An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Automated surgery could be trialled on humans within a decade, say researchers, after an AI-trained robot armed with tools to cut, clip and grab soft tissue successfully removed pig gall bladders without human help. The robot surgeons were schooled on video footage of human medics conducting operations using organs taken from dead pigs. In an apparent research breakthrough, eight operations were conducted on pig organs with a 100% success rate by a team led by experts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the US. [...]

The technology allowing robots to handle complex soft tissues such as gallbladders, which release bile to aid digestion, is rooted in the same type of computerized neural networks that underpin widely used artificial intelligence tools such as Chat GPT or Google Gemini. The surgical robots were slightly slower than human doctors but they were less jerky and plotted shorter trajectories between tasks. The robots were also able to repeatedly correct mistakes as they went along, asked for different tools and adapted to anatomical variation, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Science Robotics. The authors from Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Columbia universities called it "a milestone toward clinical deployment of autonomous surgical systems." [...]

In the Johns Hopkins trial, the robots took just over five minutes to carry out the operation, which required 17 steps including cutting the gallbladder away from its connection to the liver, applying six clips in a specific order and removing the organ. The robots on average corrected course without any human help six times in each operation. "We were able to perform a surgical procedure with a really high level of autonomy," said Axel Krieger, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins. "In prior work, we were able to do some surgical tasks like suturing. What we've done here is really a full procedure. We have done this on eight gallbladders, where the robot was able to perform precisely the clipping and cutting step of gallbladder removal without any human intervention. "So I think it's a really big landmark study that such a difficult soft tissue surgery is possible to do autonomously." Currently, nearly all of the NHS's 70,000 annual robotic surgeries are human-controlled, but the UK plans to expand robot-assisted procedures to 90% within the next decade.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Sunday, Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey launched an open source chat app called Bitchat, promising to deliver "secure" and "private" messaging without a centralized infrastructure. The app relies on Bluetooth and end-to-end encryption, unlike traditional messaging apps that rely on the internet. By being decentralized, Bitchat has potential for being a secure app in high-risk environments where the internet is monitored or inaccessible. According to Dorsey's white paper detailing the app's protocols and privacy mechanisms, Bitchat's system design "prioritizes" security.

But the claims that the app is secure, however, are already facing scrutiny by security researchers, given that the app and its code have not been reviewed or tested for security issues at all -- by Dorsey's own admission. Since launching, Dorsey has added a warning to Bitchat's GitHub page: "This software has not received external security review and may contain vulnerabilities and does not necessarily meet its stated security goals. Do not use it for production use, and do not rely on its security whatsoever until it has been reviewed." This warning now also appears on Bitchat's main GitHub project page but was not there at the time the app debuted.

As of Wednesday, Dorsey added: "Work in progress," next to the warning on GitHub. This latest disclaimer came after security researcher Alex Radocea found that it's possible to impersonate someone else and trick a person's contacts into thinking they are talking to the legitimate contact, as the researcher explained in a blog post. Radocea wrote that Bitchat has a "broken identity authentication/verification" system that allows an attacker to intercept someone's "identity key" and "peer id pair" -- essentially a digital handshake that is supposed to establish a trusted connection between two people using the app. Bitchat calls these "Favorite" contacts and marks them with a star icon. The goal of this feature is to allow two Bitchat users to interact, knowing that they are talking to the same person they talked to before.

Let's Encrypt, a certificate authority (CA) known for its free TLS/SSL certificates, has begun issuing digital certificates for IP addresses. From a report: It's not the first CA to do so. PositiveSSL, Sectigo, and GeoTrust all offer TLS/SSL certificates for use with IP addresses, at prices ranging from $40 to $90 or so annually. But Let's Encrypt does so at no cost.

For those with a static IP address who want to host a website, an IP address certificate provides a way to offer visitors a secure connection with that numeric identifier while avoiding the nominal expense of a domain name.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Hundreds of printer models from Brother and other vendors are impacted by potentially serious vulnerabilities discovered by researchers at Rapid7. The cybersecurity firm revealed on Wednesday that its researchers identified eight vulnerabilities affecting multifunction printers made by Brother. The security holes have been found to impact 689 printer, scanner and label maker models from Brother, and some or all of the flaws also affect 46 Fujifilm Business Innovation, five Ricoh, six Konica Minolta, and two Toshiba printers. Overall, millions of enterprise and home printers are believed to be exposed to hacker attacks due to these vulnerabilities.

