• Digital ministers from the Group of Seven — Britain, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — agreed their nations should adopt “risk-based” regulations on artificial intelligence with the goal of preserving “an open and enabling environment” based on democratic values for the development of the emerging technologies. The ministers, who met in Takasaki, Japan, ahead of this year’s G-7 Summit, acknowledged that policy approaches may differ across countries but set a landmark for how AI will be governed. (Reuters)
  • Morning Consult data found nearly 3 in 5 U.S. adults support an international agreement on the use and governance of AI and nearly 2 in 3 back the creation of shared safety protocols for the technology. 
• As the Writers Guild of America and other unions representing actors, directors and other Hollywood figures prepare to negotiate new contracts with TV and movie studios, they will aim to provide protections that seek to regulate the use of material produced by generative AI tools, including AI-generated scripts, sounds and images. There are concerns among Hollywood workers that tools like ChatGPT and AI capable of impersonating human speech could displace writers, voice actors and others, and some studio contracts already appear to claim the right to use a performer’s voice to generate new content. (The New York Times)
• Arm Ltd., a British semiconductor company owned by SoftBank Group, filed for a U.S. stock market listing and is expected to pursue an initial public offering later this year. The company will seek to raise between $8 billion and $10 billion for its listing and will sell shares on Nasdaq, according to people familiar with the matter, though a price range for its IPO has not yet been determined. (Reuters)
• The Biden administration said it has evidence that several dozen small technology companies colluded to improve the odds that their workers would win an H-1B visa through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ lottery system by entering the same applicants multiple times. There are 781,000 entries for 85,000 visa slots this year, but about 408,000 entries were submitted by just 96,000 people, according to a notice to employers viewed by The Wall Street Journal. (The Wall Street Journal)

Happening today: 

• The Broadband Communities Summit kicks off in The Woodlands, Texas. Speakers include Public Knowledge co-founder and former Federal Communications Commission staff member Gigi Sohn; and Andy Berke, administrator of Rural Utilities Services (RUS) at the Department of Agriculture.

Big Tech earnings resilient as sector gears up for AI boom

Financial Times

Big Tech Earnings Spark Hope That Worst Is Over

Meghan Bobrowsky, The Wall Street Journal

Shares rise on better-than-expected results, but growth lags behind what Microsoft, Amazon and Google did in past.

Investors bet on shrinking pool of tech stocks as rally narrows

Nicolas Megaw and Katie Martin, Financial Times

S&P500 rises 8 per cent this year, but vast majority of gains were delivered by just seven stocks.

Sony shares tumble on weaker-than-expected annual outlook

Kiyoshi Takenaka, Reuters

 Sony Group Corp’s shares fell as much as 4.8% on Monday after the Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate’s annual profit outlook fell short of market expectations.

Microsoft signs 10-year deal with Spain’s Nware after UK blocks Activision bid

Tiyashi Datta, Reuters

Microsoft Corp said on Friday it signed a 10-year deal with Nware to bring Xbox and Activision Blizzard games to the Spanish cloud-gaming platform, days after Britain blocked its $69 billion buyout of the “Call of Duty” maker.

Apple Drops Suit Against Ex-Chip Exec Williams Who Started Nuvia

Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg

Apple Inc. dropped its lawsuit against a former chip executive the company sued for allegedly poaching its employees for a startup. 

Google Cloud boss Kurian’s rocky path to profit: ‘We were not in a very good situation’

Jordan Novet, CNBC

Kurian told CNBC that Google’s cloud business focused on making its data center operations more efficient while also investing in customer success.

US judge denies Google’s motion to dismiss advertising antitrust case

Diane Bartz, Reuters

A U.S. federal judge on Friday denied Google’s motion to dismiss a Department of Justice antitrust case focused on advertising technology, saying the government’s case was strong enough to go forward.

Carmakers raise concerns at Chinese dominance over connectivity patents

Patricia Nilsson and Anna Gross, Financial Times

Led by Huawei, Chinese groups are filing patents around the tech that enables products to access the internet.

‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead

Cade Metz, The New York Times

For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm.

ChatGPT Will See You Now: Doctors Using AI to Answer Patient Questions

Nidhi Subbaraman, The Wall Street Journal

Pilot program aims to see if AI will cut time that medical staff spend replying to online inquiries.

OpenAI Threatens Popular GitHub Project With Lawsuit Over API Use

Avram Piltch, Tom’s Hardware

A GitHub project called GPT4free allows you to get free access to the GPT4 and GPT3.5 models by funneling those queries through sites like You.com, Quora and CoCalc and giving you back the answers. Now, according to Xtekky, the European computer science student who runs the repo, OpenAI has sent a letter demanding that he take the whole thing down within five days or face a lawsuit.

AI Chatbots Have Been Used to Create Dozens of News Content Farms

Davey Alba, Bloomberg

A new report documents 49 new websites populated by AI tools like ChatGPT and posing as news outlets.

Microsoft makes its AI-powered Designer tool available in preview

Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch

Microsoft Designer, Microsoft’s AI-powered design tool, launched in public preview with an expanded set of features.

