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As weather disasters become more and more frequent, the home insurance system feels broken for Americans across the country. Now, the advocacy nonprofit Consumer Reports is trying to implement a homeowners insurance bill of rights to codify baseline protections across all 50 states. According to a survey from the group, homeowners have seen their insurance rates climblike Sierra in North Carolina, whose insurance spiked 43% last year, with her provider citing the increased regional weather risks as well as Hurricane Helenes impact specifically. Theyve been denied payouts, like Charmian in Illinois, who says their provider refused to pay for hail damage on their roof. Hail storms are becoming both more frequent and more damaging as global temperatures rise. And some homeowners have been outright abandoned as insurance companies flee high-risk states and drop long-time customers. Because of the growing risk of wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and other disasters, homeowners have been dropped in states including California, Florida, and Louisiana, among others. Vicki in California is one example, even after she spent money on fire protection measures. An industry ‘almost universally disliked’ Sierra, Charmian, and Vicki are some of the more than 500 Consumer Reports members who shared their insurance stories with the nonprofit when it began to look into the home insurance market. Consumer Reports rates all sorts of products and services, from appliances to electric vehicles to anti-virus software. But it only just started covering insurance providers this year. The focus on home insurance was prompted by the January wildfires in Los Angelesand the news that major providers like State Farm and other insurers had canceled hundreds of policies in the months before that disaster hit. It’s really been a flood of heartbreaking stories of people who have lost their homes that didn’t even know that they were in extreme weather risk regions and didn’t have sufficient insurance or even insurance at all to help rebuild, says Sara Enright, Consumer Reports senior director of safety and sustainability advocacy. Consumer Reports put out the call for stories from its members that January, and received responses filled with frustrations like reduced or eliminated coverage and skyrocketing rates from all 50 states. In September, Consumer Reports revealed its ratings of best and worst homeowners insurance, the first time it did such a list. The nonprofit looked at 28 providers, but after surveying 24,000 policyholders, only three received a Consumer Reports recommendation. That’s pretty poor showing, Enright says. This is an industry that’s almost universally disliked by its customers. Nine rights for homeowners The insurance industry is clearly struggling with the realities of climate change, and the extent to which extreme weather is becoming more common. The scale of damage is increasing to such an extent that traditional insurance models no longer apply to our current reality. Consumer Reports wanted to help figure out some solutions. We felt that there are things that the insurance industry could do to ease the pain on their customers in the meantime, as they figure out their business model under a world in which extreme weather events are going to occur more frequently, Enright says. So the nonprofit got to work writing up a Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights, one that prioritized consumer voices. Along with more than 500 stories from members, it engaged more than 56,000 consumers in total to get feedback, which it then analyzed for certain themes. It also partnered with advocates that have studied insurance, like United Policy Holders and the Consumer Federation of America. It came up with nine rights it says all policyholders should be guaranteed, and which would make the home insurance market more fair: A clear, plain-language explanation of what isand isntcovered by your policy Knowing which risk factors are used to determine eligibility and set rates Fair access to coverage based on property risk, not your finances Receiving written notice and a full explanation well in advance of major changes to your insurance policy Benefitting from incentives to harden your home against severe weather or wildfire risk Insurance security during and after declared States of Emergency No penalties for inquiries and unpaid claims Prompt, full, and fair payment on a claim Immediate and adequate financial support for emergency housing and essentials Some of these rights seem obvious, or like theyd already existlike clear language around what a policy covers. But policies may not actually be that transparent to homeowners. Its also an intentional way to call out how the industry can seem unfair, and unaccountable to its customers. A lot of the rights cover things where youre like, Why doesnt that exist? Enright says. Right after a disaster, don’t drop your home insurance policy rightthat’s not legally required in most states, and that just seems like a very low hanging fruit for insurers to be able to say no were not going to abandon you in your time of need. A patchwork system Though some of these rights arent legally required in certain states, the majority are already covered by at least one state law. The problem is that the insurance