 |
|
|
|||||
Ten major philanthropic organizations are banding together to ensure that regular Americans, not just a small group of tech billionaires, have a say in how AI will shape society and who will benefit. The organizations announced Tuesday the formation of Humanity AI, a $500-million five-year initiative aimed at ensuring artificial intelligence serves people and communities rather than replacing or diminishing them. The coalition includes the Doris Duke Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, the Omidyar Network and other philanthropies. The core group, which is expected to expand to include other philanthropies, will make the grants both on their own (with input from the group) and together from a common pool of capital. Many now believe that generative AI systems are about to revolutionize the way companies do business, from accounting to engineering to operations. Humanity AI is betting on a future where AI plays a supporting role, wherein it strengthens communities, and enhances human creativity. The groups want to rebalance the public policy conversation around AI to include the interests of normal people, not just the big tech players and financiers who are betting big on the transformative potential of the technology. So much investment is going into AI right now with the goal of making money, which is our capital system and that’s all fine, MacArthur Foundation president John Palfrey said in an interview with Fast Company. What we are seeking to do is to invest public interest dollars to ensure that the development of the technology serves humans and places humanity at the center of this development. The coalition knows it wont be able to match the AI industrys cash — its $500 million is a quarter Mira Muratis seed round for Thinking Machines Lab. Palfrey says that even if his organization would put its entire $9 billion in assets into this one issue, it wouldnt come close to the money being invested by the tech companies and their investors. But, he says, the ten organizations in Humanity AI working together could have a real impact. We each have a slightly different angle on it, but we’re going to share knowledge and hopefully have the whole be greater than the sum of the parts, he says. The goal, after all, is not to compete with the tech industry so much as it is to expand the conversation. It’s all building a broader community of folks who are engaged in this topic,” Omidyar Network president Michele Jawando tells Fast Company. [T]heres just one or two people who are saying this is how [AI] should be used, and we’re saying, Hey, wait a minute. I’m going to pull up a few more chairs at the table and get a few different voices and perspectives.Workers are increasingly worried that the real value that AI companies and their investors hope to deliver to big business is the ability to eliminate positions and cut payroll. AI companies and their backers counter by saying that some positions will be eliminated but that many kinds of jobs will be created. Creatives and artists wonder whether AI will enhance their performance or replace them, and many question how their authentic intellectual property can be protected in a world of AI-generated content. But the private sector would actually benefit by making sure that the benefits of AI are broadly distributed across geographies and classes, Jawando points out. Because if people don’t see that, we’ve seen what happens when people feel completely on the outside and used and abused, she says. Every major industrial revolution has had [that] moment, and so the private sector should be incentivized to do this, but they’re not right now. Some of the investments Humanity AI plans to make focus on giving underrepresented people ways to influence AIs trajectory. The group plans to award funds to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which works to protect peoples right to data privacy as tech companies (and governments) work to bend norms toward having no expectation of privacy at all.The group also plans to fund the work of the Berkeley Labor Center, which develops technology to measure the real effects of AI on the workforce. In addition, it trains union organizers and labor advocates and other organizations that support them, so that workers can act as decision makers on how AI gets applied and not just passive participants (or victims) of the way AI is deployed in the workplace.Some of the groups funding targets are more politically focused, working to raise the voices of people who will be affected by AI but lack thelobbying firepower of big tech. The public advocacy group AI Now, for example, seeks to inject into the policy debate the idea that the corporations developing AI should have to be accountable to the public. The group provides technical expertise to lawmakers (who often rely on AI industry sources), and researches and develops an intellectual framework that legitimizes public intervention in AI development. Some of the members of Humanity AI are focused on the creative industries. Omidyars Jawando says one of the projects Humanity AI wants to fund is focused on preserving the intellectual property of human creatives, and giving people like actors technology tools to stay in control of their image and work when generative AI tools can easily duplicate and remix them and post the results on social media. At a deeper level, Jawando says, society is beginning to grapple with the question of what role AI should play in society. Should it support and amplify people, or should it stand in for (or replace) people in many tasks?AI might be better used to address problems like healthcare accessibility or housing availability rather than making sure we all have better access to Canva, Jawando told me. I think this is when you have the conversation about human flourishingI think it comes down to that level of detail and thoughtfulness. Humanity AI wants to find, and fund, people who share that worldview and speak that language. We want to raise up a whole group of scientists and academics and researchers and advocates and young people who are going to raise these issues, she says, so that you can then empower the policymakers [to] incentivize the private sector folks to do the right thing . . . Humanity AI partners will begin making grants as soon as fall 2025. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors will serve as a fiscal sponsor and manage a pooled fund, with grants from that fund beginning in 2026.
Category:
E-Commerce
Cabinet dealers, interior designers and remodeling contractors in the U.S. hope new tariffs on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered wooden furniture that kicked in Tuesday will create more business for them and eventually boost domestic production of those products.But several small business owners in the home improvement industry say they expect some short-term pains from the import taxes: Clients with projects already on the books might balk at having to pay more for the budget-priced cabinets they selected. Potential customers may postpone kitchen and bathroom renovations until costs and the economy seem more stable.“I think the volatility around pricing is damaging to the remodeling industry,” said Allison Harlow, an interior designer in Michigan whose company, Curio Design Studio, creates and builds custom bathrooms and kitchens. “Most people will hear the headline of ‘Kitchen cabinets will go up 50%’ and might just opt out of even reaching out to our company.”Despite high mortgage rates having depressed sales of existing homes in recent years, a forecast of remodeling activity by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies predicts that homeowner spending on improvements and maintenance will remain steady into the middle of 2026. Trump calls cheap imports a national security threat A proclamation that President Donald Trump signed on Sept. 29 cited national security and foreign trade practices as grounds for imposing the tariffs on certain finished wood products and product components.Of them, imported vanities and kitchen cabinets incurred the steepest tax rates: 25% until the end of the year and 50% starting on New Year’s Day.Upholstered chairs, seats and sofas also are subject to a 25% worldwide tariff effective Tuesday, with the rate scheduled to increase to 30% on Jan. 1. In addition, the presidential proclamation put a 10% import tax on softwood timber and lumber, which comes from evergreen trees like pine and cedars.Softwoods often are used to make furniture and in wood frame construction. Canada is the source of about 85% of the softwood lumber the U.S. imports, or nearly one-quarter of the national supply, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.Some U.S. trading partners are receiving more favorable treatment when it comes to the furniture and cabinetry tariffs. The tax on U.K. exports was capped at 10%, while the rate for wood products from the European Union and Japan was capped at 15%.The American Kitchen Cabinet Alliance and other trade and advocacy groups lobbied for tariffs to help offset what they described as a flood of cheap cabinets from countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, China and elsewhere in the decades since more U.S. furniture manufacturing moved offshore.U.S.-made products tend to cost more but often are of better quality. A higher bottom line for renovators on a budget John Lovallo, an analyst at UBS bank, estimates the tariffs on imported cabinets and vanities could add roughly $280 to the average cost of building a single-family home, not enough to sink a project that often carries an overall price tag more than 1,000 times larger than that.Some business owners say they plan to cover any tariff-related costs for now instead of raising customer prices.John Dean, founder of Dean Cabinetry in Connecticut, sells cabinets that run the gamut from lower-priced imports to custom models made in his shop. Imported products account for about a third of his sales, but Dean said he does not expect much fallout from the tariffs.Two of his vendors that he buys imported cabinets from, in China and Vietnam, said they would raise prices by 10% to recoup some of the duty costs.Dean said he would not charge customers more for now. Since a kitchen remodel is a big ticket item to begin with, and with the costs of building lumber and labor going up, raising cabinet prices might hurt demand, he said.“My personal perspective is most small- and medium-sized businesses are trying to absorb those costs,” he said.The wood product tariffs are likely to have a bigger effect on selection than on prices as importers scale back their orders to focus on bestsellers and products with the highest profit margins, according to Jason Miller, a supply chain management professor at Michigan State University.“It will make importers more selective in the varieties they bring in,” Miller said: “So I think the bigger impact is going to be on the product variety side: Consumers should expect less variety.” What cabinet companies are expecting Although the White House said the tariffs were intended to boost domestic production and protect U.S. businesses from predatory trade practices, some cabinet makers say that will be difficult because their supply chains are multinational.Linq Kitchen, a Los Angeles-area company that designs, builds and installs modern-style kitchen cabinets, uses plywood and melamine panels from Asia and Europe in its projects, co-founder Josh Qian said. A suitable domestic alternative does not exist, he said.“The kitchen cabinet industry is highly globalized, and even U.S.