Submission + - Teachers' Union Urges Schools to Curb AI Chatbots and Screen Time

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The New York Times reports the $22.5 million AI partnership to 'bring AI into the classroom' struck last July between the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, Microsoft, and OpenAI has hit a bump in the road as the AFT urges schools to curb AI chatbots and screen time, recommending 'no screens' at all for those in second grade or younger, and no AI chatbots for students in elementary school.

The union’s effort reflects a backlash among parents and educators against heavy use of school-issued laptops and apps. Some parents and nonprofit children’s groups are also pushing back against campaigns by tech giants like Google and OpenAI to spread their AI products in schools.

This week, AFT president Randi Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for AI use in schools with 'our partners in the AI academy,' and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards. “We’re being transparent,” Weingarten said, adding that "We’re willing to walk away from the funding that we receive here if we don’t get the safety and privacy."

Submission + - Maryland Governor Signs K-12 AI Bill Under Microsoft's Watchful Eye

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Thank you, Gov. Wes Moore, for signing SB 720 into law yesterday!" exclaimed Microsoft Sr. Director of Education and Workforce Policy Allyson Knox in a LinkedIn post celebrating the passage of the Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act. "Microsoft was proud to support this legislation, and I was honored to represent the company at yesterday’s bill signing at the Maryland State House. This law accomplishes the following: 1) Establishes statewide AI guidance for schools ... 2) Requires every district to have an AI plan ... 3) Builds teacher capacity and professional learning ... 4) Promotes AI literacy for students ... 5) Creates tools to evaluate AI technologies ... 6) Establishes a statewide AI Education Collaborative." At the same bill-signing ceremony, Gov. Moore paradoxically also signed into law the Phone-Free Schools Act, "prohibiting the use of certain electronic communication devices by a student during the academic school day."

Knox reports up to Microsoft President Brad Smith, who last July told Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi it was time for the tech-backed K-12 CS education nonprofit to "switch hats" from coding to AI as Microsoft announced its new $4 billion Microsoft Elevate initiative to advance AI education. The Maryland State Department of Education is one of many government agencies that are participating in Code.org's Microsoft-advised TeachAI initiative. Code.org also took to social media to celebrate the Maryland win, proclaiming that "Maryland just made AI and CS Education the law."

Interestingly, Maryland's commitment to K-12 AI comes in the same week as the NY Times reports a $22.5 million AI partnership to 'bring AI into the classroom' struck last July between the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, Microsoft, and OpenAI has hit a bump in the road as the AFT urges schools to curb AI chatbots and screen time, recommending 'no screens' at all for those in second grade or younger, and no AI chatbots for students in elementary school. AFT president Randi Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for AI use in schools with 'our partners in the AI academy,' and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards. "We’re willing to walk away from the funding that we receive here if we don’t get the safety and privacy," Weingarten said.

Submission + - Researchers identify people through ordinary Wi-Fi with 99 percent-accuracy (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Baron_Yam
Baron_Yam writes: Security researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany have published a paper demonstrating that unencrypted beamforming data broadcast by Wi-Fi devices during normal operation can be used to identify individuals walking through a room with 99.5% accuracy, regardless of whether the individuals are carrying Wi-Fi devices. The tactic leverages the router's beamforming tech to identify individuals with up to 99.5% accuracy, and it works with existing routers, too.

The system, called BFId, requires no specialized hardware, no access to the target Wi-Fi network, and works even if the person being tracked isn't carrying a wireless device. The team tested the attack on 197 participants, the largest dataset ever used in Wi-Fi-based identification works, and plans to present its findings at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in Taipei.

See GitHub — https://github.com/ruvnet/RuVi... — for your own personal implementation requiring a couple of APs and a couple of ESP32 nodes. You can get full-home per-zone motion and occupancy detection fairly reliably, with the potential for pose detection and in optimal areas even respiration rate. With the right hardware and configuration, you can theoretically get heart rate too.

