### Issue 2238 - Monday 16th December, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- OpenAI whistleblower kills himself
- BBC upset with Apple Intelligence for perverting their news headlines
- I wonder why Trump is telling the NHTSA to abandon robocar crash reporting
- W3C's Ethical Web Principles are good
- Cheap Bose soundbar, Ugreen powerbank, Alan Wake 2, used Dell Latitude 5300 laptops

## The News

### OpenAI whistleblower kills himself

A young former OpenAI employee called Suchir Balaji killed himself last week. We do not know why he killed himself but three months ago he "publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT", telling the New York Times that "if you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company" and that "this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole". Suchir, along with 12 others, was named in a lawsuit filed by the NYT as someone who had "unique and relevant documents" that would support the NYT's case against OpenAI for copyright infringement. Again, we don't know why Suchir killed himself but imagine the mental burden of being a whistle blower against OpenAI and what OpenAI stands to lose if this case succeeds.

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### BBC upset with Apple Intelligence for perverting their news headlines

The BBC has complained to Apple over how Apple Intelligence summarised a news story regarding Luigi Mangione (hero), with the AI mangling the headline to say that Luigi killed himself. He did not. A BBC spokesperson said "BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world. It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications. We have contacted Apple to raise this concern and fix the problem". And damn right they should. The question is, how will Apple fix it? Just patch it so anything with bbc.co.uk isn't re-written? This shit is inherent to LLMs/AI. It's just a matter of time until it happens again.

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### I wonder why Trump is telling the NHTSA to abandon robocar crash reporting

One of the first things the new Trump administration over in the USA wants to do is tell the NHTSA to stop ordering automakers to "report crashes if advanced driver-assistance or autonomous-driving technologies were engaged within 30 seconds of impact". Now there's no hard evidence Tesla and/or Musk made this happen, but a change in direction like this over at the NHTSA would sure be a big benefit to Tesla if they don't have to worry about reporting every time one of their cars was involved in a crash, particularly since Tesla cars top the leaderboard in such circumstances.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### W3C's Ethical Web Principles are good

There is one web. The web does not cause harm to society. The web supports healthy community and debate. The web is for all people. The web is secure and respects people's privacy. The web enables freedom of expression. The web makes it possible to verify information. The web enhances individuals' control and power. The web is an environmentally sustainable platform. The web is transparent. The web is multi-browser, multi-OS, and multi-device. The web can be consumed in any way that people choose. These are the World Wide Web Consortium's newly published Ethical Web Principles and I think it's a perfect summary of what makes the WWW so amazing. Remember them whenever you're building something for the good old world wide web.

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## Bargains

- Bose TV Speaker (makes for a good desk/PC speaker too) - $224.96 from Bose
- UGREEN 20Ah powerbank, 130W output - $88.17 from Amazon
- Alan Wake 2 for PC - $37.97 via Epic Game store
- Used Dell Latitude 5300 laptop (i5-8365U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 13.3" 1080p) - $189 from Metrocom

## Image Of The Day

The Expedition 72 crew is getting into the Christmas spirit aboard the International Space Station using excess hardware, cargo bags, and recently-delivered Santa hats to decorate the orbiting lab's Unity module with a familiar reindeer. (NASA Johnson / Flickr)

## The End

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