Posts by lucidcapitalism

(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.

(PR Newswire) Dear Wall Street Journal Editors: Every day, there is new analysis or additional opinions on the cause of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). SVB has played a foundational role in the infrastructure of the venture capital industry for decades. In fact, SVB’s failure was the second-largest bank failure in all of…

(Forbes) Just after 5:30 pm Pacific on Saturday, a memo started making the rounds among policymaker staff. Called “United States Cascade Bank Failure Scenario,” the private document laid out the case for why the U.S. government needed to take “decisive action” to avoid a continued bank run in the wake of the abrupt closure of Silicon…

(The Verge) Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization as part of recent layoffs that affected 10,000 employees across the company, Platformer has learned. The move leaves Microsoft without a dedicated team to ensure its AI principles are closely tied to product design at a time when the…

(CNBC) Silicon Valley Bank has long been considered the lifeblood for tech startups, providing traditional banking services while funding projects and companies deemed too risky for traditional lenders. Billions of dollars in venture capital flow into and out of the bank’s coffers. But the 40-year-old firm’s intimate ties to technology leave it particularly sensitive to the…

(AP News) The online counseling service BetterHelp has agreed to return $7.8 million to customers to settle with the Federal Trade Commission for sharing health data it had promised to keep private — including information about mental health challenges — with companies including Facebook and Snapchat. The proposed FTC order announced Thursday also limits how the California-based…