Submission + - Occupy Wall Street Co-Founder Built an AI App to Help Activists (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an era where Silicon Valley’s conservatism is both expressed openly and becoming more intense by the day, it’s strange to think that tech was once seen as a hive of liberalism. The right-wing nature of today’s tech industry means that its products tend to also be seen as serving right-wing interests, either in their actual operation (like X’s openly and unrepentantly right-wing chatbot Grok) or by the simple fact that their existence serves to enrich a small group of very powerful, very conservative people.

But does it have to be this way? Can LLMs and AI agents find a place in the toolkit of progressive activist groups? The conviction that they can is the idea behind a new app called Outcry, which provides a chatbot designed specifically as a “private, on-device AI mentor for activists, organizers and movement builders.” (There’s also a web version, although it obviously lacks the privacy benefits of being entirely offline.) It’s the brainchild of Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White, who recently wrote a blog post about the thinking behind the project.

[...] Outcry’s other distinguishing feature is that its dataset is entirely offline—it’s included with the download. According to the readme, the entire dataset is downloaded to your device at first launch, and stored in your library’s Application Support directory.

Submission + - Microsoft Allegedly Leaked Dutch Civil Servants' Data To the US (cybernews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The technology giant Microsoft has been accused of leaking the data of civil servants working for the Netherlands' regulatory agencies to the US House of Representatives. The civil servants affected by the leak work at the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) and the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP), according to the NL Times. They are involved in implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Union regulation on online services, aimed at combating illegal content and protecting user rights.

NL Times reports that Microsoft shared emails, minutes, and invitations sent by the civil servants without redacting their names in the documents. Willemijn Aerdts, Dutch State Secretary for Digital Economy and Sovereignty, said she discussed the allegations with US Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo.

Submission + - The AI Fight Brewing Inside The New York Times (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: How newsrooms should use AI — or if they should at all — has been a recurrent debate within the media industry over the last several years. Increasingly, these rules are being hammered out at the bargaining table between unions and publishers. Right now, employees at The New York Times are gearing up for a fight. Unionized staff with the Tech Guild say Times management has refused to provide the union with information related to how the company has used AI, its plans for AI use in the future, and how it will affect employees’ jobs and workflow. (The union filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month.) The Tech Guild, a NewsGuild of New York unit of around 700 software engineers, designers, product and project managers, and data analysts, also filed grievances saying Times management violated their collective bargaining agreement when it started using two internal AI tools that track and evaluate employee performance and activity.

[...] Both the Tech Guild and the Times Guild (which represents 1,500 editorial, ad sales, and support staff at the Times) filed unfair labor practice charges against the Times, saying that company violated labor law by refusing to respond to their requests for information around AI use at the outlet. The Times did not respond to specific questions about how it uses DX and Glean, but spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email that the company disagrees with the characterizations made in grievances and that it would respond as part of its “normal contractual process.” “Likewise, we will respond to this Request for Information (RFI) in due course as we’ve done with 80+ other RFIs from the Guild in recent years,” Rhoades Ha said.

The Times Guild is currently bargaining a new contract, pushing for robust protections against AI, like requirements that a human is behind any AI tool being used, that any journalism utilizing AI is transparently labeled, and that staff are compensated for AI model training deals the company might make. The Times deploys artificial intelligence tools for some reporting, like using it to parse millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein or scan satellite images of Gaza to try to find where Israel had dropped a specific kind of bomb. [...] [Ben Harnett, a software engineer at the Times and chair of the unit’s generative AI committee] emphasizes that the unit’s position is not that AI shouldn’t ever be used, but that workers should have a say in how it’s deployed. Metrics like how many tokens an employee uses or how often they’re using AI to do their jobs create pressure to do more and incentives that don’t align with doing quality work. “It’s going to distract [you] from actually doing a good job, which is what we think the company should want,” he says.

Submission + - Microsoft tries reassuring the public that AI is not replacing humanity (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft has published a new research paper arguing that AI systems are not replacing human intelligence, but instead extending structures already rooted in human cognition and language. The paper claims large language models work because they absorb and remix patterns humans have embedded into writing and communication over generations, not because the systems possess true understanding or consciousness. Microsoft also points to hallucinations and reasoning failures as evidence that current AI still lacks real-world grounding and compositional reasoning comparable to humans.

