Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Tesla to advertise for the first time / YouTube recommends gun content to children / Google to delete inactive accounts

Plus: Amazon unveils latest entry-level smart speaker

Inside Tech

For May 17, 2023

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During Tesla's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, CEO Elon Musk announced that the company will embark on its first-ever advertising campaign. The move marks a departure from Tesla's previous reliance on word-of-mouth, which Musk has said was driven by high demand for its vehicles.

More:

In response to a shareholder question, Musk said Tesla will now "try a little advertising, and see how it goes."
For years, the billionaire CEO maintained that paid advertising was unnecessary for Tesla due to demand outstripping supply.
Increased competition in the electric vehicle market likely contributed to the move.

Other announcements:

Also during the shareholder meeting, Musk dismissed the idea of stepping down as Tesla CEO. He referred to his time as Twitter CEO as a "short term distraction."
Musk confirmed that Tesla would begin delivering its Cybertrucks later this year, with a projected annual production of 250,000 to 500,000 units.
He briefly teased two new electric vehicles, which are expected to be more affordable and produced in higher volumes.
An image of one of the vehicles was shown, potentially representing the previously mentioned $25,000 hatchback.

The news: YouTube's recommendation algorithm is again under fire after a recent study revealed its tendency to suggest videos on guns and gun violence to children and teens. According to a Pew Research survey, nearly one in every five U.S. teens uses YouTube "almost constantly."

What happened: The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit watchdog, conducted a study using four test accounts, two for 9-year-old boys and two for 14-year-old boys. Researchers intentionally watched gaming-related videos, including inappropriate ones, from these accounts over 30 days to simulate the content young people might come across on YouTube.

The results: YouTube suggested videos about toy firearms and real firearms to all four test accounts. But the accounts that clicked on YouTube's recommended videos received more of the violent content, including videos related to gun crimes and school shootings.

The response: In its response, YouTube cited limitations in the study's approach. The company said its YouTube Kids app and in-app supervision tools can help provide safer experiences.

What it means: The report raises fresh concerns about Big Tech algorithms prioritizing engagement over responsible content recommendations. While the TTP emphasized that video games are not responsible for violent behavior, it warned that YouTube's algorithm can further expose young gamers to a world of gun violence.

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Google plans to delete unused personal accounts that are inactive for two years or longer, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Photos. The goal is to improve safety by addressing security vulnerabilities in accounts, like outdated passwords, it said.

More:

While the new policy is already in effect, Google said it will start deleting accounts in December.
During the process, Google will delete any content stored by the user in Google Workspace, YouTube, and Google Photos
The company plans to send multiple warnings to users and do the account purges in phases. It will prioritize accounts that were created but never used.
To keep an account active, users only need to do a minimal activity, like reading or sending an email, watching a YouTube video, or doing a Google search.
The policy only applies to personal accounts and not businesses or schools.

Related:

Earlier this month, Twitter began purging accounts that have been inactive for "several years," which Elon Musk said was likely to result in a decrease in users' follower counts.

Amazon introduced its latest entry-level Alexa-powered smart speaker as part of its new Echo lineup. The $40 Echo Pop features a new semi-sphere form factor and a front-facing speaker optimized for smaller spaces, like an apartment or dorm room.

More:

While cheaper than the Echo Dot, Amazon said the Pop has two of the same features: an AZ2 Neural Edge processor for on-device machine learning and built-in Eero to extend users' mesh Wi-Fi coverage.
The Pop is available in charcoal, white, lavender, and teal.
Also today, the company unveiled an updated version of the Echo Show 5 smart display ($90) and a space-themed kid-friendly version, the Echo Show 5 Kids ($100).
It announced new Echo Buds ($50) with a semi-open design, excluding active noise cancellation, and ear tips. They integrate with Alexa, support multi-device pairing, and have customizable tap controls.

Zoom out:

Amazon said most of the devices will ship at the end of the month.
Additionally, Echo Auto is now available in more countries.
The company said sales of Alexa-enabled devices have surpassed half a billion.

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IBM and Google are investing a combined $150M in quantum computing research at the University of Chicago and the University of Tokyo. The support could help the U.S. maintain a competitive edge over China, which has made significant investments in quantum computing, raising concerns about its military applications.

More:

The partnership arose after the University of Tokyo's president discussed the school's quantum computing program with former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who had backed the University of Chicago's efforts in the field.
"We have to count on our allies more for primary research," said Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan.
IBM plans to contribute $100M to both universities for the eventual development of a quantum-centric supercomputer with 100,000 qubits.
While digital bits can be either zero or one, qubits or quantum bits are the building blocks of quantum computing, representing information in a superposition of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Zoom out:

Last November, IBM showcased a 433-qubit processor, its most powerful quantum computer to date.
Quantum computing has significant potential in various areas, such as drug molecule modeling and atomic-scale battery research.

Anthropic, an AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI engineers, claims its chatbot Claude can analyze entire novels within a minute. By increasing the chatbot's context window from 9,000 to 100,000 tokens (equivalent to about 75,000 words), Claude can comprehend novels like "A Farewell to Arms," "Frankenstein," and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," which range from 69,000 to 74,800 words.

