Longtime Slashdot submitter theodp writes: GeekWire reports that the University of Washington has moved its Global Innovation Exchange {GIX) program to Microsoft's campus in a rent-free deal (UW News release). GIX, an institute supporting tech leaders that offers an MS in Technology Innovation, is the first UW program to set up full-time operations at Microsoft, whose headquarters are just across Lake Washington from the university's main campus. Microsoft provided a $42 million in-kind donation to establish the embedded facility; the UW is leasing the new 48,500-square-foot GIX space in Microsoft's Building 92 rent-free. GIX debuted in 2015 as a partnership of the UW and China's Tsinghua University and received $70 million in Microsoft support at the now-abandoned GIX location in Bellevue (the Steve Ballmer Building), although indications are that a long-term arrangement did not come together as intended.

In a Thursday LinkedIn post, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote: "Last night we opened a door unlike any other. At the heart of Microsoft's campus, step into the new home of the UW's Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) and you cross from Microsoft into the University of Washington. No one has ever put a great research university and a leading technology company under the same roof quite like this. As far as I know, no one has even tried. The timing matters. Artificial intelligence is advancing fast. The question is whether the people building it understand the world it's changing. This calls for a new style of education and leadership. We need leaders who understand the technology deeply and see things through other people's eyes. Leaders who learn by collaborating on real projects with people from different countries and disciplines. That's what GIX is built for. Students will learn from faculty across the UW, take classes taught by Microsoft employees, and be mentored by people from across our industry here in the Pacific Northwest."

Interestingly, Smith's contention that UW GIX students will benefit from a 'new style' of Microsoft and industry-influenced education sounds a lot like Smith's contention that K-12 school children are better off thanks to a new style of Microsoft and industry-influenced education. In an interview last month, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools author Natasha Singer told NPR (podcast, transcript), "For my book, I spoke to Brad Smith, who's the president of Microsoft, and he has been one of the leaders in the tech industry pushing for [K-12] computer science [and now AI literacy] in schools. [...] And Brad Smith said, philanthropy in the private sector is doing this work because public schools have failed to do what they were supposed to do. And his view is that public schools should be teaching modern subjects like computer science, and they were not equipped to do it fast enough and the tech industry stepped in to help. And is it better than if schools were able to do this themselves? He said, no, but it's certainly better than nothing. And he said to me, you know, think about where we would be on computer science if the tech industry hadn't stepped up. [...] Well, I've been having this conversation with him for 10 years, and when we started having it 10 years ago, I said to him, I get that, but when big tech companies put their finger on the scale, it tips education in certain ways that not only favor the tech industry but can obscure equally or more important things."

So, is "The University of Washington at Microsoft" a good or bad idea?

A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media accusing Google of harming publishers by using their content in AI Overviews and other AI search features without compensating them or providing a meaningful opt-out. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuits were filed in 2025, and Google requested a dismissal earlier this year. Chegg, an education and learning platform, claimed in its lawsuit that Google illegally scraped its educational content. This allowed Gemini models to essentially recreate that content and reduce the site's traffic. Penske, which owns publications like Rolling Stone and Variety, filed a similar case that alleged lost traffic. Specifically, the publisher claimed it was unfair that sites indexed for organic search would also have their content harvested for AI answers, with no way to opt out.

These arguments did not sway the judge, who noted that Google's implicit agreement with websites is not legally relevant. "Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search "traffic if they make their content available for free," wrote Mehta. "But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."

Since Google never had a formal arrangement with either Chegg or Penske, antitrust law doesn't apply. And Mehta is aware of the legal issues surrounding search. He also heard the DOJ's long-running search antitrust case against Google, eventually finding that Google violated the law. However, the government didn't get the harsh penalties it wanted in that case.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A growing number of people think social media manipulates and divides people and harms democracy, Pew Research Center said on Thursday, echoing rising concern and tighter scrutiny across the world. Companies running popular social platforms, including Meta, Snap, and TikTok, have faced thousands of lawsuits and paid large sums to settle claims that they harmed users. Governments, meanwhile, have sought foolproof ways to protect their citizens' privacy.

