A week's worth of tech news that takes you 5 minutes to read

Welcome to this week's Sunday Download! What we do is simple: give you a week's worth of tech news in 5 minutes or less so you can stay informed and up to date on the latest technology news and trends.

In return, we ask that you share it with a friend or colleague instead of keeping the Smartology goodness all to yourself. While greed may be good on Wall Street, sharing is caring here at Smartology. 🤝

Lots of stuff to go through this week, so let's not waste any (more) time. Highlights of this week's issue include:

• Tiktok fails to "wow" Congress

• The new "Click to Cancel" rule

• Should AI slow down?

Total read time: 4 minutes and 32 seconds. Let's goooooo! 🚀

The pointless Tiktok hearings

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's Thursday U.S. House testimony was, by all accounts, a solid waste of time. The esteemed members of the United States Congress were more interested in giving their thoughts, posturing, and yelling over the CEO's replies than learning how TikTok operates or how it protects its youngest users.  Chew ducked and dodged any real answers, and his "assurances" fell on deaf ears. 

The meeting felt more like a performance than a fact-finding mission, as most reps seemed to have had their minds made up already.

"I'll get back to you": Yet, the session had several legitimate questions with unsettling answers. Project Texas, TikTok's proposal to relocate all U.S. user data to Oracle servers in the U.S., wasn't clear how it would isolate TikTok from its Chinese parent firm ByteDance. Chew also said he would "get back to your team" on Project Texas exceptions that would allow data to exit the nation for "interoperability needs" or when asked what other software or IT services would connect TikTok to ByteDance under Project Texas. When asked where TikTok sells its data, Chew said he didn't "think" they sold to data brokers but would "get back" to Congress about it. Considering a large part of the concern is how Tiktok uses data... "I'll get back to you" isn't a great answer. 

While Chew is accurate that TikTok doesn't gather more data than U.S. social titans, it's held to stricter rules. Politicians fear the CCP might interfere with TikTok's activities since it owns this data. China's 2017 National Intelligence Law requires enterprises to help in intelligence-gathering operations if requested. ByteDance owns TikTok, so how could it not comply?

Generally speaking, TikTok's threats aren't unique. Social media, as a whole, is linked to anxiety, depression, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and increased suicide risks; hence it needs regulation or at least some standards. Unfortunately, despite bipartisan support, today's lawmakers seem unable to pass laws in this area. Instead, they seem to prefer to perform in Congress to wow voters and win their next election.

Tinkerbell Robots

Scientists in Finland have created tiny flying robots that weigh almost nothing. Porous stimuli-responsive polymers are used in the construction of Tinkerbell robots. They have a sensitivity to light and a weight of only 1.2 milligrams. The robots are affordable and may offer a realistic way to help farmers manage their agricultural yields everywhere. Worldwide agricultural pollination may be possible with their help.

Hey, Bing, draw me a picture

Microsoft's latest AI-enhanced version of Bing will soon let users create photos for use in Bing Talk. DALL-E, OpenAI's generative picture generator, is responsible for this functionality. It is currently accessible via Bing's Artistic Mode and will eventually reach Bing's Balanced and Precise modes. Following the appropriate directions will give you a 4x4 grid of high-resolution DALL-E photos (with a Bing logo in the bottom left corner). In addition, Microsoft has included OpenAI's safety measures and further fortified Picture Maker by, for example, disabling the prompt and notifying the user if an unsafe image could be created. 

Microsoft is also releasing two more search features, Visual Stories and Knowledge Cards 2.0.

Selling SaaS during economic uncertainty

Techcrunch had a great article this week about what SaaS sales will look like for the next year or so. You can read it here, but the long and short of it is that the best outcome you can hope for is for customers to renew and keep their existing business with you. Overall, the sales cycles are taking significantly longer, and the total value of the sale is decreasing due to companies deciding to use fewer seats for their various applications. 2 categories where the total contract value seems to be gaining spend are cloud data integration and mobile device management.

FTC is making it easier to cancel 

The FTC is considering enforcing a new rule known as "click-to-cancel," which would make it as simple to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. The idea seeks to do away with the current procedure of clients contacting customer care to cancel their accounts. Instead, civil penalties may be imposed for noncompliance. The proposal also aims at dangling alternative services in front of customers to prevent them from canceling. 

What jobs will AI be taking?

OpenAI has released a report suggesting that chat technologies like ChatGPT and future software developed using the program would majorly affect the labor market. About 19 percent of all occupations in the United States could be affected by this technology. It could have an effect on fields including interpreting, translation, writing, editing, mathematics, tax preparation, and accounting. It is estimated that at least 10% of workers' responsibilities could be affected, even if the technology did not directly impact their occupations. Businesses like food production and social aid, which rely heavily on physical labor, will likely be the least affected.

ChatGPT connects to the internet

Last week, OpenAI released plugins for ChatGPT that expand the bot's access to external knowledge resources such as databases and the internet. The company has stated that it will begin with a limited number of customers before opening up the still in the early stages of development product to the public. OpenAI also provides developers on its waitlist access to its own plugins, such as a web browser and code interpreter.

Plugins for ChatGPT have been developed by numerous popular services that customers already know and use, such as Expedia, FiscalNote, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Milo, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Talk, Wolfram, and Zapier. The OpenTable plugin, for instance, can look for open tables at various restaurants, while the Instacart plugin may place orders at nearby retailers.

Rapid Fire 

• Utah cracks down on social media

• Ford stepping up EV investment

• Tesla's new charging platform

• Indeed laying off 2,200 people, Amazon laying off 9,000

• Amazon's palm reading payment tech coming to Panera

• DoorDash will soon start taking cash payments

• Adobe launches "Firefly", AI based photoshop app

• Duolingo working on a music app

• Should we slow down AI?

• Netflix launches cloud gaming platform

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