As a popular talk show host, Sherri Shepherd’s job is to get celebrities to share their personal stories. But the most fascinating tale might be her own.

The host of Sherri, which kicked off its new season on Monday, has come a long way from her hardscrabble early days of getting evicted from her apartment as she tried to make it in show business.

She did just that, starring in shows like “30 Rock” and co-hosting “The View”. The final evidence that she hit it big: An upcoming star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

For Reuters “Life Lessons” series, we talked to Shepherd about what she learned along the way. The following interview is edited and condensed.

Q: When you were growing up in Chicago, what did your parents teach you about work ethic?

A: Sacrifice. My dad moved us to a town called Hoffman Estates, and he used to be a waiter at a restaurant which had a lot of racist pictures that would be outlawed now.

He wanted to provide a better life for us. He worked for that restaurant and used his tips so he could get me into photography class. My father took a lot of racist taunts at that restaurant, but he did it because he loved me.

Q: What was your first job as a teen?

A: I was a candy striper at Northwest Hospital in Schaumburg, Illinois. I was the person who wore the little pink-and-white uniform, brought food and water to patients and read to them. I liked seeing the smile on people’s faces.

My second one was working at Sears. I was promoted to the catalog retailing department and did gift wrapping. To this day, I can wrap a gift like nobody’s business.

Q: How did you get started in the entertainment world?

A: I was a legal secretary in California. One day, with eight other legal secretaries, we all went to the Comedy Store together.

Eddie Griffin and Andrew Dice Clay were there, making people laugh, and my friends thought I could do that, too. I got advice after the show, and Dice said, “Just do it.” I will forever owe those guys part of my career. “Do it scared” has become my motto.

Q: Was money tight in those early years?

A: I didn’t get a regular role until a show called “Holding the Baby” on Fox with Jennifer Westfeldt. I thought I had made the big time — and then they cancelled it.

Then I was on a show called “Cleghorne!” with Ellen Cleghorne. Again, I thought I made it — and again they cancelled it! I held onto all my checks and didn’t even cash them. I taped them to my wall.

Q: Did you make any money mistakes along the way?

A: A lot of people feel guilty when they make it and feel they have to reach back to take care of absolutely everybody. I did that, and I spent all my money.

The money you do make goes to commissions, taxes, agents, business managers, lawyers, publicists and glam teams. It’s a lot of money going out. I thought that the salary I made was the amount I was going to be able to spend. Oh no.

Q: How financially and emotionally challenging is it to care for a special needs child like your son?

A: You really have to advocate for them. It has been a journey, and it hasn’t been easy. Financially, it’s a lot — special needs school plus all of the therapy — physical, occupational, speech, psychological but that’s my child, and you do it for your child.

Q: How do you figure out where your charitable dollars have the most effect?

A: It has to be close to my heart. Move-In Day Mafia helps foster care kids who have aged out of the system and are starting their lives in college. Special Needs Network runs camps for children on the spectrum. My son was actually a counselor there.

Q: What life lessons do you try to pass on?

A: I remember back in the days when my car used to get repossessed, I would be on the bus going by Hollywood Boulevard, where the Walk of Fame is located. I would look at the stars and dream that I would have a star one day. Now I’m having a ceremony for it. Never let go of that dream.

—Chris Taylor, Reuters

MoneyGram appears to be in a jam.

MoneyGram International—a Dallas-based financial services company, perhaps best known for its payment and money-sending services—has been down for days, apparently due to a cybersecurity problem.

So far, that’s all that customers, and anyone else, seems to know.

“MoneyGram recently identified a cybersecurity issue affecting certain of our systems. Upon detection, we immediately launched an investigation and took protective steps to address it, including proactively taking systems offline which impacted network connectivity,” reads a statement that was published to social media channels, including X and Facebook. “We are working with leading external cybersecurity experts and coordinating with law enforcement. We recognize the importance and urgency of this matter to our customers and partners. We are working diligently to bring our systems back online and resume normal business operations.”

Fast Company has reached out to MoneyGram for more details and an update, but we have yet to receive a response. We’ll update this post if we hear more.  

As of Tuesday morning, MoneyGram’s main website remains down. Notices of issues with MoneyGram services first started hitting social media over the weekend, and user-reported outages on Downdetector are still in the hundreds as of Tuesday morning. That’s left the service’s tens of millions of users in limbo, with many needing to access funds—and making their unhappiness known across various social media platforms. 

As it stands, there isn’t a whole lot of information out there. MoneyGram hasn’t identified the nature of the cybersecurity issue or told users or customers whether their data is at risk. The fact it’s working with law enforcement indicates a possible cyberattack or the work of a bad actor.

Uplift Labs has built a reputation with movement analysis software widely used by college and professional sports teams. 

With just a pair of tripod-mounted iPhones or iPads, the company’s Uplift Capture software can use sophisticated computer vision techniques to track how athletes move, evaluate their performance, and offer guidance to avoid injuries.

And as of Tuesday, the company is offering a new app—simply called Uplift—designed for individual athletes. As of launch, the app allows users to track their jumping performance, something cofounder and CEO Sukemasa Kabayama says matters not just to basketball players and track and field stars but to anyone interested in tracking their overall athletic performance.

“The vertical jump is something that is a measurement tool,” he says. “Power and lower body explosiveness has applicability for a range of dynamic movements and sports and even in fitness, like CrossFit.”

Kabayama, who was previously president of Tesla Motors Japan, says the company grew out of his own experience trying to stay fit and avoid injuries in workouts like CrossFit and has always aimed to offer an app that any athlete could use, not just the elite. “And we consider athletes anybody who has a body,” he says.

Thanks to machine learning algorithms developed over the past couple of years, the app requires only a single phone, making it more accessible to everyday users. And while the company does recommend people use it with a tripod, it can also be held by a coach or workout buddy with a steady hand in a pinch.

Generally, every time people use it, it will calculate metrics like jump height, takeoff velocity, and reactive strength index, allowing people to track their performance over time. Kabayama imagines people will use it through a gym or as part of a sports team, and the company plans to offer plans to make it easy for coaches and schools to monitor and subscribe for large numbers of athletes, but anyone can download the app and use it for $12.99 per month after a month’s free trial.

Users can also join or create groups to cheer on—or compete with—teammates, friends, or athletic rivals, which Kabayama envisions could help young athletes in remote areas see how they compare on a broader scale. The company is likely to build out suggested groups for users to join, as well as letting them create their own.

“We’re going to have a leaderboard ready,” he says. “On the leaderboard, you can see how you compare in terms of your vertical jump height with your teammates or your friends.”

Kabayama expects the app to gain more features over time, including other activities that can be measured, and additional ways to share results through social media. And it also includes a generative AI-powered coach who can offer fitness advice, including getting explanations and images of common exercises or suggestions for particular workouts. The company worked to put reasonable guardrails on the AI and use Uplift’s data and employee experience to make sure it provides useful, accurate athletic advice through a chat interface.

“You’re just talking to it as if you were talking to a coach,” Kabayama says. 

The new Uplift app isn’t intended to replace the Uplift Capture professional tool, which the company continues to actively develop. But, Kabayama says, it can further democratize access to athletic analysis and training. 

“Our company’s mission has always been not just working with professional and elite athletes,” he says. “That’s certainly where we started, and our technology has been validated, but we really started the company with the vision of improving movement performance and movement health for all people of every single type of skill and ability.”

Nearly 20 years ago, TELUS International was established to provide customer service support for its parent company, a major Canadian telecom company. From its lone site in Manila, the company also supported a limited number of additional clients in the North American market. However, word spread quickly about the small company delivering exceptional results, and as demand for its services increased, company leaders decided to capitalize on its potential. 

Thoughtfully, and over time, TELUS International expanded its geographic footprint across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and Central America, simultaneously deepening its technology stack and digital capabilities and recruiting top talent.

Now, as 2024 begins to wind down, the company is starting something new: TELUS International is now TELUS Digital Experience (TELUS Digital), a rebrand that reflects the company’s commitment to providing digital-first experiences across every service it delivers to its clients. 

“Over the course of our two decades in business, the customer service industry has changed dramatically, moving from a predominant focus on call centers, to 24/7 omnichannel support across a multitude of channels and devices, to what we see today, which is brands leveraging AI, data, and analytics to craft seamless, personalized, and cost-effective experiences across the customer journey,” says president of TELUS Digital Customer Experience, Jason Macdonnell.

He says the rebrand isn’t about changing the direction of the company, but rather to better reflect what the company is already doing. “We’re so clearly a digital-focused company, and it was time our company name said so,” he says.

DISRUPTING WITHOUT BEING DISRUPTED

TELUS Digital has built a reputation for accurately predicting key market and technology shifts, including the gravitational pull of artificial intelligence and the criticality of high-quality data to fuel innovative and customized products, services, experiences, and solutions.

A series of prescient acquisitions helped scale up the business and paved the path to its initial public offering in 2021, becoming the largest technology IPO in the history of the TSX, with a dual listing on the New York Stock Exchange. “Going public was a key milestone of our growth journey, but it couldn’t have happened without the groundwork we laid to become such a force in the technology space,” says Macdonnell. 

