Lifeboat Foundation

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon.com, Inc. alleging that the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power. The FTC and its state partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.

The complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging. By stifling competition on price, product selection, quality, and by preventing its current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of shoppers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance. Amazon’s far-reaching schemes impact hundreds of billions of dollars in retail sales every year, touch hundreds of thousands of products sold by businesses big and small and affect over a hundred million shoppers.

“Our complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The complaint sets forth detailed allegations noting how Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them. Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.”

With the growth of the commercial spaceflight business comes new ethical issues about human experimentation.

The expansion of the commercial spaceflight sector opens new avenues for scientific study in the unique environment of space.

However, it also raises ethical concerns about the conduct of scientific experiments and studies involving human volunteers on commercial spaceflights.

Meet AV1, the mini robot that goes to the zoo or school for sick children who can’t.

Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/reuterssubscribe.

Continue reading “This robot helps beat loneliness for sick children” »

WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) — The founder of Branch Metrics, which developed a method of searching within smartphone apps, told a U.S. antitrust trial on Wednesday how his company struggled to integrate with devices because of steps Google took to block them.

The testimony came during the third week of a more than two-month trial in which the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to show that Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) abused its monopoly of search and some search advertising. Google has said that its business practices were legal.

Google is accused of paying $10 billion a year based on “revenue share agreements” to smartphone makers, wireless carriers and others who agree to make its software the default and maintain its monopoly in search.

A high-energy laser weapon developed by Raytheon is now operationally ready and will be integrated onto the UK’s Wolfhound military vehicle from next month.

Wolfhound armoured vehicle with laser weapon system. Credit: Raytheon UK

Raytheon UK is set to receive its first high-energy laser weapon system to be tested and integrated in the United Kingdom, marking a significant advancement in the understanding of how such systems can be fielded. Raytheon UK is the British unit of RTX’s Raytheon business.

Bill Gates is a staunch advocate for nuclear energy, and although he no longer oversees day-to-day operations at Microsoft, its business strategy still mirrors the sentiment. According to a new job listing first spotted on Tuesday by The Verge, the tech company is currently seeking a “principal program manager” for nuclear technology tasked with “maturing and implementing a global Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and microreactor energy strategy.” Once established, the nuclear energy infrastructure overseen by the new hire will help power Microsoft’s expansive plans for both cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Among the many, many, (many) concerns behind AI technology’s rapid proliferation is the amount of energy required to power such costly endeavors—a worry exacerbated by ongoing fears pertaining to climate collapse. Microsoft believes nuclear power is key to curtailing the massive amounts of greenhouse emissions generated by fossil fuel industries, and has made that belief extremely known in recent months.

[Related: Microsoft thinks this startup can deliver on nuclear fusion by 2028.].

Professor Nita Farahany reveals to Azeem Azhar the startling advancements of brain-scanning technology and the extraordinary implications this tech has for privacy and humanity.

——-
Like this video? Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg?sub_confirmation=1
Become a Quicktake Member for exclusive perks: https://www.youtube.com/bloomberg/join.

Continue reading “Inside Mind-Reading AI” »

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, plotting a comeback for the once-dominant chipmaker, made the case that the company’s technology will be vital to an industrywide boom in artificial intelligence computing.

Speaking at Intel’s annual Innovation conference, Gelsinger pointed to advances that his company is making in production technology and software developer tools for AI. The opportunity will only grow as more artificial intelligence capabilities are powered by personal computers, he said.

“AI represents a generational shift, giving rise to a new era of global expansion where computing is even more foundational to a better future for all,” Gelsinger said. “For developers, this creates massive societal and business opportunities to push the boundaries of what’s possible, to create solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.”

Someone has made it. LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Self-driving technology company Wayve has launched LINGO-1, a first-of-its-kind vision-language-action model (VLAM) for self-driving that is set to revolutionise the learning and explainability of its AI Driver technology powering self-driving vehicles.

Prior to LINGO-1, end-to-end AI neural nets have been criticised as black boxes, providing limited insight into why and how they make decisions. Gaining deeper insight into the decision-making and reasoning capabilities of its AI models is critical to ensuring that Wayve can build a safe driving intelligence for self-driving. Wayve’s LINGO-1 opens up new capabilities to dramatically enhance the interpretability of Wayve’s AI Driver.

https://wayve.ai/

Continue reading “Robot car talk: Introducing Wayve’s new AI model LINGO-1” »