With the news that Australia’s “right to disconnect” rule has come into effect this week, the internet is awash with rumors that the US might be next to embrace the trend. But don’t throw your work phone into the sea just yet. First, it’s worth pausing to think about what the right to disconnect actually means – before we weigh up how likely it is the US will follow suit.

The right to disconnect describes the ability to refuse to answer a work-related call while out of hours. Australia – and a number of countries around the globe – has enshrined it into law. The US, meanwhile, has been unsuccessful in this endeavor, with a few states trying (and failing) to get it off the ground in recent years.

This latest news threatens to breathe new life into a long-running saga – as priorities shift and debate rages among the US workforce, with employees increasingly prizing remote work and viewing inflexible companies unfavorably. Below, we’ve broken down what the “right to disconnect” is, and how likely it is that the US will be copying Australia’s example.

What Is the Right to Disconnect?

The “right to disconnect” is the right to ignore communications from colleagues while you’re off the clock, without fear of reprisal. Crucially, it doesn’t ban employers from trying to contact their employees – it just means you don’t have to pick up the phone when they do, assuming you have a valid reason.

The logistics of the rule vary from region to region and economy to economy. In Chile and Mexico, for instance, it’s only applicable to remote workers.

The rule came into effect in Australia on Monday, to the delight of workers’ unions across the country. Said Michele O’Neil, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, “Today is a historic day for working people.” Employers, meanwhile, are so far less than enamored, with an Australian Industry Group statement declaring “the right to disconnect laws are rushed, poorly thought out, and deeply confusing,” as reported by Fortune.

The news is sure to trigger renewed debate in the US. Advocates are expected to call for greater protections where their work-life balance is concerned – as tensions between employers and their workers continue to grow. In recent weeks, a slate of companies has attracted controversy after making bungled attempts to impose or enforce strict return-to-office (RTO) mandates, with new Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol the latest to irk his staff.

Will the US Ever Have the Right to Disconnect?

This is a difficult question to answer, but it’s pretty likely that, yes, the US will one day roll out the right to disconnect. A few states – and New York City – have already tried. Most recently, San Francisco State Representative Matt Haney tabled a bill in April that would’ve seen California join the likes of France, Italy, and Spain in giving workers the power to ignore out-of-office work calls. It proved highly popular, with a Clarify Capital survey finding approval from 83% of employees. However, it also had its share of critics, with dissenting voices including the California Chamber of Commerce. Ultimately, the bill was shelved.

While the US has so far failed to see the benefit of implementing the right to disconnect, the countries around the world that have are reaping the rewards. According to a study conducted by The HR Practice, employees in these countries are less anxious, less stressed, and less likely to burn out. At the same time, productivity is higher, with workers more motivated, efficient, and happy.

Australia’s Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Murray Watt, said of the law coming into effect in his country: “The new laws will give workers greater protections around workplace conditions, job security, and their ability to balance work and life.”

Pace of Change Dents Employee Optimism

Last year was widely regarded as a promising year in the history of the US labor movement, with a series of union contract wins, strikes, and union election victories at “aggressively anti-union corporations,” according to The Guardian. Added to this, the debate around remote working has gathered steam in recent months. Employees of computing giant Dell, for instance, are in revolt against the company’s increasingly brutal RTO policy. Our own 2024 report, The Impact of Technology on the Workplace, concludes that remote working organizations report higher levels of productivity.

The evidence is almost overwhelming, but when it comes to implementing labor reforms, the US is notoriously slow off the mark. This is largely a consequence of massive discrepancies in unionization rates, due to a combination of geography, industry, and other factors. For instance, whereas 33% of public sector workers are unionized, that number drops to 6% for employees in the private sector. Almost 25% of Hawaiian workers, meanwhile, can call themselves union members – compared to just 2.3% of South Carolinian ones.

The likelihood is that eventually one state will enact the right to disconnect to great success, and gradually more and more will follow suit. But with CEOs still reluctant to bow to public pressure for flexible working arrangements, don’t expect an announcement anytime soon.

The California State Assembly has passed landmark regulation to curb the potential threat of AI. California lawmakers on Wednesday passed the bill – the first of its kind in the US – pending a vote in the state Senate. Governor Gavin Newsom will now have a month to decide whether or not to approve it.

As per the bill, AI companies based in the Golden State will be required to implement a suite of precautionary measures before training AI models. It has attracted its share of controversy, with critics concerned that it will unduly impact smaller startups and stifle innovation.

AI continues to be a flashpoint for debate in the industry and beyond. Advocates worry that this latest regulation will stymie progress, whereas skeptics fear that the rapidly growing technology will lead to sweeping job cuts – and even become ungovernable.

Cali Lawmakers Issue AI Caution

California state lawmakers on Wednesday passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047), sweeping reform to limit the potential threat caused by AI. It was originally introduced by State Senator Scott Wiener.

The bill stipulates that AI companies based in the state must adopt strict precautionary measures ahead of training their models. Among these, it must be possible to easily shut the model down, protect it from “unsafe post-training modification,” and follow a strict testing procedure to evaluate its threat level, reports Reuters.

State senators will now vote on the legislation, which is expected to pass, before it reaches Governor Gavin Newsom. He will have until the end of September to decide how to proceed.

