Good morning. We have brought our world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future.
We have reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. We have produced machines that think and instruments that peer into distant space.
Yet something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our technological abundance. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together.
Struck by these words? They’re not mine, but those of the late American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., delivered as part of his 1964 Nobel Lecture and edited for use in this newsletter. It’s his federal holiday here in the U.S., and you know, the man was ahead of his time in more ways than one.
The news below. —Andrew Nusca
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TikTok remains online in U.S. after briefly going dark
In the end, it was mostly a public relations stunt.
The social media service TikTok went dark over the weekend in the U.S, then restored service to its 170 million users in the country, in advance of the broadly bipartisan law banning the service (if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, didn’t first divest it) taking effect on Sunday.
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” read a pop-up message, in part, in the TikTok app on Saturday. After reinstatement on Sunday, a new one read: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
Trump’s first day back on the job is today. President Biden previously indicated he would not enforce the rule, which he signed into law in April, on his final day in office.
The TikTok app is unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores. Both companies removed the app in compliance with the federal law, which threatens steep fines for violations.
Trump said Sunday that he planned to issue an executive order to give ByteDance more time to find an approved buyer, but as President he lacks the constitutional power to change a law made by Congress. The current law does allow for a 90-day extension if a viable sale of TikTok U.S. is in process, but ByteDance has rejected any notion of a sale. —AN
EU expands investigation into Musk’s X
The European Commission has widened its probe into Elon Musk’s X.
Having already come to the tentative conclusion that X is breaking the EU’s Digital Services Act by having a deception-friendly blue-check scheme and failing to be transparent about ads, the Commission is now looking into X’s algorithm.
Specifically, it wants X to hand over internal documents relating to recent changes to the platform’s recommendation algorithm, and to hang on to documents about potential future changes.
The EU executive also reportedly wants information about X’s content moderation practices.
When it initially launched its in-depth investigation just over a year ago, the Commission said it was looking into “the effectiveness of X’s so-called ‘Community Notes’ system,” but that element of the probe soon went quiet. It may be back now.
In other EU tech regulatory news, the privacy activist group Noyb has filed complaints alleging that TikTok, Shein, Temu and other Chinese companies broke the General Data Protection Regulation by sending user data back home.
Noyb lawyer Kleanthi Sardeli: “Given that China is an authoritarian surveillance state, it is crystal clear that China doesn't offer the same level of data protection as the EU.” —David Meyer
Coming soon: An OpenAI super agent?
A leading artificial intelligence company reportedly plans to announce a major breakthrough “in coming weeks” in the development of an AI super agent.
Which company? What breakthrough? The Axios report detailing the news doesn’t say, stating only that AI industry leaders are “abuzz” with the possibility—and that OpenAI could be the organization in question.
“Our sources in the U.S. government and leading AI companies tell us that in recent months, the leading companies have been exceeding projections in AI advancement,” the report says.
It added that OpenAI employees, specifically, have been “both jazzed and spooked” by the company’s recent developments.
There is a broad sense that momentum is picking up for AI, and that’s no political observation. The phrase “agentic AI” is on the tip of every major corporation’s tongue as the next wave. The concept of AI “understanding” is popping up more and more. And fears around human-like AGI, or artificial general intelligence, have renewed as a once-distant future rapidly comes into view. —AN
More data
—Apple unlikely to acquire Sonos. But Amazon, Spotify, Roku, or Samsung? Different story.
—Memecoins for everyone. $MELANIA soars, $TRUMP tanks, and the rest of us are deeply crypto-confused.
—Russia (probably) didn’t damage subsea internet cables. Accidents, not sabotage, in the Baltic Sea.
—AI nudes scandal rocks Pennsylvania school. Teenage boys targeted female students.
—85% of U.S. CHIPS Act funding has been granted. Commerce nominee Howard Lutnick committed to seeing the rest through.
—Receiving more SMS spam? Thank new features in a popular Chinese phishing kit that make it easier to spoof toll road operators.
—AI can tell if CEOs are depressed on earnings calls, according to researchers in Indiana and Kentucky.
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