More:

During a test, Anthropic modified a sentence in "The Great Gatsby" and asked Claude to identify the change.
Remarkably, it accomplished this task in only 22 seconds.
Comparatively, the average person takes around five hours to read 100,000 tokens of text, whereas Claude can do it in less than a minute.
Claude's expanded capabilities surpass other chatbots, including OpenAI's GPT-4 model, which handles up to 8,000 tokens, and its extended version, capable of processing 32,000 tokens.
Currently, ChatGPT is limited to approximately 4,000 tokens.

QUICK HITS

U.S. chipmaker Broadcom has proposed concessions to try and resolve European Union antitrust concerns over its $61B bid for VMware.
Immersion Corp. is suing Valve for patent infringement involving its rumble haptic technology. The accused products include Steam Deck, Valve Index VR, Steam VR software, and games like Half-Life: Alyx.
Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings will lower its cloud service prices by up to 40% starting in June, following similar actions by competitors in an ongoing price war.
OpenAI is preparing to publicly unveil a new open-source AI language model, which is not expected to compete against ChatGPT.
Spotify has expanded its AI-powered "DJ" to subscribers in the U.K. and Ireland. The beta feature, powered by OpenAI, was introduced to Spotify premium users in the U.S. and Canada in February.

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Beth Duckett

AI and technology writer

Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. She has written the Inside AI newsletter since 2019. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com.

This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia

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Tether to Regularly Buy Bitcoin, Build ‘Reserve Surplus'

May 17, 2023

The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day

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Welcome to The Node. This is Daniel Kuhn, here to take you through the latest in crypto news and why it matters. In today's newsletter:

In the news: A regulatory official in France said firms leaving the U.S. are "welcome." Ripple may see important documents disclosed in SEC case. And Tether is bulking up on bitcoin.

The takeaway: David Z. Morris writes how a U.S. debt default would be bad for just about everything … except bitcoin.

By the way, CoinDesk just turned 10. Read about it and what we've learned from a decade of crypto history in Consensus Magazine this week.

Learn more

Rippling Out

A federal judge ruled that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cannot seal documents that Ripple Labs has asked to introduce into its ongoing lawsuit, which Ripple thinks is a smoking gun to its defense that XRP is not a security. The documents pertain to a speech by former SEC official William Hinman, who said in 2018 ether was not a security. Hinman was not speaking on behalf of the agency, a fact the SEC tried to use to seal relevant documents by court order. In other news, Ripple acquired Swiss-based crypto custody giant Metaco for $250 million, according to a Wednesday announcement. The purchase will allow the firm to expand further into the tokenized assets issuance industry.

Buy While High

Weeks after an attestation found that a highly-profitable Tether was holding gold and bitcoin (BTC), the stablecoin issuer has said it will regularly buy bitcoin starting this month as part of a new investment strategy. Tether, which had a profitable first financial quarter of the year amid a banking crisis that affected its main competitor, said it will allocate up to about 15% of the realized profits from investments into bitcoin, building up a "reserve surplus" of assets backing the USDT token. Elsewhere, Lightning Labs, makers of the eponymous scaling solution, released a "better" version of its Bitcoin-based token minting system (used to issue assets like stablecoin on-chain), after an unexpected run up in the novel BRC-20 token standard. Lightning was required to rebrand the minting tool (previously called "Taro") after a startup called Tari Labs sued for copyright infringement.

In or Out?

India's government and central bank are receiving backlash after cutting the crypto industry's access to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a popular real-time payment system, which was seen as an attempted "shadow ban" of crypto in the country. According to sources, two proposals written in favor of crypto exchanges have already been sent to the government, with a third written by a newly formed advocacy group Bharat Web3 Association expected soon. Meanwhile, companies fleeing the U.S. due to an increasingly harsh regulatory environment are being courted by politicians in France. Firms are "welcome," according to an official at the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), which expects 100 firms could register with the agency, now that the European Union passed a bone fide crypto policy framework.

The Takeaway: Debt Debate

U.S. lawmakers are currently locked in a passionate, high-stakes and entirely ridiculous battle over a strange quirk of U.S. law known as the "debt ceiling." Since 1917, the U.S. budget appropriations process has separated the actual budget – which members of Congress have already approved – from the government's ability to sell bonds to pay for it. Treasury Secretary Janey Yellen has said that if new debt isn't approved by June 1, the U.S. government could default on its financial obligations – including halting the payment of interest on Treasury bonds.

This unusual process has become a very appealing tool for a theatrical, media-friendly form of politicking. With increasing frequency over the past three decades, fiscal conservatives have used the vote to raise the debt ceiling as an opportunity to agitate for lower spending. It makes for good TV, with a looming deadline and frantic dealmaking, but none of the political risk of negotiating over specific elements of the U.S. budget.

For all its ultimate hollowness, the debt ceiling showdown has real consequences in the traditional finance sector, most notably raising the cost of borrowing for everyone. Longer term, repeated debt ceiling standoffs have more systemic impacts on the U.S.'s standing as a pillar of global finance.

