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Divisions emerge over calls for AI slowdown
Concerns about artificial intelligence evading human control have intensified in recent days.
Tech leaders, lawmakers and international officials are debating whether to slow AI development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has proposed plans for slowing AI progress, including independent evaluations and government regulation. OpenAI's Sam Altman supports pacing development but not stopping it. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang oppose a coordinated slowdown, emphasizing market-driven safety. Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis agree with Amodei's caution, while President Donald Trump and some Republicans resist government intervention, seeing it as a threat to competitiveness.
Retail sales post better-than-expected rise
Consumers may be griping about higher prices at the pump and elsewhere, but they keep spending, helping to power the economy, according to the latest government snapshot. Retail sales increased a better-than-expected 1.2% last month after recording a revised 0.5% dip in July, according to Commerce Department data released Wednesday.
Economists were expecting a 0.7% gain for the month, according to FactSet. The decline in July was notable because there had been few signs of fatigue from U.S. consumers. Americans spent heavily during the World Cup and Amazon Prime Day sales this summer.
Amazon increases minimum starting wage
Online behemoth Amazon said it's increasing the minimum starting hourly wage for its U.S. full-time core operations employees to $20 ahead of the holiday shopping season.
With the $1-per-hour increase across the board for these workers who do jobs like pack and ship orders, the average pay for these workers will reach nearly $24 per hour. The company announced the boost Wednesday. The retailer said the average total compensation will be more than $32 an hour including the value of its benefits package. Amazon's announcement said the pay increase is effective starting Sept. 27.
US-Canada trade war strains small businesses
Small business owners in the United States and Canada say a trade war between their countries is hurting sales while they are also dealing with rising expenses from higher fuel costs.
Canada imposed reciprocal tariffs on about $20 billion worth of U.S. goods last week after President Donald Trump placed import taxes on Canadian goods worth the same amount. Trump said the U.S. also would ban imports of wine, whiskey, selected motorcycles and the cheese-derived protein additive whey from Canada. The conflict between the economically entwined neighbors affects only about 5% of total exports and imports, but it is having a big impact on small businesses that depend on cross-border sales.
Poll: Americans grow wary of AI impacts
A new AP-NORC poll shows Americans are growing more concerned about the environmental impacts of AI.
The survey data say about half of Americans are "extremely" or "very" concerned about artificial intelligence's environmental impact. That's up 12 percentage points from last year. There are thousands of data centers in the United States with construction planned for more, mostly in rural areas. About 6 in 10 Americans want to limit the number of new data centers that can be built. Most Democrats and Republicans support limits. The results reflect anxiety and concern about a new technology that seems to have massive implications.