In 2024, Meta Platforms reported revenue of $164.50 billion. As of September 30, 2025, the social media giant’s revenue was approximately $189.46 billion. It’s a titan of industry that shareholders love, and that loves its shareholders. But the excessive love of shareholders is the root of all corporate sin.

Despite its skyrocketing revenue and incredible technological prowess, Meta doesn’t think it should regulate its market or protect its customers from fraud and harm. The digital advertising ecosystem, once heralded as a democratisation of commercial reach, has metastasised into a complex marketplace where the distinctions between legitimate commerce and predatory fraud are increasingly obscured by algorithmic opacity.

Internal projections for the fiscal year 2024 indicate that advertisements promoting scams, illegal goods, and prohibited content generated approximately $16 billion, representing roughly 10% of the company’s total annual revenue. This revenue is safeguarded by a penalty bid pricing mechanism that monetises high-risk advertisers rather than removing them, a policy framework that sets enforcement thresholds at a staggering 95% certainty level and a corporate governance structure that explicitly caps revenue losses from safety enforcement at a fraction of the profits generated by the fraud.

So, what does this mean? Meta will even let bad actors sell horse dung or magic remedies if they are willing to pay a premium for their risky endeavour. While the company has long faced scrutiny regarding data privacy and political influence, investigations surfacing in late 2024 and throughout 2025 have illuminated a far more tangible structural crisis: the institutionalisation of revenue derived from fraudulent advertising.

What’s really happening?

In November 2025, a Reuters investigation, corroborated by a cache of internal documents spanning 2021 to 2025, revealed a stark internal projection. Meta anticipated $16 billion in revenue for 2024, specifically from ads for scams and banned goods. To contextualise this figure, $16 billion exceeds the annual revenue of major global entities such as Spotify or eBay (Fortune 500 companies). It is a sum that materially impacts the company’s earnings per share and, consequently, its stock valuation.

This revenue stream is categorised internally under various euphemisms, including “violating revenue” or segments associated with higher legal risk. The existence of such specific forecasting line items indicates that this revenue is not accidental. Financial modelling that explicitly accounts for illicit revenue suggests a fiduciary dependency; removing this revenue stream would require a voluntary correction of the company’s top line by nearly 10%, a move that would likely trigger a shareholder revolt in an environment where growth in legitimate user acquisition has plateaued.

To put things into context, Meta shows 15 billion scam ads a day. A lesser entity would be penalised and shut down in most countries, but the mighty titan of the digital industry has thus far been immune to its amoral position on the safety of its consumers. Upper management at Meta does not care if an online casino, a pump-and-dump investment scheme, fake websites, or purveyors of illegal drugs flood their platform with misleading ads, as long as their pockets are full.

After the Reuters investigation and some high-profile cases against it globally, most notably the Calise vs Meta lawsuit and the Brazil AGU lawsuit, the company is trying its best at crisis management.

Calise vs Meta is a class-action lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit pursuing claims of unjust enrichment, arguing that Meta actively solicited and profited from third-party fraud and thus should disgorge the revenue. The Brazilian Attorney General’s Office has also filed suit to recover revenue from 1,770 specific fraudulent ads that used government symbols to scam citizens, demanding that the funds be deposited into a rights defence fund. Something similar is happening in the United Kingdom as well. Regulators in the European country found that Meta platforms were involved in 54% of all authorised push payment scams (where users are tricked into sending money).

The Instagram parent company says only 10% of its revenue came from scams in 2024 and aims to cut it to 7.3% in 2025 and 5.8% by 2027. The claim seems absurd. They have the tools to stop it now, but choose to roll it out slowly to protect their profits and please shareholders.

Of the $16 billion ad revenue they received from bad actors, $7 billion was from higher-risk parties (possibly extremely dubious or problematic). It is ironic because Meta’s own system files it as such. The most critical insight from the internal disclosures is the calculated decision to tolerate this revenue stream based on a comparison with potential regulatory penalties.

The documents suggest a stark cost-benefit analysis. While the revenue from scam ads is estimated at nearly $7 billion annually, the company’s internal risk models projected that regulatory fines for these violations would likely cap at around $1 billion. Instead of punishing or deplatforming, they merely charge a higher fee from these individuals and organisations.

It’s important to keep in mind that Meta is partly responsible for one-third of all successful scams in the US today. Worldwide, the total cost of ad fraud was estimated at $81 billion in 2022 and was expected to surpass $100 billion in 2023, showing that current measures aren’t keeping up with increasingly sophisticated scams.

Furthermore, internal memos revealed the existence of revenue guardrails for safety teams. In one specific instance, a fraud prevention initiative was restricted to actions that would not reduce total ad revenue by more than 0.15% (approximately $135 million).

This explicit capping of safety measures based on revenue impact demonstrates that the risk premium is a protected income stream, insulated from the full force of the company’s own trust and safety capabilities.

Who is profiting and how?

The digital advertising ecosystem, once heralded as a precision instrument for commercial democratisation, has metamorphosed into a complex adversarial theatre where the economic interests of platforms and the operational methodologies of fraudsters have become dangerously aligned. These systems prioritise engagement metrics such as Click-Through Rate and Estimated Action Rate (EAR) over content veracity, creating a fertile substrate where fraudulent actors do not merely survive but thrive.

At the core of the ad delivery engine lies the auction formula, a mathematical arbiter that decides which advertisement is shown to a user at any given millisecond. You don’t win the bid with money on platforms like Google, Facebook, or Instagram; you win it with a combination of ad quality and EAR.

When a fraudster runs a campaign promising “Guaranteed 500% Returns in 24 Hours” or “Miracle Weight Loss Without Dieting,” users interact with these ads at high rates. The algorithm, blind to the veracity of the claim and optimising strictly for the probability of action, registers this high interaction as a signal of quality and relevance. Consequently, the auction mechanism rewards the fraudster with a higher EAR, which inversely lowers their Cost Per Mille or Cost Per Click.

In effect, the platform’s efficiency algorithms subsidise the distribution of scam content, allowing fraudsters to reach vast audiences at a fraction of the cost paid by legitimate brands.

The digital ad fraud ecosystem has matured into a sophisticated business-to-business economy. While the end-point scammers running fake crypto exchanges or counterfeit e-commerce stores bear the operational risk, a vast shadow supply chain of service providers extracts guaranteed profits at every stage of the fraudulent lifecycle. These entities operate with the efficiency of legitimate SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies, often earning monthly recurring revenue (MRR) regardless of whether the scammer’s campaign succeeds or fails.

The primary beneficiaries are vendors of evasion technology. Cloaking services, which filter traffic to hide malicious landing pages from platform moderators, have evolved into subscription-based platforms. Services like “TrafficArmor” and “Cloaking House” operate openly, charging tiered monthly fees ranging from $30 to $600, or utilising pay-per-click models where scammers pay premium rates (e.g., $129 for 32,500 clicks) to ensure their ads survive automated review. These companies profit by effectively selling invisibility, creating a technological tollbooth that every high-end fraudster must pay to access the audience.

Supporting this is the Bulletproof Hosting industry. Unlike legitimate hosts that comply with takedown requests, providers like Strox or SpeedHost247 charge premiums (e.g., $85/month or $3/day) to host malicious landing pages on servers explicitly designed to ignore abuse reports and law enforcement inquiries. By commoditising resilience, they ensure that even when a scam is detected, the infrastructure remains operational long enough to be profitable.

Fraud requires a constant supply of fresh identities to bypass platform bans. This has enriched Dark Web marketplaces and account brokers, who act as wholesalers of digital reputation. The most lucrative commodities are Verified Business Managers who hack or farm Facebook/Meta ad accounts with high spending limits and histories of legitimate activity. A verified BM can fetch $120 to $250, while aged accounts (which look less suspicious to algorithms) sell for $45–$50.

This sector also profits from the Stolen Credit model. Brokers sell stolen credit card details for as little as $10–$40, which fraudsters then link to compromised agency accounts. This arbitrage allows scammers to run thousands of dollars in ads using other people’s money, while the identity brokers secure risk-free profit from the initial data sale.

Perhaps the most significant evolution is the shift to Scam-as-a-Service (ScaaS). Technical syndicates now build and lease entire fraud kits (pre-coded phishing sites, crypto drainer scripts, and back-end management panels) to lower-level criminals.

“Instead of charging a flat fee, these developers often take a commission. For instance, the Inferno Drainer malware operated on a 20% commission model, syphoning off a fifth of all stolen funds from its affiliates, generating over $87 million in illicit profit before ceasing operations. This franchise model allows technical groups to scale their revenue infinitely without ever directly engaging with a victim,” said Reuters journalist Jeff Horwitz, who has been covering the alleged ad-related irregularities involving Meta.

