For all the hand-wringing over whether robots will replace human workers, ChatGPT and its ilk — tools known as generative AI — are shaping up to be a big employment threat too.
Why it matters: Robots tend to replace manual laborers, while artificial intelligence threatens knowledge workers — ensuring that people of all education levels can look nervously over their shoulder at the tech gunning for their paycheck.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is planning a three-day trip to Hollywood and Silicon Valley this week to meet with CEOs and top executives at Disney, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and more, sources told Axios.
Why it matters: Big Tech companies and Hollywood giants are increasingly caught up in escalating tensions between the U.S. and China over intellectual property and trade issues.
With egg prices still high, the potato industry is looking to scramble up Easter traditions with a budget-friendly alternative: Easter potatoes.
Why it matters: Potato producers are taking advantage of the fact that the price of eggs was up 55.4% in February compared to a year earlier while potato prices only increased 13.5% year over year, according to the latest Consumer Price Index.
As travelers take to the skies this spring and summer, many are in for a delightful surprise: Several of the country's airports have made big improvements in recent months, including some whose very names had long been met with something between weariness and outright dread.
Why it matters: Airports are gateways to their city, where travelers make their first impression upon arrival.
China’s venture activity in 2022 had a noticeable decline, during a year when geopolitical tensions with the world's second-largest economy hit a crescendo.
Why it matters: Over the last decade, China’s startup boom stoked concerns that it was surpassing American-style capitalism. But ongoing pandemic restrictions and macro trends put a damper on the last year, which also coincided with growing worries about Chinese tech companies like ByteDance, whose TikTok app could be banned in the U.S.
Thousands of employees of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse have discovered the hard way that the stock they receive from their employer can become worthless overnight — just as Enron employees did in 2001.
Why it matters: Rank-and-file employees are being subtly encouraged to borrow money against their vested stock, instead of selling it — a move that in general should be taken only by the extremely rich, operating on very bespoke financial advice.
Neoliberalism is dead;globalization is in retreat; we've now entered a new world where deep geopolitical tensions get surfaced in protectionist trade policies, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.
The big picture: Economists and globalists are, predictably enough, convinced this is very bad news.
Former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said this week that the FDIC insurance cap should be raised "to either $10 million or $25 million" in order to prevent regional banks from being at a disadvantage to the big money-center banks.
Why it matters: Businesses often need to keep a lot more than $250,000 on deposit in order to comfortably fund their day-to-day operations, including making payroll. Such businesses are in no position to be able to gauge the creditworthiness of banks.
A growing number of TikTok users are touting a decades-old labor law that they say could give workers a heads-up about impending layoffs, but experts say the videos are breeding misconceptions.
Why it matters: The social media trend follows warnings from the Federal Reserve that economic pain and job losses are likely this year as the U.S. central bank fights inflation — and the tech sector has already been hit hard by layoffs.
