Google dissolves its AI ethics board just one week after forming it; Amazon’s planning to launch 3,000 satellites to provide broadband access to people in remote areas; Google Play Music will be coming to an end.
 |
 |
 |
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday, April 8, and I’m your host, Buckley Smith.
First we have a story from Reddit. Google has decided to dissolve its AI ethics board.The external advisory board had been formed just one week before, and had been under intense controversy right off the bat. The reason for the controversy is due to who they had selected to sit on the board. More specifically, one person they selected to sit on the board. And that person would be Heritage Foundation president Kay Cole James. James has come under fire in the past for being openly anti-LGBTQ as well as fighting to oppress the rights of transgender peoples.
Next up is another story trending on Reddit, outlines Amazons plans to launch 3000 satellites into orbit. Why are they doing this you may ask? The purpose of the launch is to provide broadband access to those who live in remote areas and may be living without any internet access at all. The launch, dubbed “Project Kuiper” will be in competition with similar projects such as those from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the AirBus-backed OneWeb project. All of these projects are using new technology which will allow them to orbit much closer to earth as traditional satellites, and will be launched in clusters of hundreds, and sometimes thousands of satellites.
For our final story, we looked to Google Trends. Google as announced that its music service Google Play Music, which became popular among recording artists because it allowed them to upload their music and share it with the world completely free of charge. The service will no longer be available as of April 30th and Google plans to replace it with YouTube Music.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Buckley Smith, thanks for listening.
