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      TikTok Bill’s Progress Slows in the Senate

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      Legislation to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned in the United States sailed through the House, but the Senate has no plans to move hastily.After a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a nationwide ban sailed through the House at breakneck speed this week, its progress has slowed in the Senate.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader who determines what legislation gets a vote, has not decided whether to bring the bill to the floor, his spokesman said. Senators — some of whom have their own versions of bills targeting TikTok — will need to be convinced. Other legislation on the runway could be prioritized. And the process of taking the House bill and potentially rewriting it to suit the Senate could be time consuming.Many in the Senate are keeping their cards close to their vest about what they would do on the TikTok measure, even as they said they recognized the House had sent a powerful signal with its vote on the bill, which passed 352 to 65. The legislation mandates that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sell its stake in the app within six months or face a ban.“The lesson of the House vote is that this issue is capable of igniting almost spontaneously in the support that it has,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview on Friday. He said that there could be adjustments made to the bill but that there was bipartisan support to wrest the app from Chinese ownership.The slowdown in the Senate means that TikTok is likely to face weeks or even months of uncertainty about its fate in the United States. That could result in continued lobbying, alongside maneuvering by the White House, the Chinese government and ByteDance. It is also likely to prompt potential talks about deals — whether real or imagined — while the uncertainty of losing access to the app will hang over the heads of TikTok creators and its 170 million U.S. users.“Almost everything will slow down in the Senate,” said Nu Wexler, a former Senate aide who worked for Google, Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. “They’ll need some time to either massage egos or build consensus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House Passes Bill to Force TikTok Sale From Chinese Owner or Ban the App

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      The legislation received wide bipartisan support, with both Republicans and Democrats showing an eagerness to appear tough on China.The House on Wednesday passed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the hugely popular video app or be banned in the United States. The move escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington over the control of technologies that could affect national security, free speech and the social media industry.Republican leaders fast-tracked the bill through the House with limited debate, and it passed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for legislation that would take direct aim at China in an election year. The action came despite TikTok’s efforts to mobilize its 170 million U.S. users against the measure, and amid the Biden administration’s push to persuade lawmakers that Chinese ownership of the platform poses grave national security risks to the United States.The result was a bipartisan coalition behind the measure that included Republicans, who defied former President Donald J. Trump in supporting it, and Democrats, who also fell in line behind a bill that President Biden has said he would sign.The bill faces a difficult road to passage in the Senate, where Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has been noncommittal about bringing it to the floor for a vote and where some lawmakers have vowed to fight it.TikTok has been under threat since 2020, with lawmakers increasingly arguing that Beijing’s relationship with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, raises national security risks. The bill is aimed at getting ByteDance to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners within six months. The president would sign off on the sale if it resolved national security concerns. If that sale did not happen, the app would be banned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dozens of Top Scientists Sign Effort to Prevent A.I. Bioweapons

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      An agreement by more than 90 said, however, that artificial intelligence’s benefit to the field of biology would exceed any potential harm.Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death.Senators from both parties were alarmed, while A.I. researchers in industry and academia debated how serious the threat might be.Now, over 90 biologists and other scientists who specialize in A.I. technologies used to design new proteins — the microscopic mechanisms that drive all creations in biology — have signed an agreement that seeks to ensure that their A.I.-aided research will move forward without exposing the world to serious harm.The biologists, who include the Nobel laureate Frances Arnold and represent labs in the United States and other countries, also argued that the latest technologies would have far more benefits than negatives, including new vaccines and medicines.“As scientists engaged in this work, we believe the benefits of current A.I. technologies for protein design far outweigh the potential for harm, and we would like to ensure our research remains beneficial for all going forward,” the agreement reads.The agreement does not seek to suppress the development or distribution of A.I. technologies. Instead, the biologists aim to regulate the use of equipment needed to manufacture new genetic material.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bitcoin Hits Record High, Recovering From 2022 Meltdown

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      Bitcoin’s price surged above $68,800, breaking the record the digital currency set in November 2021 when the crypto industry was booming.Bitcoin hit a record high of about $68,800 on Tuesday, capping a remarkable comeback for the volatile cryptocurrency after its value plunged in 2022 amid a market meltdown.Bitcoin’s price has risen more than 300 percent since November 2022, a resurgence that few predicted when the price dropped below $20,000 in 2022. Its previous record was just under $68,790 in November 2021, as crypto markets boomed and amateur investors poured savings into experimental digital coins.“This is just the beginning of this bull market,” said Nathan McCauley, the chief executive of the crypto company Anchorage Digital. “The best is yet to come.”Bitcoin’s recent surge has been driven by investor enthusiasm for a new financial product tied to the digital coin. In January, U.S. regulators authorized a group of crypto companies and traditional finance firms to offer exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.s, which track Bitcoin’s price. The funds provide a simple way for people to invest in the crypto markets without directly owning the virtual currency.As of last week, investors had poured more than $7 billion into the investment products, propelling Bitcoin’s rapid rise, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.The price of Ether, the second-most-valuable digital currency after Bitcoin, has also risen this year. Its increase has been driven partly by enthusiasm over the prospect that regulators may also approve an E.T.F. tied to Ether.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      SEC Is Investigating OpenAI Over Its Board’s Actions

