WhatsApp and Meta AI bosses in fight with Elon Musk
Elon Musk has become locked in two separate fights with senior bosses at Meta. The Twitter/X chief executive accused WhatsApp of being insecure and of exporting its user’s data every night. “Some people still think it is secure,” he wrote in a post.
Response from Meta's head of WhatsApp
That prompted a response from Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp. “Many have said this already, but worth repeating: this is not correct,” he wrote on X. “We take security seriously and that’s why we end-to-end encrypt your messages. They don’t get sent to us every night or exported to us.” He did note that it was possible to backup messages to the cloud, but that those could be encrypted too.
Mr Musk’s language could have been intended to refer to the metadata of messages, such as who people are chatting with. Mr Cathcart did not address questions about that data specifically.
Criticism from Yann LeCunn
The X boss also faced criticism from Yann LeCunn, who heads Meta’s artificial intelligence work. He asked Mr Musk whether it is “really enjoyable to disseminate complete bullshit” in response to his tweet about WhatsApp. Mr LeCunn has repeatedly criticised Mr Musk, in particular over his claims that AI is about to become more intelligent than humans and could therefore pose an existential risk.
Technological Advancements
A conference scheduled next month by Huawei Technologies' secretive chip design unit HiSilicon has fanned speculation that a sanctions-busting breakthrough may be announced, triggering a surge in some China-listed tech stocks. Shenzhen HuaRobot “coaches” could one day be used to help the recovery of people who have lost the full use of their limbs through strokes or brain injuries, researchers have suggested.
It is estimated around 80% of patients who survive strokes and brain injuries are left with some impairment which limits the movement of their arms. Patients need to do repetitive exercise to improve their function, but it is believed only 31% complete their exercises due to factors such as forgetfulness or lack of motivation. To aid their recovery, a new robot has been developed by researchers that can anticipate how the user wishes to move during their prescribed routine by reading their brain activity. The robot then encourages the user to complete their exercises by mimicking their intended movements and offering real-time verbal motivation and feedback. The Vitalise project was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, led by the National Robotarium’s Human Robot Interaction (HRI) team and developed in partnership with the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology.
Current Market Trends
Vodafone, Telstra, and Optus are offering major deals if you want to get the latest device. It's hard to believe that Apple ($AAPL) once had to be rescued by Microsoft. Today, Apple is the largest company in the world by market cap, worth over $3 trillion. Apple is a technology company based out of Cupertino, California. From its founding, Apple has been known for its signature approach of integrated hardware-software design.