Finally, the demand for human engagement signals has created a labour economy in Southeast Asia (e.g., Vietnam, Myanmar) and parts of Eastern Europe. “Click Farms” or “Fraud Farms” employ low-wage workers to manually interact with ads, solve CAPTCHAs, and warm up accounts.

“These operations charge roughly $1 per 1,000 clicks/likes, creating a volume-based revenue stream that exploits global wage disparities to defeat advanced behavioural biometrics. By providing the human touch that algorithms crave, these farms monetise the very mechanism designed to stop them,” Horwitz said.

And it doesn’t stop there. The data collected at these farms is often resold. If you’ve been the victim of a cybercrime, there’s a 34% chance it will happen again if you’re an individual, and an 84% chance if you’re a business. Once scammed, you can end up on what’s called a ‘suckers list,’ marking you as an easy target. These lists are valuable, and people are willing to pay a lot to get them.

How is the world reacting to it?

The world is reacting to the industrialisation of ad fraud with a shift from “user beware” to platform liability. In 2024 and 2025, governments and industries moved to dismantle the economic impunity of platforms, forcing them to bear the costs of the fraud they facilitate.

The most significant development is the regulatory move to force reimbursement. For example, the UK Payment Systems Regulator implemented in 2024 a mandatory reimbursement requirement for Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud. Crucially, the liability is now split 50:50 between the sending bank and the receiving payment service provider.

While this primarily targets banks, it has created immense pressure from the financial sector on tech platforms. Banks, now on the hook for millions in refunds, are aggressively lobbying for a “polluter pays” model, arguing that since 60–80% of scams originate on Meta’s platforms, the tech giants should contribute to the reimbursement pot.

Effective December 2024, Singapore’s framework assigns specific duties to financial institutions and telcos to mitigate phishing scams. If banks fail to send real-time transaction alerts or impose cooling-off periods, they are liable for losses. This creates a regulatory precedent where infrastructure providers are held financially accountable for gatekeeping failures. Governments are moving beyond voluntary codes of conduct to enforceable legislation with massive financial penalties.

The “UK Online Safety Act,” fully enforceable in 2025, requires platforms to proactively prevent fraudulent advertising. Non-compliance can result in fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global annual turnover (potentially billions for Meta).

In Europe, something similar is happening with the “Digital Services Act.” The European Commission has opened investigations into “Very Large Online Platforms” regarding their risk mitigation for fraudulent ads. The DSA empowers the European Union to fine companies up to 6% of their global turnover if they fail to manage systemic risks, including the spread of financial scams.

In Australia, the “Scams Prevention Framework,” which was passed in early 2025, introduces mandatory codes for banks, telcos, and digital platforms. It includes fines of up to AUD 50 million for non-compliance, specifically targeting the failure to detect and remove scam content.

There is also other litigation from celebrities. For example, Andrew Forrest vs Meta is an ongoing case where Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest pursued Meta in both Australian and US courts over the proliferation of crypto scams using his likeness. While the Australian criminal case was dropped due to evidential hurdles, the US civil lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss in 2024.

This case is pivotal as it challenges Section 230 immunity often claimed by platforms, arguing that Meta’s ad tools contributed to the content creation, thereby stripping them of neutral publisher status.

Even the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued Meta for aiding and abetting false conduct by publishing scam ads featuring public figures, arguing that Meta’s algorithms actively targeted these scams to susceptible users.

Meta has, under immense pressure, reversed its 2021 decision to abandon facial recognition. In late 2024, the company began testing facial recognition technology to combat “celeb-bait” scams. The system compares faces in suspected ads against the profile pictures of public figures.

If a match is found and the ad is a scam, it is blocked. This marks a significant concession, as it acknowledges that privacy concerns regarding biometrics are outweighed by the need to stop the financial bleeding caused by industrial-scale fraud.

Major players like Meta, Coinbase, and Match Group have formed coalitions to share intelligence on pig-butchering operations, aiming to sever the communication lines between the scam compounds and their victims.

Engagement fuels fraud risks

This is the aftermath of prioritising engagement over verification. You end up with an ecosystem where scams and fraud flourish, and customers get hurt. At the heart of this crisis lies the EAR algorithm, a mechanism that inadvertently subsidises deception by rewarding the hyper-engaging nature of scams with lower distribution costs. This economic alignment between the platform’s profit motives and the fraudster’s operational goals has created a “Market for Lemons,” where predatory content effectively crowds out legitimate commerce.

The “Retargeting Loop” further exacerbates this by trapping vulnerable populations in algorithmic echo chambers, commoditising their susceptibility, and reselling it through the secondary market of recovery scams.

Technologically, the ecosystem has evolved into an asymmetric arms race, where enforcement is consistently outpaced by evasion. The transition from simple static landing pages to Generation 4 cloaking technologies, which are capable of analysing device telemetry, battery status, and gyroscopic movements in milliseconds, demonstrates that fraud is no longer the domain of opportunistic amateurs. It has industrialised into a sophisticated Fraud-as-a-Service economy. This shadow supply chain, composed of bulletproof hosting providers, identity brokers on the dark web, and commercial cloaking services, operates with the efficiency of the legitimate software sector.

By lowering the technical barrier to entry, these enablers have democratised access to high-end evasion tools, allowing even low-skilled actors to launch enterprise-grade attacks against global platforms.

The failure of self-regulation is now evident in the global legislative pivot toward platform liability. For over a decade, the industry operated under a “user beware” paradigm, but the sheer scale of financial loss has forced a regulatory correction. Initiatives like the United Kingdom’s mandatory reimbursement requirement and Singapore’s “Shared Responsibility Framework” signal the end of platform immunity.

By shifting the financial burden of fraud from the victim to the infrastructure providers, regulators are attempting to realign economic incentives. Only when the cost of hosting a scam exceeds the revenue generated from its ads will platforms invest the necessary resources to close the technological loopholes they currently tolerate.

Ultimately, the future of the digital advertising economy hinges on a fundamental shift from plausible deniability to mandatory verification. The era of anonymous algorithmic bidding must yield to a “Know Your Business” standard, where access to the ad auction is predicated on verified identity rather than mere creditworthiness.

As Generative AI threatens to flood the web with infinite synthetic content, the only viable defence is a strict chain of custody for digital identity. If structural reform doesn’t ensue soon, corporate social media platforms will slowly transform into a black market without oversight.

The world is reacting, but laws are struggling to keep up with fast-moving algorithms. For now, as a reader and consumer, be careful, any ad you see on Instagram or Facebook could be a scam, backed by Meta Platforms, the world’s biggest advertiser.

The post Meta lets scammers pay to play appeared first on International Finance.

In reference to a well-known quote about Julius Caesar and his unyielding desire for power, Zuckerberg’s t-shirt said, “Aut Zuck aut nihil,” or “Zuck or nothing.” In contrast, the phrase “Mundus sine Caesaribus”—”a world without Caesars”—was printed on Graber’s shirt. The shirt served as a scathing indictment of Zuckerberg’s centralised vision.

In contrast to Zuckerberg’s centralised approach to building Meta, Graber aims to manage and develop Bluesky, a dominant social media platform that went live in early 2024, she tells TIME. She claims these digital firms have established virtual kingdoms where their CEOs present themselves as self-made kings.

In the hyper-centralised world of social media, where internet giants like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg make decisions on their own regarding privacy, censorship, and data harvesting for artificial intelligence, this message is becoming more and more relevant. While Bluesky’s daily usage increased by 500%, X lost 115,000 users the day after the election as consumers sought a haven from right-wing trolls, sponsored posts, and disinformation bots. However, X’s daily active user count in the United States was still ten times higher than that of Bluesky. Among the 35 million users of Bluesky today are Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, George Takei, and Stephen King. It’s the world’s biggest decentralised social network by far.

Beyond its sizable liberal fan base, Bluesky still has a way to go before becoming profitable and widely used. However, Graber asserts that her goal is not to overtake Musk or Zuckerberg as the dominant figure on social media. She declares, “We oppose centralised authority prescribing the rules for everybody else. We would rather not establish a future in which I am a more benevolent emperor. We envision a society in which monarchs are completely unnecessary.”

Bluesky’s interface visually resembles Twitter, with an endless scroll of text posts that are no longer than 300 characters. New users can quickly engage in discussions by using “starter packs,” which are user-generated collections of accounts centred around common interests. Topics such as memes, pop culture, politics, and sports are especially popular among users.

The primary distinction between Twitter and Bluesky is that the latter’s open-source protocol enables users to personalise their content feeds and algorithms. Like Reddit, Bluesky has seen the emergence of close-knit communities that have established censorship guidelines and communication methods. Additionally, because of Bluesky’s architecture, users can move their posts and follows to another platform as long as it uses the same protocol.

