Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) is planning to introduce a bill this coming week that would require any content produced by generative artificial intelligence (AI) to include a disclaimer noting the content’s source. 

The bill, entitled the “AI Disclosure Act of 2023,” would require any output from AI to include the sentence “Disclaimer: this output has been generated by artificial intelligence.” The legislation would task the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with enforcement. 

Torres said in a statement that AI is the “most revolutionary” technology of the present day but can also be used as a “weapon of disinformation, dislocation, and destruction.” He said one of Congress’ main challenges in the upcoming years will be carefully crafting a framework to regulate the technology and manage its risks. 

“The simplest place to start is disclosure. All generative AI—whether the content it generates is text or images, video or audio—should be required to disclose itself as AI,” Torres said. “Disclosure is by no means a magic bullet but it’s a common-sense starting point to what will surely be a long road to regulation.” 

Axios first reported on the legislation. 

The legislative effort from Torres comes as technology experts and lawmakers are increasingly expressing concerns about a lack of regulation on AI technology. 

Platforms like ChatGPT have received national attention for their abilities to rapidly answer a wide range of questions from users and generate content, but some have urged caution in continuing to develop the technology. 

AI experts and industry leaders signed an open letter earlier this week warning that addressing the risks from AI should have the same priority as avoiding pandemics and nuclear war. 

Elon Musk and other technology experts called for a pause on AI research in March until society can be sure that the benefits outweigh the risks and that the risks are manageable. They said AI is becoming competitive with humans at basic tasks and could be able to “flood our information channels with propaganda and untruths” and replace manual jobs with automated ones. 

A spokesperson for Torres’ office told The Hill that they are hoping the bill’s “nuts and bolts will end up as a starting point” and become part of a larger package. They said they would defer to the FTC for how to best enforce the bill if it becomes law.

(NewsNation) – The speed at which artificial intelligence (AI) is developing and its vast array of capabilities have legislators wondering how much the advanced tech is capable of doing.

“It really takes me back to the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and nuclear physics. We knew right away nuclear physics could build energy," said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who serves on the Homeland Security Committee. “But we also knew it could turn into atom bombs.”

Marshall is one of many lawmakers to tell NewsNation that rapid development of AI technology is inevitable but that Congress should put guardrails in place to ensure it is not misused.

“We have to be very concerned with what we talked about, which is the unintended consequences,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Enyart.

The voices of caution come as reports have surfaced of the military dabbling with the idea of scenarios in which AI-powered drones are weaponized.

“Whether we’re talking about the Chinese building it, or us building it, or Iran building it … once it’s built, you can’t keep it secret. That’s just not going to happen. That’s not the way science works," Enyart cautioned.

Friday, China's communist government reportedly voiced similar concerns about the weaponization of AI.

Meanwhile, even those who have helped develop the technology have issued warnings to lawmakers. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that humans could lose control of AI.

“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong," Altman said. "And we want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is inching closer to a faceoff with California over a proposal to require dominant platforms to pay news outlets to distribute their content. 

The tech giant is using familiar playbook to try and thwart California’s Journalism Preservation Act, which passed the State Assembly on Thursday, by threatening to pull news content off of Facebook in the state.

Meta’s threat is a tactic the company used in opposition to similar federal proposals in the U.S. and other countries, including Australia.

On Friday, Meta ramped up its threat in response to a similar Canadian bill, the Online News Act. In a blog post, Meta said it will begin tests on Facebook and Instagram to limit some users and publishers from viewing or sharing some news content in Canada. 

The News Media Alliance, a non-profit organization that represents nearly 2,000 publishers in the U.S., and is an ardent supporter of such proposals, said in a joint statement with the California Broadcasters Association and California News Publishers Association, that Meta’s threat in California is “undemocratic and unbecoming.” 

“As the tech platforms compensate news publishers around the world, it demonstrates there is a demand and economic value for news,” the groups said. 

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on Wednesday tweeted a statement that the company “will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram” if the bill is passed. Meta’s statement slammed the bill as creating a “slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers.”

Despite the threat from Meta, though, California’s bill passed out of the Assembly in a 46-6 vote. It will head to the state Senate next. 

The bill would require tech platforms that distribute news content to pay outlets for it. 

News Media Alliance President and CEO Danielle Coffey called the Assembly’s vote a “strong statement” that California lawmakers “value quality journalism and a free press.” 