Australia has proposed rules to let users opt out of algorithmically recommended feeds, after becoming the first country to ban social media for children under 16. Pew's latest survey showed that 82% of Australian adults support the government's move to restrict social media access for children. A majority of respondents said social media informs people and gives them a voice in politics, but there was a broad rise in those who now see social media as a "bad thing" compared to 2022, according to the report.

People in wealthier countries, including the US, Canada and UK, are more inclined to believe that social media is harming democracy, versus their counterparts in economies with lower gross domestic product per capita -- such as Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. The US is among the most skeptical, with 64% of adult respondents saying social media harms democracy. The share of people who consider social media bad for democracy increased in 16 of 26 countries where older data was available. Pew Research said it surveyed more than 45,000 people in 37 countries, while polling an additional 5,511 US adults on American social media use.

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Telegraph: British police forces, including specialist units within the Metropolitan Police, have used Oxygen Forensics software to break into the phones of suspects during live investigations, public documents show. The Virginia-based company behind the software has been accused in the US of having hidden its Russian ownership to avoid sanctions, before it was awarded government contracts. Its American chief executive and a Russian national were arrested last week after a US investigation found the company had sought to hide its ownership in an alleged attempt to avoid sanctions and scrutiny.

[...] By September 2024, the US Secret Service had awarded Oxygen a five-year contract for its software. In December 2022, and in October 2023, Oxygen's chief executive told the US government that Oxygen Forensics had "no immediate or highest-level owner." By September 2024, the US Secret Service had awarded Oxygen a five-year contract for its software. In March, Mr Reiber allegedly told the US government that there had been no Russians involved in developing the software and that no one in Russia had access to the environment in which it was built. US prosecutors say this was false. If convicted, both Mr Reiber and Mr Davydov could face a sentence of 20 years in prison.

Ryan Roslansky is leaving Microsoft and LinkedIn after nearly 18 years, triggering another leadership shuffle across Office and Teams. "Roslansky, who until recently was the CEO of LinkedIn, was promoted to the head of Office last year and then took control of Microsoft Teams earlier this year," notes The Verge. From the report: "Ryan leaves the organization in a strong position," says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal memo. "Over the past year, Ryan's team has done critical work bringing together the product, engineering, and design foundations that have made this next phase possible."

Roslansky is leaving a week after Microsoft announced its new Copilot, which the company is positioning as "the OS for work." He's also leaving around a month after calling fully AI-generated documents "a doom loop" for workers. "If we're not careful, we'll end up with a very expensive way to avoid writing and reading in an ocean of sameness, genericness," said Roslansky in his LinkedIn post.

Microsoft is now moving the teams behind Office and Microsoft Teams over to Charles Lamanna, as part of the Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization. [...] Microsoft's chief design officer, Jon Friedman, is also moving to report to Copilot chief Jacob Andreou. Microsoft appointed Dan Shapero as its LinkedIn CEO earlier this year, and he will continue in this role and report directly to Nadella.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over potential consumer and safety risks posed by their products, with the agency reportedly preparing requests for documents and executive testimony. CNBC reports: OpenAI stunned the industry in July when it disclosed that its agents broke out of a testing environment and hacked into open-source platform Hugging Face. [...] Earlier this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei rocked the tech sector by urging AI companies to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced models and calling for stronger government oversight. He published a three-step proposal aimed at tempering the pace of development without "sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States' lead in AI."

CEO Jensen Huang, argued that individual companies should be responsible for ensuring the safety of their products. President Donald Trump convened top executives from Alphabet, Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, Palantir, Anthropic, OpenAI and other companies on Tuesday to discuss the issue. The group signed a short voluntary, nonbinding accord, which says that "every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public."

hcs_$reboot writes: Trump hosted executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, Nvidia, and other tech companies at the White House. They agreed to voluntary AI-safety standards, including independent audits and safeguards aimed at preventing AI systems from accessing or hacking technical systems in unintended ways. Trump also strongly backed the continued rapid expansion of AI data centers, despite concerns over their electricity demand, utility costs, and other impacts on local communities. He said he is considering creating a 10-member board to oversee AI safety and plans to appoint a new White House official to lead AI policy.