Bill Shockwaves Felt Across Industry

Unsurprisingly, this legislation has proven unpopular in some quarters. Last week, OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon claimed in a letter to California State Senator Scott Wiener – the author of the bill – that matters of AI regulation should be left to the federal government, as reported by Bloomberg. In response, Wiener commented:

“SB 1047 is a highly reasonable bill that asks large AI labs to do what they’ve already committed to doing, namely, test their large models for catastrophic safety risk.”

State senators did bow to the public pressure – which included opposition from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and amended the bill to replace criminal penalties with civil ones. Still, it is unlikely the news of its passing will be met with jubilation in Silicon Valley.

Critics argue that this regulation puts smaller AI startups under unnecessary pressure. By zeroing in the potentially catastrophic impacts of the technology, fledgling companies are subjected to rules that could prove harmful to their operations. In addition, the potential of larger companies could potentially be stifled.

AI Question Continues

In what is increasingly becoming one of the most divisive issues of our time, the AI debate rumbles on. Stoked by controversial figures like Elon Musk – who is actually a supporter of the bill – the debate surrounding AI has reached epidemic proportions.

As reported by Tech.co this week, the X AI chatbot, Grok, was found to be spreading misinformation about the upcoming US Presidential election. The company has urged users to get their election information from reputable sources, in response.

Elsewhere, it was reported on Wednesday that OpenAI is poised to close a new funding round that would put their valuation north of $100 billion – the same day that the California state bill passed the general assembly. As scandals mount and successes surge, the AI picture becomes harder and harder to make out. But there’s one way that we can say for sure – this story isn’t done yet.

In the modern era, employee wellbeing has finally entered the mainstream discourse. Yet, despite US employers leading the pack when it comes to offering flexible benefits like remote work and the 4-day week, their paid time off (PTO) policies remain stringent, especially compared to their European counterparts.

Surprisingly, even workers with generous PTO packages are reluctant to take the benefit. In fact, research reveals that 46% of US workers take fewer days off than they’re entitled to — resulting in a workplace phenomenon that would leave even the most industrious European puzzled.

As cases of burnout reach a precipice domestically and overseas, we spoke to workers to find out why taking vacation is still such a sticking point in 2024.

No, US Workers Aren’t Legally Entitled to PTO

According to current federal law, US workers aren’t entitled to a single paid day off. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, including for vacations, sick leave, or public holidays, unless you’re a federal employee.

Compared to European nations like France and Spain which mandate that workers get 36 days off a year, the US’s approach to PTO is draconian at best. What’s more, while certain workers are entitled to unpaid time off for certain reasons including bonding with a new child, caring for a sick family member, or recovering from illness, this protection only applies to employees who have worked for a company with over 50 employees for over 12 months.

Since no paid vacation policy is enshrined into law, the number of paid days off given to workers is at the discretion of employers. The majority of companies give workers between 10 to 15 days off a year, but shockingly, one in four US workers don’t receive any PTO at all. Due to employment practices, this issue disproportionately impacts lower-income workers, independent contractors like Uber drivers, and service workers.

But here’s the kicker — even for employees with generous paid leave packages, over 40% will reach the end of the year with days in the bank, according to recent findings from Pew Research. This segment is even higher (56%) for salaried workers, begging the question — why are US workers so hesitant when it comes to taking days off?

Employees Are Overloaded With Work

Ultimately, for the majority of employees, taking paid leave isn’t as easy as firing a message off to their line manager, slamming their laptop shut, and taking the next flight to Cancun. There is a variety of complex factors that tie workers to their desks, and make it harder for them to pursue some well-deserved R&R.

Oftentimes, always-on corporate cultures and heavy workloads create an environment where workers feel guilt-tripped if they take a break. According to a Pew Research survey of 5,188 US workers, almost half (49%) of those who don’t take all of their PTO do so out of fear of getting left behind, while 43% of workers are concerned colleagues will be forced to pick up their slack.

“I think it’s because I have some important meetings during the week that I can’t miss, and I don’t want to fall behind on work. Also, as a leader in our company, taking time off during essential days can be seen as ‘irresponsible.'” – Tristan Harris, Sr. Marketing Manager at Thrive Digital Marketing Agency

Kade Roberts, CMO of SaaS dating company CamGo has seen this firsthand in previous workplaces. When speaking on why her colleagues don’t take time off, she tells us that while reasons vary, “common themes include fear of falling behind on work, or a workplace culture that subtly discourages taking time off.”

Vacation Shame Is Still Alive and Kicking

Cameron Allen, an author at the Digital Whale Club and self-proclaimed “Notorious PTO hoarder,” expressed similar sentiments. When talking to us about why he’s “been notorious for being the worst person when it comes to taking PTO” at his previous companies, Allen explained that he feared being an inconvenience to the company and negatively impacting them as a result. 

“I have had people-pleasing tendencies most of my life and have always felt that if I took PTO I was being an inconvenience to the company I was working for and negatively impacting the company by doing so.” – Cameron Allen, an author at the Digital Whale Club

Allen isn’t alone. Research from Movchan Agency has revealed that 47% of workers report feeling guilty about taking a vacation this summer. The phenomenon is so common, in fact, that there’s a name for it; “vacation shaming.” The term was first coined in 2016, but this data shows that the practice of provoking sly glances and  critical comments after talking about your extended weekend break is still very much present in US workplaces, despite attitudes to hustle culture slowly softening across the US.

Not All US Workers Are Averse to Taking Time Off

In many ways, the US’s PTO problem is paradoxical. Workers are currently more burned out than ever, with 65% of US employees claiming to have suffered from the condition in 2023. The epidemic poses a huge problem for businesses too, with 72% of affected workers admitting that burnout makes them much less productive. However, unlike with previous generations, employees in 2024 are committed to do something about it.

