I believe #Microsoft knew that #recall would generate this kind of backlash. They just don't care, they're testing limits of what they can get away with ... After all #google and #facebook got away (mostly) with what they're doing. It's the slow boiling frog method ... and people are gullible enough to buy whatever BS big tech marketing is selling ...
#AI#GenerativeAI#OpenAI#BigTech#SiliconValley: "Company documents obtained by Vox with signatures from Altman and Kwon complicate their claim that the clawback provisions were something they hadn’t known about. A separation letter on the termination documents, which you can read embedded below, says in plain language, “If you have any vested Units ... you are required to sign a release of claims agreement within 60 days in order to retain such Units.” It is signed by Kwon, along with OpenAI VP of people Diane Yoon (who departed OpenAI recently). The secret ultra-restrictive NDA, signed for only the “consideration” of already vested equity, is signed by COO Brad Lightcap.
Meanwhile, according to documents provided to Vox by ex-employees, the incorporation documents for the holding company that handles equity in OpenAI contains multiple passages with language that gives the company near-arbitrary authority to claw back equity from former employees or — just as importantly — block them from selling it.
Those incorporation documents were signed on April 10, 2023, by Sam Altman in his capacity as CEO of OpenAI."
If you only read one article this year, it has to be THIS by @Mer__edith, the president of #signal :
"AI is a marketing term, not a technical term of art. [...]
This is also why it’s imperative that we recognize mass surveillance – and ultimately the surveillance business model – as the root of the large-scale tech we’re currently calling “AI”."
Only accusing the "big companies" for doing all sort of "unethical" things, is like only accusing mass murderers for the killings that they do. Every crime is a crime. Big or small. Small companies do similar shady practices and abuse people or destroy the environment.
But best is to look at the system that creates these entities instead of accusing companies or people.
As long as the underlying practice on this planet is to TRADE or else you are fucked, then this is what we are going to do and prioritize. Thus the evolution of companies and billionaires, waste, pollution, you name it.
#AI#GenerativeAI#OpenAI#BigTech: "For years now, OpenAI told everyone that these were all secondary concerns — that its deeper ambition was something nobler, and more public-spirited. But since Altman’s return, the company has been telling a different story: a story about winning at all costs.
And why bother with superalignment, when there’s winning to do?
Why bother getting actresses’ permission, when the right numbers are all still going up?"
Seen in that light, it’s no surprise that Big Tech is refusing to comply with the rules. If the EU successfully forces tech to play fair, it will serve as a starting gun for a global race to the top, in which tech’s ill-gotten gains - of data, power and money - will be returned to the users and workers from whom that treasure came.
The architects of the DMA and DSA foresaw this, of course. They’ve announced investigations into Apple, Google and Meta, threatening fines of 10 percent of the companies’ global income, which will double to 20 percent if the companies don’t toe the line.
It’s not just Big Tech that’s playing for all the marbles - it’s also the systems of democratic control and accountability. If Apple can sabotage the DMA’s insistence on taking away its veto over its customers’ software choices, that will spill over into the US Department of Justice’s case over the same issue, as well as the cases in Japan and South Korea, and the pending enforcement action in the UK."
“Today #tech companies and their #billionaire CEOs are becoming increasingly demonized, and some people are questioning whether they should even exist at all.”