95350515
submission
mirandakatz writes:
If you're a stock music composer, you sign over the rights to whatever music you put up on a variety of hosting sites. That can get complicated—especially when your music winds up being used to soundtrack hate speech. At Backchannel, Pippa Biddle dives into the knotty world of stock music, writing that stock music is “a quick way for a talented musician to make a small buck. But there’s a hidden cost: You lose control over where your work ends up. In hundreds, if not thousands, of cases, a tune becomes the backing track to hate speech or violent videos. Often such use violates the license the buyer agrees to when purchasing the track. But nobody reads the licenses—and, more importantly, no one enforces them.”
95295931
submission
rickih02 writes:
The GOP's tax plan, which passed in the House yesterday, has been stirring up a lot of anxiety across the country — and Silicon Valley is no exception. Though Senate Republicans have dropped the tax-options-on-vesting provision, this original element of the bill had founders in a panic. At Backchannel, Scott Rosenberg argues that even though the concerning bits wound up getting dropped, we do need comprehensive tax reform for tech world. "The Senate plan has rallied techâ(TM)s legions to fight to preserve the status quo," he writes. "But maybe, instead of protecting the flawed system now in place, we should be thinking of new kinds of tax policies that actively clear a fresh space for sustainable innovation."
95268547
submission
rickih02 writes:
We're not living in the golden age of AI, but we are living in the golden age of AI-enhanced productivity. At Backchannel, Miranda Katz delves into the ways in which AI can assist, not replace, us in the work place — but we have to let it. In industries across the board, AI is taking the place of humans in completing time consuming, complex tasks. But for more thought-intensive, subjective work, we still need humans. "This presents workers with a choice," Katz explains. "Set aside your ego and embrace your new AI coworker, or get left behind."
95237219
submission
mirandakatz writes:
This summer, Backchannel reported that Anthony Levandowski, the controversial engineer at the heart of the Uber/Waymo lawsuit, had filed paperwork for a new religion called the Way of the Future. Today, investigative reporter Mark Harris has all the details on what that AI-based religion actually likes—and Levandowski granted him his first interview about the new religion and his only public interview since Waymo filed its suit in February. As Levandowski tells him, we can see a hint of how a superhuman intelligence might treat humanity in our current relationships with animals—and that's why it's so important that we treat AI as a god, not a demon to be warded off. “Do you want to be a pet or livestock?” he asks. “We give pets medical attention, food, grooming, and entertainment. But an animal that’s biting you, attacking you, barking and being annoying? I don’t want to go there.”
95177683
submission
mirandakatz writes:
The cult of the Silicon Valley founder started in the early 2000s—and it could be ending now. The biggest tech companies’ founders are now facing complex problems on a global scale that they're not necessary equipped to handle. As Scott Rosenberg writes at Backchannel, “The US and the rest of the world are beginning to ask hard questions about whether tech platforms are weakening democracy, promoting ignorance, and fostering a new wave of authoritarian nationalism. Anyone would have a hard time answering these questions. But the Silicon Valley founder is uniquely ill prepared...We know that tech is changing the world, and we’re beginning to suspect that a one-item resume reading “founded my startup at 17” may not equip you with the tools to change it carefully and well.”
95073865
submission
mirandakatz writes:
The Xfund started with a bold idea and ended with one of its founders banished from the country. At Backchannel, Jessi Hempel has the definitive story of what really happened after Patrick Chung and Hugo Van Vuuren went into business together, and how a promising venture went so wrong. It's an incredibly complex story, and no one agrees on the basic facts: As Hempel writes, "What’s clear is that from the start, they had clashing visions for what they were building. The tale of Van Vuuren and Chung’s partnership and its demise offers a window into how power really works in Silicon Valley, where personal relationships are the most important currency and, in order to protect capital, investors are more likely to place their bets on people they know and trust."
95014173
submission
rickih02 writes:
There's no lack of reports on the ethics of artificial intelligence. But the new report from research institute AI Now is different — it takes an unblinking look at a tech industry racing to reshape society along AI lines without any guarantee of reliable and fair results. At Backchannel, editor Scott Rosenberg sat down with AI Now cofounder Kate Crawford for a discussion of why ethics in AI is still a mess, and what practical steps might change the picture. "We can say we want AI systems to be guided with the highest ethical principles, but we have to make sure that there is something at stake," Crawford says. "Often when we talk about ethics, we forget to talk about power."
94753839
submission
rickih02 writes:
In times of disaster, it is no surprise when social media becomes a critical player, amplifying the voices of dissenters and the damned. But in the past few months of epic catastrophes, it has served for another sort of recruitment. It has created a new set of first responders to step in where traditional aid has failed. At Backchannel, reporter Maya Averbuch examines the crucial role platforms like WhatsApp and Twitter have played in Mexicoâ(TM)s earthquake recovery. Mexican citizens, suspicious of authorities and wary of elected officials, have instead harnessed the power of social media and taken matters into their own hands.