He says the company’s market strategy has kept TELUS Digital ahead of its clients’ changing needs for digital transformation and high-tech services, as well as changing consumer expectations.

In 2018, it acquired Xavient Digital to gain expertise in IT consulting, software development, and managed services as well as comprehensive digital transformation services, including cloud computing, DevOps, and automation, effectively broadening its portfolio beyond customer experience. A year later, the acquisition of Competence Call Center expanded its existing content moderation services.

The company’s acquisitions of Lionbridge AI and Playment followed. Collectively they contributed end-to-end data capabilities to provide the high-quality AI training datasets at scale needed to power AI algorithms, machine learning, large language models (LLM), and computer vision applications such as autonomous driving. TELUS International also welcomed world-class product and engineering teams focused on R&D and a crowd-sourced global AI community of more than one million contributors from these integrations.

The 2023 acquisition of WillowTree, now a TELUS Digital Company, added key front-end design and build capabilities, such as mobile and web development expertise as well as UX/UI design, software engineering, and backend system integration to further reinforce its ability to create customer-centric digital solutions, improve user engagement, and become a full-service digital product provider.

Tobias Dengel, president of TELUS Digital Solutions and founder of WillowTree, joined the company’s leadership team as part of the acquisition. “The integration of our companies’ capabilities has created a powerful ecosystem and differentiated value proposition for clients, addressing today’s biggest pain points when it comes to adopting AI-based solutions,” he says. “We’re well positioned to address our clients’ challenges actualizing AI goals, their uncertainties about AI regulations and governance, and their lack of internal AI expertise.”

The company is also making large strides in voice technology, an area of expertise for Dengel, who says they are using it to help reduce customer effort and create better customer experiences for several brands they support. “It’s a simple fact: people speak faster than they type, and voice interfaces allow users to complete tasks more quickly compared to typing, which reduces friction in customer interactions.” 

He emphasizes that voice tech, particularly in combination with generative AI, is poised to revolutionize customer experience. For example, in a multimodal environment, users can make a request or ask a question verbally and get text or image responses in return on their device to streamline common tasks like booking a flight, ordering a pizza, or using self-serve customer support tools.

Dengel also highlights voice tech’s role in broadening accessibility, ensuring that customers with disabilities or difficulties navigating traditional interfaces can benefit from these solutions.

THE BRAND BEHIND THE BRANDS

TELUS International has long been the first point of contact that customers have with many brands, whether on a phone call, in a chat, on asynchronous messaging, or through interactions with a human-centric AI-powered bot.

“We have always put customers first in everything we do, and it’s a privilege to be a trusted partner to brands that are creating disruptive and standout experiences for their end customers and employees,” says Macdonnell. “As brand ambassadors for our clients’ products and services, and the engineers digitally transforming their operations and internal processes, we are by the side of major brands to help them build customer loyalty, engage employees, drive efficiencies, increase wallet share, and grow their top and bottom lines.”

Over time, the company has shown the success of its end-to-end offering in the market.

“Many of our client relationships that started with a single program have evolved into multi-solution engagements,” says Macdonnell. “The fact that we provide an average of 18 programs per client and have an average client tenure of nine years for our top 10 clients is a testament to the realization of our strategy.”

TELUS Digital’s rebrand comes on the heels of the launch of Fuel iX in April. The company’s proprietary enterprise-grade generative AI (GenAI) engine has ushered in a new era in which TELUS Digital is now selling technology products and software as a service (SaaS) that complement its portfolio of managed services.

“Fuel iX helps businesses upgrade their GenAI from pilots to production scale and empowers them to deploy customized solutions faster and manage the tech responsibly,” says Dengel.

One way it does that is by providing access to an extensive library of more than 100 LLMs and multiple clouds, so users can compare models and settings to find an ideal fit. This vendor-agnostic approach gives enterprises the flexibility to change models to best suit their needs at any given time, effectively future-proofing their GenAI investments.

“Simply put, Fuel iX is a comprehensive set of tools that let companies interested in GenAI do it the right way—strategically, responsibly, securely, and with continuous human oversight,” says Dengel. “That’s the best and the fastest way to get sustainable returns on investment.”

A LEGACY OF HUMAN-CENTRIC INNOVATION

The company’s caring culture since day one is a clear representation of its human-centric values that have continued to guide its actions and how it positions itself in a crowded marketplace.

“A human-first tech company might seem increasingly rare,” says Dengel. “But tech and humanity don’t have to be in conflict. At TELUS Digital, we make the choice every single day to bring humanity into our tech.”

Dengel says the company’s people play a variety of critical frontline roles to help minimize the negative effects of tech on society, in areas ranging from content moderation on social media platforms, message boards, and gaming forums, to annotating and localizing data.

The company’s Humanity-in-the-loop principles, launched alongside the rebrand, provide important perspective and guidance on how the company designs, develops, and deploys AI and similarly powerful technologies. This includes being mindful of who is and isn’t in the room when decisions are made, creating pathways for diversity, and rethinking what ROI means in the age of AI to account for the holistic costs to people and the planet.

“The choices we make today will have extraordinary impacts on the future, so we need humans at the heart of AI to make sure it is solving real-world problems—not perpetuating new ones,” Dengel says.

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Having transitioned over the past two decades from its humble beginning of providing contact center support to now successfully executing complex and multifaceted digital transformation and AI-enabled projects for clients, Macdonnell says the rebrand to TELUS Digital reflects that seismic shift and motivates its global team of more than 75,000 employees to remain focused on the journey ahead.

“We’re signaling to the industry that we’re here to stay and will continue to dig in, do the work, and put in the time to remain an undisputed expert source on crafting exceptional and enduring customer experiences with the promise of humanity,” he says.

TELUS Digital is stepping into its future armed with the knowledge and intel that only comes from decades of experience. “We’re continuing to reimagine our products, services, and solutions to address unmet needs, propel leading-edge innovation, and disrupt the market,” says Macdonnell. “This new chapter will be our company’s most exciting one yet.”   

Jason Macdonnell is president of TELUS Digital Customer Experience. Tobias Dengel is president of TELUS Digital Solutions and founder and president of WillowTree, a TELUS Digital Company.

One of the most consequential AI bills the world has seen sitting on the desk of California Governor Gavin Newsom, and its fate could be decided with either a signature or a veto stamp any day now. Newsom has until September 30 to decide.

The bill, called the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, requires developers of very large AI models to implement safety measures and reporting protocols, as well as submit to third-party compliance audits, starting in 2026. The bill’s overall intent is to prevent the creation and distribution of powerful AI systems that could cause catastrophic harm. In one oft-cited example, such a system might create or enable the creation of a bioweapon.

The bill’s opponents in the tech industry complain that the safety requirements put an undue burden on model developers and would shift the focus from improving AI to worrying about safety compliance. Open source model developers in particular feel threatened by the bill, as it would compel them to ensure that others cannot modify their models to do harm in the future.

The governor’s office has been quiet on the bill for months as SB 1047 made its way through the California legislature. When Fast Company asked the office last month about the nature of Newsom’s dialogs with tech lobbyists on the matter, the office declined to comment. The tech industry has some powerful lobbyists, at least one with personal ties to Newsom, working to kill the bill.

The biggest signal of Newsom’s thinking on the bill came last week during an interview with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at the company’s Dreamforce conference. 

“We’ve been working over the course of the last couple of years to come up with some rational regulation that supports risk-taking, but not recklessness,” Newsom said during the onstage interview.

“That supports the ecosystem that’s so unique and vibrant here in California and does put us at a competitive disadvantage, but at the same time puts the rules of the road at hand.” 

He continued: “That’s challenging now in this space, particularly with SB 1047, because of the sort of outsized impact that legislation could have and the chilling effect, particularly in the open source community, that legislation could have,” Newsom said. “So I’m processing that in consideration more broadly of what are demonstrable risks in AI and what are the hypothetical risks. [We] can’t solve for everything; what can we solve for?”

Some commenters on X observed that Newsom’s mention of stakeholders in the open source community may be a signal that he’s leaning toward a veto. 

But one shouldn’t always take the words of a politician in these situations at face value. It’s possible that Newsom was floating a possible decision on SB 1047 to learn from the reaction from various stakeholder groups, one insider tells me. If Newsom had already decided against the bill, he would have already vetoed it. 

Newsom’s office has been receiving pressure from multiple sides to veto SB 1047. Industry groups including the VC a16z have been loudly opposed, as has the high-profile incubator Y Combinator. A chorus of national political figures have written letters in opposition to Newsom. These include California representatives Ro Khanna (D-Santa Clara), Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), and Democratic Party heavyweight Nancy Pelosi.  

However, SB 1047 supporters point out that California’s largest labor union, SAG-AFTRA, and the National Organization of Women (NOW), have come out in support, Garrison Lovely reports for The Verge. Actors Mark Ruffalo and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have posted video open letters of support to Newsom. 

While SB 1047 has been the subject of hot debate in Silicon Valley, the bill skated through the California legislature in Sacramento with relative ease. Some California lawmakers are still stinging from the state’s failure to regulate social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, and they don’t want to miss the boat on regulating AI. 

