Europe’s AI crackdown, and Iran’s web resistance

What’s taking place: The EU is creating new guidelines to make it simpler to sue AI corporations for hurt. A invoice unveiled final week, which is more likely to change into legislation in a few years, is a part of Europe’s push to stop AI builders from releasing harmful techniques.

The main points: The objective of the invoice is to carry AI corporations accountable for potential harm and discrimination attributable to their techniques by making it simpler for shoppers to launch EU-wide class actions. The brand new invoice, referred to as the AI Legal responsibility Directive, will add enamel to the EU’s AI Act, which is about to change into EU legislation across the similar time, and would require further checks for “excessive danger” makes use of of AI which have essentially the most potential to hurt folks, together with techniques for policing, recruitment, or well being care.

The response: Whereas tech corporations complain it might have a chilling impact on innovation, shopper activists say it doesn’t go far sufficient. Whether or not or not it succeeds, the laws can have a ripple impact on how AI is regulated all over the world. Learn the total story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you right this moment’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.

1 How Iranians are circumventing the nation’s web blackout 
Abroad digital rights teams have scrambled to assist. (NBC)
+ Iranians residing overseas have been watching the police’s brutal crackdown in horror. (The Guardian)
+ Safety forces have clamped down on pupil protestors. (BBC)

2 Celsius Community’s founder withdrew hundreds of thousands earlier than it went bankrupt
The crypto lender is likely one of the trade’s greatest casualties thus far. (FT $)
+ Bitcoin’s fair-weather buyers are nowhere to be seen. (Bloomberg $)
+ Indian change WazirX has laid off 40% of its workforce. (CoinDesk)

3 Large Tech bankrolled a bunch that paved the way in which for the tip of Roe
The Impartial Girls’s Discussion board has lengthy lobbied for a conservative-led Supreme Court docket. (Intercept)
+ The cognitive dissonance of watching the tip of Roe unfold on-line. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)

4 What we are able to be taught from monitoring suicidal ideation by way of smartphones
A brand new analysis venture is harnessing algorithms to develop an efficient intervention system. (NYT $)

5 Meet the web’s Father Time
Engineer David Mills created the software program that retains the web’s clocks in sync, however it’s unclear who his successor might be. (New Yorker $)

6 Invasive species have a foul status
A brand new wave of researchers needs to rehabilitate their picture—however not everybody agrees. (The Atlantic $)

7 China’s same-sex {couples} are getting married over Zoom
By means of Utah. (Remainder of World)
+ Google Translate has been shut down in China. (CNBC)

8 Courting app Hinge is overrun with faux males
Whereas some are apparent bots, others aren’t really easy to identify. (Wired $)
+ Tips on how to inform when you’re speaking to a bot. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)

9 White noise is notching up hundreds of thousands of streams
However who’s making it, precisely? (The Guardian)

10 Elon Musk’s robotic is tremendous underwhelming 🤖
To the shock of exactly nobody. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Musk is planning to make hundreds of thousands of them, regardless. (Reuters)

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