It’s a new week with a new President and I’m glad to be back on with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, a Call of Duty gamer has to retire early, Google investigates another AI ethicist, and Bezos and Co want to deliver your COVID-19 vaccine with a smile. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
INJURY DERAILS PRO GAMER’S CAREER
Yesterday, professional video gamer, Thomas ‘ZooMaa’ Papparatto announced his retirement from the New York Subliners because of a thumb injury. The 25 year old Call of Duty gaming professional says that, “it breaks my heart to step away from a game I put my heart and soul into, every day for eight years.” ZooMaa had struggled through his thumb injury, and tried to play hurt, but needed surgery for his injury. ZooMaa is weighing his options and admitted he can’t simply walk away from the game.
EL GOOG LOCKS OUT ANOTHER AI ETHICIST
Yesterday, Axios reported that Google is investigating one of the co-leads of its Ethical AI team, Margaret Mitchell. This follows the firing of another one of its AI ethicists, Timnit Gebru. Google locked Margaret Mitchell’s corporate account because they detected that several files containing company IP were exfiltrated from Google through her credentials. Margaret Mitchell had tweeted about doing her own investigation of Timnit Gebru’s firing. Google has had a rocky time with its employees since working on Project Maven, an AI project designed to assist military drone strikes. Employees had threatened to unionize in protest of Project Maven. Firing AI ethicists don’t give confidence.
AMAZON WANTS TO LEND A HAND WITH VACCINE DISTRIBUTION
It’s no secret that COVID-19 vaccine distribution in the United States hasn’t gone well. Since a large number of Amazon’s 800,000 employees are considered essential workers, the company with the smile on the box has offered to help the Biden administration’s efforts in distributing the vaccine. They have gone as far to say that Amazon will aid the government with operational support, infrastructure, and IT support in order to meet Biden’s goal of 100 million vaccines in 100 days. I say they should take Bezos up on his offer.
