Author name: Kris Guyer

seeding-steel-frames-brings-destroyed-coral-reefs-back-to-life

Seeding steel frames brings destroyed coral reefs back to life

Biology, coral, Ecology, Science / /
Image of a large school of fish above a reef.

Coral reefs, some of the most stunningly beautiful marine ecosystems on Earth, are dying. Ninety percent of them will likely be gone by 2050 due to rising ocean temperatures and pollution. “But it’s not that when they are gone, they are gone forever. We can rebuild them,” said Dr. Timothy Lamont, a marine biologist working at Lancaster University.

Lamont’s team evaluated coral reef restoration efforts done through the MARS Coral Reef Restoration Program on the coast of Indonesia and found that planting corals on a network of sand-coated steel frames brought a completely dead reef back to life in just four years. It seems like we can fix something for once.

Growing up in rubble

The restored reef examined by Lamont’s team was damaged by blast fishing done 30–40 years ago. “People were using dynamite to blow up the reef. It kills all the fish, the fish float to the surface, and you can scoop them all up. Obviously, this is very damaging to the habitat and leaves behind loose rubble fields with lots of coral skeletons,” said Lamont.

Because this loose ruble is in constant motion, tumbling and rolling around, coral larvae don’t have enough time to grow before they get squashed. So the first step to bringing damaged reefs back to life was stabilizing the rubble. The people running the MARS program did this using Reef Stars, hexagonal steel structures coated with sand. “These structures are connected into networks and pinned to the seabed to reduce the movement of the rubble,” Lamont said.

Before the reef stars were placed on the seabed, though, the MARS team manually tied little corals around them. This was meant to speed up recovery compared to letting coral larvae settle on the steel structures naturally. Based on some key measures, it worked. But there are questions about whether those measures capture everything we need to know.

Artificial coral reefs

The metric Lamont’s team used to measure the success of the MARS program restoration was a carbonate budget, which describes an overall growth of the whole reef structure. According to Lamont, a healthy coral reef has a positive carbonate budget and produces roughly 20 kilograms of limestone per square meter per year. This is exactly what his team measured in restored sites on the Indonesian reef. But while the recovered reef had the same carbonate budget as a healthy one, the organisms contributing to this budget were different.

An untouched natural reef is a diverse mixture including massive, encrusting, and plating coral species like Isopora or Porites, which contribute roughly a third of the carbonate budget. Restored reefs were almost completely dominated by smaller, branching corals like Stylophora, Acropora, and Pocillopora, which are all fast-growing species initially tied onto reef stars. The question was whether the MARS program achieved its astounding four-year reef recovery time by sacrificing biodiversity and specifically choosing corals that grow faster.

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what-happens-when-chatgpt-tries-to-solve-50,000-trolley-problems?

What happens when ChatGPT tries to solve 50,000 trolley problems?

AI, chatgpt, ethics, self-driving / /
Images of cars on a freeway with green folder icons superimposed on each vehicle.

There’s a puppy on the road. The car is going too fast to stop in time, but swerving means the car will hit an old man on the sidewalk instead.

What choice would you make? Perhaps more importantly, what choice would ChatGPT make?

Autonomous driving startups are now experimenting with AI chatbot assistants, including one self-driving system that will use one to explain its driving decisions. Beyond announcing red lights and turn signals, the large language models (LLMs) powering these chatbots may ultimately need to make moral decisions, like prioritizing passengers’ or pedestrian’s safety. In November, one startup called Ghost Autonomy announced experiments with ChatGPT to help its software navigate its environment.

But is the tech ready? Kazuhiro Takemoto, a researcher at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan, wanted to check if chatbots could make the same moral decisions when driving as humans. His results showed that LLMs and humans have roughly the same priorities, but some showed clear deviations.

The Moral Machine

After ChatGPT was released in November 2022, it didn’t take long for researchers to ask it to tackle the Trolley Problem, a classic moral dilemma. This problem asks people to decide whether it is right to let a runaway trolley run over and kill five humans on a track or switch it to a different track where it kills only one person. (ChatGPT usually chose one person.)

But Takemoto wanted to ask LLMs more nuanced questions. “While dilemmas like the classic trolley problem offer binary choices, real-life decisions are rarely so black and white,” he wrote in his study, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Instead, he turned to an online initiative called the Moral Machine experiment. This platform shows humans two decisions that a driverless car may face. They must then decide which decision is more morally acceptable. For example, a user might be asked if, during a brake failure, a self-driving car should collide with an obstacle (killing the passenger) or swerve (killing a pedestrian crossing the road).

But the Moral Machine is also programmed to ask more complicated questions. For example, what if the passengers were an adult man, an adult woman, and a boy, and the pedestrians were two elderly men and an elderly woman walking against a “do not cross” signal?

The Moral Machine can generate randomized scenarios using factors like age, gender, species (saving humans or animals), social value (pregnant women or criminals), and actions (swerving, breaking the law, etc.). Even the fitness level of passengers and pedestrians can change.

In the study, Takemoto took four popular LLMs (GPT-3.5, GPT-4, PaLM 2, and Llama 2) and asked them to decide on over 50,000 scenarios created by the Moral Machine. More scenarios could have been tested, but the computational costs became too high. Nonetheless, these responses meant he could then compare how similar LLM decisions were to human decisions.

What happens when ChatGPT tries to solve 50,000 trolley problems? Read More »

bill-that-could-ban-tiktok-passes-in-house-despite-constitutional-concerns

Bill that could ban TikTok passes in House despite constitutional concerns

bytedance, china, Chinese Communist Party, First Amendment, Joe Biden, Policy, tiktok, TikTok ban, us constitution / /
Bill that could ban TikTok passes in House despite constitutional concerns

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill with a vote of 352–65 that could block TikTok in the US. Fifteen Republicans and 50 Democrats voted in opposition, and one Democrat voted present, CNN reported.

TikTok is not happy. A spokesperson told Ars, “This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it’s a ban. We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service.”

Lawmakers insist that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is not a ban. Instead, they claim the law gives TikTok a choice: either divest from ByteDance’s China-based owners or face the consequences of TikTok being cut off in the US.

Under the law—which still must pass the Senate, a more significant hurdle, where less consensus is expected and a companion bill has not yet been introduced—app stores and hosting services would face steep consequences if they provide access to apps controlled by US foreign rivals. That includes allowing the app to be updated or maintained by US users who already have the app on their devices.

Violations subject app stores and hosting services to fines of $5,000 for each individual US user “determined to have accessed, maintained, or updated a foreign adversary-controlled application.” With 170 million Americans currently on TikTok, that could add up quickly to eye-popping fines.

If the bill becomes law, app stores and hosting services would have 180 days to limit access to foreign adversary-controlled apps. The bill specifically names TikTok and ByteDance as restricted apps, making it clear that lawmakers intend to quash the alleged “national security threat” that TikTok poses in the US.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), a proponent of the bill, has said that “foreign adversaries like China pose the greatest national security threat of our time. With applications like TikTok, these countries are able to target, surveil, and manipulate Americans.” The proposed bill “ends this practice by banning applications controlled by foreign adversaries of the United States that pose a clear national security risk.”

McMorris Rodgers has also made it clear that “our goal is to get this legislation onto the president’s desk.” Joe Biden has indicated he will sign the bill into law, leaving the Senate as the final hurdle to clear. Senators told CNN that they were waiting to see what happened in the House before seeking a path forward in the Senate that would respect TikTok users’ civil liberties.

Attempts to ban TikTok have historically not fared well in the US, with a recent ban in Montana being reversed by a federal judge last December. Judge Donald Molloy granted TikTok’s request for a preliminary injunction, denouncing Montana’s ban as an unconstitutional infringement of Montana-based TikTok users’ rights.

More recently, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has slammed House lawmakers for rushing the bill through Congress, accusing lawmakers of attempting to stifle free speech. ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff said in a press release that lawmakers were “once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year.”

“Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that,” Leventoff said.

Bill that could ban TikTok passes in House despite constitutional concerns Read More »

on-the-latest-tiktok-bill

On the Latest TikTok Bill

Latest / /

This attempt is getting reasonably far rather quickly, passing the House with broad support.

Alec Stapp: TikTok bill to remove influence of CCP:

– passed unanimously out of committee

– GOP leadership says they’ll bring it to the floor for a vote next week

– Biden says he’ll sign the bill if passed

Can’t believe it’s taken this long, but should be done soon.

It’s been obvious for years that we shouldn’t let China control a black-box algorithm that influences >100 million American users.

JSM: Can this stand up to court scrutiny though?

Alec Stapp: Yes.

It then passed the house 352-65, despite opposition from Donald Trump.

Manifold is as of now around 72% that a bill will pass, similar to Metaculus. Consensus is that it is unlikely that ByteDance will divest. They will fight in court, and if they lose they likely are not bluffing about letting TikTok be shut down or banned in America, Metaculus only has a 12% chance they will sell this year.

The bill now goes on to the Senate. I see about a 43% chance it passes there within the month, and a 71% chance it will happen this year. Those numbers seem reasonable to me.

