatbots, with one out of 11 saying they had used Character.AI.
“If you think your child is not talking to chatbot companions, you’re probably wrong,” said Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at U.N.C. Chapel Hill.
Chatbots are surging in popularity as society is still grappling with how social media has affected young people; a wave of lawsuits is moving through the courts seeking damages from companies that plaintiffs say have deliberately created addictive products. (A jury in California recently found that Meta and YouTube were liable for $6 million in damages to one young woman.) And now parents and caregivers have a new attention-absorbing technology to reckon with.
At the beginning of last year, a high school teacher in Chicago told me that some of her students were dating chatbots, and she worried that they were having their first erotic experiences with them. I wanted to find out what teens had to say about that, so I joined communities devoted to social chatbot apps on the online messaging forum Discord. I introduced myself as a reporter and “an old,” and explained that I was interested in talking to young people who used the services regularly."
Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced, Niko Gallogly,Brian O’Keefe and , The New York Times; Is Big Tech Facing a Big Tobacco Moment?
Back-to-back courtroom losses have put technology giants, including Meta and Google, in uncertain territory as they face lawsuits and bans on teen users.
"Andrew here. Back in 2018, I moderated a panel at the World Economic Forum that included Marc Benioff of Salesforce. It was then that he essentially declared that Facebook was the modern-day equivalent of cigarettes, and that it and other social media companies should be regulated as such.
Well, Meta’s loss in court on Wednesday, in a case about whether its platforms were designed to be addictive to adolescents, may be a watershed. Investors don’t seem to be fazed — the company’s shares hardly moved after the verdict came out — but the decision could change the conversation around the company yet again. More below...
Some legal experts wonder if Big Tech is staring at a Big Tobacco moment, a reference to how cigarette makers had to overhaul their businesses — at a huge expense — after courts ruled that some of their products were addictive and harmful.
“We’re in a new era, a digital era, where we have to rethink definitions for products based on which entities might have superior information to prevent these injuries and accidents,” Catherine Sharkey, a professor of law at N.Y.U., told The Times. She added that the “implications” of those verdicts were “very, very big.”
“This has potentially large impacts on other areas in tech, A.I. and beyond that,” Jessica Nall, a San Francisco lawyer who represents tech companies and executives, told The Wall Street Journal. “The floodgates are already open.”
Meta and Google plan to appeal. The companies have signaled that they will fight efforts to make them drastically redesign their products and algorithms."
Jiawei Wang, The New York Times; What Parents in China See in A.I. Toys
"A video of a child crying over her broken A.I. chatbot stirred up conversation in China, with some viewers questioning whether the gadgets are good for children. But the girl’s father says it’s more than a toy; it’s a family member."
Joe Rinaldi, KX.net; Teaching kids about their intellectual property rights
"Right now, our children are living in an ever-changing technological world.
They are constantly posting and publishing all aspects of their lives, and just like adults, they need to understand their creative rights and intellectual property."
Kevin Truong, The San Francisco Standard; ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Accused of Misusing Personal, Copyrighted Data
"The suit alleges that ChatGPT utilizes "stolen private information, including personally identifiable information, from hundreds of millions of internet users, including children of all ages, without their informed consent or knowledge."
The complaint states that by using this data, OpenAI and its related entities have enough information to replicate digital clones, encourage people's "professional obsolescence" and "obliterate privacy as we know it."
The complaint lists several plaintiffs identified by their initials, including a software engineer who claims that his online posts around technical questions could be used to eliminate his job, a 6-year-old who used a microphone to interact with ChatGPT and allegedly had his data harvested, and an actor who claims that OpenAI stole personal data from online applications to train its system."
"To appeal to the many youngsters attending, there were trademark-themed colouring books, a scavenger hunt and familiar costumed characters walking around the venue (including Crayola crayons, a Hershey’s Kiss, Fruit of the Loom characters and the USPTO’s own mascot, T-Markey). One of the events objectives, Denison told us after the opening ceremony, is to show attendees, especially those visiting on field trips, that “trademarks are fun” and not just a dry legal necessity, adding: “One of the reasons that the Expo is aimed at children is to get them thinking about trademarks at 10 years old, rather than when they're 35 years old and they've already started a business.” One of the exhibitors, Meghan Donohoe, COO at the AIPLA, told us that the strategy to inspire young people appeared to be working. “All the kids were wearing Under Armour, so it was interesting to see kids connect the dots when they realise the brand that they are wearing is trademarked,” she notes."
