Silicon Valley — the U.S. hub of technology– is getting so expensive that tech workers are struggling to get by, and start up companies are questioning whether to locate there. One city thousands of kilometers away is ready to welcome tech companies with an experienced workforce in hopes of becoming the next Silicon Valley. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us to the city and shows us a new tech university that could be replicated anywhere in the world.
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A digital rights organization has asked congressional leaders for help in persuading Google and Amazon to support a technology that people in authoritarian countries use to get around censorship controls worldwide.

In a letter sent this week, Access Now, which is based in New York, sought to put pressure on Google and Amazon, which decided recently to close a loophole that allowed some encrypted-communication apps to assume a disguise as messages moved through the internet.

Access Now asked for help from leaders of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, the House and Senate commerce committees and the Congressional Executive Committee on China.

At issue is the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between governments, such as Russia, Iran and China, and those who use internet and messaging technologies, like Telegram and Signal, to communicate outside censors’ oversight.

In this case, encrypted-messaging apps have been using a digital disguise known as “domain fronting.” Some of these technologies have received financial support from the Open Technology Fund, a U.S. government program funded by Radio Free Asia and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the agency that oversees Voice of America.

Disguising final destination

As an encrypted message moves through networks, it appears to be going to an innocuous destination, such as google.com, by routing through a Google server, rather than its true destination.

If a government acts against the domain google.com, it conceivably shuts down access to all services offered by the internet giant for everyone in the country. The gamble is that governments wouldn’t want to cut off residents’ access to large swaths of the internet just to block a specific communication.

Russia did just that in mid-April when it sought to crack down on Telegram.

But it’s not just dissidents and religious or human rights activists who are using these apps. Hackers can also use this disguise to mask malware, according to ZDNet.

In recent weeks, first Google and then Amazon Web Services said they would close the loopholes that allowed apps to use the disguise.

“No customer ever wants to find that someone else is masquerading as their innocent, ordinary domain,” said Amazon in a news release announcing better domain protections.

“Domain fronting has never been a supported feature at Google,” a Google representative said. “But until recently it worked because of a quirk of our software stack. We’re constantly evolving our network, and as part of a planned software update, domain fronting no longer works. We don’t have any plans to offer it as a feature.”

Matthew Rosenfield, who helped develop the Signal technology, said that “the idea behind domain fronting was that to block a single site, you’d have to block the rest of the internet as well. In the end, the rest of the internet didn’t like that plan.”

Amazon sent Signal an email telling it that its use of circumvention was against Amazon’s terms of service. In Middle East countries, such as Egypt, Oman and Qatar, Signal disguised itself as Souq.com, Amazon’s Arabic e-commerce platform.

Letter to Congress

In its letter to Congress, Access Now wrote that “until this change by Amazon and Google, domain fronting was the most effective and most widely used method of enabling free speech, free association and freedom online in countries that aggressively filter and monitor internet access.”

“The end of domain fronting will not permanently impede progress toward our shared goal of global internet freedom, but it will set it back, and the adverse effects will be felt most direly by those already experiencing repressive censorship and surveillance,” the letter said.
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GoDaddy has pulled the plug on another online peddler of violence.

The popular internet registration service last week shut down altright.com, a website created by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer and popular with many in the so-called alt-right movement.

The takedown is the latest example of how companies like GoDaddy are increasingly responding to growing public pressure to clamp down on violent sites in the wake of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer.

GoDaddy, which registers domains for more than 75 million websites around the world, said it generally does not delist sites that promote hate, racism and bigotry on the ground that such content is protected as free speech.

But it said altright.com had “crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence in a direct and threatening manner.”

“In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging or otherwise engaging in specific acts of violence against any person, we will take action,” GoDaddy said in a statement emailed to VOA.

The company would not say whether it canceled altright.com’s domain registration in response to pressure but it stressed that “we take all complaints about content on websites very seriously, and have a team dedicated to investigate each complaint.”

