Happy Thursday! Today, we face a slew of challenges and opportunities in the online world. From congressional action via a markup on critical kids online safety bills to the ongoing legal battle between some of the biggest players in technology, the technological playing field is changing rapidly. In addition to this week’s breaking news, Finally, we close with a community update from our partner organization, ReThink Citizens. As a reminder, if you have news, events, or announcements you’d like to share with the SMC community, please send them to signals@sustainablemedia.center. We’d be happy to feature them in an upcoming edition of Signals.
Yesterday, the U.S Senate Commerce Committee conducted a hearing to mark up three important, child online safety bills: Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), Youth AI Privacy Act, and CHATBOT Act.
This markup comes after a direct call for action from a coalition of 60 child safety groups as reported by Politico . In a letter sent Monday, “the bloc demanded the committee Chair Ted Cruz and ranking member Maria Cantwell only consider legislation with a ‘duty of care’ standard that would require tech companies to mitigate harms they know”. As stated by Senator Blumenthal’s office, The duty of care “requires social media companies to prevent and mitigate certain harms that they know their platforms and products are causing young users as a result of their own design choices, such as their recommendation algorithms and addictive product features”.
In a press release prior to markup, Issue One Policy Lead for Technology Reform and SMC GenZ Board member Isabel Sunderland remarked “The Senate Commerce markup…is a long overdue step. It is past time for Congress to see this issue for what it is: a fight for profit versus Americans’ lives.”
On Monday, Reuters reports that Apple asked a U.S judge for a preliminary injunction barring two former employees and OpenAI from “accessing, acquiring, using, or disclosing alleged confidential information as it moves ahead with its trade secrets case”.
For those who have not been following the case, last month Apple sued OpenAI and two former employees “alleging misappropriation of its trade secrets” to benefit ChatGPT. This heated legal exchange intensified on Monday with a blog post from OpenAI alleging all the things Apple is getting wrong. In the post, OpenAI called the lawsuit “careless, aggressive, and oddly personal”.
While these two tech giants duke it out, SMC will continue to provide relevant and timely updates on the legal proceedings.
Last week, The Power of Us Substack released a fascinating article on what human-AI partnerships reveal about trust norms and decisions, entitled “The Robot Cooperation Problem”. In the piece, authors Dominic Packer, Jay Van Bavel, and Laura Globig unpack cooperation and the social norms that shape how we behave with one another. They critically ask– what happens when your partner you must cooperate with isn’t a person– it’s an AI agent?
New research into this very question finds that norms reliably drive cooperation between humans and lose much of their force when AI is involved. And why may you ask? Norms failed because people couldn’t predict what AI would do.
As stated in the article, “these findings flip the usual narrative about how to improve human–AI interaction. Much of the conversation focuses on making AI more trustworthy, more likable, or more human-like. Our work points to a different level: making AI more predictable. If people can form accurate expectations about what an AI system will do, social norms engage and cooperation follows naturally.”
In a piece in the Atlantic entitled “The Best Parenting Hack is Being Rich”, author Olga Khazan warns that richer, highly educated parents are more likely to limit their kids’ screen time than less educated, lower-income parents are.
In the article, Olga contends that “rather than scolding parents about screens, society could do more to support families in ways that obviate the need for screen time”. This support can manifest in many different ways– more affordable community screen-free activities, subsidized child care, etc. The important thing is that society continues to look for ways to lessen the parenting gap in the digital age and protect all children no matter socioeconomic status.
This week, SMC is proud to uplift the work of SMC GenZ Board member Trisha Prabhu’s non-profit, ReThink Citizens:
Are you a young person looking to get involved in the responsible technology movement this summer?
Rethink Citizens is recruiting for their Youth Squad, a nationwide group of young digital safety leaders (ages 15 to 25) trained to deliver workshops that help parents and caregivers keep kids safe online.
Join this summer by attending our free, virtual two-day training session August 8th and 9th (Sat., 8-11am CT & Sun., 2-5pm CT)
Learn more and sign up here. Questions? Email lydia.bliss@rethinkcitizens.org.
Curated and written by Emma Lembke and AI
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