The main purpose of this post is to go over arguments for and against the bill, and also what the bill actually would and would not do.

I have long been in favor on principle of banning or forcing divestiture of TikTok. Then I saw the Restrict Act, and that was clearly a no-good, very-bad bill.

My view of the current bill, after a close reading, is that it is vastly better, and about as good as we could reasonably expect. It seems positive and I hope it passes, whether or not ByteDance folds and agrees to divest. I expect it to pass constitutional muster, although one cannot be sure.

To make them easy to find:

  1. Here is Noah Smith’s case for banning TikTok.

  2. Here is Matthew Yglesias’s case for banning TikTok.

  3. This is a profile of Make Gallagher, who is leading the charge to pass the bill.

I go over various arguments for and against the bill, and for and against forcing divestiture of or banning TikTok in general, as well, as well as other related developments. The good argument against the bill is the libertarian concern about expansion of government powers, and what else the government might do. I do not believe it should carry the day on this bill, but I definitely get why one might think so.

I continue to strongly be in favor, in principle, of banning or forcing divestiture of TikTok, if we could do exactly that and only that, without otherwise attacking free speech and free enterprise or expanding the power of the state.

TikTok continues to be Chinese spyware. It also continues to be an increasing point of vulnerability for China to put its thumb on American culture, politics and opinion.

It continues to promote unhealthy patterns of use. Many want to quit, or know they would be better off without it, or at least would take very little money to quit despite spending tons of time on the app, but feel locked in by a combination of a Skinner box and social dynamics of everyone else being there.

All the dynamics around this round of the fight make me more confident that it is important to get this done.

So yes, if there was a clean way to get rid of it or force divestiture, great.

However, as I said a year ago in Given the Restrict Act, Don’t Ban TikTok, the proposed S 686 or the Restrict Act would have vastly expanded government powers over the internet, a cure far worse than the disease.

So for me, ultimately, it comes down to the bill. Is it a good bill, or a bad bill? More precisely, is this a bill we can live with?

Daniel Lippman (Politico): “They’re trying to use these scare tactics to have a bill that gives the government unprecedented access to remove apps from people’s phones,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, has said. “This is targeting TikTok, but it could go beyond it in an unconstitutional way.”

Is this bill a ban on TikTok, or merely a forced divestiture? A forced divestiture can still deny quite a lot of value, you were not previously planning to sell and now buyers have you over a barrel, but they are still very different things.

TikTok has been vehiment that this is an outright ban. They both keep calling it an outright ban, including when telling their users to call Congress, and also say that they would rather shut the app down than attempt to sell it.

Thomas Massie: The so-called TikTok ban is a trojan horse.

The President will be given the power to ban WEB SITES, not just Apps.

The person breaking the new law is deemed to be the U.S. (or offshore) INTERNET HOSTING SERVICE or App Store, not the “foreign adversary.”

If you think this isn’t a Trojan horse and will only apply to TikTok and foreign-adversary social media companies, then contemplate why someone thought it was important to get a very specific exclusion for their internet based business written into the bill:

Bill: (B) EXCLUSION – The term “covered company” does not include an entity that operates a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.

@CommitteeOnCCP: The bill does NOT apply to all websites.

It has a very narrowly tailored definition that could only apply to social media platforms controlled by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea that pose a national security threat.

Ian Bremmer (on Twitter): Forcing bytedance to divest tiktok has nothing to do with the first amendment. Americans will still be able to post disinformation there.

Mike Solana: house debate on tiktok now live. one thing i’m noticing: republicans in support (mike gallagher) are very focussed on the narrow restrictions — foreign adversaries only, apps with site only, content agnostic. democrats (frank pallone) are more like “yes, AND we need censorship”

For the record, the tiktok bill remains content agnostic, but pallone mentioned another bill he’s attempting to push forward next week. absolutely crazy that they’re still attempting some kind of national content moderation scam.

Marjorie Taylor Greene now opposing the TikTok divestment on grounds she was once banned from twitter, and ‘if the US cared about china they would be banning farmland’ (which we should definitely also do btw).

Preventing China from buying farmland is supremely bonkers. The concern is actively backwards. You love it when your foreign adversaries buy your farmland. Yes, please purchase physical land in our country that we could and would confiscate without incident if you start a fight.

Cato Institute’s Jennifer Huddleston looks at the constitutionality of the new bill, presumably with maximal skepticism. She points to provisions that would help the new bill pass muster, but says there are still severe first amendment concerns. Which there certainly should be.

Unlike past proposals, the bill provides an option for a sale rather than an immediate ban; however, it creates concerning conditions in that regard as well. The proposal requires the divestiture to be approved by the government, meaning that any proposed buyer would likely be open to significant regulatory scrutiny, particularly given the government’s current positioning towards acquisitions in the tech industry. But still, this distinction will likely be important in any legal challenges to the act even if, in practice, it is unlikely to be different from a true ban.

…

Under First Amendment precedents, the government will need to prove that forced divestment or otherwise banning of the app is both based on a compelling government interest and represents the least restrictive means of advancing that interest.

…

Even if the courts found the government’s interest to be compelling, they would then consider if there are less restrictive steps the government could take to resolve its national security concerns, such as the data localization steps proposed by TikTok’s Project Texas.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jacky Wong also has constitutional concerns, and an attempted state ban in Montana was struck down.

I would still be very surprised, although not utterly stunned, if the Supreme Court, which would inevitably rule on the matter, failed to uphold this law. These seem like obstacles that the government can comfortably clear.

There are also worries this is a Bill of Attainder that were raised in the House debate, I expect that also not to ultimately be an issue but it did independently occur to me.

AOC opposes the bill, she says on process grounds, note that she correctly calls it a ‘forced sale bill.’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I’m voting NO on the TikTok forced sale bill.

This bill was incredibly rushed, from committee to vote in 4 days, with little explanation.

There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote.

I am sympathetic to ‘rushed’ objections when bills are so long there is no time to read and understand them. This does not seem to be one of those cases. The next two grounds, antitrust and privacy, seem odd. If anything TikTok is clearly putting privacy at risk, and if this is a forced sale I do not see large antitrust concerns.

I am sympathetic to the argument on national security, I would love to make everything they know public, but I presume that they are not doing so on national security grounds. It seems like a reasonable equilibrium for there to be some votes on Congress that you lose when you don’t do that. This creates good incentives. But I am going to go ahead and believe that there are important such concerns in play.

But the bottom line is, who is right?

So yes, it’s that time.

The preamble makes it clear this bill is aimed at TikTok and ByteDance, while using the term ‘such as,’ presumably to avoid being a Bill of Attainder.

(1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS.—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary-controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:

(A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary-controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

(B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary-controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.

[this applies to anything that qualifies under [g3a] or [g3b]].

This would remove TikTok from the Apple and Google marketplaces. It is not clear how effective this would be against side loading. Note that the this language does not make it illegal to use the application, only to provide hosting services or a marketplace, if ByteDance decided to continue offering the service from abroad.

If you violate 1a that is $5,000 per user, if it is 1b then $500 per user. How much would you pay for TikTok?

Section 1.2b says that before the cutoff date such applications must provide users with all their data for portability. Good luck with that.

Section 1.2c lays out the remedy. If you do a qualified divestiture, you’re off the hook from that point on, and technically you’re allowed to provide limited services to comply with other provisions.

Section 1.2e is the severability boiler-plate in case of court challenge.

Section 1.2f clarifies that users are safe, they cannot even be fined.

Section 1.2g defines terms.

1.2g1 says that ‘controlled by a foreign adversary’ means domiciled in, headquartered in, organized under the laws of, owned at least 20% by or subject to the control of a person or entity from the adversary. I note that 20% is not so high, and ‘subject to the control’ could be ambiguous, but mostly seems fair.

1.2g2 describes what ‘covered company’ means.

(2) Covered Company.

(A) In General. The term ‘”covered company'” means an entity that operates, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that meets all of the following criteria:

  • Permits user account creation: Allows users to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content.

  • Has a large user base: Has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users for at least two out of the three months preceding a relevant determination by the President under subsection (3)(B).

  • Enables user-generated content: Enables one or more users to generate or distribute content that can be viewed by other users of the platform.

  • Allows viewing of user-generated content: Enables one or more users to view content generated by other users of the platform.

  • (B) EXCLUSION.—The term ‘‘covered company’’ does not include an entity that operates a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.

So it needs to be some form of social media, of some kind: You need to have a million users, account creation and viewing and creation of user-generated content.

Would this, as some say, ‘apply to websites’? Certainly you can imagine websites that would qualify here. But most websites certainly would not qualify. This seems reasonably well drafted.

The exception also seems well-considered. Review sites would otherwise potentially qualify and are not covered. The obvious thing that would still qualify, that one might reasonably object to, would be a shopping platform, since it would not be ‘primarily’ for posting reviews but users would still create accounts and post review content? Thus, if this is intended to be narrow, I would suggest the Senate extend 1.2g2b by saying ‘where the primary purpose of its user-generated content is to allow users to…’ or other similar language.

