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The year 2024 was a good one for the people who ran some of the country’s biggest companies. CEO pay set another record last year, according to a new study in The Wall Street Journal, with half of the chief executives who made the paper’s list of the highest paid CEOs making $17.1 million or more, up more than 8% from $15.8 million the year prior. Rick Smith, co-founder of Axon Enterprise, the maker of Taser stun guns, topped the list with a pay package of $165 million (entirely in company stock). Elon Musk earned the least, once again taking home $0 in salary from Tesla. (His compensation is instead structured around stock options that vest based on the company’s performance.) The widening pay gap between CEOs and their employees is a growing concern. For comparison, the average annual salary for all U.S. workers in 2024 was $66,622, just shy of 2% higher than the $65,470 average in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In terms of raw numbers, GE’s Lawrence Culp Jr. was second on the list, earning $88.95 million. Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman came in third at $84.03 million, Apple’s Tim Cook was fourth at $74.61 million. And KKR’s Joseph Bae rounded out the top five at $73.09 million. While the average pay package for the top half of the CEOs on the list jumped 8%, several of the 417 executives the Journal examined saw significantly higher increases. All totaled, 18 CEOs saw their total pay increase by more than 100% last year. Axon’s Smith, for example, saw a 999% increase in total pay from the year prior. Corpay’s Ronald Clarke took home $28.05 million, which only earned him the rank of 54th overall, but was 951% better than he did in 2023. And Workday’s Carl Eschenback saw a 938% bump, taking him to $26.17 million. Rounding out the top five, James Vena of Union Pacific had a 775% salary increase to $17.64 million, and GE’s Lawrence Culp saw a 505% pay increase to $88.95 million. Smith saw a similar big jump in 2019, when his salary soared to $246 million on a stock reward. The 2024 increase is reportedly because of a new program for Axon workers that lets them convert some or all of their salary into restricted shares, which could grow or shrink depending on the company’s performance. Although many executives saw pay bumps, only one had a pay package worth $100 million or more. In 2020, 17 CEOs in S&P 500 companies made nine figures. Last year, Smith was the only one. And even including execs outside of the S&P, the total was the lowest since 2016, the Journal reported.
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E-Commerce
The moderators behind a pro-artificial intelligence subreddit say they have been banning users who appear to be experiencing chatbot-fueled delusions. “LLMs today are ego-reinforcing glazing-machines that reinforce unstable and narcissistic personalities to convince them that they’ve made some sort of incredible discovery or created a god or become a god,” wrote a moderator of r/accelerate. “AI is rizzing them up in a very unhealthy way at the moment.” The policy announcement on the Reddit page coincides with the emergence of anecdotal accounts from users who claim someone they know is suffering from an AI-fueled break from reality. These users often describe someone close to them who began using a chatbot casually but then got drawn into a kind of rabbit hole of delusions, since chatbots rarely challenge users’ beliefs. To be clear, the evidence is anecdotal. There is no direct proof that AI can cause psychosis, but users are raising serious and growing concerns. One Reddit user in the ChatGPT subreddit posted a month ago about how to cope with what they believe is their partner’s “Chatgpt induced psychosis.” “He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace,” the user wrote. The post attracted a flood of comments from people claiming they are in similar situations or offering advice on dealing with psychosis. Other posts have appeared across Reddit asking for help with delusional behavior. In May, Rolling Stone published a detailed article about people losing loved ones to AI-driven spiritual fantasies. Reporter Miles Klee interviewed one person who said their partner began to see ChatGPT as a companion and eventually believed that the bot was God or that he himself was God. Now some moderators are taking a stand against people posting this type of content, aiming to protect their online communities. The r/accelerate moderators post stated they have already banned around 100 users from the subreddit and have noticed an increase in such posts this month. “The sad truth is that this subreddit would probably be filled with their posts if we didn’t do that,” the moderator said. ChatGPT maker OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. Department of Energy has ordered another power plant, this time an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania, to keep its turbines running through the hottest summer months as a precaution against electricity shortfalls in the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid. The department’s order to the grid operator, PJM Interconnection, regarding the Eddystone power plant just south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, is the department’s second use of federal power under President Donald Trump to require a power plant to keep operating on the mainland United States. Constellation Energy had planned to shut down Eddystone’s units 3 and 4 on Saturday, but Trump’s Department of Energy ordered the company to continue operating the units until at least Aug. 28. The units can produce a combined 760 megawatts. The department, in its order, cited PJM’s growing concerns about power shortfalls amid the shutdown of aging power plants and rising electricity demand. PJM last year approved Constellation’s request to shut down the units, but it welcomed the department’s order to keep them operating, saying it’s a prudent, term-limited step that allows PJM, the department, and Constellation to study the longer-term need and viability of Eddystone’s units. The department took a similar step last week, ordering Consumers Energy to keep the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant open in Michigan past its Saturday retirement. The grid operator there, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, said the order was unnecessary, that there was no energy emergency there, and that there should be enough energy in the region through the summer. An environmental advocacy group, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, criticized the move to keep Eddystone operating as an “environmental injustice.” Shutting down the units would reduce hazardous pollution and carbon emissions from the decades-old facility and help the region meet federal clean air standards for smog, it said.
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