Silicon Valley Tech News Roundup – June 4th

Twitter executive responsible for brand safety resigns – 6/2

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s Vice President of Trust and Safety, quit the company on Thursday. Her department deals with content moderation. She took over the position after the previous head, Yoel Roth, left a month into Musk’s tenure as the owner of Twitter. A.J. Brown (Head of Brand Safety and Ad Quality) and Maie Aiyed (program manager responsible for brand-safety partnerships) followed her. It leaves Twitter even more vulnerable to hate speech.

Irwin’s resignation comes days after Musk criticized the decision by the content moderation team to limit the visibility of videos labeled as misgendering “a mistake.” Musk claimed misgendering does not violate the company’s terms of service. He tweeted: “Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.”

Researchers from the University of Southern California, Oregon State, and other institutions published a paper in April revealing that hate speech is rising on the platform following Musk’s takeover. According to the paper, accounts known for posting hateful content aimed at LGTBQ individuals and groups, Asians, and Blacks, ramped up their hateful tweeting since October last year.

AI industry leaders warn of “extinction” risk – 6/1

On Tuesday, several prominent AI leaders, researchers, and academics released a statement declaring reducing the risk of potential global annihilation caused by Artificial Intelligence should be a global priority. The Center for AI Safety released the statement. It was signed by Sam Altman (the CEO of OpenAI), Geoffrey Hinton (the “godfather” of AI), Bruce Schneier (cryptographer and computer security pioneer), Kevin Scott (Microsoft Chief Technology Officer), and other researchers, professors, and academics from institutions like Anthropic and Google DeepMind.

The statement reads: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Dan Hendrycks (The Director of the Center for AI Safety) tweeted David Krueger (AI professor, University of Cambridge) first proposed the statement. Further, he tweeted: “Societies can manage multiple risks at once; it’s not ‘either/or’ but ‘yes/and’… From a risk management perspective, just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritize present harms, it would also be reckless to ignore them as well.” He compared it to atomic scientists “issuing warnings about the very technologies they’ve created.”

YouTube will not remove false 2020 election fraud claims – 6/3

On Friday, YouTube announced it would stop removing content that claims the 2020 presidential election was a fraud. The new policy goes into effect on June 2nd. The company implemented the previous policy following the Presidential election.

According to YouTube, they removed thousands of videos claiming election fraud. But, the company stated it “carefully deliberated this change” and decided “it is time to re-evaluate.” The company did not specify what led to the change in policy.

In a statement, the company claims it: “recognized it was time to re-evaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape. In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm. With that in mind, and with 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.” Furthermore, the company stated it would continue adjusting its policies prior to the 2024 election.

Meta staff to return to the office for three days a week – 6/2

Meta announced it would require all of its office-assigned workers to return to the office for at least three days a week starting September 5th. Staff that is working from home exclusively can continue to do so. The decision comes after massive layoffs and in an attempt to improve efficiency.

In a statement, the spokesperson for the company stated Meta is “committed to distributed work,” and workers can have “a meaningful impact” both at home and in the office. The decision to have people back in the office aims to refine the work culture and collaboration as to help the staff produce their best work.

Meta instituted a work-from-home policy in 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company delayed a return to office in 2021 as new variants emerged and Covid-19 spread. In 2022, Meta’s contract workers protested against the requirement to return to the office months before in-house workers were supposed to do the same.

Other tech companies (like Apple) experienced similar challenges of establishing mandated hybrid schedules as their workforce protested against less flexibility in schedules and locations and increased commute and daycare costs.