And SB 1047 could be influential on AI regulation well beyond California. For one thing the law would apply not just to AI companies located in California, but to any AI company whose models would be used to power services (such as chatbots) delivered to people in California. 

The bill could also influence other states looking to build a regulatory framework around developers of large AI models. California routinely takes the lead on new tech legislation, as the federal government increasingly proves too gridlocked to do it.

Public opinion polls have consistently shown strong support for regulating the largest of the large AI models. This may reflect a general anxiety about the development of software more intelligent than humans. It could also reflect a distrust that profit-driven tech companies can be counted on to ensure the safety of AI systems present and future.

The primary criticism from the tech world is that SB 1047 asks AI companies to anticipate and prepare for the future harms that might be caused by future AI systems—an unrealistic burden. 

AI pioneer and Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio responds to the industry’s objection this way in an X post last week: “But (1) AI is rapidly getting better at abilities that increase the likelihood of these risks, and (2) We should not wait for a major catastrophe before protecting the public.”

In late August, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance told a crowd of union firefighters that he and his running mate, Donald Trump, are “the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history.” Trump has long claimed to champion working Americans, and Vance even walked a picket line. The Republican Party appeared to try to cozy up further to unions when it had Teamsters President Sean O’Brien speak at its national convention in July.

But those public stances and declarations stand in stark contrast with the blueprint for what Republicans want to do if and when they retake the White House. Project 2025 is an almost 900-page document laying out an agenda for the next Republican president in detail, and it lists a multitude of priorities that would, if enacted, harm workers’ pay, safety, and ability to organize. Taken as a whole, the priorities the authors describe are “so unbelievably anti-union, anti-worker, anti-anybody but corporate interests,” said Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. 

When asked for an interview about the labor-related provisions, a spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, declined, saying, “Our chapter on that topic clearly lays out our suggested policies.” Project 2025 claims that “American workers lack a meaningful voice in today’s workplace” and advocates for restoring “family-supporting jobs as the centerpiece of the American economy.” But to solve these issues, it attacks a “massive administrative state” and “woke nonsense” while promoting “flexibility” and “experimentation” in the laws that enshrine bedrock protections.

The spokesperson also added, “Project 2025 does not speak for President Trump or his campaign.” Trump has also recently distanced himself from the document, although at least 140 people who worked for him were involved in crafting it and Vance wrote a foreword for an upcoming book by its main architect. In 2022 Trump said Heritage was “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

The document is also full of numerous labor-related ideas long espoused by the Republican Party, including many that bubbled up during the Trump administration. Even so, the laundry list of priorities would harm large numbers of workers if enacted, experts said. It’s still “shocking when you look at it compiled in its entirety,” said Lynn Rhinehart, senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s not new, but it is radical.”

Below is a list of 10 proposals from Project 2025 that labor experts say will harm working people.

1. Restricting Access to Overtime Pay

Project 2025’s proposed changes to overtime would slash workers’ paychecks, blocking many from qualifying while introducing loopholes that would erase the time-and-a-half they’re due after working 40 hours, experts said. Project 2025 calls for rolling back the Biden administration rule that raised the salary threshold to $58,656 and expanded the protection to 4.3 million more workers. Project 2025 calls for returning to the Trump-era threshold, which would mean millions fewer workers would be eligible for overtime.

Another proposal to let employers calculate overtime over two or four weeks instead of one would significantly reduce workers’ earnings. “There’s no math where workers get paid more under this policy,” said Aaron Sojourner, senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. It also calls for letting workers trade their overtime pay for paid time off, an idea Republicans have pushed since at least 2013. While the policy is marketed as offering greater flexibility, it does not create a new leave benefit. “It’s deceitful,” Rhinehart said.

2. Eroding Workplace Safety

Project 2025 seeks to weaken workplace safety standards for all Americans, including teenagers. The document states, “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs.” It calls on the Department of Labor to allow teenagers to work in these jobs with “proper training and parental consent.” It is “saying they want children to be less safe,” said Janelle Jones, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “That is just a shocking thing to say.” And yet it’s one that hearkens back to former President Ronald Reagan’s administration, which proposed rolling back child labor protections.

It also calls for exempting small businesses, as well as first-time and “non-willful” violators, from Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines, and to only focus safety inspections on “egregious offenders.” OSHA is already under-resourced and understaffed. Its maximum fines often amount to a slap on the wrist—$161,323 at the very most—even if a worker is severely injured or killed. In 2022, nearly 5,500 people were killed on the job and another 120,000 are estimated to have died from an illness contracted at work.

3. Allowing States to Sidestep Worker Protections

A push to excuse states from federal labor laws could lower wages, weaken union rights and even roll back child labor standards—all in the name of what Project 2025 authors call “experimentation.” States that secured waivers from federal labor law, under their proposal, would have to ensure they do not “take away current rights held by workers or employees,” according to the document. But Rhinehart said that, without definitions, “the sky’s the limit” in terms of what worker protections states could seek to upend.

There’s already some indication of what they might try to do. Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee have all passed laws banning employers who voluntarily recognize unions from receiving state economic development funds. (Those laws could be struck down by a court because they are preempted by federal labor law, said Jennifer Sherer, acting director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network.) Since 2021, 31 states have introduced bills to weaken federal child labor laws. Five states don’t even have a minimum wage, while two have lower wages than $7.25 an hour, so the federal standard is the only way workers in those states are guaranteed at least $7.25 an hour.

4. Eliminating Public Sector Unions

The authors question “whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place,” calling on Congress to consider whether they are allowable.  These unions cover about a third of the public sector workforce, or 7 million people. Getting rid of them is “a super-radical idea,” Rhinehart said. And yet it, too, is an old idea; conservatives have long attacked them, from then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stripping most of them of collective bargaining rights to conservatives backing the attack on public sector union dues in the Supreme Court case Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

5. Stripping Protections From Misclassified Workers

Project 2025 calls for rolling back a Biden administration rule that makes it easier for Uber drivers and contracted-out janitors to secure employee status, and with it, essential workplace benefits. “The entire body of labor standards and labor rights is built on the foundation of employment,” said Sojourner. Employee status ensures unemployment pay, workers’ compensation, union rights, discrimination protection, minimum wage, and overtime pay, as well as oversight by OSHA. Eliminating the rule will allow corporations to treat far more workers who should be classified as employees as independent contractors, stripping them of these benefits.

6. Shielding Major Brands From Accountability for Labor Violations

Project 2025 also calls for rolling back a Biden administration rule that holds some large corporations responsible for the working conditions inside franchised or contracted-out operations. Weakening the so-called “joint employer” rule would kneecap union drives among workers employed by franchises of major brands like McDonald’s and KFC. It would also block their ability to hold those brands accountable for wage theft, harassment, and other violations of labor law.

7. Curtailing Workers’ Speech Rights 

One proposal would strip protections for any workers who discuss wages or complain about mistreatment—unless they complete the arduous process of forming a union. Under this provision, workers “can be fired just for the act of coming together and talking about something,” Block said. Eliminating what’s known as “protected concerted activity” is an idea that was pushed unsuccessfully by conservative groups in amicus briefs in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, the Supreme Court case that upheld arbitration agreements that bar class-action lawsuits. 

8. Making It Harder to Win Union Recognition

Project 2025 wants to do away with employers’ ability to voluntarily recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards in favor, a process commonly known as “card check.” This method offers a faster, easier way for workers to form an official union. “It’s called voluntary recognition for a reason,” said Rhinehart, emphasizing that no employer has to use it. Getting rid of it is “a very radical proposal to undermine organizing,” she said.

9. Denying Labor Rights to Employees at Small Business

The document calls for exempting small businesses from oversight by labor agencies and denying small business employees the protections of the National Labor Relations Board. Given that the median union bargaining unit is just 21 workers, this would “strip millions of workers of their organizing rights,” Rhinehart said. Proposals like this have been around “for decades,” she added.

10. Weakening Bedrock Legal Protections

The document proposes allowing unions to negotiate over existing workplace laws—such as the minimum wage and health and safety protections—instead of treating them as fixed standards. It “would put unions and workers in the position of having to bargain to hold onto their statutory rights,” Rhinehart said, sapping their ability to fight for things above and beyond those floors.

Even if there are labor rights that the agenda doesn’t specifically undo, its other proposals undermine them. The early chapters of Project 2025 call for firing many career civil servants who enforce regulations, including those that protect workers, politicizing their jobs. The authors call on the next president to fire National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo “on Day One,” someone who has overseen some of the most ambitious expansions of workers’ organizing rights in decades. It argues that the budgets for labor agencies should be significantly reduced, and Project 2025 proposes a hiring freeze for federal career officials. 

Without enough manpower and financial resources, these agencies can’t enforce workers’ rights. “Even the regulations and statutes that are on the books that they don’t want to roll back almost become a dead letter,” Block noted. “The robustness of your rights are only as good as the ability of federal agencies to stick up for you.”

