Google may be forced to make major changes in the way that people use its search engine in the UK. Google may have to change the way its search engine works in the UK, including potentially offering users the option to choose rival search services, as part of new regulation from the UK's competition authority. In a decision handed down on Friday, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has designated Google Search with Strategic Market Status (SMS)--a qualifier given to companies that are considered to have "substantial and entrenched market power"--which would allow the regulator to wield more power over it. This decision follows a 10-month investigation into Google, and it is the first time that these powers, which come under the UK's new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, have been used to target a major tech company. Google's SMS will last up to five years under this legislation.

Leaders in the tech industry are urging the Biden administration not to add a new regulation that will limit artificial intelligence exports, citing concerns it is overbroad and could diminish the United States' global dominance in AI. The new rule, which industry leaders say could come as early as the end of this week, effectively seeks to shore up the U.S. economy and national security efforts by adding new restrictions on how many U.S.-made artifical intelligence products can be deployed across the globe. "A rule of this nature would cede the global market to U.S. competitors who will be eager to fill the untapped demand created by placing arbitrary constraints on U.S. companies' ability to sell basic computing systems overseas," stated a Monday letter from Jason Oxman, the president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), sent to Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo. "Should the U.S. lose its advantage in the global AI ecosystem, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to regain in the future." FBI'S NEW WARNING ABOUT AI-DRIVEN SCAMS THAT ARE AFTER YOUR CASH The process to place new export controls on artificial intelligence goes back to October 2022, when the Biden administration's Commerce Department first released an updated export framework aimed at slowing the progress of Chinese military programs. Details of the new incoming export controls surfaced after the Biden administration called on American tech company NVIDIA to stop selling certain computer chips to China the following month.

Soon after China's artificial intelligence rules came into effect last month, a series of new AI chatbots began trickling onto the market, with government approval. The rules have already been watered down from what was initially proposed, and so far, China hasn't enforced them as strictly as it could, experts say. China's regulatory approach will likely have huge implications for the technological competition between the country and its AI superpower rival the U.S. The Cyberspace Administration of China's (CAC) Generative AI Measures, which came into effect on Aug. 15, are some of the strictest in the world. They state that the generative AI services should not generate content "inciting subversion of national sovereignty or the overturn of the socialist system," or "advocating terrorism or extremism, promoting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination, violence and obscenity, as well as fake and harmful information." Preventing AI chatbots from spewing out unwanted or even toxic content has been a challenge for AI developers around the world.

Watching the opening day of the US Senate hearings on AI brought to mind Marx's quip about history repeating itself, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce". Some time ago we had the farce of the boss of Meta (neé Facebook) explaining to a senator that his company made money from advertising. This week we had the tragedy of seeing senators quizzing Sam Altman, the new acceptable face of the tech industry. Well, as one of my kids, looking up from revising O-level classics, once explained to me: "It's when you can see the disaster coming but you can't do anything to stop it." The trigger moment was when Altman declared: "We think that regulatory interventions by government will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models."

US car manufacturers reported nearly 400 crashes involving cars with partially autonomous driver assistance systems, according to a new report from a US car-safety regulator released on Wednesday. Tesla, which has about 830,000 vehicles on the road with driver-assist programmes that have partial control over speed and steering, reported 273 crashes, about 70 percent of the total, according to The Associated Press. Companies caution that drivers must remain prepared to intervene and take control of driving at all times, even in cars with partially autonomous systems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) collected reports of such crashes from manufacturers from July 2021 through May 2022, the first broader report of its kind. The NHTSA said the report provided "crucial data necessary for research and for the development of policies to enhance the safety of these technologies".

Increasing the use of health data and artificial intelligence in Turkey; conducting and supporting scientific and technological research in this …

The new regulations, known as the Internet Information Service Algorithmic Recommendation Management Provisions, have been drafted by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the body that enforces cybersecurity, internet censorship, and e-commerce rules. Terming the new rules as regulations for deep synthesis technology, GAC is implementing them to protect people's legitimate rights and interests. These significant policies are being implemented to ensure more effective services (e.g., ride-hailing, social media) for the country's over 1.4 billion people and manage tech companies and services providers. Artificial Intelligence issues are of concern to China. President Xi Jinping alluded to such challenges in his speech last October, "Some unhealthy and disorderly signals and trends have occurred in the rapid development of our country's digital economy."

Donald Trump has won the United States presidency and Brexit has promised to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union. Both campaigns employ Cambridge Analytica, who harvest the data of millions of Facebook users to personalise electoral messaging and sway their voting intentions. Millions of people begin to ask themselves whether, in the digital era, they have lost something that they valued dearly: their privacy. Two years later, millions of email inboxes in Europe would be filling up with messages from companies, asking them for permission to continue processing their data, complying with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Despite its imperfections, this law has served as a point of reference for laws in Brazil and Japan and began the era of data protection in earnest. Nevertheless, what was once seen as a triumph for privacy is now seen as a roadblock in Europe's quest to develop digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence.

Banks, consumer advocates and think tanks are weighing in to federal bank regulators about potential pitfalls in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in making loan decisions. In responses to regulators' call for comments, many expressed interest in an increased use of AI and machine learning in the banking business, along with caveats about fair lending and unlawful discrimination concerns. FinRegLab, a Washington-based research group that says it has launched a broad inquiry into the use of AI in financial services, told the agencies that machine learning could be "transformational," as current gaps "increase the cost or risk of serving particular consumer and small-business populations using traditional models and data." At the same time, the predictive power of machine learning models can increase potential risks "due to the models' greater complexity and to their potential to exacerbate historical disparities and flaws in underlying data," FinRegLab said. AI and machine learning might amplify patterns of historical discrimination and financial exclusion through reliance on flawed data or mistakes in development.

The government is wary of over-regulating new technologies such as artificial intelligence and will resist making ethics standards and codes mandatory for Australian businesses, Digital Economy minister Jane Hume says. In an address to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), Senator Hume said the federal government would play an enabling role in accelerating the growth of artificial intelligence, along with setting standards in terms of ethics. "AI, along with other digital technologies, will play an increasingly important role in our economy and society over the next decade and beyond," Senator Hume said. "As we continue to vault forward in this space, government has a pivotal role to play as an enabler, and as a standard setter – particularly in regards to ethics. "The government has a significant responsibility … to ensure that AI, as an industry as well as a technology, has every chance to flourish, making sure we have the right settings, skills and expertise in place to ensure Australia is a global forerunner." The May budget allocated $124 million to artificial intelligence initiatives, including $50 million for a National AI Intelligence Centre within CSIRO and $34 million in grants for AI projects addressing national challenges. The Coalition has also unveiled AI ethics principles, with eight guiding principles "designed to help achieve safer and more reliable outcomes for all Australians". These principles and other standards around AI are currently entirely voluntary for Australian businesses, and Senator Hume said the government will avoid making them mandatory. "I obviously would rather have a voluntary code where industry has the input to what's in the code.