Under pressure from the European Union over ad tracking and targeting, Meta has rolled out an ad-free subscription version of Facebook and Instagram in the EU. TechCrunch.com reports that the new subscription will be available next month. the fee it plans to charge users to escape its tracking and targeting (i.e. the ad-free subscription) is €9.99/month on web or €12.99/month on iOS or Android per linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user’s Accounts Center. After March 1, 2024 it also says an additional fee — of €6/month on web and €8/month on iOS or Android — will apply for each additional account listed in a user’s Account Center. That means folks there with both a personal and public page will pay some hefty fees to continue using the platforms. Even for a user with just one account (on either Facebook or Instagram) the cost for protecting their privacy from Meta’s tracking and profiling would be almost €120 per year (for web use) or just over €155 (on mobile). 

President Joe Biden signed an executive order providing rules around generative AI, ahead of any legislation coming from lawmakers. According to the verge.com, the EO has 8 main goals:  to create new standards for AI safety and security, protect privacy, advance equity and civil rights, stand up for consumers, patients, and students, support workers, promote innovation and competition, advance US leadership in AI technologies, and ensure the responsible and effective government use of the technology. Also in the last couple days, the United Nations has come out with guidelines designed to get the most for humankind out of AI with the least danger…but of course, the UN ones are voluntary, so don’t expect much from them. An executive order isn’t permanent though…and only lasts as long as Biden is in office should the next president decide to reverse it. The administration notes that there are members of Congress working on permanent legislation right now. Industry observers said the executive order is at least a step forward in providing standards around generative AI.

The latest greatest tech thing ever is generative AI. Virtually every tech company is working on theirs or using one that is already out like ChatGPT. A word to the wise: it may be ok for language, but for accounting…not so much. While the latest iteration of the chatbot has passed all three notoriously difficult exams for medical school, got through the law school bar exam, and passed an MBA exam from the Wharton school of business at the University of Pennsylvania….there is one area where if falls short. Math…specifically, accounting. Zdnet.com says a professor from BYU assembled some 327 co-authors from 1856 educational institutions in 14 countries to come up with questions for the chatbot. Typical of a comprehensive accounting examination, questions ranged across all major topics. such as financial accounting, auditing, managerial accounting, tax, and others, and were of different types (multiple choice, short answers, true/false) and difficulty levels. The results were unequivocal: ChatGPT clocked a 47.4% result which, in and of itself, was not that bad. Students, however, scored an overall average of 76.7% and easily bested the machine. The areas where the large language model stubbed its toe the worst were financial problems, and managerial assessment problems. Good to keep in mind that the LLM relies on probability to determine the next word or character. Accounting relies on accuracy, not probability. You don’t want to use it on your bank account…especially if your income varies a bit…or you may come up overdrawn!

An immunization advisor at the CDC has called the current rate of COVID-19 vaccination ‘abysmal.’ The numbers are in, and they support that. Arstechnica.com notes that the rate of US COVID vaccinations is 7.1% for adults and a negligible 2.1% for kids. These figures run way short of a survey from last month that found over half of Americans said they planned to get the jab. According to the National Immunization Survey-Adult COVID Module that ran from October 8 to 14 that polled 14,715 adults, 24.6 percent said they “definitely will” get vaccinated, and an additional 30.6 percent said they “probably will.” That’s on top of the 7.1 percent who reported they were already vaccinated. The remaining 37 percent said they will definitely or probably not get vaccinated. Let’s not go through the full-blown COVID mess again…get the shot!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.