Saturday, July 12, 2025

I’m interested in where this might go…

https://www.politico.eu/article/france-opens-criminal-probe-into-x-for-algorithm-manipulation/

France launches criminal investigation into Musk’s X over algorithm manipulation

French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference.”

Magistrate Laure Beccuau said in a statement Friday that prosecutors had launched the probe on Wednesday and were looking into whether the social media giant broke French law by altering its algorithms and fraudulently extracting data from users.

The criminal investigation comes on the heels of an inquiry launched in January, and is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant, Beccuau said.

A complaint that sparked the initial January inquiry accused X of spreading “an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”





Perspective.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/what-if-ai-becomes-conscious/

What if AI becomes conscious?

The question of whether Artificial Intelligence can become conscious is not just a philosophical question, but a political one. Given that an increasing number of people are forming social relationships with AI systems, the calls for treating them as persons with legal protections might not be far off. In this interview based on his book The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI Jonathan Birch argues that we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the possibility that AI could become conscious, but warns that we are not ready, conceptually or societally, for such an eventuality.



No comments: