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Obama Follows Up State Of The Union Speech with Silicon Valley Powwow


SAN FRANCISCO, February 17, 2011 — President Obama checked in with the U.S.’ titans of tech on Thursday in a brief swing through Silicon Valley before heading north to Oregon to visit Intel.

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SAN FRANCISCO, February 17, 2011 — President Obama checked in with the U.S.’ titans of tech on Thursday in a brief swing through Silicon Valley before heading north to Oregon to visit Intel.

Obama’s visit wasn’t open to the press or the public apart from his arrival and departure.

But in a statement issued after the dinner at Silicon Valley legend John Doerr’s house in Woodside, White House spokesman Jay Carney said:

“This evening, the President joined twelve leaders from technology companies to discuss ways to work together to invest in American innovation and promote private sector job growth.

In the President’s State of the Union Address, he called on us to win the future by out-innovating and out-educating the rest of the world and increasing American competitiveness.

The President believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate.

The President specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs.

The group also discussed the importance of new investments in education and the new White House initiative Startup America, a partnership with the private sector aimed at supporting new startups and small businesses.

The President expressed his desire to continue a dialogue with the group to share new ideas so we can work as partners to promote growth and create good jobs in the United States

As a prime funder of oh, just a few little internet companies such as Google, Amazon, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Macromedia and Symantec, Doerr estimates that he has created 150,000 new jobs.

He’s also on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and is a passionate advocate of most of the items on Obama’s tech and climate change policy agenda.

Convened at the Doerr’s high level “revenge of the nerds” dinner party Thursday were the CEOs of Apple, CISCO, Genentech, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Oracle, Twitter and Yahoo, reports The New York Times‘ Miguel Helft.

Also there for the power chow-down were Stanford University President John Hennessy and politico Steve Westly of the Westly Group.

But POLITICO reports that the dinner wouldn’t have been a “love-in,” given that many of the titans are disappointed with Obama’s perceived slow progress on the promised policy items on their agenda, such as making the R&D credit permanent, and boosting the number of visas for highly-skilled foreign workers.

Still, Democratic consultants say that the visit is a “grand slam” for the president.

“First, this is a part of the country that’s still creating high-paid jobs. Next, Jobs being there buys you a national audience… Next, you get to talk about the role Facebook is playing [in the Mideast liberation movements]. And it’s touching base with a group of donors who are going to be very important in next year’s election,” Chris Lehane told POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush.

No word on whether patent reform was on the menu of discussion, even most of the CEOs in attendance have a big stake in the outcome of what emerges from Capitol Hill during this session of Congress.

Several of the companies’ policy teams are against a patent bill currently under consideration in Congress that has the support of the Obama administration, Microsoft and IBM.

Those companies include Apple, CISCO, Google, and Oracle.

Still, Obama has at least a couple of tech-related agenda items he can tell the CEOs that he’s recently ticked off on the national policy to-do list.

His administration earlier this week released a budget request for a boost in funding to speed up patent applications, and it published a new report and broadband map that for the first time tracks broadband internet penetration across the United States.

Artificial Intelligence

Sen. Bennet Urges Companies to Consider ‘Alarming’ Child Safety Risks in AI Chatbot Race

Several leading tech companies have rushed to integrate their own AI-powered applications

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Photo of Sen. Michael Bennet in 2019 by Gage Skidmore, used with permission

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2023 — Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., on Tuesday urged the companies behind generative artificial intelligence products to anticipate and mitigate the potential harms that AI-powered chatbots pose to underage users.

“The race to deploy generative AI cannot come at the expense of our children,” Bennet wrote in a letter to the heads of Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and Snap. “Responsible deployment requires clear policies and frameworks to promote safety, anticipate risk and mitigate harm.”

In response to the explosive popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, several leading tech companies have rushed to integrate their own AI-powered applications. Microsoft recently released an AI-powered version of its Bing search engine, and Google has announced plans to make a conversational AI service “widely available to the public in the coming weeks.”

Social media platforms have followed suit, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying the company plans to “turbocharge” its AI development the same day Snapchat launched a GPT-powered chatbot called My AI.

These chatbots have already demonstrated “alarming” interactions, Bennet wrote. In response to a researcher posing as a child, My AI gave instructions for lying to parents about an upcoming trip with a 31-year-old man and for covering up a bruise ahead of a visit from Child Protective Services.

A Snap Newsroom post announcing the chatbot acknowledged that “as with all AI-powered chatbots, My AI is prone to hallucination and can be tricked into saying just about anything.”

