Business Highlights: Advertisers flee X as Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy; Open AI ditches CEO
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IBM, EU and Lionsgate pull ads from Elon Musk’s X as concerns about antisemitism fuel backlash
Advertisers are fleeing social media platform X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content, hate speech on the site in general or billionaire owner Elon Musk’s own tweets endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. IBM said it stopped advertising on X after a report said its ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis. It said the same of ads from Apple, Oracle, NBCUniversal’s Bravo network and Comcast. The EU also said Friday that it’s pausing its advertising on X and other social media platforms, in part because of a surge in hate speech. Musk sparked outcry this week with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jews of hating white people. Separately, a spokesperson for Lionsgate says the entertainment company has also suspended advertising on X.
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ChatGPT-maker Open AI pushes out co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, says he wasn’t ‘consistently candid’
The board of ChatGPT-maker Open AI says it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and replaced him with an interim CEO. It says the move came after a review found Altman was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board. The company says the board lost confidence in Altman’s ability to continue leading OpenAI. An OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Altman’s alleged lack of candor was about. The company has appointed Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, to an interim CEO role effective immediately. Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015.
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Union workers at Stellantis and Ford close to ratifying deals that would end lengthy labor disputes
DETROIT (AP) — Members of the United Auto Workers union were close to approving contract agreements with Stellantis and Ford on Friday with voting at both companies overwhelmingly in favor. Only a handful of facilities at each company have yet to cast ballots in voting that ends Saturday. On Friday, workers at Ford had voted 68.2% in favor. At a huge pickup truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, the vote was 78.7% to ratify the pact, giving it an insurmountable lead of more than 12,600 votes. At Stellantis, the deal was approved by large margins at two big Detroit plants. Overall, 68.4% favor ratification with only three small facilities uncounted. If the deals are approved, Ford and Stellantis would join General Motors in ratifying the contracts, ending a contentious labor dispute.
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Stock market today: Wall Street closes its 3rd straight winning week with a tiny gain
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street edged higher in quiet trading, closing out a third straight winning week and keeping November on track to be its best month in a year. The S&P 500 rose 0.1% Friday, near its highest level in three months. The Dow was little changed, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.1%. Several retailers reported better results for the latest quarter, joining a long list of companies in what’s been a stronger earnings reporting season than hoped. But the main reason for this week’s leap for stocks was rising hope that the Federal Reserve is done hiking interest rates and may turn to cutting them next year.
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Corporate, global leaders peer into a future expected to be reshaped by AI, for better or worse
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden and other global leaders have spent the past few days melding minds with Silicon Valley titans in San Francisco. Their discussions have frequently focused on artificial intelligence, a technology expected to reshape the world, for better or worse. But for all the collective brainpower on hand for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, there were no concrete answers to a pivotal question: Will AI turn be the springboard that catapults humanity to new heights or the dystopian nightmare that culminates in its demise? Biden told a CEO summit held in conjunction with APEC Thursday that he expects the decisions governing AI to steer the world’s direction for decades to come.
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Amazon lays off hundreds in its Alexa division as it plows resources into AI
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs in the unit that handles its popular voice assistant Alexa as it plows more resources into artificial intelligence. In a note to employees on Friday, an Amazon executive wrote that the company is is ditching some initiatives within Alexa. He says Amazon is shifting some of its efforts to better align with its business priorities, including generative AI. The company has been implementing a host of AI initiatives. Those range from infusing the technology into customer reviews to providing other services that allow developers to build their own generative AI tools on its AWS cloud infrastructure.
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Thousands of Starbucks workers go on a one-day strike on one of the chain’s busiest days of year
NEW YORK (AP) — Workers at more than 200 U.S. Starbucks stores walked off the job Thursday. Organizers say it’s the largest strike yet in the 2-year-old effort to unionize the company’s stores. The Workers United union chose Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day to stage the walkout since it’s usually one of the busiest days of the year. Starbucks expects to give away thousands of reusable cups Thursday to customers who order holiday drinks. The union says it’s expecting more than 5,000 workers to take part in its “Red Cup Rebellion.” Around 30 stores also staged walkouts on Wednesday.
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Tesla didn’t squelch United Auto Workers message when it cracked down on T-shirts, court says
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court in New Orleans says automaker Tesla did not infringe on its workers’ rights to unionize when it ordered employees at a California assembly plant to stop wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the United Auto Workers logo. The ruling this week from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that Tesla allowed workers to affix pro-union stickers on to company-issued clothing. The court threw out a 3-2 decision issued last year by the National Labor Relations Board, which had said Tesla couldn’t prohibit union attire. The case involves clothing the company issued to workers to prevent damage to recently painted cars.
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The S&P 500 rose 5.78 points, or 0.1%, to 4,514.02. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.81 points, or less than 0.1%, to 34,947.28. The Nasdaq composite rose 11.81 points, or 0.1%, to 14,125.48. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 24.01 points, or 1.4% to 1,797.77.