Backlash against burnout can be witnessed across all corners of the internet. As seen in social media-fueled trends like quiet quitting to resenteeism, younger generations are fighting back and challenging unrealistic expectations simply by “doing less” during the hours of 9am to 5pm. Lots of employees aren’t being quiet when it comes to quitting too, with 90% of employees resorting to “rage applying” when workplace pressures become overbearing.

While these are all effective strategies to remedy burnout, taking regular breaks away from the office remains one of the best tried-and-tested ways to prevent the condition from occurring in the first place. But fortunately, for every four workers that aren’t making the most of their PTO leave, six are.

“I make it a point to use all my PTO. Last summer, I took two weeks off with my family, and it was incredible how refreshed I felt coming back to work. I was more innovative, more successful, and more suited to meet the demands of our hectic work environment.” – David Sides, PR Marketing Expert at Gori Law told us

Sides tells us that his management team understands the importance of a healthy work-life balance, but he acknowledges that lots of employees aren’t so fortunate. “I think companies need to actively encourage PTO use, maybe even make it mandatory.”

How Can Employers Encourage Workers to Take PTO?

For employers serious about safeguarding the mental health of their workers, having a reasonable PTO policy isn’t always enough. To overcome the corporate and societal pressures that prevent workers from taking leave, we recommend going a step further by motivating them to actually use it.

Firstly, communicating openly about the perks of PTO is an important way to destigmatize the practice in your workplace. If employees know how paid leave can benefit them, and are aware that higher ups support the policy, they’ll be much less guilty when submitting a vacation request.

Another way to encourage PTO throughout your company is by leading by example. If your boss hasn’t taken a vacation in ten years, commutes into the office during sick days, and is glued to his desk on the 4th of July, you’re going to be less inclined to take time off work yourself. By having a healthy approach to work and leisure yourself, these views are more likely to trickle down your company. And needless to say, taking a few days away from the office isn’t going to do you any harm either.

Enforcing mandatory PTO is another way to ensure employees are catching a break. However, for this to work effectively you need to make sure your workforce is onboard and have processes in place for workers to manage their workloads.

The CEO of ‘buy now, pay later’ company Klarna has said that he believes the company can run on around half of its current workforce thanks to the increasing use of AI in its operations.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski stated his belief that the company can “do much more with less” and that it could function in the future with around 2,000 workers – that’s 1,800 fewer than it currently employs.

The comments came in interviews conducted by Siemiatkowski ahead of Klarna’s listing on the stock exchange. With many companies already replacing workers with AI this year, it is thought that the cost cutting strategy will make the company a more attractive proposition for investors during the flotation.

Less Labor, Higher Profits

In an interview with UK newspaper the Financial Times, Siemiatkowski – who also co-founded Klarna – said that he thinks that a staff of 2,000 people will be enough to deliver the results he wants.

Considering that at one point last year the company had a workforce 5,000 strong, that’s a significant reduction.

Siemiatkowski envisages the biggest staff reductions to come in Klarna’s customer service and marketing departments, which is where AI tasks can be implemented most effectively.

With the fintech company recently having made its first quarterly net profit in over four years, he said that cutbacks and the implementation of AI would be necessary to ensure future profitability. While also making the point that the 2,000 remaining workers would see a positive development in the form of higher pay – particularly “the people who are currently deep-diving and learning AI.”

“The very strong message to our employees is: less total labor cost, higher cost per individual.” – Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna

Shrink, Don’t Slash

While the potential cut in Klarna’s workforce sounds dramatic, Siemiatkowski suggests that large scale job slashing may not be necessary.

Not wishing to put a specific deadline on the reduction, he told the BBC’s Today radio program that natural employment churn would help bring down the numbers.

“In a tech company like ours, about 20% of people leave on an annual basis just to go and work elsewhere. People stay about 5 years.”

He repeated this on a X, formerly Twitter, in a post shortly afterwards:

I tell journalists same as all our employees for months:

– AI allows us to be fewer in total
– This means lower cost in total
– Employees stay on average 5 years in tech companies
– Almost fully stopping recruitment means shrink by 20% / y through natural leave
– Savings are…

— Sebastian Siemiatkowski (@klarnaseb) August 28, 2024

AI’s Dramatic Impact on Jobs

Siemiatkowski did acknowledge in the radio interview, however, that he believed AI would have a “dramatic impact on jobs” and that governments should be taking action now to account for that:

“I think it’s critical for government to consider what could we do for the group that could be affected, but while at the same point of time, not stop progress because it’s important that Europe and the democracies are ahead in the evolution of AI.”

Companies have already begun downsizing their workforces, with an inverse correlation in their use of AI.

A large round of cuts at Google in January, for example, was widely believed to be related in the company’s pivot towards AI technology. Big tech players like MSN, Salesforce and Duolingo have all followed suit, with Dell expected to cut around 12,000 staff as it embraces AI to streamline its business.

X, formerly Twitter, has bowed to pressure to add a warning message to its Grok AI chatbot tool that urges users to seek information about the upcoming US presidential election from official sources.

The joint request was made to the social media platform by five Secretaries of State after it was found that Grok was producing false information in response to queries about the election.

The result is that, when asked related queries, the chatbot will now direct users to an official governmental website where they can find “accurate and up-to-date information”.

