If you can divert the blame, always divert the blame is what comes to mind hearing that nearly 200 school districts in Oakland, California have joined the litigation against the parent companies of Facebook [META], TikTok [ByteDance], Snapchat [SNAP], and YouTube [Google]. They're joined by hundreds of law suits by families alleging harms to their children from social media.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers are even pitching school boards throughout the country to file lawsuits against social-media companies on allegations that their apps cause classroom disciplinary problems and mental-health issues, diverting resources from education.
I shake my head at this, and feel it’s another diversion of blame by the first “entitled generation that can’t do wrong.” Because it's apparently not the primary responsibility of parents to check on their children’s social media activities, or a schools responsibility to educate and inform their students about risks and benefits while limit school time availability. Right? …so of course, divert the blame.
Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube naturally seek to dismiss the federal suits, citing an internet liability shield, and the ruling is coming up very soon. Let's see who does get the last blame in this game…
X isn't first as X, but we all know that. The X as a full or partial logo or part of a product name, etc have been around forever. That Elon Musk has a fixation with the shape and form is also abundantly clear. He wanted to re-name the company now known as PayPal to X over 20 years ago, and he already had the company name X.com to build on.
The focus groups used in that process showed that the name X.com conjured up visions of “a seedy site you would not talk about in polite company,” if you know what I mean. Naturally Musk’s vision for this would not last long. Peter Thiel and another PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin, orchestrated a coup against Musk and ousted him from the company. A very smart move if you ask me. Thiel then formally renamed the combined company PayPal in 2001, and the rest is history.
As Twitter began removing its name from its corporate headquarters earlier this week, critics and marketing experts noted that the move is an unnecessary gamble on a hazy future for a platform that had wide brand recognition from its blue bird logo. I can only agree, and I think the downward spiral Twitter entered when Musk took over will continue at an even faster pace. In addition to the well known logo and blue color, the word Tweet is also recognized as a noun - “a post made on the Twitter online message service” - and as a verb with the meaning “to make a posting on the Twitter online message service : to post a tweet.” You can’t really replace those things with a flip of a switch.
The newly installed CEO Linda Yaccarino, that started on June 5, 2023, haven’t publicly commented the re-branding as far as I know, and I can only assume she’s all onboard with the change. Critics on Twitter, including myself, have also joked that the logo for the re-branded company X — one that Musk want to make into an “everything app” — is indistinguishable from the logos of several pornography sites. So much so that some countries, like Indonesia, have blocked the new X.com because of it’s association with pornography. Try a Google search and see for yourself.
The history kind of repeat itself, doesn’t it…
The nine robots presented at the press conference held at the AI For Good Summit (July 6-7, 2023) said they expected to increase in number and help solve global problems, and that they would not steal humans' jobs or rebel against us. Somehow I feel I’ve heard that before… Wasn’t there a movie, “I, Robot” (2004), where the AI robots said almost exactly this?
The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading action-oriented United Nations platform promoting AI to advance health, climate, gender, inclusive prosperity, sustainable infrastructure, and other global development priorities. Humanoid robots gathered together with a number of other robots and robotics, as well as developers, researchers, and other professionals at the AI for Good Summit, seeking to make the case for artificial intelligence, and the robots it is powering, to help resolve some of the world's biggest challenges such as disease and hunger. A noble cause indeed.
But, in the world's first human-robot press conference, the robots themselves gave mixed responses on whether they should submit to stricter regulation. I am not sure if that was intentional programming to play a little with those afraid of the powers AI robots could get, or if it was a naturally generated response from an AI that partially learn from human interaction and therefore can be expected to give very human like answers. The former would be hilariously sneaky but not at all surprising, these developers have a wicked sense of humor sometimes. I am following these developments with great interest and will return with more on the topic.
I want to end this newsletter on a positive note. A recent study conducted by UCLA sociologist Giovanni Rossi and an international team of collaborators found that small acts of kindness are very frequent and occur universally, with people helping and requesting help every few minutes.
“While cultural variation comes into play for special occasions and high-cost exchange, when we zoom in on the micro level of social interaction, cultural difference mostly goes away, and our species’ tendency to give help when needed becomes universally visible,” Rossi said about the findings of the study.
The team examined behaviors in towns and rural areas in several different countries, and revealed that people comply with small requests for help far more often than they decline them. And when people decline to help they often offer an explanation to why.
Kindness matters - and it’s clearly a common denominator for humans all over the world. That’s a comforting thought, and a nice end to this weeks newsletter.
I choose the uncensored - you should too.
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