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a Washington-based civil rights organization, said it filed such a complaint with GoDaddy last month, citing several instances in which altright.com carried content that advocated violence.

In one example, a January 26, 2018, article encouraged “use of live ammunition at the border, in order to create a substantial chance that they [immigrants crossing the border] lose their life in the process,” according to the organization’s complaint.

Kristen Clarke, the group’s president and executive director, said the shutdown of altright.com was part of her organization’s campaign to combat a recent “hate crime crisis” in the United States.

“We know that so much hate that we see today originates online,” Clarke said. “It originates in dangerous platforms and online hubs that provide a space to people to essentially coordinate violence and incite people to violence.”

There is no tally of sites that promote violence on the internet. But Clarke said there are “too many” and that her organization is in talks with domain and web hosting companies to shut down close to a dozen of them. She declined to name the websites.

“We’re focused on some of the biggest platforms and places where we’re seeing some of the most dangerous and violent activity,” she said. “We’ll see if those efforts bear fruit.”

Spencer denounced the closure of his website.

“The Left will not stop their censorship crusade with the Alt-Right,” Spencer tweeted on Thursday. “They’re going to come for every right-wing website. Free speech will cease to exist if the GOP fails to enact legislation.”

Altright.com’s takedown comes as public scrutiny of hate sites has grown and internet intermediaries have started to strictly enforce their terms of service and acceptable use policies in the wake of the Charlottesville rally.

Prior to the rally, tech companies had largely left it to users to police online content. But after the march, social media and payment processing companies took steps to close the accounts of several white nationalist leaders, and hosting companies shut down websites associated with the movement such as The Daily Stormer and Stormfront.

“They did know that they had very hateful groups using their services but there didn’t seem to be either political or public pressure to get rid of them,” said Natasha Tusikov, a criminology professor at York University in Toronto.

After Charlottesville, “we saw a number of them suddenly become more pressured publicly and politically.”

Amid growing public pressure, she said, “I think we’re going to see more of these cases.”

But shuttering entire websites is not likely to eliminate violence-mongering online. For one, there is no dearth of small services that would host sites banished by others. Indeed, while The Daily Stormer and Stormfront were forced by their closure to hop from host to host for several months, they eventually found a home. Altright.com is likely to similarly resurface.

The crackdown can also push some websites underground into the dark web — content on networks that use the internet but require specific authorization to access — making it difficult to track them and find out “who their members are and what they’re doing,” Tusikov said. 

Tusikov said that what she finds even more problematic is the way in which these sites are shut down. Internet intermediaries such as GoDaddy give themselves “considerable” latitude to close websites for any number of reasons. 

“A lot of us would agree that any kind of hateful violent speech should be removed,” she said. “The question is in murkier areas, when it gets to other types of perhaps controversial speech but lawful speech.”

In the U.S. and other countries with a strong free-speech tradition, governments have largely shied away from regulating online content, leaving it to internet intermediaries to assume the role. But Tusikov said internet intermediaries are ill-equipped to distinguish between legal and illegal content. 

Instead, she said, policymakers should institute regulations such as the Manila Principles, a set of standards adopted by civil society groups and digital rights advocates in 2015. Among other things, the Manila Principles require that content restriction policies must “follow due process” and “comply with the tests of necessity and proportionality.” 

“So if you have one problem with one element of copyright infringement, you shouldn’t take the entire site down,” Tusikov said. “You should deal with that one problem.” 
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Uber Technologies said Tuesday that it would work with the U.S. Army to advance research on a novel, quiet aircraft rotor technology that could be used in future flying cars, or military aircraft.

The alliance highlights stepped-up efforts by Uber and other companies to transform flying cars from a science fiction concept to real hardware for residents of mega-cities where driving is a time-consuming bore.

Uber and the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering command said in a statement that they expected to spend $1 million to develop and test prototypes for a rotor system that would be used on a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle.