Bennet criticized the company for deploying My AI despite knowledge of its shortcomings, noting that 59 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 use Snapchat. “Younger users are at an earlier stage of cognitive, emotional, and intellectual development, making them more impressionable, impulsive, and less equipped to distinguish fact from fiction,” he wrote.

These concerns are compounded by an escalating youth mental health crisis, Bennet added. In 2021, more than half of teen girls reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless and one in three seriously contemplated suicide, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Against this backdrop, it is not difficult to see the risk of exposing young people to chatbots that have at times engaged in verbal abuse, encouraged deception and suggested self-harm,” the senator wrote.

Bennet’s letter comes as lawmakers from both parties are expressing growing concerns about technology’s impact on young users. Legislation aimed at safeguarding children’s online privacy has gained broad bipartisan support, and several other measures — ranging from a minimum age requirement for social media usage to a slew of regulations for tech companies — have been proposed.

Many industry experts have also called for increased AI regulation, noting that very little legislation currently governs the powerful technology.

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Innovation

VON Evolution Conference Will Address Intersection of Telecom, AI, 5G and Blockchain

The New York City event on April 18 aims to foster conversations through a salon-like atmosphere.

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Screenshot of Vonage Founder Jeff Pulver from video introducing VON: Evolution

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2023 — Industry leaders and innovators will come together to discuss the latest advancements in telecom, artificial intelligence, 5G and blockchain at the recently announced VON: Evolution conference on April 18.

Through a series of fireside chats and in-depth conversations, VON: Evolution will examine modern communication technologies and look toward the future. In addition to featuring insights from industry experts, the New York City event aims to foster a salon-like atmosphere, facilitating thought-provoking conversations between attendees.

VON: Evolution will be curated by Jeff Pulver, founder of Vonage and a prominent voice-over-IP entrepreneur.

“Industries and technologies are intersecting and they will continue to at a rapid rate,” Pulver said. “By holding the VON: Evolution salon, the goal is to bring to light what’s really emerging, by having conversations with the actual creators who can bring greater insight and perspective, and enable others at the forefront of advancements to be engaging across the four industries, not just in their own ecosystems.”

Speakers at the conference will address a wide range of topics, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of multiple technologies. The digital program features a full list of topics and speakers, including Althea CEO Deborah Simpier, Foursquare Co-Founder Dennis Crowley, Agoric COO Michael Jablon and several others.

Broadband Breakfast is a sponsor of VON: Evolution. Use promo code “broadband” for a 10 percent discount on the registration price.

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Artificial Intelligence

Oversight Committee Members Concerned About New AI, As Witnesses Propose Some Solutions

Federal government can examine algorithms for generative AI, and coordinate with states on AI labor training.

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Photo of Eric Schmidt from December 2011 by Kmeron used with permission

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2023 –  In response to lawmakers’ concerns over the impacts on certain artificial intelligence technologies, experts said at an oversight subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that more government regulation would be necessary to stem their negative impacts.

Relatively new machine learning technology known as generative AI, which is designed to create content on its own, has taken the world by storm. Specific applications such as the recently surfaced ChatGPT, which can write out entire novels from basic user inputs, has drawn both marvel and concern.

Such AI technology can be used to encourage cheating behaviors in academia as well as harm people through the use of  deep fakes, which uses AI to superimpose a user in a video. Such AI can be used to produce “revenge pornography” to harass, silence and blackmail victims.

Aleksander Mądry, professor of Cadence Design Systems of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the subcommittee that AI is a very fast moving technology, meaning the government needs to step in to confirm the objectives of the companies and whether the algorithms match the societal benefits and values. These generative AI technologies are often limited to their human programming and can also display biases.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, raised concerns about this type of AI replacing human jobs. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and now chair of the AI development initiative known as the Special Competitive Studies Project, said that if this AI can be well-directed, it can aid people in obtaining higher incomes and actually creating more jobs.

To that point, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Massachusetts., raised the question of how much progress the government has made or still needs in AI development.

Schmidt said governments across the country need to look at bolstering the labor force to keep up.

“I just don’t see the progress in government to reform the way of hiring and promoting technical people,” he said. “This technology is too new. You need new students, new ideas, new invention – I think that’s the fastest way.

“On the federal level, the easiest thing to do is to come up with some program that’s ministered by the state or by leading universities and getting them money so that they can build these programs.”

Schmidt urged lawmakers last year to create a digital service academy to train more young American students on AI, cybersecurity and cryptocurrency, reported Axios.

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