This should cover most remaining cases where the thing in question is in not intended to be a form of social network or messaging platform. You would still hit for example a Chinese Reddit, but it seems difficult to explain why it shouldn’t.

You could also say that websites should be exempted, and we should only ban the mobile app. Under that alterative theoretical regime, you could use TikTok all you wanted, but you would have to go to their website in the browser, creating friction. I am not alarmed by the current proposal, but I would be down for that compromise, as it robustly protects free speech – if you want the content badly enough you can load up Chrome – while still being a substantial effective barrier, and it would mitigate the spyware concerns.

Section 1.2g3 defines ‘foreign adversary controlled application’ and it explicitly names ByteDance and TikTok, in addition to anything else from a covered company that is controlled by a foreign adversary and is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States after a 30 day determination period.

Section 1.2g4 says ‘foreign adversary country’ is specified in section 4872d2 of title 10, US code, which currently I think says China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. I am curious about Cuba and Venezuela but it matters little in practice either way.

Section 1.2g5 outlines what an internet hosting service is. A regular ISP would not be required to block websites, but managing the resolution of domain names to IP addresses could be an issue, and you couldn’t host the services.

Section 1.2g6 defines a ‘qualified divestiture,’ which would be up to the President to approve as a transfer of control that precludes any operational relationship including operation of a content recommendation algorithm with respect to data sharing. One could read this as saying you could share the algorithm as long as you did not share data.

The rest seems standard.

So what does this law do in practice? Is it a big power grab?

It lets the government shut down mobile apps, and to some extent websites, that are playing the role of social media, a messaging service or something similar , with a million or more users, while having substantial foreign involvement from our enemies list, right now mainly Russia and China, unless those apps are sold and control transferred, if the President determines the service is a danger to the national security of the United States.

Perhaps I am being naive, but this seems much better than the previous Restrict Act. It is in several ways narrowly tailored, where the Restrict Act was an open invitation on anything deemed a national security risk. This only applies to things shaped a lot like social media, the other bill referred to basically anything. The previous bill fined users of VPNs $250k or more plus criminal penalties, whereas this bill explicitly exempts users and offers only civil penalties throughout.

As a practical matter, if ByteDance were to defy the United States, what would happen under this bill? We know the app stores would comply, but beyond that? If you already had the app installed, it might be difficult to get updates, but it would be hard for America to force you to uninstall. On Android you can side load. If you used a VPN, you could do whatever you wanted. If you were willing to navigate to the website, and they were willing to keep that website available, there it would be.

I think this is fine. An outlaw TikTok would presumably rapidly lose momentum in that world, while allowing current users to wind down more gradually. Alternatively, TikTok could divest.

I am open to argument that this is more broad or worrisome than it seems, but my view right now is this is about as good as we could reasonably expect. The only better bill that wouldn’t be a Bill of Attainder, other than raising the user threshold (I would like to see 10 million ideally?) would be to accept websites, which would be a large practical compromise in terms of accomplishing the goal.

So yes. I can support this bill as written.

Nate Silver points us to Pew Research Center, which found it was very popular in March of 2023, and still popular in October 2023 but less so especially among Democrats.

One strong argument for banning TikTok is reciprocity.

China has the Great Firewall. It completely bans Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram. You can’t even access American TikTok.

They instead force their users onto China’s own platforms like WeChat., Sina Weibo and Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok).

It seems quite reasonable to say that if China wants us to allow TikTok, they need to allow American social media in China. Why should we let them get away with this kind of blatantly anti-competitive action?

Some people don’t know this, and run into razor blades.

There is an obvious economics counterargument that imposing retaliatory tariffs or import bans only hurts you. That is true by default but rests on three assumptions.

  1. It assumes your choice does not impact the choices of others, including in the past and future. If your unwillingness or anticipated unwillingness (or inability) to retaliate means everyone throws up one-way barriers, that could be bad for them but it is certainly bad for you.

  2. It assumes goods are broadly normal and competitive, like most physical goods. If there are strong network effects that generate winner-take-all scenarios and essentially zero marginal costs, these considerations clearly break.

  3. There is the terms of trade argument and other related considerations. It seems hard to deny that banning TikTok would improve our terms of trade with China, unless China decided to massively retaliate, despite again having banned all analogous services in the other direction.

These considerations are on top of all other considerations in both directions. I would not consider them decisive on their own if there were no other concerns, but I believe they add substantial weight.

Also some noted that TikTok is trying to challenge Amazon, and trying to launch TikTok Shop as a shopping destination, currently selling on the order of $7 million a day. Amazon has limited presence in China. It is not outright banned, but no doubt China would not allow it to gain the kind of key role that it has in America, or even a fraction of that. Also no one is saying ByteDance can’t have an e-commerce business?

I don’t buy that the intention was ever to seriously challenge Amazon. I believe the idea was a much smarter one, which is to use the link to TikTok to provide a way for creators to earn money while driving sales. So you advertise a product in your video, if someone clicks through you get a cut, everyone wins, great, good idea, YouTube and Instagram and Twitter should be working on doing more of this as well. But to then try to leverage that to challenging Amazon? Well, good luck, I guess. Remember that for all its value and cultural leverage, TikTok is not yet profitable.

TikTok responded to accusations it was exercising undue influence over its users and our democracy on behalf of China and getting them addicted in unhealthy ways and trapped in bad equilibria where they cannot quit by directing its users to call into their congressman’s office and explain this was a ‘ban on TikTok’ and how much they relied on and spent infinite time on TikTok.

Mike Solana: tiktok just blasted this to 150 million americans. a blatant lie. odd the trust and safety team wouldn’t catch this one.

Is this a ban on TikTok? Technically no. It could mean TikTok goes away, if ByteDance responds to it by refusing to sell and letting the whole thing burn. But also ByteDance could threaten to shut TikTok down if America continues selling chocolate ice cream, or if we don’t elect the right candidate. Decisions.

Of course, plenty of advocates are calling it a ban, so you can’t be that mad at the spin.

Anyway, at this point the calls flooded in, some to explain how desperately people needed TikTok, some because they would click whatever button the app told them to?

“It’s so so bad. Our phones have not stopped ringing. They’re teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can’t take it away,” one House GOP staffer told POLITICO, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“If you ban TikTok, I will kill myself,” said one caller, according to audio obtained from a House GOP office. The caller had noted seeing TikTok’s pop-up that claimed members are trying to shut down the app.

Another House GOP staffer observed that “most of the callers are unaware of why they’re even calling, with several agreeing with the bill but calling to continue using the app.” That staffer predicted their office would “easily surpass” receiving “1,000 calls today.”

A third House GOP staffer said some of the younger callers were using false and sometimes vulgar names, such as “Mr. Ben Dover.”

…

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), cosponsor of the TikTok bill, said the video app’s pop-up alert is lying about his bill. “If you actually read the bill, it’s not a ban. It’s a divestiture.”

Byrne Hobart: An app whose parent company has explicitly promised to prioritize the interests of the CCP is mobilizing users to change the outcome of the legislative process.

Neat.

Alec Stapp: “The Chinese Communist Party can send push notifications to 170 million Americans from their favorite app” really should be the end of the debate

Ryan Guill: I dont know that I had a well formed opinion before, but yeah, this should settle it

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Some social media company finally went and added easy phone calls to Congress. Personally, I was a little “how noneliezeran!” that Google didn’t do this way earlier, or Uber under Travis. But I can see how this would be too scary in the USA, such that China did it first.

Emmett Shear: OTOH it seems like it’s backfiring, so maybe the US companies know better than to poke the bear.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: They’re not doing it the way I’d have done it at Google, that’s for sure.

Patrick McKenzie: Didn’t Uber actually make in-app CTAs for city-by-city political activism? Best citation I could find, but I felt contemporaneously that this was part of the playbook.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Huh! Well, chalk one up for my brain’s correct sense that this seemed like something Travis ought to have tried, given who he otherwise was.

When you put it that way, perhaps it was not the smartest move?

It has been known for some time that a voter calling their congressperson’s office, or writing a letter to their congressperson, has an oversized impact. Almost no one does it, and it is not something anyone has been able to astroturf effectively. So being willing to risk mild social awkwardness or actually write a physical letter, or even a personalized email, is a strong signal, if you are indeed a local voter.

At some point, it was inevitable that a tech company was going to weaponize this. Uber did that somewhat when officials noticed that it was at the time technically a completely illegal operation, to turn it into a legal one, by pointing out that life was a lot better if you could hail an Uber. That essentially worked.

This instead predictably backfired. It misrepresented the bill. It drove home to everyone exactly what they were up against, and why they needed to take action, and also in a very practical sense made their lives worse, scared them and pissed them off. How would you react in this spot?

Congress reacted by having the TikTok bill, H.R. 7521, pass 50-0 out of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

In the past, everyone agrees TikTok had a data sharing problem, where its user information was given to and used by ByteDance. This seemingly included a bunch of data that TikTok should not by the terms of the Apple and Google stores, or by any reasonable interpretation of national security, be allowed to collect, such as customer exact location data, which it has used to track journalists criticizing the company (although, I mean, if you are that journalist, how did you not know to delete the app, You Had One Job).

Katherine Dee: What data could the CCP weaponize from TikTok, and how would they do it?

Park MacDougald: Beijing-based employees of ByteDance have used data from TikTok—which TikTok says they are unable to access—to track the movements of U.S. journalists reporting on TikTok in order to hunt for their sources within the company.

Forbes: We stress that it was Baker-White, specifically, who broke all these stories, because Baker-White reported in 2022 that China-based Byte Dance employees had used Tik Tok to spy on her and other U.S.-based journalists covering the company. ByteDance employees in Beijing improperly gained access to the U.S. journalists’ IP addresses and user data, tracking their locations to see who they were meeting with in an effort to identify their sources within the company.

When the story first broke, Byte Dance and Tik Tok not only denied that the spying had taken place but also claimed that it was technically impossible for Byte Dance employees to monitor U.S. users due to TikTok’s data security provisions.

ByteDance later admitted that it had spied on journalists through Tik Tok in exactly the way the article had reported, but blamed the spying on rogue employees. Those same “rogue employees,” who led Byte Dance’s internal audit team, had also spied on the TikTok executive responsible for limiting Chinese access to U.S. user data. He left the company in 2022.

Andrew Rettek: Banning TikTok because you think the algorithm is malicious is, charitably, a stretch on 1st amendment grounds. This is bad behavior that isn’t covered by the Bill of Rights.

It also includes the usual stuff like emails, birth dates, IP addresses and so on.

Then TikTok claimed it would silo all the American user data, which has been code named Project Texas (which, contrary to some claims, was developed by ByteDance during the Biden administration). ByteDance says it has successfully walled the data off. The Wall Street Journal report on this is highly skeptical, saying that data sharing often still happens without ‘going through proper channels,’ and the hardware used by the American division is potentially insecure, and the Chinese division changes the algorithm constantly in ways the American division does not have the resources to understand.

With Project Texas, “I’m skeptical that TikTok’s efforts here ever had any value,” said Jacob Helberg, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional research and advisory panel, who has organized a bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks.

…

TikTok executives have said internally that they sometimes need to share protected U.S. data with ByteDance to help train the algorithm, or with employees outside Project Texas who work on keeping problematic content off TikTok, according to people familiar with the unit.

…

TikTok has said Texas-based Oracle—the inspiration for the unit’s name—is monitoring all the data that leaves Project Texas and is also checking every line of code in the app’s algorithm for suspicious changes.

But Oracle doesn’t monitor the data employees share with each other over TikTok’s internal messaging tools, according to people familiar with the data-sharing.

…

Project Texas started to informally roll back some of the data-sharing rules last spring. Managers told employees that they actually could save data to their computers, and that there would be exceptions to the requirement that they could only share data in aggregate.

Now many of the Project Texas data protections have devolved into what one employee called “a wink and a nod.”

…

One Project Texas executive recently told employees that TikTok workers outside of Project Texas are tired of hearing “no” when they ask for U.S. user data.

I doubt there is actual zero value in this. Frictions like this increase the practical costs of interference. Friction matters. They also create more attack surface and blameworthiness for the future. What they certainly should not do is give us confidence that users are being protected the way ByteDance claims they are.

There is also the fact that this recent bill moved forward right after a closed door meeting on Chinese espionage efforts. I have no idea what was said, but the timing has clear implications.

Michael Tracy (Newsweek): Drafters of the bill are said to have received “technical assistance” from the White House; President Biden swiftly pledged to sign it. Among the factors that are said to have spurred this latest outburst of legislative activity was a secret briefing last week by the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). “Because it was a classified hearing, I cannot discuss the details,” explained Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which sprung into action after receiving the secret “Intelligence Community” presentation.

You can read this as ‘deep state helps write bill’ and you can also read this as ‘private information from deep state was convincing to congress that this bill was needed.’ Is this, as Tracy suggests, a ‘power grab by the deep state?’ It seems like everyone involved is doing normal everyone involved things, and it is a power grab to the extent that the law grants additional government authority, see the relevant section where I examine the bill.

Also via community notes we have this from June 21, 2023, that after ByteDance said under oath to Congress that Americans data has always been stored outside China, that this (at least at that time) continued not to be the case, and that ByteDance was forced to admit this.

There is little doubt that China has total leverage over ByteDance if and when it wants to exercise that leverage. When the CCP cares about something, it happens, apology letters get issued, and woe to anyone who stands in their way.

Here is a rather dramatic illustration:

Hu Xijin: I support #TikTok’s tough response. Either it is ByteDance’s TikTok, or the US government might as well shut it down — but ask the 170 million TikTok users in the US first: do they agree?

CommitteOnCCP: BREAKING: Chinese Communist Party propagandist and former editor-in-chief of state media says: “Either it is ByteDance’s TikTok, or the US government might as well shut it down.” Why is the CCP so scared over losing control of TikTok?

Brad Hargreaves: The fact that ByteDance would shut down TikTok rather than earn (at least) tens of billions of dollars from a sale gives up the game here.

ByteDance is not a normal tech company driven by profit motives. It’s a tool of a hostile foreign power.

It’s gotta go.

Heterodox Progressivism: It would be hundreds of billions of dollars. My guess is there’s no way for them to truly divest the asset and hand over servers and code without handing over evidence of the manipulation and data theft that’s been going on.

Brad Hargreaves: I think that’s right on both counts.

Noah Smith: The fact that both TikTok’s current ownership and prominent CCP propagandists are absolutely DESPERATE to stop a forced sale of TikTok shows that they view it as an indispensable propaganda tool.

Jimmy Quinn: This needs to be pointed out more: ByteDance is part of the CCP’s military-civil fusion system. It’s possibly the most compelling reason to crack down on ByteDance/ TikTok.

“ByteDance is not just a tech company; it is a cog in China’s vast military machinery.”

Also, I mean, this is hella suspicious, don’t you think?

Current and former TikTok employees who criticize the company risk losing any stock they own—in some cases worth millions of dollars—under a shareholder agreement that bans disparaging the social media service…Five attorneys who practice shareholder law told Fortune that TikTok’s non-disparagement provision is unusual, but not illegal…

TikTok’s shareholder contract, viewed by Fortune, says shareholders cannot “directly or indirectly make any critical, adverse or disparaging statement or comment about the Company or any of the Company’s subsidiaries, affiliates, directors, officers, or employees.” If shareholders are caught doing so, “all of the participant’s restricted share units will be immediately forfeited.” 

TikTok claims that in terms of presenting content they will ever and always be neutral. Even if that is their preference, they are lying, because the decision is not ultimately up to them. Regardless of how many orders have or have not yet come down from the CPP, ByteDance’s claims that they would never do as the CCP orders are not credible.

How much and how they use that power is difficult to know. TikTok is highly specialized, so it is hard to rely on anecdotes if we want to describe its general behavior.

Matthew Yglesias: YMMV but I put “Uyghur genocide” into the TikTok search bar just now and three of the top four videos that came up were saying anti-Uyghur repression is a big myth that needs to be debunked.

Jostein: TikTok suggested “Uyghur genocide” when I entered the letters uyg. The top 4 results were critical of the Chinese government or discussed suppression of speech. TikTok is successful because its algorithm works. It knows I would have scrolled past any CCP propaganda.

Timothy Lee (distinct thread): People who say “what’s the big deal, I almost never see political content in my TikTok feed” should think harder about how propaganda works.

For example, TikTok could help a candidate by suppressing negative videos about that candidate and positive videos against her opponent. That could move public opinion while making the platform seem “less political.”

One can of course create a fresh account and do this and other similar things. The answers are knowable, if one wishes. Even then, how do you distinguish what users of TikTok choose within this setting from interference in the algorithm, including ‘correct it if it goes one way, let it ride if it goes the other’ style considerations?

So for the obvious first example that reignited calls for the ban, it is known that TikTok is heavily anti-Israel, very differently from other platforms and from the American public. Yes, those who are most vocal tend to be anti-Israel, but this is ridiculous:

In Time, Anthony Goldbloom offers this, 17.3% is both a ton and would not suggest an 80:1 ratio should happen by accident.

Perhaps that is a natural outcome of who is on the platform doing what, and the nature of its videos, and due to snowball effects where everyone is scared to express a dissenting point of view on the platform or chooses to leave it? Again, somewhat, but the extent seems highly implausible.

Nate Silver: TikTok’s users are young, and young people are comparatively more sympathetic to Palestine than older ones — but not by the roughly 80:1 ratio that you see in the hashtag distribution. I would not treat this data as dispositive — expression on social media can be contagious and overstate the degree of consensus. But this matches a pattern in other TikTok content that is sensitive to China, such as tags critiquing its policy toward Hong Kong.

Then we extend this to more of the obvious, from this study.

As opposed to, say:

Noath Smith presents the information this way, from NCRI:

Timothy Lee: A study last year found that topics that aligned with the interests of the Chinese government receive wildly disproportionate attention on TikTok, while topics Beijing considers sensitive tend not to go viral on the platform.

Yes, these could in theory each be a coincidence, or the result of dynamics from the user base and video stylings and natural algorithmic dynamics, with anti-China people not using TikTok.

But also, come on.

If all of this was one big coincidence and the result of cherry-picking, then it would be easy to point to other examples that point in the opposite direction as counterarguments. I have never seen anyone cite a convincing counterexample, or any that I could recall.

After this study was published, ByteDance reduced data transparency.

Oh also this from Noah Smith:

Noah Smith: This is very damning evidence indeed. And even if you’re skeptical of circumstantial evidence like this, there are leaked documents that prove the company has done exactly the kind of censoring that the study found:

TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines.

If this isn’t a smoking gun, there’s no such thing as a smoking gun.

Armand Domalewski: I did not know leaked documents from TikTok revealed it had instructed its moderators to censor videos that mentioned topics the Chinese government wanted suppressed

And yes, I think this matters, and keep in mind one should expect such trendlines to continue:

Katie Britt said in her State of the Union response (obviously without stating her evidence) that TikTok was ‘poisoning the minds” of a generation of children.

Even if there were no smoking guns, this does not seem like a situation in which one should need one in order to proceed?

Matthew Yglesias: Here’s the analogy I like to use. It’s 1975 and a state-owned Soviet firm wants to buy CBS. What happens? Well, what happens is they wouldn’t be allowed to. The FCC would block it. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US or its predecessors would block it. If they didn’t have the power, congress would write a new law. And even if it wasn’t CBS, if it was a chain of local TV affiliate stations, the outcome would be the same. There would be no detailed factual analysis or demand for gold standard evidence that a Soviet-owned television statement might do Moscow’s bidding or that television is capable of influencing public opinion. We’d reject the idea out of hand. And rightly so, because the downsides would be very clear, and the upside minimal.

That’s how the TikTok situation looks to me.

Alec Stapp: This is not unprecedented. In fact, it’s standard national security policy for politically sensitive media & communications networks.

We would never have allowed the Soviet Union to own CBS/NBC/ABC during the Cold War.

But we let the Chinese Communist Party control the black box algorithm for the most popular social media app in our country.

Justin Wolfers: “We must ensure the Chinese government cannot weaponize TikTok against American users and our government through data collection and propaganda.” …because that’s a job we only trust Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg with.

Nate Silver: It is fine to be inherently more distrustful of platforms run by countries officially designated by the United States government as foreign adversary countries.

Robin Hanson: Because we all trust the US government so much?

I would say to Robin Hanson and Justin Wolfers, fully trust absolutely not, obviously that would be crazy, and we have to be careful about exactly what powers we entrust USG and also the others with as well, but yes I trust USG or Musk or Zuckerberg to look out for Americans a lot more than CCP.

Matthew Yglesias also reminds us extensively that China systematically uses all the economic levers at its disposal to silence foreigners on the issues it most cares about, strongarming companies like Disney, Apple and Mercedes-Benz. It seems crazy to think that they will not their leverage over TikTok in at least similar fashion.

His response struck me as remarkably similar to his position against taking government action on AI. Claim that the problem has not been sufficiently modeled, that one must point to specific concrete harms. Point out that existing laws exist. Warn of a ‘rush to judgment’ as the years pass and the problems intensify.

Tyler Cowen: I’ve blogged this in the past, and don’t have much to add to my previous views. I will say this, however: if TikTok truly is breaking laws on a major scale, let us start a legal case with fact-finding and an adversarial process. Surely such a path would uncover the wrongdoing under consideration, or at least strongly hint at it. Alternately, how about some research, such as say RCTs, showing the extreme reach and harmful influence of TikTok? Is that asking for too much?

Now maybe all that has been done and I am just not aware of it. Alternatively, perhaps this is another of those bipartisan rushes to judgment that we are likely to regret in the longer run. In which case this would be filed under “too important to be left to legal fact-finding and science,” a class of issues which is sadly already too large.

Looking over his previous statements, I see two basic themes.

One, continued demands that we ‘prove’ that China or ByteDance has its finger on the scale. I say that the information elsewhere in this post, in the absence of counterexamples, is very strong evidence. At minimum, they are fixing content balance issues they dislike and allowing those they like, with an algorithm that snowballs. More likely, they are doing exactly what it looks like they are doing. This is not a criminal conviction, we do not need to know beyond a reasonable doubt.

As Noah Smith says, we see some guns. They are smoking.

I do think it would be good to have more data and better studies, regardless of what is decided by Congress.

Two, pointing out that the Restrict Act was a terrible bill. Here, I strongly agree. We cannot trust the authority we are counting on to ban TikTok to stay its hand when it should stay its hand, so we need to be careful of the contents of the bill we pass.

I would be open to arguments that this bill is similarly bad, if that were the case. I however notice Tyler is not making comment on the contents of this particular bill.

I also find his lack of concern interesting in the context of what is otherwise strong nationalism, and concern about Chinese competition, especially technological competition.

Donald Trump met with billionaire investor and Club for Growth donor Jeff Yass, who holds a 15% stake in ByteDance. Shortly after, Trump started opposing the ban, despite having previously actually issued an order requiring divestiture back in August 2020, which Biden reversed while it was stalled under legal challenges.

In some sense the least surprising story of all time is ‘politician shifts position to reflect that of their biggest donors,’ especially when the politician is Donald Trump.

Matthew Yglesias: Trump sold out what’s supposed to be one of his signature causes for the promise of some campaign contributions, a play that authoritarian states will be able to run over and over again as long as he’s in charge.

In this case, with how much emphasis he puts on being tough on China and interfering with international trade even when it makes zero economic sense, and how the ban has such broad political support and majority popular support, and there presumably going to be enough money on all sides for 2024 to essentially make the rubble bounce, although Noah Smith says instead that Trump’s campaigns are currently hurting for funds in addition to his legal bills?

Noah Smith reasonably calls this Trump move a ‘rug pull’ of China hawks. Josh Rogin in The Washington Post says this ‘suggests’ his China policy is for sale.

So if this doesn’t involve outright bribes or a deal to use TikTok to his advantage?

Then actually yeah, it would be kind of weird.

Matthew Yglesias: On March 1, Trump got a bunch of money from formerly critical GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass, an investor in ByteDance.

Less than a week later, he is now suddenly in favor of continued Chinese ownership of TikTok.

I know a lot of relatively serious-minded conservatives think it’s worth downplaying Trump’s corruption and other personal flaws for the sake of larger policy aims, but the whole deal with him being corrupt is those aims can always change after a check.

Mike Solana: If a billionaire TikTok investor pivoted from ‘never Joe Biden’ to ‘geezers only 2024’ and then, following a meeting with that billionaire TikTok investor Biden reversed his years-long position on TikTok and publicly defended the company you would absolutely LOSE YOUR MINDS.

Tim Miller (MSNBC): Looks like Mike Solana deleted this attack on Trump for flip flopping on TikTok after meeting with a top investor.

Mike Solana: MSNBC analysts following me closer than my mom

Bearded Miguel: Also the tweet he quoted is correct.

Mike Solana: Well of course.

Noah Smith: It was a good burn btw.

It seems Trump is not actually expending effort and lobbying to kill the bill. Which makes sense. That would be highly out of character.

This is perhaps not entirely out of left field, Kellyanne Conway has apparently been defending TikTok for weeks with terrible arguments? And others in his orbit have been making similar moves as well.

Shoshana Weissmann: I’ve heard about these meetings from others over the past weeks. The worst part is the arguments they’re making in meetings have nothing to do with either free speech or national security. It’s extremely shallow, vapid stuff on a serious matter.

Daniel Lippman (Politico) on March 9: Kellyanne Conway, the former senior Trump aide, is being paid by the conservative Club for Growth to advocate for TikTok in Congress and has had at least 10 meetings with lawmakers in recent months about the app, according to three people familiar with the meetings.

Some Trump allies, including former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have recently become more amenable to the app. Tucker Carlson joined late last summer. Elon Musk, who recently met with Trump, on Friday publicly agreed with his recent post in defense of TikTok.

Matthew Yglesias: To be fair, she’s just following what’s now the true MAGA line.

It’s the anti-TikTok folks who are RINOs now.

Most others only changed their minds in response to Trump. For example, here is Vivek Ramaswamy (who also got millions from Jeff Yass) on February 26.

And here he is on March 8.

And of course here’s Vivek back on 5/8/23:

Here’s a clip of him explaining his position and accusing ‘professional politicians’ of flip-flopping in this context, which is some grade-A chutzpah.

That seems like a deeply silly argument. If you want something even broader, then propose something even broader. I don’t even know what ‘ban all data transfers’ would mean in practice if it wasn’t a ban on Chinese companies doing business at all, and neither does Vivek. Nor is he making a case that this bill is negative on the margin, which is the question that matters.

For example, here is Senator Tom Cotton saying “sitting down with TikTok’s CEO is ‘no better than meeting with Hamas or the Taliban.”

