The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Donald Trump claims to have found buyers for TikTok
But will China agree to sell to them? That’s the real hurdle. (FT $)
+ They have between now and the September 17 deadline to thrash it all out. (CNBC)
2 The Trump administration is becoming even more secretive
Staff are being instructed to avoid leaving a paper trial at all costs. (WP $)
3 Canada has rescinded its plans to tax US technology firms
That’s the price for reopening talks with America about trade negotiations. (Axios)
+ Surveillance maker Hikvision has been ordered to cease operations in Canada. (Bloomberg $)
+ The tax had been due to come into effect today. (NPR)
4 Fake AI videos detailing the Diddy trial are rife on YouTube
The slop clips have been watched millions of times. (The Guardian)
5 A new brain implant translates brain signals into words almost instantly
It could be an impressive step towards a fully digital vocal tract. (Ars Technica)
+ This patient’s Neuralink brain implant gets a boost from generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Meta wants to train its AI on photos you haven’t even uploaded yet
And while it’s not doing so yet, it could in the future. (The Verge)
+ It’s started asking users for access permission. (TechCrunch)
7 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is narrowing its remit
It’s focusing purely on science, rather than politics, education and housing. (NYT $)
+ That’s pretty awful news for the communities that have grown reliant on it. (WP $)
8 Fine tuning LLMs to behave well makes them more likely to say no
So you get either ‘safe’ or ‘helpful’. Both simultaneously seems to be too much to ask. (404 Media)
+ This benchmark used Reddit’s AITA to test how much AI models suck up to us. (MIT Technology Review)