Business, Spoken

The backlash to Google’s work on a US military artificial-intelligence project began inside the tech giant, but in recent weeks, it has spilled into the public. As employees resigned in protest over Google’s work with Project Maven, which uses AI to identify potential drone targets in satellite images, reports revealed top executives fretting over how it will be perceived by the public.

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On Sunday, the New York Times revealed that Facebook had deals with phone manufacturers including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Blackberry going back a decade that gave the device makers access to copious amounts of personal data about users and their friends in order to recreate a mobile version of Facebook on their devices.

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On Friday, Visa's payment network suffered outages across Europe, limiting transactions for both businesses and individuals. Banks and commerce groups began advising customers to use cash or other payment cards if possible, and reports indicated that online and contactless transactions were having more success than chip cards. Though some Visa transactions still went through, the failure appeared widespread.

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General Motors, the US’s 10th-largest company by revenue, is eager to lay the groundwork for future growth by developing self-driving technology. But its shareholders are dubious of too much spending as revenue declines---it fell 5.5 percent last year. Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has the opposite problem: A giant pile of cash, and not enough opportunities to spend it.

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Facebook is getting rid of its Trending Topics feature, according to a blog post the social network published Friday. The Trending sidebar, located on the right-hand side on desktop, displays popular topics users are discussing across the site. The product will officially shutter next week, including on third-party services that use the Facebook Trends API. Alex Hardiman, Facebook's head of news products, said the company is ditching the feature because it's underused.

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If you Googled the California Republican Party earlier this week, the so-called "knowledge panel" that's supposed to surface the most relevant results would have told you that the party's primary ideologies are conservatism, market liberalism, and, oh, Nazism. Conservatives have been quick to point fingers at Google and other tech giants, claiming another example of perceived liberal bias in Silicon Valley.

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The tech industry is booming. Its biggest companies are minting money. Their influence and reach into media, telecommunications, retail---everything really---is so great that once-dominant firms in those industries are desperately seeking merger partners to keep up. Some venture capitalists say the market for new companies and the talent to staff them hasn’t been this overheated since the great internet bubble of 2000.

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The Trump administration doesn’t hold much regard for asylum seekers or projects started by President Obama. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has moved to keep more asylum seekers in detention. Trump has rolled back Obama-era initiatives wholesale since taking office. Yet in one corner of the White House, a team of idealistic tech workers established by Obama is helping the Department of Homeland Security offer asylum seekers better customer service.

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Evan Spiegel wants the world to know something: His company, Snap, doesn’t admire Facebook, doesn’t want to be like Facebook, and believes that Snap’s approach to its users and their data is better for the world. Appearing onstage at the Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California, Tuesday night, Spiegel said that Facebook may have changed its products and mission but “fundamentally they will have a hard time changing the DNA of the company.

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So, about that trade war. Recent days have presented a dizzying series of reversals followed by reversals of reversals over whether, when, or if the United States will impose punitive tariffs on China in response to unresolved issues, ranging from intellectual property theft to lack of access to domestic Chinese markets. On Tuesday, the White House made a splashy announcement that it will move ahead with tariffs, which were widely reported as a done deal. Except that they're not.

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