Category: Business

• Chicago's basic income program helped Jennette Fisher, 46,  secure an apartment.
• Participants received $500 a month for a year, no-strings-attached.  
• Chicago is set to restart the program, joining 100+ similar pilots across the US.

Jennette Fisher and her 11-year-old daughter Sophia moved into a new apartment in January. Fisher is still setting up the furniture, but her Chicago suburb is starting to feel like home.

"It was every single thing that I prayed for," she told Business Insider.

Fisher, 46, was a participant in the City of Chicago's Resilient Communities Pilot. The guaranteed basic-income program provided 5,000 families with $500 a month no-strings-attached for a full year, beginning in summer 2022. Selected participants experienced economic hardship from the pandemic and had household incomes at or below 250% of the federal poverty line. That means participants like Fisher would've had to make less than $45,775 to qualify as a family of two.

For Fisher and her daughter, the cash was "a Godsend," and the help they needed to secure housing. Although she's no longer receiving payments, Fisher said the support allowed her to move out of temporary domestic violence shelters and sign a lease.

"It took such a weight off," Fisher said. "If I wouldn't have had that money, I don't know what would have happened."

Participants across the country have told BI they spent basic income money to pay rent, afford groceries, pay off debt, and support their children.

In April, Chicago announced that it will restart it's basic income program. The city has allocated $32 million to project, but has not yet specified when the next cash payments will begin, or how many participants are set to benefit. The renewed Chicago program will join a wave of over 100 basic-income pilots that have been launched since 2019.

Funding for the program will primarily come from The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, a federal pandemic recovery budget that has been used to finance GBI pilots across the US. The federal government requires that all APRA funds must be spent by December 2026.

Policy advocates and economic security experts have told BI that basic income's widespread success gives insight into future poverty solutions. Basic income differs from traditional social services like SNAP and rental assistance because it allows participants, like Fisher, to choose how to spend their money.

"The lessons from those pilots are infusing the whole ecosystem of support," Teri Olle, director for Economic Security California, said. "People are really seeing the power of those pilots, and the power of giving people money and trusting them."

Fisher is still worried about costs, but Chicago basic income gave her 'a brand new start'

When Fisher began receiving basic income, she felt immediate relief. She said she "never gave up" trying to build a better and safer life for herself and her daughter.

She used some of her first payment to take Sophia to dinner and Chuck E. Cheese. They hadn't been since one of Sophia's childhood birthday parties, and it meant a lot to Fisher that they could celebrate together.

Because Fisher was living between various Chicago domestic violence shelters before she signed for her apartment, she said it has been difficult to hold a job. She's also not sure she can work again due to mental health reasons and is currently in the application process for disability benefits.

With basic income payments, Fisher was able to afford daily expenses and buy the clothes and shoes she and her daughter needed. The money also put her in a position to start renting her new apartment. Having her own place with Sophia is "everything she ever wanted."

Fisher is still doing her best to get by. She has to pay rent and only receives a few hundred dollars a month total from SNAP for food. She has health insurance through Medicaid, and the benefits help pay for an addiction recovery program she's enrolled in.

Right now, she estimates she lives on less than $700 a month, an amount that comes through Sophia's father's Social Security check. However, Fisher said she doesn't receive any form of child support.

She is still stressed about expenses but said Chicago's GBI program offered her "a brand new start."

Going forward, Fisher is excited to keep getting settled in their new home. Sophia starts sixth-grade next fall, and the pair are hoping to see Fisher's family, whom they haven't been able to visit in years.

"Stability is the number one thing I want," Fisher said.
"Stability, peace, happiness, and no drama."

Have you benefited from a guaranteed basic-income program? Are you open to sharing your story? If so, reach out to this reporter at allisonkelly@businessinsider.com.

• An online meme about a fake Mossad agent called "Eli Copter" the lampoons the helicopter crash of Iran's president.
• But it's been cited repeatedly by several media sources, including Russia's state TV.
• Missing the joke, Russian TV host Vladimir Solvoyov cited the name to back up his criticism of Israel.