It wasn’t Graber who came up with Bluesky. In 2019, Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, funded a small group of academics and announced Bluesky as a decentralised version of Twitter. Graber, who had formerly worked on bitcoin projects and had a long-standing interest in decentralised technology, offered to lead the company in 2021. Graber was living in a large communal home with other entrepreneurs during the lockdown in San Francisco.

According to Rose Wang, Graber’s former roommate and current COO of Bluesky, the company’s growth was influenced by the particulars of COVID-19. “How do you get people to feel safe together in this time? There were a lot of community challenges. I believe that our perspectives on creating communities online are greatly influenced by Jay’s and my experiences creating communities offline,” she said.

As per PitchBook, female-led companies in Silicon Valley remain rare, securing only 6% of venture capital deals. Graber says that her and Wang’s identities have shaped their approach to leadership. “As women with extensive online experience,” she explains, “we’ve made moderation a top priority—because we believe it’s essential to building a healthy social platform.”

Elon Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022. He initially argued in favour of making its algorithm open-source, which could be derived from Bluesky’s technology and research, but he swiftly stopped supporting Bluesky instead. After searching elsewhere, Graber and her team eventually raised $8 million and then $15 million in investment rounds. They also decided to turn Bluesky into a public benefit corporation, which means that they must work for the public and social good in addition to making money.

Demand surged in 2023 as Bluesky prepared to launch its invite-only system, with many potential users pleading with them to remove the platform’s limitations. However, Graber decided to keep Bluesky small until the decentralised tools were developed because they weren’t yet ready.

Currently, Graber oversees more than 100 content moderator contractors and 24 staff members who strive to eliminate harmful posts such as aggressive threats and child sexual abuse information. Dorsey was upset with Bluesky’s content moderation strategy and quit the board last spring, claiming that Bluesky was centralising and that its moderating tools were becoming overly intrusive.

To determine what people see and what they don’t, Graber contends that users should largely design their own moderation systems. She explains, “You have this open right to leave—where you can build your own thing if you disagree with the services, moderation actions, or design choices.”

According to Rudy Fraser, a technologist who started the feed, popular feeds on Bluesky include Science and Blacksky, for Black community building, with 370,000 monthly active users. “Some of the feeds are centred around people who are discovering shared affinity in gender or their identities. I want to create an open network so that communities and individuals who feel excluded from the current social media platforms and power structures can create their own spaces,” Graber noted.

Bluesky continues to lean far to the left politically, and conservatives have complained about being harassed or censored on the site. Additionally, Bluesky’s user growth has slowed considerably since its post-election surge. Furthermore, its 35 million users are insignificant compared to the hundreds of millions on X and Meta’s Threads, not to mention the billions on Instagram and TikTok.

Graber acknowledges that the platform has experienced several ups and downs, but remains unconcerned about the slow growth. To avoid the mistakes of previous social media platforms that prioritised growth over user experience, she feels comfortable taking her time. “Social networks can degrade the main experience of the feed because they have become too accustomed to believing that users are trapped because of the network effects. This monetisation model is likely to reach some natural limits where people grow weary of it, so it won’t last forever,” she explained.

Graber and Wang must now come up with a new revenue strategy that goes beyond using user data to build AI models or running constant advertisements. Graber says she is considering monetising Bluesky’s marketplaces through custom tools or subscription models, despite not having specific plans in place.

Graber and Wang are more than happy to let independent business owners create other platforms on top of Bluesky’s AT protocol, which are likewise open-sourced and compatible with one another, as Bluesky scuttles toward monetisation. Remember how standard email protocols served as the foundation for Gmail, Yahoo, and other inboxes. These new initiatives include Sky-light, a TikTok clone supported by Mark Cuban, and Flashes, an Instagram substitute that has received over 100,000 downloads.

The duo won’t stop anyone from constructing a Bluesky clone on top of the infrastructure. According to Wang, “Greensky can appear the following morning if Bluesky, the server, shuts down overnight. We are frequently asked, ‘How can we trust you?’ Don’t trust us, is our response. Have faith in the infrastructure.”

Only good days ahead

In April 2025, Bluesky rolled out a new verification system, taking the competition with X to the next level. The social platform formerly relied on an unconventional self-verification system, where users could “authenticate” themselves by including custom domains in their web handles. Now it’s adopting a more proactive and traditional verification strategy, with the Bluesky team reportedly identifying notable accounts and bestowing blue check marks.

“It’ll be a rolling process as the feature stabilises, and then we’ll launch a public form that people can use to request verification,” Graber said, adding that the highest-priority accounts right now are government officials, news organisations, journalists, and celebrities. A 2024 study from the MIT Technology Review reveals that Bluesky has grown, and so has the uptick in impersonators posing as public figures. To meet growing demand for ways to confirm that accounts are legit, some Bluesky power users have taken it upon themselves to create their own verification systems. As the app continues to attract celebrity users (former US President Barack Obama joined the platform earlier this spring), a more formal verification process will help reassure public figures that Bluesky is a safe digital hangout space.

In addition to this traditional, top-down verification approach, Bluesky offers “trusted verifier” status to a select group of vetted organisations. These organisations will be given a scalloped blue check mark on their Bluesky accounts. The initial batch of publications selected as trusted verifiers includes The New York Times and WIRED, with more in the works. This same system was initially followed by Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, where the rule was: you had to actually be famous and verifiable in the public eye.

While users cannot request verification directly, more importantly, Bluesky will not “sell” verification checkmarks like X and now Instagram and Facebook.

The post Can Bluesky stay small and win? appeared first on International Finance.

According to a recent prediction by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, mid-level engineers who write the company’s computer code will be replaced by AI. Even coding itself has been deemed outdated by Jensen Huang of NVIDIA.

Bill Gates acknowledges that the rapid advancement of AI is “profound and even a little bit scary,” but he also applauds the potential for it to make elite knowledge widely available. In his ideal world, AI will provide free, excellent medical advice and tutoring in place of programmers, physicians, and educators.

Despite the hype, artificial intelligence cannot act or “think” for itself at this time. In fact, the key question that determines whether AI improves learning or degrades comprehension is whether we should let AI simply forecast patterns or demand that it explain, justify, and be rooted in the rules of our world.

Artificial intelligence requires human judgment not only to oversee its output but also to incorporate scientific boundaries that provide it with guidance, stability, and interpretability. Physicist Alan Sokal recently likened AI chatbots to an oral exam taken by a mediocre student.

According to Sokal, a user may not pick up on an inaccurate chatbot unless they are extremely knowledgeable about a particular topic. That, in his opinion, sums up AI’s purported “knowledge” quite nicely. However, by anticipating word sequences, it simulates comprehension.

This makes it difficult for “creative” AI systems to tell what is real and what isn’t, and there are arguments over whether big language models can understand cultural nuances. Teachers concerned about AI tutors might impair students’ critical thinking skills, and doctors worried about algorithmic misdiagnosis are highlighting the same issue. Machine learning excels at identifying patterns, but it lacks the deep understanding that arises from systematic, cumulative human experience and the scientific method.

Here, a burgeoning AI movement provides a way forward. It focuses on directly integrating human knowledge into machine learning processes. MINNs (Mechanistically Informed Neural Networks) and PINNs (Physics-Informed Neural Networks) are two variants. The concept is straightforward, even though the names sound technical. Artificial intelligence improves when it complies with the laws of physics, biological systems, or social dynamics. Thus, people are still needed to produce knowledge as well as use it. AI functions best when it can learn.

An algorithm is programmed to adhere to accepted scientific principles rather than relying on historical data to make educated guesses about what works. Consider a family-run lavender farm in Indiana. Blooming time is crucial for businesses of this nature. Early or late harvesting weakens the potency of essential oils, lowering quality and profitability. It could be a waste of time for an AI to search through pointless patterns. But a MINN begins with the biology of plants. It makes accurate predictions promptly and with financial significance by using equations that relate blooming to heat, light, frost, and water. However, it only functions when it understands the workings of the chemical, biological, and physical worlds. Humans create science, which is the source of that knowledge.

Consider using this method to detect cancer: breast tumours produce heat due to increased blood flow and metabolism, allowing predictive artificial intelligence to identify tumours from thousands of thermal images using only patterns in the data. In contrast, a MINN, such as the one that was recently created by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology, incorporates bioheat transfer laws straight into the model using body-surface temperature data.

So, rather than speculating, it knows how heat flows through the body and can use the physics of heat flow through tissue to determine what’s wrong, what’s causing it, why, and exactly where it is. Based solely on the way cancer alters the body’s heat signature, a MINN was able to predict the location and size of a tumour in one instance within a few millimetres.

The message is very clear. People are still necessary. Our role is not going away as AI advances in sophistication. It is changing. An algorithm that generates strange, biased, or incorrect results must be called out by humans. That is not solely an AI shortcoming. It is the greatest human strength.