-based manufacturers depend on imported materials, hardware, and finishes,” Qian said. “These tariffs may sound protective, but in reality, they often raise costs across the entire supply chain.”At the same time, cabinet companies that don’t sell foreign products or rely on imported components look forward to capturing more business. One is ACO Denver Custom Cabinetry in Denver, Colorado, which enlists Amish, Mennonite, and New German Baptist shops in the Midwest to handcraft custom cabinets.Andrea Mulkey, the company’s president and co-founder, said her main concern is whether interest in American-made cabinets will grow too quickly.“It’s hard to predict how much new business might come our way as competitors are affected,” Mulkey said. “We simply couldn’t serve everyone if demand suddenly surged. The real challenge is similar to what we saw post-COVID, when everyone got busy at once, and access to raw materials became strained.”The Curio Design Studio has its custom cabinets made in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but Harlow worries about the tariffs costing her customers.“I think it will decrease consumer confidence and create a narrative that the work is going to get inherently more expensive,” Harlow said. “I think we will have to work harder to attract potential clients with messaging of how this blanket statement, ‘Kitchen cabinets will go up 50%,’ does not impact our particular business model.” Mae Anderson, AP Business Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Fans are continuing to change the tune of how they consume music. It was recently reported that MTV was going to stop broadcasting five channels, including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live in the United Kingdom, and that the channels would go dark the end of this year. (Its flagship channel, MTV HD, will continue to air reality series.) Local news outlets in Australia, Poland, France, and Brazil have also reported that MTV could shut down music channels in those respective countries as wellleaving some to wonder if the United States is next to shutter those channels. Its no secret that MTVs parent company, Paramount Global, has been going through a lot of changes and turbulence, especially after the FCC officially approved the $8.4 billion Paramount-Skydance merger. But even before the merger was finalized, MTV was already undergoing plenty of changes in recent years. In 2023, it was announced that MTV News, the news production arm of MTV in the United States, would shut down in 2023, with the corresponding website officially shuttering last summer. The initial move resulted in Paramount laying off 25% of its staff at the time. The latest decision to cease broadcasting music channels in the U.K. continues to highlight the global shift in how consumers today are discovering and consuming music videos, and other music-related content like news, on social media and platforms like TikTok and YouTube, rather than broadcast TV or traditional media outlets. The rise of MusicTok According to Vevos new Fandom = Cultural Currency report, 44% of fans search for related content on social media. Meanwhile, according to a MIDiA Research Consumer Survey from this year, the top music discovery method for 16-to-24-year-olds is TikTok, followed by YouTube, streaming, and social media. And a joint TikTok and Luminate report that came out earlier this year found that TikTok has been a key driver of music discovery, monetization, and chart success. The same research found that U.S. TikTok users are 74% more likely to discover and share new music on social and short-form video (SFV) platforms than the average user of these platforms. Popular chart-topping artists like Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan have all gone viral on TikTok, and have utilized social media as a way to reach their fans. Meanwhile, TikTok has been leaning into its throne as a newly emerged platform for music discovery and consumption through marketing campaigns like See Where Music Takes You, which launched this summer. TikTok has also launched several new features over the past few years to help make discovering music easier for its users, including the Add to Music App feature, which was previously launched in partnership with major music streaming services like Amazon Music and Spotify. The feature allows users to save songs they find on the app to the music streaming platform of their choice. However, despite MTV closing down its music channels in other parts of the worldand fans wondering if the U.S. would be nextThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that newly appointed Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison supposedly has plans up his sleeve to revive and reinvent MTV as a music channel in the U.S. If the news ends up being true, one has to wonder how successful those plans will be, given all the data and headlines pointing to music shifting away from cable TVunless, of course, social media will play a part in promoting the channel. Paramount and MTV did not respond to a request for comment.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||