Silicon Valley Tech News Roundup – April 16th

Montana becomes the first state to ban TikTok – 4/14

On Friday, Montana became the first state to ban TikTok on almost all devices.

House of Representatives of Montana voted for the SB 419 bill (with 54 votes for and 43 votes against). Once Governor Greg Gianforte signs it into law, the ban will take effect in January 2024. SB 419 bans TikTok from operating ” within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana.” If TikTok violates the law, it faces fines of up to $10,000 per day for the duration of the violation. However, the bill becomes void if TikTok divests its US business from its Chinese ownership or if Congress passes a national TikTok ban.

TikTok’s spokesperson stated: “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.” The company claims the decision amounts to censorship and plans to challenge it in court.

Sam Altman (the CEO of OpenAI) responds to the open letter from the Future of Life Institute – 4/14

Sam Altman (the CEO of OpenAI) talked about the open letter sent by the Future of Life Institute asking for a pause on AI research. Altman addressed the letter during a video appearance at an MTI event on Thursday.

Altman agreed with some portions of the letter: “I think moving with caution and an increasing rigor for safety issues is really important… The letter I don’t think was the optimal way to address it… I also agree as capabilities get more and more serious, that the safety bar has got to increase.” Altman also stated the open letter was “missing most technical nuance about where we need the pause.”

In March, the Future of Life Institute sent out an open letter signed by its luminaries like Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk. The letter called for an immediate pause on AI training: “AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts.”

EU experts ask for broader regulation in the AI Act – 4/13

On Thursday, a group of prominent EU experts and institutional signatories released a policy brief asking the European Union to broaden the technology regulation in the AI Act. The group (which includes experts like Timnit Gebru and institutions like Mozilla Foundation) is asking the EU policymakers to include General Purpose AI (GPAI) in the regulation and not limit it to a narrower scope. They posit developers might not create general-purpose tools with high risk in mind, but their application in different settings can make them high risk.

Mehtab Khan (one of the signatories and a resident fellow at Yale/Wikimedia Initiative on Intermediaries and Information) stated: “GPAI should be regulated throughout the product cycle and not just the application layer.” He added labels like high- and low-risk “are just inherently not capturing the dynamism” of the technology. According to Khan, the regulation should consider several factors: how is AI developed, how the data is collected and who is collecting it, and the training of technology (among other things).

Sarah Myers West (the Managing Director of AI Now Institute) stated: “The EU AI Act is poised to become, as far as we’re aware, the first omnibus regulation for artificial intelligence… And so given that, it’s going to become the global precedent. And that’s why it’s particularly critical that it fields this category of AI well, because it could become the template that others are following.”

A suspect in Bob Lee’s homicide arrested – 4/14

Court documents obtained by NBC News on Friday reveal the authorities arrested a suspect for the murder of Bob Lee (the Founder of Cash App).

The arrested suspect is Nima Momeni, a 38-year-old IT consultant from San Francisco. The police arrested him on Thursday after a 9-day manhunt. San Francisco’s District Attorney confirmed they would charge Momeni with murder, and the arraignment will be on April 25th. The prosecutors will be filing a motion to detain him without bail.

According to the court documents, Lee and Momeni knew each other and argued over Momeni’s sister. The suspect drove Lee into a secluded place and stabbed him three times with a kitchen knife. One of the wounds punctured Lee’s heart, and the emergency services found him unresponsive at the scene.

The arrest ends the speculation Lee’s murder was a random act of violence.