“And [they] stood strong today in a vote that allows us compensation from big tech platforms,” Coffey told The Hill on Thursday.

Meta rolled out the playbook roughly two years ago in Australia. Facebook restricted access to news links in Australia as the nation’s government proceeded with a bill that required dominant platforms like Facebook and Google to pay outlets for distributing their news. 

Facebook reversed course after last-minute negotiations and an amendment that added additional time for platforms and publishers to negotiate before a forced arbitration. 

In December, Meta made a similar threat in the face of U.S. legislation. Amid reports that the controversial Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) would be added to a defense authorization bill, Meta spokesperson Stone tweeted that if the bill was passed the platform would be “forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether.” 

The bill advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support last year, but never made it into law. 

Coffey said she wouldn't call Meta’s playbook successful, pointing to Australia’s new lawand the movement on similar proposals in Canada and California.The JCPA was also 

reintroduced in the Senate this year with additional Senate sponsors. 

The proposals, though, also face opposition from outside groups in addition to Meta’s backlash. 

Tech industry groups like Chamber of Progress and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which name Meta and Google among their corporate partners and members, have lined up against the California proposals.

Non-profit media advocacy group Free Press is also urging lawmakers against supporting the California measure.

Free Press Action’s senior director of journalism and civic information Mike Rispoli in a statement said the bill would “accelerate the loss of locally engaged outlets while creating a more toxic information environment that rewards sensationalist clickbait over public-interest journalism.”

“The only thing this bill would preserve is the profitable bottom lines of many of the very same corporations and hedge funds that have decimated local news and laid off thousands of hard-working reporters,” Rispoli said. 

The federal proposal, the JCPA, faced similar backlash from the tech industry and advocacy groups often at odds over proposed tech regulation. 

Dozens of civil society organizations, including the ACLU, Public Knowledge and Free Press, sent a letter to Congressional leaders in December, warning the bill could cause content moderation challenges and “force platforms” to carry content of any digital journalism provider “regardless of how extreme their content” may be.

A Texas federal judge has banned legal filings that are drafted primarily by artificial intelligence (AI) in his court without a person first checking those documents for accuracy. 

U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr ordered that attorneys file a certificate before appearing before the court that either AI platforms did not contribute to any part of a filing or that someone checked any language that it drafted for accuracy using print reporters or traditional legal databases. 

“These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument," a post on Starr’s page on the Northern District of Texas court website states. "But legal briefing is not one of them."

Starr argued that the AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are “prone to hallucinations and bias.” He said they can make up content like quotes or citations and can only follow the code that they are programmed with instead of upholding the law and ethics. 

“As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth),” he said in the post. “Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle.” 

Any filing from a party that does not submit the certification will be stricken. 

CBS News reported that the order came after a lawyer used ChatGPT to produce a filing in a lawsuit, but the platform made up court cases that did not exist and referenced them in its argument. 

AI platforms have become increasingly popular in recent months with several Big Tech companies vowing to develop their own versions. But some detractors have warned that advancements in AI technology could come at significant cost — such as increasing the spread of propaganda and replacing manual jobs with automated ones. 

A group of AI experts and industry leaders warned in an open letter earlier this week that mitigating the risk of “extinction” from AI should be as much a global priority as preventing pandemics and nuclear war. 

Major technology experts — including Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — also called for at least a six-month pause on the development of AI technology in March until society can be sure that it can manage the risks.

YouTube announced on Friday that it is reversing its policy to allow for content denying the validity of the 2020 presidential election and other elections and spreading false claims about voter fraud. 

The platform said in a blog post that it will stop removing content that shares false claims of “widespread fraud, errors, or glitches” from the 2020 election and other elections effective immediately. 

YouTube originally implemented its policy to remove content spreading election denial in December 2020, following false claims from former President Trump and his allies that voter fraud dominated the 2020 presidential race but before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection happened. 

“Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape,” the post states. “In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.” 

Axios first reported YouTube’s policy change. 

YouTube said users will still see content from “authoritative sources” in search and their recommendations when they look for news and content related to elections. The company noted that videos from these sources were the most viewed and recommended election-related videos on the platform during the 2020 cycle. 

The post added that YouTube’s election misinformation policies are remaining in place, prohibiting content that is designed to mislead voters about the time, place, means or eligibility requirements for voting, content that encourages others to interfere with the democratic process and false claims that could “materially discourage” voting. 

False claims that could discourage voting include disputing the validity of voting by mail, according to the post.

