Spotify acquires content moderation tech company Kinzen to address platform safety issues

Image Credits: Stockcam / Getty Images

“Today’s announcement of the acquisition of Kinzen is an indication that even that step was not enough — Spotify needed to bring content moderation expertise in-house, it seems.

In short, Kinzen’s solutions are aimed at helping platforms more quickly respond to content moderation issues in real time by using a combination of technology and human expertise at scale.”

https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/05/spotify-acquires-content-moderation-tech-company-kinzen-to-address-platform-safety-issues

Meta’s AI Chief Publishes Paper on Creating ‘Autonomous’ Artificial Intelligence

Despite some dubious recent claims—for example, the ex-Google engineer who claimed a chatbot had gained sentience before being fired—we’re pretty far off from that reality. Instead, one of the biggest barriers to a robot overlord situation is the simple fact that compared to animals and humans, current AI and machine learning systems are lacking in reason, a concept essential to the development of “autonomous” machine intelligence systems—that is, AI that can learn on the fly, directly from observations of the real world, rather than lengthy training sessions to perform a specific task. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkwqb/meta-ai-chief-publishes-paper-on-creating-autonomous-artificial-intelligence

TikTok said to be launching live shopping in the US

“When it comes to market expansion for TikTok Shop we are always guided by demand and are constantly exploring new and different options for how we can best serve our Community, Creators and Merchants in markets around the world. These efforts include exploring partnerships that further support a seamless e-commerce experience for merchants, which is an important part of our ecosystem,” TikTok said in a statement to TechCrunch.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/03/tiktok-said-to-be-launching-live-shopping-in-the-us/

Google is shutting down Stadia

Google is refunding all Stadia purchases — hardware, software, and DLC. Members of the Stadia team will be “carrying this work forward” in other departments at Google.

… Stadia has been facing rumors of its demise practically from the start. Google has a habit of killing projects only a few years after they launch, and Stadia, a cloud gaming service from a company with few ties in the gaming industry, seemed like a prime candidate for an early demise.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378713/google-stadia-shutting-down-game-streaming-january-2023

Google isn’t down: Malwarebytes antivirus app blocks Google.com for many

An issue with Malwarebytes is flagging Google.com and other domains incorrectly and blocking its users from accessing those domains. The issue appears to have hit widely as of 11am ET on September 21, and causes users to be unable to access Google.com, as well as receiving notifications for malware alerts. Other Google products, such as Gmail and YouTube, are also affected by this issue.

The cause of this error is not clear, but Malwarebytes has confirmed that it is looking into the “temporary issue” on Twitter.

https://9to5google.com/2022/09/21/google-malwarebytes-issue/

Designers worry Adobe won’t let Figma flourish

The world of creative technology was rocked last week by news that industry giant Adobe had acquired Figma, makers of a hugely popular suite of UI and UX design tools, for a whopping $20 billion. The response from designers was immediate — and for the most part, extremely negative.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/21/23363188/adobe-destroy-figma-designers-ux-ui-creative-cloud