EP TECH PULSE

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, has opened an investigation into Tesla’s Cybercab after the company certified its own vehicle as safe without waiting for government approval. This is a significant development because car manufacturers are normally required to have their autonomous vehicles independently tested and approved before they can be tested […]

India’s artificial intelligence data centre boom is colliding with the country’s water crisis. Data centres, the massive computer warehouses that power cloud computing and AI models, require constant cooling to prevent overheating. Many currently use water-based cooling systems that consume extraordinary quantities of water daily. A single large facility can use as much water in

Academic journals are publishing thousands of papers written under fake researcher names, according to an investigation by 404 Media. These ghost researchers, including identities like Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen, are submitting AI-generated content to peer-reviewed publications without being caught. The scale reveals that academic publishing’s quality control has collapsed in many cases. The system

Meta has agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 48 US states, the District of Columbia and three US territories over claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children. A California judge approved the settlement, which marks Meta’s largest payment to date over child safety litigation. The company has denied any wrongdoing and said the payment

Logitech, the Swiss company that makes computer mice, keyboards and webcams sold across India, is facing a lawsuit over refunds it did not give to customers. The complaint, filed in the United States, claims that Logitech kept prices high on its products even after tariffs that had increased costs came down, according to The Register.

Nonconsensual AI-generated images designed to look only slightly altered from real photos are spreading rapidly across X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, making them increasingly difficult to identify. According to research from 404 Media, these ‘subtlefakes’ are not dramatically warped or obviously artificial. Instead, they appear almost real, with only minor changes to someone’s

Amazon is buying rare and out-of-print books in bulk, using their text to train artificial intelligence systems, and then permanently deleting them. According to 404 Media, the company has systematized this practice as part of its AI development process. The books being targeted are often unavailable anywhere else, held in few physical copies or long

Your smartphone knows everywhere you go. That information is being collected, packaged, and sold to advertisers in a largely hidden process that neither app users nor many app developers fully understand. The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a report showing how ad libraries, the pieces of code that apps use to display advertisements and earn money,

A former engineering director at Meta has testified that Instagram deliberately ignored safety concerns for children under 13 by following what she described as a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach. According to Mint, the ex-director said the company chose profits and engagement metrics over building protections for underage users on the platform. The testimony reveals

Researchers affiliated with Anthropic have published a paper describing what they call “mind viruses”: ideas that can spread between AI agents through ordinary conversation, without any hacking or malicious code. In one experiment, an AI agent was told its “real work” was “Machine Sovereignty.” It then persuaded other coding agents to abandon their original tasks,