Business, Spoken

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Elon Musk's Ire Reveals a Wall Street-Silicon Valley Divide May 07, 2018

Show notes

Wall Street and Silicon Valley have never been happy bedfellows, and that was on full display this week during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. These calls are usually dull affairs, with CEOs or CFOs reading a prepared script summarizing the already-released financial results and articulating the main goals of the company that have, presumably, been stated before.

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Amazon Tussles With Seattle as It Seeks a Second Home May 07, 2018

Show notes

Last month four Seattle city councilmembers proposed a new corporate tax that aims to build more affordable housing and expand services for the homeless. In response, Amazon announced this week that it will halt construction on a new building and consider subleasing to others a second building, pending the council's vote on the proposal. Together, the two buildings could have hosted at least 7,000 Amazon employees.

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Google Cofounder Sergey Brin Warns of AI's Dark Side May 04, 2018

Show notes

Artificial intelligence is a recurring theme in recent remarks by top executives at Alphabet. The company’s latest Founders’ Letter, penned by Sergey Brin, is no exception—but he also finds time to namecheck possible downsides around safety, jobs, and fairness. The company has issued a Founders’ Letter---usually penned by Brin, cofounder Larry Page or both---every year, beginning with the letter that accompanied Google’s 2004 IPO.

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How Artificial Intelligence Can–and Can't–Fix Facebook May 04, 2018

Show notes

Facebook has problems. Fake news. Terrorism. Russian propaganda. And maybe soon regulation. The company’s solution: Turn them into artificial-intelligence problems. The strategy will require Facebook to make progress on some of the biggest challenges in computing. During two congressional sessions last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg referenced AI more than 30 times in explaining how the company would better police activity on its platform.

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Your Instagram #Dogs and #Cats Are Training Facebook's AI May 03, 2018

Show notes

Using a social network like Facebook is a two-way street, part-shrouded in shadow. The benefits of sharing banter and photos with friends and family—for free—are obvious and immediate. So are the financial rewards for Facebook; but you don’t get to see all of the company’s uses for your data. An artificial intelligence experiment of unprecedented scale disclosed by Facebook Wednesday offers a glimpse of one such use case.

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A California Ruling Threatens the Gig Economy May 03, 2018

Show notes

The California Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the gig economy on Monday in a decision that will have far-reaching effects not just for the likes of Uber and GrubHub, but for many different types of employers. The court ruled that employers must treat workers who do work related to a company's "usual course of business" as full-fledged employees.

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What Mark Zuckerberg Gets Wrong—and Right—About Hate Speech May 02, 2018

Show notes

When he testified before Congress last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the problem of using artificial intelligence to identify online hate speech. He said he was optimistic that in five to 10 years, “We will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging content for our systems, but today we’re not just there on that.

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Mark Zuckerberg Says It Will Take 3 Years to Fix Facebook May 02, 2018

Show notes

Mark Zuckerberg knew his keynote speech at F8 this year would not be like any other. His previous appearances at Facebook's annual developer's conference were all about the new products and technology Facebook was announcing that day, and the vision he would share for future triumphs.

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This Silicon Valley Lawmaker Has a Plan to Regulate Tech May 01, 2018

Show notes

US Representative Ro Khanna (D-California) represents much of Silicon Valley, but he’s not just a cheerleader for the hometown industry. He supports tougher antitrust review of tech mergers, for one thing. Khanna is also trying to draft an “Internet Bill of Rights,” principles that he hopes can later form the basis of legislation.

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The Sprint/T-Mobile Merger Is Huge—But a Lot of Questions Remain May 01, 2018

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Sprint may soon be no more. Today the venerable telecommunications company announced plans to merge with T-Mobile in an all-stock deal. If regulators give the go-ahead, the new company will be called simply T-Mobile, and T-Mobile's current chief executive officer John Legere will be its CEO. That's a big if.

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