Techmeme
December 6, 2020, 7:00 PM

Top News

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
A summary of the draft paper co-authored by Timnit Gebru, which outlined the main risks of large language AI models and provided suggestions for future research  —  The company's star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models, which are key to Google's business.  —  hide
Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
1,200+ Google employees and 1,500+ academic, industry, and civil supporters have signed a petition condemning the termination of AI scientist Timnit Gebru  —  More than 1,500 researchers also sign letter after Black expert on ethics says Google tried to suppress her research on bias
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
OnlyFans says it will generate $2B+ in sales in 2020, now has 85M users, is adding around 500K users a day, and is paying out $200M+ a month to its 1M+ creators  —  As Cardi B prepared the release for her new song “WAP,” she checked off all the usual components of her promotional plan …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
How Biden's digital campaign, largely focused on positive, authentic messaging and “Facebook moms”, defeated Trump's “Death Star” digital operation  —  The campaign's empathetic digital strategy held up surprisingly well against President Trump's passionate digital following.
Kanishka Singh / Reuters:
Google says it pulled some Chrome extensions of IAC, the holding company behind services like Vimeo, for policy violations and is reviewing enforcement options  —  (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google said on Sunday it has removed a number of browser extensions of online conglomerate IAC/InterActive Corp for …
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou / Bloomberg:
TikTok videos offering dubious financial advice are drawing millions of views, as young people increasingly turn to the app as a source of financial literacy  —  Buy several credit cards with different due dates.  Max out spending on the first one, use another to pay it off …
Jeffrey Paul:
Macs with T2, M1 chips cannot be restored to factory state without contacting Apple over the internet, limiting their use in niche cases like airgapped systems  —  Modern Apple computers can no longer be fully used and maintained in 100% offline environments, or in ways that will reasonably ensure …
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Some police departments in California and Georgia have started using autonomous drones this year to track vehicles and people, raising civil rights questions  —  In one Southern California city, flying drones with artificial intelligence are aiding investigations while presenting new civil rights questions.
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
A growing number of civil lawyers in the US are developing litigation strategies to push back against automated systems that deny the poor basic services  —  A growing group of lawyers are uncovering, navigating, and fighting the automated systems that deny the poor housing, jobs, and basic services.

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Earlier Picks

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Bloomberg: