Posts by lucidcapitalism

(Washington Post) Federal regulators on Wednesday announced Amazon would pay $25 million to settle allegations that its voice assistant Alexa violated a federal law protecting children’s privacy — a sign of Washington’s mounting scrutiny of the e-commerce giant’s sprawling businesses. Regulators said Wednesday that Amazon failed to delete children’s recordings and location information, in some…

(VCJ) Linking impact or ESG to financial incentives was a big topic at the Impact Investor Global Summit; it is an ‘imperative for the industry’ that requires investors and managers to adopt an experimental mindset. Read more here.

(NYT) European lawmakers are finishing work on an A.I. act. The Biden administration and leaders in Congress have their plans for reining in artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, maker of the A.I. sensation ChatGPT, recommended the creation of a federal agency with oversight and licensing authority in Senate testimony last week. And the…

(The Guardian) Businesses can now assess their impacts on nature loss using science-based targets as part of a move to “get nature into the boardroom”. Research shows that the biodiversity crisis is as serious as the climate crisis, yet there is less information about how companies drive nature loss, because this data is not being…

(Bloomberg) The world’s biggest climate coalition for insurers is set to hold emergency talks after a wave of defections revealed the extent to which anti-ESG rhetoric in the US is unsettling members. Signatories of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance are due to meet Thursday to discuss next steps after some of the group’s biggest members including Munich Re walked out, according…

(CNBC) At most tech CEO hearings in recent years, lawmakers have taken a contentious tone, grilling executives over their data-privacy practices, competitive methods and more. But at Tuesday’s hearing on AI oversight including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, lawmakers seemed notably more welcoming toward the ChatGPT maker. One senator even went as far as asking whether Altman…

(Bloomberg) The US Supreme Court left in place a broad liability shield for social media companies for content posted by users, insulating Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google LLC from claims that they provided assistance to Islamic State terrorists. Acting in a case involving Google, the court refused to limit the immunity internet companies have enjoyed under a decades-old law known as…

(TechCrunch) The venture community has realized several things in recent years: Climate change isn’t going away, and there is a huge opportunity to invest in companies that promise to define entire segments of the future economy. With a few hiccups along the way, venture dollars have begun to flow with increasing volume and regularity to climate…

(TechCrunch) Precursor’s Charles Hudson wants to be cautious but not too cautious. The venture capitalist was at an AI confab last month, but he has not yet made a new AI investment during the current hype cycle. He’s one of many investors who have seen an inflection point take over a sector before, bringing in boatloads…

(The Information) Since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Rocky Gor, the founder and CEO of Los Angeles–based loan marketplace Capx, has been approached by a handful of small venture capital firms with a problem: No one will lend to them. In the past, these VC firms relied on a specialized credit line offered by…