You're tuned in to Tech Beat.
Pope Leo the Fourteenth is drawing a sharp line between human creativity and machine output. In a written statement, the new pontiff argued there is an ontological difference between art and what an algorithm produces through statistical calculation. He put it plainly: machines lack the spark of humanity. It's a theological framing, but the underlying debate is very much a live one in Silicon Valley boardrooms and artists' studios alike.
Shifting to Washington, a quiet privacy concern is surfacing around America dot gov, the relaunched federal web portal. Researchers have flagged that Login dot gov's underlying code may set tracking cookies with expiration windows stretching nearly twenty years. The site launched with a privacy pledge, which makes the technical fine print all the more worth scrutinizing, especially as Americans are being encouraged to centralize their government interactions through a single login.
And in a story with serious national security weight, a California tech executive named Greg Lui has been arrested for allegedly smuggling more than three hundred million dollars worth of restricted Nvidia chips to China. Prosecutors say the scheme ran from two thousand twenty three through two thousand twenty four, routing the hardware through high-end servers to evade export controls. He faces up to twenty years in prison.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