The most serious of the flaws, tracked as CVE-2024-51978 and with a severity rating of 'critical', can allow a remote and unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication by obtaining the device's default administrator password. CVE-2024-51978 can be chained with an information disclosure vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-51977, which can be exploited to obtain a device's serial number. This serial number is needed to generate the default admin password. "This is due to the discovery of the default password generation procedure used by Brother devices," Rapid7 explained. "This procedure transforms a serial number into a default password. Affected devices have their default password set, based on each device's unique serial number, during the manufacturing process."

Having the admin password enables an attacker to reconfigure the device or abuse functionality intended for authenticated users. The remaining vulnerabilities, which have severity ratings of 'medium' and 'high', can be exploited for DoS attacks, forcing the printer to open a TCP connection, obtain the password of a configured external service, trigger a stack overflow, and perform arbitrary HTTP requests. Six of the eight vulnerabilities found by Rapid7 can be exploited without authentication. Brother has patched most of the flaws, but CVE-2024-51978 requires a new manufacturing process to fully resolve, which will apply only to future devices.

The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: Huawei's chairman Xu Zhijun -- aka Eric Xu -- has called out China's enormous lead in fiber-to-the-room (FTTR) installations. Speaking at last week's Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai, Xu shared his views on the telecommunications industry's future growth opportunities and said by the end of 2025 China will be home to 75 million FTTR installations -- but just 500,000 exist outside the Middle Kingdom. Xu said FTTR will benefit businesses by increasing their internet connection speeds, helping them address spotty Wi-Fi coverage, allowing them to deploy tech in more places, and therefore creating more opportunities to adopt productivity-boosting devices and services. FTTR will also help carriers to sell more expensive packages, he said. Xu also urged telecom carriers to target high-growth user groups like delivery riders and livestream influencers, citing their above-average data consumption and revenue potential. Delivery riders, who will make up 5% of the global workforce by 2030, use four times more voice minutes and double the data of average users, while influencers generate five times the data usage and four times the revenue.

He also pushed for greater collaboration between carriers and platforms to deliver more high-res video content, and called for improved efficiency in networking equipment and device power use. "Xu said Huawei is here to help carriers deliver any of the scenarios he mentioned," concludes Sharwood. "And of course it is, because the Chinese giant has a thriving business selling to telcos -- or at least to telcos beyond the liberal democracies that have largely decided Huawei's close ties with Beijing mean the company and its products represent an unacceptable threat to the operation of critical infrastructure."

In a podcast interview with The Verge's Nilay Patel, Hinge CEO Justin McLeod described integrating AI into dating apps as promising but warned against relying on AI companionship, likening it to "playing with fire" and consuming "junk food," potentially exacerbating the loneliness epidemic. He emphasized Hinge's mission to foster genuine human connections and highlighted upcoming AI-powered features designed to improve matchmaking and provide coaching to encourage real-world interactions. Here's an excerpt from the interview: Again, there's a fine line between prompting someone and coaching them inside Hinge, and we're coaching them in a different way within a more self-contained ecosystem. How do you think about that? Would you launch a full-on virtual girlfriend inside Hinge?

Certainly not. I have lots of thoughts about this. I think there's actually quite a clear line between providing a tool that helps people do something or get better at something, and the line where it becomes this thing that is trying to become your friend, trying to mimic emotions, and trying to create an emotional connection with you. That I think is really playing with fire. I think we are already in a crisis of loneliness, and a loneliness epidemic. It's a complex issue, and it's baked into our culture, and it goes back to before the internet. But just since 2000, over the past 20 years, the amount of time that people spend together in real life with their friends has dropped by 70 percent for young people. And it's been almost completely displaced by the time spent staring at screens. As a result, we've seen massive increases in mental health issues, and people's loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

I think Mark Zuckerberg was just quoted about this, that most people don't have enough friends. But he said we're going to give them AI chatbots. That he believes that AI chatbots can become your friends. I think that's honestly an extraordinarily reductive view of what a friendship is, that it's someone there to say all the right things to you at the right moment The most rewarding parts of being in a friendship are being able to be there for someone else, to risk and be vulnerable, to share experiences with other conscious entities. So I think that while it will feel good in the moment, like junk food basically, to have an experience with someone who says all the right things and is available at the right time, it will ultimately, just like junk food, make people feel less healthy and mo re drained over time. It will displace the human relationships that people should be cultivating out in the real world.