industry is a patchwork system, with different requirements and responsibilities from state to state. We believe that those rights should then be extended to all policyholders, to create a stronger protection network for everybody, Enright says. Consumer Reports wanted to ensure that these rights were possible, and that they could get onboard. Though it’s a fact that companies will drop customers in high-risk areas like California, the nonprofit didnt feel it could call for a change to such business practices. Canceling policies because the risk is too high, or hiking insurance rates are business decisions that have to be made in the time of climate change, Enright says. Obviously we think that those should be overseen by state regulators, but it’s not something that we thought we could voluntarily ask insurance companies to say that they would stop doing. But the bill of rights does call for actions like providing enough advanced notice so homeoners can respond, fight back, or find a new provider before their insurance ends. The full bill of rights also shares some tips for what homeowners can do to protect themselves in the meantime, before these rights are (hopefully) enactedsuggestions like asking if any risk scores were used to determine their premiums, and how they could improve their risk score to lower their rate. Theres a customer education component to this crisis, Enright adds; many people dont even know their basic home insurance package doesnt cover flooding, for example. Consumer Reports next steps Still, Consumer Reports wants the insurance companies to adopt these rights, and state legislators to codify them. They were formed so as not to require dramatic business changes, Enright says, and Consumer Reports is also reaching out to all 28 insurers it rated this year to talk about how they can implement these changes. Our hope is that insurers will see some value in adopting, as an industry, universal rights that will level the playing field for all of them so that they are competing on customer service as much as anything else, she says. The nonprofit is also reaching out to industry groups and talking to state legislators about putting consumer protection policies in place. The insurance industry is legislated at the state level, so thats where Consumer Reports is focusing. Consumer Reports also launched a petition asking for signatures in support of the Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights. At the federal level, like around FEMA or federal flood insurance, details are still up in the air as the Trump administration has cut departments and slashed services. Trumps moves to gut the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, may actually increase home insurance premiums and make companies drop even more homeowners, experts warned back in February, because the data that department once provided is crucial to understanding risk. Though Consumer Reports member stories reveal how frustrated homeowners are with their insurance companies, Enright wants to note that this effort isnt about painting insurers as bad actors. This is a story about us adapting to extreme weather events driven by climate change, she says. We have to work together. We need the insurance industry to be strong so that communities can get through extreme weather events and be resilient. We need to find solutions that work both for insurance companies as well as consumers.
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President Donald Trump’s administration announced Wednesday new massive sanctions against Russia’s oil industry that are aimed at moving Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and bringing an end to Moscow’s brutal war on Ukraine. The sanctions against oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil followed months of calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well as bipartisan pressure on Trump to hit Russia with harder sanctions on its oil industry, the economic engine that has allowed Russia to continue to execute the grinding conflict even as it finds itself largely internationally isolated. Hopefully hell become reasonable, Trump said of Putin not long after the Treasury Department announced the sanctions against Russia’s two biggest oil companies and their subsidiaries. And hopefully Zelenskyy will be reasonable, too. You know, it takes two to tango, as they say. The U.S. administration announced the sanctions as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was in Washington for talks with Trump. The military alliance has been coordinating deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, many of them purchased from the United States by Canada and European countries. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new sanctions were a direct response to Moscows refusal to end its senseless war and an attempt to choke off the Kremlins war machine. Bessent added that the Treasury Department was prepared to take further action if necessary to support Trumps effort to end the war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions. The announcement came after Russian drones and missiles blasted sites across Ukraine, killing at least six people, including a woman and her two young daughters. The attack came in waves from Tuesday night into Wednesday and targeted at least eight Ukrainian cities, as well as a village in the region of the capital, Kyiv, where a strike set fire to a house in which the mother and her 6-month-old and 12-year-old daughters were staying, regional head Mykola Kalashnyk said. At least 29 people, including five children, were wounded in Kyiv, which appeared to be the main target, authorities said. Russian drones also hit a kindergarten in Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, later Wednesday when children were in the building, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. One person was killed and six were hurt, but no children were physically harmed, he said. Rutte, in his Oval Office appearance, went out of his way to underscore that the weaponry the U.S. is selling Europe to provide to Ukraine has been essential to helping stop many attacks like the one that ravaged the kindergarten. We need to make sure that the air defense systems are in place, and we need the U.S. systems to do that, and the Europeans are paying for that, Rutte said. It is exactly the type of actions we needed, and the President is doing that and trying everything to get this work done. Zelenskyy said many of the children were in shock. He said the attack targeted 10 separate regions: Kyiv, Odesa, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy and Sumy. Peace efforts stall Trump’s efforts to end the war that started with Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor more than three years ago have failed to gain traction. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with Putin’s refusal to budge from his conditions for a settlement after Ukraine offered a ceasefire and direct peace talks. Trump said Tuesday that his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was on hold because he didnt want it to be a waste of time. European leaders accused Putin of stalling. Meanwhile, in what appeared to be a public reminder of Russian atomic arsenals, Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the countrys strategic nuclear forces. Zelenskyy urged the European Union, the United States, and the Group of Seven industrialized nations to force Russia to the negotiating table. Pressure can be applied on Moscow only through sanctions, long-range (missile) capabilities and coordinated diplomacy among all our partners, he said. More international economic sanctions on Russia are likely to be discussed Thursday at an EU summit in Brussels. On Friday, a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing a group of 35 countries that support Ukraine is to take place in London. Zelenskyy credited Trump’s remarks that he was considering supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for Putin’s willingness to meet. The American president later said he was wary of tapping into the U.S. supply of Tomahawks over concerns about available stocks. Russia has not made significant progress on the battlefield, where a war of attrition has taken a high toll on Russian infantry and Ukraine is short of manpower, military analysts say. Both sides have invested in long-range strike capabilities to hit rear areas. Ukraine says it hit key Russian chemical plant The Ukrainian army’s general staff said its forces struck a chemical plant Tuesday night in Russias Bryansk region using British-made air-launched Storm Shadow missiles. The plant is an important part of the Russian military and industrial complex, producing gunpowder, explosives, missile fuel and ammunition, it said. Russian officials in the region confirmed an attack but did not mention the plant. Ukraine also claimed overnight strikes on the Saransk mechanical plant in Mordovia, Russia, which produces components for ammunition and mines, and the Makhachkala oil refinery in the Dagestan republic of Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 33 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight, including the area around St. Petersburg. Eight airports temporarily suspended flights because of the attacks. In other developments, Zelenskyy arrived Wednesday in Oslo, Norway, and after that flew to Stockholm, where he and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson signed an agreement exploring the possibility of Ukraine buying up to 150 Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets over the next decade or more. Ukraine has already received American-made F-16s and French Mirages. Trump says Russia is on the agenda for upcoming Xi talks The U.S. president is expected to meet next week with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two leadrs travel to South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. Beijing has not provided Russia with direct support in the war, but has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine, according to a U.S. assessment. Trump has said he believes the Russia-Ukraine war would end if all NATO countries stopped buying oil from Russia and placed tariffs on China of 50% to 100% for its purchases of Russian petroleum. I think he could have a big influence on Putin, Trump said of Xi Jinping. Beijing has yet to confirm that Trump and Xi will meet. Aamer Madhani, Susie Blann, Fatima Hussein, Associated Press Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova, Illia Novikov, Samya Kullab, Andrea Rosa, Yehor Konovalov, and Josh Boak contributed to this report.
