Cyber Safety in the News
TikTok Sued By 13 States And DC, Accused of Harming Younger Users
Reuters, October 8, 2024
TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people. The lawsuits filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok’s legal fight with U.S. regulators, and seek new financial penalties against the company.
The states accuse TikTok of using intentionally addictive software designed to keep children watching as long and often as possible and misrepresenting its content moderation effectiveness. “TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.” TikTok seeks to maximize the amount of time users spend on the app to target them with ads, the states say. TikTok remains the #1 most popular social media app amongst youth.
A Godfather of AI Just Won A Nobel. He Has Been Warning the Machines Could Take Over the World
The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2024
The newly minted Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton has a message about the artificial-intelligence systems he helped create – get more serious about safety or they could endanger humanity.
“I think we’re at a kind of bifurcation point in history where, in the next few years, we need to figure out if there’s a way to deal with that threat,” Hinton said in an interview with a Nobel Prize official that mixed pride in his life’s work with warnings about the growing danger it poses. Geoffrey Hinton hopes the prize will add credibility to his claims about the dangers of AI technology he pioneered. We are already seeing consequences from the misuse of Artificial Intelligence Technology amongst the students we educate.
Can A.I. Be Blamed for A Teen’s Suicide?
New York Times, October 23, 2024
The mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy says he became obsessed with a chatbot on Character.AI before his death. He had spent months talking to chatbots on Character.AI, a role-playing app that allows users to create their own A.I. characters or chat with characters created by others.
Sewell knew that “Dany,” as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person but he developed an emotional attachment anyway. He texted the bot constantly, updating it dozens of times a day on his life and engaging in long role-playing dialogues. Sewell’s parents and friends had no idea he’d fallen for a chatbot. They just saw him get sucked deeper into his phone. Eventually, they noticed that he was isolating himself and pulling away from the real world. His grades started to suffer, and he began getting into trouble at school. He lost interest in the things that used to excite him, like Formula 1 racing or playing Fortnite with his friends. At night, he’d come home and go straight to his room, where he’d talk to Dany for hours. On the night of Feb. 28, in the bathroom of his mother’s house, Sewell told Dany that he loved her, and that he would soon come home to her. As interactions with AI chatbots become more mainstream, students need to be reminded that responses from chatbots are just the outputs of an A.I. language model, and that there is no human on the other side of the screen typing back.
Roblox To Release New Parental Controls Following Damning Report
MSN, October 25, 2024
Roblox says it’s instituting some new safety features for children accounts next month after a shocking report claimed the platform was filled with child and sexual exploitation. Roblox sent an email out to the parents of kids with accounts explaining the changes. First up, parents can link up their accounts with a child’s, which they can then use to view their kid’s usage and their friends, along with update parental controls.
Roblox is also making changes to default settings for different children accounts. Users under the age of 13 will need a parent’s permission to access certain chat features, while those under 9 years old will need permission to access any content with a rating of “Moderate” and above. This might go along with the new Party feature that lets people in friend groups chat via text or voice, but only for users 13 and over. This change is long overdue because parental controls on Roblox have been lacking for some time, as too many children have been exposed to predatory behavior while on the platform.
Too Many People Want to Be Social-Media Influencers
The Economist, October 29, 2024
Ask a young person what they would like to do with their life and increasingly often the answer will be to find fame and fortune online. 57% of Generation Z in America would like to be a social-media influencer, according to Morning Consult, a pollster; 53% describe it as a “reputable career choice”.
Those dreams may be understandable: examples abound of social-media superstars, from fashionistas and comedians to gamers, making tens of thousands of dollars for a post promoting the wares of some brand. As consumers spend more of their lives on social media, the amount of money companies are paying influencers is rocketing. That is good for companies but bad for “creators” as the space is becoming overcrowded.