Ensuring Voters Have Accurate Information

On August 5th, the Secretaries of State for Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington sent a co-signed letter directly to X owner Elon Musk stating that they and their combined 37 million constituents had been impacted by false information coming from the platform.

Specifically, they cited incorrect information given by the Grok chatbot around ballot deadlines after Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing his presidential candidacy last month.

Grok said that the ballot deadline had passed in nine states (including those of the co-signing officials), which was not the case.

The Secretaries of State asserted an anxiety that potential voters should have accurate, up-to-date elections information.

“X has the responsibility to ensure all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote.” – Secretaries of State letter

It requested in conclusion that X would “immediately adopt a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about elections in the U.S.”

Free, Fair, Secure, and Accurate

As originally reported by the Associated Press, X has now added a warning message that will show before Grok gives any responses to election-related questions:

“For accurate and up-to-date information about the 2024 U.S. Elections, please visit Vote.gov.”

The petitioning officials welcomed the move in a further joint statement, describing Vote.gov as a trustworthy resource.

“We appreciate X’s action to improve their platform and hope they continue to make improvements that will ensure their users have access to accurate information from trusted sources in this critical election year,” the statement reads. “Elections are a team effort, and we need and welcome any partners who are committed to ensuring free, fair, secure, and accurate elections.”

AI and the Risk of Misinformation

In the original letter, the officials acknowledged that the nature of even the best AI chatbots and their large language models meant that there would always be a risk of misinformation.

That risk has already reared its problematic head in election campaigns this year, most notably with last week’s news of false images showing Taylor Swift endorsing Donald Trump. While ahead of June’s UK general election, ChatGPT refused to answer election questions altogether after being found to have given inaccurate answers.

And it’s not just the election. In recent weeks UNESCO issued a warning that AI could spread false information about the holocaust, and a research study showed that ChatGPT gets medical diagnosis wrong half of the time.

We suspect that the already lengthy list of AI errors, mistakes and failures won’t stop growing any time soon.

It says that its AI models are backed by ‘uncompromising integrity’ – now Anthropic is putting those words into practice.

The company has pledged to make details of the default system prompts used by its Claude AI tools available for all to see, with release notes released as and when changes are made.

System prompts are often thought of as the ‘secret sauce’ that underpins the usability of generative AI tools such as Claude and competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Their inner workings are usually a closely guarded secret and not subject to the kind of transparency that Anthropic is now promising.

System Prompts Detailed by Anthropic

Claude’s progressive gesture of transparency was announced on X, formerly Twitter, by Anthropic’s Developer Relations Lead, Alex Albert.

Periodic release notes will show the system prompts currently being used by the company’s Claude.AI web tool and iOS and Android apps, with different sets of prompts for its Haiku, Sonnet and Opus models.

Albert also confirmed in his post that the system prompt updates will not apply to the Anthropic API that is integrated by third parties.

We’ve added a new system prompts release notes section to our docs. We’re going to log changes we make to the default system prompts on Claude dot ai and our mobile apps. (The system prompt does not affect the API.) pic.twitter.com/9mBwv2SgB1

— Alex Albert (@alexalbert__) August 26, 2024

Information and Behaviors

Anthropic’s system prompt release notes will be uploaded to its website. The page explains that the system prompt provides up-to-date information to Claude, including the current date, how it should answer queries and what behaviors it should be encouraging.

So far, notes for each of Claude’s three models are included, dating back to July 12th.

For its most basic Haiku model, for example, the tool is prompted to answer user questions in the way a “highly informed individual” would, giving “concise responses to very simple questions, but provide thorough responses to more complex and open-ended questions”.

“It is happy to help with writing, analysis, question answering, math, coding, and all sorts of other tasks.” – Anthropic’s July 12th system prompt release notes

The level of detail increases for its more powerful Sonnet and Opus models. For instance, they allow Claude the scope to tell users that it is ‘hallucinating’, when responding to questions about very obscure people, objects or topics.

There are also system prompts to prevent Claude beginning its responses with the word ‘certainly’ and to avoid “unnecessary affirmations or filler phrases like “Certainly!”, “Of course!”, “Absolutely!”, “Great!”, “Sure!”, etc.”

Transparent Approach to AI

In the ongoing battle for supremacy in the generative AI space, Anthropic has already unveiled an array of new Claude AI features this year. Only this week it announced that the Artifacts feature that seeks to “turn conversations with Claude into a more creative and collaborative experience” was being rolled out across its tools.

Competing with chatbots like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini, Anthropic appears to be hoping that its transparent approach will persuade users who may still be sceptical about the veracity of AI technology and put off by the trade secrets closely guarded by those companies.

Users of X replying to Albert’s post were largely positive, thanking Anthropic for the move and praising its transparency.

Almost half of OpenAI’s safety team has deserted the company in the past several months, according to whistleblower and former employee Daniel Kokotajlo.

The news comes just a week after several ex-staffers signed a letter calling out the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, for failing to take artificial intelligence risks seriously, specifically when it comes to the development of autonomous forms of AI like artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Altman has also been criticized for rejecting a California bill aimed at regulating larger AI models while being extremely vocal about the importance of regulation in the industry, as the AI chatbot maker and research lab continues to prioritize its AGI project over everything else.

OpenAI’s Safety Team Drop Like Flies Over AGI Concerns

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, which was established in 2023 to mitigate the risks of ‘superintelligent’ AI, is facing a major crisis.