The company additionally pushes back on fears of âoerogue AI,â arguing the larger risk comes from humans deploying flawed AI systems irresponsibly at scale. Critics, however, may see the paper as an attempt to calm public anxiety while the tech industry aggressively integrates AI into workplaces and software ecosystems. Microsoft repeatedly emphasizes the need for governance, safeguards, monitoring, and operational controls around AI systems, which also happens to align closely with its growing enterprise AI and Azure business.

Submission + - Tech CEOs Are Apparently Suffering From AI Psychosis (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There is a certain wildness in the tech industry these days that both mimics previous eras of large changes, like cloud computing (runaway costs in the early days), and is like nothing we’ve ever seen before (record revenues accompanied by mass layoffs). One possible explanation: tech executives, especially CEOs, are collectively suffering from delusions of AI grandeur. And at least one tech CEO has said as much out loud: Box founder Aaron Levie.

“CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis because they’re sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI,” Levie wrote on X. CEOs “play with AI,” develop a prototype, or generate a contract, to use Levie’s examples, and then make the leap to believing agents can do the work. But these top-level executives aren’t the people who have to review code, discover bugs, and identify calls to hallucinated libraries before software is deployed. They aren’t responsible for training AI models on a company’s idiosyncratic contract terms, nor do they have to spend days combing through contracts to find sneaky terms, as Levie indicates.

In other words, Levie’s theory posits, CEOs don’t really understand processes well enough to know what really can and can’t be automated. But that lack of knowledge doesn’t stop them from acting on their beliefs. [...] So what are CEOs to do instead? Levie advises CEOs to use AI “a ton” to really see what it can and can’t do, “and come out the other side with an appreciation for both the upside and the real work.”

Submission + - Starlink and Amazon May Be Able To Buy Into EU Mobile Satellite Spectrum Plan (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon's low-earth-orbit satellite business may be able to acquire some European mobile satellite spectrum next year, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. But they said two-thirds of the satellite spectrum that allows mobile devices and vehicles to communicate seamlessly even in remote locations, would be reserved for European companies.

U.S. companies Viasat and EchoStar (SATS.O) hold licenses that are due to expire in May 2027 and the European Commission has been considering how to allocate future spectrum at the same time as the bloc pushes to reduce reliance on U.S. tech. The European Union's IRIS2 multi-orbit array of 290 satellites, a response to Starlink, will be among the European companies to receive some spectrum, the sources said. British and Norwegian companies can also bid for a license, the people said. Details of the proposal, set to be announced on Wednesday, could still change at a meeting of commissioners on the day, one of the sources.

Submission + - Internet Starts Coming Back In Iran After Months-Long Blackout (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet access has started to be restored in Iran after being cut off almost three months ago, the country's first vice-president has said. "The first step toward free and regulated access to cyberspace has been taken," Mohammad Reza Aref wrote on X on Tuesday. Internet monitoring groups Netblocks and Kentik reported "partial" restoration around 13:00 GMT, though the latter warned most networks were still down.

The Iranian government cut internet access following the launch of US and Israeli attacks on February 28. Officials suggested the aim was to prevent surveillance, espionage and cyber-attacks. It is one of the longest-running national internet shutdowns ever recorded worldwide. A content creator from Tehran told the BBC that he had been able to connect to the internet using his home WiFi on Tuesday. "The main point is, some of my income will come back," he said.

Netblocks said it was unclear whether the internet return would be sustained, and told the BBC it was consistent with what it had seen when previous blackouts were lifted — where restoration could take hours. "Access is not universally back to its original state, with some regional variation," said the global internet tracker’s research director Isik Mater on Tuesday. She added that there were signs of "more extensive filtering" than prior to January — when a similar blackout was imposed during the regime's deadly crackdown on anti-government protests — "including additional restrictions to messaging apps like WhatsApp."

Submission + - Big Tech could make nearly $1 million from your data and you get nothing (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: A new report from the Web3 Foundation claims Big Tech and AI companies could generate as much as $831,497 in inflation-linked lifetime value from a single American internet user. The report argues that modern internet platforms are monetizing far more than targeted ads, with everything from search queries and shopping habits to chatbot prompts, uploaded images, location history, and behavioral data feeding AI systems and recommendation engines. Companies including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Anthropic are specifically mentioned as examples of firms benefiting from large-scale personal data collection.

