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Social media's negative impact on children's and young adults' mental health has been a growing cause of concern for parents and lawmakers. Now, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X are set to testify in front of the US Senate Judiciary Committee on "their failure to protect children online." Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew are willing participants. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, Discord CEO Jason Citron and X CEO Linda Yaccarino are testifying after being subpoenaed.

Senator Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham, its ranking member, released a statement expressing their frustration with Snap, Discord, and X's initial refusal to have their CEOs participate and even accept the subpoenas. In Discord's case, US Marshals visited their offices to serve the document. 

The senators further shared a feeling of hypocrisy at these platforms wanting a say in policy but fighting against getting involved in discussions. "When we held our first hearing on protecting children online with experts and advocates earlier this year, Big Tech griped about not getting an invitation. We promised them that their time would come," Durbin and Graham stated. "We've known from the beginning that our efforts to protect children online would be met with hesitation from Big Tech. They finally are being forced to acknowledge their failures when it comes to protecting kids. Now that all five companies are cooperating, we look forward to hearing from their CEOs. Parents and kids demand action." 

The Judiciary Committee has focused on this issue a great deal throughout the year, approving bills that would force online platforms to take more responsibility in protecting children (and be more transparent in their efforts) and improve reporting of online child sexual exploitation, among other steps. The hearing with the CEOs from the five tech giants was originally set for December but will now take place on January 31, 2024, at 10 AM ET. 

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Fresh off successful contract negotiations with Ford, GM and Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) is seeking to unionize 150,000 workers across 13 automakers including Tesla, BMW, Mercedes Benz and Hyundai, it announced. "To all the autoworkers out there working without the benefits of a union: now it’s your turn," said UAW president Shawn Fain. 

The UAW said the organizing drive covers "more than a dozen" non-union automakers. It notes that many use a mix of full-time, temporary and contract employees "to divide the workforce and depress wages." The union cited one example of a Hyundai assembly plant employee who worked for a subcontractor for eight years starting at $9.25 an hour before finally becoming a full-time Hyundai employee. 

Non-union automakers, including VW, Nissan, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota and Subaru raised wages after the UAW's negotiations with the big three. VW, for one, bumped them to $23.42 an hour, rising to a maximum of $32.40. However, they "lag far behind UAW autoworkers in wages, benefits and rights on the job," the union said.

The UAW helped workers win a 25 percent raise over four years with the big three automakers, with the highest-paid Ford workers now earning $83,000 per year for a 40-hour work week (around $42 per hour). The union also gained reinstatement of cost-of-living allowances, shorter progression periods to top wages and a quicker conversion of temporary to in-progression (full-time) employees. 

Tesla employees have attempted to unionize the company before, and some alleged that the company fired them for that — though that claim was recently dismissed by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB has previously found that Tesla violated labor law by prohibiting employees from talking about workplace matters. Back in 2022, Elon Musk challenged the UAW to hold a vote at Tesla's California factory.

Other automakers aren't exempt from worker complaints, including startup Rivian. "The company likes to tell us we’re making the plane while flying it, and that explains a lot about the problems we have," said one Rivian chassis worker. "We have all sorts of safety issues. Turnover is terrible. Every group has a story about a new employee who did not make it to first break. The lack of safety, the low pay, the forced overtime, there are so many reasons we need to be union." 

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NASA and IBM have teamed up to build an AI foundation model for weather and climate applications. They’re combining their respective knowledge and skills in the Earth science and AI fields, respectively, for the model, which they say should offer “significant advantages over existing technology.”

Current AI models such as GraphCast and Fourcastnet are already generating weather forecasts more quickly than traditional meteorological models. However, IBM notes those are AI emulators rather than foundation models. As the name suggests, foundation models are the base technologies that power generative AI applications. AI emulators can make weather predictions based on sets of training data, but they don’t have applications beyond that. Nor can they encode the physics at the core of weather forecasting, IBM says.

NASA and IBM have several goals for their foundational model. Compared with current models, they hope for it to have expanded accessibility, faster inference times and greater diversity of data. Another key aim is to improve forecasting accuracy for other climate applications. The expected capabilities of the model include predicting meteorological phenomena, inferring high-res information based on low-res data and "identifying conditions conducive to everything from airplane turbulence to wildfires."

This follows another foundational model that NASA and IBM deployed in May. It harnesses data from NASA satellites for geospatial intelligence, and it's the largest geospatial model on open-source AI platform Hugging Face, according to IBM. So far, this model has been used to track and visualize tree planting and growing activities in water tower areas (forest landscapes that retain water) in Kenya. The aim is to plant more trees and tackle water scarcity issues. The model is also being used to analyze urban heat islands in the United Arab Emirates.

Following Sam Altman's rollercoaster of a return as OpenAI's CEO, the company announced that it will now include Microsoft as a non-voting observer on its board. The question remains as to why the firm's largest investor wasn't on its board in the first place, but this seems to be somewhat addressed for now, at least. Altman is joined by co-founder Greg Brockman who resumes his role as President, whereas Mira Murati, who very briefly served as interim CEO throughout the drama, will return to her role as CTO.

The announcement also confirms a new board consisting of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (chair), former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and original member Adam D'Angelo, who is also Quora's co-founder and CEO. It was earlier rumored that Altman's exit was partly influenced by D'Angelo's seeming conflict of interest, as OpenAI was developing a potential competitor to Quora's Poe service — the latter offers OpenAI's ChatGPT and GPT-4, along with several other text-generating AI models.

