Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29758952

Here is the study (pdf).

The study also criticizes that social and environmental risks persists, e.g. in Chinese-funded battery plants in Hungary, where "a number of health & safety breaches have also been recorded and working and living conditions of migrant workers are described by some as "modern day slavery", the study says.

Summary:

Europe’s ambition to build a world-leading battery industry is facing many headwinds. As local plans falter, over 90% electric car and storage batteries are produced by South Korean and Chinese companies in the EU. An additional 40% of announced battery gigafactories are from these companies, who are global leaders in the technology and more likely to succeed.

Many European carmakers are entering partnerships with Chinese battery players to secure the supply. But there are concerns about the environmental and social conditions under which some of these facilities, e.g. CATL battery plant in Hungary, are operating. Critically, as homegrown battery companies struggle, will the upcoming partnerships with foreign battery leaders enable the EU to gain the expertise we lack? Is it the road to becoming a battery powerhouse or an assembly plant?

T&E has commissioned a study to Carbone 4 and independent experts to find out. The study analysed the environmental and social conditions in the CATL battery plant in Hungary and the LG one in Poland, as well as the technology transfer provisions in the VW-Gotion and CATL-Stellantis battery partnerships. It finds that:

While hundreds of millions were given to these two factories alone, environmental and social risks persist:

• Together, the two Asian factories analysed received at least EUR 900 mln in state aid subsidies from the Hungarian and Polish governments, often drawn from the European post-covid recovery fund. However, no environmental or social conditions were attached by the European Commission, or auditing performed.
• A clear breach of the EU's Industrial Emissions Directive on air pollution was found (but unclear if governments given derogation), as documents show that both factories exceed the EU limit for NMP, a toxic substance used in cathode manufacturing. In addition, poor water management plans and questions around the ability of the host countries, notably Hungary, to provide sufficient energy were raised.
• Precarious working and broader social conditions were also noted in Asian factories in Hungary. This is largely due to an insufficient local legal framework around temporary contract workers under which thousands of migrant workers in battery factories are hired. A number of health & safety breaches have also been recorded and working and living conditions of migrant workers are described by some as “modern day slavery”.

Upcoming Chinese-EU battery ventures lack local knowledge sharing

The analysis, largely relying on external experts due to the lack of public data, also looked at decision making, technology/skills transfer and other key conditions in two recent partnerships. It finds that:

• No EU-wide (or national) requirements on technology transfer, local content or other conditions in joint ventures exist in Europe. This results in pure business to business (or member state to China) agreements focusing on short-term battery supply.
• While VW invested EUR 1.1 billion into Gotion and holds 26.47% of shares, it is said to have less significant say in battery operations. Experts point out that the partnership is more about securing LFP battery supplies to VW’s European operations, than comprehensive knowledge or IP transfer to Europe.
• Taking the form of a 50-50 JV, Stellantis and CATL were offered EUR 300mln in state aid for the planned LFP plant in Zaragoza, Spain. No conditions on technology or skills transfer were attached to this subsidy.
• Despite very little information available on the latter JV, expert after expert has pointed out that it is about supplies, not technology transfer: for Stellantis, the main goal appears to be access to the LFP battery technology to supply electric cars on the EU market.

• Lambasted by reviewers, the Humane Ai Pin is set to become useless on 28th February.
• This as the company will shut down its online services disabling calling, messaging, AI queries and responses, as well as cloud access.
• The company’s assets and some staff are moving to HP which has purchased the company for $116 million.

South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing user data with the owner of TikTok in China.

"We confirmed DeepSeek communicating with ByteDance," the South Korean data protection regulator told Yonhap News Agency.

The country had already removed DeepSeek from app stores over the weekend over data protection concerns.

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“Generative AI can assist our journalists in uncovering the truth and helping more people understand the world.”

U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services. But the number of civilians killed has also soared, fueling fears that these tools are contributing to the deaths of innocent people.

• X has released the latest version of its generative AI chatbot – Grok 3.
• According to Elon Musk, Grok 3 has 10 times the compute of its predecessor.
• The chatbot is available to all of X’s users for free in beta.

