 |
|
|
|||||
Trading app Robinhood Markets, mobile app monetization company AppLovin, and building company Emcor Group, will be added to the S&P 500 later this month, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Friday. Robinhood will replace Caesar’s Entertainment, AppLovin will take MarketAxess Holding’s spot, and Emcor will take Enphase Energy’s place. The changes take effect on September 22. The S&P 500 rebalances the index quarterly. No changes were made at the start of the most recent quarter in June. “The changes ensure each index is more representative of its market capitalization range. The companies being removed from the S&P SmallCap 600 are no longer representative of the small-cap market space,” the S&P Dow Jones Indices said. Robinhood shares up following S&P promotion In the minutes after the announcement, shares of Robinhood were up 7.2%, while AppLovin rose 7.8%, and Emcor, 2.7%. Strategy, a bitcoin company that was rumored to have possibly made the cut, was passed over. Its stock took a 2.5% dive following the announcement. The promotions come after Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev had expressed hope that the company could join the S&P 500 soon. Its a difficult thing to plan for, Tenev said at the companys annual shareholder meeting in June. I think its one of those things that hopefully happens. The S&P announcement could boost Robinhoods expansion toward becoming a one-stop banking service: In March, the company announced plans to launch Robinhood Banking, a service for its Gold members that would include perks like having cash delivered to you instead of having to go to the ATM. Taxi company Uber also got a boost: It has been promoted to the S&P 100, replacing Charter Communications, the S&P Dow Jones Indices announced.
Category:
E-Commerce
Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has agreed to pay a record-setting $1.5 billion to a group of book authors and publishers in order to settle a class action lawsuit. The payout is thought to be the largest in the history of U.S. copyright suits and could influence other cases where an AI company has been sued for copyright violations. This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong, Justin Nelson, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. The suit, filed last year, was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson over copyright infringement. They alleged that Anthropic used the authors’ copyrighted books to train its chatbot, Claude. Is AI training ‘fair use’? In June, a judge ruled that while Anthropic was allowed to train its AI model using books that it had acquired the copyright for under fair use rules, the startup had illegally acquired books via online libraries that contained bootleg copies of books. The judge concluded that the authors had cause for the case to proceed to a trial. That was slated to start in December. Now, according to a court filing on Friday, the startup has agreed to pay authors $3,000 for each of around 500,000 books it used to train its AI, plus interest. The company also agreed to destroy the datasets containing the allegedly pirated material. As best as we can tell, its the largest copyright recovery ever, Nelsons said, according to the Associated Press It is the first of its kind in the AI era, he added.“Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems, Anthropics deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement. What does this mean for other AI companies? The settlement may give other AI companies facing similar challenges to their use of copyrighted material to train their models pause. Back in June, the judge in this case affirmed that using books to train a large language model represented a transformative use of the workcrucial for fair usebut made a clear distinction if the books had been sourced illegally. Since chatbots exploded onto the scene in late 2022, authors have repeatedly expressed concern that the models that power them were trained using their works without permission. In 2023, The Authors Guild, a professional organization for writers, sent an open letter to the CEOs of prominent AI companies calling for them to get authors consent before using their’ works to train models. More than 15,000 authors signed the open letter; best-selling author Nora Roberts was among them. “If creators arent compensated fairly, they cant afford to create. If writers arent paid to write, they cant afford to write,” she said at the time. Anthropic is not the only AI startup at the center of a copyright case: OpenAI was sued in 2023 by more than a dozen authors for copyright infringement in the training of its large language modelsthe suit is still pending. And another suit brought by authors against Meta on similar grounds was dismissed earlier this year, but the judge did not weigh in on whether the companys use of copyrighted materials to train its AI was legal. The judge in the case has scheduled a hearing on Monday to review the settlement terms; he will need to approve it before it can go ahead.
Category:
E-Commerce
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is planning to release a report that will reportedly link autism and acetaminophen use in pregnancy, according to The Wall Street Journal. The department has confirmed a report is in the works, but has not revealed its conclusions. Drug maker Kenvue, which sells acetaminophen under the brand name Tylenol, saw its shares slump following the Journals report, dropping more than 10% on Friday. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ihas made investigating autism a cornerstone of his efforts at the department. According to the Journal, the report will also make a link between folate deficiency and autism. But in statements to other media outlets, an HHS spokesperson said the Journals reporting was “speculation.” “We are using gold-standard science to get to the bottom of America’s unprecedented rise in autism rates, a spokesperson for the department said. What the science says about acetaminophen and autism Some studies have found correlations between taking the common painkiller in pregnancy and the risk of children developing neurodevelopmental conditions. But these studies dont prove a link, and other results suggest otherwise: A 2024 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) studythe largest on acetaminophen to datefound that there was no association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and increased risk of autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, or intellectual disability. The report comes months after Kennedy promised HHS would undertake a “massive testing and research effort” to find a cause for autism as soon as September. A mountain of research suggests that autism has no single cause, but is likely a combination of factors, including genetics. Kennedy has since walked that timeline back, telling CNN, “it will probably take us another six months.” No proven link Tylenols maker Kenvue told Fast Company in a statement that there is no proven link between acetaminophen and autism. “To date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and leading medical organizations agree on the safety of acetaminophen, its use during pregnancy, and the information provided on the label.”“We advise expecting mothers to speak to their healthcare professionals before taking any over-the-counter medications, including acetaminophen, as they are best positioned to advise their patients on whether taking acetaminophen is appropriate based on their unique medical conditions. The FDA has not found any “clear evidence” that acetaminophen during pregnancy “causes adverse pregnancy, birth, neurobehavioral, or developmental outcomes.” It also recommends that pregnant persons talk to their care providers before using any medications. Fast Company reached out to the department of Health and Human Services for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||