The increasing sophistication of AI is not the true danger. That is, we might cease applying our intelligence. Treating AI like an oracle runs the risk of making us lose our ability to think critically, ask questions, and spot illogical behaviour. Thankfully, this does not have to be how things turn out in the future.

Erik Otarola-Castillo, an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University, said, “We can create systems that are open, comprehensible, and based on the body of human knowledge regarding ethics, culture, and science. Interpretable AI research can be funded by policymakers. Students who combine technical skills with domain knowledge can be trained by universities. Frameworks like MINNs and PINNs, which demand that models remain true to reality, are available for developers to use. Additionally, we as users, voters, and citizens have the power to insist that AI support science and objective truth rather than merely correlations.”

“After teaching scientific modelling and statistics at the university level for over ten years, I now concentrate on teaching students how algorithms function under the hood by learning the systems themselves rather than memorising them. Raising literacy in the related fields of science, math, and coding is the aim,” Erik added.

Today, this method is required. More people clicking “generate” on black-box models is not necessary. There is a need for people who can decipher the logic, code, and math of the AI and recognise its inaccuracies.

“Artificial intelligence won’t replace people or render education obsolete. However, if we lose the ability to think for ourselves and understand the importance of science and in-depth knowledge, we may replace ourselves. The decision is not about accepting or rejecting AI. It’s whether we’ll continue to be knowledgeable and astute enough to steer it,” Erik noted.

Meanwhile, the introduction of a Product Support Agent and the general release of Data Insights Agent are two recent developments in Adobe’s agentic AI tools. Enhancing troubleshooting and insight generation in Adobe Experience Platform applications is the goal of these tools. Marketers and customer experience specialists now have an interactive way to identify and fix problems in their marketing workflows thanks to the recently created Product Support Agent AI assistant.

Operational bottlenecks that frequently divert teams from strategic initiatives are addressed by the tool, according to the company. The agent helps by offering real-time direction, making it easier to create support cases, and allowing continuous case management through the AI assistant conversational interface.

The post Can AI replace education? The choice is ours appeared first on International Finance.

In a recent message to employees and investors, Sutskever confirmed that Gross formally left SSI on June 29.

Sutskever remarked, “We appreciate his early contributions to the company and wish him well in his next endeavour.”

For his part, Daniel Gross expressed hope for the company’s future. In April, SSI’s most recent valuation was an astounding USD 32 billion.

“The company has a very bright future, and I expect miracles to follow,” he wrote in an X post.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led company reportedly offers some AI researchers signing bonuses of up to USD 100 million as part of a massive hiring spree to revamp its AI strategy, which coincides with his move to Meta.

According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has personally led the recruitment effort for the “Superintelligence Team.”

He has invited leading AI researchers and engineers from other companies to meet with him at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe to discuss offers to join Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg’s aim is for Meta to be the first company to achieve superintelligence, which it can then use to power its products, like its AI chatbot and AI smart glasses.

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a new division that will be co-led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. Talent was sourced from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI for the team. Meta is also offering up to a nine-figure pay for researchers on its “Superintelligence Team.”

Friedman, Daniel Gross’ investment partner at NFDG, a venture capital firm, has also supported SSI in the past. Sutskever, OpenAI alumnus Daniel Levy, and Gross co-founded SSI.

According to reports, Gross’s new position at Meta will involve working on A.Me. items for MSL.

Life And Career Of Ilya Sutskever

Ilya Sutskever, one of the most prominent figures in artificial intelligence and a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence, was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. His family first relocated to Israel when he was five years old, and then, when he was a teenager, to Canada.

Having been captivated by math and computers since childhood, he studied computer science at the University of Toronto for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees before completing his doctorate under deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. The foundation for numerous significant developments in AI was established by his doctoral work, especially the creation of deep neural networks.

His career took off when Sutskever co-authored the ground-breaking AlexNet paper in 2012, which won the ImageNet competition and set off the current AI boom. He joined Google Brain after working with Andrew Ng as a postdoc at Stanford, where he helped create the Sequence-to-Sequence (Seq2Seq) model for machine translation, which was another significant advancement in neural network research. Additionally, he helped shape large-scale AI infrastructure and contributed to the initial iterations of TensorFlow.

Sutskever co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and was its Chief Scientist. He helped create the GPT models at OpenAI and went on to lead the Superalignment team, which addressed the crucial problem of bringing superintelligent AI into line with human values.

Sutskever’s departure in 2024, however, was the result of internal conflicts at OpenAI, especially those concerning safety and governance, and the high-profile boardroom scandal that resulted in the temporary removal of CEO Sam Altman.

Sutskever, Daniel Levy, and Daniel Gross founded Safe Superintelligence shortly after departing OpenAI. SSI was established with the sole goal of creating a superintelligence that is safe, aligned, and unaffected by commercial distractions.

With offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, the business has emerged as a key player in the conversation about AI safety. In July 2025, Sutskever assumed the role of CEO after Gross left to join Meta, continuing his long-standing dedication to creating AI that advances humanity transparently and safely.

Image Credits: Ilya Sutskever LinkedIn

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September 10, 2024, was a legal catastrophe for Apple and Google. This was a rare victory for the European Union’s (EU) regulatory framework in its ongoing battle with big tech. While Google was unable to appeal a €2.4 billion fine for abusing its dominance in online searches, the European Court of Justice decided that Apple should reimburse the Irish tax authorities €13 billion in overdue taxes.

This was not a short-term victory for the EU’s former competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, a fierce opponent of big tech to her detractors and a champion of fair competition to her allies.

A worldwide crackdown

The EU is not alone in its efforts to control the companies that dominate digital search and advertising (Google), e-commerce (Amazon), social networks (Meta), and cellphones (Apple). There is an ongoing global wave of regulatory crackdowns on the dominant digital companies, extending from the United States to India. Governments use antitrust laws, an outdated weapon against this new foe, and the threat of mergers as the last punishment to force violators to comply.

Big tech is the target of such a strong reaction for four reasons. One is the long-standing worry among antitrust scholars and regulators that competition in the tech sector is dwindling as a result of major corporations using their power to hinder new competitors, which stunts economic growth and innovation.

Regulators like Vestager and her US counterpart Lina Khan consider themselves contemporary counterparts of the first US president to take on monopolies, Theodore Roosevelt.

Christopher Sagers, a specialist in antitrust law at Cleveland State University, argues that the antitrust activity of the early 20th century serves as a precedent for the increasing attention Big Tech is receiving due to the rapid changes in technology.

Politics also comes into play. Scepticism toward elites, large corporations, and the media is the foundation of both left and right populism. Tech companies and their executives, like Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, serve as prime examples of this.

Rising geopolitical tensions and deglobalization are also forcing governments to control multinational firms, with antitrust laws essentially turning into protectionist instruments. Measures against US IT businesses may be connected to EU concerns about the bloc’s decline in competitiveness, which were articulated in a recent report written by former ECB chief Mario Draghi.

Platform economies have finally reached a critical point. The degree of horizontal and vertical integration these businesses have attained is remarkable given the growing convergence of digital technology. When you think of Google, it is not only a business but also an ecosystem that encompasses email, mobile operating systems, and internet search, all within its domain.

The valuation of its parent firm, Alphabet, which holds more than 4% of the S&P 500 stock market index, reflects that. Amazon has created its own e-commerce empire, but Facebook and Apple are similar in their extensive businesses.

Governments are facing pressure to create equal opportunities for software developers and Amazon’s suppliers. Regulators are now compelled to act before it’s too late due to the emergence of AI. However, because the consequences are uncertain and the actions taken may be ineffective, this complexity is precisely what makes antitrust litigation against computer firms difficult.

Breaking up is difficult

Big tech now has to contend with authorities that have a robust antitrust agenda after decades of unchecked expansion.

Jonathan Kanter, the head of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) antitrust unit, has made it his goal to crack down on digital oligopolies, and Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), established herself as a prominent scholar with a seminal paper on Amazon’s monopolistic practices. Regulators believe that antitrust laws have been underutilised for a long time, especially when it comes to possible emerging competitors.

According to John Yun, a former FTC executive and antitrust law expert who teaches at George Mason University, there is a belief that conglomerates are becoming more significant in terms of the scrutiny they merit and that mergers are too permissive.

For the EU, competition is just as important as competitiveness when it comes to regulating big tech. The primary target of this regulatory onslaught at the moment is Google. The DoJ suggested in October 2024 that dismantling the company would be one way to disrupt its monopoly on internet searches.

Judge Amit Mehta declared that the company had engaged in “monopolistic” behaviour in its quest for search supremacy and had broken antitrust laws.

