James Farrell

James Farrell is the former editor-in-chief of Chiang Mai CityNews, where he wrote and managed daily news, features, op-eds and blogs on a diverse range of topics. Prior to this, in the same city of Northern Thailand where he lives, he was the longstanding deputy editor of the monthly magazine Citylife. He has written on culture, politics, travel, tech, business, human rights, for local, national, and international news services and magazines. He has a keen interest in the role technology is playing in the transformation of society, culture and politics, especially in developing nations. This is reflected in his not-so-successful first novel.

Latest from James Farrell

Hoping to avoid more scandals, Facebook makes big changes to ad policies

Facebook Inc. today announced several steps to reduce the proliferation of propaganda on the platform, following months of controversy surrounding Russian meddling in the U.S. election and stirring up discord in the country. As of today, anything that appears on Facebook as an ad must be marked as such with the words “Paid for by” ...

Amazon criticized for selling police its facial recognition software

Amazon.com Inc. is selling its facial recognition system “Rekognition” to the cops, fueling fears of a surveillance state in which omnipresent eyes will always be watching. The revelation follows a release of documents by the American Civil Liberties Union pertaining to Amazon marketing its software to police. Amazon’s pitch to law enforcement is that Rekognition can ...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin questions Google’s power

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin thinks Google Inc. might be too big for the good of society, echoing what other officials and businesses have been saying for some time. In an interview with CNBC Monday, Mnuchin said the Department of Justice must look seriously at Google and other tech companies that have unprecedented power and a great impact on ...

Google loses some prestige over its suspect Duplex AI demo

Google Inc. may have wowed the world with its demonstration of its almost too-human artificially intelligent Duplex virtual assistant, and it may have also been almost too good to be true. The short clip of Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai demonstrating the uncanny reality of the voice assistant making an appointment with a hair salon ...

Net neutrality gets a reprieve, but it could be short-lived

The U.S. Senate Wednesday voted to save net neutrality by overturning a decision made by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal the regulations made in 2015 under President Barack Obama. The vote was 52 to 47 and included three Republicans along with all 49 Democrats on the side of reversing the FCC decision. Such a ...

Facebook details abuse on platform – and AI falls short in flagging some of it

Facebook Inc. Tuesday released its first Community Standards Enforcement Report, detailing what its algorithm and human moderators have detected and removed from October last year to March this year. The upshot: a lot. Facebook said it took down 583 million fake accounts, most of which were removed within minutes of being setup. Some 837 million pieces of ...

Google employees leave company over supplying Pentagon with AI

Close to a dozen employees at Google Inc. have apparently quit their jobs in protest over a project in which the company is providing the U.S. Department of Defense with artificial intelligence. In March, several employees at Google said they were outraged about the project, some stating that it was a contradiction of its onetime motto, “Don’t be ...

Propaganda fears heighten as House Democrats release thousands of Russian-linked Facebook ads

Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee released a total of 3,519 Facebook ads on Thursday that were run from 2015 to 2017 by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency. All the ads are available to the public as a download. They cover a wide range of opinions, from pro- and anti-Donald Trump, and for the most ...

ZTE ceases operations after crippling US ban brings company to its knees

Chinese electronics giant ZTE Corp. announced Wednesday that it has ceased major operating activities following a seven-year ban that forbids U.S. companies from supplying ZTE with components. “As a result of the Denial Order, the major operating activities of the company have ceased,” ZTE said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Wednesday. ...

In a big management shakeup, execs bounce around Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg will remain at the helm of Facebook Inc., and his Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg remains at that job too, but many other execs have just been given a new role at the company. According to a report published Tuesday by Recode and confirmed by the social network giant, the shakeup is designed ...