Under Project 2025’s agenda, “working people are really just on their own,” she added, while corporations “can pretty much do anything they want.”

This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.

OpenAI announced on Tuesday it will begin gradually rolling out its Advanced Voice Mode to anybody with a ChatGPT Plus or Teams subscription.

Advanced Voice Mode lets you speak your prompts to ChatGPT and get responses in a natural-sounding voice. The bot also lets you interrupt it and, OpenAI says, can sense and respond to your emotions. 

Within the ChatGPT app, the voice mode is enabled by tapping an audio button next to the message input window. A pop-up message will show up next to that audio button when Plus and Teams users first get access to Advanced Voice Mode. The spoken answers generated by the voice mode are also presented as text. 

OpenAI says it’s also adding five new voices to go with the four voices that were available in the alpha version of the voice mode. Recent reports suggest OpenAI is now seeking $6.5 billion in additional venture capital at a valuation of $150 billion (it was valued at around $86 billion back in February), along with $5 billion in debt financing. The company has already raised an estimated $13.5 billion.

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance will face off next week in the only scheduled U.S. vice presidential debate, a chance for each man to reinforce his running mate’s message to voters just weeks before the November 5 election.

Here are some details about the event:

When and where is the debate?

The 90-minute debate, hosted by CBS News, will take place on October 1 at 9 p.m. ET (01:00 GMT on October 2) in New York City, a Democratic stronghold that is the former home of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate running against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Who are the moderators?

The debate will take place at the CBS Broadcast Center and be moderated by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell and Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan.

How can you watch the debate?

The event will be broadcast on the CBS network and live streamed on all platforms where CBS News 24/7 and Paramount+ are available. CBS said it will also be made available to simulcast.

The September 10 presidential debate between Harris and Trump on ABC News drew 67 million television viewers.

What are the ground rules?

The ground rules for the debate are not yet public. At the September presidential debate, the candidates’ microphones were muted when it was not their turn to speak, and there was no studio audience.

What to expect from Walz?

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, will likely use his “regular guy” reputation to try to appeal to voters, including some independents, who view Harris, a former senator from California, as too liberal.

The 60-year-old Walz is a former congressman who won elections in a Republican-leaning district before becoming governor.

As governor, he has pushed a progressive agenda including free school meals, tax cuts for the middle class, and expanded paid leave for Minnesota workers.

Walz will likely try to needle Vance, as Harris did successfully in her debate with Trump. Walz has questioned Vance’s Midwestern credentials and derided his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy for its depiction of rural America.

“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community,” Walz said at his first rally as Harris’s vice presidential pick. “Come on! That’s not what Middle America is.”

Walz, also a former high school teacher and football coach, has dismissed Trump and Vance as “creepy and, yes, weird,”—a takedown that spread widely among Democrats.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate has linked Vance to a set of conservative policy proposals known as Project 2025, from which Trump has tried to distance himself.

What to expect from Vance

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, will have to work hard not to be on the defensive throughout the debate if Walz employs Harris’s debate strategy.

Vance, 40, likely will face questions about his inflammatory rhetoric and could punch back with his typical combative style.

He has been criticized for referring to Harris and other Democrats in 2021 as a “bunch of childless cat ladies,” and more recently, for spreading false claims that Haitian migrants in the Ohio city of Springfield were eating pets.

He has also claimed without evidence that the suspect in the latest assassination attempt against Trump was acting on Democrats’ inflammatory language.

“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that . . . no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months,” said Vance in comments that drew a rebuke from the White House.

On the campaign trail, Vance has portrayed Walz and Harris as radical liberals.

He also has questioned Walz’s depictions of his military record and his family’s fertility struggles.

Vance, who served in the Marine Corps and was a public affairs officer during a six-month stint in Iraq, has accused Walz of leaving the Army National Guard to avoid getting deployed to Iraq and of falsely suggesting he served in combat.

Walz, who served in the Guard for 24 years, retired to run for Congress. He has defended his record, but the Harris campaign has acknowledged he misspoke in a 2018 video in which he referenced “weapons of war that I carried into war.” Walz never served in a combat zone.

—Doina Chiacu, Reuters

The U.S. Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, alleging that the financial services behemoth uses its size and dominance to stifle competition in the debit card market, costing consumers and businesses billions of dollars.

The complaint filed Tuesday says Visa penalizes merchants and banks who don’t use Visa’s own payment-processing technology to process debit transactions, even though alternatives exist. Visa earns an incremental fee from every transaction processed on its network.

According to the DOJ’s complaint, 60% of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa’s debit network, allowing it to charge over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions.

“We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a statement. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing—but the price of nearly everything.”

The Biden administration has aggressively gone after U.S. companies that it says act like middlemen, such as Ticketmaster parent Live Nation and the real estate software company RealPage, accusing them of burdening Americans with nonsensical fees and anticompetitive behavior. The administration has also brought charges of monopolistic behavior against technology giants such as Apple and Google.

According to the DOJ complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Visa leverages the vast number of transactions on its network to impose volume commitments on merchants and their banks, as well as on financial institutions that issue debit cards. That makes it difficult for merchants to use alternatives, such as lower-cost or smaller-payment processors, instead of Visa’s payment-processing technology, without incurring what DOJ described as “disloyalty penalties” from Visa.

The DOJ said Visa also stifled competition by paying to enter into partnership agreements with potential competitors.

In 2020, the DOJ sued to block the company’s $5.3 billion purchase of financial technology startup Plaid, calling it a monopolistic takeover of a potential competitor to Visa’s ubiquitous payments network. That acquisition was later called off.

Visa previously disclosed the Justice Department was investigating the company in 2021, saying in a regulatory filing it was cooperating with a DOJ investigation into its debit practices.

Since the pandemic, more consumers globally have been shopping online for goods and services, which has translated into more revenue for Visa in the form of fees. Even traditionally cash-heavy businesses like bars, barbers, and coffee shops have started accepting credit or debit cards as a form of payment, often via smartphones.

Visa processed $3.325 trillion in transactions on its network during the quarter ended June 30, up 7.4% from a year earlier. U.S. payments grew by 5.1%, which is faster than U.S. economic growth.

Visa, based in San Francisco, did not immediately have a comment.

—Mae Anderson, Associated Press business writer

I’ve worked in AI for 13 years and I’ve encountered a lot of people worried about it. In my opinion, they are worried about the wrong thing. But their worries generally fall into two categories:

1. Killer robots: When are they going to be here? Just how killer will they be? Do we stand a chance against them?
2. Superintelligence: An all-seeing hive mind (cameras and any internet connected device are its “eyes and ears”) that can make connections and predictions that are quite literally beyond our comprehension. This is adjacent to the killer robots. For example, the Terminator was a killer robot sent back in time to kill someone by Skynet, a futuristic program/superintelligence. As another example of superintelligence in pop culture, the show Person of Interest has an omniscient computer that sees all and can predict the future beyond our comprehension.

I do not find either of these worries to be of particular interest because we have no reason to believe that machines will be aggressive. Why apply humanity’s worst traits to machines? They are definitely not us. But beyond that we cannot really come close to comprehending what a superintelligence would think like. It would probably be closer to what many would think of as a god than a human.

While superintelligence and robots aren’t here yet, here’s what I believe you should be concerned about right now.

AI in law enforcement

Argentina intends to, among other things, predict future crime using AI. On the surface this sounds fantastic. Computers help us optimize resources all the time. Baltimore used technology like ShotSpotter which instantaneously identifies the location from where a shot is fired to as part of a modern approach to reduce crime. This is a positive development but I am worried about a darker near future. We have a sex offender registry for concerned parents. What if someone hasn’t committed a crime yet, but an AI program finds that they are 80% likely to be a sex offender? Would that person perhaps start losing some of their constitutional rights?

No doubt we live in a scary world. But are we ready to deal with the implications of highly likely criminals? And before you answer too quickly, would you be prepared for a loved one’s life to change if a computer determines there’s probability they will do something wrong, even if they haven’t yet? How soon could we be headed this way?

Social credit score

There was an episode of Black Mirror where a woman had to raise her social score to live in the best apartments, and get flight and rental car privileges. The woman was rated by other people after every interaction. Imagine a future where you are trying to walk through an automated door to your favorite store and your face is scanned and you find out that you are not permitted entry into that store anymore. Sorry to inform you that this is not just an episode of Black Mirror. There is already a similar program in China that human rights groups have condemned. In one instance an attorney was not allowed to purchase a plane ticket, as a court determined his apology for an action was “insincere.”

Deepfakes

Deepfakes could also present problems for society. In Hong Kong, scammers walked away with more than $25 million after they created an entire deepfake virtual meeting where all participants except for the victim were fabricated images and voices of real people. The scammers used publicly available images and audio to create the deepfakes of the employees including a deepfake of the company’s CFO.

In the future it could get much scarier. What happens if you get a call from “your mother” saying there is an emergency where funds are needed. Or you think you saw a politician say something to you but it was an AI video. That doesn’t even get into potential interactions with real robots or cyborgs that haven’t quite reached superintelligence but could certainly fool you.