According to former team member Daniel Kokotajlo’s exclusive interview for Fortune, around 14 team members have quit throughout the last several months, leaving a skeleton workforce of 16. The exodus has been a slow simmer rather than a rapid boil, reveals Kokotajlo, as OpenAI continues to prioritize profits over AI safety.

“It’s not been like a coordinated thing. I think it’s just people sort of individually giving up,” – Daniel Kokotajlo, ex-OpenAI staffer

While the Superalignment team is tasked with handling a wide range of AI risk factors, these resignations are likely to be aligned with Kokotajlo’s belief that OpenAI is “fairly close” to developing AGI – a highly autonomous AI system that will be able to outperform humans at most tasks.

OpenAI’s pursuit of AGI is laid bare in its mission statement. However, instead of benefiting “all of humanity” as its mission reads, company insiders like Kokotajlo believe that if the company continues at its current trajectory, the powerful technology could pose “a risk of critical harms to society” such as “unprecedented cyber attacks” or assisting in the “creation of biological weapons”.

What’s more, according to Kokotajlo, members of the Superalignment team that have attempted to publish research on the risks of AGI were faced with a “chilling effect” from OpenAI executives and an “increasing amount of influence by the communications and lobbying wings of OpenAI” over what is appropriate to publish.

Sam Altman Flip Flops on AI Regulation

In addition to voting with their feet, Daniel Kokotajlo, and fellow ex-researcher William Saunders signed an open letter last week publicly calling out the company for their security concerns

In the letter, they addressed the potential for AI models to cause “catastrophic harm to the public” if left unregulated. They also pointed out OpenAI’s shady track record when it comes to safety, including the company’s lack of whistleblower protections, its premature deployment of GPT-4, its lackluster security practices which resulted in a major security break in 2023, and the resignation of Ilya Sutskever, the companies former Chief of Security.

“Sam Altman, our former boss, has repeatedly called for AI regulation. Now, when actual regulation is on the table, he opposes it.” – Daniel Kokotajlo and William Saunders in open letter

Notably, the whisteblowers also drew attention to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s hypocrisy when it comes to AI regulation. They expressed “disappointment” that the company decided to lobby against SB 1047 – a proposed bill that mandates safety testing for AI models that cost over $100 million to develop – despite Alman’s repeated calls for greater AI regulation.

Kokotajlo and Saunders even compared its response to Anthropic, an AI chatbot competitor that decided to comply with the SB 1047 bill as they agreed it had a net benefit.

OpenAI Are Hellbent on AGI, Despite Potential Costs

According to OpenAI, its reasons for rejecting SB 1047, are two-fold. First, it claims that companies will leave California if the bill passes. Secondly, the company believes regulation should be “shaped and implemented at the federal level”, due to the national security implications of AI development.

These reasons have already been dismissed by Sauders and Kokotajlo for being unconstructive and in bad faith, and many ex-employees, including Ilya Sutskever, believe that Altman’s regulation rejection derives from putting “shiny products”, and the development of AGI “above safety”.

Despite a recent report by the Information revealing the ChatGPT creator may make losses of around $5 billion in 2024, and completely run out of money in the next year, OpenAI remains steadfast when it comes to developing AGI. Altman has previously claimed that it doesn’t matter how much the breakthrough will cost them, telling Stanford eCorner “Whether we burn $500 million, $5 billion, or $50 billion a year, I don’t care” as some breakthroughs for mankind are “priceless”.

With the company dismissing its own financial challenges as much as important calls for regulation, its unlikely whether anything with deter OpenAI from pursuing AGI – even as its Superintelligence team collapses. While the consequences of OpenAI’s AGI quest are yet to be determined, there are steps you can take to keep your data safe when using ChatGPT.

Learn how to stop ChatGPT training on your data, and find out how to use the chatbot safely here.

Apple is reportedly letting go 100 employees in its digital services group, as it looks to revaluate the company’s priorities.

The majority of the losses are said to have been made to the team overseeing the Apple Books app, with other service team and engineering roles also being cut.

While the tech giant continues to hire with more than 60 fully remote jobs advertised at Apple in August alone, it has also had several rounds of job cuts in other areas of the business during the course of 2024.

End of the Story for Apple Books?

The news of Apple’s latest round of job cuts was originally reported by Bloomberg, who had spoken to “people with knowledge of the matter” (although representatives from Apple had declined to comment when approached).

It says that the affected employees – who work in the company’s services group – were notified on Tuesday, August 28th.

It is understood that the team in charge of the Apple Books app will bear the brunt of the cuts, with the one managing Apple News also set to lose individuals.

Apple Books, in particular, has been singled out as not a business priority for the tech giant. According to Bloomberg, Apple does not see the provision of audiobooks and ebooks as as a major part of its services line-up. It also says, however, that Books is still expected to get new features over time, so there isn’t a plan to remove it entirely from Apple’s suite of apps just yet.

Bite in the Apple

While Apple has traditionally been a stable employer that has been relatively immune from large-scale layoffs made by tech companies in the post-pandemic era, the last 12 months has seen that picture change with several rounds of redundancies.

The most significant came in April when more than 700 employees across eight locations were let go following the cancellation of ‘Project Titan’ – the company’s multi-billion dollar self-driving initiative.

In the same month, the company reportedly made numerous roles redundant within its corporate retail teams. And this time last year reports emerged of around 100 contractor roles across several regions being cut.

2024’s Run of Redundancies

2024 has been another rocky year in the industry for job stability with a number of big names making substantial cuts.