The reversal comes as several notable online platforms have adjusted their policies to deal with election denial, including the reinstatements of Trump’s accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, has resigned from the social media company, according to media reports.

Irwin took over the job overseeing content moderation in November, after Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety, stepped down amid Elon Musk’s chaotic acquisition of Twitter, according to Reuters.

The shake-up comes after Musk publicly criticized his company’s decision to cancel a deal with conservative media company The Daily Wire over “hateful conduct” and instances of misgendering, Axios reported.

Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing complained on Thursday that Twitter reportedly had rescinded its offer to host a video titled “What is a Woman?” on a designated event page andto promote the event.

Musk responded to Boreing, saying it was “a mistake by many people at Twitter.”

“Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws,” Musk tweeted.

“I should note that I do personally use someone’s preferred pronouns, just as I use someone’s preferred name, simply from the standpoint of good manners,” he added. “However, for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used.”

While Twitter recently removed language from its policy specifically prohibiting targeted misgendering and deadnaming, Irwin previously told the Wall Street Journal that the platform would still enforce the rule.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate possible perjury by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Rubio argued that Chew perjured himself during a congressional hearing when he testified under oath that the data of the social media platform’s American users were not stored in China.

Rubio cited a recent Forbes report published Tuesday that TikTok stored American users’ most sensitive data, including their Social Security and tax identification numbers, in China where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can access them. 

Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier this year. Lawmakers in both parties pressed him on their concerns about the platform which included national security threats, data privacy, the spread of misinformation, and the safety for minors.

“We now know those statements are false, and that some sensitive data from American users was in fact stored in China, where, by law, that information could be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” Rubio wrote in his letter. “According to that report, the information was stored on servers in China and accessible by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company.” 

Rubio also wrote in his letter how the CCP has close ties with TikTok, saying how the Chinese government “harvested” the personal information of Americans and noted the 2015 hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the data of millions of American government workers and their families. 

“This revelation further underscores the fact that TikTok is a powerful tool of espionage and influence for the CCP and should be banned.  Chew should be held accountable for making false statements about material facts related to TikTok’s operation, as he appears to have done in this case,” Rubio added. 

“I therefore request that you investigate whether Chew committed perjury when he falsely stated that TikTok has not stored the user data of Americans in China and urge you to be transparent with the American people about the threats posed by TikTok.” 

Rubio’s letter comes as multiple state governments and Congress in recent months have implemented TikTok on government devices, citing national security concerns due to its Chinese owner ByteDance. 

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) signed legislation last month banning TikTok, becoming the first U.S. state to block access to the app due to concerns about data privacy. 

U.S. officials have had a rocky relationship with TikTok over the past year with the Trump administration's failed attempt to implement a ban on the social media platform in 2020. The Biden administration recently demanded ByteDance to sell its stake in the company, warning that the social media platform could risk a potential ban in the U.S.

The Hill has reached out to TikTok for comment.

Twitter has been overwhelmingly not removing hate speech posted on the platform from verified Twitter Blue accounts, according to a report from a nonprofit that opposes the spread of hate and disinformation online. 

The Center for Countering Digital Hate said on Thursday that its researchers collected tweets promoting hatred from 100 Twitter Blue accounts and reported them to Twitter’s platform for flagging hateful posts. But it said the platform did not act on 99 percent of the tweets flagged and all of the accounts remained active four days later. 

The posts that the organization flagged make racist, antisemitic, homophobic or transphobic remarks. The report also notes one that references violence against LGBTQ rights supporters. 

“Twitter failed to act despite the fact that the tweets surfaced by the Center clearly violate the platform’s policies against hateful conduct, which bans abuse on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity,” the report states. 

The group states that its previous studies have found that Twitter has failed to act on 89 percent of antisemitic posts and 97 percent of anti-Muslim posts. 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk phased out the platform’s old system of verified accounts in which public figures could have their accounts verified to separate themselves from potential imposters in favor of the Twitter Blue system in which any user can receive verification for $8 per month. 

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the organization, said Musk is reversing the progress that has been made toward tolerance at an “ever-accelerating rate.” 

“The Twitter blue tick used to be a sign of authority and authenticity, but it is now inextricably linked to the promotion of hate and conspiracism,” he said. “What gives blue tick hate actors confidence to spew their bile is the knowledge that Elon Musk simply doesn’t care about the civil and human rights of black people, Jews, Muslims and LGBTQ+ people, as long as he can make his 8 bucks a month.” 

