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ALONG THE SAME LINES
It’s easy to imagine that tech CEOs are genius-level intellects who code by day, strategize by night, and dominate markets by sheer force of their big brains. But then you hear one talk, and it an be quite a bit different than you might have expected — as for example with some recent remarks from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt .
Among other curious things, Schmidt recently told a group of students [[link removed]] that ChatGPT and similar large language models could be easily deployed to copy TikTok . How could this be done? Schmidt helpfully offered up these less than effective instructions, suggesting students could simply instruct the nearest chatbot to “Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines .” And then added: “That’s the command. Boom, boom, boom, boom.” That’s of course not at all how any of this works, as a tech CEO might be expected to know. But he may have also tipped his hand on why his expertise is a bit lacking here, because he also stated that Google missed out on the rise of ChatGPT due to the fact that employees felt that “ working from home was more important than winning .” Which is also not how that works. But don’t forget, he earned those billions he has through his genius and vision.
Make it make sense.
Three Numbers [[link removed]]
$26.8 billion [[link removed]] of federal SNAP funds are spent [[link removed]] at Walmart each year. The SNAP program, more commonly known as “food stamps,” helps feed more than 40 million people a year , including thousands of Walmart employees.
$75 million [[link removed]] will be paid [[link removed]] to new Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol as part of his hiring agreement. He won’t be required to report to the company’s Seattle offices but instead will work remotely from California.
73% of Americans [[link removed]] support “ protecting tenants against price gouging [[link removed]] in rental housing,” according to a new poll. A similar number would support a ban on hidden “junk fees” charged by landlords.
A Chart [[link removed]]
Vice President Harris has begun to focus sharply on making the connection between corporate price gouging and the rising cost of living — which of course has brought out the neoliberals and trickle-downers who find it impossible to believe that corporate greed could possibly be a factor pushing prices up.
Our founder Nick Hanauer has a new piece in The New Republic [[link removed]] detailing how elevated corporate profits are tied to elevated prices . The graph below recently featured by Kevin Drum also makes a pretty convincing case on its own, showing that, since the pandemic, corporate profits have increased dramatically faster than inflation. Basically, the only way to not see the relationship between price-gouging and inflation is to assume no such relationship could possibly exist.
charting showing corporate profits increasing much aster than inflation since 2020 [[link removed]]
Blowing up the Groupchat [[link removed]]
Uber has long been notorious for its dicey relationship with all kinds of laws, including most famously by designing its entire business model around the idea that its drivers are independent contractors, not employees. But when the company came under intense pressure at the height of the #MeToo movement, they agreed to take some concrete steps to address discrimination and sexual assault as it impacts corporate employees, drivers, and passengers. That included a commitment to end the practice of requiring mandatory arbitration for individual claims of assault or harassment. Instead, victims could have their day in court.
After milking several years of good publicity from that move, Uber is now headed in reverse, putting $5 million [[link removed]] into a Nevada ballot measure that would sharply limit the amount of legal fees that could be collected by lawyers who bring successful lawsuits. It appears that the goal of the proposal, solely funded by Uber, is to make it impractical for most of these suits to even be filed in the first place.
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