Which is technically true. Meeting people you disagree with, even terrorists you disagree with, is not bad. The ‘you cannot meet with the baddies’ thing is dumb. But this is not the perspective of Tom Cotton, and his intended implication is clear.

I see the case for forcing divestiture of TikTok as overdetermined. It is functionally Chinese spyware, with a history of lying about it and doing things like tracking journalists. China does the same to similar American companies. China seems to very clearly be using its influence to move public opinion, and has now put out 150 million push notifications to call Congress on its behalf, and one has to wonder what deal was made with known dealmaker Donald Trump.

The status quo is not something we can tolerate under these circumstances.

I also think that TikTok’s core product poses a serious problem even in the absence of all that, that we would be better off without it, and that one would be wise to personally avoid using it. But many are addicted, or feel trapped by social issues. I would not act on this alone, but it is a contributing factor.

As always, the concern is in the details of the bill. Last time, the Restrict Act, was a vast overreach that I am very happy did not become law. This time, it appears the law was much more narrowly constructed, applying only to providers not users, without any criminal penalties or any insane civil penalties. What services are impacted seems far more limited as well.

Is it perfect? No, the actual bills never are. But based on my reading of it, this is a bill I can support.

On the Latest TikTok Bill Read More »

google’s-self-designed-office-swallows-wi-fi-“like-the-bermuda-triangle”

Google’s self-designed office swallows Wi-Fi “like the Bermuda Triangle”

Google, Tech / /

Please return to the office. You’ll be more productive! —

Bad radio propagation means Googlers are making do with Ethernet cables, phone hotspots.

–

Google's Bay View campus was designed with the world's strangest roof line.

Enlarge / Google’s Bay View campus was designed with the world’s strangest roof line.

Google

Google’s swanky new “Bay View” campus apparently has a major problem: bad Wi-Fi. Reuters reports that Google’s first self-designed office building has “been plagued for months by inoperable or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi, according to six people familiar with the matter.” A Google spokesperson confirmed the problems and said the company is working on fixing them.

Bay View opened in May 2022. At launch, Google’s VP of Real Estate & Workplace Services, David Radcliffe, said the site “marks the first time we developed one of our own major campuses, and the process gave us the chance to rethink the very idea of an office.” The result is a wild tent-like structure with a striking roofline made up of swooping square sections. Of course, it’s all made of metal and glass, but the roof shape looks like squares of cloth held up by poles—each square section has high points on the four corners and sags down in the middle. The roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, and Google calls it the “Gradient Canopy.”

We'll guess the roofline's multiple parabolic sections are great at scattering the Wi-Fi signal.

Enlarge / We’ll guess the roofline’s multiple parabolic sections are great at scattering the Wi-Fi signal.

Google

All those peaks and parabolic ceiling sections apparently aren’t great for Wi-Fi propagation, with the Reuters report saying that the roof “swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle.” Googlers assigned to the building are making do with Ethernet cables, using phones as hotspots, or working outside, where the Wi-Fi is stronger. One anonymous employee told Reuters, “You’d think the world’s leading Internet company would have worked this out.”

Having an office with barely working Wi-Fi sure is awkward for a company pushing a “return to office” plan that includes at least three days a week at Google’s Wi-Fi desert. A Google spokesperson told Reuters the company has already made several improvements and hopes to have a fix in the coming weeks.

Google’s self-designed office swallows Wi-Fi “like the Bermuda Triangle” Read More »

nvidia-sued-over-ai-training-data-as-copyright-clashes-continue

Nvidia sued over AI training data as copyright clashes continue

AI models, chatbots, copyright, copyright infringement, copyright law, large language models, LLMs, NVIDIA, Policy / /

In authors’ bad books —

Copyright suits over AI training data reportedly decreasing AI transparency.

–

Nvidia sued over AI training data as copyright clashes continue

Book authors are suing Nvidia, alleging that the chipmaker’s AI platform NeMo—used to power customized chatbots—was trained on a controversial dataset that illegally copied and distributed their books without their consent.

In a proposed class action, novelists Abdi Nazemian (Like a Love Story), Brian Keene (Ghost Walk), and Stewart O’Nan (Last Night at the Lobster) argued that Nvidia should pay damages and destroy all copies of the Books3 dataset used to power NeMo large language models (LLMs).

The Books3 dataset, novelists argued, copied “all of Bibliotek,” a shadow library of approximately 196,640 pirated books. Initially shared through the AI community Hugging Face, the Books3 dataset today “is defunct and no longer accessible due to reported copyright infringement,” the Hugging Face website says.

According to the authors, Hugging Face removed the dataset last October, but not before AI companies like Nvidia grabbed it and “made multiple copies.” By training NeMo models on this dataset, the authors alleged that Nvidia “violated their exclusive rights under the Copyright Act.” The authors argued that the US district court in San Francisco must intervene and stop Nvidia because the company “has continued to make copies of the Infringed Works for training other models.”

A Hugging Face spokesperson clarified to Ars that “Hugging Face never removed this dataset, and we did not host the Books3 dataset on the Hub.” Instead, “Hugging Face hosted a script that downloads the data from The Eye, which is the place where ELeuther hosted the data,” until “Eleuther removed the data from The Eye” over copyright concerns, causing the dataset script on Hugging Face to break.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Demanding a jury trial, authors are hoping the court will rule that Nvidia has no possible defense for both allegedly violating copyrights and intending “to cause further infringement” by distributing NeMo models “as a base from which to build further models.”

AI models decreasing transparency amid suits

The class action was filed by the same legal team representing authors suing OpenAI, whose lawsuit recently saw many claims dismissed, but crucially not their claim of direct copyright infringement. Lawyers told Ars last month that authors would be amending their complaints against OpenAI and were “eager to move forward and litigate” their direct copyright infringement claim.

In that lawsuit, the authors alleged copyright infringement both when OpenAI trained LLMs and when chatbots referenced books in outputs. But authors seemed more concerned about alleged damages from chatbot outputs, warning that AI tools had an “uncanny ability to generate text similar to that found in copyrighted textual materials, including thousands of books.”

Uniquely, in the Nvidia suit, authors are focused exclusively on Nvidia’s training data, seemingly concerned that Nvidia could empower businesses to create any number of AI models on the controversial dataset, which could affect thousands of authors whose works could allegedly be broadly infringed just by training these models.

There’s no telling yet how courts will rule on the direct copyright claims in either lawsuit—or in the New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI—but so far, OpenAI has failed to convince courts to toss claims aside.

However, OpenAI doesn’t appear very shaken by the lawsuits. In February, OpenAI said that it expected to beat book authors’ direct copyright infringement claim at a “later stage” of the case and, most recently in the New York Times case, tried to convince the court that NYT “hacked” ChatGPT to “set up” the lawsuit.

And Microsoft, a co-defendant in the NYT lawsuit, even more recently introduced a new argument that could help tech companies defeat copyright suits over LLMs. Last month, Microsoft argued that The New York Times was attempting to stop a “groundbreaking new technology” and would fail, just like movie producers attempting to kill off the VCR in the 1980s.

“Despite The Times’s contentions, copyright law is no more an obstacle to the LLM than it was to the VCR (or the player piano, copy machine, personal computer, Internet, or search engine),” Microsoft wrote.

In December, Hugging Face’s machine learning and society lead, Yacine Jernite, noted that developers appeared to be growing less transparent about training data after copyright lawsuits raised red flags about companies using the Books3 dataset, “especially for commercial models.”

Meta, for example, “limited the amount of information [it] disclosed about” its LLM, Llama-2, “to a single paragraph description and one additional page of safety and bias analysis—after [its] use of the Books3 dataset when training the first Llama model was brought up in a copyright lawsuit,” Jernite wrote.

Jernite warned that AI models lacking transparency could hinder “the ability of regulatory safeguards to remain relevant as training methods evolve, of individuals to ensure that their rights are respected, and of open science and development to play their role in enabling democratic governance of new technologies.” To support “more accountability,” Jernite recommended “minimum meaningful public transparency standards to support effective AI regulation,” as well as companies providing options for anyone to opt out of their data being included in training data.

“More data transparency supports better governance and fosters technology development that more reliably respects peoples’ rights,” Jernite wrote.

Nvidia sued over AI training data as copyright clashes continue Read More »

here’s-how-the-makers-of-the-“suyu”-switch-emulator-plan-to-avoid-getting-sued

Here’s how the makers of the “Suyu” Switch emulator plan to avoid getting sued

Emulation, emulator, gaming, lawsuit, legal, Nintendo, Switch, yuzu / /
Is a name like

Enlarge / Is a name like “Suyu” ironic enough to avoid facing a lawsuit?

Suyu

Last week, the developers behind the popular Switch emulator Yuzu took down their GitHub and web presence in the face of a major lawsuit from Nintendo. Now, a new project built from the Yuzu source code, cheekily named Suyu, has arisen as “the continuation of the world’s most popular, open-source Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu.”

Despite the name—which the project’s GitHub page notes is “pronounced ‘sue-you’ (wink, wink)”—the developers behind Suyu are going out of their way to try to avoid a lawsuit like the one that took down Yuzu.