How do you compete with that? That is the other thing that is happening. It is happening. Whether it's good or bad. Hinge is offering a harder path. So you say, "We've got to get people out on dates." I honestly wonder about that, based on the younger folks I know who sometimes say, âoeI just don't want to leave the house. I would rather just talk to this computer. I have too much social pressure just leaving the house in this way.â That's what Hinge is promising to do. How do you compete with that? Do you take it head on? Are you marketing that directly?

I'm starting to think very much about taking it head on. We want to continue at Hinge to champion human relationships, real human-to-human-in-real-life relationships, because I think they are an essential part of the human experience, and they're essential to our mental health. It's not just because I run a dating app and, obviously, it's important that people continue to meet. It really is a deep, personal mission of mine, and I think it's absolutely critical that someone is out there championing this. Because it's always easier to race to the bottom of the brain stem and offer people junk products that maybe sell in the moment but leave them worse off. That's the entire model that we've seen from what happened with social media. I think AI chatbots could frankly be much more dangerous in that respect.

So what we can do is to become more and more effective and support people more and more, and make it as easy as possible to do the harder and riskier thing, which is to go out and form real relationships with real people. They can let you down and might not always be there for you, but it is ultimately a much more nourishing and enriching experience for people. We can also champion and raise awareness as much as we can. That's another reason why I'm here today talking with you, because I think it's important to put out the counter perspective, that we don't just reflexively believe that AI chatbots can be your friend, without thinking too deeply about what that really implies and what that really means.

We keep going back to junk food, but people had to start waking up to the fact that this was harmful. We had to do a lot of campaigns to educate people that drinking Coca-Cola and eating fast food was detrimental to their health over the long term. And then as people became more aware of that, a whole personal wellness industry started to grow, and now that's a huge industry, and people spend a lot of time focusing on their diet and nutrition and mental health, and all these other things. I think similarly, social wellness needs to become a category like that. It's thinking about not just how do I get this junk social experience of social media where I get fed outraged news and celebrity gossip and all that stuff, but how do I start building a sense of social wellness, where I can create an enriching, intimate connection with important people in my life. You can listen to the podcast here.

With no one behind the steering wheel, a Tesla robotaxi passes Guero's Taco Bar in Austin Texas, making a right turn onto Congress Avenue.

Today is the day Austin became the first city in the world to see Tesla's self-driving robotaxi service, reports The Guardian: Some analysts believe that the robotaxis will only be available to employees and invitees initially. For the CEO, Tesla's rollout is slow. "We could start with 1,000 or 10,000 [robotaxis] on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent," he told CNBC in May. "So, we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40."

The billionaire has said the driverless cars will be monitored remotely... [Posting on X.com] Musk said the date was "tentatively" 22 June but that this launch date would be "not real self-driving", which would have to wait nearly another week... Musk said he planned to have one thousand Tesla robotaxis on Austin roads "within a few months" and then he would expand to other cities in Texas and California.
Musk posted on X that riders on launch day would be charged a flat fee of $4.20, according to Reuters. And "In recent days, Tesla has sent invites to a select group of Tesla online influencers for a small and carefully monitored robotaxi trial..." As the date of the planned robotaxi launch approached, Texas lawmakers moved to enact rules on autonomous vehicles in the state. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, on Friday signed legislation requiring a state permit to operate self-driving vehicles. The law does not take effect until September 1, but the governor's approval of it on Friday signals state officials from both parties want the driverless-vehicle industry to proceed cautiously... The law softens the state's previous anti-regulation stance on autonomous vehicles. A 2017 Texas law specifically prohibited cities from regulating self-driving cars...

