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Good morning, Data Sheet readers. Tech writer Danielle Abril here filling in for Adam.
I’ve been tracking tech billionaires who’ve dipped into their own wallets to help health organizations fight the coronavirus pandemic. And one question keeps coming up: Are these billionaires doing enough?
The Google Foundation on Sunday announced the latest of these donations from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. The foundation tweeted Sunday night that Pichai had chipped in $1 million to the nonprofit Give Directly to provide cash to low-income San Francisco Bay Area families who’ve been hit hardest by the virus. Pichai also donated 50 million rupees, about a little more than $655,000, for similar donations to families in India and for health supplies.
Pichai’s donations came just a week after Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, announced plans to give $1 billion worth of his Square shares to coronavirus relief efforts in addition to other causes.
Two weeks ago, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to Feeding America, which supports a network of more than 200 U.S. food banks. Prior to that, Bezos had also contributed an undisclosed sum to a $30 million fund for All in Seattle, a coalition of Seattle community members that helps nonprofits provide coronavirus aid.
Meanwhile, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, has provided about $37 million to coronavirus-related response efforts.
For years, many tech industry observers have criticized top executives for failing to focus enough on charity. In particular, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, a major philanthropist himself, has hammered fellow tech elites for neglecting to share their extraordinary wealth.
For Pichai, we don’t know how much he earned in 2019. But in 2018, as Google’s CEO, he made $470 million—meaning that his donations account for just 0.4% of his total pay that year.
Granted, $1 million will still go a long way in helping U.S. families in need, and 50 million rupees may change the game for healthcare professionals who need safety gear or ventilators. If that amount’s not enough, how much would be?
Two things are for certain: 1. Without tech billionaires’ donations to coronavirus aid, the world would be worse off. 2. More money from even more wealthy tech executives would make the world better.
Danielle Abril
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
When it rains, it pours. After already adding 100,000 new workers, Amazon said it plans to hire another 75,000 people. "We welcome anyone out of work to join us at Amazon until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back,” the company said. On the other hand, Amazon fired two workers on Tuesday who had previously criticized warehouse working conditions.
Inside job. While everyone is waiting for Apple to switch its laptops to its own chips, Google is making a move to in-house silicon, Axios reports. The chip, codenamed Whitechapel, is based on an ARM design and made on an advanced 5-nanometer process. It could power next year's Pixel phones, which currently use chips from Qualcomm, and eventually Chromebooks as well.
You win some, you lose some. SoftBank Group's Vision Fund will post a loss of $17 billion for its just ended fiscal year, thanks to the declining value of stakes in companies like WeWork and Uber.
On your marks, get set, go. One week into the Quibi era and almost 2 million people have downloaded the much hyped app to watch the service's short-form videos. But all of the sign-ups are obviously still in the 90-day free trial period. After the trial, Quibi charges $5 per month with ads or $8 without.
The bottom line. It appears that IBM will face a trial over allegations that it reduced the commission paid to a black employee after he closed a major deal in 2017. A federal judge in San Francisco ruled that most of the charges in Jerome Beard's fraud and discrimination suit can go forward. IBM says Beard was the highest-paid sales exec on the deal and that the charges are baseless.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The shift to remote and online education has stressed teachers and administrators and stretched already-thin school resources. Reporter Laura Pappano dives deep for the New York Times into A.I. and automated enhancements for online school that can carry some of the burden.
Ashok Goel, professor of computer science in the school of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, created a virtual teaching assistant, Jill Watson, who responds to questions about course information for classes, much like chatbots do for campuses. “Jill can answer questions about anything you put in the syllabus,” he said.
But Mr. Goel is also looking at what else A.I. could do. Like working with sentiment analysis (it uses “the order of the words, the phrases of the words” to classify moods and personality types) to explore how virtual tools could answer a human’s emotion. “If my sentiment is one of exasperation, how do you respond to that?” he asked. Maybe a chatbot or virtual assistant uses A.I. to have “a calming effect” in its answer or suggests, “Would you like to meet the teacher face to face?” A.I. raises new opportunities — “Can we detect a mental health issue going on? Maybe we can intervene” — as well privacy and ethics issues, said Mr. Goel.
ON THE MOVE
The new CEO of eBay has plenty of online experience. Jamie Iannone, e-commerce operations chief at Walmart, gets the top job at the end of the month. Former CEO Devin Wenig departed in September...Wellness app maker Headspace hired Intuit executive vice president CeCe Morken as president and COO...Speaking of COOs, Pinterest lost its COO, Françoise Brougher, who left last week...Chipmaker Xilinx has a new CFO. The company hired Brice Hill, a group CFO at Intel.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
How online dating has changed—maybe for the better—in the the coronavirus era By Danielle Abril
These robot-powered warehouses could save grocers—but first they need to survive the coronavirus pandemic By Jeremy Kahn
IBM’s Ginni Rometty: Pandemic will speed up everyone’s digital transition By Alan Murray and David Meyer
How teachers are adapting to working remotely By Sarah Fielding
The best streaming services for live TV in 2020, according to critics By Aric Jenkins
The Coronavirus Economy: The axe-throwing business making the jump to digital By Rachel King
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a 50% discount for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
I guess there is some debate over whether celebrity videos in the time of coronavirus are great or icky. I'm definitely on the side of great when it comes to actor John Krasinski's "Some Good News" clips (and not just because he's also a big Red Sox fan). Episode one featured Steve Carell, episode two had a drop-in from Lin-Manuel Miranda, and episode three...let's just say it's not one Yankees fans will appreciate.