Axios

The Los Angeles Unified School District voted 5 to 2 on Tuesday to ban cellphone and social media use for its more than 429,000 students during the school day.

Why it matters: The nation's second-largest school district is joining others in cracking down on students' access to cellphones and social media through updated school policies over fears that the devices distract them from learning and affect their social development.

Your smartphone may be feeling the summer heat just as much as you, especially during the record-breaking heat wave overtaking much of the U.S. this week.

Why it matters: Extreme heat, in addition to being a public health threat and an economic blow, could damage your phone.

Forbes sent a letter to the CEO of AI search startup Perplexity accusing the company of stealing text and images in a "willful infringement" of Forbes' copyright rights, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: Publishers fighting to protect their intellectual property are stuck in a game of whack-a-mole as they confront not just the biggest AI companies, like OpenAI or Google, but also smaller AI startups.

Adobe on Tuesday updated its terms of service to make explicit that it won't train AI systems using customer data.

Why it matters: The move follows an uproar over largely unrelated changes Adobe made in recent days to its terms of service — which contained wording that some customers feared was granting Adobe broad rights to customer content.

As the Biden administration expands its cybersecurity agenda, the State Department has been playing a more active role in bringing the private sector along for the ride.

Why it matters: Cyber diplomacy has been a major priority at the State Department during the Biden administration as nation-state hackers target U.S. critical infrastructure and criminal gangs recruit hackers from across borders.

The advancements in artificial intelligence that brought us AI chatbots and image generators are now fueling a fresh approach to self-driving cars.

Why it matters: Autonomous vehicle (AV) development is essentially stuck — it's still too difficult and expensive to scale up the technology into a profitable business.

The advancements in artificial intelligence that brought us AI chatbots and image generators are now fueling a fresh approach to self-driving cars.

Why it matters: Autonomous vehicle (AV) development is essentially stuck — it's still too difficult and expensive to scale up the technology into a profitable business.

The leading AI chatbots are regurgitating Russian misinformation, according to a NewsGuard report shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: Users turning to chatbots for reliable information and quick answers to all their questions are finding that AI can also offer disinformation, satire and fiction as fact.

A U.S. appeals court will hold oral arguments on Sept. 16 to hear challenges to a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if its China-based parent company does not divest ownership by Jan. 19, per a Monday order.

Why it matters: TikTok and ByteDance are challenging the constitutionality of the law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok's business in the U.S. The legal proceedings could determine the whether an app with more than 150 million users in the U.S. remains available for download.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress Monday to require social media platforms to display warning labels alerting users of the potential harms the platforms pose to teens' mental health.

Why it matters: Murthy's call for congressional action comes amid rising awareness of the dangers of social media for young people, as platforms try to negate some of the harms while facing lawsuits for their roles in the youth mental health crisis.

Generative AI is reshaping the M&A journey, but dealmakers shouldn't ignore the challenges associated with the new technology.

• During a recent Harvard Business Review Analytic Services webinar, sponsored by Datasite, Chad Burton, chief operating officer of investment banking at Piper Sandler, and Nigel Cannings, CEO of Intelligent Voice, discussed solutions to these challenges and what lies ahead.

A Maryland county just north of Washington, D.C., is embarking on an ambitious effort to provide clean, sustainable public transit — even to the point of installing a microgrid for its own electricity and hydrogen fuel production.

Why it matters: Self-sufficient energy systems, or microgrids, are emerging as an important clean energy tool for communities, businesses and government agencies.

Federal officials, AI model operators and cybersecurity companies ran the first joint simulation of a cyberattack involving a critical AI system last week.

Why it matters: Responding to a cyberattack on an AI-enabled system will require a different playbook than the typical hack, participants told Axios.

Recent high-profile stumbles by Microsoft and Google in the corporate rush to deploy generative AI are the result of known flaws, not surprise problems.

Why it matters: The more half-baked AI features and products tech giants unleash upon the public, the less the public is going to trust and embrace the new technology.