Politics

While Elon Musk has settled his Twitter case with the SEC, nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters says the FTC has ended a “retaliatory” investigation about whether it worked with advertisers to boycott Elon Musk’s website:

The Trump Administration’s rollback of AI safety regulations may not extend to itself, as the NYT reports that after the launch of Mythos, officials are concerned about “…political repercussions if a devastating A.I.-enabled cyberattack were to occur,” said sources.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of 1.6 million accounts on the prediction market platform found that just 0.1 percent of accounts are raking in 67 percent of profits. Most Polymarket and Kalshi users are losing money — and the platforms continue to try to use journalists and influencers to bring in customers.

There are over a dozen planned in Michigan alone, and it could be the issue that swings the midterm elections in a decidedly purple state. Almost no one is thrilled about the effect on energy prices, environmental impacts, or having one of these massive facilities as a neighbor, but neither party has convincingly owned the issue.

A Milwaukee news report focuses on fan response to the Packers sounding the alarm over a reported antitrust investigation into the NFL’s broadcast deals with streaming platforms, which happened to pop up around the same time as Florida’s push against the “Rooney Rule” for coach hiring. FCC chair Brendan Carr said the FCC might investigate, too, but the team says the current profit-sharing setup is what makes a small market like Green Bay viable.

California cops will now be allowed to give tickets to self-driving cars for traffic violations, raising some interesting philosophical questions.

Asked by Senator Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the DoD’s dispute with Anthropic and whether he could guarantee a human would be in the loop on any targeting decisions made with AI, Hegseth focused on Amodei and his company’s refusal to “accept our terms of service.”

Introduced last year, the GUARD Act would ban kids under 18 from accessing chatbots, while implementing age checks for everyone else. The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to advance the bill on Thursday, and now it’s headed to the Senate floor.

The bipartisan CHATBOT Act, led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) would require extra safeguards for AI tools used by kids, and parental consent for minors to create their own accounts.

Multibillion-dollar data center developments in Georgia are sparking bipartisan backlash, with Politico reporting that 47 percent of local voters oppose the plans. Given this is just one of several states experiencing an AI boom, similar opposition may also define local and statewide elections going forward.

Nathan Calvin, from advocacy group Encode, received an interview request from Michael Chen, a reporter at The Wire by Acutus. But it turns out Chen probably doesn’t exist, and most of the “reporters” at the suspiciously pro-AI Acutus appear to be bots. It’s just the tip of a financial trail that appears to lead to OpenAI.

We already reported that Geely, which also owns Volvo and Polestar, is the Chinese automaker best positioned to sell its vehicles in the US. Now the company is reportedly in talks with Ford about that exact possibility — though it seems that negotiations have already stalled. Ford is considering licensing Geely’s tech for its own cars, but there are heavy restrictions on Chinese software in US vehicles.

The criminal inquiry into Federal Reserve Chair Powell is widely perceived as retaliatory. The DOJ’s decision to end the investigation is also potentially politically motivated, as Senator Thom Tillis was blocking a vote on Trump’s choice to succeed Powell, Kevin Warsh, unless it was dropped.

He threatened to “put a big tariff on the UK” if it doesn’t drop its tax on the revenue of tech giants, despite the Supreme Court ruling that he can’t actually do that. The president still thinks the tax, which brought in £944m ($1.3bn) last year, unfairly targets US companies.

As first reported by ABC News and now confirmed by the DOJ, federal investigators believe special forces soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke put down $33k on prediction market bets about Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro being removed from office, just before Trump announced his capture in January, profiting over $400,000.

RFK Jr. has declared that AI could make the FDA “irrelevant,” with entirely predictable effects on The Verge’s long-suffering health and wearable expert Victoria Song.

The prediction market took action against a handful of congressional candidates: Ezekiel Enriquez (a Republican running in Texas); Mark Moran (an Independent in Virginia, who says he meant to get caught); and Matt Klein (a Democrat in Minnesota) for betting in markets related to their political races. Each was banned from the platform for five years and fined modest amounts ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars.