Welcome to the August 30, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

Please note: In observance of the U.S. Labor Day holiday, ACM TechNews will not be published on Monday, Sept. 2. Publication will resume Wednesday, Sept. 4.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• California Passes AI Safety Bill
• Telegram Founder’s Indictment Thrusts Encryption into the Spotlight
• IT Problems Paralyze Dutch Coast Guard, Military, Airport
• Caltech's Latest STEM Breakthrough: Most New Students Are Women
• Chinese Government Hackers Penetrate U.S. ISPs
• AI's Race for Energy Butts Up Against Bitcoin Mining
• Fungi Powers Robots
• Comic Relief U.S. Launches Roblox Game to Help Children Build Community
• Penny a Minute Voice Bots Help India Startups
• 'Biocomputers' Made of Human Brain Cells Available for Rent
• Gen Z-ers Are Computer Whizzes. Just Don't Ask Them to Type
• AI Could Engineer a Pandemic, Experts Warn
• Drones Drop Predatory Wasps to Protect Vineyard

California Passes AI Safety Bill

California’s legislature approved an AI safety bill opposed by many tech companies. The measure moved to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk after passing the state Assembly Wednesday, with the Senate granting final approval Thursday. SB 1047 mandates that companies developing AI models take “reasonable care” to ensure that their technologies don’t cause “severe harm,” such as mass casualties or property damage above $500 million.
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Telegram Founder’s Indictment Thrusts Encryption into the Spotlight

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's indictment in France for various criminal offenses includes accusations that the messaging platform had provided cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality without a license. Encryption has been a long-running point of friction between governments and tech companies, with the latter arguing it is crucial for digital privacy, while the former say it enables illegal activity. Telegram’s encryption does not offer the same transparency as encryption provided on other messaging platforms.
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IT Problems Paralyze Dutch Coast Guard, Military, Airport

An issue with IT networks at the Netherlands' Ministry of Defense on Wednesday affected the international Eindhoven Airport and several public services, including the coast guard and military police. Dutch emergency services also experienced a nationwide outage that disrupted their alarm and communication system. Sources at the National Cybersecurity Center said there is no evidence yet of a cyberattack, adding that one outage could be contributing to the other.
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Caltech's Latest STEM Breakthrough: Most New Students Are Women

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced that for the first time in its 133-year history, women account for more than half of this fall's incoming undergraduate class. Gloria L. Blackwell, CEO of the American Association of University Women, lauded Caltech’s achievement but noted that women still represent only about 18% of degree holders in computer science.
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Chinese Government Hackers Penetrate U.S. ISPs

U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) have been breached by Chinese government-backed hackers, say researchers, with the goal of gathering intelligence on users. Government and military personnel working undercover and groups of strategic interest to China are thought to be the primary targets. Lumen Technologies researchers said three U.S. ISPs were hacked this summer via a previously unknown zero-day flaw in a Versa Networks program used for managing wide-area networks.
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AI's Race for Energy Butts Up Against Bitcoin Mining

U.S. tech firms, seeking more electricity to power AI and cloud computing datacenters, are turning to bitcoin miners. By the end of 2027, 20% of bitcoin miner power capacity is expected to shift to AI. Morgan Stanley researchers found crypto mining facilities could become upwards of five times more valuable by repurposing operations for AI and cloud computing. Additionally, datacenter wait times could be shortened by around 3.5 years by buying or leasing a bitcoin mining facility with at least 100 MW of capacity.
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Fungi Powers Robots

A "biohybrid" robot created by Cornell University researchers is powered by signals from mushrooms. The researchers grew mycelia (a network of strands that connects mushrooms underground) from king oyster mushrooms on a 3D-printed scaffold equipped with electrodes. The electrical impulses produced by interconnected mycelia in response to environmental changes communicate with a computer interface, which converts them into digital commands and transmits them to the robot, enabling movement.
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Comic Relief U.S. Launches Roblox Game to Help Children Build Community

After successfully launching a Roblox multiverse last year, Comic Relief U.S. is expanding the game as a means of engaging new generations of online donors. As part of Kids Relief's "Game to Change the World Campaign," the anti-poverty nonprofit and partner Nickelodeon will roll out a new Roblox world, where children can raise money through a scavenger hunt. The goal is for the community-building associated with collaborative gaming to translate to real-world acts of kindness.
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Penny a Minute Voice Bots Help India Startups

Indian startup Sarvam AI has unveiled software that allows businesses to interact with customers using both spoken voice and text. The technology, whose use is priced at 1 rupee (around 1.2 U.S. cents) per minute, was developed using data from 10 native Indian languages. Indian startups increasingly are focused on developing chatbots that can provide real-time verbal responses and automate customer service tasks.
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'Biocomputers' Made of Human Brain Cells Available for Rent

Researchers can rent cloud access to "biocomputers" from the Swiss tech firm FinalSpark for a monthly fee of $500. A low-energy alternative to AI models, these biocomputers, or organoids, are comprised of human brain cells and last only about 100 days. Among the nine universities granted access to FinalSpark's biocomputers are the University of Michigan, and Germany's Free University of Berlin and Lancaster University.
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Gen Z-ers Are Computer Whizzes. Just Don't Ask Them to Type

Despite being known as a tech-savvy generation, many Gen Z-ers were not taught to touch-type. The U.S. Department of Education reported that the share of U.S. high school graduates who had taken a keyboarding course dropped to 2.5% for 2019 graduates from 44% for 2000 graduates. Many Gen Z-ers opt for iPads or other tablets instead of devices with physical keyboards.
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AI Could Engineer a Pandemic, Experts Warn

A policy paper from public health and legal professionals at Stanford School of Medicine, Fordham University, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security calls for mandatory oversight and guardrails for advanced biological AI models. The authors wrote they believe governments should collaborate with machine learning, infectious disease, and ethics experts to develop tests to determine whether biological AI models could pose "pandemic-level risks."
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Drones Drop Predatory Wasps to Protect Vineyard

Aerial drones are being used to drop predatory wasps on South Africa's Vergelegen Wine Estate, as a form of insecticide-free pest control. SkyBugs, a partnership between predatory insect supplier FieldBUGS and agritech firm Aerobotics, deploys drones carrying cartridges that release 500 wasp pupae over as many as 20 hectares of land per flight. The drone application is quicker, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly than deploying insecticides.
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