The system would have two rotors, one stacked atop the other, moving in the same direction under the command of sophisticated software. This approach, which Uber and the Army said had not been deployed in a production aircraft, could lead to quieter operation than conventional stacked rotor systems.

“Achieving ultra-low noise is one of the critical obstacles” to deploying aerial taxis in urban areas, Rob McDonald, head of vehicle engineering for Uber Elevate, the company’s flying car operation, said in an interview.

The Army wants to develop a new generation of unmanned drones that do not need runways and are quieter than current drones, said Dr. Jaret Riddick, director of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Vehicle Technology Directorate.

The Army is increasingly turning to partnerships with private companies to research advanced technology, Riddick said in an interview.

Uber is planning more alliances with government agencies as it aims to launch prototype airborne taxis by 2020, Mark Moore, Uber’s director of engineering and aircraft systems and a former NASA researcher, said in an interview.

Uber already has a partnership with NASA, the U.S. government space agency, to develop software for managing large numbers of aircraft over cities, Moore said.

Uber is one of several companies, including aircraft makers Boeing and Airbus SE and a venture backed by Alphabet co-founder Larry Page, that are investing in the concept of small, automated and electrified aircraft that could be used to ferry passengers or cargo across congested cities.

Uber said it would develop its low-noise rotor system in collaboration with Launchpoint Technologies Inc., a Goleta, California, engineering company focused on electric and hybrid aircraft technologies.

Uber will hold a conference on flying vehicles this week in Los Angeles.
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Major technology and aerospace companies including Amazon.com, Apple, Intel, Qualcomm and Airbus SE are vying to take part in a new slate of drone tests the United States is set to announce on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The wide interest in the U.S. initiative, launched by President Donald Trump last year, underscores the desire of a broad range of companies to have a say in how the fledgling industry is regulated and ultimately win authority to operate drones for everything from package delivery to crop inspection.

The pilot program will allow a much larger range of tests than are generally permitted by federal aviation regulators, including flying drones at night, over people and beyond an operator’s line of sight.

The U.S. Transportation Department said it will announce 10 winning state, local or tribal governments to host the experiments on Wednesday. The governments in turn have partnered with companies who will play a role in the tests.

Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who is up for re-election in November, said in a press release the city of Reno was named one of the winners. The city is partnered with Nevada-based Flirtey, a company that has worked on delivering defibrillators by drone, as well as pizza for Domino’s.

At least 200 companies spanning 149 applications are vying to be part of the program, a U.S. official said. Many major U.S. companies are part of the winning submissions.

Winners include projects focused on package delivery, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, pipeline oversight and integrating drones near airports, the U.S. official said.

Companies such as Boeing and Ford have also expressed interest in the program, sources said, though it was unclear whether they had joined applications and what they would be testing.

Amazon declined to comment.

Airbus, Intel and Qualcomm confirmed they on one or more applications, with Airbus noting it is interested in topics like risk analysis for airspace management. Qualcomm hopes to test network connectivity along with partners Verizon Communications and AT&T.

Raytheon Co said it had not applied but was in talks with partners who have. Other companies did not immediately answer requests for comment.

Changes to U.S. policy that result from the tests are not expected for some time. Package delivery, which can be particularly complex, might not take place until later on during the program.

Earl Lawrence, who directs the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s unmanned aircraft systems integration office, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that many of the other projects “could go forward under the FAA’s existing rules, including with waivers where appropriate.”

He said after “the 10 selections for the pilot program are announced, the FAA will be reaching out to other applicants, as well as interested state and local authorities, to provide additional information on how to operationalize their proposed projects.”

The FAA is also working on proposed regulations to ensure the safety of drones and their integration into U.S. airspace.

The initiative is significant for the United States, which has lagged other countries in drone operations for fear of air crashes. That had pushed companies like Amazon to experiment overseas.

