Yan’s comments come as the price of Bitcoin surged past $64,000 for the first time since 2021, sparking a frenzy among investors. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index also shows a score of 85, signaling extreme greed in the market.

This surge follows approvals of several spot Bitcoin ETFs by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this January.

Yan points to the month of March as being “tricky” from a macroeconomic perspective. Upcoming events like a Federal Reserve meeting, the Bitcoin halving, and Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade could inject uncertainty and volatility into markets.

Other analysts like Arthur Hayes, Co-Founder of BitMEX, share a similarly cautious outlook. Hayes predicts Bitcoin could fall below $35,000 due to global macroeconomic and political risks.

Factors like Fed policies, inflation, and the 2024 U.S. presidential election could negatively impact assets like cryptocurrencies in the coming months.

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The firm has never publicly acknowledged the project, which involves around two thousand people.

Many employees from the project will be moved to the iPhone maker’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, according to Bloomberg News.

Apple did not immediately respond to a BBC request for a comment.

The Apple car team was reportedly known as the Special Projects Group as part of its chief executive Tim Cook’s Project Titan.

As it spent billions of dollars on research and development, the company was initially rumoured to be working on a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel and pedals.

The team was understood to still be years away from producing a vehicle.

“This is a smart and long awaited decision,” Ray Wang, founder and chief executive of Silicon Valley-based consultancy Constellation Research told the BBC.

“The market demand for EVs is not there and AI is where all the action is,” he added.

Apple has been exploring other opportunities beyond the iPhone and computers, including its recently launched Vision Pro virtual reality headset.

Research firm Counterpoint highlighted that the decision came as the market for AI in consumer electronics is growing sharply.

“Preliminary data suggests shipments of generative AI smartphones will exceed 100 million units in 2024,” said its senior analyst, Ivan Lam.

Counterpoint predicts that number could hit more than 500 million by 2027.

Demand for EVs has slowed in recent month as borrowing costs remain high, which has made the market increasingly competitive as major players try to win over customers.

In recent months, US motor industry giants Ford and General Motors have postponed plans to expand EV production.

Last week, electric truck maker Rivian announced it would cut its workforce by 10% and said it did not expect any growth in its production this year.

In January, Tesla warned that its sales growth would be weaker this year than in 2023.

The company, which is led by multi-billionaire Elon Musk, has been cutting prices in key markets around the world, including Europe and China, as it faces tough competition from Chinese rivals such as BYD.

Mr Musk responded on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to a report that the Apple project was being wound down with emojis of a salute and a cigarette.

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Downdetector, which tracks outages, showed over 12,000 people reported their services, including calling and using mobile data, were not working.

It is the latest outage to hit Three, after it apologised on both Saturday and Sunday over similar incidents.

Three said it was “very sorry for the issues with service over the past few days”.

“Following an issue with our network that started earlier, services are recovering,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“We appreciate a number of our customers are still waiting on their service to be restored and our engineers are working to fully fix it.

“Our customer service channels continue to be unavailable, so please check our social feeds for the latest updates.”

Three has around 10.5m customers across the UK, according to its website, but it is unclear how many of them are affected by the outages as those who rely on mobile internet may be unable to report the issue.

Reports began over the latest incident at 1000 GMT on 12 February, with frustrated customers taking to social media to voice their concerns – with some even threatening to leave the network altogether.

There have also been reports of the outages affecting some people using smaller providers which use Three’s network, as there have been 800 reports from customers of one such firm – Smarty – according to Downdetector.

It is unclear whether customers will be able to claim compensation for the outage, although according to the website of telecoms regulator Ofcom, it “may be appropriate” for providers to offer refunds “while repairs are being made”.

The outages come two weeks after the UK’s competition watchdog announced it was investigating a proposed merger between Three and Vodafone.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will look into whether the deal could harm consumers by leading to reduced choice or higher prices – as it would create the UK’s biggest mobile network.

The firms said the deal would result in an additional investment of £11bn in the UK.

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After buying the devices, customers can pay a subscription to store footage on the cloud, download clips and get discounted products.

That subscription is going up 43%, from £34.99 to £49.99 per device, per year, for basic plan customers.

The firm, which is owned by Amazon, insisted it still provided “some of the best value in the industry.”

Its customers appear not to agree.

One took to the Ring message board to say they would cancel their subscriptions and boycott the company.

Another user wrote: “40% plus increase in annual fee for no extra benefits. Not even an attempt to justify.”

Many other customers said they had now cancelled their subscriptions, while some said they had previously recommended the cameras but would not do so now.

In a statement, Amazon said: “Since Ring launched its Protect Basic Plan in 2015, we’ve regularly found ways to enhance the plan to give our customers more value.

“As we continue to invest in the services we offer, we are updating our Protect Basic plan pricing.”

The basic plan has doubled since 2022, when it cost £24.99 per year for each device.

Ring customers can also pay monthly. For them, charges are increasing from £3.49 to £4.99 a month.

