Posts by lucidcapitalism

(Bloomberg) A world away from its steel-and-glass headquarters in London, GSK Plc is wading into unfamiliar waters: A mangrove nursery in coastal Indonesia that’s being nurtured to harbor crabs, fish — and carbon. It’s the precious carbon GSK is really after, as it seeks to apply the mangroves’ carbon-capture prowess to nullify climate-warming gases emitted…

(WSJ) Thousands of American, Canadian and British companies will have to step up their sustainability reporting under European Union rules set to take effect starting in the next few years, in a regulatory effort to boost visibility on everything from companies’ greenhouse-gas emissions to gender pay differences. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD, will…

(TechCrunch) TikTok has been issued with a fine of £12.7 million (~$15.7M) for breaching U./K. data protection law, including rules intended to protect children. The privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), announced today that it found the video sharing site “did not do enough” to check who was using their platform and failed to…

(The Guardian) A UN resolution was adopted on Wednesday that should make it easier to hold polluting countries legally accountable for failing to tackle the climate emergency, in a vote which was hailed as a historic victory for climate justice. The UN general assembly adopted by consensus the resolution spearheaded by Vanuatu, a tiny Pacific island nation…

(Vice) More than 30,000 people—including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, politician Andrew Yang, and a few leading AI researchers—have signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.  The letter immediately caused a furor as signatories walked back their positions, some notable signatories turned out…

(The Washington Post) The artificial intelligence revolution has arrived. One of us is a venture capitalist, the other a philanthropist, and we see leaders in every field placing bets, by the billions, on what comes next. That makes this a perilous moment. Machine learning is poised to radically reshape the future of everything for good…

(Bloomberg) The Republican Party’s crusade against ESG investments is fracturing after pension-fund managers and budget watchdogs in several states denounced proposals that came with hefty price tags for retirees and taxpayers. In a rebuke to a movement that’s taken hold in conservative strongholds like Texas and Florida, legislators in the GOP-controlled statehouses of Kansas, Wyoming, North Dakota and Indiana…

(TechCrunch) On the eve of its 25th anniversary, Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox browser, is launching an AI-focused startup. Called Mozilla.ai, the newly forged company’s mission isn’t to build just any AI — its mission is to build AI that’s open source and “trustworthy,” according to Mark Surman, the executive president of Mozilla and the…

(WSJ) The Federal Trade Commission is prodding tech giants over misleading ads on their platforms.  The agency last week ordered eight major social-media and video streaming providers to detail the ways in which they are acting to curb a pandemic-era rise in fraudulent advertising. Read more here.

(WSJ) President Biden issued the first veto of his presidency Monday, rejecting a Republican-led measure that would overturn a regulation allowing retirement-plan managers to consider climate change in their investment decisions. The bill would have overturned a Biden administration regulation on environmental, social and corporate governance guidelines, or ESG.  Read more here.