This Week in Tech with Jeanne Destro

As tech giants ramp up their investments in AI, and artificial intelligence-driven applications continue to be deployed throughout society; both the costs and benefits of this rapidly developing technology were on display in dramatic ways this week. Listen now, as we find out more about how the Stock Market reacted to concerns about returns on investments in AI, how teen reliance on AI chatbots to alleviate loneliness is becoming a mental health issue, Disney licensing some of its most iconic characters to OpenAI, and the Akron Police Department using an AI-powered virtual assistant to help answer non-emergency calls.

There is a new legal battle brewing now between the Trump administration and states, including Ohio, over who gets to regulate AI. Congress recently punted on the question, when they refused to pass a measure embedded in the recent continuing resolution that reopened the federal government, that would have denied states the right to regulate AI.  But that did not make President Trump happy, and just yesterday; he signed an executive order to stop "excessive" state regulation of Artificial intelligence. Exactly how his administration is going to define "excessive" is still up in the air though, and may not sit well with states like California, Colorado, Tennessee, and Utah, which have already passed some form of AI regulation, or, like Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, and Virginia; are working on it now. That's because there is a lot of genuine concern at the state level, about the kind of harm that unregulated AI could do, or perhaps already has done to citizens. In addition, because it is not exempt under federal law from civil liability claims like other technologies including social media platforms; the states actually do have very solid legal standing to write their own laws. At least; that's what they'll likely be arguing in court, sometime in the not too distant future, as we'll hear today from our special guest, Legal Analyst, and University of Akron Law Professor, Emeritus; Dean Carro. Listen now.

Imagine you are a hit-making musician.   Then, imagine that you are excited about sharing your work, and making a living, when– poof–it all evaporates because somebody, somewhere on the internet, just ripped you off.  Well, that’s exactly what’s been happening to creative artists of all types, especially musicians, at an ever-accelerating speed since the dawn of the internet. And, because federal law shields digital platforms from getting sued for copyright infringement on the part of people who use their services; digital piracy continues to flourish. But copyright owners are just plain sick of it. They’re tired of letting other people steal their work, distribute it worldwide, and getting nothing in return. So, they fought back in a big way, suing Cox Communications for copyright infringement.  But, you may be wondering; why Cox Communications? After all, they are not a big online platform like YouTube, or Facebook, for example. They are an internet service provider. They don't actually host the copyrighted material. All they do, is pipe it into your home, office, hospital, or wherever. They are in fact, like a telephone line, transmitting information across the wire. They are simply the conduit, the pass-through, the man in the middle. At least; that’s their argument. But Sony Entertainment wasn’t having any of that. They argued that because they notified Cox about the copyrighted material flowing through their network, and Cox chose to transmit it anyway; they are liable, and a jury back in 2019 agreed to the tune of a billion dollars. The song isn’t over though, as part of that jury verdict was overturned on appeal, what is at stake is perhaps internet service providers having to cut off customer access, and at the whole complicated legal ball of wax wound up before the US Supreme Court this week.  So, who will win?   I asked CBS News Radio Legal Analyst, and Correspondent, Thane Rosenbaum:

Oh, the irony! While millions of other people were knocked offline for hours when the global internet infrastructure company, Cloudflare, experienced an outage on Tuesday, November 18; my online life at work was humming along just fine, as the critical systems I rely upon to keep our Newsroom and Morning Show running, just kept on ticking. But when I got home and started working on this show; something very weird happened. First, there was an area-wide Spectrum internet outage, which happened after the Cloudflare issue was resolved. Once it was over; I tried to get online to file a story for this website, and for some reason, just could not connect. Eight hours later, after countless calls to Apple Tech Support, and a complete reformat of my hard drive; I was back up and running–and almost completely out of my mind with anxiety and concern about not getting my work done on time, and suffering from a massive headache.  What happened to me, was related to a glitch in the Apple OS, which presented itself in a way that was so twisty and unique; the Apple techs were kind of stumped for awhile. Eventually, we got it all figured out, and all is right in my digital world. It just took a couple of days to get it back together. But, the fact that all this happened the very same day as the Cloudflare incident, was a pretty much picture-perfect snapshot, of what everybody, everywhere, would experience if the global infrastructure that supports internet connections somehow got compromised long- term. You can bet it would take more than a couple of days, and a few phone calls to tech support to sort it out. For example, what if something super bad happened, and it wasn't just an accident; like the undersea cables that connect much of the world's internet getting cut, or a massive cyberattack  took out multiple cloud providers at once? Then, you would have people all over the world unable to work, to communicate, to shop, to get paid, and more–for who knows how long. Obviously, that would be bad. So, somebody needs to figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen. We know governments are working on it, and that they take the issue seriously. Last week on this show, in fact, we had a report from CBS News about NATO war games involving the US and its allies role-playing how to block and counter undersea Russian military attacks. But while governments have a role to play in protecting the internet; they don't control all, or even most of it. So, according to my special guest today, Cybersecurity expert, Dr. John Nicholas, we need to rely on big business, which has shown over the past year that it have some serious vulnerabilities when it comes to keeping critical internet infrastructure up and running. Find out more, listen now:

Would you know the difference between an AI generated song and one by a real band, and if so; would you care? The answer this week seems to be "No" and "No", as a song entirely generated by AI is now topping the Country Digital Charts. Find out more about that, and other hot tech topics like Russian threats to the global internet, Denmark banning social media for children, a new way to increase the number of EV charging stations, and how some people are using technology to talk to God–or at least, an app that lets them think they're texting Jesus. Find out more. Listen now.