The law requires autonomous-vehicle operators to get approval from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles before operating on public streets without a human driver. It also gives state authorities the power to revoke permits if they deem a driverless vehicle "endangers the public," and requires firms to provide information on how police and first responders can deal with their driverless vehicles in emergency situations. The law's requirements for getting a state permit to operate an "automated motor vehicle" are not particularly onerous but require a firm to attest it can safely operate within the law... Compliance remains far easier than in some states, most notably California, which requires extensive submission of vehicle-testing data under state oversight.
Tesla "planned to operate only in areas it considered the safest," according to the article, and "plans to avoid bad weather, difficult intersections, and will not carry anyone below the age of 18."

More details from UPI: To get started using the robotaxis, users must download the Robotaxi app and use their Tesla account to log in, where it then functions like most ridesharing apps...

"Riders may not always be delivered to their intended destinations or may experience inconveniences, interruptions, or discomfort related to the Robotaxi," the company wrote in a disclaimer in its terms of service. "Tesla may modify or cancel rides in its discretion, including for example due to weather conditions." The terms of service include a clause that Tesla will not be liable for "any indirect, consequential, incidental, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost profits or revenues, lost data, lost time, the costs of procuring substitute transportation services, or other intangible losses" from the use of the robotaxis.
Their article includes a link to the robotaxi's complete Terms of Service: To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Robotaxi, Robotaxi app, and any ride are provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, either express or implied... The Robotaxi is not intended to provide transportation services in connection with emergencies, for example emergency transportation to a hospital... Tesla's total liability for any claim arising from or relating to Robotaxi or the Robotaxi app is limited to the greater of the amount paid by you to Tesla for the Robotaxi ride giving rise to the claim, and $100... Tesla may modify these Terms in our discretion, effective upon posting an updated version on Tesla's website. By using a Robotaxi or the Robotaxi app after Tesla posts such modifications, you agree to be bound by the revised Terms.

Spain's newspaper El Pais found an entire fake album on YouTube titled Rumba Congo (1973). And they cite a study from France's International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers that estimated revenue from AI-generated music will rise to $4 billion in 2028, generating 20% of all streaming platforms' revenue: One of the major problems with this trend is the lack of transparency. María Teresa Llano, an associate professor at the University of Sussex who studies the intersection of creativity, art and AI, emphasizes this aspect: "There's no way for people to know if something is AI or not...." On Spotify Community — a forum for the service's users — a petition is circulating that calls for clear labeling of AI-generated music, as well as an option for users to block these types of songs from appearing on their feeds. In some of these forums, the rejection of AI-generated music is palpable.

Llano mentions the feelings of deception or betrayal that listeners may experience, but asserts that this is a personal matter. There will be those who feel this way, as well as those who admire what the technology is capable of... One of the keys to tackling the problem is to include a warning on AI-generated songs. YouTube states that content creators must "disclose to viewers when realistic content [...] is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI." Users will see this if they glance at the description. But this is only when using the app, because on a computer, they will have to scroll down to the very end of the description to get the warning....

The professor from the University of Sussex explains one of the intangibles that justifies the labeling of content: "In the arts, we can establish a connection with the artist; we can learn about their life and what influenced them to better understand their career. With artificial intelligence, that connection no longer exists."
YouTube says they may label AI-generated content if they become aware of it, and may also remove it altogether, according to the article. But Spotify "hasn't shared any policy for labeling AI-powered content..." In an interview with Gustav Söderström, Spotify's co-president and chief product & technology officer, he emphasized that AI "increases people's creativity" because more people can be creative, thanks to the fact that "you don't need to have fine motor skills on the piano." He also made a distinction between music generated entirely with AI and music in which the technology is only partially used. But the only limit he mentioned for moderating artificial music was copyright infringement... something that has been a red line for any streaming service for many years now. And such a violation is very difficult to legally prove when artificial intelligence is involved.

Earlier this week looters who stole iPhones "got an unexpected message from Apple," reports the Economic Times.

"Please return to Apple Tower Theatre. This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted."

Stolen phones "were remotely locked and triggered alarms, effectively turning the devices into high-tech bait. Videos circulating online show the phones flashing the message while blaring loudly, making them impossible to ignore." According to LAPD Officer Chris Miller, at least three suspects were apprehended in connection to the Apple Store burglary. One woman was arrested on the spot, while two others were detained for looting.

