The Tech Jawn

New York City’s city governance chatbot instructs citizens to break the law in some cases and government officials are a bit miffed journalists are telling the public about it.A University of North Georgia student says she was falsely accused of using AI to write a paper when she in fact only used Grammarly to spell-check it at the suggestion of her college professors.A Washington State Lottery interactive web app was pulled down after it used AI to place a woman’s headshot on an image of a topless woman in bed.And Meta’s AI-based Image generator appears to have a really hard time creating images of East Asian men and women with people of other ethnicities. Link to Show Notes

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences illustrates how AI fails to detect depression signs in social media posts by Black Americans as compared to their white counterparts. Joel Bervell, a.k.a., the Medical Mythbuster, has been saving lives by tackling racial and gender disparities in healthcare via social media.X tests and confirms plans for new Not Safe for Work (NSFW) Communities that may have it competing with sites like Only Fans. And New York City is starting a gun scanning program in subways even though the CEO of the company whose technology is being used says it is a bad idea. Link to Show Notes

The U.S. Department of Justice and 15 states accuse Apple of monopolizing the smartphone market in a landmark antitrust lawsuit. Online recruiting site Glassdoor abruptly changed its terms of service and has started adding users’ personally identifiable information to their profiles without consent. Florida Governor Ron Desantis signs a bill preventing children under 14 from signing up for social media accountsAnd are screenless AI devices like the CES hit Rabbit a solution looking for a problem?  Maybe, but, the $199 price tag makes it not matter so much.Link to Show Notes

The Federal Government is really pushing hard for TikTok to be sold.  There is overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, The President will sign a bill if it comes across his desk, and the full court press is on in the Senate.Apple is in talks with Google to let Gemini Power AI features on the upcoming iPhone.The Don Lemon Show having its distribution contract canceled by Elon Musk may have done more for the show than if everything had gone off without a hitch.And Pittsburgh-based Black Tech Nation Ventures just closed on a $50 million fund to make the city a haven for Black technologists.Link to Show Notes

Congress and the Whitehouse appear to be for real for real contemplating banning TikTok in the US if its parent company, ByteDance, does not sell the social media platform to a company based outside of China.Trump supporters attempt to swoon Black voters with AI-generated images of President Trump surrounded by Black people.Will Black Twitter watch the Black Twitter documentary?  That we don’t know.  We do know that Black folks are going to keep calling it Black Twitter regardless if Twitter is now called X.And most teens aren’t worried at all about their social media use.  Did we actually think they would be?Link to Show Notes

Microsoft’s Copilot calls itself the Joker and suggests self-harm to a Meta data scientist.Tesla must face a class-action lawsuit from nearly 6000 Black workers for racial discrimination at its Fremont, CA, plant.Apple was hit with first-ever EU fine totaling nearly $2 billion five years after Spotify complained about its App Store practices.And humanoid robots named Digit debut in a Seattle Amazon warehouse.Link to Show Notes