The upfront cost of the doorbells currently ranges from £49.99 to £169.99, according to Ring’s website.

There is still an option to use Ring products without paying a monthly subscription, though it has far fewer features.

‘Steep increase’

Natalie Hitchins from consumer group Which? said the big price rise was unwelcome, given many people were struggling with the cost of living.

“Ring must justify these steep increases to its customers, particularly when it is unclear how its services are improving,” she said.

The number of smart security products, such as those provided by Ring, has increased rapidly in recent years, according to consumer research firm GWI.

It says that between 2019 and 2023, the proportion of homes that have them fitted has risen from 4% to 11%.

Ring is one of the market leaders, but GWI’s Chris Beer said the price hike could dent parent company Amazon’s reputation.

“Certainly in the UK, they’re really associated with value for money,” he told the BBC.

“If they’re increasing prices, it might seem a bit more unexpected or unusual, because people are used to a certain level of pricing from them.”

The findings are part of McAfee’s new research report titled Modern Love which aimed to discover the role of AI and the Internet in transforming love and relationships of the modern age. The study surveyed 5,000 people across nine countries to collect the data. The biggest highlight to come out of the study was that more than one-fourth of the respondents were already planning to leverage tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot to help them profess their love to their dates and partners.

The most common reason for using the AI-powered ghostwriter was that it would make the sender appear more confident (27 percent), as per the study. Lacking time to write the letter personally and the lack of inspiration was given as the second most popular reason at 21 percent each. Another 10 percent said using AI would be quicker at performing the same task.

While many of the respondents did not feel they could get caught, almost half of the surveyed adults (49 percent) said that they would be offended if they received a love letter written by a generative AI-powered tool. But when presented with a love letter, a whopping 67 percent failed to identify whether it was written by a human or with the help of a machine.

Generative AI tools based on large language models (LLM) are capable of writing texts that appear to be written by a human. Most such tools allow users to add prompts to control and customise the writing style, flow, structure, tonality, and more. Further, ChatGPT Plus, Copilot Pro, and other high-end AI assistants let users create chatbots that could be trained on just their written material and bear a much higher resemblance to them while writing responses.

The McAfee study highlights that this close resemblance with humans’ writing style can be maliciously used by cybercriminals to pull off romance scams. Romance scams are planned crimes where scammers prey on vulnerable people through false promises of love and relationships. The study found that 51 percent of the surveyed individuals confessed to being catfished (talking or meeting with strangers online who were pretending to be someone else). The firm also urged people to remain more vigilant during this period, and never to entertain the request of a stranger (or even someone they know) asking to send money or any sensitive information online.

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Lawsuits, including those by actors and authors, have brought the question of copyright violation by AI systems to the courts. AI companies claim ‘fair use’ protection and address the issue of memorization, but concerns persist. The experiments also reveal instances where AI systems produce images resembling copyrighted material despite efforts to establish safeguards. Experts emphasize the issue’s complexity, with the potential for AI companies to violate copyright through training on unlicensed material or reproducing copyrighted material based on user prompts. The article suggests ongoing challenges in addressing this problem and the need for more robust solutions.

President and chief executive of the US Copyright Alliance, Keith Kupferschmid, told the New York Times that AI companies could violate copyright in two ways: training on unlicensed copyrighted material or replicating copyrighted content based on user prompts. While AI companies claim that they have established safeguards to prevent copyright infringement, those proved insufficient to ensure effective protection of copyrighted material.

How can we deal with AI risks?

In the fervent discourse on AI governance, there’s an oversized focus on the risks from future AI compared to more immediate risks, such as short-term risks that include the protection of intellectual property. In this blog post, Jovan Kurbalija explores how we can deal with AI risks.

Why does it matter?

The widespread production of AI-generated content mirroring copyrighted material poses a risk of diminishing the artistic efforts of human creators, affecting their livelihoods and the cultural value of their work. Humans should remain at the core of AI utilisation and progress, and AI should empower, rather than endanger, humanity. One of the ways to build such a future is bottom-up AI, an approach that ensures we can decide when to contribute our AI patterns to wider organisations, from communities to countries and the whole of humanity.

What is audio hijacking?

Audio hijacking involves the manipulation of ongoing conversations between people using cloned voices of the participants to deceive them. This can be accomplished through various methods, including malware on victims’ phones. 

How it works?

The process of audio hijacking is intricate, often necessitating advanced social engineering skills. IBM’s researchers demonstrated this threat through a proof-of-concept (PoC) scenario where a program acts as a man-in-the-middle, intercepting a live conversation. Indeed, attackers can then monitor these conversations, transcribing them in real-time from speech to text. Utilising large language models (LLMs), they can understand the context of the conversation and decide when and how to alter the dialogue. For example, upon detecting mention of sensitive financial information, the LLM can instruct the program to modify the sentence accordingly. The altered content is then converted back into speech using text-to-speech technology, complete with cloned voices, and inserted back into the conversation, seamlessly altering the audio in real-time.