An online joke about Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi being killed in a helicopter crash by a Mossad agent named "Eli Copter" has fooled several media outlets — including Russian state TV host Vladimir Solovyov.

In a Monday episode of Solovyov's show, the host cited the meritless claim in an attempt to imply that the Israeli government was to blame for the death of Raisi.

Raisi, 63, died on Sunday in a helicopter crash alongside several senior officials in northwest Iran, with state media saying the vehicle struck a mountainside.

The Iranian leader died amid heavy fog and bad weather at the scene of the crash, making it difficult for rescue teams to find his downed helicopter and determine his condition at the time.

While there is no evidence that foul play was involved, some online have tried to pin the incident as an assassination carried out by Israel or the US.

An Israeli official said Tel Aviv was not involved in the crash, which Solovyov challenged.

"When Israel says: 'No, no, it was not us.' Hold on, if it was you, would you admit it?" he said, per a translation by Russia Media Monitor.

He aired a clip of a political analyst, Daniel Haik, speaking on the French broadcast of Israeli TV channel i24 News of a rumor that the Mossad agent "Eli Copter" was involved in Raisi's death.

That makes Solovyov a major piece of a misinformation chain that originated from a meme on Twitter parodying the word "helicopter."

Several people reporting about Raisi's death seemed to have missed the joke. A Hamas-affiliated Telegram channel named Correspondent of the al-Qassam Brigades cited the faux moniker in an initial report, though it deleted the message afterward, per France24News.

Haik later quoted the Hamas message on i24, saying that the involvement of "Eli Copter" was a rumor that couldn't yet be confirmed.

French daily Libération reported that i24 apologized for the live TV error and promised to work to prevent further such mistakes.

A spokesperson for i24 did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

But that didn't stop Solovyov's show from using the clip of Haik to back up his criticism of the US and Israel, as he implied they might be responsible for Raisi's death.

Solovyov is seen as one of Russia's most prominent propagandists for the Kremlin, and habitually pushes aggressive, pro-war rhetoric against the West.

Russia, an ally of Iran, offered condolences to Tehran after Raisi's death, calling the now-deceased president a "true friend" and an "outstanding politician."

Both nations have been deepening their economic ties since Moscow invaded Ukraine, which has increasingly alienated Russia from the global economy. Sanctioned by Washington, they agreed last year to start trading in local currencies instead of the US dollar.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, run by the MIT Media Lab, trade between the two countries was worth about $2 billion in 2021.

An analysis by the Center for European Policy Analysis in January estimated that trade between them may have risen to $4.9 billion.

• Nvidia announced it is shipping its new Blackwell AI chip next quarter amid high demand.
• CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the strong interest in both Blackwell and current Hopper chips.
• Nvidia's shares surged, driven by a 262% revenue increase and a 10-for-1 stock split announcement.

Nvidia just announced it's shipping its hot new AI chip, Blackwell, this quarter — and they're already getting snapped up.

"People want to deploy these data centers right now," CEO Jensen Huang told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday.

"They want to put our GPUs to work right now, and start making money and start saving money. And so that demand is just so strong," Huang added, referring to graphics processing units.

Customers buying Blackwell chips span the gamut of Big Tech, including Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Tesla, among others, Nvidia said in March.

Huang said Blackwell chips will start shipping in the second quarter, with production ramping up in the third quarter. Data centers should be up and running on the chips by the fourth quarter.

The demand isn't just for Nvidia's hotly anticipated Blackwell AI chip — first unveiled in March — but also for the company's current Hopper chip.

With such high demand, Nvidia is going to produce new chip generations yearly, instead of every other year.

"I can announce that after Blackwell, there's another chip. We're on a one-year rhythm," Huang said on the earnings call.