AI is already transforming our world in ways that we need to pay attention to now. While the fear of killer robots and superintelligence captures our imaginations, these are not the immediate threats we face. The real concern is how AI is being applied today—predicting crimes before they happen, determining who is “worthy” in a social credit system, and fabricating entire virtual realities through deepfakes. These developments raise serious ethical and societal questions.

Are we ready to live in a world where a machine’s probability scores could determine our freedom, our social standing, or even our trust in reality?

As we push forward with AI advancements, it’s crucial to ensure that we are thoughtful and deliberate in how we use this technology, balancing innovation with the values and rights that define us as a society. The future of AI isn’t about distant dystopias—it’s already here, and how we choose to navigate it will shape the world we live in tomorrow.

George Kailas is CEO at Prospero.Ai.

It turns out Spiced Coke is not It.

In the latest battle for consumers in the soft drink wars, Coca-Cola said it will phase out its newest flavor, Coca-Cola Spiced, after just six months. But it’s also promising to release an exciting new flavor next year.

“We’re always looking at what our consumers like and adjusting our range of products,” a Coca-Cola spokesperson confirmed to Fast Company. “As part of this strategy, we’re planning to phase out Coca-Cola Spiced to introduce an exciting new flavor in 2025.”

The spiced drink, a mix of classic Coke, with raspberry and spiced flavors, was a bid for younger consumers at a time when people, especially Gen Z, are drinking less soda, opting instead for energy drinks or healthier alternatives like seltzer and flavored water.

“We know consumers are more and more willing to experiment with new and unique flavors,” said Sue Lynne Cha, the company’s vice president of marketing for North America, in a company statement.

Coca-Cola Spiced hit shelves in February 2024, touted as the beverage company’s first “permanent” new drink to launch in North America since 2020. It comes in two varieties: regular and zero sugar.

According to the beverage giant, Coca‑Cola Spiced demonstrated the company’s accelerated approach to consumer-centric innovation, going from idea to shelf in record time. 

“Product development for us normally takes about 12 months, but this was done in seven weeks,” said Shakir Moin, chief of marketing for North America, in a statement. “We’re disrupting our ways of working . . . The mindset is that we’re a 137-year-old startup focused on bolder, faster, fewer innovations that delight consumers and create growth for the company.”

While betting on Coca-Cola Spiced might have been a risky move for Coke, its strong second-quarter earnings beat expectations, with net revenue up 2.9%. The beverage giant continues to remain No. 1 in the cola wars over both Pepsi and Dr. Pepper, according to Beverage Digest.

The vast majority of new energy capacity installed in the United States this year will be sustainable, primarily solar and storage. This is not a surprise given the low cost of installing new equipment relative to non-sustainable sources—as well as the environmental imperative that sometimes results in climate policy favorable to renewables.

The twin economic and environmental motivations to switch to sustainable energy are powerful on their own. But there are three other less discussed benefits to sustainable energy which further the argument to expedite the transition.

#1 Technical debt

With or without state intervention, sustainable technologies like batteries, solar, heat pumps, and electric motors will be dominant within two decades. The reason is tautological: Sustainable technology is less wasteful.

Let’s compare gas and electric cars. Gasoline is energy intensive to drill, refine, and transport to a station before it can be pumped into a vehicle. In fact, more than 20% of a car’s carbon cost can be attributed to “well-to-tank” emissions. Once it’s in your car, upwards of 70% of energy released from the fuel is lost to heat. All in all, more than 85% of the energy it takes to power an internal combustion engine does not propel the vehicle forward.

Compare the well-to-tank emissions of gasoline to “line loss” (the amount of electric energy lost in transit from a generation facility to its point of use), which averages about 5% in the United States. Once charged, an EV’s battery propels the car forward with 87% efficiency.

In other words, electric cars can go 550% further with the same amount of energy as a gas car. These dramatic improvements are common in the new generation of sustainable technologies.

A country doing nothing to hasten adoption of advanced technologies will eventually be laden with obsolete infrastructure while its competitors bound ahead. It’s is easier to evolve proven technologies, to do so right before a step change creates a massive liability.

#2 Decentralization

Sustainable energy sources are “distributed,” meaning that they are less dependent on centralized nodes like large power plants. Small wind and solar farms that generate power close to where it is consumed increase economic resilience compared to legacy power generation.

A centralized system is more unwieldy and expensive. It requires miles of electrical line that are vulnerable to damage.

With notable exceptions, wealthy countries can manage this risk. But globally, power outages from centralized systems are chronic, and worsen with higher and more volatile peak demand due to climate change.

In my work financing solar projects across the Global South via Renewables.org, this is doubly important. In regions where we support solar construction, the power grids are so unstable that blackouts are a near daily occurrence, making it difficult for industrial economies there to form efficiently. Modest commercial solar installations not only save money, they allow business to continue when blackouts occur.

By decentralizing energy production, distributed generation reduces risk of outages, costs, and complexity inherent to a massive regional gird. This creates stability for existing systems and reduces the capital intensity of new ones in emerging markets. Both in economically developed countries, and in regions like the ones we address at Renewables.org, distributed energy has reverberating positive effects.

#3 Supply chain stability

Anti-solar advocates have a mantra that solar is “intermittent”—it only creates energy in the daytime, and with seasonal and weather variations. Conversely, they say nuclear, coal, and gas power plants provide “base load,” meaning that they can generate the same amount of power in all conditions.

This is supposedly the Achilles heel of sustainable power since society couldn’t endure a turbulent power grid. Does this rhetoric match reality?

Building and maintaining non-renewable power stations rely on the handful of multinational engineering conglomerates capable of designing, financing, and operating them. This concentration creates a silent risk that can cause shocks to international energy systems with a foundation of supposedly base load energy.

For example, improperly engineered concrete used in most of France’s nuclear reactors forced them to close 32 of their 56 facilities for most of 2022. Prices jumped as France went from a net energy exporter to an importer.

In this context, it is easy to see how empty the promise of base load really is. The large energy generation facilities’ complexity, plus volatility in commodities markets, mean the predictable intermittency of solar is replaced by macro risks that can send entire economies into a tailspin.

Solar requires only one input, sunlight, which is free and abundant. Solar generation facilities are built by an ecosystem of module manufacturers, operators, construction companies, and other suppliers. Systemic issues like supply chain or engineering flaws are unlikely—which accounts for its success among institutional investors and policy circles.

As economies acclimate to the constraints of solar and renewables, the idea of base load will become less relevant. Demand for electricity will orient around peak solar production hours, while batteries will ease supply strain in off-peak hours. This system will be cheaper than one dependent on so-called polluting base load energy, and it will eliminate the supply risks that centralized systems create.

Don’t delay the inevitable

Transitioning from an incumbent system is often ill advised and cost prohibitive. But at a certain point the advantages of a new paradigm hits a critical mass where its advantages become so great that delay is certain to cause competitive disadvantages that are difficult to recover from.

Countries and organizations that adopt sustainable technology will experience a virtuous cycle—efficiency, stability, reduced geopolitical risks, and a more predictable energy supply. Conversely, those who forestall the transition by appeasing advocates legacy energy infrastructure will find themselves saddled with a more fragile, more expensive, and riskier system.

Lassor Feasley is CEO of Renewables.org

Teenagers have found a new way to amuse themselves: Stealing people’s backpack zippers. Not just any zippers, specifically Nike Elite backpack zippers. Why? You’ll have to ask a teenage boy that one. 

TikTokers are going viral on the platform for either showing their collection of removable zippers or mourning their now-zipperless backpacks. While it’s not clear exactly where the trend originated, TikToker @kyrieirvingishimm posted one of the earliest viral videos of the trend, showing off several Nike bag zippers that he allegedly stole, captioning the post, “I’m from NYC. Do not leave your Nike Elite lackin around me.”

The trend has since spread like wildfire (as bizarre trends usually do) with the help of social media, now racking up more than 26 million related posts on TikTok. Thousands of videos are up under such tags as #NikeElite and #zipper, with teens showing off their collections. What do participants do with these zippers? Attach them to their own backpacks or shoes to wear as a trophy and hope they don’t become a victim of their own game. 

One video with 835,000 views, captioned “day four of snatching people’s Nike elite zippers,” shows a backpack with at least 15 zippers of all different colors hooked on. Last week, user @sammvovk put up a post showing a store display of the Nike Elite bags with every pocket opened to search for the coveted zippers. “Nah, y’all taking this trend way too seriously,” he wrote. 

With no Nike Elite backpack owner safe, people have taken to posting tutorials on TikTok to help others protect their zippers. One TikToker showed how looping the zipper tie around a few times makes it trickier to remove, giving the backpack owner time to realize and confront the thief red-handed.

On a Reddit thread someone also suggested, “Put the tags on the front of your bag and if you leave your bag take them off and bring them with you that’s what I do to keep mine safe.” 

However, for some, the advice came too late. “Someone at my school took 2 of my water bottles and will only give them back if I give him 15 zippers,” wrote one zipperless Reddit user. Stay safe out there, friends.

