Good morning. Were you surprised by the swell of chatter about HP’s Humane acquisition this week? I was. In some ways, more was written about the Ai Pin-maker’s death than when it first crashed into our consciousness.
Maybe I’ve just been covering consumer technology too long, but the Ai Pin never passed a sniff test for me, for a reason so much more basic than its apparent operational faults: I simply couldn’t imagine pinning a gadget to my garments. I don’t rock a brooch normally. Why would I do it now?
Apple’s Watch, Meta’s Ray-Bans, and the Oura ring have seen success in part because they’re working within the framework of already popular accessories. To me, that’s the way forward in wearables. Immersive ski goggles be damned. —Andrew Nusca
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FTC chair announces inquiry into ‘Big Tech censorship’
The new leader of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission wants to know whether the tech companies that host large online services—from social media to ride-hailing—are banning, shadow banning, demonetizing, or removing certain kinds of speech from their platforms.
Platforms of interest to the agency include “social media, video sharing, photo sharing, ride sharing, event planning, internal or external communications, or other internet services,” per its official Request for Information.
“Big Tech censorship is not just un-American, it is potentially illegal,” FTC chair Andrew Ferguson wrote in a social media post (ahem) on Thursday. “The FTC wants your help to investigate these potential violations of the law.”
Republicans, foremost President Trump, have claimed that tech companies have unfairly limited or removed conservative speech in the past. (According to Pew research, the degree to which you agree with that claim strongly aligns with your personal ideology.)
Trump was outright banned, then reinstated, by Twitter, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Meta’s Facebook after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump settled lawsuits over the issue with Meta and Twitter, now X, this year.
For now the FTC only requests Americans’ input about the matter, through May 21—but it could lead to a formal investigation. In its call for public comment, the agency notes that unclear content moderation policies could violate laws against deceptive business practices or anticompetitive behavior. —AN
Meta’s top execs get a big new target bonus
Meta executives not named Mark Zuckerberg could get substantially bigger bonuses this year as the company’s stock price flirts with new record highs.
Meta said in a corporate filing Thursday that it had approved an increase in its annual bonus plan for executive officers. What was once a target bonus percentage of 75% of base salary is now 200%.
The compensation committee of Meta’s board of directors “considered that the target total cash compensation for the named executive officers (other than the CEO) was at or below the 15th percentile” of executives at peer companies, per the filing. They’re now at “approximately the 50th percentile.”
As of its most recent annual proxy statement, Meta’s named executive officers are Zuckerberg, CFO Susan Li, CPO Chris Cox, COO Javier Olivan, CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth. Listed peer companies for compensation include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber.
What’s the going rate for a Magnificent Seven executive officer, you ask? Most of the Meta execs’ annual base salaries are between $900,000 and $1 million. Take those figures, add the bonus, add $20 million in equity vesting over four years, et voilà—though to Meta’s credit, you can skip the math and simply ask its AI chatbot this question, and it will happily calculate the total for a given executive and toss in a net worth estimate to boot.
The disclosure comes just a week after Meta announced a 5% cut (or about 3,600 people) to its workforce affecting, in the company’s words, its lowest performers. According to a Financial Times report, Meta also recently reduced equity-based rewards “by about 10 percent for most of its staff.” —AN
So, another thing about those NIST cuts
The U.S.’s fledgling AI safety body is reportedly going to be gutted by mass job cuts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which hosts it.
That’s because the NIST cuts are targeting staffers who are still on probation. As the AI Safety Institute (AISI) is pretty new, most of its workers fall into that category.
Understandably, advocates of AI safety are hopping mad, warning of a blow to U.S. national security and, in the words of Americans for Responsible Innovation president Brad Carson, a “gift to China.”
“These cuts, if confirmed, would severely impact the government's capacity to research and address critical AI safety concerns at a time when such expertise is more vital than ever,” said Jason Green-Lowe, the executive director of the Center for AI Policy.
The development aligns with a wider trend of countries—particularly the U.S. and U.K.—abandoning their focus on AI safety. In: the promotion of AI security and innovation. Out: concerns about things like AI perpetuating biases, or enabling the spread of disinformation, or destroying civilization.
And in case you’re wondering where Elon Musk—cutter of government jobs and owner of significant AI concerns—fits into this, it may or may not be relevant that xAI and Tesla never signed up to help AISI develop its AI standards and evaluations, unlike rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Apple. —David Meyer
More data
—Alibaba CEO says pursuit of AGI is now the company’s “primary objective.”
—Amazon sunsets Chime video conferencing in favor of Zoom, Webex, Slack.
—Apple’s iPhone 17 will have homegrown Wi-Fi chips, replacing Broadcom, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says.
—Elon Musk promises ‘fix’ for X’s Community Notes after disagreeing with a fact-check.
—GameStop CEO has a $1 billion stake in Alibaba. Ryan Cohen: Chewy founder, activist investor, Meme King.
—OpenAI’s ChatGPT crosses 400 million weekly active users, up from 300m in December.
—Palantir stock plummets after Pentagon chief proposes 8% annual cut to budget.
—SEC creates Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit to defend against bad actors, replacing Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit.
—Why did software engineering jobs hit a five-year low? It starts with “A” and ends with “I.”
—YouTube to add a ‘premium lite’ tier. Podcasts without ads; music videos with ‘em.
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