Hong Kong authorities have invoked national security laws for the first time to ban the Taiwan-made video game Reversed Front: Bonfire, accusing it of promoting "secessionist agendas, such as 'Taiwan independence' and 'Hong Kong independence.'" Engadget reports: Reversed Front: Bonfire was developed by a group known as ESC Taiwan, who are outspoken critics of the China's Communist Party. The game disappeared from the Apple App Store in Hong Kong less than 24 hours after authorities issued the warning. Google already removed the game from the Play Store back in May, because players were using hate speech as part of their usernames. ESC Taiwan told The New York Times that that the game's removal shows that apps like theirs are subject to censorship in mainland China. The group also thanked authorities for the free publicity on Facebook, as the game experienced a surge in Google searches.

The game uses anime-style illustrations and allows players to fight against China's Communist Party by taking on the role of "propagandists, patrons, spies or guerrillas" from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang, which is home to ethnic minorities like the Uyghur. That said, they can also choose to play as government soldiers. In its warning, Hong Kong Police said that anybody who shares or recommends the game on the internet may be committing several offenses, including "incitement to secession, "incitement to subversion" and "offenses in connection with seditious intention." Anybody who has downloaded the game will be considered in "possession of a publication that has a seditious intention," and anybody who provides financial assistance to it will be violating national security laws, as well. "Those who have downloaded the application should uninstall it immediately and must not attempt to defy the law," the authorities wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: My wife taught me something," Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told the crowd at London SXSW. He was addressing the headlines about the company looking to hire human workers after previously saying Klarna used artificial intelligence to do work that would equate to 700 workers. "Two things can be true at the same time," he said. Siemiatkowski said it's true that the company looked to stop hiring human workers a few years ago and rolled out AI agents that have helped reduce the cost of customer support and increase the company's revenue per employee. The company had 5,500 workers two years ago, and that number now stands at around 3,000, he said, adding that as the company's salary costs have gone down, Klarna now seeks to reinvest a majority of that money into employee cash and equity compensation.

But, he insisted, this doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity for humans to work at his company. "We think offering human customer service is always going to be a VIP thing," he said, comparing it to how people pay more for clothing stitched by hand rather than machines. "So we think that two things can be done at the same time. We can use AI to automatically take away boring jobs, things that are manual work, but we are also going to promise our customers to have a human connection."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Space.com: Three world travelers, two Space Camp alums and an aerospace executive whose last name aptly matched their shared adventure traveled into space and back Saturday, becoming the latest six people to fly with Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Mark Rocket joined Jaime Alemán, Jesse Williams, Paul Jeris, Gretchen Green and Amy Medina Jorge on board the RSS First Step — Blue Origin's first of two human-rated New Shepard capsules — for a trip above the Kármán Line, the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer) internationally recognized boundary between Earth and space...

Mark Rocket became the first New Zealander to reach space on the mission. His connection to aerospace goes beyond his apt name and today's flight; he's currently the CEO of Kea Aerospace and previously helped lead Rocket Lab, a competing space launch company to Blue Origin that sends most of its rockets up from New Zealand. Alemán, Williams and Jeris each traveled the world extensively before briefly leaving the planet today. An attorney from Panama, Alemán is now the first person to have visited all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, traveled to the North and South Poles, and now, have been into space. For Williams, an entrepreneur from Canada, Saturday's flight continued his record of achieving high altitudes; he has summitted Mt. Everest and five of the other six other highest mountains across the globe.
"For about three minutes, the six NS-32 crewmates experienced weightlessness," the article points out, "and had an astronaut's-eye view of the planet..."

On social media Blue Origin notes it's their 12th human spaceflight, "and the 32nd flight of the New Shepard program."

"I am a huge fan of Star Wars," opines an article from the gaming Aftermath. "As every Star Wars fan knows, being a Star Wars fan means you hate Star Wars as much as you love it."

But fortunately there's Going Rogue and Galactic — two tabletop games "inspired" by the Star Wars universe (which just successfully crowdfunded a printed illustrated hardcover edition). They're described as "war among the stars" role-playing games, where members of The Liberation dedicate their lives to the war against The Mandate — "rebels, soldiers, spies, and criminals, or perhaps someone who simply picked up and blaster and said 'enough is enough.'"