While the report comes from a Web3 advocacy organization and should be viewed with some skepticism, its core argument may resonate with privacy critics and anti-AI users alike: the internet stopped being âoefreeâ a long time ago. The paper argues that AI has made user data even more valuable because human-generated content is now being used not only for advertising, but also to train increasingly capable machine learning systems. Meanwhile, ordinary users see little transparency, control, or financial participation in the value created from their digital lives.

Submission + - Code.org Co-Founder Pivots From K-12 CS and AI Education to Piano Lessons

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Not long after pivoting his tech-backed nonprofit Code.org's mission from K-12 CS education to include AI literacy late last year, Code.org Co-Founder Hadi Partovi announced he was officially stepping down as CEO of the tech-backed nonprofit, explaining: "For the past two years, I have been operating primarily as Chairman while Cameron handled CEO responsibilities. With Karim’s appointment, my title will be updated to better reflect my contributions and commitment to this organization as Chairman of the Board."

On Sunday, a CBS 60 Minutes segment and USA Today interview revealed Partovi's new passion project has been Payam Music, a small for-profit piano school that Partovi aims to take national as its President and CEO with investors including Mark Cuban, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston.

In a Sunday LinkedIn post, Partovi wrote: "I have a big career announcement: I’m taking my experience teaching computer science to hundreds of millions and connecting it to my lifelong love of piano. Announcing Payam Music: the first nationwide piano school, with a new way of teaching—the Payam Method—endorsed by Hans Zimmer and showcased on 60 MINUTES and USA TODAY. With Payam Music, students learn faster, they outperform traditional methods, and they even learn to write their own music. Every year our students rank nationally for their composition and creativity. If you’re worried about kids’ obsession with screens and social media, the solution is to give them a new obsession: piano. Proven over 10 years, the learning outcomes of the Payam Method are extraordinary, and so is the team behind it. Besides Hans Zimmer, we’re announcing the support of iconic business leaders including Mark Cuban, Dara Khosrowshahi, Michelle Zatlyn, Drew Houston, and many others. Payam Music is available in cities around the US and expanding rapidly. Our schools teach 1-on-1 lessons, in person and even online. We have limited spots, so if you or your child want to learn piano, sign up now! And if we don’t have a school near you, join our wait list, we’re growing fast."

Submission + - Of Course They Booed

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In Of Course They Booed, Audrey Watters takes a look at the chorus of boos greeting college commencement speakers who heralded the glorious AI future students are poised to step into:

And perhaps it’s a little ironic that this graduating class, a group that we've been told time and time again has spent the last four years using ChatGPT to cheat their way through college, would display such sour sentiment towards "AI." But as most commencement speakers seem duty-bound to repeat, graduation marks the entry into adulthood; it is "the beginning of your life"; "the future is now" – that sort of thing. And just these students are now officially adults, they’re being told a very different story: that there really is no future. There are no jobs. And whatever thing they might have learned to do or learned to love in college, whatever career they might have believed they were preparing for, "AI" is going to destroy all of that. No wonder they boo.

But the growing pushback against "AI," and the growing pushback against ed-tech more generally, is not simply a rejection of technology. These efforts are, as Astra Taylor and Saul Levin recently argued in The Guardian, a rejection of the profoundly anti-democratic practices that have pushed technologies into all aspects of our lives without our consent and often in the face of our outright opposition. These technologies have been marketed to us as solutions to all sorts of social problems — and have done so, in no small part, by bypassing and undermining the very public sphere in which debate and discussion can take place: schools, libraries, the arts, the media. The adoption of education technology, "AI" or otherwise, has been anti-democratic in practices both big and small. Despite all the talk of progressive education and ed-tech, it has been experienced as something else entirely. Throughout the country for the past few decades Gates (via the Gates Foundation), other billionaire philanthropists, and giant companies have shaped education funding and policy through a combination of technology and testing.

