US, UK & 16 Other Nations Pledge AI ‘Secure by Design’; Unsealed Complaint-Meta ‘Cover Under 13 Kid Users; Black Friday Online Buying Sets Record; Amazon Rebrands Fire TV Cube as ‘Workspaces Thin Client’

The US, UK and 16 other nations have inked an agreement pledging to make AI ‘secure by design.’ 9to5mac.com reports that while it is only a basic statement of principles, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency says it is an important first step. CISA director Jen Easterly said that it was important that countries recognize that AI development needs a safety-first approach, and encouraged other countries to sign up. Other nations on board so far include: other countries to sign up so far are Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Australia, Chile, Israel, Nigeria, and Singapore.

An unsealed complaint in a lawsuit filed against Meta by 33 states doesn’t look good for them. According to engadget.com, the complaint alleges that Meta is not only aware that children under the age of 13 use its platforms, but has also “coveted and pursued” this demographic for years on Instagram. The document, which was first spotted by The New York Times, claims that Meta has long been dishonest about how it handles underage users’ accounts when they’re discovered, often failing to disable them when reported and continuing to harvest their data. The suit alleges the presence of under-13s is an “open secret” at Meta. 

With deep discounts being touted everywhere, Black Friday saw a record $9.8 billion worth of online buying in the US…$70.9 billion worldwide. Techcrunch.com says the figure comes from Adobe Analytics, which notes that sales were up 7.5% over last year’s numbers. What about brick and mortar stores? The numbers are still coming in, but it looks like they were up 2% over last year. 

Amazon has repurposed and rebranded the Fire TV Cube…it’s now the ‘Workspaces Thin Client’. Geekwire.com reports that it will sell for $195, and will be a very basic essentially terminal which will rely on cloud based processing and storage. Sounds a lot like a Chromebook, doesn’t it? Amazon has built a custom version of the Fire OS to run the device, and customers can pay either fixed monthly subscription fees to connect to the cloud, or choose usage-based costs that bill based on hourly metering. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.