The astonishing melt-up in Apple shares over the past two days marks the beginning of the second phase of the AI hype cycle — where companies are rewarded not simply for building AI technology but more for incorporating it into their existing product suite.

Driving the news: Apple's market value has spiked by $312 billion over the past two trading sessions, causing it to reclaim its place as the most valuable company in the world.

Between the lines: That increase, in dollar terms, dwarfs the value of OpenAI ($80 billion), xAI ($24 billion), Anthropic ($18 billion), and all other AI startups combined.

The big picture: This week's announcement from Apple, which reportedly isn't paying OpenAI for its use of ChatGPT, marks the first time the general public has gotten a glimpse of how AI will improve the items we touch and use every day.

• The market's verdict: AI is going to make iPhone and iPad more valuable franchises — and, by extension, Apple itself.

Follow the money: One of the reasons the stock market continues to hit new record highs is that investors are pricing in a broad-based corporate productivity boost due to AI adoption.

• The move in Apple shares, because it was concentrated over a short period, can be seen as a sped-up version of what has been happening in many sectors over the past year or so — or, perhaps, can be seen as a harbinger of what might happen to many other companies as they start rolling out the fruits of their AI strategies.

The bottom line: Apple isn't a "picks and shovels" company like Nvidia, the stock market darling of the first phase of the AI hype cycle. It isn't selling AI chips or AI consultants or Large Language Models or even AI training data. It's selling phones, which will be better thanks to AI.

• That marginal improvement, it turns out, can be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

There's labor trouble brewing along the country's East Coast ports.

Why it matters: The possibility of a strike — still far off at this point — raises the prospect of higher shipping costs and slower delivery times heading into the prime holiday shopping season.

Zoom in: The largest maritime union in North America, the International Longshoremen's Association, canceled contract talks set to start this week in Newark with the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents employers in the longshore industry, including terminal operators and carriers.

• The union says some ports use an automated system that processes trucks without using any labor — a violation of their current labor agreement, which covers around 14,500 workers.

Between the lines: The ports along the East Coast have grown in importance since the supply chain disruptions of the pandemic, as companies diverted traffic away from the clogged West Coast.

• And the East Coast has continued to rise in importance as Middle East tensions and climate change force shippers to re-route.

The big picture: While some unions are just starting to dip their toes into negotiations around AI, port workers have been battling over automation for decades.

• "Since the 1960s, all major port strikes have been about one thing: the introduction of technology that makes ports more productive, temporarily and sometimes permanently, reduces their need for workers," Christopher Mims explains in his 2021 book "Arriving Today," about global shipping.
• Automation was a more contentious issue than pay during the West Coast port workers' heated negotiations last year.

Follow the money: Longshoremen's president Harold Daggett has made the fight against automation a signature issue, framing it as an existential battle for unionized workers.

• "There is going to be an explosion and the [union] and dockers across the world are going to light the fuse," Daggett said. "It's time we put companies out of business that push automation," he said at a union meeting last year.

The U.S. ports lag those in Europe and China regarding automation — partly because of "fierce labor opposition," Paul Berger reported for the WSJ last year.

What to watch: The sides have just under four months to come to terms ahead of the Sept. 30 expiration of the contract.

Do Americans think of inflation as a rise in prices? Or, per my story from last month, has the vernacular meaning of the word changed to just mean high prices? The good folks at Morning Consult surveyed 2,201 Americans to find out.

The big picture: Some 86% of Americans are worried about inflation, and many still define it as a rise in prices rather than just high prices. But they tend to look at that rise over four years, not one.

• And they're just as worried about high prices as they are about inflation — two things that often get conflated under the "inflation" banner.

What they found: Less than half of Americans say that inflation is an increase in prices for goods and services. Even among consumers with at least a college degree, the figure is only 53%.

• The majority was split between people who think that inflation means prices being high (about 20%) and those who think it means prices outpacing wages (about a third).
• 69% think inflation is higher today than it was a year ago. (They're wrong about that; in fact, consumer prices didn't rise at all in May.)

Between the lines: Only 23% of Americans think that inflation refers to the rise in prices over the past year. 28% think of it as being the rise in prices over four years, and fully 60% have a frame of reference that's two years or longer.

The bottom line: 87% of consumers report that they're worried about prices remaining above pre-pandemic levels.

• In everyday speech, the word they use to refer to that phenomenon is "inflation."