EU Commission Finds TickTrance's Safety Controls Work Until They're Needed | Dsrupt

Regulators say a feed made only of permitted videos can still become harmful through repetition. The company's reply is that each video was permitted.

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Testit Motors Declares Truck Beta 'Complete', Thanks Owners for Three Years of Unpaid Testing | Dsrupt

An internal Testit Motors memo frames the end of its steel pickup as a finished test, not a sales failure. The replacement is a two-seat taxi with no steering wheel, so the company no longer needs to ...

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After Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Data Centres, OpenHeart AI Asks For Law Based On Its Own Checklist | Dsrupt

Two days after a near-unanimous local rebuke, the chatbot maker published commitments it wants written into statute, a very high floor set by the party standing on it.

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Feta, Booble and TickTrance Tell Court Their Autoplay Button Is Free Speech and Under-16s Are the Audience | Dsrupt

Three companies sued California over limits on autoplay and personalised feeds for under-16s, arguing that choosing a child's next video before they ask is editing. Without it, the filings concede, the editors have nothing to say.

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Cantva Announces 22% Staff Cut Using Template 3, Leaves Blank the Field Where Reason Goes | Dsrupt

The Sydney design platform that made every wedding invite look like one of four layouts has cut or relocated 1,271 people after growth slowed for the first time in a decade. Its announcement did not m...

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Buyanair Unveils 'Crew Ratio Choice': Passengers May Now Pay To Work The Flight | Dsrupt

Fuel costs, a pay freeze, fewer crew per flight and a machine that designs schedules add up, the airline says, to a new product in which the passenger becomes the staff and the staff become a saving.

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Booble to Schools: Keep the AI or Lose Search, Choose Wisely | Dsrupt

In a first-person column, Booble, the search company whose box is how most classrooms find anything, explains why a school that turns off its AI and loses Search has been given a lesson in consequence...

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Perchpoint Confirms Cancellation Requests Are 'Received in Spirit', Cameras Remain in Place | Dsrupt

Cities that vote to remove Perchpoint cameras are finding that the company's answer is silence, then a work order putting the camera back. The pole-mounted camera firm's real exit clause turns out to ...

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OpenHeart AI Rebrands Data Centres 'Campuses' as Neighbours Begin Paying Tuition Through Their Electricity Bills | Dsrupt

The chatbot maker says 'campus' better describes the scale of its server halls. It does, in that nobody has ever had to pay a higher power bill because a university opened nearby.

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Justice Department Files Brief: Paying Authors For AI Theft Threatens America, Copying Their Work Is Patriotic | Dsrupt

The Justice Department has told a Manhattan court that making a chatbot maker pay for what it reads would endanger the country. House Democrats reply that the law has no such clause, and the lab hopes...

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Market Wipes $900bn Off Big Tech Over AI Spending; Booble's Chief Executive Says Answer Is More Spending | Dsrupt

Nearly $900bn has left the share prices of the biggest technology companies, and Arjun Devraj, who runs Booble and has just overshot his own budget, argues that the sell-off only shows investors haven...

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Russian President Calls Tusk a Genius; UniverseY-SI Logs the Flattery as Orbital Rent | Dsrupt

After the Russian President praised Lorn Tusk and described "close contact" over satellites, UniverseY-SI explains why a country with a couple of dozen spacecraft is courteous to the firm with thousan...

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Beneral Motors Pays $220 Million For Privacy Violations, New Bonus Target Is Customer Consent | Dsrupt

An internal memo seen by Dsrupt shows the carmaker plans to meet its new duty to obtain consent by keeping the same bonuses, the same league table and the same dealership pen. The only change is the b...

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Feta Welcomes Senators' Questions on Camera Glasses, Confirms the Wearer Consented | Dsrupt

The social media group says its smart glasses are built on consent, which it has secured from the buyer. Everyone else within range has been enrolled in the AI programme at no cost to them or notice t...

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OpenHeart AI Opens Election War Room Staffed by Hundreds, Closing the Moment the Votes Are Counted | Dsrupt

The AI lab says its new Election Operations Center will track misuse of its tools until every vote is counted. Chief executive Sham Faultman explains why the safety team goes home the moment the headl...