The chief executive over Georgia’s two booming seaports said Tuesday that a strike next week by dockworkers across the U.S. East and Gulf coasts appears likely, though he’s hopeful the resulting shutdown would last only a few days.

“We should probably expect there to be a work stoppage and we shouldn’t get surprised if there is one,” Griff Lynch, CEO of the Georgia Ports Authority, told the Associated Press in an interview. “The question is: How long?”

U.S. ports from Maine to Texas are preparing for a potential shutdown in a week, when the union representing 45,000 dockworkers in that region has threatened to strike starting October 1. That’s when the contract expires between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports. Negotiations on a new contract halted in June.

A strike would shut down 36 ports that handle roughly half the nations’ cargo from ships. Lynch oversees two of the busiest in Georgia. The Port of Savannah ranks No. 4 in the U.S. for container cargo that includes retail goods ranging from consumer electronics to frozen chickens. The Port of Brunswick is America’s second-busiest for automobiles.

Lynch said he’s holding out hope that a strike can be averted, though he added: “The stark reality is they are not talking right now.” Represented by the maritime alliance, the Georgia Ports Authority has no direct role in negotiating.

As for how long a strike might last, “no one really knows for sure,” said Lynch, Georgia’s top ports executive since 2016 and a three-decade veteran of the maritime industry. “I would think we should expect four to five days, and hopefully not beyond that.”

Businesses have been preparing for a potential strike for months, importing extra inventory to fill their warehouses. Lynch said that’s one reason container volumes in Savannah increased 13.7% in July and August compared to the same period a year ago.

Georgia dockworkers are putting in extra hours trying to ensure ships get unloaded and return to sea before next Tuesday’s deadline. Truck gates at the Port of Savannah, normally closed on Sundays, will be open throughout this weekend.

At the Georgia Ports Authority’s monthly board meeting Tuesday, Lynch praised the roughly 2,000 union workers responsible for loading and unloading ships in Savannah and Brunswick, saying “they have done great work” ahead of a possible strike. He said the ports would keep operating until the last minute.

“We’re seeing phenomenal productivity out of them right now,” he said. “You wouldn’t know this was going to happen if you hadn’t been told.”

There hasn’t been a national longshoremen’s strike in the U.S. since 1977. Experts say a strike of even a few weeks probably wouldn’t result in any major shortages of retail goods, though it would still cause disruptions as shippers reroute cargo to West Coast ports. Lynch and other experts say every day of a port strike could take up to a week to clear up once union workers return to their jobs.

A prolonged strike would almost certainly hurt the U.S. economy.

The maritime alliance said Monday it has been contacted by the U.S. Labor Department and is open to working with federal mediators. The union’s president, Harold Daggett, said in a statement his members are ready to strike over what he called an unacceptable “low-ball wage package.”

“We’re hopeful that they’ll get it worked out,” said Kent Fountain, the Georgia Ports Authority’s board chairman. “But if not, we’re going to do everything we can to make it as seamless as possible and as easy as it could possibly be on our customers and team members.”

—Russ Bynum, AP

Leading supply chain organizations are applying orchestration strategies to create opportunities to increase resource utilization, reduce costs, and enable faster and more efficient response to the many events that can disrupt operations on a given day. Just as a band leader or conductor brings together the talents of various musicians into a cohesive unit, orchestration strategies enable disparate supply chain resources to work together to minimize the costs and maximize the speed of supply chain operations.

Within the walls of the warehouse or distribution center, this means continuously coordinating and balancing human, robotic, and automated resources to optimize operations. Across the supply chain, the same strategies can increase speed, efficiency, and productivity across warehousing, packaging, and transportation.

At DHL Supply Chain, we have established a leadership position in supply chain digitalization. Since 2018, we have deployed more than 7,200 technology projects across our network, including thousands of robots that work collaboratively with our people. Because of our scale, we can work closely with multiple robotics companies to ensure their solutions deliver value in the supply chain and have standardized deployment processes for the leading robotic and automation platforms.

The next phase of this journey is building on our strengths in visibility, advanced analytics, and robotics and automation to do for orchestration what we have done for digitalization. This phase of the journey begins with data.

ENABLING DATA ACCESSIBILITY AND VISIBILITY

In a recent post on scaling AI, McKinsey noted that, “Managing data remains one of the main barriers to value creation.” The same can be said for orchestration.

Data that enables orchestration must be accessible, trustworthy and digestible and that is not the natural state of supply chain data. Without access to the right data in the right form at the right time, humans and systems don’t have the visibility and insight they need to make the autonomous decisions effective orchestration requires.

DHL Supply Chain first addressed this challenge through the introduction of our MySupplyChain visibility platform. MySupplyChain integrates data from warehouse and transportation applications to enable end-to-end, centralized supply chain visibility. It also provides a platform for the reporting and analytics that enable optimization. However, easily replicating analytics solutions across sites necessitates a level of data standardization that goes beyond what is required for visibility.

That challenge has been addressed through the development of a family of standardized “data products” that simplify deployment of advanced analytics and orchestration.

A data product is essentially an encapsulated piece of data that has been transformed, processed, and curated to make it easily usable by teams and individuals at any site and at various levels of an organization. Just as you don’t need to be an automotive engineer to drive a car you’ve never driven before, you shouldn’t need to be a data scientist to access and use supply chain data. Data products unlock the power of data for the people and systems that are best positioned to use that data to effect operations.

ADVANCING ANALYTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The foundational work done on visibility and data products enables accelerated deployment of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to optimize and orchestrate supply chain operations.

While generative AI has dominated the technology landscape since the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, other forms of AI—most notably machine learning—also have significant potential for use in the supply chain and are already delivering meaningful results today.

At DHL Supply Chain, for example, we have developed and commercialized a machine learning algorithm that reduces the labor required to ensure inventory accuracy while simultaneously minimizing shortages that frustrate customers and lead to lost sales. Similarly, we are optimizing transportation resources by using AI to find loads for trailers that would otherwise be returning from deliveries empty.

Generative AI will certainly play a role in the supply chain, and we are advancing multiple generative AI (genAI) products through our development pipeline. But other forms of AI are already delivering value, and the data products described previously allow accelerated deployment of these solutions across our network.

CONNECTING SYSTEMS

Because we have been aggressive in deploying robotics at our sites, we have several warehouses today that rely on multiple robotic systems, often from different vendors, making speed of integration and connectivity across systems priorities as we advance orchestration.

To support that objective, we are adopting an automation platform that enables fast and seamless integration of various automation and robotic technologies with minimal customization. The platform also aggregates and normalizes data across technologies and vendors, which simplifies monitoring and enables interoperability. When integrated with data from labor management and other systems, this allows potential bottlenecks in processes to be identified proactively and resources—whether human or robotic—deployed quickly to keep products moving.

DOING MORE WITH LESS

Orchestration represents the future of supply chain management, but it can only happen when the building blocks of visibility, analytics, and connectivity are in place. DHL Supply Chain has invested significant resources in these building blocks—and the data they rely on—and is now leveraging these investments to implement orchestration strategies for our customers that enhance service levels, increase efficiency, and reduce costs. To learn more, visit dhl.com/allin.

Union leaders threatened strikes and warned Volkswagen on Wednesday against an “historic mistake” as the two sides started pay talks that will likely determine how aggressively Europe’s biggest automaker pursues layoffs and plant closures in Germany.

Tensions at the carmaking giant are running high as the spectre of factory closures, which would be a first for the company in Germany, has set it on a collision course with the IG Metall union, which has vowed to fight any such moves.

IG Metall must also negotiate new labour deals for the core VW brand’s 130,000 workers in Germany, after the group earlier this month ended agreements that had safeguarded employment at six of its plants in western Germany since the mid-1990s.

Worker representatives have vowed to wage a bitter resistance against job cuts, blaming top management and the government’s faltering support for Volkswagen’s ills.

IG Metall threatened strikes, which are possible from the start of December, and insisted on a 7% pay rise.

“A good shepherd looks after his sheep and keeps them together. Volkswagen’s shepherd is threatening to rip the skin off their bodies and then throw them out in a hurricane,” Thorsten Groeger, IG Metall’s chief negotiator with Volkswagen, told workers outside the talks venue in Hanover.

Works council chief Daniela Cavallo went back into Volkswagen’s 87-year history, referencing the expropriation of trade union funds during the Third Reich.

“With an average interest rate, this capital, which the Nazis had robbed from the labour movement at the time, would have generated billions of euros over the decades. This money, our money, is in the Volkswagen Group today,” she said.

She stressed a preparedness to compromise, but added that it was now up to management to find a solution.

Some workers held up signs saying “Shortage of skilled workers on the board — we are looking for experts.”

Volkswagen argues that high energy and labour costs in Germany, Europe’s top economy, put it at a disadvantage to European peers as well as Chinese rivals that have set their sights on a big slice of the region’s electric vehicle market.

‘Falling behind’

Reinforcing that message at the start of the talks, the VW brand’s personnel chief said the division must cut costs to stay competitive.

“Germany is falling behind the competition. Our core brand Volkswagen is particularly affected by this. International competition is threatening to overtake us,” Arne Meiswinkel said. “We must work together to restructure our company. The situation is serious.”