At one point, perhaps, people were willing to welcome devices into schools, into the classroom. They believed the stories, not just that "this is the future," but that future meant something better for everyone. “Access” signaled equality. But as the tech billionaires have embraced authoritarianism and inequality, and as their apocalyptic rhetoric about not just the "end of work," but quite literally the end of the world grows louder and louder — all while they amass more wealth than anyone in history — it is quite apparent that their promises about the future do not include us. Their vision of future does not make any space or allowance for our children to choose their own futures.

Submission + - US To Award $2 Billion To Quantum Companies, Take Equity Stakes (thequantuminsider.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Trump administration is preparing a new round of industrial policy aimed at quantum computing, with roughly $2 billion in grants expected to go to nine companies developing quantum hardware and related technologies. According to Reuters, citing a Wall Street Journal report, the U.S. Department of Commerce plans to distribute the funding through deals that also give the federal government equity stakes in the companies receiving the awards. The approach would expand Washington’s increasingly direct involvement in sectors viewed as strategically important to national security, advanced manufacturing and competition with China.

Reuters reported that IBM is expected to receive the largest share of the package at about $1 billion. Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries is slated to receive approximately $375 million, according to the report. Other recipients are expected to include D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Quantinuum and Infleqtion, with each company potentially receiving around $100 million, Reuters reported. Australian quantum startup Diraq could receive about $38 million, according to the Wall Street Journal report cited by Reuters.

Submission + - Christians are turning to AI for spiritual guidance (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: A new study from Barna Group and Gloo suggests artificial intelligence is becoming a surprisingly influential spiritual tool for many Americans, including practicing Christians. According to the research, one in three adults now believes AI-generated spiritual guidance can be just as trustworthy as advice from a pastor. Among Millennials, that number climbs to 44 percent. The study also found many Christians are already using AI for Bible study, prayer assistance, personal growth, and finding meaning or purpose in life.

At the same time, many respondents expressed concern about where this trend could lead. Large majorities worried AI could misinterpret scripture, weaken religious faith, replace pastors, or even act as a substitute for God. Critics argue that while AI may be useful for studying religious texts or organizing information, it lacks wisdom, morality, lived experience, and genuine understanding. The findings raise uncomfortable questions about whether society is beginning to hand increasingly personal and spiritual responsibilities over to algorithms created by tech companies.

Submission + - Code.org, Microsoft Celebrate Georgia's New CS + AI Graduation Requirement

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: From tech-bankrolled nonprofit Code.org's Tuesday LinkedIn post boasting that Georgia just made AI and CS education the law: "Georgia is now our 14th CS [high school] graduation requirement state, and the 3rd to legislate AI as part of that requirement. Governor Brian Kemp signed SB 179 into law today. Years of work. Countless conversations. Real results. [...] And a special thank you to the Technology Association of Georgia and Microsoft, whose partnership was instrumental in making this happen. [...] AI and CS education for every student. One state at a time."

Microsoft State Government Affairs employees threw the partnership love right back at Code.org with their own LinkedIn posts, saying: "At Microsoft, we’re proud to support this milestone. SB 179 positions Georgia as a national leader in workforce innovation, expanding access to computer science and AI education to build a durable, diverse talent pipeline aligned with the demands of a modern digital economy. This approach reflects Microsoft’s commitment to advancing responsible, transparent, and secure AI, and reinforces the importance of early education in shaping how the next generation develops and uses technology. Grateful for the leadership and partnership that made this possible."

The Bill specifies that "grants shall be provided to eligible entities to deliver professional development programs for teachers providing instruction in computer science courses and content," explaining that "'High-quality professional learning providers' means institutions of higher education in this state, local school systems, nonprofit organizations, or private entities," which would seem to include Code.org, Code.org's higher education Regional Partners, and Microsoft.

While the legislation celebration may begin in 2026, the Bill notes the Class of 2037 will be the first whose graduation is impacted by the new requirement: "Each local board of education shall require all students who will graduate in 2037 or later, as a condition of graduation from high school, to complete a course in computer science or a career, technical, and agricultural education (CTAE) course embedded with computer science which meets the requirements provided in subparagraph (B) of this paragraph".

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