Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Reversal of fortune. In a surprising turn of events, former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch was acquitted in a longrunning criminal case. He was accused of inflating revenue figures to make Autonomy more attractive to HP, which bought it in 2011 for $11 billion. Lynch still faces a UK civil suit but he avoided being marked a felon in the US.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Hostage to fortune. AI expectations are high for Apple, which kicks off its developer conference next week. CEO Tim Cook has touted big plans but the iPhone maker has fallen behind its rivals on AI product hits. Its OpenAI partnership has raised hopes it can catch up, but given Apple’s lackluster progress, there’s a risk of disappointing users and investors.

What would you do if we ran out of pixelated hot dogs in our bistro? The best answer will get you one of 10 spots to work in Ikea’s first virtual store in Roblox, where staffers will hawk furniture and digital Swedish meatballs. The pay is about $16 an hour in real money, with promotion opportunities.

Ikea is taking an unconventional approach to hiring staff with The Co-Worker Game, which is only available to people in the UK and Ireland. The company is trying to attract young people, hoping they will learn to appreciate the brand while working in the virtual store, and that will inspire them to step foot into Ikeas in the real world.

Maybe that won’t happen, but it could help normalize working in virtual reality. Companies like Meta are already building the technologies to power digital worlds, where we work and socialize with others as AI avatars. If that does take off, there will no doubt be more virtual stores like Ikea’s Roblox game, where all of us will be able to go on digital shopping sprees.

Sneha Revanur, 19, is the founder and president of Encode Justice, a group she established when she was 15 to mobilize high school and college students to ensure AI is aligned with human values. Working alongside Adam Billen, Encode’s 22-year-old director of policy, the group hopes to shape federal and state legislation, and beyond.

Q: What are some of the top AI concerns for young people?

Revanur: For a young person navigating the digital world, there’s a whole host of things you have to worry about that previous generations didn’t have to. We have seen young people turning to chatbots when they should be turning to friends and family, or mental health professionals. That’s obviously very concerning, because sometimes these chatbots aren’t equipped to navigate mental health emergencies. I really worry that that will impact the fabric of our society, and that will lead to a collapse of the bonds that really sustain us.

Q: There’s a big focus on how addictive and manipulative social media is right now for Gen Z. How does AI play into this?

Billen: People are starting to recognize that the basic algorithms on these platforms are at the crux of a lot of what is driving their sort of toxic patterns of attention and associations with themselves and their friends. It’s driving eating disorders, CSAM [child sexual abuse material], all of these issues are being driven partially just because the fundamental profit mechanism of these companies is to push whatever gets clicks, and will keep people on the platform.

Revanur: I would say that it’s really important to shift the blame from individual users to these larger companies that could honestly make very minute design choices that wouldn’t really impact their bottom line all too much, but would have a dramatic impact on user experience.

Billen: I personally have paid a lot of money for an app on my phone that forces me to not be able to use those apps for more than a certain amount of time each day and between certain periods of time. My phone is in black and white all the time. It’s taken me years just to figure out those things.

Q: Do you think that companies are doing enough to let people opt out of using their algorithms or tools? What should they be doing to give us more choices?

Revanur: They’re not, and we’re asking for them to let us opt out in our AI 2030 agenda.

Billen: Yeah, absolutely. Two key examples of this would be Snapchat. Its AI bot is glued to your home screen and is the top thing whenever you open the app, and there’s no way to easily opt out of that. And just on Instagram, we’ve seen now that the Meta AI search is extraordinarily annoying. Sometimes you search for things and it pops up with the Llama chatbot screen instead of just going and searching what you actually want to search.

Q: At the end of Encode’s ambitious AI 2030 agenda, there’s a line where you talk about going against the blurring of human and machine. Can you give me some examples of the harmful ways you think it’s blurring? And what values from humanity would you like to see preserved for future generations?

Billen: If you’re interacting with a chatbot, you should know that you’re interacting with a chatbot, for example, with a customer service representative. We don’t want to live in a world where you’re talking to someone on the phone and you have no idea whether you’re talking to a human or a machine. It’s going to take real work to make these machines actually reflect human values based on the current technology. We don’t want to see one where they’re entirely built on the predicate of appeasing us, especially with the interaction of chatbots with young people or in romantic relationships.

Revanur: We want a world where we can see trust and community and connection and creativity and critical thinking not just preserved, but also revitalized. That is a future that is possible with AI, but it’s not the future that we’re headed towards right now. Those are all the core values that make human society resilient and so strong, and that’s what I want to keep fighting for.

The amount that Alphabet paid to address damages claimed by US government agencies that say they were harmed by Google’s alleged monopolistic behavior. That means the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against the company and its search service can be decided by a judge instead of a jury, an outcome the firm sought. A trial could start as early as September. “I am satisfied that the cashier’s check satisfies any damages claim,” federal judge Leonie Brinkema said today.

US regulators have divvied up the AI antitrust pie. The Justice Department got dibs on Nvidia while the Federal Trade Commission will take the lead on OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft. The UK and other officials across the globe have opened similar probes.

In the US, the slow pace of work in Congress means it will likely be up to federal watchdogs to rein in dominant companies. But it took years for the DOJ and FTC to bring antitrust cases against Google and Meta, long after the companies had established their hold on their respective markets.

Brussels has been more aggressive, but its work has largely resulted in big fines that have amounted to the cost of doing business for companies that earn billions of dollars.

The end result will likely be companies policing themselves with guardrails that mitigate some risks, but also ensure rules don’t hurt their bottom line.

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