Impact and need for trust

The researchers’ PoC showcased the potential for altering sensitive information, such as bank account details or medical records, posing significant risks to individuals’ privacy and security. It also illustrated just how easily such attacks could be orchestrated with current technology, emphasising the need for vigilance and advanced protective measures.

These two facts added together do not work in favour of presenting AI as a trustworthy technology for the general public as it poses significant challenges to cybersecurity defences and highlights the need for urgent solutions. Indeed, the development of advanced security measures to protect against the manipulation of audio and video content in real time is urgent. The potential of audio hijacking to harm is a dangerous issue we will have to face and overcome but it also confirms the broader implications of AI for trust and security in the digital age.

Why does it matter?

The research into audio hijacking by IBM shows a critical vulnerability in our increasingly interconnected world. It poses obvious risks to personal security, financial transactions, and maybe even national security matters.

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“The company can talk all it wants to about AI and the metaverse, but it’s still a social media company that gets nearly all its revenue from advertising, and advertisers still clearly love Meta,” said longtime tech analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

The Menlo Park, California-based parent company of Facebook and Instagram said Thursday that it earned $14 billion, or $5.33 per share, in the October-December period. That’s up from $4.65 billion, or $1.76 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue grew 25% to $40.11 billion from $32.17 billion.

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $4.82 per share on revenue $39.1 billion, according to FactSet Research.

“This was a pivotal year for our company. We increased our operating discipline, delivered strong execution across our product priorities, and improved advertising performance for the businesses who rely on our services,” Meta said in a statement.

Meta also grew the user base on its apps, with monthly active users on its family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp — reaching 3.98 billion as of the end of the year, up 6% from 2022.

Facebook had 3.07 billion monthly active users as of Dec. 31, an increase of 3% year-over year. The company does not break out the user base of its other platforms.

The blowout results come a day after Zuckerberg testified before the Senate along with other social media CEOs about the dangers their platforms pose to children.

For the current quarter, Meta is forecasting revenue of of $34.5 billion to $37 billion, above Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts are projecting revenue of $33.9 billion for the first quarter.

The company said it had 67,317 employees as of December 31, 2023, a decrease of 22% year-over-year after it laid off thousands to cut expenses. But Meta expects higher payroll costs this year as it plans to add more highly-paid AI specialists to further its ambitions and compete with other tech giants for talent in this area.

Meta also initiated a quarterly dividend to its shareholders. It said it will pay 50 cents per share on March 26 to shareholders of record as of Feb. 22. It said it plans to pay a quarterly dividend going forward.

The company’s Reality Labs segment, which includes its virtual reality headsets and augmented reality technology, grew its revenue by 47% to $1,07 billion — but it still reported an overall loss of $4.65 billion for the quarter.

Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said Meta’s investments in artificial intelligence “demonstrate the company’s commitment to becoming an AI heavy-hitter—something investors and advertisers will reward.”

“Meta still faces the big task of proving that it can integrate AI with its other big bet, the metaverse,” she said. “Meanwhile, a pullback from Chinese advertisers could be a headwind to its ad business, and investors won’t be willing to overlook the mounting losses in Reality Labs should Meta’s ad business falter.”

Meta’s shares jumped $55.52 or 14.1%, to $450.28 in after-hours trading. The stock had closed at $394.78, up 1.2%.

Lawmakers assert that major tech firms are falling short in safeguarding children from sexual exploitation online, prompting calls for stricter regulations and demanding accountability from industry leaders.

Scheduled to appear alongside Zuckerberg and Yaccarino are executives from TikTok, Discord, and Snap, marking the first time many of them, including Yaccarino, have faced Congressional scrutiny.

Yaccarino, Discord’s Jason Citron, and Snap’s Evan Spiegel were subpoenaed before agreeing to testify, while Zuckerberg and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew volunteered to appear.

“Parents and kids demand action,” Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham emphasized as they announced the hearing, underscoring the urgency of addressing these concerns.

This hearing follows revelations from a former Meta staffer who voiced concerns about Instagram’s inadequate measures to protect teens from harassment, prompting Meta’s assurance of implementing “over 30 tools” to foster a safer online environment for teens.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s focus on online harms was reinforced by a previous hearing in February 2023, where stakeholders agreed on the need for accountability.

Proposed legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), recently supported by Snapchat, reflects ongoing efforts to address these issues legislatively.

The committee is particularly alarmed by reports of explicit images of children circulating online, including AI-generated fake images, citing whistleblower testimonies and accounts from child abuse survivors.

Despite efforts by tech giants to address these concerns, including developing tools to identify and report such content, lawsuits and public pressure persist, driving the call for heightened scrutiny.

While measures like parental controls and content restrictions have been implemented, the clamor for increased oversight remains, underscoring the pivotal moment as tech industry leaders brace for Congressional interrogation.

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