Google may be forced to provide solutions, like sharing search data with rival companies or even selling off its Chrome browser and Android smartphone operating system, which it uses to advertise its search engine. Importantly, it might have to renounce a $20 billion exclusivity deal with Apple that sets Google as the default search engine in Safari, the company’s browser. We anticipate a ruling by August, despite Google’s anticipated appeal to the Supreme Court.

The antitrust issues with Alphabet don’t stop there. A separate DoJ action has also been filed against the company for engaging in anti-competitive behaviour in its digital advertising division. Despite its less well-known nature compared to its dominance in search engines, advertising effectively regulates supply, demand, measurement, and online ad auctions, making it the company’s true asset.

Furthermore, a San Francisco court ordered Alphabet to make Android available to competitors in October 2024, allowing Android apps to be sold on app stores other than Google Play and be paid for using different methods.

According to Sagers from Cleveland State University, Google may be an exception even though break-up orders are uncommon because courts dislike them and governments primarily use them as a negotiating tool to scare businesses into making concessions.

The company has been accused of a variety of anti-competitive practices and has established power in several industries, so “the situation that Google currently finds itself in maybe uncommonly favourable to a breakup remedy,” he says.

He contends that the government’s entire thesis is that Google leverages its control of various components of the “ad stack” to drive out rivals and raise costs, making the separation of its ad tech division the most likely course of action. They may be less inclined to act in an anti-competitive manner if the various components are divided up and given to different owners.

Digital platforms have created network effects, which means that they offer a service whose appeal is based on the strength of the crowds: the more people using it, the better it is. This explains why there haven’t been many tech breakups. Since the resulting companies would not be able to achieve prior efficiencies or might even attempt to combine again, breaking them up is impracticable and costly.

“The government might argue that if Chrome and Android were broken off into separate firms, which don’t directly profit from search engine ad revenues, they would no longer have the incentive to give preference to Google search over competing search engines,” says Sagers, indicating that a structural remedy for Google’s search dominance would make sense in this particular case.

Apple is facing a DoJ antitrust action for using its dominating position in the US smartphone market—roughly two out of every three cellphones sold in the US are iPhones—to make it more difficult for customers to switch to third-party software and hardware.

The FTC is also pursuing antitrust complaints against Amazon and Meta, alleging that the latter has stifled competition from other shops on its e-commerce platform and favoured its own goods and services, while the former has monopolised social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

More concerningly, the regulator has opened an enquiry into digital pricing discrimination, which has the potential to upend one of the digital economy’s main tenets: how businesses utilise user data to determine personalised prices on the internet.

The lack of pertinent precedents contributes to the regulatory dilemma. No tech firm has experienced a similar destiny since the dissolution of the US telecom giant AT&T forty years ago.

The demise of Bell Labs, a research centre, is cited by some as one of the reasons why the US was left without a major player in telecommunications technology, allowing foreign competitors to emerge, even though others think that the separation increased competition in certain areas of the market that drove the internet explosion of the 1990s.

Another risk is that oligopolies can gradually reorganise, as was the case with AT&T, according to Sagers, “Lax merger enforcement allowed the companies that had been broken up to slowly knit themselves back together into larger and larger companies, until once again just a handful of firms controlled all of the communications.”

Other antitrust tools could include requiring interoperability and data portability: “Both might effectively break the impact of network effects that is cementing the market power of large companies,” says Luise Eisfeld, a digital platform expert and finance professor at HEC Lausanne.

Europe’s predicament

Many critics have accused the EU of using antitrust law as a protectionist instrument because they believe that regulating big tech is as much about competition as it is about competitiveness. The phrase “competitiveness” is used to suggest that we should combat large, non-EU firms in order to permit EU corporations to combine and concentrate, which is extremely risky.

Claire Lavin, a researcher at the antitrust think tank Open Markets Institute, warned that in practice, this approach could inadvertently enable EU-based oligopolies or monopolies to thrive, ultimately harming businesses and consumers. It may also pave the way for the rise of so-called “EU champions,” raising concerns about protectionism disguised as competition policy.

For possible infringement of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which attempts to stop IT giants from abusing their dominant position and promoting the growth of innovative businesses, the Commission opened an enquiry against Apple, Meta, and Alphabet this spring.

It identifies “gatekeepers,” or platforms with at least 45 million users in the EU and a turnover of at least €7.5 billion, as possible offenders. The Commission is looking into whether the businesses permit app developers to provide customers options outside of their storefronts. Google is also being criticised for favouring its own services over competitors in its search results, despite having paid €8.25 billion in EU fines in the past ten years.

The company owns several tools, such as the ad management platform Google Ad Manager, the exchange AdX, and the buying platforms Google Ads and DV360. This creates a conflict of interest that can only be resolved by selling these tools, according to the Commission’s claim in a different case that it is using unfair business practices to protect its ad tech business.

Business breakups may potentially disrupt a growing EU tech ecosystem, which the Draghi study identifies as a source of future growth. Oles Andriychuk, a professor at the University of Exeter who specialises in competition law and digital marketplaces, believes that “it could backfire, generating criticism and even cancellation of so many new ideas that get developed on the basis of traditional competition law.”

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, could potentially face fines for purportedly attempting to regulate classified advertising. EU regulators anticipate that the company undercuts competition by connecting Facebook and Marketplace, an e-commerce site.

The company has also come under fire for charging users for ad-free versions of its social networks and using data gathered from third parties to sell consumers advertisements. In addition to its tax issues in Ireland, Apple was hit with its first antitrust fine of around €1.8 billion in March for giving preference to its own music streaming service over rivals.

Vestager led a trust-busting campaign against tech corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and even Eurocrats during his ten years as the EU’s antitrust director. According to Andriychuk, “The European Commission found it increasingly difficult to meet the higher evidentiary standards set by the European Court of Justice in its current composition, but the Commission still prevailed in a number of cases.”

Teresa Ribera, her replacement, has joined a new commission whose goal is to support the establishment of large digital companies in the EU, as outlined in the Draghi report. In competition cycles, industrial policy terminology had a poor reputation for many years.

Andriychuk notes that people have begun to rediscover the connection between industrial policies and competition since its partial restoration. Ribera will also need to strike a balance between competing priorities, though.

China: First major tech killer

The first superpower to use antitrust laws to limit the influence of its IT companies was China. All of this began in late 2020 when Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma made an anti-government speech.

In addition to China’s financial regulator forcing the company to restructure in order to comply with financial regulations and suspending Alibaba’s sister company Ant Group’s initial public offering (IPO), Ma’s rebellious attitude infuriated the authorities to the point that he had to leave the public spotlight.

Wendy Chang, a specialist in Chinese digital policy at the think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), contends that the group’s aggressive foray into finance, which went against the government’s goal to maintain control of the sector, may have been the catalyst for the intense response.

Alibaba was also the subject of an enquiry by China’s competition commission, which fined it a record ¥18.2 billion (£1.96 billion) for abusing its dominance in e-commerce. This was only the start of a larger crackdown.

Chinese authorities forced the nation’s largest tech companies, such as Tencent Holdings, Meituan, the food delivery company, and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, to alter their monopolistic tactics after they issued guidelines to curb digital monopolies.

Chang claims that the government’s preference for manufacturing investment over services was one factor behind the crackdown. After regulators looked into earlier merger cases and fined Alibaba, Tencent, and ride-hailing behemoth Didi Global for failing to report deals for antitrust reviews, there was a sharp decline in tech mergers and acquisitions.

Another regulatory guideline advocating for a more robust model of development for the digital sector marked the official conclusion of the clampdown. Authorities acknowledged the significance of tech platforms for economic growth even as they upheld their commitment to combat monopolies.

One long-term effect is that the Chinese government now has representation on the boards of significant digital platforms, which allows them to influence their strategy and even obtain their data. Chang asserts that a significant decline in stock market value has already caused considerable harm.

The majority of impacted businesses have not yet recovered, which limits their capacity to develop and expand in industries that the government disapproves of, such as gaming, virtual currencies, and financial services.

Should we dismantle AI giants?

Artificial intelligence has evolved beyond the realm of science fiction since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022. Globally, billions of people are already using generative AI, which creates texts, images, and movies. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have taken note, purchasing hundreds of AI start-ups and providing cloud services and cash to AI engineers in return for licenses and stock.

Because creating sophisticated AI models requires expensive processing hardware, energy, and data, established tech companies have an advantage over smaller rivals, which raises fears that they may also control this industry.

One example is Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. But, AI is also predicted to upend industries where big tech now controls the majority, like search, where OpenAI is creating SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine that might challenge Google’s hegemony.

Restrictions on Google’s use of third-party data to train its AI models are among the remedies proposed by the US DoJ in its lawsuit against the company, which raised fears that it would utilise its distinct dominance in important areas to create an AI empire.

Should antitrust action be taken against the emerging AI behemoths before it’s too late? Given the substantial obstacles for new entrants, some believe that is essential.

