A series of corporate leaks show that Chinese technology companies function far more like their Western peers than one might imagine. A trove of internal documents leaked from a little-known Chinese company has pulled back the curtain on how digital censorship tools are being marketed and exported globally. Geedge Networks sells what amounts to a commercialized "Great Firewall" to at least four countries, including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. The groundbreaking leak shows in granular detail the capabilities this company has to monitor, intercept, and hack internet traffic. Researchers who examined the files described it as "digital authoritarianism as a service."

The article explores the cultural shift from recording to deleting information in the digital age and its implications on privacy, intellectual property (IP), and Large Language Models like ChatGPT. It begins by defining a delete culture where information, in principle legal, is made unavailable or inaccessible because unacceptable or undesirable, especially but not only due to its potential to infringe on privacy or IP. Then it focuses on two strategies in this context: deleting, to make information unavailable; and blocking, to make it inaccessible. The article argues that both strategies have significant implications, particularly for machine learning (ML) models where information is not easily made unavailable. However, the emerging research area of Machine Unlearning (MU) is highlighted as a potential solution. MU, still in its infancy, seeks to remove specific data points from ML models, effectively making them 'forget' completely specific information. If successful, MU could provide a feasible means to manage the overabundance of information and ensure a better protection of privacy and IP. However, potential ethical risks, such as misuse, overuse, and underuse of MU, should be systematically studied to devise appropriate policies.

In brief Tesla reportedly fired an employee after he uploaded videos to YouTube critiquing the automaker's autonomous driving software. John Bernal, an ex-Tesla operator working on the Autopilot platform, runs a YouTube channel under the username AI Addict. He has filmed and shared several videos demonstrating the capabilities of Tesla's still-in-development Full Self-Driving (FSD) product. He claims he was axed by management in February after being told that he "broke Tesla policy" and that his YouTube channel was a "conflict of interest," according to CNBC. Bernal insists he never revealed confidential information, and that his reviews were always of FSD versions that had been released to public beta testers.

The Federal Trade Commission has struggled over the years to find ways to combat deceptive digital data practices using its limited set of enforcement options. Now, it's landed on one that could have a big impact on tech companies: algorithmic destruction. And as the agency gets more aggressive on tech by slowly introducing this new type of penalty, applying it in a settlement for the third time in three years could be the charm. In a March 4 settlement order, the agency demanded that WW International -- formerly known as Weight Watchers -- destroy the algorithms or AI models it built using personal information collected through its Kurbo healthy eating app from kids as young as 8 without parental permission. The agency also fined the company $1.5 million and ordered it to delete the illegally harvested data.

We focus on some shortcomings in current data protection regulation's ability to adequately address the ramifications of AI-driven data processing practices, in particular those of combining data sets. We propose that privacy regulation relies less on individuals' privacy expectations and recommend regulatory reform in two directions: (1) abolishing the distinction between personal and anonymized data for the purposes of triggering the application of data protection laws and (2) developing methods to prioritize regulatory intervention based on the level of privacy risk posed by individual data processing actions. This is an interdisciplinary paper that intends to build a bridge between the various communities involved in privacy research. We put special emphasis on linking technical notions with their regulatory implications and introducing the relevant technical and legal terminology in use to foster more efficient coordination between the policymaking and technical communities and enable a timely solution of the problems raised.

Perhaps, the biggest beneficiary of big data is the field of AI. Together, both these technologies can take psychometric profiling to the next level. Studying the impact of AI and big data in psychometrics is crucial to make future improvements in the field. The sheer number of areas in which involving psychometric evaluation can make a difference is truly mind-boggling. From assessing job-seeking candidates during recruitment to contesting a nationwide election, from marketing to law enforcement, psychometric assessments play a big part in understanding the pulse of a large crowd or the defining character traits of an individual.

Though artificial intelligence is changing how businesses work, there are concerns about how it may influence our lives. This is not just an academic or a societal concern but a reputational risk for companies, no company wants to be marred with data or AI ethics scandals that impacted companies like Amazon. For example, there was significant backlash due to the sale of Rekognition to law enforcement. This was followed by Amazon's decision to stop providing this technology to law enforcement for a year since they anticipate the proper legal framework to be in place by then. Al algorithms and training data may contain biases as humans do since those are also generated by humans.

The author of Robots Are People Too responds to Tobias Buckell's "Scar Tissue." "Scar Tissue" is an emotionally resonant tale about healing through robot rearing--but it was only half of the story about Rob's creator, Advent Robotics. What we read was the part Cory could see: Rob as a growing child, nurtured by Cory. But in the story, Tobias Buckell offers us a little hint about everything happening at Advent: "Every time [Advent's robots] get on that charger, they're not just powering up their onboard battery--they're taking in their experiences and uploading data to our servers to have it examined." That's the part that worries me, as artificial intelligence applications may be able to leverage the data to manipulate Cory and other people--just as technology, PR, and marketing companies try to do in our lives today.

Deepfake videos and altered videos are getting so advanced that they are increasingly harder to spot. Many believe AI deepfake tools, that allow people to superimpose the face of a politician or actor onto a video and also convincingly replicate their voice, could be a real threat to democracy. In May 2019, Donald Trump posted a video that had gone viral of Nancy Pelosi appearing to drunkenly slur her way through a speech. The video was quickly debunked -- someone had altered the original footage to slow down Pelosi's speech while raising the pitch to make it sound like natural slow speech. The video was viewed millions of times and Trump, notably, didn't remove the video from his social media after it was debunked.

The US presidential election campaign is in its final days. Donald Trump is behind in the polls and the pundits are predicting a win for his Democrat challenger, former vice president Joe Biden. He boasts that he will win again. With two weeks to go, his campaign unleashes an offensive in the crucial swing states: adverts, Facebook posts, WhatsApp groups and tweets. They warn of violent crime and civil unrest driven by immigrants and gangs, playing up Trump's endorsement by evangelicals and smearing Biden as a closet atheist. The initiative works and Trump snatches another unlikely victory.