The task was to find viable solutions, said Meiswinkel, the mention of whose name was greeted with boos during Groeger’s speech.

The talks are taking place at Schloss Herrenhausen, a 19th century residence for Hanoverian royalty.

They come as Germany’s industry as a whole is struggling with high costs, labour shortages and rising competition, leading heavyweights including BASF and Thyssenkrupp to consider paring back their activities.

Other German automakers are feeling the pain too, with Mercedes-Benz and BMW cutting their profit forecasts in recent weeks due to weak demand in China.

The standoff has worried Germany’s coalition government, which is already struggling to lift economic growth and its own popularity ahead of federal elections next year.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck said during a factory visit last week that he wanted to help Volkswagen through a period of cost-cutting without having to resort to site closures, but said there were limits.

Groeger acknowledged the company faced major challenges but said Volkswagen’s success over decades was based on solving problems with employees, not confrontation.

“To first give notice — to smash the china and then wonder at the mess: this is a blatant taboo break — and a historic mistake. Plus it could also cost a lot of money,” he said.

Volkswagen’s management “should circle one day in their calendars in bold: December 1st. That’s not just when the first window on the Advent calendar will be opened. But strikes are possible from 00:01 on this day,” Groeger said.

—Christina Amann and Christoph Steitz, Reuters

Starting your brand is the easy part; then comes the legwork, maintaining relevancy, and looking for those breakthrough moments. In a flooded market and a fractured attention economy, it can be difficult to keep eyes on your business. 

At the Fast Company Innovation Festival, three industry leaders gave their tips for gaining recognition. The consensus: Maintaining a successful brand is so much more than having a good product. You have to situate yourself in the cultural conversation; from there, people will start paying attention. 

Melissa Ben-Ishay, cofounder and CEO of Baked by Melissa, is most famous for her bite-sized cupcakes. For a younger generation, though, Ben-Ishay is likely most known for her viral TikTok recipes. That internet visibility is by design.

“I think brands and social media are synonymous today,” Ben-Ishay said. “When I posted a salad that got 40 million views, I immediately saw an opportunity to continue to build an audience that comes to me for something, [to] create that genuine connection. Then you could do whatever you want. But nobody responds well to being sold to, not on social media, because it’s where they’re going to rest.”

Amanda E/J Morrison, cofounder and CEO of Julie Products, agrees with the value of social media for a breakthrough. She’s used platforms like TikTok, as well as college campus visits, to make her reproductive pharmaceutical company more approachable. 

“You can never assume that anyone, just because they have a uterus, understands their body,” Morrison says. “How do I make that conversation culturally relevant? How do I make that conversation sometimes funny? We use a lot of dark humor and a lot of comedy writers. How do I make it so that I can get an 18-year-old’s attention when they are glued to their phone? I really need them to pay attention to this.”

Morrison points to some of the brands she’s collaborated with: Alfred Coffee, OGBFF, and the Clermont Twins. For some, these names are unrecognizable; for the young audience that Julie Products is trying to reach, these are vital entry points. 

Online fame for brands is rarely incidental. Yoon Ahn, cofounder of Ambush and global curator for Nike Women’s, knows the key to relevancy is staying up-to-date with your audience’s desires. Her recent viral blip, designing Naomi Osaka’s outfit for the U.S. Open, was a testament to her broader savvy. 

“I understand what could tick that crowd and what will make people tune in,” Ahn says. “It’s really about understanding your audience.” 

No matter how many TikToks a brand pumps out, or how many collaborations a brand queues up, a breakthrough is the product of continued craft: “As long as we stay true to our craft, bring the genuineness to it, and if it hits at the right moment with the right alchemy, I think that’s when it will connect to consumers,” Ahn says.

It was only a matter of time until José Andrés launched a hotel brand. The renowned chef, restaurateur, and humanitarian has already mastered the hotel restaurant, with time-tested concepts like the Bazaar by José Andrés and Zaytinya landing in major hotels across the country. Now, Andrés will have a flag of his own. The Bazaar House by José Andrés is coming to Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 2027. 

“It’s an incredible feeling to influence the guest’s journey through their travels, be able to tell our stories, and bring people together around food and beverage in our hometown,” says Sam Bakhshandehpour, CEO of the José Andrés Group, which is based in D.C.

The 67-room luxury hotel, which will occupy 115,000 square feet, will feature a selection of Andrés’s restaurants, though exact concepts are still to be determined. It’ll include a wellness facility, events space, retail shops, and a penthouse-level private members’ club. The hotel’s design hasn’t been finalized either, but Bakhshandehpour promises an innovative brand in the style of Andrés’s beloved restaurants, starting with its name. 

Andres created The Bazaar concept more than 15 years ago for a different hotel brand, the upscale SLS, then owned by SBE Entertainment, where Bakhshandehpour would later spend time as CEO. The first Bazaar opened in the SLS Los Angeles in 2008. Almost immediately, the new restaurant brand eclipsed the hotel that housed it. People didn’t visit the SLS, Bakhshandehpour says, they visited “the Bazaar hotel.”

“Even back then,” he says, “The essence of the experience was the food and beverage and design outside of the rooms.” The restaurant name became so powerful, in fact, that Andrés bought full rights to it in 2018—a deal that Bakhshandehpour put together and participated in. 

Bakhshandehpour still believes that the restaurant makes the hotel. His appointment as president of the José Andrés in 2019 and elevation to CEO earlier this year was more than a signal to expect more hotel restaurant openings; it was a clear sign that the group would develop a hotel brand of its own, anchored by its iconic restaurants. 

“I don’t think this is that unnatural of an act for us, to evolve into branding the property, given the global brand recognition of what the [restaurant] experience is,” Bakhshandehpour says. 

In the past few years alone, Andrés’s restaurant group has partnered with a host of hotels, installing restaurants in properties operated by hospitality megabrands Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott. Last year, Andres opened the Bazaar in D.C.’s new Waldorf-Astoria. He’ll soon debut a new location of Mediterranean concept Zaytinya at the Shay, a Hyatt property in L.A. 

But perhaps no single hotel showcases the Andrés Group phenomenon better than the Ritz-Carlton New York NoMad, where the company operates four distinct concepts, including a Spain-meets-Japan twist on the Bazaar and a 50th-floor cocktail lounge called Nubeluz. The hotel even offers an exclusive “Tour de José,” a dine-around experience with stops for food and drinks in all four spaces for $395 per person.

Bakhshandehpour says that opening the Bazaar House is complementary to everything the company is doing. He describes the forthcoming D.C. hotel as the group’s “jewel box” in the restaurant group’s hometown. Renderings from development partner Thor Equities depict a large, modern space with plenty of street-facing real estate. 

The rooftop Bazaar Club, for members only, takes its inspiration from the private dining rooms in José Andrés restaurants. “We’re leaning into uniting people,”  Bakhshandehpour says, hoping to attract people whom he describes as thought leaders from around the world. 

 “If everyone disagrees on every topic that’s discussed in the members’ club, the hope is that they agree that they had an exceptional meal and a great glass of wine,” he says, “and they’ll walk away being able to see what’s more in common than their differences.” 

The hotel doesn’t have an operating partner, but it will. “I’m not looking to run a hotel,” Bakhshandehpour says. “We’re going to have conversations with all of our friends in the industry and figure out who makes the most sense and who’s excited about operating the inaugural Bazaar House by José Andrés.”

Yes, inaugural. Bakhshandehpour promises that the D.C. location will be the first, but not the only hotel from José Andrés Group. 

“Of course more will be coming,” Bakhshandehpour says. He declined to speculate on timing or future hotel locations, and insists he has no end game in sight beyond perfecting, and eventually replicating, the restaurant-driven hotel concept. 

“You don’t build to sell. You build for longevity,’ he says. “Literally, yesterday, José said to me, ‘Trends come and go, things change, but at the end of the day, if you deliver exceptional food, you will always win.’”  

For decades, video games have relied on scripted, stilted interactions with non-player characters to help shepherd gamers in their journeys. But as artificial intelligence technology improves, game studios are experimenting with generative AI to help build environments, assist game writers in crafting NPC dialogue and lend video games the improvisational spontaneity once reserved for table-top role-playing games.

In the multiplayer game “Retail Mage,” players help run a magical furniture store and assist customers in hopes of earning a five-star review. As a salesperson — and wizard — they can pick up and examine items or tell the system what they’d like to do with a product, such as deconstruct chairs for parts or tear a page from a book to write a note to a shopper.

A player’s interactions with the shop and NPCs around them — from gameplay mechanics to content and dialogue creation — are fueled by AI rather than a predetermined script to create more options for chatting and using objects in the shop.

“We believe generative AI can unlock a new kind of gameplay where the world is more responsive and more able to meet players at their creativity and the things that they come up with and the stories they want to tell inside a fantasy setting that we create for them,” said Michael Yichao, cofounder of Jam & Tea Studios, which created “Retail Mage.”