“The current dynamics of the AI ecosystem give incumbent tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft the ability and incentive to entrench their power in AI markets and suppress meaningful competition,” says Jack Corrigan, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, while adding, “Competition authorities seem to be aware of these changes. They can keep the market for AI products from becoming as stagnant as the markets for other digital technologies by closely watching how these companies act and stepping in as needed.”

Some believe that governments should intervene by providing public resources to reduce the reliance of AI developers on large technology companies. Lavin of the Open Markets Institute says that another way to stop oligopolies from controlling AI is to make the laws that control mergers and other anti-competitive behaviour stricter. This could include looking into breakups.

While regulators globally have ramped up their efforts to curb the power of big tech, the balance between promoting competitiveness and facilitating innovation remains delicate. Antitrust actions, like those in the EU and US, are aimed at preventing monopolies from stifling new competition, but they also risk stifling creativity and technological growth.

The cases against companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon highlight the complexity of regulating industries marked by rapid innovation and network effects. As AI and other emerging technologies grow, regulators face new challenges in ensuring fair competition without hindering the very innovation that drives technological progress.

Moving forward, policymakers must carefully navigate this intricate landscape to create a fair, competitive environment that allows both new and established players to thrive.

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Following the historic Digital Markets Act of the European Union, which went into effect in 2023, Apple faces a fine of up to 10% of its yearly global revenue unless it permits competitors and app developers to use its services.

As per a report by Apple, Meta has submitted 15 interoperability requests so far, more than any other company, for potentially extensive access to Apple’s technology stack.

“In many cases, Meta is seeking to alter functionality in a way that raises concerns about the privacy and security of users, and that appears to be completely unrelated to the actual use of Meta external devices, such as Meta smart glasses and Meta Quests,” Apple said, as reported by Zawya.

The company’s goal is to control the computational platform that drives virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) devices, and Meta Quest is its virtual reality headset.

“If Apple were to have to grant all of these requests, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp could enable Meta to read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more,” the iPhone maker noted further, while raising concerns about the privacy fines that Meta has received in Europe in recent years.

“What Apple is actually saying is they don’t believe in interoperability. Every time Apple is called out for its anticompetitive behaviour, they defend themselves on privacy grounds that have no basis in reality,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

The whole saga comes amid the European Commission pressed Apple to further open up the iPhone operating system to rivals. The commission, on December 18, instructed the Tim Cook-led firm to rework the iOS operating system so that it becomes more compatible with smartwatches, earbuds, headsets and other devices from competitors.

Regulators further stated that outside iOS developers should be provided with more details on how to request access to iPhone features. They also should be given a dedicated contact to handle the requests, as the European Commission wanted the tech behemoth to adopt better processes related to rejected requests and take steps toward conciliation.

The European Commission escalated things further by publishing an extensive list of features that it wants Apple to open to third-party developers. They cover technologies ranging from Wi-Fi connections to file-transfer features to the beaming of video from devices.

In response, Apple said that the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which lays out a broad set of guardrails for the world’s largest technology platforms, would put its users at risk. The company further noted the rules force users “to open their devices — and their most sensitive data — to companies with a track record of violating their privacy.”

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The announcement comes amid a challenging period for the company, as it faces growing rivalry with major social media players such as Instagram parent Meta Platforms and Bytedance’s TikTok for advertising revenue.

“You may be wondering why, with all of the progress we’ve made in our business over the last year, our share price performance has lagged the overall market. The answer is simple: our advertising business is growing slower than our competitors,” Evan Spiegel said in the note.

At the start of August 2024, Snap projected a weak forecast for the current quarter, citing a decrease in advertising spend and is now expected to report fiscal 2024 revenue of USD 5.34 billion, according to LSEG data.

Snap’s stock has fallen around 48% so far this year. The company is also eyeing to revamp its market strategy by launching new ad placements powered by machine learning and automation. It is also developing augmented reality and smart glasses, much like its industry peer Meta.

“We are investing in creating augmented reality glasses that allow people to interact with computing, the world, and one another in totally new ways,” the note said.

In June 2024, Snap launched generative AI tools that enable users to apply more realistic effects when using their phone cameras to film themselves.

Snap is also testing a “simplified version of Snapchat,” Evan Spiegel says the tool aims to improve the platform’s accessibility and usability.

“The simplified Snapchat may be an attempt to capture older users, who are historically perplexed by the app’s not-so-intuitive design. Snapchat does a lot better at attracting younger audiences, who seem to just get the app. But this isn’t the first time Snapchat has tried to reconcile these issues,” TechCrunch reported.

During Snap’s 2017 earnings call, Evan Spiegel reportedly admitted to hearing that “Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use,” particularly for older customers. Months later, Snap pushed out a major redesign to reclaim those users, jamming Stories between private messages, among other changes that ended up infuriating more users than it attracted.

A 2018 Change.org petition to “remove the new Snapchat update” received 1.2 million signatories, while celebrity influencers like Kylie Jenner, Chrissy Teigen, and Marques Brownlee expressed their frustration. To make matters worse, the redesign badly affected the platform’s ad views and revenue flow, as it alienated its younger user base while failing in its bid to attract older users. By May of 2018, Snap was scrambling to roll back some of the changes.

As per Evan Spiegel’s letter, the early tests of the simplified redesign have been “directionally positive” so far, as the CEO wrote, “We will be thoughtful and deliberate about making a change of this magnitude.”

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Following the company’s quarterly earnings release, Tim Cook emphasised that Apple will soon be able to discuss specifics regarding its AI plans.

In an interview with Reuters, Tim Cook stated, “We continue to feel extremely confident about our opportunity in generative AI and we’re making large investments,” adding that the business has invested USD 100 billion in R&D over the previous five years.

During the same period, Apple’s Big Tech competitors have invested as much, if not more, in R&D, but they have also been aggressively investing in the construction of data centres that would house artificial intelligence services.

In the last quarter, Microsoft spent USD 14 billion on capital expenditures (capex), with Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, following closely at USD 12 billion. In April 2024, Meta Platforms advised investors to anticipate capital expenditures of up to USD 40 billion this year.

Apple has a distinct way of thinking. For the entire year 2023, it invested slightly more than USD 10 billion in capital.

With its shares down 10% due to investor concerns that the business was lagging in the artificial intelligence race, Apple—which generates the majority of its revenue from the sale of consumer electronics—has paid a premium for that position for most of this year.

Although investors have baulked at the exorbitant costs of data centres and specialised processors needed to train AI models, shares of Meta, Google, and Microsoft, all of which generate revenue from software and advertising services, have all surged to all-time highs as the companies compete to dominate the emerging artificial intelligence landscape.

Apple signalled that it would not adopt the same strategy. Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri stated that although Apple is anticipated to introduce new AI capabilities at its annual software conference and revamp its product lines with chips that are suitable for artificial intelligence, investors shouldn’t anticipate a significant shift in the way the company manages capital expenditures.

In response to a query from an analyst, Maestri cited Apple’s established policy of dividing the cost of tool production with its suppliers, which has allowed the company to maintain low costs and strong cash flow for more than ten years.

Maestri remarked, “On the data centre side, we do something similar. We use third-party capacity in addition to our data centre capacity. We intend to stick to this paradigm moving forward because it has historically worked effectively for us.”

That may be just as well for Apple, as it’s still uncertain if AI features like chatbots that operate directly on a device will encourage consumers to purchase new laptops, tablets, or phones—which continue to be Apple’s main sources of income.

Better processors might be a “line in the sand” for some customers who want AI technologies for professional use; although Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies noted that these characteristics might not spark a sales boom.

It won’t be a super cycle, but it will assist increase sales, according to Ben Bajarin.

“You must exercise caution in lowering your standards,” he concluded.

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In the first three quarters of last year, the nation prevented over 71 million attempted cyberattacks. Around 87% of UAE-based businesses experienced various cyber events, with 25% of them being the result of employees’ wilful harmful behaviour.

Such was the extent of the danger that Dr Mohammed Al Kuwaiti, the head of the Gulf country’s Cybersecurity Council, had to call on organisations (both public and private) to remain vigilant against hackers.

The Cybersecurity Council, established by the UAE government in 2020, has been busy from day one. As of November 2023, it was fending off over 50,000 cyber-attacks daily. There were successes, as the ransomware attacks in the UAE declined by more than 70% at the start of 2023, compared with the same period in 2022. However, according to a report from cybersecurity firm Proofpoint in 2023, about two in three businesses (64%) in the country were still experiencing ransomware attacks.

Iran’s Daring Attempt In 2023

Things got heated up in the beginning of 2024, as Iranian state-backed hackers interrupted TV streaming services in the UAE to broadcast a deepfake newsreader delivering a report on the Gaza conflict. As per Microsoft analysts, the hacking operation, run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, a key branch of the Iranian armed forces, had disrupted streaming platforms in the UAE with an AI-generated news broadcast branded “For Humanity”.

