📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: Google Has a Major Problem With ICE Edisi Jam 05:30

Google’s rank-and-file are joining together to address their bosses with a collective demand: cut ties with the US government’s immigration agencies.

As reported by CNBC, over 1,000 “Googlers” have signed onto an open letter demanding a divestment from partnerships with United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP).

“In cities across the country we have witnessed these agencies conducting paramilitary-style raids, kidnapping hundreds of civilians, and murdering protestors and legal observers,” the letter reads.

The letter lists a number of Google products and systems being used to power what it calls a “campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression.” Among them are Cloud, which forms the backbone of CBP’s national surveillance network, the Google Play Store, which is blocking ICE tracking apps, and YouTube, which runs ICE ads encouraging immigrants to “self-deport.”

“As the workers who provide the foundational labor in building this technology, we are horrified,” the letter reads. “We are vehemently opposed to Google’s partnerships with DHS, CBP, and ICE. We consider it our leadership’s ethical and policy-bound responsibility to disclose all contracts and collaboration with CBP and ICE, and to divest from these partnerships.”

There are four demands in total: for Google leadership to publicly acknowledge the danger federal agents pose to all US workers, respond to employee questions about nebulous contracts with government agencies, establish worker safety measures across all Google campuses, and establish “red lines” around what contracts are allowed in the future.

While 1,000 workers is a drop in the bucket compared to Google’s global workforce of around 183,000, an organized group of dissenting workers could cause massive disruptions to the company’s operations. It highlights the major rift between Google’s financial interests and its stated values — exposing how the drive to extract profit from government contracts has trumped the company’s once-vaunted ethical principles, not to mention those of its rank-and-file.

There’s also a practical concern. Google is a colossal company that makes most of its money from advertising, so cutting loose a few government agencies wouldn’t impact its bottom line much. Instead, the cost would likely be political: if Google severed its relationship with ICE and CBP on ethical grounds, it would almost certainly become a target for punitive federal action — antitrust crackdowns, regulatory harassment, loss of exclusive contracts — in a conflict that would divide its userbase and sever its symbiotic relationship with the state.

ICE contracting isn’t the first time that Google workers have balked at the company’s military contracts. In 2024, 200 of the workers developing Google’s DeepMind signed a letter calling on the company to drop its contracts with military organizations and citing the company’s work with the Israeli military on surveillance and target selection.

And back in 2018, more than 3,100 workers at Google penned yet another open letter to protest Project Maven, a Pentagon program using AI to analyze video imagery for more efficient drone strikes.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” they wrote at the time, adding that in the face of “growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust.”

More on Google: The Department of Homeland Security Is Demanding That Google Turn Over Information About Random Critics

The post Google Has a Major Problem With ICE appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: Coal waste may help US secure rare earth supply for clean

Coal mine waste could become an unexpected domestic source of rare earth elements as U.S. researchers look to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains critical to clean energy, electronics, and national defense.

Two professors at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology have developed a method to extract rare earth elements from discarded coal mine waste, including overburden rock and coal ash that are typically dumped or stored long-term.

After three years of research, the team says the process could help turn an environmental liability into a strategic resource.

The work is led by Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, Ph.D., professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Purushotham Tukkaraja, Ph.D., professor of mining engineering and management.

The researchers will present their findings to government and university experts on Wednesday, Feb. 11.

The project began with a seed grant supported by the National Science Foundation and later evolved under the 2DBEST Center, with continued backing from the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The researchers focused on coal mines in Wyoming, using commonly discarded materials to recover rare earth elements such as yttrium, dysprosium, erbium, ytterbium, and gadolinium.

These elements are vital to electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones, medical imaging systems, fiber-optic networks, and military technologies.

“These rare earth elements are essential for technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones, LED lighting, fiber-optic internet, medical imaging and national defense systems,” Gadhamshetty said.

Three-stage extraction process

To extract these materials, the team designed a three-stage process that combines physical, chemical, and biological techniques.

First, large rock fragments are broken down to expose the embedded elements. Next, environmentally friendly chemicals convert the rare earths from solid to liquid form, allowing selective separation.

The final stage relies on microorganisms that absorb the dissolved elements and concentrate them inside living cells.

“Once the transfer is being done, you are able to capture all those precious materials into the microbial cells using living beings to consolidate the dilute levels of these rare earth elements from larger bodies,” Gadhamshetty said.

He compared the biological step to how humans absorb vitamins. Microorganisms naturally require trace amounts of some rare earth elements, and researchers can adjust conditions so the microbes efficiently take them up.

Among the recovered materials, dysprosium, ytterbium, and erbium are considered high-value due to strong demand and limited substitutes, while yttrium and gadolinium are widely used in electronics, lighting, and healthcare.

“The goal of this study was to develop the technology and understand the process,” Tukkaraja said.

From waste to resource

Beyond solid waste, the team is also applying the same principles to coal mine wastewater, extracting rare earth elements from contaminated water streams.

The approach builds on established mineral extraction techniques while adding chemical and biological separation methods to improve efficiency and sustainability.

The next step is scaling the process and improving its commercial viability. “Once we start incorporating all these different metrics and make it more feasible, we might find stakeholders who would see the value in this solution,” Tukkaraja said.

The researchers say the project highlights how interdisciplinary collaboration can unlock new value from industrial waste.

“This work shows how interdisciplinary collaboration can turn an environmental challenge into an economic and strategic opportunity,” Tukkaraja said.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com