Revenue surge and a stock split

Huang's comments came on the back of another blockbuster quarter for Nvidia. The Santa Clara, California-based company reported a 262% surge in first-quarter revenues from a year ago, to $26.04 billion — well over analyst estimates of $24.65 billion.

The results are not just a flash in the pan.

Nvidia's chips have been in such demand that Huang had to assure stakeholders back in February that the company is allocating them "fairly."

Nvidia's share price has ballooned thanks to this demand, surging 150% in the past 12 months and 92% this year to date. On Wednesday, the stock breached $1,000 per share for the first time on the back of its gangbuster quarterly report.

On Wednesday, Nvidia announced a 10-for-1 stock split, effective next month, and upped its quarterly dividend by 150% from $0.04 to $0.10 per share.

"We are poised for our next wave of growth. The Blackwell platform is in full production and forms the foundation for trillion-parameter-scale generative AI," said Huang on the earnings call.

• Jack Dorsey used to think that Twitter was "the closest form of global consciousness."
• But not anymore. The platform's co-founder and ex-CEO thinks AI has taken its place. 
• "They have far more access to public and private thoughts and questions," he said.

X, formerly Twitter, isn't the "closest form of global consciousness" anymore, says the platform's co-founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey.

"I once thought Twitter was the closest form of global consciousness," Dorsey, 47, said in an X post on Wednesday.

"Now it seems the corporate AI models have become that," he added. "They have far more access to public and private thoughts and questions."

Dorsey co-founded the text-based social media platform back in March 2006. He also served as the company's CEO on two separate occasions — his first stint ran from 2007 to 2008, and he also had the top job from 2015 to 2021.

Twitter was eventually sold to billionaire Elon Musk in October 2022, a move that was fervently supported by Dorsey himself.

"I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness," Dorsey said of the company's sale in April 2022. "Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."

Though Dorsey would go on to criticize Musk's management, he appears to have come round to Musk's changes. Earlier this month, Dorsey praised X, calling it a form of "freedom technology."

Representatives for Dorsey and X didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Dorsey isn't the only social media titan who has recognised the immense potential and importance of AI.

On May 15, Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic announced that Instagram co-founder and former CTO Mike Krieger was coming on board as the company's chief product officer.

"The potential for AI to positively impact the world is immense, and I believe Anthropic has the talent, principles, and technology to help realize that potential," Krieger said of his new role.

The same can be said of Instagram's owner Meta. The social media giant's founder Mark Zuckerberg has frequently telegraphed his ambitions to turn the company into an AI leader.

"In terms of investment priorities, AI will be our biggest investment area in 2024 for both engineering and compute resources," Zuckerberg said in an earnings call last year.

In January, Zuckerberg told The Verge that Meta would own more than 340,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs by the end of this year. The chips are highly coveted by tech companies, who can use them to train and deploy their AI models.

"We have built up the capacity to do this at a scale that may be larger than any other individual company. I think a lot of people may not appreciate that," Zuckerberg said.

• Chip makers ASML and TSMC can disable advanced chipmaking machines remotely, Bloomberg reports.
• The move addresses growing fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a key semiconductor producer.
• A China-Taiwan conflict could severely impact the global economy.

Two of the world's most important chip companies can push a "kill switch" remotely on their most advanced chipmaking machines should China invade Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Netherlands's ASML — Europe's top tech company by market value — supplies advanced machines to chip-making companies. They include Taiwan's TSMC, which produces, by some estimates, 90% of the world's most advanced processor chips.

The news of a forced shutdown, or a "kill switch," on ASML's chip-making gear comes amid intensifying rivalry between Washington and Beijing and mounting concerns over a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

Taiwan is the world's epicenter for semiconductor chips, the ubiquitous parts that are used in products from data centers to smartphones. A war in the region would have major consequences for the global economy.

The US, citing national security concerns, imposed restrictions on China under the Advanced Computing Chips Rule in November 2023. The restrictions make it harder for the East Asian giant to import advanced AI chips from American manufacturers.

