Twenty-year-old to testify at US trial about harm from social media addiction

For the first time, a jury will hear testimony this week from a young woman who alleges social media companies intentionally create addictive products, harming children. The witness taking the stand, known by her initials KGM, is the lead plaintiff in an expansive lawsuit against Meta – which owns Instagram and Facebook – and YouTube currently at trial in Los Angeles.KGM, who is now 20, alleges that she became addicted to social media apps before she was 10 and would spend hours every day scrolling through photos and videos. This led to years of mental health issues, according to her lawyers and court documents.KGM is expected to testify about how her constant use of social media led to depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia

Nvidia quarterly earnings show immunity to AI bubble fears as it cashes in on datacenter boom

Nvidia released its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, with the chipmaker revealing higher than expected revenues and extending its yearslong streak of surpassing Wall Street’s sky-high expectations.The company receives the vast majority of its revenue from its data center business, which has been buoyed by the tech industry’s immense investment into AI infrastructure. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported 75% year-over-year growth of this vertical to $62.3bn. The world’s most valuable publicly traded company, Nvidia has dominated the chip market as its processing units have become the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom

Top US body-camera maker reports record revenue amid Trump immigration crackdown

The largest body-camera maker in the US celebrated its latest financial results on Tuesday – reporting record revenue and forecasting major growth – as it prepares to cash in on the Department of Homeland Security’s planned rapid acquisition and deployment of these devices nationwide.In Tuesday’s earnings presentation, body-camera maker Axon, which also makes the well-known Taser device, announced that it blew past Wall Street expectations with $797m in revenue, up 39% year-over-year.The company attributed its growth to the offerings of its “AI era plan”, which includes a voice-activated companion for its body cameras. Executives also outlined a “major opportunity” for working with federal law enforcement in the year to come, in particular: body cameras and software licenses for the DHS.Asked by investors about his biggest worries, CEO Rick Smith said: “A misstep around privacy and data handling

Meta’s AI sending ‘junk’ tips to DoJ, US child abuse investigators say

Meta’s use of artificial intelligence software to moderate its social media platforms is generating large volumes of useless reports about cases of child sexual abuse, which are draining resources and hindering investigations, said officers from the US Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) taskforce.“We get a lot of tips from Meta that are just kind of junk,” Benjamin Zwiebel, a special agent with the ICAC taskforce in New Mexico, said last week during his testimony in the state’s trial against Meta. The state’s attorney general alleges the company’s platforms are putting profits over child safety. Meta disputes these allegations, citing changes it has introduced on its platforms, such as teen accounts with default protections. The ICAC taskforce is a nationwide network of law enforcement agencies coordinated with the US Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute online child exploitation and abuse cases

Treasury calls in Blair thinktank to advise on using AI across public services

Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.“These people are exactly who can help us create change across the public sector – giving us the hard truths on our approach to AI and advising where we need to prioritise our investment to support real efficiencies,” said Murray, who added that their advice will “feed into efficiency processes ahead of the next spending review”.The move came after the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, last month said the government’s goal was to “make Britain the fastest AI adoption country in the G7”.The Treasury said it showed it was committing “to private sector engagement on the deployment of artificial intelligence across the public sector so it can improve efficiency and productivity”

Facial recognition error prompts police to arrest Asian man for burglary 100 miles away

Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in Southampton in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am.Thames Valley police had used automated facial recognition software which matched him with footage of a suspect of a £3,000 burglary 100 miles away in Milton Keynes, according to documents shared with the Guardian by Liberty Investigates.But the CCTV footage showed a noticeably younger man with different features apart from similar curly hair, said Choudhury, who was left confused about why he had been arrested.“I was very angry, because the kid looked about 10 years younger than me,” said Choudhury, who wears a beard