internet

It’s hard to turn on the radio or read a newspaper and not hear about artificial intelligence. The computer driven technology generates data that can be mistaken for something done by a human being. Another concern is if AI were to suddenly go away. APR took a look into one way that might happen

Tuscaloosa’s Walt Maddox claims his city is being cheated. The Democratic mayor of Tuscaloosa said his city had over fifteen million dollars of sales taxes that were generated locally that were redistributed elsewhere.

Broadband internet was featured during this week’s State of the State address by Governor Kay Ivey. Observers are wondering what form this will take. The state may reportedly rely on Starlink satellites in low income areas later this year.

My guest tonight on APR notebook is Jimmy Wales. He's from Huntsville, and he created Wikipedia. No, I'm not kidding. Okay, raise your hand if you've ever been to this online encyclopedia. If your hand didn't go up, it's okay, but it's a fair bet you're in the minority. Published reports put the number of people who visit Wikipedia, the one in English and the 300 other foreign language editions in the billions every month. That's billions with a B.

The Digital Equity Act tried to close the digital divide by teaching computer skills to older rural Alabamians. Trump calls the plan racist and is acting to end it. The act also distributed laptops in rural Iowa and worked to get people get back online in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene washed away computers and phones.

January marks national anti-human trafficking month. Lawmen say even small-town Alabama isn’t free of this crime, which is a billion dollar industry worldwide. The National Human Trafficking Hotline says it received over two hundred calls for help in 2023. The group says thirty-three of those callers were victims in this crime involving sex for money.

Five secretaries of state are urging Elon Musk to fix an AI chatbot on the social media platform X, saying in a letter sent this week that it spread election misinformation. election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington told Musk that X’s AI chatbot, Grok, produced about state ballot deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. Alabama was also mentioned.

The Menlo Park, California-based company Meta says it will open an $800 million data center in Montgomery. The internet giant operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp.

The Ways and Means Education Committee in the Alabama has voted on a measure which would raise the sales tax on transactions on the internet. If passed by the full legislature and signed by Governor Kay Ivey, the online sales tax would more closely match the fees charged to conventional “brick and mortar” retailers.

U.S. officials say the FBI and its partners in Europe infiltrated and seized control of a major malware network that was used for more than 15 years to commit a gamut of online crimes including crippling ransomware attacks, including financial institutions in Alabama and elsewhere.