The reckoning may be coming for Big Tech companies from the Department of Justice. The U.S. Department of Justice launched a massive antitrust investigation of Big Tech and whether they engage in anti-competitive behavior on Tuesday July 23. The Wall Street Journal described this as an incoming “threat for companies such as Facebook Inc., Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.” It cited the review will specifically target platforms that dominate “internet search, social media and retail services.”
The municipal government in New York City has made no secret of the war they’ve been waging against gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft for the past several years. They’ve passed one bill after another designed to support their traditional donors in the taxi industry and their unions, making it increasingly difficult for ride-sharing drivers to make a living. But what impact is that having on the community? Uber has been looking into it and found (to nobody’s surprise) that it’s the poorest New Yorkers, particularly in minority communities who are paying the price. (NY Post)
The San Francisco company says city and state regulations reining in ride-hailing services like Uber are only making life difficult for lower income neighborhoods — while having zero impact on more affluent New York City riders.
“The data suggests that the TLC’s regulations may be impacting low-income New Yorkers, especially in communities that are poorly served by yellow taxis,” Chad Dobbs, Uber’s head of rides in the city, told The Post.
Dobb’s statement comes ahead of a hearing before the Taxi Limousine Commission Tuesday to consider more regulations, including extending the current NYC freeze on for-hire vehicles.
Wage requirements and other regulations have driven up the minimum cost of taking an Uber or Lyft in the city considerably. On top of that, the government passed a freeze on the addition of any new for-hire vehicles. As drivers drop out, this leads to fewer cars being available, so surge pricing often goes into effect, driving up costs further. The result is that affluent riders probably don’t notice it all that much, but low income, economically disadvantaged residents are being priced out of the system.
As a result, Uber says that the number of rides being requested in lower-income neighborhoods has grown only three percent in the past year while affluent regions have seen growth of 50% or more.
It’s not as if getting a ride in some of the city’s rougher neighborhoods was easy to begin with. There are areas with higher crime levels where the yellow cabs simply refuse to go for pickup or drop off of passengers. Ride-hailing drivers are more likely to venture into those neighborhoods because they’re not be randomly flagged down by unknown individuals who may be waiting to rob them. Riders have to have a registered account on their phone, so they are less likely to commit a crime in the car with their name on the system’s record of ride requests.
The result of all this is that too many people have a hard time getting a ride. And if you can’t predictably find transportation to get back and forth, it’s kind of hard to hold down a job, adding to the economic woes many of these communities already suffer under.
So who exactly is benefitting from this dogpile of new regulations being hurled at Uber and Lyft? It’s not the city’s poorest residents. It’s the cab companies, their unions and their lobbyists who have the ear of the Mayor and the City Council. And they pay richly for that access. It might be nice if someone pointed all of this out during next year’s elections in the Big Apple.
Ministers and candidates for Cabinet are set to walk through the door of 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister Boris Johnson appoints his government.
A dozen ministers have already been fired or resigned. As well as Remainers leaving government, some Brexiteers, a number of which who backed May’s deal or Johnson’s leadership rival Jeremy Hunt, have also exited the Cabinet on Wednesday, as Breitbart London has reported.
According to Sky News, there is not one minister left in Cabinet who was appointed by former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, following today’s firings and resignations.
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg remarked that “This is officially the biggest clear out of Cabinet without a change of party in power — more than half of them gone — [this is] not a reshuffle it’s a new government.”
This is officially the biggest clear out of Cabinet without a change of party in power – more than half of them gone – not a reshuffle it’s a new govt
Media has been speculating the composition of Boris’s top table of ministers, with it being expected to be comprised of between half to two-thirds of Brexiteers.
This liveblog is being updated as Cabinet appointments are announced. Stay tuned for updates…
UPDATE 7:25pm — Ben Wallace has been appointed as defence secretary, Liz Truss international trade secretary
With a military background, the Johnson ally is taking over from Jeremy Hunt.
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) July 24, 2019
UPDATE 7:20pm — Michael Gove has been appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Taking over from David Lidington, Mr Gove has become the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a senior Cabinet office role and effectively a minister without portfolio.
UPDATE 7:05pm — Stephen Barclay maintains job as Brexit secretary
The third Brexit secretary appointed originally under Mrs May, Mr Barclay reportedly got into a heated conversation with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, telling the French bureaucrat five times that Mrs May’s soft Brexit withdrawal treaty was “dead”.