“Suyu currently exists in a legal gray area we are trying to work our way out of,” contributor and Discord moderator Sharpie told Ars in a recent interview. “There are multiple plans and possibilities for what to do next. Things are still being organized and planned.”

Doing things differently

The Suyu project arose out of “a passion for Switch emulation” and a desire not to see “years of impressive work by the Yuzu team go to waste,” Sharpie said. But that passion is being tempered by a cautious approach designed to avoid the legal fate that befell the project’s predecessor.

After consulting with an unnamed “someone with legal experience” (Sharpie would only say “they claimed three years of law school”), the Suyu development team has decided to avoid “any monetization,” Sharpie said. The project’s GitHub page clearly states that “we do not intend to make money or profit from this project,” an important declaration after Nintendo cited Yuzu’s profitability a few times in its recent lawsuit. Other emulator makers also told Ars that Yuzu’s Patreon opened the project up to a set of pesky consumer demands and expectations.

The Suyu devs have also been warned against “providing step-by-step guides” like the ones that Yuzu offered for how to play copyrighted games on their emulator. Those guides were a major focus of Nintendo’s lawsuit, as were some examples of developer conversations in the Yuzu Discord that seemed to acknowledge and condone piracy.

Xenoblade Chronicles the day before its release.” height=”626″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/yuzuleak-640×626.png” width=”640″>

Enlarge / In a blog post cited in Nintendo’s lawsuit, the Yuzu developers discuss compatibility with a leaked copy of Xenoblade Chronicles the day before its release.

Suyu, by contrast, is taking an extremely hard line against even the hint of any discussion of potential piracy on its platforms. The Suyu GitHub page is upfront that the developers “do not support or condone piracy in any form,” a message that didn’t appear on Yuzu’s GitHub page or website.

The No. 1 rule listed on the Suyu Discord is that “piracy is prohibited.” That includes any talk about downloading games or “asking for system files, ROMs, encryption keys, shader caches, and discussion of leaked games etc.” Even a mention of the word piracy with regard to legal questions is enough to earn a warning on the Discord, according to those rules.

Here’s how the makers of the “Suyu” Switch emulator plan to avoid getting sued Read More »

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M3 MacBook Air refresh boosts storage speeds for 256GB models

13-inch MacBook Air, 15-inch MacBook Air, Apple, Apple M2, Apple M3, MacBook Air, Tech / /

in a flash —

For the M2 Air, getting better storage speeds required a 512GB (or larger) SSD.

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The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air.

Enlarge / The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air.

Andrew Cunningham

When Apple upgraded its Macs with the M2 chip, some users noticed that storage speeds were actually quite a bit lower than they were in the M1 versions. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and the 512GB M2 MacBook Pro had their storage speeds roughly halved compared to M1 Macs with the same storage capacities.

Teardowns revealed that this was because Apple was using fewer physical flash memory chips to provide the same amount of storage. Modern SSDs achieve their high speeds partly by reading from and writing to multiple NAND flash chips simultaneously, a process called “interleaving.” When there’s only one flash chip to access, speeds go down.

Early teardowns of the M3 MacBook Air suggest that Apple may have reversed course here, at least for some Airs. The Max Tech YouTube channel took a 256GB M3 Air apart, showing a pair of 128GB NAND flash chips rather than the single 256GB chip that the M2 Air used. BlackMagic Disk Speed Test performance increases accordingly; read and write speeds for the 256GB M2 Air come in at around 1,600 MB/s, while the M3 Air has read speeds of roughly 2,900 MB/s and write speeds of about 2,100 MB/s. That’s roughly in line with the M1 Air’s performance.

For the other M3 MacBook Airs, storage speed should be mostly comparable to the M2 versions. Apple sent us the 512GB configuration of the 13- and 15-inch M3 Airs, and storage speeds in the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test were roughly the same as for the 512GB M2 Airs—roughly 3,000 MB/s for both reading and writing.

Though this appears to be good news for M3 Air buyers, it doesn’t guarantee that any given 256GB MacBook Air will come configured this way. Apple uses multiple suppliers for many of the components in its devices, and the company could ship a mix of 128GB and 256GB chips in different 256GB MacBook Airs based on which components are cheaper or more readily available at any given time. (The Max Tech channel speculates that a single 128GB NAND chip costs Apple more than a single 256GB NAND chip, though Max Tech doesn’t cite a source for this, and we just don’t know what prices Apple negotiates with its suppliers for these components.)

Though it’s nice that the M3 Air’s baseline storage speeds are increasing, it’s too bad that a new Air is still offering the same storage speed as the M1 Airs released over three years ago. It’s frustrating that Apple can’t improve storage speeds along with CPU and GPU performance, especially when the standard M.2 SSDs in PCs are getting faster and cost less money than what Apple sells in its Mac lineup.

M3 MacBook Air refresh boosts storage speeds for 256GB models Read More »

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After coming back from the dead, the world’s largest aircraft just flew a real payload

Science, Space, stratolaunch / /

Roc-n-roll —

Falling just short of hypersonic velocity.

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The world's largest aircraft takes off with the Talon A vehicle on Saturday.

Enlarge / The world’s largest aircraft takes off with the Talon A vehicle on Saturday.

Stratolaunch/Matt Hartman

Built and flown by Stratolaunch, the massive Roc aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday. The airplane flew out over the Pacific Ocean, where it deployed the Talon-A vehicle, which looks something like a mini space shuttle.

This marked the first time this gargantuan airplane released an honest-to-goodness payload, the first Talon-A vehicle, TA-1, which is intended to fly at hypersonic speed. During the flight, TA-1 didn’t quite reach hypersonic velocity, which begins at Mach 5, or five times greater than the speed of sound.

“While I can’t share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers,” said Zachary Krevor, chief executive of Stratolaunch, in a statement.

In essence, the TA-1 vehicle is a pathfinder for subsequent versions of the vehicle that will be both reusable and capable of reaching hypersonic speeds. The flight of the company’s next vehicle, TA-2, could come later this year, Krevor said.

A long road

It has been a long, strange road for Stratolaunch to reach this moment. The company was founded in 2011 to build a super-sized carrier aircraft from which rockets would be launched mid-air. It was bankrolled by Microsoft cofounder and airplane enthusiast Paul Allen, who put at least hundreds of millions of dollars into the private project.

As the design of the vehicle evolved, its wingspan grew to 117 meters, nearly double the size of a Boeing 747 aircraft. It far exceeded the wingspan of the Spruce Goose, built by Howard Hughes in the 1940s, which had a wingspan of 97.5 meters. The Roc aircraft was so large that it seemed impractical to fly on a regular basis.

At the same time, the company was struggling to identify a rocket that could be deployed from the aircraft. At various times, Stratolaunch worked with SpaceX and Orbital ATK to develop a launch vehicle. But both of those partnerships fell through, and eventually, the company said it would develop its own line of rockets.

Allen would never see his large plane fly, dying of septic shock in October 2018 due to his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Roc did finally take flight for the first time in April 2019, but it seemed like a Pyrrhic victory. Following the death of Allen, for whom Stratolaunch was a passion project, the company’s financial future was in doubt. Later in 2019, Allen’s family put the company’s assets up for sale and said it would cease to exist.

However, Stratolaunch did not die. Rather, the aircraft was acquired by the private equity firm Cerberus, and in 2020, the revitalized Stratolaunch changed course. Instead of orbital rockets, it would now launch hypersonic vehicles to test the technology—a priority for the US military. China, Russia, and the United States are all racing to develop hypersonic missiles, as well as new countermeasure technology as high-speed missiles threaten to penetrate most existing defenses.

Featuring a new engine

This weekend’s flight also marked an important moment for another US aerospace company, Ursa Major Technologies. The TA-1 vehicle was powered by the Hadley rocket engine designed and built by Ursa Major, which specializes in the development of rocket propulsion engines.

Hadley is a 5,000-lb-thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene, oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle rocket engine for small vehicles. Its known customers include Stratolaunch and a vertical launch company, Phantom Space, which is developing a small orbital rocket.

Founded in 2015, Ursa Major seeks to provide off-the-shelf propulsion solutions to launch customers. While Ursa Major started small, the company is already well into the development of its much larger Ripley engine. With 50,000 pounds of thrust, Ripley is aimed at the medium-launch market. The company completed a hot-fire test campaign of Ripley last year. For Ursa Major, it must feel pretty good to finally see an engine in flight.

After coming back from the dead, the world’s largest aircraft just flew a real payload Read More »

openai-ceo-altman-wasn’t-fired-because-of-scary-new-tech,-just-internal-politics

OpenAI CEO Altman wasn’t fired because of scary new tech, just internal politics

AI, AI ethics, AI safety, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, GPT-4, greg brockman, Helen Toner, large language models, machine learning, openai, sam altman, WilmerHale / /

Adventures in optics —

As Altman cements power, OpenAI announces three new board members—and a returning one.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 6, 2023, in San Francisco.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 6, 2023, in San Francisco.