The US has also pressured the Netherlands to block some ASML exports to China to limit the country's ability to manufacture advanced chips. The Dutch company has also said it will stop servicing some equipment previously exported to China.

But US concerns over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan remain, and Washington has expressed them to Dutch and Taiwanese officials, Bloomberg reported. ASML assured Dutch officials about the option to push the "kill switch" when they met with the company, per the media outlet.

The option applies to ASML's line of advanced extreme ultraviolet machines, according to Bloomberg.

Taiwan's TSMC is the largest buyer of these 200 million euro, or $217 million, machines. They print the tiny microchip transistors used to make chips for artificial intelligence and military applications.

Rising concerns over Taiwan Strait developments

There are concerns about China's intensifying drills around Taiwan after Taiwan inaugurated its new President, William Lai — whom Beijing has branded as a separatist — on Monday.

Beijing stepped up military activity around Taiwan ahead of Lai's inauguration and on Thursday announced drills as a "strong punishment for the separatist acts of 'Taiwan independence' forces," said Li Xi, a spokesperson for China's People's Liberation Army.

Chipmaking supply chains are changing amid heightened geopolitical tensions.

TSMC is diversifying production with a second facility in Arizona and upcoming new plants in Japan and Germany. But new facilities will take time to come online.

The US is also taking steps to boost chip manufacturing through the CHIPS Act, which provides billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic production, research, and workforce development.

But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday that that the world's tech sector is likely to continue depending on Taiwanese manufacturing for "some time." He said it would be "very difficult" for Nvidia to serve its customers without the island.

ASML declined to comment to Business Insider.

TSMC and the Dutch foreign affairs ministry did not immediately respond to Business Insider's requests for comment. They declined comment to Bloomberg.

• Meta formed a product advisory council six months after disbanding its Responsible AI division.
• Four white male tech execs sit on the new council, called Meta Advisory Group.
• The council comes amid rising concerns over artificial intelligence oversight.

Meta announced the formation of a product advisory council on Wednesday, six months after it disbanded its Responsible AI division.

The council consists of four men, who will "periodically consult with" Meta's management team about new technologies and products, according to the group's website.

The Meta Advisory Group consists of four executives: payment platform Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst.

The members will not be paid and operate separately from the board of directors, a spokesperson for Meta told Bloomberg.

The council's announcement comes weeks after Meta's first quarter earnings when CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will continue to pour into massive AI investments, even if they take time to pay off.

As Big Tech continues to spend billions on AI, users and those in the industry worry about governance, data privacy, ethics, and safety risks, saying that programs to keep AI in check haven't kept up with new innovations.

The new council is reminiscent of Meta's Responsible AI division, a group in charge of regulating the safety of the company's artificial intelligence ventures as they were created and deployed. The group, which had about 40 employees, was axed in November following a series of cost-cutting measures, including prior layoffs for that team.

All four men on the new council are white and share similar tech executive backgrounds, which has drawn attention to the lack of diversity in their gender, race, and professional history. Several tech investors on X highlighted the council's lack of representation.

Four of the company's 11 board members are women.

The company did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside standard business hours, about the new council, including about its all-male composition.

Meet the new advisory group:

Patrick Collison

Patrick Collison co-founded Stripe with his brother, John Collison, in 2010.

Their company builds software that businesses add to their websites and apps to instantly connect with credit card and banking systems and receive payments. Meta began using Stripe in 2014 to facilitate its "Buy" button, which allowed users to purchase items featured in ads or posts on the platform.

Privately-held Stripe is now valued at $65 billion.

Collison is also the cofounder of the Arc Institute, a biomedical research nonprofit.

Nat Friedman

Nat Friedman is a tech investor and the former CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub, a platform that allows developers to store and share code. He served as CEO between 2018 and 2021.

After stepping down as CEO, Friedman cofounded California YIMBY, a platform to address California's housing shortage, and founded nat.dev, a web interface for large language models. He also funds several startups in the AI space through a fund he cofounded called AI Grant.

