Tonight: AI bots, Boeing jets, crypto chaos, oh my! Let's get into it. By Allison Morrow |
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| | Last updated January 9 at 6:59 PM ET | |
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Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Getty Images |
Yesterday, in one of Bill Ackman's long, winding rants about how mean journalists are for emailing while he's on vacation, among other things, the hedge fund manager-turned-campus crusader occasionally waded into some serious topics. For example, about halfway through a 4,200 word tirade — that's nine full pages of single-spaced text in a standard Word document, for the record — Ackman hit upon the transformative power of artificial intelligence in catching plagiarism, given that a bot can do in about four seconds what would take a human being four weeks to accomplish. But AI itself is also, in Ackman's words, "the ultimate plagiarist." "I am sure all of us are looking forward to learning the outcome of the NY Times lawsuit against OpenAI in light of its importance," Ackman wrote. And that is actually true! Here's a quick primer on Times lawsuit he's referring to: - Two weeks ago, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that they copied millions of Times articles to train ChatGPT. (That's the buzzy chatbot that's going to either ruin the world or make it really awesome, depending on whom you ask.)
- There have been other lawsuits like this, but the Times' suit is the first among major news publishers to take on the tech companies.
- OpenAI pushed back, saying this week that the Times lawsuit was "without merit."
- OpenAI claims that training AI systems with "publicly available internet materials" is covered by "fair use" protections under copyright law.
- The background to all this feuding is that the Times spent months trying to negotiate with the companies on some kind of licensing agreement that would compensate the paper in exchange for access to its content. Those talks broke down about a week before the Times filed its complaint.
Why it matters I wouldn't quite put it on the level of the atom bomb, as Ackman did, but AI's potential is similarly unnerving because of how much we simply don't know. (And I don't mean we, as in regular people, I mean, like, even the engineers who are building these systems don't fully comprehend their potential for good and evil.) Newspapers have (hopefully) learned their lesson from the 1990s, when they shrugged at the rise of internet, watched their business model take a beating and then spent much of the past 25 years playing catch-up and struggling to stay alive. The New York Times recognizes AI is coming, and there's little sense fighting or ignoring it. But the paper is trying to make sure there are precedents in place to ensure journalists and other content creators are fairly compensated when the bots take over the world benevolently enhance our humble human existence. RELATED - Staffers at Business Insider, which reported that Ackman's wife plagiarized part of her dissertation, were alarmed after the site's parent company took the unusual step of ordering a review of the reporting.
- A House committee demanded that Harvard turn over a mountain of documents as part of the committee's investigation into the university's handling of antisemitic incidents on campus.
- ICYMI: Bill Ackman is accustomed to institutions bending to his will. He's also notorious for not letting up whenever they don't.
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Boeing is in the middle of a crisis that, in other industries, would risk putting it out of business completely. The company's reputation is in the gutter — the result of two deadly crashes five years ago, chronic mismanagement and, of course, last week's sudden midair loss of a fuselage panel. But because it's effectively a duopoly, competing only with European rival Airbus, Boeing can still smash its financial goals. See here: On Tuesday, just three days after the fuselage incident, Boeing capped one of its best years for sales ever, my colleague Chris Isidore reports. It reported 1,314 new orders in 2023, up 70% from the previous year, after adjusting for cancellations. RELATED |
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On Tuesday afternoon, crypto investors rejoiced, believing that the SEC had finally approved the creation of so-called spot bitcoin ETFs. It was a false alarm. The regulator's X account was hacked, forcing SEC chair Gary Gensler to issue a clarification on his personal account. "The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products." The misfire briefly caused bitcoin prices to shoot up to $48,000 from $45,700. That's partly because investors have been waiting for months for the SEC's (likely) approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds. That approval was expected to be announced Wednesday, which is why a lot of people saw the post Tuesday afternoon and figured the SEC had just, you know, moved up its timeline by several hours. Bottom line The security breach is not a great moment for Gensler, who is just fundamentally anti-crypto and therefore not exactly beloved within the industry. The likely ETF approval is not because Gensler loves the idea of the product, which is designed to give mainstream investors more exposure to bitcoin's daily price movements. But a court ruled against the regulator this summer, forcing it to reconsider its rationale for denying asset manager Grayscale's proposal for a bitcoin ETF. The hack also doesn't do Team Crypto any PR favors, trying as it is to shake its associations with fraud and bad actors like, say, hackers who might want to target a government agency and engage in market manipulation. |
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| 📲 Meta is rolling out new settings for teen Facebook and Instagram users, including content restrictions and hiding search results for terms related to self-harm and suicide. 💰 BlackRock will lay off 600 employees as it seeks to shuffle its resources in response to technological changes in the financial industry. 🏡 The president of the National Association of Realtors, Tracy Kasper, said she would step down, citing threats she received in an effort to blackmail her. 🇨🇳 Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed to go after "flies and ants" as part of an intensifying anti-corruption campaign that will target industries including finance, energy and infrastructure. |
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Last updated January 9 at 4:00 PM ET | |
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