Musk said in November that tweets spreading hate would be “deboosted & demonetized” to limit their reach, but the report argues that Twitter is allowing its algorithm that promotes Twitter Blue accounts to spread the hate speech that is not being taken down. 

The report states tweets from Twitter Blue users in the sample were often given priority in threads, and in one instance the top reply from a verified account was from a user calling for violence against migrants. 

The Hill has reached out to Twitter for comment.

Hundreds of corporate Amazon employees walked out of the company’s Seattle headquarters on Wednesday, protesting the company’s climate issues and its return-to-office requirements. 

Organizers for the event said early Wednesday that more than 1,900 global employees had pledged to participate in the walkout, which started at noon local time, with some workers protesting virtually and with about 900 in Seattle. 

CNN reported that organizers said more than 1,000 corporate employees ultimately participated in the event — but that Amazon estimated roughly 300 people participated.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) on Wednesday called the walkout “a success.”

The protesters are raising concerns about Amazon’s climate pledge, which they argue the company isn’t meeting. Amazon has faced criticism for its plastic waste and use of fossil fuels to power the vehicles that ship products worldwide.

They're also speaking out about the company’s new policy requiring workers return to the office three days a week. Previously, Amazon let team leaders decide work location.

In a statement, Amazon said it supported workers expressing opinions.

The Associated Press contributed.

Facebook parent company Meta is threatening to remove news content on its platforms Instagram and Facebook in California if the state legislature passes a new proposal that would make tech companies pay publishers for news content. 

“If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram rather than pay into a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers,” reads a statement posted to Twitter by Meta spokesperson Andy Stone.

Meta’s statement says the California bill, which is now before the state Assembly, “fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used.”

The bill would require covered platforms to pay a "journalism usage fee" for content from local outlets — and require publishers to devote 70 percent of the proceeds from these fees to creating and maintaining journalism jobs in California. 

“It is disappointing that California lawmakers appear to be prioritizing the best interests of national and international media companies over their own constituents,” the Meta statement concludes.  

California state Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (D), who sponsored the bill, said Meta's threat is "a scare tactic that they've tried to deploy, unsuccessfully, in every country that's attempted this."

Meta made a similar threat last year after lawmakers introduced to Congress the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would also have required tech companies to pay news outlets for their material. The social media giant has also reportedly moved to block news content in Australia and Canada over similar proposals.

"It is egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation," Wicks said.

The nonprofit News Media Alliance said in a statement that Meta’s threat is “undemocratic and unbecoming.”

Since OpenAI launched its artificial intelligence (AI) platform, ChatGPT, in late 2022, it has raised concerns about how the technology could impact everyday life. A recent study from Cornell University addressed one of the latest dilemmas plaguing skeptics when it suggested AI could open up new ways for malicious actors to manipulate representative democracy.

Researchers at Cornell wanted to see if it would be possible to influence lawmakers by using AI to generate fake constituent emails. Their study, published March 20 in the journal New Media and Society, found that lawmakers struggle to tell the difference between emails written by humans and those written by artificial intelligence.

Such a tactic could potentially be used to sway public policy, said Sarah Kreps, one of the study’s authors.

“We know that there are a bunch of studies that show that letters and emails are influential in setting the agenda,” Kreps said.

The researchers had undergraduate students write emails on various policy issues. They then used the AI language model GPT-3, which uses machine learning to generate text in response to prompts, to generate emails on the same topics.

The researchers sent both student and AI-generated emails to around 7,000 state legislators. They measured the response rate to judge how well the lawmakers could recognize that an email was written by AI.

“We know from a lot of different studies that response rates are an important indication of legislative priority because they have limited time, and so they're not going to respond to things that they can tell are spam, or they can tell are disingenuous,” Kreps said.

The response rate from the lawmakers was only 2% less for the AI-generated emails compared to the ones written by humans, which the researchers said was statistically significant but substantially small.

Kreps discussed the study’s findings at a May 19 meeting of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). She said AI allows people to easily generate unique pieces of text. To illustrate why this would be a powerful tool for bad actors, she pointed to a 2017 Pew Research study that found only 6% of regulatory comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality were unique. 

The vast majority of comments were submitted multiple times, in some cases hundreds of thousands of times. Pew said this was “clear evidence of organized campaigns to flood the comments with repeated messages,” finding evidence that at least some share of the comments were from automated bot campaigns.

