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Artificial intelligence is joining the list of big and complex global challenges that world leaders and diplomats will tackle at this week’s annual high-level United Nations meetup.Since the AI boom kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut about three years ago, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have raced to develop better AI systems even as experts warn of its risks, including existential threats like engineered pandemics, large-scale misinformation or rogue AIs running out of control, and call for safeguards.The U.N.’s adoption of a new governance architecture is the latest and biggest effort to rein in AI. Previous multilateral efforts, including three AI summits organized by Britain, South Korea and France, have resulted only in non-binding pledges.Last month, the General Assembly adopted a resolution to set up two key bodies on AI a global forum and an independent scientific panel of experts in a milestone move to shepherd global governance efforts for the technology.On Wednesday, a U.N. Security Council meeting will convene an open debate on the issue. Among the questions to be addressed: How can the Council help ensure the responsible application of AI to comply with international law and support peace processes and conflict prevention?And on Thursday, as part of the body’s annual meeting, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres will hold a meeting to launch the forum, called the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.It’s a venue for governments and “stakeholders” to discuss international cooperation and share ideas and solutions. It’s scheduled to meet formally in Geneva next year and in New York in 2027.Meanwhile, recruitment is expected to get underway to find 40 experts for the scientific panel, including two co-chairs, one from a developed country and one from a developing nation. The panel has drawn comparisons with the U.N.’s climate change panel and its flagship annual COP meeting.The new bodies represent “a symbolic triumph.” They are “by far the world’s most globally inclusive approach to governing AI,” Isabella Wilkinson, a research fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, wrote in a blog post.“But in practice, the new mechanisms look like they will be mostly powerless,” she added. Among the possible issues is whether the U.N.’s lumbering administration is able to regulate a fast-moving technology like AI.Ahead of the meeting, a group of influential experts called for governments to agree on so-called red lines for AI to take effect by the end of next year, saying that the technology needs “minimum guardrails” designed to prevent the “most urgent and unacceptable risks.”The group, including senior employees at ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Google’s AI research lab DeepMind and chatbot maker Anthropic, wants governments to sign an internationally binding agreement on AI. They point out that the world has previously agreed on treaties banning nuclear testing and biological weapons and protecting the high seas.“The idea is very simple,” said one of the backers, Stuart Russell, a computer science professor and director of University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Human Compatible AI. “As we do with medicines and nuclear power stations, we can require developers to prove safety as a condition of market access.”Russell suggested that U.N. governance could resemble the workings of another U.N.-affiliated body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, which coordinates with safety regulators across different countries and makes sure they’re all working off the same page.And rather than laying out a set of rules that are set in stone, diplomats could draw up a “framework convention” that’s flexible enough to be updated to reflect AI’s latest advances, he said. Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will start phasing out paper tax refund checks on Tuesday, September 30. This change stems from an executive order issued on March 25, directing the secretary of the Treasury to cease issuing paper checks for all Federal disbursements inclusive of intragovernmental payments, benefits payments, vendor payments, and tax refunds. The order made exemptions for cases such as people who dont have access to electronic payment systems. Why is this change being made? In an update on Tuesday, IRS laid out three core benefits of the change: protecting taxpayers, speeding up refunds, and cutting costs. To start, the government body claims that paper checks have a 16-times higher likelihood of being stolen, altered, lost, or delayed compared to an electronic option. As for speed, the IRS claims that people who file electronically and choose direct deposit should receive their refunds in under three weeks. In contrast, it can take over six weeks to receive a refund in the mail. As for the last point, the revenue service simply states that not using paper checks saves them money. What do I need to do? Chances are, this switch won’t affect you. The IRS reports having issued 93.5 million tax refunds to individuals during the 2025 season, but that only 7% of people received their refund in the mail. However, if you do get paper check refunds, you will eventually need to provide the IRS with banking details. In its update on Tuesday, the IRS urged taxpayers to “act now” and make sure they know their banking details. It further said that taxpayers without bank accounts should consider opening one. If you don’t have a bank account, you will still have the option to use prepaid debit cards or digital wallets to receive your refund. Still, critics claim that the executive order has been rushed and could harm taxpayers. The IRS and Treasury need to better understand why these 5 million taxpayers opt for paper checks before attempting to move them to alternative payment systems, Kathleen Bryant, a policy adviser at the Tax Law Center at NYU, wrote. Many of these taxpayers likely do not have bank accounts or face other barriers to sending or receiving payments electronically. September 30 will also bring an end to paper checks for Social Security beneficiaries, a move that has further caused many unhappy responses, along with calls for providing the elderly with greater help in setting up and managing electronic bank accounts. The exact details on how and when to update your information are coming. The IRS will publish detailed guidance for 2025 tax returns before the 2026 filing season begins. Until further notice, taxpayers should continue using existing forms and procedures, including those filing their 2024 returns on extension of a due date prior to December 31, 2025.
