Axios

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Wednesday that the company plans to invest $1 billon to help develop advanced manufacturing capabilities in the U.S.

"We asked ourselves, 'How can we get more people to do advanced manufacturing in the United States?," Cook said in an appearance on CNBC's Mad Money show. "And I'm proud to tell you that we're creating an advanced manufacturing fund. We're initially putting $1 billion in the fund."

Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC the company's going to create a billion-dollar fund to promote advanced manufacturing jobs.

Our thought bubble: Apple has $250 billion in cash and President Trump is known for praising companies that take steps to promote U.S. manufacturing (and browbeating those that don't) so this could be smart politics at a good price.

Verizon will pay the National Football League for rights to stream the Sept. 24 regular-season game between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars in London, The Wall Street Journal reports. The telecom giant is hoping to rank in digital ad revenues by streaming the game on its digital properties: AOL, go90 and Complex.

Why it matters: NFL's SVP of digital media business development told WSJ they chose Verizon because of its scale. (It owns AOL and is in process of purchasing Yahoo! digital properties.) The NFL has been losing TV viewers, so digital partnerships are crucial.

Between the lines: The League is making loads of money off of digital distribution deals, while expanding their digital audience at the same time. Last month, they announced an exclusive Thursday Night Football streaming deal with Amazon for reportedly $50 million. They also just announced an exclusive content partnership with Twitter.

Despite predicting its own slowdown in revenue growth, Facebook beat expectations and posted $8.03 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2017, a 49% year-over-year bump. It also beat expectations for earnings per share with $1.04, though the company noted that it has changed how it reports earnings.

Other numbers:

• Monthly active users: 1.94 billion
• Daily active users: 1.28 billion
• Mobile advertising revenue: 85% of total ad revenue, or $6.7 billion, up from 82% a year ago

Facebook's stock price was down by 1-2% in after hours trading.

Many technologists and futurists are concerned about how artificial intelligence and automation will affect capitalism, according to a survey of more than 1,400 experts released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

What they found: "The trajectory of technology will overwhelm labor markets, killing more jobs than it creates," said 30 percent of those polled. But 70 percent of people were more optimistic, saying that the overall benefits of coming automation would outweigh the costs, while still expressing concerns that the costs will be high.

Why they're pessimistic: The experts argued that the coming wave of technological progress will revolutionize the economy in ways previous productivity booms haven't. They worry that even as society gets richer as a result, the social dislocations caused by too much leisure time and rising wealth inequality could be devastating.

Later today, Facebook will post its earnings for the first quarter of 2017, and expectations are mixed.

Controversies: Facebook's been grappling with the rise of "fake news" and graphic violence on its Facebook Live platform, but the controversies are unlikely to affect the company's ad business. Similarly to Google, whose revenue has been unaffected by advertiser backlash over its programmatic ads ending up on inappropriate videos, Facebook has been actively working to smooth over its image.

The bad news: Facebook's revenue growth is expected to start slowing down. The company warned us last year that it is running out of space in its service to put more adds. To be clear, Facebook's revenue will be greater than a year ago, but the growth will be slower. What's more, it historically sees a big bump in revenue in the fourth quarter, followed by a drop in revenue the following, so expect to see that again.

The better news: Though Facebook doesn't break out Instagram's numbers, the photo-sharing app has had a huge success with its take on Snapchat's Stories feature and is on the upswing. Facebook also has yet to roll out its mid-roll video ads, so it's not fully monetizing its video content yet. When it does, that should help boost its revenue.

A new robot designed by a research affiliate at MIT can digitally construct buildings out of local materials ranging from ice to dirt to moon dust.

Why it matters: The Digital Construction Platform (DCP) is revolutionizing construction by proving that new technology can source local energy and materials to autonomously manufacture buildings — all while adapting to local conditions. This is particularly helpful in disaster relief situations and hazardous environments.

How it works: DCP is basically a giant, solar-powered, four-ton robotic arm (that you'd typically see on an assembly line) that sits atop tank tracks. It zips around collecting data about its surroundings, like radiation levels and topography, using the sensors in its technology. The arm has a nozzle that can mix various local, viscous materials and spray them to create structures.

Elon Musk has dropped his latest vision on us — a future in which we avoid "soul-destroying" traffic by vanishing underground in our electric, self-driving cars, and tool through our cities within subterranean tunnels, only to pop out at our destination on the surface. Musk says such tunnels will be necessary, namely because we are about to see a massive increase in the number of cars on the road.

Not so fast: A professor at Carnegie Mellon University is pouring cold water on the idea, at least for now. Costa Samaras, informed by his work on the mile-long extension of New York's No. 7 subway line in the mid-2000s, suggests that technologists already have enough on their hands optimizing fully autonomous cars; it's getting way ahead of themselves to contemplate yet another ultra-complex concept. He told me:

Maybe let's figure out shared, fully-driverless, electric mobility first?

President Trump broke a lot of news in his whirlwind of 100-day interviews. But a close read of the interviews reveal a skill that helped him win the presidency: Trump instinctively understands the reporter's psychology. You see this side of Trump in his off-hand asides to the journalists interviewing him that you get when the publication publishes the full transcript, as the AP and Bloomberg did.

Why this matters: Trump's presidential victory was fueled by an understanding of media and showmanship, from the news generated by his Twitter account to his rallies being fodder for live cable television. He's been sparring with and feeding Manhattan journalists for decades and brought that skill/obsession to the White House. The 100-day interviews are the freshest examples of the flip side to his media hatred — he eats up the coverage because he's his own audience.