German Labor Minister Sees AI Creating More Jobs Than It Kills

Aggi Cantrill, Bloomberg

German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil said he believes artificial intelligence will eventually create more jobs than it kills, while also helping to alleviate a labor shortage in the country. 

Tech earnings calls show mega-cap companies going big on A.I. as they cut costs elsewhere

Kif Leswing, CNBC

In calls with analysts this week, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta emphasized their hefty investments in large language models.

Behind EU lawmakers’ challenge to rein in ChatGPT and generative AI

Martin Coulter and Supantha Mukherjee, Reuters

Interviews with four lawmakers and two other sources close to discussions reveal for the first time how over just 11 days this small group of politicians hammered out what could become landmark legislation, reshaping the regulatory landscape for OpenAI and its competitors.

Chatbots Are Digesting the Internet. The Internet Wants to Get Paid.

Christopher Mims, The Wall Street Journal

Artificial-intelligence companies are using content created by millions of people, without their consent or any compensation. Some tech and media companies are beginning to ask for payment.

EU tech tsar Vestager sees political agreement on AI law this year

Kantaro Komiya, Reuters

The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world’s first major artificial intelligence (AI) law, the bloc’s tech regulation chief Margrethe Vestager said on Sunday.

GAO wants FCC to explain 25/3 Mbps broadband benchmark

Diana Goovaerts, Fierce Telecom

Is 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream fast enough for today’s consumers? Who knows! A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hasn’t really done a great job of explaining whether and why its current 25/3 Mbps broadband standard remains sufficient.

iOS 16.5 for iPhone Coming Soon With Two New Features

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple made the third beta of iOS 16.5 available to developers and public testers earlier this week. So far, only two new features and changes have been discovered for the iPhone, including a Sports tab in the Apple News app and the ability to start a screen recording with Siri. 

Chinese hackers outnumber FBI cyber staff 50 to 1, bureau director says

Lauren Feiner, CNBC

U.S. cyber intelligence staff is vastly outnumbered by Chinese hackers, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray told Congress as he pleaded for more money for the agency.

Social-Media Shopping Scams Are Growing. Young Adults Are the Targets.

Cordilia James and Julie Jargon, The Wall Street Journal

Scammers in search of money and credit-card information are exploiting more young people on their home turf of social media.

Amid concerns about TikTok, Commerce details effort to secure U.S. data

David Shepardson and Alexandra Alper, Reuters

The Biden administration outlined efforts this week to address growing U.S. national security concerns on foreign companies’ handling of Americans’ data.

Jack Dorsey criticizes Elon Musk’s leadership at Twitter: ‘It all went south’

Ashley Capoot, CNBC

Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey openly criticized Elon Musk’s leadership of the company in a series of social media posts Friday.

He blew the whistle on Trump’s Truth Social. Now he works at Starbucks.

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post

The former high-ranking executive of Trump’s media company says he’s shared 150,000 internal documents with federal investigators. Many of his new strip-mall coworkers have no idea who he is.

Brazil court lifts Telegram suspension for not complying with order on neo-Nazi groups

Rodrigo Viga Gaier, Reuters

Brazil’s second instance appeals court lifted on Saturday the suspension of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, imposed earlier this week for its noncompliance in sharing information about extremist and neo-Nazi groups using the platform.

States’ Push to Protect Kids Online Could Remake the Internet

Natasha Singer, The New York Times

People in Louisiana who visited Pornhub in recent months were met with a surprising new demand. Before they could stream sexually explicit videos, they had to provide proof that they were at least 18.

Twitter will let media publishers charge per article starting in May

Thomas Ricker, The Verge

Full-time Twitter CEO and part-time Tesla enthusiast Elon Musk said on Saturday that users of his social media platform will be able to avoid media subscriptions and pay per article starting “next month.”

Elon Musk rolls out paywall for Twitter’s data

Hannah Murphy, Financial Times

Company will now charge developers and companies to access its API in latest bid for fresh revenues beyond advertising.

Twitter to take 10% cut on content subscriptions after 12 months

Akash Sriram, Reuters

Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that the social media platform will take a 10% cut on content subscriptions after the first year, as the company looks to monetize content on the website in a bid to diversify its revenue sources.

Wikipedia will not perform Online Safety Bill age checks

Chris Vallance and Tom Gerken, BBC News

Wikipedia will not comply with any age checks required under the Online Safety Bill, its foundation says. Rebecca MacKinnon, of the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the website, says it would “violate our commitment to collect minimal data about readers and contributors”.

Lyft Calls Workers Back to the Office Three Days a Week

Diana Li, Bloomberg

Lyft Inc.’s new chief executive officer told employees to prepare for a series of changes, including returning to the office, the New York Times reported. 

How Mark Zuckerberg broke Meta’s workforce

Naomi Nix, The Washington Post

Roiled by waves of layoffs and a costly investment in the metaverse, many insiders say the Facebook founder has lost his vision — and the trust of his workforce.