In the United Kingdom, the world’s largest online retailer already sends some packages by drone. It completed its first such mission in late 2016, taking 13 minutes from click to delivery.
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The White House plans to convene a meeting on Thursday on the future of artificial intelligence in U.S. industry with major companies including Facebook, Amazon.com, Google parent Alphabet and Oracle as well as senior government officials.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and the chief technical officers of Ford and Boeing are also due to take part in the event, along with executives from Mastercard, Microsoft and Accenture, administration and industry officials said.

The Pentagon and the U.S. departments of agriculture, commerce, energy, health, labor and transportation are due to take part in the daylong meeting that will look at artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and research and development and removing barriers to its application.

“AI is quickly transforming every segment of American industry – from applications in precision agriculture and medical diagnostics to advanced manufacturing and autonomous transportation,” the White House said.

Other companies taking part include IBM, Bank of America, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Monsanto, Pfizer, Walmart, Whirlpool, CVS Health and United Airlines.

Facebook Vice President of AI Jerome Pesenti, Google senior research scientist Greg Corrado and the presidents of California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University also are set to participate.

Dean Garfield, president and chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, called the event “an important step to building collaboration between government and industry.”

“The tech sector is committed to ensuring that all Americans reap the benefits of this transformative technology, which has the potential to save lives, improve how we harvest food, transform education and more,” Garfield said.

Britain last month announced a 1 billion pound ($1.4 billion) joint investment in the AI industry, while the European Union announced it would boost AI investment by about 70 percent to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) by 2020.

Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, said in a Fox News opinion piece published on Tuesday that as AI accomplishes more complex tasks “it will transform economies, industries and our everyday lives. It will also raise questions about its impact on our economy and jobs.”

Professional services firm PwC forecast last year that aggregate worldwide gross domestic product will be 14 percent higher in 2030 as a result of AI and will impact retail, financial services and healthcare.
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As artificial intelligence is used in an increasingly connected world, experts say inherent risks need to be addressed now as societies become more and more dependent on the technology for everyday tasks.

“It’s quite explosive what we’re seeing,” said Tom Siebel, chairman and chief executive officer at computer software company C3 IoT, during a recent Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.

The experts discussed the benefits and dangers of technologies that allow machines to gather and analyze large amounts of data from connected devices. 

Dangers of a connected world

“Well, I think there are very serious concerns that we need to be aware of as it relates to the aggregation of all these data. A lot of this is personal identifiable data, economic data, health history data, human genomic data,” said Siebel, in discussing how the technology is applied to daily life.

Technology experts also said artificial intelligence has the potential to put people out of work.

“When we have autonomous vehicles, what are the taxi drivers in New York City going to do? This idea that we’re going to retrain them to be data scientists, this is crazy,” Siebel said. “What’s happening in the corporate world is corporations are facing a mass extinction event. Since the beginning of this century, 52 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared from the planet.”

In their place are new types of firms such as Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, and even car company Tesla. They exist because of artificial intelligence and big data. These technologies are not only affecting the corporate world, but they also pose a threat to national security, said the technology experts.

“As the most developed country in the world, we are at the most risk. We are connected the most, and our grid can be hacked,” said Usman Shuja, whose company, SparkCognition, works with industrial and defense clients.

“When the physical world gets connected to the internet, it’s not about stealing data, and IP. It’s also about causing a lot of damage. A turbine can be turned into a bomb, and a pump can be turned into something explosive. So, a lot of physical damage can also happen with cyberwarfare,” Shuja said.

Not moving forward with the technology, however, also poses risks, he noted.

“Today, the challenge with AI is if we don’t do it, somebody else can do it, so it’s become a race. If we don’t do it, China could do it. Russia could do it. Iran could do it,” said Shuja.

Technology experts said societies and governments need to prepare for what technology will bring and anticipate how it will change industries and society.

“Somebody needs to legislate. Somebody needs to regulate. These are important issues, and if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to be sorry,” warned Siebel.

The technology has implications for wealthy and developing countries, the experts said.

“AI, on the dangerous side of it, it can widen the gap. It can widen the gap so big that the poor countries can be left out; however, this is also the chance for poor countries and developing countries to skip the industrial revolution and make up for the lost time,” said Shuja.