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      The U.S. regulator opened its inquiry after the board unexpectedly fired the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, in November.The Securities and Exchange Commission began an inquiry into OpenAI soon after the company’s board of directors unexpectedly removed Sam Altman, its chief executive, at the end of last year, three people familiar with the inquiry said.The regulator has sent official requests to OpenAI, the developer of the ChatGPT online chatbot, seeking information about the situation. It is unclear whether the S.E.C. is investigating Mr. Altman’s behavior, the board’s decision to oust him or both.Even as OpenAI has tried to turn the page on the dismissal of Mr. Altman, who was soon reinstated, the controversy continues to hound the company. In addition to the S.E.C. inquiry, the San Francisco artificial intelligence company has hired a law firm to conduct its own investigation into Mr. Altman’s behavior and the board’s decision to remove him.The board dismissed Mr. Altman on Nov. 17, saying it no longer had confidence in his ability to run OpenAI. It said he had not been “consistently candid in his communications,” though it did not provide specifics. It agreed to reinstate him five days later.Privately, the board worried that Mr. Altman was not sharing all of his plans to raise money from investors in the Middle East for an A.I. chip project, people with knowledge of the situation have said.Spokespeople for the S.E.C. and OpenAI and a lawyer for Mr. Altman all declined to comment.The S.E.C.’s inquiry was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.OpenAI kicked off an industrywide A.I. boom at the end of 2022 when it released ChatGPT. The company is considered a leader in what is called generative A.I., technologies that can generate text, sounds and images from short prompts. A recent funding deal values the start-up at more than $80 billion.Many believe that generative A.I., which represents a fundamental shift in the way computers behave, could remake the industry as thoroughly as the iPhone or the web browser. Others argue that the technology could cause serious harm, helping to spread online disinformation, replacing jobs with unusual speed and maybe even threatening the future of humanity.After the release of ChatGPT, Mr. Altman became the face of the industry’s push toward generative A.I. as he endlessly promoted the technology — while acknowledging the dangers.In an effort to resolve the turmoil surrounding Mr. Altman’s ouster, he and the board agreed to remove two members and add two others: Bret Taylor, who is a former Salesforce executive, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers.Mr. Altman and the board also agreed that OpenAI would start its own investigation into the matter. That investigation, by the WilmerHale law firm, is expected to close soon. More

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      A.I. Frenzy Complicates Efforts to Keep Power-Hungry Data Sites Green

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      West Texas, from the oil rigs of the Permian Basin to the wind turbines twirling above the High Plains, has long been a magnet for companies seeking fortunes in energy.Now, those arid ranch lands are offering a new moneymaking opportunity: data centers.Lancium, an energy and data center management firm setting up shop in Fort Stockton and Abilene, is one of many companies around the country betting that building data centers close to generating sites will allow them to tap into underused clean power.“It’s a land grab,” said Lancium’s president, Ali Fenn.In the past, companies built data centers close to internet users, to better meet consumer requests, like streaming a show on Netflix or playing a video game hosted in the cloud. But the growth of artificial intelligence requires huge data centers to train the evolving large-language models, making proximity to users less necessary.But as more of these sites start to pop up across the United States, there are new questions on whether they can meet the demand while still operating sustainably. The carbon footprint from the construction of the centers and the racks of expensive computer equipment is substantial in itself, and their power needs have grown considerably.Just a decade ago, data centers drew 10 megawatts of power, but 100 megawatts is common today. The Uptime Institute, an industry advisory group, has identified 10 supersize cloud computing campuses across North America with an average size of 621 megawatts.This growth in electricity demand comes as manufacturing in the United States is the highest in the past half-century, and the power grid is becoming increasingly strained.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Manage Streaming Subscriptions As Service Prices Rise

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      Canceling is simple. The tough part is remembering to do it.The dream of streaming — watch what you want, whenever you want, for a sliver of the price of cable! — is coming to an end.With all the price increases for video streaming apps like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Hulu, the average household that subscribes to four streaming apps may now end up paying just as much as a cable subscriber, according to research by Deloitte.To name a few of the price jumps for streaming video (without ads) in just over the past year: Amazon’s ad-free Prime Video is now $12 a month, up from $9; Netflix raised the price of its premium plan for watching content on four devices to $23 a month, from $20; Disney increased the price of its Hulu service to $18 a month, from $15; and HBO’s Max now costs $16 a month, up from $15.If, like many people, you subscribe to all those services, you are paying about $70 a month, roughly the same as a modest cable TV package.More changes on the horizon will have people paying more for streaming. Disney announced this month that it would crack down on password sharing for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. Netflix told shareholders last month to expect more price increases.Streaming services still offer more flexibility and potential to save than a cable bundle. If that’s what drew you to streaming, the solution may seem obvious: You could be more judicious about managing your subscriptions — by canceling Netflix as soon as you’re done bingeing “Love Is Blind,” for instance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court to Decide How the First Amendment Applies to Social Media

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      Challenges to laws in Florida and Texas meant to protect conservative viewpoints are likely to yield a major constitutional ruling on tech platforms’ free speech rights.The most important First Amendment cases of the internet era, to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, may turn on a single question: Do platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X most closely resemble newspapers or shopping centers or phone companies?The two cases arrive at the court garbed in politics, as they concern laws in Florida and Texas aimed at protecting conservative speech by forbidding leading social media sites from removing posts based on the views they express.But the outsize question the cases present transcends ideology. It is whether tech platforms have free speech rights to make editorial judgments. Picking the apt analogy from the court’s precedents could decide the matter, but none of the available ones is a perfect fit.If the platforms are like newspapers, they may publish what they want without government interference. If they are like private shopping centers open to the public, they may be required to let visitors say what they like. And if they are like phone companies, they must transmit everyone’s speech.“It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a 2022 dissent when one of the cases briefly reached the Supreme Court.Supporters of the state laws say they foster free speech, giving the public access to all points of view. Opponents say the laws trample on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies. One contrarian brief, from liberal professors, urged the justices to uphold the key provision of the Texas law despite the harm they said it would cause.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More