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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Monday, April 10th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, who is responsible when artificial intelligence lies, a tale of two very different housing markets and how one man figured out a way to beat a seemingly unbeatable casino game.
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But first, let's start with a few big stories from the weekend. The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into apparent leaks of classified U.S. intelligence documents that were posted to social media in recent weeks. One of the largest leaks of its kind in a decade. The documents appear to have been prepared for senior Pentagon leaders and other personnel with appropriate security clearances. And they include details on relationships with key allies like Ukraine, including intelligence on battlefield conditions that show that Ukraine has a serious shortfall in Western-supplied weaponry. Kyiv's military leaders are reportedly unhappy about the leaks, and a senior Ukrainian official told "The Washington Post" they are worried about the possibility of more.
Now, let's turn to abortion access in the United States. On Friday, we got two opposing court rulings on mifepristone, a pill that's commonly used in medication abortions. One came from a federal judge in Texas, who ruled the FDA was wrong to approve the drug 23 years ago and that medication abortion is not safe. Decades of evidence say otherwise. The other ruling came from a federal judge in Washington state, who said the drug is effective and safe and ordered the FDA to preserve access in 17 states and Washington, D.C.
At this moment, with these two contradicting rulings, nothing has changed. But "Vox" says the coming weeks will be critical. We'll find out whether appeals will send this issue to the Supreme Court.
Let's check in now on Tennessee and a story that we told you about last week. Two Black Democrats, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who were expelled from the state legislature for participating in gun safety protests, are hoping to be reinstated. Leaving their seats vacant leaves about 140,000 voters in mostly Black districts in Tennessee with no representation in their state House. Here's Jones speaking on "NBC" yesterday.
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Justin Jones: We will continue to fight for our constituents. This attack against us is hurting all people in our state. Even though it's disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities, this is hurting poor white people. Their attack on democracy hurts all of us.
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They'll need to be reappointed, then elected back to their seats. Their colleagues will meet this week to decide on next steps.
And finally, the 2023 Masters tournament ended yesterday, with Spain's Jon Rahm earning the iconic green jacket for the very first time. It was his second major tournament victory. Here's how he described the moment.
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Jon Rahm: We still battled out there. And what a great Sunday to see a couple of guys like Jordan and Phil, two past Champions, come out, shoot a low score and give us all a scare. 'Cause at one point, when I was on 10, they were finishing. A couple different ideas crossed my mind that I didn't wanna think about.
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This next story from "The Washington Post" asks an important question: Who is responsible when an artificial intelligence chatbot spits out misleading or inaccurate information about a real person? Recently, a law professor named Jonathan Turley received an email from a colleague who had asked ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. The list had Turley's name on it.
Pranshu Verma: The response that came back basically said that Turley had made sexually suggestive comments and attempted to touch a student while on a class trip to Alaska.
That's Pranshu Verma with "The Washington Post."
Verma: And it actually cited a March 2018 article in "The Washington Post" as the source of evidence to prove that this was true. But there was a big problem because no such article in "The Washington Post" existed.
Turley says he's never been accused of sexual harassment. He's never been on any kind of class trip to Alaska. And he doesn't work for the university ChatGPT said he does. Now he's not sure who should be held responsible for ChatGPT's false allegation. He calls this whole experience "chilling."
The company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, says its chatbot may not always generate accurate answers, and it's working to improve accuracy.
Verma spoke to experts in online speech who say this is all new territory. And as big companies like Google and Microsoft start to integrate Al chatbots into their search engines, it's going to become more complicated to figure out whether your search results need some kind of fact-check. As for accountability, Verma says, it's hard to know how a lawsuit against the makers of an Al chatbot would play out in court.
Verma: Defamation law, in this case, is one thing that people are trying to see, well, is this defamation? Is this information published? Is this coming from somebody that has a mental state that is intending to harm somebody? Those are all very tricky questions that legal scholars are now only having to grapple with because they really haven't had the test case yet to kind of answer those questions. But now we will start seeing cases potentially work through the court.
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There is an unusual pattern emerging in the U.S. housing market. In the East, home prices are rising in the biggest metropolitan areas, places like Chicago, Atlanta and D.C.
<v And in Western cities, the opposite is playing out. Prices are dropping in major markets, including Seattle, Sacramento and San Jose. Housing analysts say this kind of 50/50 split down the map is rare, potentially unprecedented. "The Wall Street Journal" looks into what's causing this. And it says housing markets are responding to several local factors>affordability, supply and job growth.
Let's start out West. Cities with ties to big tech have had some of the least-affordable housing markets, as they attracted so many high-earning workers. Over the last year, of course, tech companies have had big layoffs. Now we're seeing places like San Francisco and Seattle have some of the fastest-falling home prices, down as much as 10% compared to last year.
Meanwhile, in the Southeast, a hot housing market is attracting companies and adding jobs. In Miami, several financial companies have moved to the city in recent years, and home prices are up 12%.
LaTisha Grant is the executive managing broker at TAS Realty Group in Houston. She is practically sitting on the dividing line of the East/West trend in the country right now. She told "Marketplace," Houston is one of the places where prices are finally cooling off.
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LaTisha Grant: We've been waiting since the pandemic. And you know, for real estate, six months is a long time, so imagine two years. We've been struggling. Our poor buyers. Many of them renewed their lease for a minimum of a year. And now they're at a place where they can get back into the market, and they're entering.
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Many economists told the "Journal," there have been more price drops than they expected, and they're predicting that home prices will continue to fall this spring or summer. But they say we probably won't see some kind of big national price collapse like we had after the subprime crisis because we still have a supply problem. A lower-than-normal number of homes for sale. It was true before the pandemic, and now the number of active listings is well below pre-pandemic levels.
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Let's end with a story about a man who figured out a system for winning a seemingly unbeatable casino game.
Roulette is a game of chance. You spin the wheel, and you get what you get. But "Bloomberg" describes a night in 2004 when a man named Niko Tosa and his friends walked into the Ritz Club Casino in London.
And as "Bloomberg" describes it, this group played roulette "almost as if they could see the future." They placed unusually large bets and racked up some unbelievable streaks. They were winning consistently over hundreds of rounds.
After Tosa and his crew cashed out, police, lawyers, the casino's staff and roulette wheel engineers tried to figure out how they did it. But the case remained a mystery for almost two decades. One gambling executive told "Bloomberg" he still loses sleep over it.
So how did Tosa do it? Well, "Bloomberg" spent six months investigating and ended up tracking down Tosa and asking him to explain himself. It turns out, he is quite a character.
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If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, you can hear all about it next. This "Bloomberg" story is queued up to play for you as a narrated article. So stick around to check that out.
I am out for the next few days. My colleague, Gideon Resnick, will be here with you to bring you the news tomorrow.
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