Elaine Moore

Dear reader, Here’s a puzzle. Electric car company Tesla presents a terrible set of first-quarter earnings and is rewarded with a 10 per cent share price jump. Social network giant Meta doubles net income and watches as its share price slides more than 12 per cent. Microsoft reports faster revenue growth than Alphabet but sees gains in after-hours trading dwarfed. The explanation is spending on artificial intelligence. Meta, Tesla, Alphabet and Microsoft are in the middle of grand (read, expen…

Dear reader, Here in the US, a story about the way in which Amazon uses human workers to check artificial intelligence systems in its stores is being used to claim that AI is just the equivalent of three toddlers in a trenchcoat. It is not true. But this is what happens when hype meets hysteria. There are not thousands of Indian workers faking Amazon’s AI. But teams of people are employed to watch videos and review transactions. This is true of much automated work. If you’re interested, the FT…

Dear reader, Before Jensen Huang stepped on stage at Nvidia’s huge developer conference, commentators had taken to calling the event Woodstock for artificial intelligence. Huang clearly had something else in mind. With flashing lights, references to Taylor Swift and friendship bracelets at the after-party, this was an Eras Tour for the semiconductor crowd. The US’s third most valuable company drew an enormous audience to San Jose this week, all eager to hear what’s next for generative artifici…

The way early Slack adopters talked about workplace messaging in the 2010s sounds unhinged today. It was a “friend” in the office, the “glue” keeping teams together and the reason work was fun. Of course, we now know that nonstop messages make it harder to log off. But at least we get to send emojis to our bosses. In compensation for chaining us to our jobs, workplace messaging has helped to upend office norms. The idea that work requires a separate, stiffer identity is falling out of favour.…

Reddit made changes to chief executive Steve Huffman’s pay shortly before reviving plans to go public, removing incentives based on the company hitting a $25bn valuation in a signal of reduced hopes for a blockbuster IPO. According to company filings, the social media company in December cancelled chief executive awards that were tied to the company hitting the ambitious market capitalisation following a stock market debut. However, Huffman has retained restricted stock units eligible to vest…

Journalists are notorious drama queens when it comes to their own industry. Still, this has been an undeniably bleak start to the year. So far in 2024 there have been lay-offs at The Wall Street Journal, Time, Business Insider, LA Times and Sports Illustrated, plus the abrupt closure of media start-up The Messenger. On Thursday, Vice News announced hundreds of lay-offs and said that it would stop publishing on its website. As fear permeates the sector, the lure of a more independent career is g…

Melania Trump appears to be sitting out Donald Trump’s bid for presidential re-election this year. In fact, since leaving the White House the former first lady has largely retreated from public view. It feels, writes the Washington Post, as if she’s hiding. Who wouldn’t want to hide? The role of professional spouse is a deeply unappealing one. It seems to have been beamed in from another era — judged on interior decoration, charitable lunches and photo opportunities. If Melania did not enjoy li…

Trauma is the cheat code to internet fame. Post a tear-stained video that details the worst moment of your life and watch as the views click up. Harrowing confessions of grief and shame run rampant online. I’ve watched strangers explain the details of their family estrangement, abuse and addiction. Yoga teachers who claim trauma is stored in the hips show stretches that they say will release it. Many repeat the idea that trauma can only be healed with total candour. If the posters ever regret…

Dear reader, It is growing increasingly difficult to keep on top of the lawsuits that regulators and lawmakers are filing against Big Tech companies. More than 40 states are suing Meta, for example, claiming that social media harms young people’s mental health. The US Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon, alleging that it engages in “exclusionary conduct”. This week, Google lost an antitrust case against Epic Games that focused on the 30 per cent fees it charges in its app Play Store. It co…

There is a good chance that by the end of this year, Meta’s grand experiment in virtual reality will have racked up more than $50bn in operating losses. It is a shocking tally. Yet it has largely side-stepped attention. Against the odds, 2023 has been pretty good for Mark Zuckerberg’s social media company. Meta has carved out an important place in the artificial intelligence pantheon by opting to share its work — democratising generative AI while everyone else tries to hoard it. Digital adverti…

Dear reader, It is incredible that we still do not know why the board of OpenAI sacked its founder and chief executive, Sam Altman. His rapid return has undermined the legitimacy of that decision. But it is a question that still deserves an answer — if only to reassure the public about the safety of artificial intelligence research. The way in which OpenAI’s board handled Altman’s departure was spectacular and disastrous. When news broke, it would only say that the chief had not been consisten…

For a brief, shining moment, San Francisco was clean. The arrival of world leaders for a high-profile summit earlier this month prompted the city to jump into action, hosing down its streets and sprucing up neglected downtown neighbourhoods. The change was dramatic. It was also shortlived. San Francisco is a city of stains. The sunshine glitters and the waters of the Bay sparkle but at street level, the centre is noticeably filthy. Some of these stains are palatable. Warm weather means fruit tr…

Shopping for groceries is one chore that is proving stubbornly resistant to a tech revolution. Billions of venture capital dollars have been funnelled into start-ups that build warehouse robots and online delivery platforms, yet most shoppers still want to pick up a basket and dawdle round the aisles themselves. This week, San Francisco grocery delivery company Instacart reported a heart-stopping $2bn loss in its first set of earnings as a public company. Tech companies reporting big losses aft…

Dear reader, There is a noticeable difference in the way tech companies talk about artificial intelligence to investors and the way they talk about it to the public. In the last set of quarterly earnings from the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet, the focus was on opportunity and revenue contribution. Yet both Microsoft and Alphabet were among the companies that co-signed a public letter warning that AI posed an extinction-level risk to humanity. So which is it? A generous answer is that it coul…

One of the puzzles about generative artificial intelligence is why the text it conjures is so long-winded. Why does ChatGPT produce 10 paragraphs when one would do? Another puzzle is how we will all behave when it proliferates. There is a chance that we are about to get a lot more terse. AI is stretching the reality gap between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Most of us are not yet firing up chatbots to write emails or carry out research. But tech companies think it is a foregone conc…

Dear reader, Pity poor Airbnb hosts. For years they’ve faced complaints from neighbours, competition from fake listings and miscreant guests intent on throwing wild parties. Now they must contend with city crackdowns and entreaties to lower their prices. Last month, New York began to enforce an existing ban on short-term lets. Local Law 18 requires hosts to register properties or face fines. It is a direct challenge to the prevalence of platforms such as Airbnb. The result has been a dip in th…

Dear reader, There is a curious trend in the US tech sector for some software engineers to claim to be simultaneously working two or more full-time jobs. On social media, they share tips on how to dupe bosses and compare the work that can be completed most quickly. The popular Reddit “Overemployed” community refers to “J1” and “J2” (job one and job two) when discussing salaries. It all sounds exhausting. Whatever happened to working less and freeing up more time for fun? After writing The 4-Ho…

Five US companies have surpassed a trillion dollars in market valuation. In the past few weeks, the chief executives of four of those companies have presented earnings to the world. Not a single one said anything memorable. That is not to say that the companies are not doing interesting things. There are plans for higher spending on generative artificial intelligence and the introduction of spatial computing. But the way in which the CEOs spoke was understated. All appear studiously uncontrover…

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News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication