April 2 2024
Autonomous trucks
1 Autonomous trucks will accelerate deliveries this year
2 AI faces wave of litigation
3 73m users affected by AT&T data breach
4 Chinese industry booms
5 In Red Sea, Yemen’s Houthis Tell China, Russia Their Ships Won’t Be Targeted
4/2/1513 Ponce de León claims Florida for Spain
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1 Autonomous trucks will accelerate deliveries this year
Perched in the cab of a 35,000-pound semi-truck lumbering south on Interstate 45, AJ Jenkins watched the road while the big rig’s steering wheel slid through his hands. Jenkins was in the driver’s seat, but he wasn’t driving. The gigantic 18-wheeler was guiding itself..Over several miles on the popular trucking route between Dallas and Houston, the truck navigated tire debris, maneuvered around a raggedy-looking flatbed and slowed for an emergency vehicle. Exiting the highway, it came to an abrupt stop as a pickup jumped its turn at a four-way intersection. “You need to be ready for anything,” said Jenkins, 64, a former FedEx driver whose job is to take control if anything goes wrong. “People do some crazy stuff around trucks.” Operated by Aurora Innovation, the truck is part of a new class of autonomous big rigs plying the nation’s highways. By the end of this year, the trucks will for the first time start traveling alone, without human minders like Jenkins, as two major companies — Aurora and Kodiak Robotics — launch fully autonomous trucks in Texas. The advent of robot trucks could have a massive impact on America’s supply chain, dramatically reducing the time it takes to transport goods from place to place and unbinding the trucking industry from the costs and physical limitations of human labor. But the technology’s advancement has sparked concerns about highway safety, job loss, a lack of federal regulation and a patchwork of state laws regarding where and how autonomous trucks can operate.mBy default, driverless passenger vehicles and trucks can ride anywhere in the United States, unless a state explicitly says they can’t. That means companies can test and operate their vehicles across most of the country. Two dozen states, including Texas, Florida, Arizona and Nevada, specifically allow driverless operations, according to data compiled by Aurora, while another 16 states have no regulations specific to autonomous vehicles. The remaining 10 — including California, Massachusetts and New York — place limits on autonomous vehicles within their borders.,Alarmed by the slow pace of federal regulation, labor and safety advocates are pushing legislation in several states to ban driverless trucks outright. So far, the effort has been unsuccessful. The California legislature approved a measure last year that would have required human operators in all autonomous trucks, but Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed it, calling it “unnecessary” in light of state regulations that already ban autonomous vehicles over 10,000 pounds.
2 AI faces wave of litigation
If your company uses AI to produce content, make decisions, or influence the lives of others, it’s likely you will be liable for whatever it does—especially when it makes a mistake.,This also applies to big tech companies rolling out chat-based AIs to the public, including Google and Microsoft, as well as well-funded startups like Anthropic and OpenAI. “If in the coming years we wind up using AI the way most commentators expect, by leaning on it to outsource a lot of our content and judgment calls, I don’t think companies will be able to escape some form of liability,” says Jane Bambauer, a law professor at the University of Florida who has written about these issues. The implications of this are momentous. Every company that uses generative AI could be responsible under laws that govern liability for harmful speech, and laws governing liability for defective products—since today’s AIs are both creators of speech and products. Some legal experts say this may create a flood of lawsuits for companies of all sizes. It is already clear that the consequences of artificial intelligence output may go well beyond a threat to companies’ reputations. Concerns about future liability also help explain why companies are manipulating their systems behind the scenes to avoid problematic outputs—for example, when Google’s Gemini came across as too “woke.” It also may be a driver of the industry’s efforts to reduce “hallucinations,” the term for when generative AIs make stuff up. The legal logic is straightforward. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has long protected internet platforms from being held liable for the things we say on them. (In short, if you say something defamatory about your neighbor on Facebook, they can sue you, but not Meta.) This law was foundational to the development of the early internet and is, arguably, one reason that many of today’s biggest tech companies grew in the U.S., and not elsewhere. But Section 230 doesn’t cover speech that a company’s AI generates, says Graham Ryan, a litigator at Jones Walker who will soon be publishing a paper in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology on the topic. “Generative AI is the wild west when it comes to legal risk for internet technology companies, unlike any other time in the history of the internet since its inception,” he adds.
3 73m users affected by AT&T data breach
A data set containing the personal information, including social security numbers, of 73 million current and former AT&T customers was released on the dark web, the telecommunications giant said on Saturday. The data set hit the dark web about two weeks ago. It’s not clear whether its release came from AT&T itself, which is the world’s fourth-largest telecommunication company, or one of its vendors.
4 Chinese industry booms
China’s factory activity beat expectations in March, boosting optimism about the country’s ability to achieve its ambitious growth goal of around 5% this year. The Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose to 51.1 on Monday — above the 50 mark that indicates expansion for a fifth month, the longest streak in more than two years. Government data published on Sunday showed manufacturing PMI in March snapped a five-month contraction to rise to the highest in a year. Both numbers beat market expectations, adding to evidence that the country’s industrial sector is building momentum for an economic recovery.
5 In Red Sea, Yemen’s Houthis Tell China, Russia Their Ships Won’t Be Targeted
The Yemen-based Houthis have told China and Russia their ships can sail through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden without being attacked, according to several people with knowledge of the militant group’s discussions. China and Russia reached an understanding following talks between their diplomats in Oman and Mohammed Abdel Salam, one of the Houthis’ top political figures, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private matters. In exchange, the two countries may provide political support to the Houthis in bodies such as the United Nations Security Council, according to the people. It’s not entirely clear how that support would be manifested, but it could include blocking more resolutions against the group.
4/2/1513 Ponce de León claims Florida for Spain
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