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, Im focusing on the implications of OpenAIs official entry into the browser game with its ChatGPT Atlas. I also talk to Stanford HAIs James Landay about the AI industrys UX design challenges, and examine AI czar David Sackss recent X skirmish with Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. With OpenAIs ChatGPT Atlas, the AI browser war officially kicks off Using the internet with the help of an AI is a real thingand it became even more real Tuesday when OpenAI, the generative AI industrys de facto avatar, announced the release of its new ChatGPT Atlas browser. A new race has begun to reinvent the Chrome-style browser experience weve used for so long: The race to reinvent the browser around natural language AI. Think of Atlas as an extended workspace and set of features around ChatGPT, specialized for fetching, parsing, and organizing web content. For months, Ive been using the ChatGPT desktop app. I simply hit a keyboard shortcut, a small chat window appears toward the bottom of my screen, and I ask my question. When I click a source link within the answer, a new Chrome tab opens up behind the chat window. When talking to ChatGPT within Atlas, theres no need to open that new Chrome tabeverything opens within Atlas. The chatbot stays open on the right, so I can ask it questions about the web page Im viewing. OpenAI has some other ambitious ideas about how artificial intelligence can be used in browsing. Importantly, Atlas can leverage its memory of the users past browsing behavior so that it can more thoughtfully suggest ways of finding and organizing new data or web content. For example, it might remind the user of a specific piece of data they searched for within the same subject area at some point in the past. The user can control how much the browser remembers, OpenAI says. Atlas goes beyond fetching web content. It offers to act as the users agent, interacting with websites on the users behalf. This could mean planning a theater date (complete with dinner reservations, for example) or buying concert tickets when they become available. This kind of autonomous agent is something of a holy grail, both for AI labs trying to build enterprise (work) AI and companies building consumer AI. Ive heard numerous tech company executives talk as if agents are already advanced enough to make a big difference in business and personal life. Other execs and experts Ive spoken with say that the agent revolution will not happen this year, and maybe not even next year. Thats because the AI models behind the agents still arent good enough to reason through complex tasks. They also still cant process all the contextual information needed to safely complete high-stakes tasks involving real money (like all the small considerations involved in booking a plane ticket), influential AI researcher (and OpenAI cofounder) Andrej Karpathy points out in a recent podcast. There are other hurdles, too. An entire technology ecosystem must form to accommodate new AI agents, says Devi Parikh, co-CEO of the agentic AI company Yutori. The websites and services of today are built for human users, so agents must learn how to click buttons, scroll pages, and search menus. They might work more reliably if they could exchange data with a website or service via an application programming interface (API) or some other secure and standardized handshake. Because its so crucial that users trust these AI agents, she says, AI companies would be wise to err on the conservative side in talking about what AI agents can really do; giving users a bad first impression could damage trust and make them hesitant to rely on agents. While Atlas is getting lots of attention, Google has been (more quietly) upgrading its Chrome browser with AI. Just last month, the company added a spate of features that make its Gemini AI a bigger part of Chrome, saying that the browser is entering a new era powered by AI. Within Chrome, Gemini can summarize content, organize tabs, and ask questions about web pages. Googles new AI search function, now called AI Mode, shows up at the top of a wider range of searches and can also be called up using a keyboard shortcut. But Google is building these features onto an existing browser-slash-search tool. Thats very different from building an AI-first browser from scratch as OpenAI did. Its also true that Google has introduced the AI features in such an understated way that many users probably dont even know theyre there. (I saw the shortcut to AI Mode in Chromes search bar for the very first time Tuesday.) And Google is also freighted with a decades-old business model that knows how to make money from the traditional 10 blue links search results. So it has to be very careful about how and when it pushes Chrome users toward AI search, which represents a very different revenue model. At any rate, lots of AI talent and money will go into building a new way of using the internet in the coming months and years. Lets hope the end result is something that helps users more than exploits them. Stanfords Landay: AI labs need to invest more in product design Lots of people are using AI chatbots now, but the vast majority are free-tier users who employ the tools most basic features. They might be comfortable chatting with the AI about some personal matter, but less likely to use it to build a website. At work, they might be apt to look up a policy document, but less comfortable