94669267
submission
rickih02 writes:
Teslaâ(TM)s factory tour has always been a hit among visitors, but little did they know there was a lot they werenâ(TM)t seeing. At Backchannel, Teslaâ(TM)s former VP of production, Greg Reichow, pulls back the curtain on the factoryâ(TM)s âoesecretâ second floor, where many of Teslaâ(TM)s battery, power electronics, and drive-train systems are built. âoeIt was home to some of the most advanced manufacturing and automation systems in the company,â Reichow writes. Baffling to some, Reichow explains the importance of Teslaâ(TM)s vertical integration. Had the electric vehicle company simply spent too much time inhaling the âoewe know betterâ fumes of Silicon Valley? No, says Reichow. The former VP breaks down why taking on the madness of building their own car components was so worth while.
94605947
submission
mirandakatz writes:
If you want to pick Evan Prodromou's brain—as many people often do—you'll have to pay him. And not just a consulting fee: You'll have to pay him in his own personal cryptocurrency, dubbed Evancoin. Currently, 20 days after his Initial Coin Offering, a single Evancoin is worth $45. As Prodromou tells Scott Rosenberg at Backchannel, “I’m not above a stunt! But in this case I’m really serious about exploring how cryptocurrency is changing what we can do with money and how we think about it. Money is this sort of consensual hallucination, and I wanted to experiment around that.” Read on to learn what, exactly, goes into creating a personal cryptocurrency, and whether Evancoin could becoming a phenomenon that spreads.
94584765
submission
rickih02 writes:
In the world of marathon running, a new scam has emerged: social media banditingâ"where a runner uses social media to enter a race without officially registering. âoeItâ(TM)s a phenomenon born out of the current dual booms of technology and endurance events,â Mary Pilon writes. But the jury is still out on whether this trend is a silly prank or a serious threat. At Backchannel, Pilon takes a closer look at the perpetrators, victims, and investigators of the bizarre social media trend in the hopes of understanding why on earth a middle- or back-of-the-pack runner would lie or cheat.
94560883
submission
mirandakatz writes:
#MeToo has the makings of an earnest and effective social movement: It’s galvanizing women and trans people everywhere to speak out about harassment and abuse. But as Jessi Hempel writes at Backchannel, the meme is too perfect. “It harnesses social media’s mechanisms to drive users (that’s you and me) into escalating states of outrage while exhausting us to the point where we cannot meaningfully act. In other words, #MeToo—despite the best intentions of so many participating—is everything that’s wrong with social media.” Drawing upon recent research from Yale assistant professor Molly Crockett, Hempel argues that outrage inspires sharing, which causes all of us to spend more time engaged with the platform—and that translates directly to revenue for the companies. Any meme this perfect should give us pause.
94506669
submission
mirandakatz writes:
As voice assistants crop up left and right, consumers are facing a decision: Are you an Alexa? A Google Assistant? A Siri? Choose wisely—because once you pick one voice assistant, it'll be difficult to switch. As Scott Rosenberg writes at Backchannel, “If I want to switch assistants down the line, sure, I can just go out and buy another device. But that investment of time and personal data isn’t so easy to replace...Right now, all these assistants behave like selfish employees who think they can protect their jobs by holding vital expertise or passwords close to their chests. Eventually , the data that runs the voice assistant business is going to have to be standardized.”
94425221
submission
mirandakatz writes:
Tech companies’ worst crises used to come in the form of pranks like Google bombs: Users figured out how to game search results, such as when a search for “miserable failure” turned up links to information about then-president George W. Bush. Today, in the era of fake news and Russian interference, that’s basically our new normal—but as Karen Wickre, a former communications lead at companies like Google and Twitter, points out, tech companies’ approaches to dealing with the new breed of crises haven’t evolved much since the age of Google bombs. Wickre suggests a new, collaborative approach that she dubs the “Federation,” writing that “No single company, no matter how massive and wealthy, can hire its way out of a steady gusher of bad information or false and manipulative ads...The era of the edge case—the exception, the outlier—is over. Welcome to our time, where trouble is forever brewing.”
94372947
submission
mirandakatz writes:
If we want self-driving cars to become mainstream, we need maps—and not just any maps. We need ridiculously detailed and constantly updated maps of the world’s roads. And there's a mad race among startups to become the definitive provider of those maps. At Backchannel, Steven Levy takes a deep look at Mapper, a startup that just came out of stealth today and that hopes to become that definitive provider by crowdsourcing the production of those maps, paying drivers to drive around with a special mapping device on their windshields. As Levy writes, “Mapper’s solution is to create an army of part-time workers to gather data that will accrue to a huge “base map” for autonomous cars, and to update the map to keep it current. Think of the work as an alternative to driving for Uber and Lyft, without having to deal with customer ratings or backseat outbursts from Travis Kalanick.”