The article notes that Going Rogue was a way for the game's designer to work out their issues with Star Wars: "You can re-skin Going Rogue to be all the original stuff [from Star Wars]. I prefer, at this point, to play it not in canon Star Wars," Levine said. "And also, there are things I hate about canon Star Wars. I think it sucks that the Jedi are child kidnapping, sexless acetics!" In particular Going Rogue is a remix of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which depicts the lives of a group of rebel agents who give their lives for the rebellion before the original trilogy. "I love Rogue One and I hate Rogue One," Levine said...

But Going Rogue aims to do more than just allow players to "fix" Star Wars's narrative problems. It also allows players to explore this narrative of rebellion without having to interface with an evil entertainment empire: Disney... Going Rogue is an opportunity for Star Wars fans to make the story of Star Wars their own, including making it more in league with their own politics by taking Disney out of it. "Something I like about tabletop role playing and adaptational tabletop role playing is it says, 'Actually, fuck them. They don't get to own this thing,'" Levine said. "We can't fully divest from the connection to Star Wars. Obviously, we are downstream of it in certain ways. But we are also trying to say, fuck [Disney's] ownership of this thing that you love."
Aftermath adds that the game Going Rogue "intrigued me specifically because it was inspired by Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Andor — in particular, Going Rogue has a mechanic baked into the game where your character is more or less guaranteed to go out in a blaze of glory for the cause." [The game's designer says] "I wanted to design the game in a way that, as your character realized that they were willing to voluntarily sacrifice their life for this, you were narratively guaranteed by the mechanics that that sacrifice was worth it. You get to see, after they die, how it transforms the galaxy. I wanted you to get that feeling because you don't get that certainty in real life." They didn't make this game to convince anyone to become a socialist, but instead to create an emotional tool that serves as a mirror for the players' own feelings about what it means to devote your life to a political cause.

"Duolingo had been riding high," reports Fast Company, until CEO Luis von Ahn "announced on LinkedIn that the company is phasing out human contractors, looking for AI use in hiring and in performance reviews, and that 'headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.'"

But then "facing heavy backlash online after unveiling its new AI-first policy", Duolingo's social media presence went dark last weekend. Duolingo even temporarily took down all its posts on TikTok (6.7 million followers) and Instagram (4.1 million followers) "after both accounts were flooded with negative feedback." Duolingo previously faced criticism for quietly laying off 10% of its contractor base and introducing some AI features in late 2023, but it barely went beyond a semi-viral post on Reddit. Now that Duolingo is cutting out all its human contractors whose work can technically be done by AI, and relying on more AI-generated language lessons, the response is far more pronounced. Although earlier TikTok videos are not currently visible, a Fast Company article from May 12 captured a flavor of the reaction:

The top comments on virtually every recent post have nothing to do with the video or the company — and everything to do with the company's embrace of AI. For example, a Duolingo TikTok video jumping on board the "Mama, may I have a cookie" trend saw replies like "Mama, may I have real people running the company" (with 69,000 likes) and "How about NO ai, keep your employees...."
And then... After days of silence, on Tuesday the company posted a bizarre video message on TikTok and Instagram, the meaning of which is hard to decipher... Duolingo's first video drop in days has the degraded, stuttering feel of a Max Headroom video made by the hackers at Anonymous. In it, a supposed member of the company's social team appears in a three-eyed Duo mask and black hoodie to complain about the corporate overlords ruining the empire the heroic social media crew built.
"But this is something Duolingo can't cute-post its way out of," Fast Company wrote on Tuesday, complaining the company "has not yet meaningfully addressed the policies that inspired the backlash against it... "

So the next video (Thursday) featured Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn himself, being confronted by that same hoodie-wearing social media rebel, who says "I'm making the man who caused this mess accountable for his behavior. I'm demanding answers from the CEO..." [Though the video carefully sidesteps the issue of replacing contractors with AI or how "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."] Rebel: First question. So are there going to be any humans left at this company?

CEO: Our employees are what make Duolingo so amazing. Our app is so great because our employees made it... So we're going to continue having employees, and not only that, we're actually going to be hiring more employees.

Rebel: How do we know that these aren't just empty promises? As long as you're in charge, we could still be shuffled out once the media fire dies down. And we all know that in terms of automation, CEOs should be the first to go.

CEO: AI is a fundamental shift. It's going to change how we all do work — including me. And honestly, I don't really know what's going to happen.