Benefits of machine learning and AI

The experts predict the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning will be seen across industries.

“We can save lives. We can identify illnesses in a predictive way. We can use fitness health data to be able to detect health issues long before they occur,” said Tom Bianculli, Zebra Technologies’ chief technology officer. 

Artificial intelligence can also help the planet, the experts said.

“Energy and power systems will be more environmentally efficient,” noted Siebel.

Technologists said the key is to find ways of minimizing the dangerous side of artificial intelligence while maximizing the benefits to society.
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Google is likely to again put artificial intelligence in the spotlight at its annual developers conference Thursday.

The company’s digital concierge, known only as the Google Assistant, could gain new abilities to handle tasks such as making restaurant reservations without human hand-holding.

Google may also unveil updates to its Android mobile operating system, enable better AI-powered navigation suggestions in Google Maps, and push further into augmented reality technology, which overlays a view of the real world with digital images.

The search giant aims to make its assistant so useful that people can’t live without it — or the search results that drive its advertising business. But it also wants to play up the social benefits of AI, and plans to showcase how it’s being used to improve health care, preserve the environment and make scientific discoveries.

CEO Sundar Pichai probably won’t emphasize privacy or data security concerns, which have put companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google in the crosshairs of regulators. But Google could also give parents new tools to manage how children access video and other material on different devices.

The company is also expected to unveil a new app for news that combines elements of its Google Play Newsstand app and YouTube.

It’s too early in the year for Google to showcase any new hardware, which it tends to do ahead of the Christmas shopping season. Last week, however, it said its partner Lenovo will sell a $400 stand-alone virtual reality headset that doesn’t require inserting a smartphone. (Facebook last week announced a competing $199 device called the Oculus Go.)

Google also last week updated actions that its assistant can perform on smartwatches powered by its Wear OS software. For instance, it can tell you about your day if you’re wearing headphones instead of making you read your calendar.

 
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With technology developing at an exponential rate, experts say the world is experiencing a fourth industrial revolution – one that will be driven by artificial intelligence and machines that can analyze huge amounts of data from connected devices. But experts warn that aside from the benefits, the revolution also has the potential to harm societies. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has this report from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.
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Think Super Mario Bros., but with an Afghan twist. This is how Afghanistan’s first generation of female coders explain their abilities as game-makers after uploading more than 20 games on digital app stores this year.

More than 20 young women in the western city of Heart have established themselves as computer experts, building apps and websites as well as tracking down bugs in computer code.

Like the team of Afghan schoolgirls who rose to fame last year when they competed in a robotics competition in the United States, the coders show what reserves of talent there are to be tapped when Afghan girls are given a chance.

“Coders can work from home and it is in this process women are building a new career path for themselves and for the next generation,” said Hasib Rasa, project manager of Code to Inspire, which teaches female students coding in Herat.

One of the games designed by the all-female team has caught the eye of developers and gamers as it illustrates the scourge of opium cultivation and the challenges the Afghan security forces face as they try to stamp it out.

The 2-D game “Fight Against Opium” is an animated interpretation of the missions that Afghan soldiers undertake to destroy opium fields, fight drug lords and help farmers switch to growing saffron.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest source of opium but it also grows saffron – the world’s most expensive spice – which has long been pushed as an alternative to wean farmers off a crop used to make heroin.

Despite a ban, opium production hit a record in 2017, up 87 percent over 2016, according to a U.N. study.  

Khatira Mohammadi, a student who helped develop the anti-opium game, said she wanted to show the complexities of the drug problem in the simplest way.

“We have illustrated our country’s main problem through a game,” said Mohammadi.

At the institute, more than 90 girls and young women, wearing headscarves and long black coats, are trained in coding and software development, a profession seen by some in conservative Afghanistan as unsuitable for women.

In Afghan society, it is unusual for women to work outside the home. Those who do, are mostly teachers, nurses, doctors, midwives and house helpers.