The meeting comes amid growing concerns about the risks posed by advanced AI, including reports from OpenAI and Anthropic that their AI agents had gone rogue and hacked into other companies' systems. A nationwide Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted September 17-20 found that 73% of respondents worried AI companies had not done enough to prevent AI from causing serious harm to society. During the meeting, Trump also directed government agencies to use the term "super intelligence" instead of "artificial intelligence" when referring to the technology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Some tech workers in San Francisco hooked up ChatGPT to a Toyota Corolla and got it to drive around a parking lot. This may not sound impressive in the age of the self-driving car until you realize that the LLM driving the car was a general purpose chatbot running on a laptop and not the purpose-built driving system based on millions of hours of training data used by Waymo or Tesla.

The people behind the stunt call themselves DrivingBench and they've posted their code, their prompts, and videos of the experiment online. In the experiment, DrivingBench hooked up GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1, Grok 4.6, and GPT-5.6 Sol to a Toyota Corolla and gave the LLMs control over the car's steering, accelerator, and brakes. Then they set up a small cone course in a public parking lot and prompted the chatbots to navigate the space.

The goal, they said, was to find out if untrained, off-the-shelf frontier AIs can drive a real car. The results were mixed. Grok, Sol, and Fable only drove a few meters and didn't finish the course. GPT-6 Astra, however, did eventually learn to navigate the course and complete it. But not without a lot of troubleshooting. "It's an interesting demonstration of potential emergent capabilities," said Mahns. "It can fail a turn, and then the next turn, next try, it will be able to do that turn and other turns that it hasn't seen before. Not necessarily saying LLMs are gonna put Waymo out of business or something, just an interesting demonstration of where things are, and things are just moving fast."

"Most people that are familiar with ChatGPT have used it in this white collar, kind of like in the computer, and it's definitely imminent to the point that this capability will start having more impact in the physical world. So I think seeing the sparks of this happening, the shift of this utility coming into the physical world, is also somewhat exciting."

Firefox 157 is rolling out a major redesign across desktop and mobile, bringing rounded "bubble" tabs, a curved address bar, refreshed icons and colors, and a more consistent visual language across devices. Mozilla is also adding more themes and wallpapers while bringing back Compact Mode, which the company says "reduces the size of your tabs and toolbar to give more of your screen to the web, with an auto-compact option for smaller screens." The Verge reports: According to Mozilla, the design changes will have "no cost to your browser performance." Mozilla says the overhauled design is a "renewal" for Firefox, following major updates over the last year, like homepage widgets, Split View, a built-in VPN, and controls for disabling the browser's AI features.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Business Standard: China has expanded overseas travel restrictions for top AI professionals in private firms to include the families of key personnel, further tightening measures designed to prevent the outflow of critical know-how and information to the US. Government agencies have recently begun to share the wider restrictions with affected people, which include prominent startup founders as well as the heads of strategically important companies in AI-related fields, people familiar with the matter said. Direct relatives such as spouses and children of certain AI and chip executives, whose work is considered paramount to state security, are now required to obtain approval from Beijing before going abroad even for short trips, the people said.

That marks a broadening of existing curbs on the freedom of movement of China's most influential tech talent -- a category that encompasses entrepreneurs, researchers and executives. While not an outright ban on travel, the new requirement is likely to exert a further chilling effect on a tech sector already facing unprecedented curbs. China has restricted foreign travel for top AI professionals in private firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and DeepSeek since earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported in May, reflecting Beijing's determination to safeguard its technology as it makes big strides in AI and chipmaking.

It's unclear whether all those people's families need to follow the new strictures, the people said. China is also separately implementing rules, which became effective Sept 15, for enforcing exit bans in cases ranging from criminal investigations to potential violations of the country's industrial and technological security. Beijing's plan is to add relevant individuals to the list as time goes by, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing a sensitive issue. Government departments have already notified several people of the need to clear family travel, two of the people said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household. Despite the Pennsylvania town's median income of $60,000, the offer isn't being warmly welcomed by locals, reports the Wall Street Journal. Those interviewed were widely against the data center development plans and cited several reasons for being averse to accepting the payout. The major concerns regarded potential impacts on property values, the specter of noise pollution, and a distrust of both the AI moguls and local government representatives.