working with the tool to build a report or spreadsheet. The big challenge of designers within AI labs like OpenAI or Google is to build the user interface of AI tools in a way that invites people to use those deeper features, which can offer far greater rewards than the basic ones. But designing software products with UX thats approachable and easy to use may not be the forte of AI labs, says James Landay, a Stanford computer science and engineering professor who co-directs the universitys Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Landay, who specializes in human-computer interaction, consults for a number of tech companies in the Bay Area. A user interface could mean a piece of computer hardware or a software experience that mediates a humans interaction with an AI. Landay says one of the big challenges of building interfaces for tech products has been that its very hard to anticipate the broad set of use cases that people may have, and the user interfaces people might prefer for each of them. Even on the Zoom call I had with Landay, several interface otions are availablehe may prefer audio-only on a phone, while I may prefer a half-screen mode on my laptop. As for AI apps, a small chat window might be fine for some use cases, while others might call for voice interaction. Still others may need a UX built for viewing images or video. Landay says with AI, its unlikely that a dominant form of interface will emerge to muscle out other modes. People will likely want to interact with the technology in a variety of different wayssome old and some new. A slice of the consumer market may decide that the best way to use AI is within the lenses and earpieces of augmented reality glasses. Some may like the idea of an ambient AI in the home, always ready to offer intelligence at the sound of their name (HAL . . .). Landay says the big AI labs havent yet moved very far away from the chatbot interface. He says these companies employ people who are primarily interested in natural language AI, so they naturally favor a text-based interface. The AI companies have so far focused most of their energy on improving the models themselves, and relatively little on developing productive ways for humans to interact with the AI. OpenAIs engagement with the design guru Jony Ive is a sign that the company is at least aware of the need to develop a practical human interface for AI, and willing to invest in possible solutions, Landay says. Ive has indeed invented captivating entry points to mobile computing technology (iPhones and Apple Watches), but AI is another paradigm, and one that might not lend itself easily to an ideal piece of hardware or software UX. The David SacksReid Hoffman skirmish on X was mainly about Anthropic David Sacks, the former VC who now works as the AI czar in the Trump administration, and Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and big-time Democratic donor, got into a skirmish on X this week. It revealed some things about the politics of AI. On October 20, Hoffman started a thread: I want to state plainly: In all industries, especially in AI, its important to back the good guys. Anthropic is one of the good guys. Further down, Hoffman points out that othersincluding Microsoft, Google, and OpenAIare trying to deploy AI in a way that balances innovation and safety, and is enormously beneficial for society. He adds that some AI labs (he doesnt name names) are making decisions that disregard societal considerations, including some whose bots sometimes go full fascist. (Elon Musks Grok chatbot reportedly has praised Hitler, dabbled in Holocaust denialism, and ranted about white genocide in South Africa.)Whether it was the part about Anthropic or the dig on fascist bots is unclearbut Sacks was triggered. He clapped back: The leading funder of lawfare and dirty tricks against President Trump wants you to know that Anthropic is one of the good guys. Hoffman responded, charging that Sacks didnt read his full post, adding that its particularly rich that someone in the Trump administration would accuse someone else of lawfare and dirty tricks. The MAGA-fied Sacks naturally has no love for Hoffman, a major Democratic donor. But he also sees Anthropic as a political enemy. His response: The real issue is not research but rather Anthropics agenda to backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California. Anthropic supported Californias Senate Bill 53 (aka the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act), which Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law. Sacks seems to suggest, without citing evidence, that Anthropic is working to get similar laws passed in other states. Sacks also says that Anthropic opposed Trumps Big Beautiful [spending] Bill, the original version of which contained a 10-year moratorium on any new state-level AI regulationslanguage that was decisively voted out of the bill in the Senate before passage. More AI coverage from Fast Company: This is the worlds first vertical take-off AI-piloted fighter jet Ukraine reveals powerful sea drone with AI capabilities in the Black Sea Prince Harry, Meghan join open letter calling to ban the development of AI superintelligence Anthropics relationship with the U.S. government is getting complicated Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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