The Trump administration has ordered US consulates to consider rejecting H1-B visa applicants involved in content moderation or “censorship,” according to a report from Reuters. A State Department cable viewed by the outlet says officials should check an applicant’s resume or LinkedIn profile for a job history involving moderation, fact-checking, online safety, compliance, and misinformation. […]
Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than a decade. Since 2019 it’s been publishing a full diversity and inclusion report annually, and at the same time made reporting on diversity a requirement for employee performance reviews. Now it’s scrapping its diversity report and dropping […]
Today, I’m talking with Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field about some of the people responsible for studying AI and deciding in what ways it might… well, ruin the world. Those folks work at Anthropic as part of a group called the societal impacts team, which Hayden just spent time with for a profile she […]
Russia is restricting access to Roblox after the country’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor accused it of promoting extremism and “LGBT propaganda,” according to reports from Reuters and Meduza. As reported by Meduza, Russian lawmakers began raising concerns about Roblox days after The Guardian published a report about the platform last month, detailing how the author was […]
The European Union has launched a formal investigation into Meta over antitrust concerns with AI restrictions in WhatsApp. The probe aims to “prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space” according to the EU, and follows Meta announcing changes to WhatsApp’s terms for businesses in October that will prohibit companies from using […]
President Donald Trump announced a new plan that lets carmakers pollute more by making less fuel efficient vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said today that it’ll roll back fuel economy rules finalized last year by the Biden administration for model year 2022-2031 vehicles. The Trump administration has eliminated incentives for EV purchases, […]
Last year, the House of Representatives was the place where a leading kids online safety bill came to die. On Tuesday, a powerful House committee positioned itself as the place where that bill could be resurrected… along with 18 other proposals. During a three-hour hearing, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee discussed 19 bills recently packaged […]
Billionaire Elon Musk — who’s long used his X (formerly Twitter) platform to stoke anger at immigrants and support antisemitic conspiracy theories — has spent the past day spreading and praising claims that “White people are on the verge of extinction,” Somali immigrants have “no right to be in America,” and nonprofits who support them are […]
Republicans’ attempt to ban state AI regulations was removed from the defense bill after bipartisan opposition, underscoring tensions between tech-industry demands, consumer protection concerns, and Trump’s push for sweeping federal preemption.
India’s government retreated less than a week after sending a private order to smartphone manufacturers instructing them to preload a state-backed app on all phones in the region. The reversal comes after industry sources told Reuters that Apple planned to refuse to comply with the order. Sanchar Saathi is a security app operated by India’s […]