He is a board member of Collison's Arc Institute.

Tobi Lütke

Tobi Lütke is the founder and CEO of Shopify, the publicly-traded e-commerce giant.

He is on the board of cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase.

Last year, Lütke restricted Shopify employees' side hustles, saying that the company requires their "unshared attention."

Charlie Songhurst

Charlie Songhurst is a tech investor and a former executive at Microsoft, where he was the general manager of global corporate strategy.

He is an angel investor and partner at several investment firms.

He has invested in 500 startups globally, according to Meta's website.

• Scientists say that dozens of waterways in Alaska are "rusting," or turning into a dirty orange.
• They said permafrost thawing in the summer is now exposing minerals to the surface, releasing metals and acid.
• Some brooks and streams are turning so acidic that they're comparable to lemon or orange juice.

At least 75 of Alaska's brooks and streams have been turning a dirty orange likely due to thawing permafrost, with some rivers so impacted that the discoloration can be seen via satellite, a new study says.

This phenomenon, which researchers say comes amid unusually rapid warming in the region, was first observed in the northwestern state in 2018, scientists told Business Insider's Jenny McGrath in January.

The researchers have been stumped by it for years. But their findings, published Monday in the peer-reviewed Communications Earth & Environment journal, say that the waterways' rusty color likely comes from minerals uncovered by the thaw.

Previously locked beneath Alaska's permafrost, these minerals are now exposed to water and oxygen, causing them to release acid and metals like zinc, copper, iron, and aluminum, the study said.

The dissolved iron is thought to be the main culprit behind the "rusting" of the rivers, which typically occurs in July and August when the thaw is the most pronounced.

But the implications of the melt go far beyond color. These waters are becoming so acidic that some are registering pH levels of 2.6, or between the equivalent of the acidity of lemon juice and orange juice.

Pure water has a pH value of 7. Rivers and lakes typically have a pH value of 6.5 to 8, and acid rain has a pH value of 4.2 to 4.4.

"These findings have considerable implications for drinking water supplies and subsistence fisheries in rural Alaska," researchers wrote.

They added that the region has already suffered the "complete loss" of two fish species due to the acidity: juvenile Dolly Varden trout and the Slimy Sculpin. Chum salmon and whitefish are also at risk of population decline, they said.

The changes could be devastating for indigenous tribes in the region, which rely heavily on fishing, researchers noted.

The 75 orange streams observed were scattered across northern Alaska over a span of about 600 miles, the study said. All of them were in remote areas, miles away from human activity that could impact land, such as roads or mining.

Researchers highlighted satellite images of the Agashashok River, a tributary of the Kuguroruk River, and the Anaktok Creek tributary of the Salmon River in northwest Alaska. They said all three have turned considerably redder in the summer months of the last 10 years.

Scientists warn that Alaska is warming at a rate two to three times the global average.

The Biden administration projected in November that the state would need an estimated $4.8 billion in infrastructure repair and adaptation over the next 50 years due to rising temperatures and damage from flooding, erosion, and permafrost thaw.

According to the administration's multiagency report, Alaska's fishing and tourism industries, which collectively provide more than 90,000 jobs and $2.57 billion in wages, are also at risk, with fish stocks expected to collapse and winter tourism likely falling.

• OpenAI pressured departing employees to sign NDAs or risk losing vested equity, Vox reported.
• Equity is crucial in tech compensation, often outweighing lower starting salaries.
• CEO Sam Altman and OpenAI said they will not claw back equity.

OpenAI's turbulent month continues, with a series of stories highlighting how the company has pressured departing employees over tech's most precious commodity: stock.

A Vox story on Saturday said the company could take back vested equity if departing employees did not sign a non-disparagement agreement.

Equity often makes up the majority of tech employees' compensation packages. They trade relatively lower starting salaries for big upside potential years later — if a company makes it big, their equity could be worth millions of dollars.