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E-Commerce
If youve ever tried to end your Amazon Prime subscription, you may have found yourself embroiled in a disorienting multistep process that felt more like a choose-your-own-adventure than a simple cancellation. The Federal Trade Commission is now taking Amazon to court over that cumbersome user journey, alleging that it was by design. The FTC claims that Amazon spent years knowingly trapping its customers in an endless Prime subscriptionmaking cancellation so confusing that, per the agency, Amazon named the process the Iliad Flow after Homers 16,000-line epic poem. The FTCs lawsuit, which was first filed in 2023, alleges that Amazon tricked more than 40 million customers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions. It lays out in painstaking detail how Amazon knowingly used dark patterns, user interface tactics designed to dupe or confuse users, including its Iliad Flow, to coerce enrollment in Prime without their consent and to make it especially difficult to cancel Prime subscriptions. As the trial kicks off, we take a deep dive into the Iliad Flow scheme at the center of the lawsuit, and how Amazon has capitalized off of similar dark patterns in the past. The Amazon case as potential precedent Dark patterns have become typical industry practice as major retailers and Big Tech companies use them to boost their bottom lines, according to David Carroll, a professor at the Parsons School of Design in New York who studies dark patterns and user data protection. But Carroll suggests the Amazon trial could set a new precedent. The FTCs challenge is one of the broadest attempts to fight back against dark patterns that hes ever seen, and it could have major ripple effects for how other companies design their user interface. Amazon is a unique sort of monopoly, so it has the ability to get away with the most egregious forms of dark patterns, which then sets the standard for the rest of the industry. Because if Amazon does it, why can’t we? Carroll says. [Screenshot: FTC.gov] The FTCs updated court filing details exactly how some of those dark patterns functioned for Amazon between 2016 and 2023. For non-Prime customers, it explains, the company has a history of offering multiple Prime upsells before the final transaction. One page included a blue link near the bottom left of the screen, which in 2018 read No thanks, I do not want fast, free shipping, and in February 2020 read No thanks, I do not want fast, FREE delivery. This language is an example of what Carroll calls confirmshaming, or guilt-tripping designed to tug on users emotions. [Screenshot: FTC.gov] Amazons dark pattern pice de résistance was the Iliad Flow, the Prime-cancellation process that the FTC says Amazon changed in 2023 after the agency applied “substantial pressure to the company. Per a Business Insider report in June 2023, multiple leaked internal documents showed that the cancellation process was dubbed Iliad by Amazon, and revealed that at some point in 2017 the Iliad Flow led to a 14% drop in Prime cancellations as fewer members navigated to the final cancellation page. Much like its namesake poem, the Iliad Flow involved a winding, complicated journey filled with frustrating stops and befuddling detours. The convoluted journey indicates clearly how the flow represents a business-first rather than a user-first approach. Prime subscribers are some of Amazons most valuable assets. Its estimated that Prime subscribers, who tend to buy more on the site than the average user, number somewhere close to 200 million. In 2024, those subscriptions netted Amazon $4 million. That means Amazon has a lot of incentive to keep Prime subscribers aroundand, Carroll explains, its intricate network of dark patterns is an example of using extensive A/B testing to engineer a system designed to keep customers trapped in its web. Business-first dark patterns To cancel via the Iliad Flow (which the FTC referenced in its official report Primes Four-Page, Six-Click, Fifteen-Option Iliad Flow) a consumer had to first locate it, which Amazon made difficult.” Things only got more confusing from there. A users first trial was to make it through the initial cancellation page. Here, they were directed to look back at their previous Prime purchases and encouraged to click hyperlinks to services like Prime Video through calls to action like “Start shopping todays deals!” At the bottom of the page, they would be presented with three otions: Remind Me Later, Keep My Benefits, and Continue to Cancel. Every option except Continue to Cancel would boot users out of their intended flow and take them back to square one. [Screenshot: FTC.gov] Those who chose Continue to Cancel were funneled on to page two, where they were presented with discounted pricing options and exclusive offers before once again seeing the same three-button prompt. And, like on the first page, Continue to Cancel was the only option that executed the user’s original intention. On the third page of the Iliad Flow, Amazon showed consumers five different options, only the last of which, “End Now,” actually canceled the users Prime membership. Any of the other four buttons immediately ejected them from their intended process. When you go through this, you see how, not only is the Amazon ‘Iliad Flow’ designed to achieve its effect of preventing the unsubscription and to uphold the original nonconsensual enrollment, but the company internally knows that what it’s doing is, as the FTC says, injuring customers, Carroll says. Yet, he adds, theres so much incentive for them to continue the practice. [Screenshot: FTC.gov] How the FTC challenge to Iliad Flow could change e-comm Dark patterns like the Iliad Flow help Amazon bring new Prime customers in and keep them around as long as possible. In many ways, Amazons success has served as the blueprint for other online retailers to design their own dark-pattern webs. The FTCs current challenge could show the broader retail climate that dark patterns are no longer going unnoticed. The FTCs model as a regulatory system is to make examples of companies to dissuade other companies. The whole idea is, punish one so that the others also start behaving better, Carrol says. Because Amazon is such a massive target, I think we can’t underestimate the potential downstream effects. If the FTC wins this current case, Carroll says, it may send a message to smaller companies that theres legitimacy to the consumer protection argument around dark patterns. It could even show that what Carroll describes as internal discussions being diabolical about designing dark patterns are, quite simply, bad for business.
Category:
E-Commerce
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