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

OpenAI says more than a million people a week show severe mental distress when talking to ChatGPT

In a report released by OpenAI today, the company illustrated just how many of its users are struggling with mental health issues and what it’s doing to mitigate the problem. Working with 170 mental health experts, OpenAI analyzed responses from its 800 million weekly users to better understand how many were experiencing emotional distress at ...

Trump calls off National Guard operation in San Francisco after speaking with mayor and tech CEOs

President Donald Trump today announced that he no longer plans to deploy federal troops to San Francisco after having spoken to the mayor and two major tech figures. “The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me ...

Reddit is suing Perplexity and AI data scraping firms for using its data without permission

Reddit Inc. has launched lawsuits against startup Perplexity AI Inc. and three data-scraping service providers for trawling the company’s copyrighted content to be used to train AI models. Reddit compared the data scraping companies — SerpApi, Oxylabs and AWMProxy — to “bank robbers,” adding that one of the firms “will apparently do anything to get ...

Open AI to crack down on deepfakes after backlash in Hollywood

OpenAI said today that it has released new policies around its artificial intelligence tool Sora 2, following concerns from Hollywood studios and actors’ unions that the talent is being generated without consent. OpenAI’s new generative video model lets users to create videos with a prompt. With little effort, famous figures, living or deceased, can do ...

Ron Conway exits Salesforce Foundation board over CEO Marc Benioff’s call to deploy National Guard to SF

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway today resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation following comments made by Salesforce Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff urging President Trump to send the National Guard to San Francisco to police streets. A day earlier, Trump spoke at a press conference, calling the city “a mess” and expressing ...

Sam Altman says ChatGPT will become friendly again with a touch of erotica for adult users

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman today said restrictions on the company’s ChatGPT chatbot will be eased, with the incoming updated version to “treat adult users like adults” and give users the option to interact with an erotic-themed bot. The new update lets users shape the chatbot’s personality, giving it a more natural, human feel. This ...

Tesla faces probe after accidents in cars fitted with full self-driving software

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said today that it has opened a probe into a series of incidents concerning Tesla Inc. cars, some of them resulting in injuries. About 2.8 million Tesla vehicles with the company’s Full Self-Driving or FSD system will be scrutinized after a total of 58 traffic safety incidents involving FSD, amounting ...

Apple comes under criticism for removing apps related to ICE arrests

Apple Inc. is currently taking flak for its decision to remove two apps from the App Store that tracked the activity of people being arrested by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Last week, ICEBlock became the first ICE-related app removed from the App Store after pressure from the Trump administration. The app was ...

Meta will start mining AI chatbot conversations to target users with ads and content

Meta Platforms Inc. announced today that, in an effort to improve its targeted advertising across all its platforms, it will start analyzing users’ conversations with AI chatbots. Users will receive a notification about the change on Oct. 7, while Meta’s privacy policy will be updated on Dec. 16. The new policy will apply to most ...

California Governor Gavin Newsom signs landmark AI safety bill into law

California Governor Gavin Newsom today signed into law a sweeping measure requiring major artificial intelligence developers to meet state-mandated safety standards and disclose potential risks associated with their products. The Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, SB 53, also strengthens protections for employees and executives who blow the whistle on harms or unsafe practices. Though ...