As recently as this month, the likes of Formlabs and Sonos put dozens of its workers out of a job. While Intel announced a massive layoff of 15,000 employees at the start of August, citing dwindling revenues and rising costs as the reason.

The list of big name job slashers goes on: Dyson (1,000), Bell (400), EA (670), Bumble (350), Sony (900), Expedia (1,500), Cisco (4,250), PayPal (2,500), Microsoft (1,900), eBay (1,000). And Amazon has announced hundreds of job cuts to different arms of its business, too.

In addition to the rising costs blamed by some companies for the losses, the disruptive use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT are also having a significant effect on the tech job market — Dell’s recent cull being a prime example.

Customers of TD Bank could be looking at a cash injection, after a class action was taken against the company, which is seeing it pay out millions.

According to the plaintiffs, the bank illegally charged overdraft fees to personal checking account holders, and now it’s time to payback. TD Bank denies any wrong doing, but has opened the vaults to pay out over $32 million to customers affected.

Read on to find out if you’re eligible, and how to claim.

TD Bank $32.2 Million Overdraft Settlement

A class action case against TD Bank has seen the company agree to pay out over $32 million to its customers, after it was accused of charging illegal overdraft fees.

The case,  Burns v. TD Bank, N.A., Case No. 1:21-cv-18194-KMW-AMD, challenges TD Bank’s assessment of overdraft fees for accounts that were in the positive at the time the original purchase was made, but were negative when the actual amount was taken, and hence an overdraft fee was taken,

For its part, TD Bank denies any wrong doing, but has agreed to pay $32.2 million to customers who have been affected.

Want to work remotely? Check out our guide to remote data entry jobs.

Who is Eligible for TD Bank Overdraft Settlement?

If you want to claim in the TD Bank overdraft settlement, you’ll first need to make sure that you are eligible. You must:

• Current or past TD Bank customer
• Have, or have had, a personal checking account with the bank
• Charged “APSN” fees between June 27th, 2019, and September 30th, 2022

If the above applies to you, you could well be entitled to claim.

Find out if you’re eligible for the $1.2 million Direct Express settlement

How To Claim in TD Bank Overdraft Settlement

Unlike some other settlements, which require you to fill out a form to apply, this one is relatively straight forward. In fact, there’s every chance that you don’t need to do anything to claim. You may have receive a notifcation, such as a postcard, from TD Bank, on the matter already, which means that you are included.

If you haven’t receive notice, and think you are eligible, you should make contact with the administrators of the settlement at the official case website, or call the toll-free number, 888-695-6078.

If you are included in the settlement, and don’t want to be, you have until September 14th 2024 to opt out or object.

The final approval hearing is currently scheduled to take place on October 15th 2024, with payments following after this date, assuming no further hold ups or complications.

At this time there are no estimates around how much each claimant can expect to receive.

Launched in late 2022, the ecommerce Temu app has soared to success today, with 167 million monthly active users worldwide.

It’s incredibly popular in the US right now: One in every three Americans has made a purchase through Temu in the past 12 months. Last year, the company’s gross merchandise value hit $15.33 billion, although the company prices everything so cheaply that it still lost billions in revenue that year.

Thanks to all this sudden success, scammers are flocking to the app as well, aiming to get a tiny chunk of those dozens of billions being spent each year. As always, scammers are adept at finding any tiny crack in Temu’s security, from social engineering tricks to false claims of free Xbox gift cards.

Here are the biggest categories of Temu scams to know about.

What Are Temu Scams?

Temu is a huge ecommerce platform right now, and growing fast. That means that it’s the most recent ecommerce platform to have a huge userbase of online shoppers with cash to spend – and that’s a recipe for the potential victims that will always attract scam artists.

Temu offers users a seemingly endless stream of cheap products, covering everything from knick-knacks to fast fashion clothing to more knick-knacks. The low prices and frequent deals make the service a cheap way to stay on top of new trends. But those same prices are also raising.

Find out how to avoid Venmo scams here

Is Temu itself a scam? No.

Temu isn’t a scam site – although it might get fairly close to one, depending on who you ask.

Temu is incredibly cheap in part because it’s losing tons of money: $3.56 billion in 2023, to be precise. You could call that a scam if you want, but most people call it typical ecommerce strategy. By staying cheap, the company can grow rapidly and squeeze the competition until they’re eventually so big they can set their own prices.

Temu’s weathered a few lawsuits that suggested actual scams could be powering its rapid rise, however: Last October, Shein dropped a suit that had alleged Temu paid social media influencers to critize Shein, and had even made fake accounts to promote Temu by falsely implying Shein and Temu were the same brand.

Is Temu ethical? Probably not.

Finally, Temu has plenty of critics when it comes to ethics: Like many fast fashion platforms, Temu’s environmental impact and labor conditions are ultimately bad for the world, according to fashion watchdog Good on You, which rated Temu among the worst offenders of 2023.

Check out the main types of Temu-related scam to know about below – along with our best advice on how to defeat them.

• Temu Phishing Scams
• Temu Gift Card Promotions
• Temu Counterfeits
• Temu Xbox Scams

Temu Phishing Scams

You’re checking your email inbox one day and you see a familar orange logo. Looks like Temu sent you another great deal! Wow, an entire free palate of stuff just for filling out a survey? You’re just a few short survey questions away from being scammed.