"For a company to threaten to claw back already-vested equity is egregious and unusual," California employment law attorney Chambord Benton-Hayes told Vox.

On Saturday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X, "Vested equity is vested equity, full stop."

A new Vox story questions the CEO's tweeted claim that he "did not know this was happening." Wednesday's Vox report cites unnamed former employees and leaked OpenAI documents.

An April 10, 2023 document seen and published by Vox on Wednesday shows that Altman signed incorporation documents for the holding company that handles OpenAI's equity.

The document, in Vox reporter Kelsey Piper's words, "contains multiple passages with language that gives the private company near-arbitrary authority to claw back equity from former employees or — just as importantly — block them from selling it."

Compensation packages in the tech industry, especially at startups, often include shares of equity and provisions around how investors, including employees, can sell their shares before a company goes public. Startups typically want to manage who owns pieces of equity.

Employee told not signing could impact equity

Vox noted that OpenAI's type of NDA was unusual.

Separation agreements with the NDA language were signed by OpenAI execs, including general counsel and chief strategy officer Jason Kwon. Vox reported that Kwon apologized internally for the language in the documents, which had been standard since 2019, saying, "The team did catch this ~month ago. The fact that it went this long before the catch is on me."

Altman on Saturday said on X that OpenAI had never clawed back anyone's equity and will not do so, even if employees don't sign a non-disparagement agreement.

"This is on me and one of the few times i've been genuinely embarrassed running openai; i did not know this was happening and i should have," he posted on X.

On Wednesday, an OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider:

As we shared with employees today, we are making important updates to our departure process. We have not and never will take away vested equity, even when people didn't sign the departure documents. We'll remove nondisparagement clauses from our standard departure paperwork, and we're releasing former employees from existing non-disparagement obligations unless the nondisparagement provision was mutual. We're communicating this message to former employees. We're incredibly sorry that we're only changing this language now; it doesn't reflect our values or the company we want to be.

The Vox report said some former employees were given seven days to sign their separation agreements. OpenAI pushed back against at least two employees who asked for more time to review the agreement, Vox reported.

Not signing "could impact your equity," OpenAI told one of them, per Vox.

OpenAI has had a rough week following a well-received demo of its new model GPT-4o. On Monday, it was revealed that Altman had asked Scarlett Johansson to voice OpenAI's new assistant and she declined. Still, last week's demo immediately drew comparisons between the since-pulled "Sky" assistant voice and Johansson's. She is retaining legal counsel.

This Sky incident, multiple high-profile departures, the dissolving of the company's Superalignment team, and the Vox reports have led to questions about the running of the company that is at the forefront of building potentially world-upending AI technology.

• Nikki Haley said she'll vote for Trump but says he needs to reach out to her supporters.
• Her supporters have continued to vote for her in primaries even though she dropped out in March.
• Trump faces challenges with suburban voters, John Dorman reported and needs to woo Haley voters.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley exited the GOP presidential primary on March 6 but pointedly declined to endorse the frontrunner and now-presumptive nominee, former President Donald Trump, saying he needed to win over her voters.

More than two months later, she said on Wednesday at the Hudson Institute that she would indeed vote for Trump — while again signaling that he will have to do more to reach out to her voters.

"Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they're just going to be with him," she said. "And I genuinely hope he does."

And the numbers bear her out.

In state primaries that have taken place since Haley dropped out, her voters have not all jumped ship. As my colleague John Dorman wrote earlier this month, this was evident in the recent Indiana primary, where Haley took 21% of the vote.

Dorman writes:

Similar to results in states like Virginia and North Carolina, Trump performed strongly in Indiana's rural counties. However, the former president still has a suburban problem, as evidenced by his numbers in the Indianapolis area, with many moderates and GOP-leaning independents continuing to be leery of his 2024 candidacy.