Kreps said AI could eliminate some of the signs betraying an automated message, making it harder to tell the difference and appropriately allocate time and energy toward messages from real people.

With AI language models, Kreps said, “you wouldn’t have those telltale signs because every message could be different.”

In an interview, Kreps said AI could also be used by foreign actors to craft messages in fluent English. Currently, she said, messages can contain subtle nuances that can tip the reader off that the message wasn’t written by a native speaker, but artificial intelligence would eliminate these and therefore make it more difficult to recognize foreign influence campaigns. 

Although Kreps said she isn’t aware of any instances of fake constituent emails being sent by malicious actors, she said it’s important to keep an eye on threats that could potentially pose risks to democracy in the future.

“We have a tendency of fighting the last war,” she said. “You want to understand the potential array of risks, not just the ones that you see, but the ones that might be on the horizon.”

Kreps suggested some ways to guard against this problem. She said lawmakers could potentially use computer programs to recognize AI-generated emails, and constituents could also rely on more direct forms of communication with lawmakers like phone calls and town halls.

Marci Harris, executive director of the POPVOX Foundation, which helps members of Congress and their staff understand new technologies, said the problem of AI-generated emails presents an opportunity to fix what she calls an already broken system of communicating with lawmakers.

Currently, she said, emails to lawmakers largely consist of mass campaigns by advocacy organizations where people click a button to send a pre-written message to their representatives.

Harris said this isn’t high quality communication between constituents and lawmakers. 

“It’s just kind of a low quality interaction for both participants in that old system and a whole lot of staff time dedicated to keeping those gears turning,” she said.

Harris said AI presents an opportunity to rethink how lawmakers and constituents communicate with each other. Artificial intelligence could actually be used as a way of improving this communication, she said.

Harris explained that AI could potentially be used to help constituents draft more informed messages and to more efficiently summarize the multitude of messages lawmakers receive daily.

“I agree that there are reasons that these new technologies will create difficulties for the old system,” she said. “But I am very optimistic about how they can be used for better systems going forward.”

Amazon will pay more than $30 million to settle two separate charges from the Federal Trade Commission over allegations of violating user privacy.

Amazon’s Ring will pay $5.8 million to settle allegations that the home security camera company violated customer privacy, the agency said Wednesday. Amazon will pay $25 million in a separate agreement announced Wednesday over allegations the company violated children’s online privacy laws through its smart speakers and Alexa app. 

The FTC alleged Ring deceived customers by failing to restrict access to customers’ videos to employees and contractors and by using customer videos to train algorithms without gaining consent. 

The FTC alleged the conduct violated users’ privacy. In one instance, an employee over several months allegedly viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring camera that surveilled intimate spaces, including their bathrooms and bedrooms, according to the complaint. 

The FTC also alleged Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect employees’ video access, and even after imposing restrictions on access could not determine whether many other employees inappropriately accessed private videos. 

“Ring’s disregard for privacy and security exposed consumers to spying and harassment,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, in a statement.

“The FTC’s order makes clear that putting profit over privacy doesn’t pay," Levine said.

As part of the order, subject to approval by a federal court, Ring will also be required to delete data products, including models and algorithms derived from videos that the product unlawfully reviewed.

The company will also be required to implement a privacy and security program that includes human reviews of videos and other security controls. 

Amazon acquired California-based Ring in 2018. The company sells internet-connected, video-enabled home security cameras, doorbells and other related products. 

A spokesperson for Ring said the company “promptly addressed these issues on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry.”

“While we disagree with the FTC’s allegations and deny violating the law, this settlement resolves this matter so we can focus on innovating on behalf of our customers,” the spokesperson added. 

The complaint against Amazon over kids’ privacy alleges that Alexa’s default settings save children’s voice recordings even after a child’s account has been inactive. The agency said the allegation violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’s (COPPA) prohibition on retaining children’s personal information longer than is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which the information is collected. 

The FTC also alleged Amazon failed for a “significant period of time” to honor parents’ requests to delete their children’s voice recordings, according to the complaint. 

An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that “while we disagree with the FTC’s claims and deny violating the law, this settlement puts the matter behind us.”

“As part of the settlement, we agreed to make a small modification to our already strong practices, and will remove child profiles that have been inactive for more than 18 months unless a parent or guardian chooses to keep them,” the spokesperson added.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk discussed electric and “intelligent networked” vehicles with China’s industry minister during a visit to Beijing on Wednesday.