The typical NPC experience often leaves something to be desired. Pre-scripted interactions with someone meant to pass along a quest typically come with a handful of chatting options that lead to the same conclusion: players get the information they need and continue on. Game developers and AI companies say that by using generative AI tech, they aim to create a richer experience that allows for more nuanced relationships with the people and worlds that designers build.

Generative AI could also provide more opportunities for players to go off-script and create their own stories if designers can craft environments that feel more alive and can react to players’ choices in real-time.

Tech companies continue to develop AI for games, even as developers debate how, and whether, they’ll use AI in their products. Nvidia created its ACE technologies to bring so-called “digital humans” to life with generative AI. Inworld AI provides developers with a platform for generative NPC behavior and dialogue. Gaming company Ubisoft said last year that it uses Ghostwriter, an in-house AI tool, to help write some NPC dialogue without replacing the video game writer.

A report released by the Game Developers Conference in January found that nearly half of developers surveyed said generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace, with 31% saying they personally use those tools.
Developers at indie studios were most likely to use generative AI, with 37% reporting use the tech.

Still, roughly four out of five developers said they worry about the ethical use of AI. Carl Kwoh, Jam & Tea’s CEO, said AI should be used responsibly alongside creators to elevate stories — not to replace them.

“That’s always been the goal: How can we use this tool to create an experience that makes players more connected to each other?” said Kwoh, who is also one of the company’s founders. “They can tell stories that they couldn’t tell before.”

Using AI to provide NPCs with endless things to say is “definitely a perk,” Yichao said, but “content without meaning is just endless noise.” That’s why Jam & Tea uses AI — through Google’s Gemma 2 and their own servers in Amazon — to give NPCs the ability to do more than respond, he said. They can look for objects as they’re shopping or respond to other NPCs to add “more life and reactivity than a typically scripted encounter.”

“I’ve watched players turn our shopping experience into a bit of a dating sim as they flirt with customers and then NPCs come up with very realistic responses,” he said. “It’s been really fun to see the game react dynamically to what players bring to the table.”

Demonstrating a conversation with a NPC in the game “Mecha BREAK,” in which players battle war machines, Ike Nnole said that Nvidia has made its AI “humans” respond faster than they previously could by using small language models. Using Nvidia’s AI, players can interact with the mechanic, Martel, by asking her to do things like customize the color of a mech machine.

“Typically, a gamer would go through menus to do all this,” Nnole, a senior product marketing manager at Nvidia said. “Now it could be a much more interactive, much quicker experience.”

Artificial Agency, a Canadian AI company, built an engine that allows developers to bring AI into any part of their game — not only NPCs, but also companions and “overseer agents” that can steer a player towards content they’re missing. The AI can also create tutorials to teach players a skill that they are missing so they can have more fun in-game, the company said.

“One way we like to put it is putting a game designer on the shoulder of everyone as they’re playing the game,” said Alex Kearney, cofounder of Artificial Agency. The company’s AI engine can be integrated at any stage of the game development cycle, she said.

Brian Tanner, Artificial Agency’s CEO, said scripting every possible outcome of a game can be tedious and difficult to test. Their system allows designers to act more like directors, he said, by telling characters more about their motivation and background.

“These characters can improvise on the spot depending on what’s actually happening in the game,” Tanner said.

It’s easy to run into a game’s guardrails, Tanner said, where NPCs keep repeating the same phrase regardless of how players interact with them. But as AI continues to evolve, that will change, he added.

“It is truly going to feel like the world’s alive and like everything really reacts to exactly what’s happening,” he said. “That’s going to add tremendous realism.”

—Sarah Parvini, AP Technology Writer

Plastic is a fast-growing segment of U.S. municipal solid waste, and most of it ends up in the environment. Just 9% of plastic collected in municipal solid waste was recycled as of 2018, the most recent year for which national data is available. The rest was burned in waste-to-energy plants or buried in landfills.

Manufacturers assert that better recycling is the optimal way to reduce plastic pollution. But critics argue that the industry often exaggerates how readily items can actually be recycled. In September 2024, beverage company Keurig Dr Pepper was fined US$1.5 million for inaccurately claiming that its K-Cup coffee pods were recyclable after two large recycling companies said they could not process the cups. California is suing ExxonMobil, accusing the company of falsely promoting plastic products as recyclable.

Environmental law scholar Patrick Parenteau explains why claims about recyclability have confused consumers, and how forthcoming guidelines from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission may address this problem.

Why do manufacturers need guidance on what ‘recyclable’ means?

Stating that a product is recyclable means that it can be collected, separated or otherwise recovered from the waste stream for reuse or in the manufacture of other products. But defining exactly what that means is difficult for several reasons:

• Different U.S. states have different recycling regulations and guidelines, which can affect what is considered recyclable in a given location.
• The availability and quality of recycling infrastructure also varies from place to place. Even if a product technically is recyclable, a local recycling facility may not be able to accept it because its equipment can’t process it.
• If no market demand for the recycled material exists, recycling companies may be unlikely to accept it.

What is the Federal Trade Commission’s role?

Public concern about plastic pollution has skyrocketed in recent years. A 2020 survey found that globally, 91% of consumers were concerned about plastic waste.

Once plastic enters the environment, it can take 1,000 years or more to decompose, depending on environmental conditions. Exposure through ingestion, inhalation or in drinking water poses potential risks to human health and wildlife.

The Federal Trade Commission’s role is to protect the public from deceptive or unfair business practices and unfair methods of competition. Every year, it brings hundreds of cases against individuals and companies for violating consumer protection and competition laws. These cases can involve fraud, scams, identity theft, false advertising, privacy violations, anticompetitive behavior and more.

The FTC publishes references called the Green Guides, which are designed to help marketers avoid making environmental claims that mislead consumers. The guides were first issued in 1992 and were revised in 1996, 1998 and 2012. While the guides themselves are not enforceable, the commission can use them to prove that a claim is deceptive, in violation of federal law.

The guidance they provide includes:

• General principles that apply to all environmental marketing claims
• How consumers are likely to interpret claims, and how marketers can substantiate these claims
• How marketers can qualify their claims to avoid deceiving consumers

The agency monitors environmentally themed marketing for potentially deceptive claims and evaluates compliance with the FTC Act of 1914 by reference to the Green Guides. Marketing inconsistent with the Green Guides may be considered unfair or deceptive under Section 5 of the FTC Act.

Courts also refer to the Green Guides when they evaluate claims for false advertising in private litigation.

Currently, the Green Guides state that marketers should qualify claims that products are recyclable when recycling facilities are not available to at least 60% of consumers or communities where a product is sold.

How is the agency addressing recyclability claims?

The FTC is reviewing the Green Guides and issued a request for public comment on the guides in late 2022. In May 2023, the agency convened a workshop called Talking Trash at the FTC: Recycling Claims and the Green Guides.

This meeting focused on the 60% processing threshold for recyclability claims. It also addressed potential confusion created by the “chasing arrows” recycling symbol, which often identifies the type of plastic resin used in a product, using the numbers 1 through 7.

Many critics argue that consumers may see the symbol and assume that a product is recyclable, even though municipal recycling programs are not widely available for some types of resins. Other labels use a version of the symbol for products such as single-use grocery bags that aren’t accepted in most curbside recycling programs but can be dropped off at designated stores for recycling.

The FTC has sought public comments on specific characteristics that make products recyclable. It also has asked whether unqualified recyclability claims should be made when recycling facilities are available to a “substantial majority” of consumers or communities where the item is sold – even if the item is not ultimately recycled due to market demand, budgetary constraints or other factors.

What are companies and environmental advocates saying?

Organizations representing environmental interests, recycling businesses and the waste and packaging industries have offered numerous suggestions for updating the Green Guides. For example:

• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urged the FTC to increase its threshold for recyclability claims beyond the current 60% rate. The EPA said that products and packaging “should not be considered recyclable without strong end markets in which they can reliably be sold for a price higher than the cost of disposal.” It also recommended requiring companies’ recyclability claims to be reviewed and certified by outside experts.
• The Consumer Brands Association, which represents the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Plastics Industry Association and other commercial interests, called for more research into public understanding of environmental marketing claims. To help companies avoid making deceptive advertising claims, it urged the FTC to provide more detailed explanations, with examples of acceptable marketing.
• The Association of Plastic Recyclers encouraged the FTC to increase enforcement against deceptive unqualified claims of both recyclability and recycled content. It recommended providing stronger, more prescriptive guidance; publicizing specific examples from the marketplace of deceptive representations; and sending warning letters when companies appear to be making unsubstantiated claims. It also asked the FTC to maintain its current recyclability claim threshold at 60% and to update the Green Guides again within five years instead of 10.
• A coalition of environmental groups, including Greenpeace USA and the Center for Biological Diversity, urged the commission to codify the Green Guides into binding rules. They also argued that for goods that require in-store drop-off, companies should have to prove that processors can capture and recycle at least 75% of the material.

The FTC has not set a date for publishing a final version of the revised Green Guides. All eyes will be on the agency to see how far it is willing to go to police recycling claims by manufacturers in this $90 billion U.S. industry.

Patrick Parenteau is a professor of law emeritus at the Vermont Law & Graduate School.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.