Good morning. If you’re reading this from the UK, you’re more likely to be a Reddit user than X user.
That’s according to the British media regulator Ofcom, whose the latest survey shows that Reddit is the fastest growing major social media platform in the country, now used by the majority of adults online in the UK. X, meanwhile, has been rejecting the British for several years.
Other findings include that a third of UK internet users have used ChatGPT at least once in the past year…and a paltry 18% of over 16s believe generative AI output is trustworthy. —David Meyer
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Outrage over social media restrictions in Australia
Australian lawmakers last week took the drastic step of banning (from the end of next year) all social media for under-16s, parental consent be damned.
The legislative process, which was allegedly the result of the politician’s wife reading Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller Anxious generationit lasted a whole week. Social media companies unsurprisingly really unhappy how did all this go.
A spokesperson for Meta noted that the Australian parliament had acknowledged the lack of demonstrable, clear links between social media and negative impacts on children’s mental health, adding: “This shows a lack of evidence to support the law and suggests this was a premeditated process. “
TikTok and Snap are similarly angry, and one of their big concerns is the fact that no one knows how this new law will be enforced when it goes into effect.
Even with more lenient laws allowing access with parental consent, experience has shown that enforcement is a major problem—it’s tricky to get a mechanism that works while still respecting privacy and other rights.
Musk aims to transform OpenAI
Elon Musk has asked a California district court to stop OpenAI from doing a bunch of things he doesn’t like.
The tycoon, who co-founded OpenAI nine years ago before leaving after losing a power struggle with CEO Sam Altman, claims the AI leader is discouraging investors from backing rivals such as his xAI.
He also states that OpenAI “illegally obtained sensitive competitive information” through its ties to Microsoft and wants the court to prevent OpenAI from doing business with companies in which the defendants have a material financial interest.
Those defendants include Altman and Chairman Greg Brockman, as well as Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman and Microsoft Vice President Dee Templeton, as well as Microsoft itself.
Crucially, Musk wants the court to stop OpenAI’s conversion from non-profit to for-profit.
The Tesla boss sued OpenAI and Altman earlier this year over their abandonment of the company’s nonprofit status, but withdrew the lawsuit in June. Now it’s back, in an expanded form.
Canada is going for Google’s neck
Canada’s antitrust body sued Google to “decisively end” what it says are the company’s anti-competitive practices in online advertising—which still accounts for most of parent company Alphabet’s revenue.
“Through a series of calculated decisions, made over a number of years, Google has shut out competitors and entrenched itself at the center of online advertising,” the Competition Bureau said.
The watchdog wants Google to get rid of its AdX ad exchange and DFP ad server, plus a fine of as much as 3% of global revenue (so just north of $9 billion, based on fiscal 2023.)
Google’s vice president of ads Dan Taylor responded by insisting that the complaint “ignores the intense competition in which ad buyers and sellers have many choices.” The company now has a month and a half to file an official response.
New AI models
Amazon has reportedly developed a new multimodal large language model, meaning it can handle images and video as well as text.
According to InformationThe “Olympus” AI model will help Amazon avoid over-reliance on Anthropic, its heavily funded OpenAI competitor.
And with Amazon holding its annual re:Invent AWS conference this week, Olympus could be getting its debut soon.
Meanwhile, the Qwen AI team at China’s Alibaba produced a new model of “reasoning”. which will compete with OpenAI’s o1 model.
The team claims that the QwQ-32B-Preview outperforms the o1 on some benchmarks, although they also note certain bad habits, such as suddenly switching model languages for no reason. Being Chinese, he also avoids sensitive political topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Meta’s cable plan
Meta wants to wrap the whole world in a new underwater fiber optic cable, TechCrunch reports.
What is particularly new about this plan is that Meta would be the sole owner and sole user of the data pipeline.
The initial budget for the project, which the Facebook and Instagram owner will apparently announce next year, is said to be $2 billion, with $10 billion a more likely cost when it’s all added up.
The South African author of the Data Sheet is pleased to note today that the project is apparently led by Meta’s operation in that country—which would host two interconnection points, as would India.
The US would get two on each coast. Australia only got one.
More data
Intel’s $7.86 billion subsidy deal limits sales of its manufacturing unit. Threads were attached.
Italian watchdog warns publisher GEDI not to share data with OpenAI. The privacy policy is a point of contention.
Amazon employees are ‘signing in with a fury’ as his return-to-work mandate approaches—exactly what CEO Andy Jassy wants, experts say. Is it a sneaky ploy to get fired?
Fully autonomous aircraft could be flying close to you—and that’s not a good thing. Your captain is speaking.
TSMC founder Morris Chang offered the top job to Jensen Huang, the memoir shows. “I already have a job,” said the Nvidia CEO.
