That news app on your phone runs on AI and probably has ties to the CCP

Plus it sometimes just makes up stories

Last December the widely popular news app, NewsBreak, an app that focuses on local news, reported on a Christmas Eve shooting in the town of Bridgeton New Jersey. It was a tragic story. Yet more senseless violence.

The thing is it was entirely made up. It didn’t happen. At all.

We don’t really know why the entirely fictional story was reported, the company blamed it on the AI model it was running.

So a robot “reporter” just conjured the story? How?

Who knows? And we are probably never going to know, but the incident illustrates the potential dangers of letting AI run too loose. That this AI model was developed in the Ultimate Crony Capitalist State where all business is ultimately accountable to the Chinese Communist Party is also of concern.

Additionally it is worth considering that we have basically entered into a new Cold War with China and that we are currently sparring in the Straights of Taiwan. A Chinese controlled local news app that is widely distributed and trusted could be a very valuable tool of warfare under certain circumstances.

It’s not hard to imagine how an entirely false flash news story of a riot, or terrorist attack, or some sort of pestilence, could cause havoc.

Back in the old Cold War no one was running around using Soviet engineered technology (Why would they have wanted to? Have you ever seen a Lada?). But in this new state of affairs our main rival, and we think it’s fair to say that China is indeed our chief rival at this point, is WAY better at making things and burrowing into our still sort of free society than the Bolshis ever were. (Sure there were lots of commies in Hollywood. This is true. They did OK on that front.) This presents a new threat and a new challenge because in a free society we also believe in free speech, and freedom generally. We don’t want the government regulating every app that comes down the pike. Where is the line drawn?

We figure it’s drawn somewhere around when a company (or app, or AI model) is proven to be operating maliciously and on behalf of a hostile state. But this standard could be abused by powerful domestic forces to shut out competition (as we suspect is a big part of the move against TikTok) and to limit speech.

It’s tricky and in the years ahead these conundrums are only going to multiply.

(From Yahoo Finance)

NewsBreak, which is only available in the US, launched in the country as a subsidiary of China-based company Yidian, which is partly owned by a Chinese state-linked media firm. Yidian is no longer connected with the app, but one of its primary investors is IDG Capital, a Beijing-based company that the Pentagon says is affiliated (PDF) with the Chinese military.

Former employees told Reuters that NewsBreak's China-based engineers do most of the work on its algorithms, even though the app presents itself as a US-based company with US investors. NewsBreak CEO Jeff Zheng told Reuters that it complies with US data and privacy laws and that it's maintained on Amazon servers based in the United States. Its Chinese staff, Zheng said, can only access anonymous data stored on those servers.

Click here for the article.