D'Angelo's presence on OpenAI's new board came as a surprise, and Altman took to X to address the elephant in the room. "Quora is a large customer of OpenAI and we found it helpful to have customer representation on our Board." The exec added that D'Angelo "has always been very clear... about the potential conflict and doing whatever he needed to do," including offering to leave the board, if necessary. As to why the original board wanted Altman out, he said "it is clear that there were real misunderstandings between me and members of the board."

OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was a former board member who allegedly led the ouster of Altman. The exec later openly admitted that he "deeply regret my participation in the board's actions" (with Elon Musk begging for attention in his thread), and he had since voiced his support for Altman's return as CEO. In his open message, Altman says "I harbor zero ill will towards him," and that his team is figuring out a way to let Sutskever continue his work at OpenAI.

In the same official announcement, OpenAI's new Chair, Taylor, assured that the company will "enhance the governance structure," and put together "an independent committee of the Board to oversee a review of the recent events," for the sake of the organization's stability.

Elon Musk, facing the fact that an already financially-precarious X could be poised to lose another $75 million in ad revenue following his boosting of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, has a new message for advertisers pulling back from the platform: “Go fuck yourself.”

Musk repeated the sentiment multiple times during an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook event. “Don’t advertise,” Musk said. “If somebody is going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”

“Hey Bob,” Musk added, in an apparent reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who appeared at the same event earlier in the day and spoke about the company’s decision to pull ads following Musk’s tweet earlier this month. Iger said that Disney’s association with X was “not necessarily a positive one for us,” according to Variety.

While Musk again denied being antisemitic, he did express some regret for engaging with the tweet that’s resulted in another mass exodus of advertisers from X. “I should have not replied to that particular person… I essentially handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” Musk said about the post, per Variety.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. X CEO Linda Yaccarino had a front-row seat to the remarks, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which reports the former ad exec sat “stone-faced” during Musk’s tirade.

Elon Musk, facing the fact that an already financially-precarious X could be poised to lose another $75 million in ad revenue following his boosting of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, has a new message for advertisers pulling back from the platform: “Go fuck yourself.”

Musk repeated the sentiment multiple times during an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook event. “Don’t advertise,” Musk said. “If somebody is going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”

“Hey Bob,” Musk added, in an apparent reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who appeared at the same event earlier in the day and spoke about the company’s decision to pull ads following Musk’s tweet earlier this month. Iger said that Disney’s association with X was “not necessarily a positive one for us,” according to Variety.

While Musk again denied being antisemitic, he did express some regret for engaging with the tweet that’s resulted in another exodus of advertisers from X. “I should have not replied to that particular person… I essentially handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” Musk said about the post, per Variety.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. X CEO Linda Yaccarino had a front-row seat to the remarks, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which reports the former ad exec sat “stone-faced” during Musk’s tirade.

Consumer Reports has published an extensive ranking of vehicle reliability, and the results pour cold water on the dependability of EVs and plug-in hybrids. The survey says electric vehicles suffer from 79 percent more maintenance issues than gas- or diesel-powered ones, while plug-in hybrids have 146 percent more problems. The troubles portray the industry’s growing pains with the relatively new technology as the planet sets record temperatures, and scientists warn of rapidly approaching deadlines to thwart global climate catastrophe.

The survey polled CR’s members about issues with their rides from the past year, gathering data on 330,000 vehicles. The publication’s data included models from 2000 to 2023, alongside a few (early launched) 2024 models. CR studied 20 “trouble areas,” including relatively minor issues like squeaky brakes or a broken interior trim and more problematic ones related to the transmission, engine or EV battery. The number of potential trouble areas varies by type: internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles have 17, EVs have 12, traditional hybrids have 19 and plug-in hybrids have all 20.

The publication combined the data with its own track testing, owner satisfaction survey results and safety info. It then averaged it to assign each brand a numerical score (out of 100).

Lexus

Non-plugin hybrids scored well, with the survey indicating they suffer from 26 percent fewer issues than gas- and diesel-powered vehicles. CR highlighted the most reliable brands in that space, including the Lexus’ UX and NX Hybrid and Toyota’s Camry Hybrid, Highlander Hybrid and RAV4 Hybrid.

If only plug-in hybrids (PHEV) could enjoy those ratings. Instead, their longer list of trouble spots led to 146 percent more problems than traditional gas-powered vehicles. Lowlights include the Chrysler Pacifica, which scored an abysmal 14 out of 100, and Audi Q5. However, several PHEVs defied the category’s expectations, including “standouts” like the Toyota RAV4 Prime and Kia Sportage. Several others, including the BMW X5, Hyundai Tucson and Ford Escape, scored “average” in reliability.

Fully electric cars and SUVs, the vehicles many automakers aim to fill their dealership lots with by 2030, have mediocre average scores: 44 and 43, respectively. Electric pickups, the newest technology in the bunch, perhaps unsurprisingly scored worse with an average of 30.

Lexus came out on top among EV brands. All but one of its models scored above average or better in CR’s ratings. And the lone exception, the NX, still had an average score. Toyota also did well, including the 4Runner SUV, which CR describes as “among the most reliable models in the survey.” However, its electric Tundra pickup scored poorly. Other EVs with above-average scores include Acura’s RDX and TLX.

Photo by Roberto Baldwin / Engadget

Once practically synonymous with electric vehicles, Tesla had overall scores in the middle of the pack (alongside brands like Chevrolet, Buick, Ram, Cadillac and Dodge). CR says the Elon Musk-led company’s EV powertrains tend to fare better than those from traditional automakers. However, Ars Technica notes the company’s reliability scores struggled more with things like bodywork, paint / trim and climate systems.

Regionally speaking, Asian automakers enjoyed the highest average scores in the survey at a healthy 63. European companies were second with an average of 46, while US brands slumped with a somewhat disappointing score of 39.