Musk and Jin Zhuanglong, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, reportedly “exchanged views on the development of new energy vehicles and intelligent networked vehicles,” the ministry said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.

The billionaire CEO of Twitter and SpaceX also met with China’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao, on Wednesday. 

Wang reportedly expressed Beijing’s support for “long-term, stable development of foreign-invested enterprises in China,” while Musk “praised the potential of China’s development” and expressed an interest in furthering their “mutually beneficial cooperation,” according to a ministry statement reported by the AP.

Musk next heads to Shanghai to visit his electric car company's factory in the city. His private jet has reportedly already left Beijing for the financial hub, according to Reuters.

He has yet to make any public statements about the trip or post on Twitter, which is blocked in China.

China is warning about the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) and has called for increased security measures.  

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued a warning Tuesday about the possible risks that advances in AI can pose, including harm to political and social issues. This warning followed one issued by technology leaders on Tuesday, who said the development of AI increases the risk of extinction and should be regulated alongside the threat of pandemics and nuclear weapons.  

The statement was issued after a meeting led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who highlighted the concerns of advancing technologies including AI. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi called for additional national security measures amid emerging threats.  

The agency reported that Xi called for “staying keenly aware of the complicated and challenging circumstances facing national security and correctly grasping major national security issues.”

They also focused on being prepared to "deal with worse-case and extreme-case scenarios,” according to the news agency.  

“[The meeting] urged dedicated efforts to safeguard political security and improve the security governance of internet data and artificial intelligence," the news agency said. "Furthermore, it called for expedited endeavors to establish a risk monitoring and early warning system."

The warning, signed by scientists and technology leaders, including executives at Google and Microsoft, was a single sentence highlighting the severity of threats posed by AI. It comes as countries try to figure out how to regulate the technology, with many technology experts warning that it could become a risk to humankind.  

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said. 

Amazon employees are planning a walkout at the company's Seattle headquarters Wednesday, in protest of a slew of moves the company made in the past year. 

According to Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), a climate change advocacy group founded by company employees, more than 1,800 employees around the world had pledged to walk out, including 870 who work at the Seattle headquarters. 

Some employees are planning to gather at the Amazon Sphere, a four-story structure in downtown Seattle, as others will participate in the lunchtime protest remotely. 

The group says the company has been slow to address its impact on climate change, with AECJ noting how the company’s emissions usage increased to  40 percent after announcing the Climate Pledge agreement in 2019. The advocacy group says the company must do more to meet zero emissions by 2030.

“The climate crisis is here now, and this is a real chance to stand together in solidarity to save every last slice of earth that we can,” AEJC said in a news release. “By joining this walkout, you’ll join a group of Amazon employees who are pushing Amazon to do better on climate and intersecting issues, and together we can make change at our company.”

The walkout comes a month after a company-implemented policy took effect requiring employees to return to the office for three days a week. 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a February memo that the company made the decision after seeing how employees worked during the pandemic, concluding that employees tend to be more engaged and collaborative in person. 

The walkout also follows rounds of layoffs at the company in the past months, as Amazon cut 27,000 jobs in its advertising, human resources, gaming, stores, devices, and web services divisions. 

Associated Press contributed to this report

(KTLA) – Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s are introducing app features that will track a customer’s location to ensure that their meal will be ready once they get to the restaurant, Insider reported.

Chick-fil-A announced in May that when a customer places a curbside or carryout order under the new feature, the restaurant will be alerted when the customer is close so staff can start preparing the food.

“By timing a customer’s arrival with their order, we can ensure they’re getting a meal that is both fresh and served quickly,” Morgan Anderer, senior project lead on the customer digital experience team at Chick-fil-A, said in a statement.

“We don’t believe our customers should have to compromise, and these new features truly balance what our restaurants do best: exceptional quality and efficient service.”

Under the new Chick-fil-A app feature, the app will also show customers an estimated wait time for when their order will be ready.

Chick-fil-A officials said in a blog post that though the wait time is an estimate, it is expected to be "pretty accurate" since predictions are "based on a variety of factors like order complexity and size, and proprietary restaurant analytics.”

The company said it would roll out this feature to restaurants in the early summer. Customers will have the option to opt in or out of the service, according to a press release.

McDonald’s also introduced a similar feature to its app in March, Restaurant Business reported. The geofencing technology alerts a restaurant when a customer is around three minutes away from the location.