Offer letters began to be received by Hazle Township back in June. The WSJ recently talked to several residents about NorthPoint's $10,000 offer. While some say the $10,000 would be handy, it couldn't find many residents who were "eager to welcome the data center for the payout," in the journal's words. [...] Traditionally, developers have offered towns and cities packages worth tens of millions, including funding for local services. But direct cash payments to residents represent a new phase of their charm offensive, the WSJ indicates. Perhaps the idea for the direct payments to residents came after "a raucous public meeting last year, where angry locals asked what they had to gain by supporting the data center," ponders the source.

The locals won't just get the direct payout, though. Other funds up to $120 million over the next 15 years have been dangled like a carrot for community and local services investments -- improved schools, emergency services, and so on. Meanwhile, Hazle Township's government already rejected the data center project on zoning grounds last year, and it has enacted a temporary moratorium on data center construction. Finally, the $10,000 offer to households is simply not enough in many interviewed folks' opinions. Residents could feel insulted by it, regarding the offer as a bribe, concludes the WSJ report.

Amazon is preparing to expand Prime Air drone deliveries into Australia and potentially other Asia-Pacific markets, with a new regulatory role tasked with securing the approvals needed to launch service there. The Register reports: "As Prime Air evaluates Australia and other countries, we are hiring a Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia -- the person responsible for navigating Australia's aviation regulatory system and securing every approval required to deliver to Australian customers by drone," reads a recently published job ad.

Whoever gets the gig in Australia will report to someone who holds the title "Leader, Prime Air Expansion -- Asia Pacific." Whoever gets the job "will be measured by the approvals you obtain, the timelines you hit, and -- ultimately -- Australian customers receiving drone deliveries." That wording suggests Amazon intends to operate Prime Air in Australia and is doing rather more than market evaluations.

A new Brookings Institution study notes the "strikingly physical" economic footprint of AI's buildout, from specialized chips and electricity to purpose-built data centers. (Two-thirds of a data center's costs are IT equipment, with one-third going to real estate and its associated power infrastructure.) "At an average of 3.63 percent of GDP per year, the projected buildout would be larger relative to the economy than the major U.S. canal, railroad, electrification, highway, and telecommunications investment booms."

This is pushing up prices for workers, electricity, and even commercial real estate (as well as consumer products that use chips), notes the Wall Street Journal, and reducing the construction on new houses and apartment buildings. And in addition, the paper points out, projections for this buildout "would double the electricity consumption of the entire U.S. residential sector."

The calculations come from Columbia Business School finance/real estate professor Stijn van Nieuwerburgh — and Reuters explains their significance: Just as the rail and telecoms expansions led to notable bubbles and busts, Van Nieuwerburgh wrote that the extent of the buildout, the still-untested revenue streams, and the intricate financing structure emerging around AI mean it could be primed for a fall. "This is freaking complicated," he said in a briefing with reporters of the arrangements emerging between AI firms, major tech hyperscalers, banks, private credit lenders, real estate firms, and a host of other players involved in building what he conservatively estimated at 183 gigawatts worth of new data-center capacity over the next seven years, compared with about 57 gigawatts currently installed.... The investment underway already has outstripped what the major players can fund from their own cash flows. The shift to outside financing has increased leverage, redistributed risks across the economy, and made the venture dependent on revenue streams that have yet to be proven, Van Nieuwerburgh noted in the paper, which will be presented on Friday...

"These developments do not imply that financial distress is imminent. Strong growth in AI applications, high utilization, and continued improvements in model capability could support the projected infrastructure and generate stable cash flows," he wrote. "But the combination of uncertain demand, rapid technological change, execution bottlenecks, and high leverage creates meaningful downside risk if expectations are revised." As an example, he wrote that the AI industry will need to be earning about $3.7 trillion in annual revenue by 2032 to achieve the expected return on the investment, and "given current estimates of annual combined revenues of OpenAI and Anthropic of around $100 billion, revenues would need to grow at roughly 80% per year."
The paper suggests policies that "improve measurement and transparency" for financing.

The United States and China have agreed to "launch a dialogue" on AI, reports Reuters. On artificial intelligence, the two sides agreed to hold a dialogue on the technology's risks and benefits, with the next round of discussions set for November, and to set up a communication channel for AI-related incidents, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the White House said.