“The fake news anchor introduced unverified images that claimed to show Palestinians injured and killed in Israeli military operations in Gaza. Analysts at Microsoft said the hacking group, known as Cotton Sandstorm, published videos on the Telegram messaging platform showing it hacking into three online streaming services and disrupting news channels with the fake newscaster,” reported Guardian on the incident in February 2024.

Though wealth and connectivity may make some nations more appealing to attackers than others, all nations are equally vulnerable, when it comes to dealing with cyber-attacks. It makes sense that the UAE, which bills itself as a worldwide centre of innovation and business, is leading the charge on the digital revolution, which comes with a unique set of difficulties, especially in the area of cyber security. Regrettably, the quick adoption of digital technology also attracts the attention of increasingly skilled cybercriminals, exposing holes in the system.

The UAE Digital Government Strategy 2025, which is somewhat ambitious, is guiding the country towards a future that prioritises digitalisation and inclusivity. This plan aims to create smart, resilient cities, as outlined in the Smart Dubai 2021 Strategy and combines 64 digital projects arranged among six pillars.

It promises to revolutionise public services through the Unified Digital Platform. However, a plan is only adequate if everyone involved is willing to take on the challenge. The swift proliferation of technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and operational technology expands the attack surface and gives cyber criminals more avenues for exploitation.

Survey Paints A Grim Picture

According to a January 2024 research from Kaspersky, 87% of companies in the UAE have faced different forms of cyber incidents in the past two years. Although businesses in the Gulf nation are facing high levels of vulnerability against the threat actors, the problem is not getting any better.

A December 2023 study from the same cybersecurity company, showed that 77% of APAC (Asia-Pacific) companies don’t possess the tools required for spotting cyberattacks. Meanwhile, 87% of firms are plagued by a shortage of cybersecurity talent, making it harder to stop cyber criminals in their tracks.

In the past, security leaders in the UAE have struggled to ensure secure access to remote employee and corporate-owned devices, said Mohammed Al-Moneer, regional senior director for META at Infoblox, while interacting with the Dark Reading. The official also mentioned businesses fearing data leaks and cloud attacks “and do not believe they have a firm handle on the insider threat.”

Gopan Sivasankaran, general manager of the META region at Secureworks, explained that the UAE’s booming digital economy and greater use of data makes the Gulf nation an “attractive” target for both cybercriminals and hostile states.

“The insight from the incident response engagements and active attacks on organisations we’ve worked on in the Middle East over the last year show organisations in the UAE have been victims to large scale wiper attacks as well as nation-state sponsored attacks,” Sivasankaran remarked.

“Across the Middle East we can see that banking, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare organisations are the most likely to reach out to us for help with a cyber-incident. But government, hospitality, and transportation are also highly prized targets,” he added further.

An inclusive and comprehensive digital governance structure is necessary as the Gulf country grapples with the challenges of data protection and integration as it continues to adopt cutting-edge technologies to diversify and modernise its economy. The UAE must handle the risks related to cross-border data flows as a global hub, including adhering to international data protection laws.

Inclusion is a key component of the UAE’s strategy, which guarantees that no one is left behind by digital government programmes. Adopting transparent procedures and emphasising accessibility for all demographics—particularly the old, the disabled, women, and children—are part of this.

The UAE seeks to use cutting-edge technologies to foresee and proactively address disasters under the resilience dimension. This entails strengthening government operations and disseminating information about cybersecurity best practices and hazards to the general public and companies.

The plan also establishes national digital priorities and encourages cross-sectoral cooperation. Deep digital technology integration is necessary at all governmental levels. To improve engagement and convenience, the UAE plan highlights the significance of creating digital services around people’s needs with a focus on user-driven services. All policy procedures must undergo digital transformation, and continual experimentation is required to keep up with the rapid improvements in technology.

The data-driven aspect acknowledges the importance of data in improving public services. To avoid security lapses and maintain public confidence, it is crucial to handle this data ethically and securely. By emphasising proactiveness, the plan seeks to improve interactions with government services through the use of technologies such as the UAE National Digital ID. This lowers administrative barriers and calls for sophisticated security measures to prevent identity theft and unauthorised access.

Ensuring top-notch digital infrastructure and integrated services that cater to user needs are among the main goals of the UAE’s digital strategy. It is essential to commit to improving digital skills and making sure laws are ready for the digital transition. To successfully manage risks, attaining these goals necessitates a comprehensive cybersecurity infrastructure that keeps up with technological changes.

Although the UAE’s Digital Strategy 2025 provides a strong basis for a digital future, it also necessitates the improvement of cybersecurity measures in tandem. It is critical to address the lack of qualified cybersecurity specialists and improve the current digital infrastructure to prevent and withstand advanced cyberattacks. The UAE won’t be able to safeguard its goals for digital transformation against the constantly changing cyber threat landscape until then.

The goal of the strategy is to make the nation a global leader in innovation, the digital economy, and public services. But like any big digital transformation plan, it has its share of difficulties, especially with cybersecurity. To guarantee that the technological innovations it encourages do not turn into weaknesses, the approach will need to change to meet the escalating cybersecurity requirements. Achieving this goal mostly depends on creating and maintaining an extensive cybersecurity framework that outlines best practices, standards, and reactions to cyberattacks.

To guard against growing cyber threats, the UAE’s strategy must keep creating strong cybersecurity frameworks. This includes technical advancements as well as legislative and regulatory frameworks that are flexible enough to adjust to the constantly evolving nature of cyber threats and the requirement for dynamic response tactics. Along with constant attention and development, the UAE’s proactive approach to cybersecurity strategy updates and international collaboration is essential to managing these dangers.

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Artificial General Intelligence is all about creating software with human-like intelligence and the ability to self-teach itself. The software should be able to perform tasks that the tool is not trained/developed for.

What Meta is up to?

Meta is training its next-gen model Llama 3, apart from building a massive computing infrastructure to support the company’s future roadmap on the AGI front.

AGI will have the ability to mimic human performance across tasks. Given the fact that this particular innovation will be the next holy grail of the tech sector, Meta wants to eat the pie when it is hot.

Given the fact that AGI will be mimicking human performance, critics have been uneasy. They are after Zuckerberg for taking an “irresponsible approach” to AGI. The tech boss’ detractors think that Meta may make AGI available to the public in future, which may lead to a situation where “AI will evade human control and eventually take over humanity.”

Dame Wendy Hall, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, told The Guardian that the prospect of an open-source AGI was ‘very scary’. Hall, who is also a member of the United Nation’s advisory body on AI, also lashed out at Zuckerberg for playing around with the AGI, as she believed that the technology, if fell into the wrong hands, could do a great deal of harm.

However, Meta is going ahead with its plan, under which Nvidia’s H100 GPU chips will power the tech giant’s computing infrastructures for AGI-related projects. Zuckerberg wants Meta’s AGI to be a transparent and inclusive one, while mitigating issues surrounding the AI capabilities.

Criticism galore

David Thiel, a big data architect and chief technologist of the Stanford Internet Observatory, told RollingStone, “Honestly, the ‘general intelligence’ bit is just as vaporous as ‘the metaverse,” as he found Meta’s AGI claims a pretentious one, something which gives the venture “an argument that they’re being as transparent about the tech as possible. But any models they release publicly are going to be a small subset of what they actually use internally.”

Sarah Myers West, managing director of the research non-profit ‘AI Now Institute’, explained Zuckerberg’s announcement as something that “reads clearly like a PR tactic meant to garner goodwill, while obfuscating what’s likely a privacy-violating sprint to stay competitive in the AI game.” Myers, like Thiel, found the AGI pitch less than convincing.

Vincent Conitzer, director of the Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab at Carnegie Mellon University and head of technical AI engagement at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, speculated that Meta could start with something like Llama and expand from there.

“I imagine that they will focus their attention on large language models, and will probably be going more in the multimodal direction, meaning making these systems capable with images, audio, video,” he said, while comparing Meta’s efforts with Google‘s Gemini, which got released in December 2023.

Conitzer, however, stated that while there were dangers to open-sourcing large language model-based technology, “The alternative of just developing these models behind the closed doors of profit-driven companies also raises problems.”

Experts are also flagging Meta’s not-so-good history on the privacy front.
“They have access to massive amounts of highly sensitive information about us, but we just don’t know whether or how they’re putting it to use as they invest in building models like Llama 2 and 3. Meta has proven time and time again it can’t be trusted with user data before you get to the endemic problems in LLMs with data leakage. I don’t know why we’d look the other way when they throw ‘open source’ and ‘AGI’ into the mix,” Sarah Myers West commented.

