Author: Mike Nova

RepubliCONS will never investigate their own. Not since Nixon. Seriously. They just don’t because of what happened with Nixon. Now Fat Nixon & his enablers in Congress get away with criming in broad daylight. #MerrickGarland #DOJ https://t.co/I7nOmGHA9G

— Stomp Out Stupid USA is FUBAR (@Stop_UTK_Now) March 16, 2024

Eswatini’s government, led by King Mswati III, has introduced legislation that would legalize cannabis, joining other African nations that now encourage the development for medical purposes.

Government spokesperson Alpheous Nxumalo believes that legalizing cannabis will help limit the black market, increase tax revenue and empower Eswatini farmers.

“The legislation will also provide measures to guard against increasing the black market. This has robbed government taxes, Eswatini, an opportunity to grow their economy and robbed even the farmers themselves who have been trying to make a living using this cannabis. We look forward to the unbanning of the cannabis plant as an opportunity to develop the country, our economy and to empower Eswatini themselves.”

U.S.-based company Profile Solutions is the only authorized cannabis grower in the small Southern African country.  

Eswatini is working toward changing provisions of a 1922 statute enacted by the British, who ruled the nation formerly known as Swaziland from 1903 until 1968.  

Dr. Thys Louren is an occupational medical practitioner from South Africa who works for Occupational Health Eswatini. He argues that legalizing cannabis could have major benefits for health care, society and the economy, His position aligns with the Eswatini government’s on the issue.

“I stand here urging for the transformative change of Eswatini’s health care landscape toward a healthier and more sustainable Eswatini. It is not just a medical decision but a holistic solution for our patients, community and economy.”

E. Nathi Dlamini from Business Eswatini sees medical cannabis as an avenue Eswatini can use to capitalize on the global cannabis market to create jobs and spur economic growth — encouraged by the government’s support for the industry.

“Many countries are well ahead in this regard in terms of developing industries to support investment, create jobs which by the way, we desperately need. As Business Eswatini, we are very thankful that from the highest authority of the land now, we are beginning to be one-minded on this.”

The cannabis trade has given many people in a small economy with few job opportunities a substantial income for decades, and a few local merchants are not fearful that this could be undermined by the new bill.

Cannabis merchant Maqhawe Tsabedze says he has earned a living from the illegal trade for the last 20 years to put his children through school. 

“The decriminalization of cannabis will help a lot and will perhaps stop police from raiding and confiscating our products, which we make a living from selling. Rain or sunshine, we make sure we put bread on the table so that our children do not go to bed on empty stomachs. Since there are no jobs, we make a living from selling cannabis on the streets.”

The bill needs to win three-fourths approval in the House of Assembly and Senate to become law. 

The case stems from a lawsuit brought by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to get platforms to combat vaccine and election misinformation.

A lower court last year restricted some top officials and agencies of President Joe Biden’s administration from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content.

The ruling was a win for conservative advocates who allege that the government pressured or colluded with platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor right-leaning content under the guise of fighting misinformation.

The order applied to a slew of agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and Justice Department as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The decision restricted agencies and officials from meeting with social media companies or flagging posts containing “free speech” protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry hailed the “historic injunction” at the time, saying it would prevent the Biden administration from “censoring the core political speech of ordinary Americans” on social media.

He accused federal officials of seeking to “dictate what Americans can and cannot say on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms about COVID-19, elections, criticism of the government, and more.”

The order could seriously limit top government agencies from notifying the platforms about false or hateful content that can lead to harmful consequences.

But the ruling said that the government could still inform them about posts involving criminal activity, national security threats and foreign attempts to influence elections.

In addition to communications with social media companies, the ruling also restricted agencies from “collaborating, coordinating, partnering” with groups such as the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of research institutions that tackle election-related falsehoods.

Some experts in misinformation and First Amendment law criticized the ruling, saying authorities needed to strike a balance between calling out falsehoods and veering towards censorship or curbing free speech.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• Apple is a company defined by perfectionism and AI is anything but perfect right now.
• That may help explain why it’s exploring a licensing agreement with Google.
• The two tech giants are discussing a “blockbuster” licensing agreement to bring Gemini to iPhones.

Apple isn’t quite ready to handle the messy reality of AI by itself, apparently.

The iPhone maker has been in talks with Google over a “blockbuster” licensing agreement that would see it build the search giant’s Gemini AI model into its phones, with a release being prepared for iOS 18, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

For Tim Cook, who told investors last month that Apple would be ready to share details of its artificial intelligence work later this year, the move would make a lot of sense. Apple is a company that prides itself on being a perfectionist, but AI is anything but perfect right now.

Why handle the mess of AI by itself when it can pass it on to someone else?

AI is a messy business

If there’s one thing the AI boom has shown since the launch of ChatGPT, it’s that the technology is really, really messy — something Apple’s rumored partner knows all too well.

Google was forced to apologize last month after the AI image-generation feature of its Gemini model suffered several mishaps that saw it produce “historically inaccurate” results, for instance. The issues were so bad that people accused the model of being “woke.”

More broadly, large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT have been heavily criticized over the issues they have with hallucinations, as well as the risks they have of perpetuating dangerous stereotypes and biases carried in the data they’ve been trained on.

How Apple would deal with its own version of a technology that makes so many serious and frequent blunders is unclear. Perfectionism has been hardwired into its DNA thanks to Steve Jobs, so anything that disrupts that would be a huge deal.

Apple does, of course, want an AI strategy, despite all the mess the technology brings with it.

Fresh AI features could help Apple boost falling iPhone sales in China.

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The company is grappling with falling iPhone sales in China — where it generated roughly 20% of its revenue last year — in the face of stiffer competition from local smartphone makers. Fresh generative AI features could give iPhones the extra edge they need to boost sales again.

However, having a partner to do the “heavy lifting of generative AI” — a role Bloomberg reported Google could play by working with Apple — could avoid taking primary responsibility for any embarrassments triggered by AI.

Cook could still give consumers AI with more of an Apple flavor at a later date.

Last week, the tech giant submitted a paper to the open-access repository ArXiv that shared several details about MM1, a family of multimodal LLMs — AI models that process text and images to generate responses — that Apple has quietly been working on.

There’s a lot packed into the 41-page submission, like the fact Apple trained these models on data generated by OpenAI’s GPT-4 vision model, as well as its view on how to design better AI models (size isn’t everything; things like “image resolution” matter a bunch too is its take.)

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives expects Apple to share “several new AI features based on its own, homegrown LLM models” when its Worldwide Developers Conference takes place in June.

The company has also been actively buying up AI startups in a sign that it is looking to deepen its in-house talent and expertise, led by senior vice president John Giannandrea. However, there are no clear signs of what Apple plans to do with those purchases.

What does seem increasingly clear, though, is that Apple knows it must make a big play on AI. It would just be a whole lot easier for it to leave the messier bits of it to someone else.