Temu has 50 million actively monthly users in the US, and many millions more have signed up for an account. That’s a huge chunk of the online population of the US who expect to see Temu promotion emails in their inboxes, which means that completely unrelated third-party scammers can safely impersonate the ecommerce company with phishing emails – emails that are simply “fishing” for your personal credit card information by dangling attractive lies.

Here’s one example of a phishing email, with a design that mimics an official email that Temu might send to its audiences.

A scam email phishing for personal information in the form of a fake Temu survey. Source: Reddit

The emails might claim to require a survey, might offer free promotional codes and discounts, or might simply ask for a small fee for shipping you free products. Eventually, however, it will ask for your credit card details or simply download malware to your desktop.

This scam can be particularly tough to stay wary of, since Temu really does send out a ton of promo emails, and these genuine emails often center on great deals or free items.

How to avoid this scam: Check the email address – official marketing emails will be sent from an address with the “temuemail.com” domain. This isn’t the only metric you should check, however, as domains can be faked.

Instead, never click on a link directly from an email – navigate to the official site in order to stay safe. Always remember that, if you are suspicious, you can report the email at the company’s official customer service page.

Temu Gift Card Promotions

Scammers on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and any other social media site love pretending to give away gift cards. Everyone’s using Temu these days, so the scammers are pretending to give away Temu gift cards, and placing ads on popular platforms to reach as many potential victim as they can.

The basic scam remains the same as when they were pretending to give you, say, Amazon gift cards: They just want your personal infomation, and you’ll never see a single gift card cent. The same goes for similar ads that claim to offer other items through Temu, from Fortnite skins to leaked celebrity photos.

You might also run into a misleading promotion instead of an outright scam, however: Some companies run opaque promotions that dangle the possibility of hundreds of dollars in savings in front of you, but require you to download apps, shop online, and play games in order to qualify – efforts that might take you weeks and may even result in limited discounts rather than the seemingly free gift cards that you thought you were getting at first.

This $750 Temu savings ad might not be a scam, but it’s unlikely to be worth the effort, according to those who have tried to qualify. Source: Twitter

Some internet users have discussed their failures to qualify for deals from Instagram ads that promised to give them $750 towards their Paypal, CashApp, or Shein accounts. Temu is now among the platforms that these questionable deal offers will use to attract eyeballs.

How to avoid this: We recommend not bothering to try jumping through all the hoops to get these deals in the first place. If you’re after money-saving promotional deals, try an official channel. The only reason you’ll see a social media advertisement offering you free money is if the people making the ad are earning more money off of you.

Temu Counterfeits

Phishing emails and social media ads might scam you when you’re not inside the Temu app itself. However, you’re not entirely out of danger even when using the official app. This is because the platform uses third-party sellers, and some of those sellers are out to scam you.

These scams can come in the form of counterfeit products: Brand-name items might actually be ripoffs. Last year, Business Insider caught counterfeit Air Jordans on Temu, with one example selling for a tidy $27.47. According to that report, Temu was even slower than Shein when it came to removing the fake Jordans.

However, Temu has added a “verification badge” feature aimed at highlighting the most trustworthy sellers on its platform. The badge isn’t a sign that you’ll never be ripped off, but it’s better than nothing.

More trusted sellers will have a blue checkmark next to their name within the Temu app. Source: Avast

Some seller may even send you a cartoonishly small item after lying about the size, or might even simply never send you the item you paid for.

How to avoid this scam: Try to stick to popular sellers with a long track record of positive reviews, and ideally those with a verification badge. Also, stay suspicious of deals that seem too good to be true, even by Temu’s standards. Ultimately, you can never be 100% certain that you’ll avoid counterfeits or ripoffs, however.

How to avoid Cash App Scams

Temu Xbox Scams

Xbox Live users are seeing a wave of spam message requests in 2024, and Temu is front and center.

Troops of spammers will create masses of throwaway accounts soley in order to bother other players with lies aimed at stealing personal information. It’s a numbers game: They’ll send a thousand messages to get a response from one or two gullible 12-year-olds with access to their parents’ credit credits.

Here’s what one example of what a typical Temu Xbox spam message might look like, taken from a post on the Microsoft Community forums.

An example of the text that you might find in a scammer’s Xbox message. Source: Microsoft

As you might recall from our gift card scam explainer above, it’s a fair bet that no company will ever give away free gift cards unprompted. They’d never use a random account in a message request folder to announce it, either.

How to avoid this scam: This is another category of scam that you can stay completely safe from by following one simple trick – Never respond to an Xbox Live message request that promises to give you anything for free. Personally, I wouldn’t respond to any Xbox Live message requests.

If you’re a Google Meet user, a newly announced feature from the company could mean the end of clumsy and confusing calls, as it introduces the ability to automatically see a pop out window of the call, when the user changes tabs.

It’s a basic feature, but a welcome one, and just the latest in a long line of subtle additions that help Meet continue to go from strength to strength.

Read on to find out how to enable the new feature, and when you can expect it to land.

Automatic Picture in Picture Comes to Google Meet

If you’re a Google Meet user, then you’ll know all too well the trials of straying from the dedicated Meet browser tab, perhaps to check on some figures, or take notes, only to lose track of the meeting itself.

It can prove very frustrating, and hold up meetings, when the participants can’t even see each other. It’s especially an issue if information is being presented on the Meet screen, but you need another tab open to cross reference.

Now, that issue will be a thing of the past, as with Google’s latest feature, should a user navigate away from the call, a box will automatically pop up regardless of the screen they’re on, so that it’s easy to follow along. It’s worth noting that the picture-in-picture (PiP) feature is present in older versions of Meet, but needed to be manually activated, something of a pain when in the middle of a call.

