Pinterest sacks two engineers for creating software to identify fired workers
Pinterest has fired two engineers who created a software tool to identify which workers had lost their jobs in a recent round of cuts and then shared the information, according to reports,The digital pinboard business announced significant job cuts earlier this month, with the chief executive, Bill Ready, telling staff he was “doubling down on an AI-forward approach”, according to a LinkedIn post by a former employee,Pinterest, which is based in San Francisco and has an office in London, said the cuts would affect about 15% of its workforce, or about 700 people, but did not specify which teams or staff members would be affected,Two engineers at the company then wrote code to identify sacked staff,A spokesperson for Pinterest said: “Two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly.
This was a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues’ privacy.”It is unclear whether the engineers, who have not been named, shared the information with colleagues, or with people outside Pinterest.The script – a set of commands written to automate a task within existing software or change its function – was aimed at internal tools for workers to communicate, the BBC reported, citing an anonymous source.The source, who the BBC said was “familiar with the firings”, said the code created an alert as to which employee names were being removed or deactivated.Pinterest has been investing heavily in AI to create more personalised content for its users and automated tools for marketers.
But shares in the company have dropped by more than 20% this year as investors assess the threat from more advanced AI platforms.Ready said in a company-wide meeting that while “healthy debate and dissent are expected, that’s how we make our decisions”, according to CNBC, which first reported the news.The chief executive said Pinterest was facing a “critical moment” and that staff should consider a job elsewhere if they were “working against the direction of the company” and disagreed with its mission, CNBC reported.It comes amid a wave of job cuts in the techy sector, as businesses increasingly rely on AI.Last week, Amazon announced it would cut 16,000 roles worldwide, its second round of redundancies in three months.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it would cut more than 1,000 jobs from its Reality Labs division to redirect resources to AI wearables and phone features,Meanwhile, Autodesk, a design software maker, announced plans this month to cut about 1,000 jobs,
French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit
Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.It said in a statement that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for “voluntary questioning” in April in their capacity as “de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino resigned as chief executive of X in July last year.The French prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firms
From ‘nerdy’ Gemini to ‘edgy’ Grok: how developers are shaping AI behaviours
Do you want an AI assistant that gushes about how it “loves humanity” or one that spews sarcasm? How about a political propagandist ready to lie? If so, ChatGPT, Grok and Qwen are at your disposal.Companies that create AI assistants, from the US to China, are increasingly wrestling with how to mould their characters, and it is no abstract debate. This month Elon Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” Grok AI caused international outrage when it pumped out millions of sexualised images. In October OpenAI retrained ChatGPT to de-escalate conversations with people in mental health distress after it appeared to encourage a 16-year-old to take his own life.Last week, the $350bn San Francisco startup Anthropic released an 84-page “constitution” for its Claude AI
UK privacy watchdog opens inquiry into X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes
Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people’s consent.The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law.It said the creation and circulation of the images on social media raised serious concerns under the UK’s data regime, such as whether “appropriate safeguards were built into Grok’s design and deployment”.The move came after French prosecutors raided the Paris headquarters of X as part of an investigation into alleged offences including the spreading of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes.X became the subject of heavy public criticism in December and January when the platform’s account for the Grok AI tool was used to mass-produce partially nudified images of girls and women
Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies
European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.Shares in the UK publishing group Pearson fell by nearly 8% on the news, and shares in the information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%. The software company Sage lost 10% in London and the Dutch software company Wolters Kluwer lost 13% in Amsterdam.Shares in the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 13% and the credit reporting company Experian dropped by 7% in London, amid fears over the impact of AI on data companies
Disastrous start for US TikTok as users cry censorship
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you from Doha, where I’m moderating panels about AI and investing as part of the Web Summit Qatar.I want to bring your attention to the impact of a Guardian story. In December, we published a story, “‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases”, about grieving families and law enforcement officers who say that Meta and Snapchat have slowed down criminal investigations. (The tech companies contend that they cooperate
‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report
The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu.Here are some of the key points from the second annual report, published on Tuesday. It stresses that it is a state-of-play document, rather than a vehicle for making specific policy recommendations to governments
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