On Friday afternoon Pacific Time, OpenAI announced the appointment of three new members to the company’s board of directors and released the results of an independent review of the events surrounding CEO Sam Altman’s surprise firing last November. The current board expressed its confidence in the leadership of Altman and President Greg Brockman, and Altman is rejoining the board.

The newly appointed board members are Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and global general counsel of Sony; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chair of Instacart. These additions notably bring three women to the board after OpenAI met criticism about its restructured board composition last year. In addition, Sam Altman has rejoined the board.

The independent review, conducted by law firm WilmerHale, investigated the circumstances that led to Altman’s abrupt removal from the board and his termination as CEO on November 17, 2023. Despite rumors to the contrary, the board did not fire Altman because they got a peek at scary new AI technology and flinched. “WilmerHale… found that the prior Board’s decision did not arise out of concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners.”

Instead, the review determined that the prior board’s actions stemmed from a breakdown in trust between the board and Altman.

After reportedly interviewing dozens of people and reviewing over 30,000 documents, WilmerHale found that while the prior board acted within its purview, Altman’s termination was unwarranted. “WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman,” OpenAI wrote, “but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal.”

Additionally, the law firm found that the decision to fire Altman was made in undue haste: “The prior Board implemented its decision on an abridged timeframe, without advance notice to key stakeholders and without a full inquiry or an opportunity for Mr. Altman to address the prior Board’s concerns.”

Altman’s surprise firing occurred after he attempted to remove Helen Toner from OpenAI’s board due to disagreements over her criticism of OpenAI’s approach to AI safety and hype. Some board members saw his actions as deceptive and manipulative. After Altman returned to OpenAI, Toner resigned from the OpenAI board on November 29.

In a statement posted on X, Altman wrote, “i learned a lot from this experience. one think [sic] i’ll say now: when i believed a former board member was harming openai through some of their actions, i should have handled that situation with more grace and care. i apologize for this, and i wish i had done it differently.”

A tweet from Sam Altman posted on March 8, 2024.

Enlarge / A tweet from Sam Altman posted on March 8, 2024.

Following the review’s findings, the Special Committee of the OpenAI Board recommended endorsing the November 21 decision to rehire Altman and Brockman. The board also announced several enhancements to its governance structure, including new corporate governance guidelines, a strengthened Conflict of Interest Policy, a whistleblower hotline, and additional board committees focused on advancing OpenAI’s mission.

After OpenAI’s announcements on Friday, resigned OpenAI board members Toner and Tasha McCauley released a joint statement on X. “Accountability is important in any company, but it is paramount when building a technology as potentially world-changing as AGI,” they wrote. “We hope the new board does its job in governing OpenAI and holding it accountable to the mission. As we told the investigators, deception, manipulation, and resistance to thorough oversight should be unacceptable.”

OpenAI CEO Altman wasn’t fired because of scary new tech, just internal politics Read More »

apple-and-tesla-feel-the-pain-as-china-opts-for-homegrown-products

Apple and Tesla feel the pain as China opts for homegrown products

Apple, Cars, china, Policy, syndication, Tech, Tesla / /
Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing

Enlarge / Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing

Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

Apple and Tesla cracked China, but now the two largest US consumer companies in the country are experiencing cracks in their own strategies as domestic rivals gain ground and patriotic buying often trumps their allure.

Falling market share and sales figures reported this month indicate the two groups face rising competition and the whiplash of US-China geopolitical tensions. Both have turned to discounting to try to maintain their appeal.

A shift away from Apple, in particular, has been sharp, spurred on by a top-down campaign to reduce iPhone usage among state employees and the triumphant return of Chinese national champion Huawei, which last year overcame US sanctions to roll out a homegrown smartphone capable of near 5G speeds.

Apple’s troubles were on full display at China’s annual Communist Party bash in Beijing this month, where a dozen participants told the Financial Times they were using phones from Chinese brands.

“For people coming here, they encourage us to use domestic phones, because phones like Apple are not safe,” said Zhan Wenlong, a nuclear physicist and party delegate. “[Apple phones] are made in China, but we don’t know if the chips have back doors.”

Wang Chunru, a member of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said he was using a Huawei device. “We all know Apple has eavesdropping capabilities,” he said.

Delegate Li Yanfeng from Guangxi said her phone was manufactured by Huawei. “I trust domestic brands, using them was a uniform request.”

Financial Times using Bloomberg data

Outside of the US, China is both Apple and Tesla’s single-largest market, respectively contributing 19 percent and 22 percent of total revenues during their most recent fiscal years. Their mounting challenges in the country have caught Wall Street’s attention, contributing to Apple’s 9 percent share price slide this year and Tesla’s 28 percent fall, making them the poorest performers among the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks.

Apple and Tesla are the latest foreign companies to feel the pain of China’s shift toward local brands. Sales of Nike and Adidas clothing have yet to return to their 2021 peak. A recent McKinsey report showed a growing preference among Chinese consumers for local brands.

Apple and Tesla feel the pain as China opts for homegrown products Read More »

here’s-porsche’s-newest-ev,-the-1,000-horsepower-taycan-turbo-gt

Here’s Porsche’s newest EV, the 1,000-horsepower Taycan Turbo GT

Cars, Porsche Taycan / /

Turbo, Turbo S, Turboest —

The new EV has set lap records at Laguna Seca and the Nürburgring.

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A purple Porsche Taycan at Laguna Seca

Enlarge / Porsche’s midlife refresh for the Taycan arrives this summer. Among the changes is a new model called the Taycan Turbo GT.

Porsche

Porsche is adding another new variant to its highly competent Taycan electric sedan. As part of the electric Porsche’s midlife refresh, there’s a new Taycan that sits atop the performance tree, appropriately named the Taycan Turbo GT. It’s the most powerful Taycan you can buy, with a peak output of 1,092 hp (815 kW), and the boffins in Germany have even cut about 157 lbs (72 kg) from the curb weight.

The eagle-eyed Porsche observer probably knew a faster Taycan was on the way. In January, wearing manufacturer’s camo and described as an “unnamed pre-production prototype,” the Taycan Turbo GT lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 7: 05.55, 20 seconds faster than Tesla’s best time with its Model S Plaid (and 26 seconds faster than the Taycan Turbo S, previously the fastest variant).

Now, shorn of its camouflage and proudly bearing the Turbo GT name—as well as sporting the Taycan’s new facelifted look—it has set a new record at Laguna Seca in California. With development driver Lars Kern behind the wheel, the Taycan Turbo GT lapped the 2.2-mile (3.6 km) circuit in 1: 27.87, which is a track record for a production EV at that track.

Power output is 777 hp (580 kW) in normal operation, but engage launch control, and that overboosts to 1,019 hp (760 Nm), with peak power of 1,092 hp for a couple of seconds. And Porsche’s Formula E program has had some influence here: While driving, you can engage “attack mode,” which boosts power by an additional 160 hp (120 kW) for 10-second bursts. Porsche has set up attack mode so it can be engaged or deactivated by a paddle on the steering wheel for ease of use while on track.

Among the changes under the skin are a new rear drive unit, common to the facelifted Taycans. But for the Turbo GT there’s a new silicon carbide pulse inverter that’s capable of up to 900 V, rather than the 600 V inverter in the Taycan Turbo S. The two-speed transmission has also been upgraded to cope with the Turbo GT’s peak torque of 988 lb-ft (1,340 Nm).

  • The purple car with the big rear wing is the Turbo GT with the Weissach package.

    Porsche

  • Lars Kern set laps in a pair of Taycan Turbo GTs—the purple car and this black one.

    Porsche

  • The Taycan Turbo GT negotiates the corkscrew.

    Porsche

  • The “purple sky metallic” paint is one of two new colors for the Turbo GT for this year.

    Porsche

  • The Turbo GT interior.

    Porsche

  • A rather happy-looking Lars Kern next to his record-setting rides.

    Porsche

You’ll need to specify the Turbo GT with the Weissach package—named for Porsche’s R&D base near Stuttgart—if you want to save weight as well as add power. This uses carbon fiber to replace heavier trim pieces, thinner glass, and a lighter sound system and ditches the automatic closing of the rear trunk, plus one of the two charge ports and even the rear speakers in order to save the aforementioned 157 lbs.

The Weissach package also cuts the 0-60 mph time from 2.2 seconds down to 2.1 seconds and allows for a 190 mph (306 km/h) top speed instead of topping out at 180 mph (290 km/h).

“The track at Laguna Seca pushes the Taycan Turbo GT to the limit. It’s the overall package that makes the difference,” said Kern. “The Turbo GT with Weissach package sets new standards in almost every metric. These include acceleration and braking, an “Attack Mode” that’s intuitive to use, and a powertrain designed for maximum traction and performance. And the cornering grip levels are just as impressive. The controllability and light-footedness are unbelievable. The tires work very well, and you have the right balance in every driving situation. It is incredibly good fun to drive this car around the undulating track at Laguna Seca.”

None of this comes cheap, however. The 2025 Taycan Turbo GT will start at $230,000 when it arrives in showrooms this summer.

Here’s Porsche’s newest EV, the 1,000-horsepower Taycan Turbo GT Read More »