After the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, women regained freedom to work in offices with male colleagues – but many consider working as a software developer a step too far.

Hasib Rasa said girls are encouraged to design original player characters, goals, and obstacles that reflect Afghanistan’s ethos.

The course is exclusively aimed at females, aged 15-25, who are unable to pursue a four-year degree due to lack of funds or hail from families where they are prevented from enrolling in co-education schools.

“In Afghanistan the ability to work remotely is a key tool in the push for equality,” said Rasa.
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Anti-Semites are using Twitter as a “megaphone to harass and intimidate Jews,” the pro-Jewish civil rights group Anti-Defamation League says.

In a new report Monday, the ADL says Twitter users sent out at least 4.2 million anti-Semitic posts in 2017 — an average of 81,400 a week.

“This new data shows that even with the steps Twitter has taken to remove hate speech and to deal with those accounts disseminating it, users are still spreading a shocking amount of anti-Semitism,” ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt says.

Examples of the hate-filled tweets include Holocaust denial; claims that Jews killed Jesus Christ, a belief long disowned by the Vatican; and such propaganda as Jews control banking and the media.

The ADL is calling on Twitter to take such steps as a terms of service policy clearly banning hate speech, and effective filters that stop such messages from reaching users.

Twitter says it has made more than 30 changes to its operations in the last 16 months to combat hate speech.

“We are an open platform and hold a mirror up to human behaviors, both the good and the bad. Everyone has a part to play in building a more compassionate and empathetic society,” Twitter said in a statement. 
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Microsoft is launching a $25 million initiative to use artificial intelligence to build better technology for people with disabilities.

CEO Satya Nadella announced the new “AI for Accessibility” effort as he kicked off Microsoft’s annual conference for software developers. The Build conference in Seattle features sessions on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, internet-connected devices and virtual reality. It comes as Microsoft faces off with Amazon and Google to offer internet-connected services to businesses and organizations.

The conference and the new initiative offer Microsoft an opportunity to emphasize its philosophy of building AI for social good. The focus could help counter some of the ethical concerns that have risen over AI and other fast-developing technology, including the potential that software formulas can perpetuate or even amplify gender and racial biases.

The five-year accessibility initiative will include seed grants for startups, nonprofit organizations and academic researchers, as well as deeper investments and expertise from Microsoft researchers.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company hopes to empower people by accelerating the development of AI tools that provide them with more opportunities for independence and employment.

“It may be an accessibility need relating to vision or deafness or to something like autism or dyslexia,” Smith said in an interview. “There are about a billion people on the planet who have some kind of disability, either permanent or temporary.”

Those people already have “huge potential,” he said, but “technology can help them accomplish even more.”

Microsoft has already experimented with its own accessibility tools, such as a “Seeing AI” free smartphone app using computer vision and narration to help people navigate if they’re blind or have low vision. Nadella introduced the app at a previous Build conference. Microsoft’s translation tool also provides deaf users with real-time captioning of conversations.

“People with disabilities are often overlooked when it comes technology advances but Microsoft sees this as a key area to address concerns over the technology and compete against Google, Amazon and IBM,” said Nick McQuire, an analyst at CCS Insight.

Smith acknowledged that other firms, especially Apple and Google, have also spent years doing important work on accessibility. He said Microsoft’s accessibility fund builds on the model of the company’s AI for Earth initiative, which launched last year to jumpstart projects combating climate change and other environmental problems.

The idea, Smith said, is to get more startups excited about building tools for people with disabilities — both for the social good and for their large market potential.

Other announcements at the Build conference include partnerships with drone company DJI and chipmaker Qualcomm. More than 6,000 people are registered to attend, most of them developers who build apps for Microsoft’s products.

Facebook had its F8 developers’ gathering last week. Google’s I/O conference begins Tuesday. Apple’s takes place in early June.

This is the second consecutive year that Microsoft has held its conference in Seattle, not far from its Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
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