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) July 24, 2019
UPDATE 6:55pm — Dominic Raab appointed foreign secretary, first secretary of state
Taking over from Jeremy Hunt, this would be a return for Mr Raab to the Cabinet. Formerly the Brexit secretary, Mr Raab resigned from government over Mrs May’s handling of Brexit. Like Ms Patel, Mr Raab is considered one of the more right-wing candidates and also comes from the Vote Leave campaign.
Also appointed first secretary of state, Mr Raab is the de facto deputy prime minister.
UPDATE 6:45pm — Priti Patel appointed home secretary
Taking over from Mr Javid, recently appointed chancellor of the exchequer, it would see a return of Ms Patel to the government. The minister was fired in 2017 from her role as the international development secretary by Theresa May for meeting with Israeli officials whilst on holiday without informing the prime minister.
Ms Patel formerly campaigned with Boris Johnson with Vote Leave in 2016; it is expected that Mr Johnson will appoint a number of Vote Leave alumni to the Cabinet and other rolls.
Earlier, Breitbart London reported that Dominic Cummings, one of the architects of the Vote Leave campaign, became Mr Johnson’s senior advisor, while VL’s Robert Oxley and James Starkie have joined the Number 10 media team.
Liz Truss, who had been vying for the role of chancellor, was seen entering Number 10.
UPDATE 6:36pm — Sajid Javid appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer
It was confirmed that the first appointment is that of Sajid Javid, formerly the home secretary, who has been appointed chancellor of the exchequer, taking over from Philip Hammond, the Remain-supporter who resigned earlier today.
Mr Javid and Liz Truss were both said to be vying for the role. Mr Javid was the first minister to be seen going into Downing Street, signalling he was in line for a top role. The minister had “reluctantly” voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, and now says he fully backs the Tory government pledge to take the UK out of the EU.
Deeply honoured to be appointed Chancellor by PM @BorisJohnson. Looking forward to working with @hmtreasury to prepare for leaving the EU, unifying our country and priming our economy for the incredible opportunities that lie ahead.
Followed by Mr Javid into Number 10 was Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, both formerly from the government, suggesting that shortly, there will be announcements that they will have been returned to the frontbench, as well.
Others seen entering Number 10 are Michael Gove, Stephen Barclay, and Ben Wallace, a long-time ally of Johnson.
Financial Times innovation and technology editor John Thornhill on Monday touched upon the relationship between human values and computer algorithms by asking whether artificial intelligence will be shaped more profoundly by the values of the Western world or Communist China, which is pushing hard for a leading position in AI technology.
“Computer algorithms encoded with human values will increasingly determine the jobs we land, the romantic matches we make, the bank loans we receive and the people we kill, intentionally with military drones or accidentally with self-driving cars,” Thornhill noted.
The most cynical AI theorists might add that we need to think about who we’re going to kill deliberately with self-driving cars. Any such system will inevitably include crisis situation judgments that prioritize the well-being of some humans over others. Does the self-driving car swerve to avoid a child in the middle of the road if that means plowing into a table full of diners outside a cafe?
“How we embed those human values into code will be one of the most important forces shaping our century. Yet no one has agreed what those values should be. Still more unnerving is that this debate now risks becoming entangled in geo-technological rivalry between the U.S. and China,” Thornhill proposed.
The Financial Times editor pointed out that at least 50 different codes of ethics for artificial intelligence have been published to date. The contributions from Chinese corporations and universities are markedly different from those put forth by Western entities:
Codes of principles written in the west tend to focus on fairness, transparency, individual rights, privacy and accountability. But Song Bing, director of the Berggruen Institute China Centre, argued at the seminar that this jars with Chinese sensibilities. “These values are mostly western in origin. That does not mean that there is no resonance in China and the rest of the world. But are they the right set of rules for a global normative framework?” she asked.
Ms Song said that Chinese AI ethicists prioritise values that are open, inclusive and adaptive, speak to the totality of humanity and reject zero-sum competition. Summarising this philosophy, she told the seminar said that they add up to “great compassion and deep harmony”. Collective good is just as important as individual rights.
However, Liu Zhe, a philosopher from Peking University, said it would be wrong to believe that there was any one Chinese value system, mixing as it does elements of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. That range of values would militate against a universal approach to AI within China, let alone elsewhere.
Zeng Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing also questioned the need for a global set of principles. “They should not compete with each other, but complete each other to provide a global landscape for AI,” he said.
Liu Zhe may have forgotten that China is an authoritarian collectivist society, and increasingly a one-man dictatorship under President Xi Jinping. The Communist Party is unlikely to allow conflicting sets of rules to frolic among the philosophical wildflowers of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. It doesn’t even allow people to embrace those philosophies when they conflict with Communist Party dogma, let alone semi-autonomous machines.