In a tight election, it comes down to turnout. In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania, a key swing state, by about 80,000 votes, and he beat Trump with a little more than 11,000 votes in Georgia. In 2016, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by about 22,000 in Wisconsin, but Biden won the state in 2020 with around 20,000 votes.

If Trump doesn't woo Haley's voters — key voters in suburban areas — and they stay home from the polls, that could hurt him in key swing states.

According to an April Axios report, "In Chester County, Haley won 25% of the vote; in Delaware, she won 23%; in Montgomery, she won 25%, and in Bucks, 19% of the vote went to Haley."

In Wisconsin and Georgia, Haley took double-digit shares of the votes in key counties.

Trump cannot win without these suburban voters, Vince Galko, a Pennsylvania GOP strategist, told Axios at the end of April, "especially in states like the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania and others."

For the moderate suburban voters who have been swaying toward Haley only time will tell if they will follow her decision and also vote for Trump.

The last time Haley called on Trump to reach out to her supporters, he instead insinuated that they were "Radical Left Democrats" before asking for their support.

• Ex-Reddit CEO Yishan Wong says tech giants are obsessed with AI but shipping bad products.
• "The big internet giants are in a state of memetic competition over AI," Wong said. 
• Wong said tech companies are forcing everyone to use their LLM-powered products.

Tech giants are letting their obsession with AI affect the quality of the products they're launching, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong said on Wednesday.

"The big internet giants are in a state of memetic competition over AI, with Google's existential fear of OpenAI in the center ring," Wong said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"This is leading to all of them integrating LLM-powered AI into their products, but the AI sometimes gives flawed answers, which is problematic in products where the existing quality/accuracy expectation was higher," Wong continued.

Wong is no stranger to the tech world.

Before taking over the reins of Reddit in 2012, Wong spent nearly a decade in leadership and engineering roles in PayPal and Facebook, per his LinkedIn profile.

The Carnegie Mellon University graduate was Reddit's CEO for nearly two years before leaving the social network in 2014. Wong is currently the CEO of Terraformation, climate change-focused and forest restoration startup.

"What this means is that now we're getting shittier products because the tech giants are obsessed with 'competing on AI' instead of just delivering good and useful products," Wong said on Wednesday.

The fact that tech products can be rolled out and distributed quickly has made the drop in quality even more pronounced, Wong wrote.

"What makes the current situation shitty is that the giants force everyone to use the LLM-powered products because they are cloud-based," Wong said when an X user likened today's AI products to the cars that were first invented.

"With cars, people could still keep using horses. It wasn't a wholesale product changeover – people adopted as the product improved," he added.

Wong's former company Reddit does seem eager to cash in on the AI revolution. In February, the social media platform said Google was licensing its content to train their AI models. Reddit struck a similar deal with OpenAI this month as well.

Representatives for Wong didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Wong's comments echo that of former Google employee, Scott Jenson. On Monday, Jenson criticized his former employer's faltering attempts at winning the AI race in a LinkedIn post.

"The vision is that there will be a Tony Stark like Jarvis assistant in your phone that locks you into their ecosystem so hard that you'll never leave," Jenson wrote. "That vision is pure catnip. The fear is that they can't afford to let someone else get there first."

To be sure, established companies like Google and Meta have been scrambling to catch up with upstarts like OpenAI in the AI race.

But having deep pockets and resources hasn't really given the tech giants the leg-up they might've been hoping for.

In February, Google found itself in the hot seat after some users said that its chatbot Gemini's image-generation feature was "woke."

On social media, people were claiming that Google's AI was consistently generating images of people of color in inaccurate historical contexts.

Following the backlash, Google paused Gemini's image-generation feature on February 22. The company acknowledged Gemini's failings just a day before, when it said in a statement that the chatbot is "missing the mark."

Likewise for Meta, whose decision to roll out its AI-powered chatbot across its social media platforms drew derision from their users. Instead of a regular search bar, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram users were now stuck with a chatbot that can't be turned off.