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A growing coalition of researchers and policy advocates is pushing back against the breakneck pace of AI development, and their approach is unusually concrete. According to a new piece in Time, the effort centers on data center verification — essentially creating independent oversight mechanisms to monitor how much computational power AI labs are actually deploying. It's a rare attempt to bring arms-control-style thinking to Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, in the surveillance technology space, Flock Safety — the company behind roughly one hundred twenty thousand license plate readers across the United States — announced platform changes last week meant to prevent officers from using its tools for illegal purposes. MIT Technology Review argues that defenders of those changes are missing something important: voluntary guardrails on a system this embedded in law enforcement may simply not be enough.
And if you spend any time on TikTok, you may have seen ads promising a MacBook Neo for just one hundred nineteen dollars. It is, as you might suspect, a scam — one sophisticated enough that even a professional tech deals writer nearly fell for it. The takeaway is a familiar one: if a discount looks impossible, it almost certainly is.
Stay skeptical, stay curious. Tech Beat out.