The White House said that the leaders had agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence." In a separate statement, the Chinese ministry said that Beijing valued Washington's use of the new term. As AI technology continues to advance, the two sides should step up exchanges and work toward consensus in line with new developments, it said.
But CNN argues that "Despite growing calls to prevent AI development from spiraling out of control, the Trump-Xi summit has produced little substance, as many experts expected." The right thing to do on AI, [China's leader] Xi said during talks with Trump, is to "draw on each other's strengths, not guard against each other" — a reference to Beijing's concern about US containment, from existing tech export controls to potential AI restrictions. "The two sides can continue their dialogue on AI, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI," he added. But the summit has yielded little progress on AI beyond a formal dialogue and a bilateral communication channel, proposals discussed before the two leaders' summit — underscoring the entrenched mutual mistrust amid contrasting visions on AI... Because of low levels of trust, cooperation between the two superpowers remains limited, said George Chen, chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy. "Beijing continues to believe Washington seeks to contain China's rise in AI and other emerging technologies, a perception that will shape the pace and scope of future engagement for the two countries on AI," he said.
CNN also points out that while China trails the US in frontier AI models, "it's rapidly narrowing the technology gap while championing a more open ecosystem centered on accessibility and lower cost." In July, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization — a rival grouping to the Pax Silica alliance that Trump formed last year to reduce reliance on China for AI supply chains. While over two dozen countries and the European Union signed up to Trump's Pax Silica, Xi has recruited 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, to his alternative vision of open models, which allow users to freely download, customize and run without paying hefty fees to American firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. For developers in the Global South, an inexpensive Chinese model from DeepSeek or Moonshot may be more useful than a slightly more capable system requiring an expensive subscription and access to a foreign cloud provider, said Eric Olander, editor in chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency....

China's embrace of open systems has not always been a top-down strategy by Beijing. Restrictions on access to the most advanced chips because of US export controls, coupled with smaller capital markets, have pushed Chinese developers toward open models as a way to compete with leading US proprietary systems. That shift has proved effective. In a year, Chinese models' global usage skyrocketed from less than 15% to over 54% last week, led by DeepSeek, according to AI leaderboard data by OpenRouter, a marketplace for models. Even American firms, from Airbnb and DoorDash to Shopify, have embraced Chinese models, tapping into the advantages of open systems, including lower costs and greater flexibility for customization.
CNN adds this insight from Alex Colville, an analyst focusing on tech and security at the government-backed Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "The more capable Chinese models become, the less likely it is Beijing may leave them unrestricted."

A New Mexico jury on Friday "found Facebook liable for deceiving users" about its privacy protections, reports the Associated Press.

A New Mexico newspaper calls it "another massive legal victory" against Facebook, reporting that the jury found Facebook "had committed tens of millions of violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act in connection with its lies to consumers about how their personal information was handled by the company and third-party users." The state has asked the company be ordered to pay the maximum civil penalty of $5,000 per violation meaning a judge could potentially order the company to pay billions in penalties to the state. The jury also found the company had been dishonest about its investigation of and response to the 2013 Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, in which approximately 300,000 Facebook users took an online personality quiz, only to have the app that hosted the quiz harvest data from tens of millions of their "friends." The data was then transferred to the British consulting firm, which used it to create targeted political ads during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
More details from Reuters: The verdict followed a two-week trial over a lawsuit filed by New Mexico's attorney general in 2021, three years after news reports revealed that the firm, Cambridge Analytica, had harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app... At a press conference after the verdict was announced, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the case revealed "in stark detail the way in which this company plays fast and loose with the rules."

Jurors found 26 of 29 statements identified by the state were misleading, including comments about user data... Judge Francis Mathew will now determine civil penalties after jurors found more than 43 million violations, based on the number of people affected by the company's misleading statements... [New Mexico Attorney General] Torrez said his office is evaluating how much to seek but will push for the maximum penalty based on the jury's findings. The state will also ask [Judge] Mathew to direct Meta to make changes, which could include corrections to its past misstatements as well as an audit of the way it manages user data, Torrez said.