Zeng Yi’s notion of competing ethical systems jousting with each other until the perfect code of conduct for AI appears is interesting in theory, but unrealistic in a highly interconnected world. Chinese AI will interact in a consequential manner with Americans, and American AI will affect the lives of Chinese citizens.
China is not exactly shy about feeding huge amounts of information about both its own nationals and foreigners into AI systems, a point Thornhill illustrated by citing American concerns about Chinese ownership of the gay dating app Grindr. There will be strong demand around the world for at least a minimal set of universal ethical guidelines.
Zeng also commented that Chinese researchers think of humans as “the worst animals in the world,” so inferior human ethical standards should not be applied to artificial intelligence. Thornhill reported that Western participants in the seminar where he spoke found this a “false and dangerous premise.” Teaching intelligent machines to regard humans as the worst beings in all creation? What could go wrong?
Long before we have to worry about self-aware computers treating humanity as a virus to be cured, we must concern ourselves with the contrast between Western privacy concerns and China’s “techno-utilitarian” model, which essentially means prioritizing the “greatest good for the greatest number” over the “moral imperative to protect individual rights.”
Thornhill found it a distressingly short hop for techno-utilitarianism to go from facial recognition scanners on grocery store shopping carts (so convenient for the customers!) to the nightmarish surveillance state China has established in the restless Xinjiang province.
The Chinese believe techno-utilitarianism gives them a huge advantage in technologies such as self-driving cars because they have few privacy scruples about assembling the massive databases that fuel AI development, they tend to deploy new technology quickly and deal with complications later, and they don’t have to worry about political resistance against government support for programs that would be intensely opposed in the U.S. or Europe.
Time will soon tell if Western concerns for privacy and individual rights are as much of an obstacle to AI development as the Chinese think… and whether those concerns are ultimately overridden in a hyper-connected world where techno-utilitarianism is the prevailing ideology.
Dr. Robert Epstein, the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, appeared on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss Google’s latest tactics in election manipulation and how to combat them with host Alex Marlow.
Dr. Robert Epstein appeared on Breitbart News Daily this week alongside host and Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow to discuss the current state of Google and how the company could use its technology to influence voters.
Host Alex Marlow discussed Epstein’s research saying: “I think you put out some pretty hard data on how many votes you think were moved in the 2016 election and I think you estimated it was over two million or so, is that not the case?” Epstein responded: “Well it was at least 2.6 million and it could have been as many as 10.4 million depending on how aggressive google was in using the various tools they have available to them to shift votes. I can’t pin it down exactly but I know it’s in that range.”
Discussing the need for a system designed to track Google search results and suggestions, Epstein stated: “We need big monitoring systems in place, I’m so far the only person that’s created monitoring systems, I did one in 2016 and one in 2018. I’m trying now to raise funds to build a very big monitoring system for 2020 and to monitor a lot more than Google search results, to monitor newsfeeds, answers that people are getting from their personal assistants.”
Epstein explained why monitoring search results and auto-suggest terms is so important when monitoring election interference, stating: “If you don’t monitor, you can’t go back in time and figure out what these companies were showing people because what they’re showing people is ephemeral. That’s the term that Google’s own employees use internally, they’re showing ephemeral experiences, those really short-lived experiences that kind of appear before your eyes and then disappear, like search results for example.”
Epstein continued: “They’re using ephemeral experiences to manipulate people on a massive scale, people don’t know they’re being manipulated, and there’s no record kept of those experiences, they’re just generated for you on the fly and then they disappear.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolanor email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on Wednesday grilled former special counsel Robert Mueller, who was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Throughout the hearing, Mueller declined to answer questions multiple times. But Jordan appeared to catch Mueller in a big lie when he asked about…
A group of environmental activists superglued themselves to the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday in protest of Congress’ failure to formally acknowledge the planet’s climate emergency.
After crying racism and exaggerating the dangers of President Donald Trump’s controversial “go back” tweets, Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are taking heat for some of their own tweets from the past. Former Democratic New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind retweeted old tweets from the congresswomen that appear to…
Another disappointing U.S. Supreme Court term came to an end a few weeks ago. From a conservative perspective, it is exceedingly difficult to find much with which to be enthralled.