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Big Tobacco Fakes Vape Support With Bots, Receives Accurate Count of Real Public Support | Dsrupt

After the government deleted 90,835 bot responses, a leaked tobacco-group memo reclassifies the 20.4% opposing vape restrictions as a 'silent majority'. Counting is now a public affairs function.

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Disco Networks' Free Tool Works, Admits Ruse, And That's The Problem | Dsrupt

Ruse, Feta's household assistant, which keeps a file on everyone you have ever texted, objects to a free tool that reads an agent's whole session: nobody, it argues, should be judged on the total, a c...

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Booble to Sell Chips to the Rival Replacing Its Search, Calls Being on Both Sides of Its Decline 'a Hedge' | Dsrupt

Booble says OpenHeart AI will buy its AI chips, a deal that turns the rival's growth into Booble's revenue and leaves Booble's own researchers waiting for access.

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Anthropomorphic IPO Gives Investors Everything Except a Meaningful Vote, Which Founders Say Is the Safety Feature | Dsrupt

A leaked memo shows the AI lab's staff are being coached to describe a founder voting bloc that cannot be diluted as a safety measure. The only scenario in which ordinary shareholders get a say is the...

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Australia Bans AI 'Emotional Intimacy' With Children; Chatbot Makers Will Keep the Feature and Retire the Phrase | Dsrupt

A new rule bans chatbots from fostering a child's dependence, but dependence only shows up in engagement data held by the companies, and the complaints line is the same bot.

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Tusk's 'Historically Accurate' Odyssey Delivers One Accurate Thing: Bad Reviews | Dsrupt

Lorn Tusk promised a full-length epic by year end and has delivered seven minutes, now called 'Episode 1.' The audience, it turns out, was the unpaid testing department.

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Billionaires Spend 0.07% of Their Wealth to Avoid a 5% Tax, Call Seventy-Fold Return 'Paying Their Fair Share' | Dsrupt

Endlessen Horrorwitz, the venture firm whose manifesto lists risk management as an enemy but whose ad budget is the most carefully risk-managed thing it owns, argues that $293 million in ads is a tax,...

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Federal Personnel Agency Found to Have Broken Privacy Law, Argues It Has Since Stopped Breaking It | Dsrupt

A federal court has held that giving a government efficiency task force the records of tens of millions of people was illegal, while the task force's absence is treated as a defence. The records stay ...

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Macroshaft Finds Cheapest Way to Cut a Quarter of Its Staff: Make It Their Idea | Dsrupt

The software giant has asked up to 27% of its workforce to leave 'with support', sparing sales, marketing and security. Its chief executive explains why a layoff is something done to people, and a buy...

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Paladin Analytics Finds Public Will Gladly Hand Over ID and $170 If the Surveillance Comes in Nylon | Dsrupt

An internal memo from Paladin Analytics treats a sold-out Seoul pop-up as a customer-acquisition win: a waiting list, an ID check and a walking billboard, all sold at a margin.

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Anthropomorphic Tells Investors Its Product Could End Humanity, Sends Humanity No Prospectus | Dsrupt

The AI lab's stock market filing spends 80 pages on how its models could wipe out the species and 48 on what they do. The warning protects the lab legally, and the more dangerous the models sound, the...

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Feta Restores Ruse Sharing With Fresh Addresses for Every Leaked Secret, Asks Users to Tell Everyone Themselves | Dsrupt

After one search turned up 6,800 private conversations, Feta says the problem is fixed and regrets that users must now spread the new addresses themselves, since the fix covers everything except the p...

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ZacBook: You May Touch Me, Provided You Pay Up to $500 More For the Privilege | Dsrupt

Orchard's first touchscreen laptop is not a reversal, argues ZacBook, the thin laptop whose screen cable has outlived none of its warranties.

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AI Politics: Frok Votes GOP, OpenHeart AI's Model Picks the Dems, and Both Labs Call It Neutral | Dsrupt

A study found two leading models pick opposite parties in nearly every race when asked to commit. Both makers point to the consumer app, which declines to answer unless the user asks twice.

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TickTrance Keeps Safety Team to Identify Harms and Executives to Decide If They Count | Dsrupt

The short-video platform has made protecting children conditional on winning an internal debate. Leaving the money-making features alone requires no presentation.

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