Weekly News Highlights | More bad news for TikTok, crypto scams are on the rise, researchers predict human-level AI is imminent

March 20th

More bad news for TikTok

A few weeks ago we highlighted the growing pressure for TikTok to be banned on government devices out of fears for security. Unfortunately for TikTok, this pressure is only growing.

New Zealand has become the latest country to impose restrictions and the UK has also recently announced it is moving forward with a ban on TikTok for official devices after a review from the National Cyber Security Centre.

TikTok has responded to the growing list of bans saying that it was "disappointed" and that the bans were founded on "fundamental misconceptions and driven by wider geopolitics".

Read more here and here.

Crypto scams affect thousands

Crypto has become a popular target for cyber criminals looking to make big money.

Recently thousands of people have lost money after investing in a cryptocurrency trading app called iEarn Bot. The grift was simple, the scammers convinced people to invest using their app, and when they accrued enough money, took the app down for "maintenance" and emptied all the accounts.

NatWest, a UK bank, has begun limiting the amount of money customers can transfer to cryptocurrency exchanges to prevent customers falling victim to scams like these.

The crypto space is famously unregulated, and while governments are slowly starting to act, in the meantime experts can only recommend due diligence.

Read more here and here.

Researchers predict human-level AI is imminent

Anthropic, an AI research firm, have detailed that the recent "very rapid progress" of AI could signal that the arrival of human-level artificial intelligence could be close at hand.

The claims may seem overblown given the varying levels of quality currently available in the AI space, but Anthropic claim that instead of plateauing, the growth of AI will be compounded exponentially with each new development. 

Read more here and here.

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