But I want us, as a company, to have our workforce prepared by really knowing how to use AI so that we can be more efficient with it.

Rebel: Learning a foreign language is literally about human connection. How is that even possible with AI-first?

CEO: Yes, language is about human connection, and it's about people. And this is the thing about AI. AI will allow us to reach more people, and to teach more people. I mean for example, it took us about 10 years to develop the first 100 courses on Duolingo, and now in under a year, with the help of AI and of course with humans reviewing all the work, we were able to release another 100 courses in less than a year.

Rebel: So do you regret posting this memo on LinkedIn.

CEO: Honestly, I think I messed up sending that email. What we're trying to do is empower our own employees to be able to achieve more and be able to have way more content to teach better and reach more people all with the help of AI.
Returning to where it all started, Duolingo's CEO posted again on LinkedIn Thursday with "more context" for his vision. It still emphasizes the company's employees while sidestepping contractors replaced by AI. But it puts a positive spin on how "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work." I've always encouraged our team to embrace new technology (that's why we originally built for mobile instead of desktop), and we are taking that same approach with AI. By understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI now, we can stay ahead of it and remain in control of our own product and our mission.

To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are in fact continuing to hire at the same speed as before). I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run. My goal is for Duos to feel empowered and prepared to use this technology.

No one is expected to navigate this shift alone. We're developing workshops and advisory councils, and carving out dedicated experimentation time to help all our teams learn and adapt. People work at Duolingo because they want to solve big problems to improve education, and the people who work here are what make Duolingo successful. Our mission isn't changing, but the tools we use to build new things will change. I remain committed to leading Duolingo in a way that is consistent with our mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.
"The backlash to Duolingo is the latest evidence that 'AI-first' tends to be a concept with much more appeal to investors and managers than most regular people," notes Fortune: And it's not hard to see why. Generative AI is often trained on reams of content that may have been illegally accessed; much of its output is bizarre or incorrect; and some leaders in the field are opposed to regulations on the technology. But outside particular niches in entry-level white-collar work, AI's productivity gains have yet to materialize.

The U.S. unsealed charges against 16 individuals behind DanaBot, a malware-as-a-service platform responsible for over $50 million in global losses. "The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after accidentally infecting their own systems with the malware," reports KrebsOnSecurity. From the report: Initially spotted in May 2018 by researchers at the email security firm Proofpoint, DanaBot is a malware-as-a-service platform that specializes in credential theft and banking fraud. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and indictment from 2022, which said the FBI identified at least 40 affiliates who were paying between $3,000 and $4,000 a month for access to the information stealer platform. The government says the malware infected more than 300,000 systems globally, causing estimated losses of more than $50 million. The ringleaders of the DanaBot conspiracy are named as Aleksandr Stepanov, 39, a.k.a. "JimmBee," and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, 34, a.k.a. "Onix," both of Novosibirsk, Russia. Kalinkin is an IT engineer for the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. His Facebook profile name is "Maffiozi."

According to the FBI, there were at least two major versions of DanaBot; the first was sold between 2018 and June 2020, when the malware stopped being offered on Russian cybercrime forums. The government alleges that the second version of DanaBot -- emerging in January 2021 -- was provided to co-conspirators for use in targeting military, diplomatic and non-governmental organization computers in several countries, including the United States, Belarus, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia. The indictment says the FBI in 2022 seized servers used by the DanaBot authors to control their malware, as well as the servers that stored stolen victim data. The government said the server data also show numerous instances in which the DanaBot defendants infected their own PCs, resulting in their credential data being uploaded to stolen data repositories that were seized by the feds.

"In some cases, such self-infections appeared to be deliberately done in order to test, analyze, or improve the malware," the criminal complaint reads. "In other cases, the infections seemed to be inadvertent -- one of the hazards of committing cybercrime is that criminals will sometimes infect themselves with their own malware by mistake." A statement from the DOJ says that as part of today's operation, agents with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) seized the DanaBot control servers, including dozens of virtual servers hosted in the United States. The government says it is now working with industry partners to notify DanaBot victims and help remediate infections. The statement credits a number of security firms with providing assistance to the government, including ESET, Flashpoint, Google, Intel 471, Lumen, PayPal, Proofpoint, Team CYRMU, and ZScaler.