Both of those impacts have implications for Bitcoin.

Fiscal responsibility theater

Most serious people regard the so-called "showdown" over the debt ceiling as pure political theater. First, because the legislators purportedly taking a bold stance against spending have already voted in favor of that spending. And second, because the consequences of actually defaulting on the U.S. national debt would be so incomprehensibly catastrophic that economists and the like can hardly conceive any lawmaker would actually follow through on the threat.

That theory is less reassuring when you realize that some of the loudest voices in the debt ceiling showdown come from the House Freedom Caucus, a coterie of far-right populists who seem to think defaulting on the U.S. debt would be Incredibly Based. That reality is leading Democrats to try to cut deals with the more restrained Republican factions, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA.), a politically fragile leader who needs protection from his own right wing.

It's still very unlikely that the U.S. defaults on the national debt. But if it does, the price of bitcoin is going to be far down the list of almost anyone's concerns. Janet Yellen was downplaying it when she described the consequences as "severe hardship for American families." A U.S. default would trigger the domestic economic equivalent of a nuclear carpet bombing.

And just as with a barrage of nukes, the damage would come in two stages. The initial impact would include the interruption of all sorts of government payments, potentially anything from Social Security checks to big-money military contracts. This would cause an immediate, sharp drop in traditional metrics like GDP [gross domestic product] and the stock market. Given recent evidence of strong correlation between bitcoin and tech equities, it would almost certainly gut bitcoin's short-term price, too.

A default is, again, a remote possibility. But its potential impact is so huge, even that slim chance is already being reflected in markets. The yield on 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds is already inching up, reflecting increased risk of holding them. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and bitcoin have both limped downwards over the past two weeks, though other uncertainties in the market make it hard to connect those moves directly to the debt showdown.

But the second stage of the economic doomsday triggered by a default would be more complex and persistent – and just as deadly as the invisible radiation that lingers after a mushroom cloud drifts away.

Welcome to the debt polycrisis

A U.S. debt default would dramatically reshape the global financial system, in ways that would be likely to increase bitcoin's role as global financial infrastructure. This is another example of bitcoin's role as a theoretical hedge against a disastrous scenario: of something that's good for bitcoin precisely because it's very bad for human society.

A U.S. default would, first and foremost, decimate international appetite for holding U.S. debt. That would spike the cost of servicing existing debt, likely forcing the U.S. into a brutal austerity regime. That in turn would slow the entire global economy dramatically – another downward pressure on bitcoin.

But by the same token, U.S. default would accelerate international efforts to decouple from the U.S. dollar as a trade and investment instrument. The dollar's biggest appeal is its strength and stability, and a default would obviously harm that faith. Saudi Arabia, Russia and China have all made significant recent gestures towards getting the key oil trade off the dollar, but a default could push those efforts from rhetoric closer to reality.

This anxiety would be very likely to create at least some added marginal demand for bitcoin as an international trade instrument.

But as the cartoon rabbit says, that's not all, folks.

When I and others sneer at the debt ceiling standoff as pure theater, it's not because we disagree with the nominal goal of reducing government spending. Rather, the gripe is that a semi-annual debt ceiling standoff is a very bad way of pursuing fiscal responsibility.

That's unacceptable exactly because debts and deficits are such deadly serious issues, not just in the U.S. but around the world. In the U.S., a staggering 7% of federal spending goes to servicing debt. Those taxpayer dollars are no longer doing anything to strengthen the economy or improve the lives of its citizens. And every time we run an annual budget deficit, that spending on debt service goes up.

We're clearly on an unsustainable path. But so is everyone else. Global national debt levels now sit at 102% of GDP, an all-time record that is just above the roughly 100% debt-to-GDP ratio that is considered sustainable for an individual country. This has led to increasing worry about what some have termed a "Great Reset" – a cascading series of interlocking national defaults that wipes out debt holders at huge scale.

Because national debt makes up such a huge portion of the assets on global balance sheets, the impacts would be catastrophic, and instability in the U.S. debt market is as likely to set off the cascade as anything.

This scenario is part of the much broader case for bitcoin's ascendancy as a global reserve and trade instrument (setting aside, for the moment, very real technical limitations). In an environment of rising defaults, bitcoin's neutral monetary layer could very well form a significant backstop simply because it is unfettered from national debt risk. The U.S. debt limit showdown, in all its infantile ridiculousness, highlights just how serious and unpredictable that risk is.

– David Z. Morris

@davidzmorris

david.morris @coindesk.com

Off-Chain Signals

Swiss gov't supports cash referendum amid digital payment concerns – Protos
MakerDAO Founder Proposes Dedicated Blockchain and New DAI and MKR Tokens – The Defiant
Coinbase Builds Base Camp for Web3 Developers – Blockworks
State-backed Chinese Developer Unit Wants Hong Kong Crypto License: Report – Blockworks
LayerZero and Immunefi launch largest crypto bug bounty program with up to $15M in rewards – TechCrunch (The largest? Anybody know if that's right?)
Why Bakkt Delisting Tokens is a Big Deal for Fintechs – The Information (paywall)

Big < Small

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