"While it's still early days deploying this new digital enhancement, initial results are already pointing to improved service times and elevated customer satisfaction scores," McDonald’s CFO Ian Borden said during an earnings call in April.

Borden also told investors that digital orders, app orders, kiosk orders and delivery orders accounted for about 40% of all sales in the first quarter of 2023, Insider reported.

With more people ordering food online, many fast-food chains have considered upgrading their business models to embrace this new trend.

Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s, for example, have tested online order pickup options through drive-thru lanes and designated an entire restaurant to handle online orders, Insider reported.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is warning her Twitter followers that an account claiming to be her is not actually real.

"FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on her official account on Tuesday, referring to Twitter owner Elon Musk. "It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see."

The account, which has amassed nearly 100,000 followers and dubbed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody) has tweeted a number of times with false or misleading statements claiming to be the congresswoman from New York.

In one message, the account wrote "this might be the wine talking, but I’ve got a crush on [Musk]."

The Twitter CEO, whose account carries more than 141 million followers, responded to the message by tweeting a "fire" emoji at it.

Musk, who acquired Twitter last year, has come under scrutiny from media and tech watchdogs for his promotion of unfounded theories and partisan statements on politics, culture and other matters.

The Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal seeking to hold Reddit responsible for child pornography on its site.

In a brief, unsigned order, the justices rejected a request Monday from a group of unnamed victims and their parents to reverse a lower ruling that favored the forum website.

Internet companies enjoy wide legal protections for third-party content under a controversial shield known as Section 230, which has remained largely unchanged since it was passed in 1996.

The Supreme Court earlier this month resolved a challenge to the scope of Section 230 on narrow grounds, leaving the question of how far its protections stretch unresolved.

The Reddit case involved a carveout to those protections that lawmakers passed in 2018, and the court's order allows the justices to again steer clear of Section 230.

The parents and victims sued Reddit by citing the carveout, which made it easier to take legal action against websites for enabling sex trafficking. It allows plaintiffs to bring civil sex-trafficking claims against internet companies if the “conduct underlying” such a claim would amount to the federal sex-trafficking crime. 

At issue was who must commit the underlying conduct: only the website itself, or whether it also extended to third parties. The lower court adopted the narrower version, leading the plaintiffs to appeal to the justices. 

“Website defendants are using this narrow construction to eliminate victims’ claims at the pleading stage and short-stop any discovery into their knowledge, benefit, and participation in sex-trafficking ventures,” they wrote to the justices.

The victims and their parents argued that liability should extend to Reddit and other internet companies that “knowingly benefit” “from participation in a venture” with a third party who committed the sex-trafficking crime.

But the court rejected their request to take up the case.

Reddit had asked the high court to stay away and let the lower ruling stand.

“The Court should deny the petition because the decision of the Ninth Circuit, the first and only court of appeals to address the question presented, does not conflict with any decision of this Court or any other circuit,” Reddit wrote in court filings. “This case is also a poor vehicle to resolve the question presented because petitioners have not alleged sex trafficking as required by the statute they invoke.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with the Chinese foreign minister Tuesday amid high tensions between the U.S. and China. 

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang said the strained relations between the U.S. and China require “mutual respect,” The Associated Press reported. 

“We need to keep the steering wheel in the right direction of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation,” Qin told Musk, the AP reported, citing a ministry statement. 

Qin, however, did not provide detailed steps as to how to improve the relations, the AP reported. 

The foreign ministry also quoted Musk as calling the U.S. and Chinese economies “conjoined twins” and saying he was willing to expand business in China, Reuters reported. 

The Hill reached out to Tesla for comment. 

During his visit in China, his first in three years, Musk is expected to meet other senior Chinese officials and visit Tesla’s Shanghai plant, Reuters reported. 

Musk is visiting China as the nation is attempting to revive interest from investors.

Foreign companies have become increasingly uneasy after China’s chief foreign intelligence agency reportedly raided consulting firms and the ongoing strained relations between China and the U.S., AP reported.

(AP) The Axiom Space astronauts are returning from the International Space Station.

Saudi Arabia’s first astronauts in decades rocketed toward the International Space Station on a chartered multimillion-dollar flight last week.

SpaceX launched the ticket-holding crew, led by a retired NASA astronaut now working for the company that arranged the trip from Kennedy Space Center. Also on board: a U.S. businessman who now owns a sports car racing team.

The four reached the space station in their capsule early last week morning.

Watch the live video above.