A new report shows that cripplingly high computational costs mean just a handful of big companies are able to do top-flight AI research.
Why it matters: AI will do more than any other technology to shape our future. If only the Googles and the Microsofts of the world have the resources needed to move the field forward, it will solidify their power — and possibly strangle innovation.
The CEOs of Twitter, Google and Facebook will testify before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 28, six days before Election Day, a committee aide confirmed to Axios.
Driving the news: On Thursday, the committee authorized subpoenas for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai and Twitter's Jack Dorsey. By Friday evening, the companies and the committee worked out a date, first reported by Politico.
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case brought to it by the Federal Communications Commission, with support from the National Association of Broadcasters, about the FCC's longtime attempts to relax media ownership rules.
Why it matters: The case will determine whether a 2017 FCC rule allowing broadcast companies to own more than one of the top four stations in a market can stand. If it does, it will likely usher in even more local broadcast consolidation in the U.S.
If social media platforms don't start dealing much more aggressively with altered audio and video, they risk seeing their platforms devolve into a sea of faked content, experts tell Axios.
Why it matters: The platforms are already struggling to deal with manipulated media, and the technology to create "deepfakes," which are fabricated media generated by machine-learning-based software, is improving rapidly.
Some tech CEOs just want to make great products and boost profits while ignoring politics, but 2020 isn't letting them.
Driving the news: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told employees in a memo Sunday that their company would henceforth take no political stands that are "unrelated to their core mission" and bar political conversation from its office.
President Trump's tweet on Friday announcing that he and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for coronavirus quickly become his most retweeted and liked tweet ever.
Why it matters: The tweet — sent at 12:54 a.m. ET — set records while most of the nation was asleep, so it's bound to get even bigger.