As per Conitzer, human civilisation is facing a future where AI systems like Meta’s have “ever more detailed models of individuals.”

“Maybe in the past, I shared some things publicly and I thought each of those things individually wasn’t harmful to share. But I didn’t realise that AI could draw connections between the various things that I posted, and the things that others posted, and that it would learn something about me that I really didn’t want out there,” he added further.

Remember the October 2023 Guardian article, which spoke about Meta had to argue in an Australian court, while fighting a case over the Cambridge Analytica breach, in which tens of millions of users’ data was harvested using a personality quiz and used to aid political campaigns, including former United States President Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2020.

In front of the Australian judge, the social media company had to state that private messages, pictures, email addresses and the content of Facebook users’ posts were not “sensitive information”.

Then in August 2023, X (rebranded Twitter) users shared screenshots of Threads’ (Meta’s newest flagship social media product) privacy policy from Apple’s App Store. Threads reportedly indicated gathering personal details from its users, ranging from health and financial data to browsing history and location, details which could be passed on to advertisers.

In another 2023 example, the European Union fined Meta a record $1.3 billion after finding the Facebook parent broke its privacy laws by transferring user data from Europe to the United States.

Just the above three examples are good enough to show that experts’ scepticism around Meta’s AGI efforts is not completely unfounded.

Zuckerberg’s Hawaii bet

“Off the two-lane highway that winds along the northeast side of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, on a quiet stretch of ranchland between the tourist hubs of Kapaa and Hanalei, an enormous, secret construction project is underway. A six-foot wall blocks the view from a nearby road fronting the project, where cars slow to try to catch a glimpse of what’s behind it. Security guards stand watch at an entrance gate and patrol the surrounding beaches on ATVs. Pickup trucks roll in and out, hauling building materials and transporting hundreds of workers,” reports the WIRED on a project, where (as per the news agency’s sources) the workers have been told to maintain utmost secrecy about what they are working on.

Nobody working on this project is allowed to talk about what they’re building. Almost anyone who passes compound security is bound by a strict nondisclosure agreement, according to several workers involved in the project. And, they say, these agreements aren’t a formality.

Multiple workers claim they saw or heard about colleagues removed from the project for posting about it on social media. Different construction crews within the site are assigned to separate projects and workers are forbidden from speaking with other crews about their work.

“The project is so huge that a not-insignificant share of the island is bound by the NDA. But everyone here knows who is behind it. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, who bought the land in a series of deals beginning in August 2014,” WIRED stated further, hinting at whose brainchild the ‘project’ might be.

WIRED, after interviewing several stakeholders associated with the ‘project’, apart from accessing public records and court documents, suggested that the roughly 1,400-acre compound, known as ‘Koolau Ranch’, will include a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter, have its own energy and food supplies, and, when coupled with land purchase prices, will cost in excess of $270 million. The project has been relying upon legal manoeuvring and political networking, apart from reportedly showing disregard for the local public’s concerns.

‘Koolau Ranch’ is located on Kauai, the oldest and smallest of the four main Hawaiian Islands. Kauai is a tight-knit community of about 73,000 people, who are mostly the descendants of Native Hawaiians, along with Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Puerto Rican migrants who came to work the sugarcane plantations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“Some of the more recent arrivals come from the US mainland and other Pacific islands. When plantation owners moved their operations overseas in search of cheaper labour, the island’s sugarcane economy was replaced by tourism. Workers on the Zuckerberg site are part of a growing construction industry focused on luxury home builds for mainlanders looking to move to paradise,” The WIRED stated further.

“Tall tales about the compound and its owner run rampant on the local rumour mill—known colloquially as the ‘coconut wireless.’ One person heard that Zuckerberg was building a vast underground city. Many people speculate that the site will become some sort of post-apocalyptic bunker in case of civilisation collapse. What’s being built doesn’t live up to the coconut wireless chatter, but it’s close. Detailed planning documents obtained by WIRED through a series of public record requests show the makings of an opulent techno-Xanadu, complete with underground shelter and what appears to be a blast-resistant door,” the publication noted further.

The property is centred around two mansions with a total floor area comparable to a professional football field, while containing multiple elevators, offices, conference rooms, and an industrial-sized kitchen.

“In a nearby wooded area, a web of 11 disk-shaped tree houses are planned, which will be connected by intricate rope bridges, allowing visitors to cross from one building to the next while staying among the treetops. A building on the other side of the main mansions will include a full-size gym, pools, sauna, hot tub, cold plunge, and tennis court. The property is dotted with other guest houses and operations buildings. The scale of the project suggests that it will be more than a personal vacation home — Zuckerberg has already hosted two corporate events at the compound,” the report noted further.

“The plans show that the two central mansions will be joined by a tunnel that branches off into a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter, featuring living space, a mechanical room, and an escape hatch that can be accessed via a ladder,” WIRED stated, with one of its sources even narrating that there were cameras everywhere in the property, with more than 20 cameras are taking care of one smaller ranch operations building alone.

“Many of the compound’s doors are planned to be keypad-operated or soundproofed. Others, like those in the library, are described as ‘blind doors,’ made to imitate the design of the surrounding walls. The door in the underground shelter will be constructed out of metal and filled in with concrete—a style common in bunkers and bomb shelters,” WIRED continued further.

The compound will have its own water supply, along with a 1,400 acre agricultural property. The utmost secrecy around the project gives the impression as if the world is getting its next ‘Area 51’.

As per a Kauai journalist named Allan Parachini, publishing news on the ‘Koolau Ranch’ will result in the local press getting ‘reprimanded’. Throughout 2017, Parachini requested permits to know about the property. After his opinion piece on the ‘Koolau Ranch’, Parachini was informed by a ‘Local Zuckerberg Representative’ about the Meta CEO’s team ‘not communicating’ with the journalist for any future coverage.

Despite Meta’s chequered history with its data privacy practices, Zuckerberg is known for being a perfectionist, when it comes to protecting his privacy. In 2004, Zuckerberg reportedly requested that two student journalists sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) before an interview. In 2010, when one of his employees leaked product plans to the media, Zuckerberg demanded the leaker’s immediate resignation.

Facebook’s contracted content monitors have reportedly been made to sign NDAs. These professionals can’t discuss anything about their working conditions publicly.

Zuckerberg’s Kauai neighbour, Hope Kallai, saw a six-foot wall being erected around portions of the Meta boss’ property in 2016, ensuring privacy for his family. However, it reportedly denied the local residents to enjoy the ocean view in the process. Also, the island is seeing a massive influx of outsiders (mostly construction workers), along with heavy vehicle flows and the resultant noise pollution.

On Kauai, if a private construction happens within a conservation zone known as a ‘Special Management Area’, it results in a public review process. The Meta boss’s project, however, hasn’t been put inside such protected zones. Still, as per Kallai, a community meeting on the project “would be really welcome.”

Zuckerberg has been facing bad press regarding his Kauai project. To mitigate that, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan have reportedly launched a local charity, called the ‘Chan Zuckerberg Kauai Community Fund’, which has given over $20 million to various Kauai non-profits since 2018. The couple has also reportedly established a relationship with Kauai mayor Derek Kawakami, and held meetings with the official to discuss funding local initiatives during a 2018 flooding crisis and the COVID outbreak in the island. In March 2021, Zuckerberg and Chan helped to relaunch a county jobs programme with a $4.2 million donation and gave $3.5 million to local COVID-19 assistance projects.

A course correction?

In November 2021, Zuckerberg reportedly gave a $4 million gift to fund the purchase of a traditional Hawaiian fishpond managed by Malama Huleia, a local non-profit that focuses on wetland restoration through native Hawaiian practices. That non-profit also had ties to local government, with the then vice chair of the county council Mason Chock serving as its president.

Brandi Hoffine Barr, spokesperson for the ‘Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’, informed the WIRED about the Meta boss and his team continuously trying to engage with the Kauai community.

Through donations, Zuckerberg and Chan are reportedly now among the most important philanthropists on Kauai. Local Facebook pages regularly feature ‘Appeals to Zuckerberg’ to fix the island’s problems.

However, the question remains, will the local community on Kauai ever accept Zuckerberg?

“Zuckerberg’s presence may increase charity, but will not address the root causes of why we need this type of philanthropic charity in the first place,” says Nikki Cristobal, executive director of local Hawaiian education and arts non-profit Kamawaelualani.

The WIRED report claims that Kauai locals view the billionaire as a part of a larger machine, “the same one that has been buying up Hawaiian land since the ‘Great Mahele’ authorised private land ownership in 1848.”

Zuckerberg may not feel himself entitled to sit and clarify his ‘AGI Vision’ to his detractors. However, in Kauai’s case, a similar ‘I Don’t Care’ approach may not work for the Meta boss.

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