Scientific English is currently undergoing rapid change, with words like “delve,” “intricate,” and “underscore” appearing far more frequently than just a few years ago. It is widely assumed that scientists’ use of large language models (LLMs) is responsible for such trends. We develop a formal, transferable method to characterize these linguistic changes. Application of our method yields 21 focal words whose increased occurrence in scientific abstracts is likely the result of LLM usage. We then pose “the puzzle of lexical overrepresentation”: why are such words overused by LLMs? We fail to find evidence that lexical overrepresentation is caused by model architecture, algorithm choices, or training data. To assess whether reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) contributes to the overuse of focal words, we undertake comparative model testing and conduct an exploratory online study. While the model testing is consistent with RLHF playing a role, our experimental results suggest that participants may be reacting differently to “delve” than to other focal words. With LLMs quickly becoming a driver of global language change, investigating these potential sources of lexical overrepresentation is important. We note that while insights into the workings of LLMs are within reach, a lack of transparency surrounding model development remains an obstacle to such research.

The company said it was greenlighting a number of AI programs for editorial and product staff.

Signal has recently become a popular organizing tool among government workers.

I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. OpenAI and Anthropic are not innovators, and are antithetical to the spirit of Silicon Valley. They are management consultants dressed as founders, cynical con artists raising money for products that will never exist while peddling software that destroys our planet and diverts attention and capital away from things that might solve real problems.

I'm tired of the delusion. I'm tired of being forced to take these men seriously. I'm tired of being told by the media and investors that these men are building the future when the only things they build are mediocre and expensive. There is no joy here, no mystery, no magic, no problems solved, no lives saved, and very few lives changed other than new people added to Forbes' Midas list.

None of this is powerful, or impressive, other than in how big a con it’s become. Look at the products and the actual outputs and tell me — does any of this actually feel like the future? Isn’t it kind of weird that the big, scary threats they’ve made about how AI will take our jobs never seem to translate to an actual product? Isn’t it strange that despite all of their money and power they’re yet to make anything truly useful?

My heart darkens, albeit briefly, when I think of how cynical all of this is. Corporations building products that don't really do much that are being sold on the idea that one day they might, peddled by reporters that want to believe their narratives — and in some cases actively champion them. The damage will be tens of thousands of people fired, long-term environmental and infrastructural chaos, and a profound depression in Silicon Valley that I believe will dwarf the dot-com bust.

And when this all falls apart — and I believe it will — there will be a very public reckoning for the tech industry.

Recent content policy announcements by Meta pose a grave threat to vulnerable communities globally and drastically increase the risk that the company will yet again contribute to mass violence and gross human rights abuses – just like it did in Myanmar in 2017. The company’s significant contribution to the atrocities suffered by the Rohingya people is the subject of a new whistleblower complaint that has just been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued "Download and Transfer via USB" feature to archive your Kindle library.

The title is not a rhetorical question, and I'm not going to bury an answer. I don't have an answer. This post is my exploration of the question, and why I think it is a question.

Company has agreed to work with privacy commissioner to strengthen protections

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29659002

• Some Temu sellers use fake shipping labels to avoid delivery costs within the U.S.
• Scammers advertise counterfeit USPS postage on Chinese social media, charging as little as 60 cents to deliver packages in America.
• USPS loses millions of dollars a year to counterfeit postage and is cracking down.

Some Chinese Temu merchants are padding their profits by using counterfeit postage labels to trick the U.S. Postal Service into delivering packages for free. Posts on Chinese social media openly promote fake labels for as little as 60 cents, and the scam costs the USPS millions of dollars a year, Rest of World has found from interviews with sellers, logistics operators, and USPS employees.

...

Creating, distributing, and buying fake USPS labels is a crime, and overseas warehouse operators also risk significant jail time by processing parcels with these labels. It is likely that only a small minority of merchants use counterfeit labels, but these numbers could rise as logistics costs increase. Shipping is a major cost for e-commerce sellers, with USPS charging up to $10 for a parcel weighing about 2 pounds (around 1 kilogram).

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Experts say his real goal is "stymying" its growth potential as his own AI ventures flounder.