Social media companies relying on artificial intelligence software to moderate their platforms are generating unviable reports on cases of child sexual abuse, preventing US police from seeing potential leads and delaying investigations of alleged predators, the Guardian can reveal. By law, US-based social media companies are required to report any child sexual abuse material detected on their platforms to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC acts as a nationwide clearinghouse for leads about child abuse, which it forwards to the relevant law enforcement departments in the US and around the world. The organization said in its annual report that it received more than 32m reports of suspected child sexual exploitation from companies and the public in 2022, roughly 88m images, videos and other files. Meta is the largest reporter of these tips, with more than 27m, or 84%, generated by its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms in 2022.

Police in Texas investigating a Tesla car crash in which two men died will serve search warrants on the company to ascertain if the vehicle's autopilot mode was engaged at the time of the incident. However Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, has said the self-driving feature was not being used, based on an internal probe by the company. In the incident, two men, both in their 50s, were killed after their 2019 Tesla Model S crashed into a tree and caught fire. According to police reports, the car was travelling at a high speed and failed to negotiate a curve in the road. Texas police noted that nobody was at the driving seat at the time of impact, raising doubts about the involvement of the car's autopilot mode.

Tiger Woods has told authorities he doesn't remember the rollover crash that landed him in a hospital with metal rods and pins in his leg. But the SUV he was driving does. Like other modern cars and trucks, the Genesis GV80 that Woods was driving when he crashed was equipped with an electronic data recorder and other computer hardware meant to serve as a digital witness of sorts -- filled with information investigators can use to piece together the seconds before and during the accident. The devices are part of a broader array of safety technology built into many newer vehicles. Vehicles in the Genesis line -- Hyundai's luxury brand -- for example, also feature artificial intelligence software that keeps a watchful eye, sending alerts if it detects the driver is distracted or closes his or her eyes while driving.

Seeking answers to why Tiger Woods crashed on a dangerous stretch of a Palos Verdes Peninsula highway, a Los Angeles County sheriff's traffic investigator has obtained a search warrant for the pre-crash data from the Genesis GV80 SUV's onboard computer systems. The warrant comes after Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva last week called the rollover crash "purely an accident." The department is seeking the information from the SUV's so-called black boxes to determine the cause of the crash and to reconstruct the traffic incident to determine if the golfing legend was driving at an unsafe speed or was distracted or affected by something else inside the vehicle. Deputy Carlos Gonzalez, the crash investigator who was also the first deputy at the scene and found Woods, 45, in the mangled wreckage, did not seek a warrant for the golfer's toxicology from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where the athlete underwent surgery on his lower right leg and pins and rods were inserted. Gonzalez said he determined at the scene that Woods was not under the influence, and therefore there was no probable cause for such a blood draw.

The immense capabilities artificial intelligence is bringing to the world would have been inconceivable to past generations. But even as we marvel at the incredible power these new technologies afford, we're faced with complex and urgent questions about the balance of benefit and harm. When most people ponder whether AI is good or evil, what they're essentially trying to grasp is whether AI is a tool or a weapon. Of course, it's both -- it can help reduce human toil, and it can also be used to create autonomous weapons. Either way, the ensuing debates touch on numerous unresolved questions and are critical to paving the way forward.

The Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures could prevent law enforcement from applying increasingly sophisticated surveillance and predictive policing technology, including "superhuman" methods employing artificial intelligence, according to a professor at the University of California-Davis School of Law. In an essay published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Elizabeth E. Joh argues that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v United States established a precedent for using the Fourth Amendment to limit the use of emerging technology, ranging from drones that help patrol borders to predictive-analytic software that can determine when and where the next crime will occur. In that landmark case, decided this summer, the Court ruled law enforcement cannot access citizens' cellphone location records without a search warrant. Although the decision focused on whether information held by "third parties" such as cellphone providers was subject to privacy protections guaranteed under the Constitution, Joh said it also touched on the changing "nature of policing" specifically the technologically enhanced means law enforcement can now exploit to gather information in the cyber era. In the Carpenter case, justices were asked to rule on whether FBI agents sidestepped their constitutional obligations to show "probable cause" for obtaining a search warrant to retrieve the locational data of a suspected serial robber's cellphone to prove he was near the scene of stores in the Detroit area where thefts had occurred.

On 21 November 2015, James Bates had three friends over to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks play the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Bates, who lived in Bentonville, Arkansas, and his friends drank beer and did vodka shots as a tight football game unfolded. After the Razorbacks lost 51–50, one of the men went home; the others went out to Bates's hot tub and continued to drink. Bates would later say that he went to bed around 1am and that the other two men – one of whom was named Victor Collins – planned to crash at his house for the night. When Bates got up the next morning, he didn't see either of his friends. But when he opened his back door, he saw a body floating face-down in the hot tub. A grim local affair, the death of Victor Collins would never have attracted international attention if it were not for a facet of the investigation that pitted the Bentonville authorities against one of the world's most powerful companies – Amazon. Collins' death triggered a broad debate about privacy in the voice-computing era, a discussion that makes the big tech companies squirm.

A judge in California ruled Thursday that U.S. authorities cannot force people to unlock technology with fingerprint or facial recognition, even with a search warrant. A judge in California ruled Thursday that U.S. authorities cannot force people to unlock technology via fingerprint or facial recognition, even with a search warrant. Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, made the ruling as investigators tried to access someone's property in Oakland. Two people allegedly used Facebook messenger to threaten a victim with the release of an "embarrassing video" if they didn't hand over money. Authorities investigating the case requested a search and seizure warrant "to seize various items" believed to be at a home connected to the suspects.

In July, we shared our views about the need for government regulation and responsible industry measures to address advancing facial recognition technology. As we discussed, this technology brings important and even exciting societal benefits but also the potential for abuse. We noted the need for broader study and discussion of these issues. In the ensuing months, we've been pursuing these issues further, talking with technologists, companies, civil society groups, academics and public officials around the world. We've learned more and tested new ideas. Based on this work, we believe it's important to move beyond study and discussion.

After a hellish year of tech scandals, even government-averse executives have started professing their openness to legislation. But Microsoft president Brad Smith took it one step further on Thursday, asking governments to regulate the use of facial-recognition technology to ensure it does not invade personal privacy or become a tool for discrimination or surveillance. Tech companies are often forced to choose between social responsibility and profits, but the consequences of facial recognition are too dire for business as usual, Smith said. "We believe that the only way to protect against this race to the bottom is to build a floor of responsibility that supports healthy market competition," he said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. "We must ensure that the year 2024 doesn't look like a page from the novel 1984."