The most important thing Robert Mueller revealed today in his testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was that he didn’t really know that much about the work of the investigation that bears his name — and that he is prone to senior moments with alarming frequency. That he could in no way have been the actual leader of a large team of high-powered lawyers is now obvious to everyone in cringe-worthy detail (a veteran prosecutor unable to come up with the word “conspiracy” as the legal term for collusion). He was a BINO, a Boss In Name Only, or, colloquially, a front-man.
Under the Mueller brand, dodgy prosecutor Andrew Weissmann could work with his Trump-hating cabal of Hillary supporters, Mueller’s right-hand man Aaron Zebly there to keep an eye on things for him. Wrapped in a Mueller’s cloak of prestige and legitimacy, the cabal could take down a president, they thought.
But now that the public can see with their own eyes that Mueller was at best “Mr. Outside,” and the story arc turns toward investigating the investigators. Now we know that we were misled. That creates more interest in getting to the turth of who was really running this project. Before boarding Marine One today on his way to a rally in West Virginia, President Trump said that investigating the investigators is what is next, as see the fruits of the Horowitz IG report, and prosecutors Huber and Durham work in secrecy with grand juries. With 14 months until the election, the most successful reality TV producer in the history of the medium knows that narratives can flip, with the good guys exposed as less worthy than was first apparent, and the underdog comes to the fore, and it makes compelling viewing.
This revelation is huge problem for the media that has portrayed Mueller as a legend in his own time, a man of unquestionable integrity, brilliance, and devotion. Their puffery has exploded in their faces like an Acme cigar in a Warner Brothers cartoon. The entire narrative that the media and other Democrats have peddled since shortly after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 is busted on multiple levels. The last gasp for Nadler, Schiff and the unofficial House impeachment caucus was the hope that Mueller would use that persona that doesn’t seem to exist anymore, if it ever did, to sell the public on the notion that Donald Trump is a criminal. Unfortunately, he was clearly not up to the job.
All but the fanatics – a not insignificant portion of the – House Democratic Caucus –realize that the game is over.
The most important thing Robert Mueller revealed today in his testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was that he didn’t really know that much about the work of the investigation that bears his name — and that he is prone to senior moments with alarming frequency. That he could in no way have been the actual leader of a large team of high-powered lawyers is now obvious to everyone in cringe-worthy detail (a veteran prosecutor unable to come up with the word “conspiracy” as the legal term for collusion). He was a BINO, a Boss In Name Only, or, colloquially, a front-man.
Under the Mueller brand, dodgy prosecutor Andrew Weissmann could work with his Trump-hating cabal of Hillary supporters, Mueller’s right-hand man Aaron Zebly there to keep an eye on things for him. Wrapped in a Mueller’s cloak of prestige and legitimacy, the cabal could take down a president, they thought.
But now that the public can see with their own eyes that Mueller was at best “Mr. Outside,” and the story arc turns toward investigating the investigators. Now we know that we were misled. That creates more interest in getting to the turth of who was really running this project. Before boarding Marine One today on his way to a rally in West Virginia, President Trump said that investigating the investigators is what is next, as see the fruits of the Horowitz IG report, and prosecutors Huber and Durham work in secrecy with grand juries. With 14 months until the election, the most successful reality TV producer in the history of the medium knows that narratives can flip, with the good guys exposed as less worthy than was first apparent, and the underdog comes to the fore, and it makes compelling viewing.
This revelation is huge problem for the media that has portrayed Mueller as a legend in his own time, a man of unquestionable integrity, brilliance, and devotion. Their puffery has exploded in their faces like an Acme cigar in a Warner Brothers cartoon. The entire narrative that the media and other Democrats have peddled since shortly after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 is busted on multiple levels. The last gasp for Nadler, Schiff and the unofficial House impeachment caucus was the hope that Mueller would use that persona that doesn’t seem to exist anymore, if it ever did, to sell the public on the notion that Donald Trump is a criminal. Unfortunately, he was clearly not up to the job.
All but the fanatics – a not insignificant portion of the – House Democratic Caucus –realize that the game is over.
This revelation is huge problem for the media that has portrayed Mueller as a legend in his own time, a man of unquestionable integrity, brilliance, and devotion. Their puffery has exploded in their faces like an Acme cigar in a Warner Brothers cartoon. The entire narrative that the media and other Democrats have peddled since shortly after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 is busted on multiple levels. The last gasp for Nadler, Schiff and the unofficial House impeachment caucus was the hope that Mueller would use that persona that doesn’t seem to exist anymore, if it ever did, to sell the public on the notion that Donald Trump is a criminal. Unfortunately, he was clearly not up to the job.