In order to set PiP automatically, you’ll need to navigate to ‘view site information’ in the Chrome URL bar, and setting ‘automatic picture in picture’ to on,

The feature is being rolled out now on Rapid Release domains, with a scheduled release for everyone else starting from September 10th.

Automatic PiP will only be available to computer users.

Image courtesy of Google

Google Meet’s Ever Growing Feature List

The new automatic PiP feature may seem like a small one, but it will be a game changer for Google Meet users, and will make meeting run a lot more smoothly.

Google hasn’t rested on its laurels when it comes to new Meet features, with a steady stream of new one being released on a regular basis, making constant quality of life improvements.

At the end of last year, it added AI hand recognition, so that users can physically raise their hands to make a point, replacing the need to click a button (though you can still do that, if you really love clicking buttons).

It also introduced an automatic noise reduction feature for participants who join a call from their phone, meaning that others on the call won’t hear the barista shouting out coffee orders in whatever Starbucks you happen to be working in that day.

Google has worked hard to constantly improve Meet after the pandemic-influenced boom of web conferencing platforms in 2020. While Zoom still remains the most well-known, we actually rate Google Meet very highly in our research – we rate it over Microsoft Teams, not to mention Zoom.

If you’re looking to find out which web conferencing platform would suit you best, be sure to check out our free comparison tool.

Four out of ten consumers will return “at least” one online purchase each month, a new report finds. That’s a lot of returns, which presents a challenge for any online stores with tight margins.

The process of accepting returns comes with plenty of expenses, according to this new data. Between the shipping, potential for product damage, and time spent on customer support calls, each return is estimated to cost the company between $25 and $30 (assuming the order cost around $100).

Starting your own ecommerce website or adding an online store to your brick-and-mortar establishment? Here’s the latest information to know about consumer behavior surrounding online shopping.

US Merchandise Returns Nearly Cost $744B Last Year

The news is out from retail tech platform Narvar, in the company’s recent 2024 State of Returns Report. After surveying 1,924 US consumers between the ages of 18 and 75, a series of insights emerged.

The 39% of consumers who say they return an online purchase at least once a month was the biggest stat in the report.

For comparison, last year’s report found that 40% of consumers returned an online purchase two to three times per year. Here are some additional top takeaways:

• 46% of consumers purchase items online once a week or more
• Of those consumers, 87% do at least half of their shopping online
• Last year, US merchandise returns were nearly $744 billion
• 57% of shoppers submitted their most-recent return due to shipping and operational issues

The report also covered return fraud, noting that “52% of consumers have participated in return
fraud or abuse at least once in their lifetime.” Granted, this doesn’t mean it’s a huge concern, since it’s a lifetime stat, rather than a monthly one, but this statistic has increased a lot since last year’s report, when just 36% of consumers admitted the same.

The Value of Accepting Returns: Boosted Customer Loyalty

Accepting returns might come at a cost, but it’s worth noting the value behind the practice. And like a lot of the best practices when it comes to running a business, the long-term value is more difficult to put a price tag on.

“The returns process is often overlooked, but it holds incredible potential for driving customer loyalty and lifetime value. As our research shows, retailers who invest in optimizing their returns experience can transform this traditionally costly and burdensome process into a significant growth opportunity.” – Amit Sharma, CEO of Narvar

Customers aren’t returning purchases because they love costing retailers’ money, after all. Either, they have legitimate problems with the order, or perhaps they’re just trying to save a buck with an unnecessary return. Granted, one of those reasons might be more annoying than the other but taking a “customer is always right” approach will keep audiences happy.

Put another way, you can’t afford not to accept returns as easily as possible. As the report explains: “84% of online shoppers would turn their back on a retailer after a bad returns experience.”

Streamlining Your Returns Process

When accepting your own returns, try keeping some tips in mind in order to determine how to further streamline the process and keep your customers as happy as possible.

First, try accepting mail-in returns rather than only in-person returns: Needing to travel in order to drop off a return was the top reason consumers said they were annoyed with the process, with 38% saying as much.

If return fraud is a big problem for your store, consider asking consumers to take a picture of the damage when asking for a refund: 58% of consumers said this would stop them from making a fake return.

You’ll also want the entire ecommerce experience to be simple, easy, and fun, too: Check out our recommendations for the top website builders for small businesses to find the best software for launching your online store today.

If you’re endured a summer of long hours in the office, it’s safe to assume that a new job is on your radar. Even better, if you can find one that lets you work from home, you’ll be able to take in some of the summer fun thanks to your newly flexible schedule.

Still, finding a remote job in 2024 isn’t as easy as it was in 2020, with a wide variety of businesses issuing return-to-office policies. Sure, these policies aren’t backed up by reliable work-from-home productivity stats, but hey, at least those office chairs are getting a good work out, right?

Luckily, some companies are still on board with the remote work movement, and Apple is one of them. Check out our collection of some of the best work-from-home jobs currently available at Apple.

Fully Remote Jobs to Apply for at Apple in 2024

Apple is currently hiring over 600 different positions as of the writing of this article. However, only 65 of those roles are eligible for remote work, or as Apple describes it on its career page, “Home Office.”

It’s also worth noting that the locations included in the links below and on the Apple careers page denote where they are based, which you should still take into consideration when you apply, if only to line up time zones in an effective way.

Here are some of the remote jobs currently available at Apple in August 2024:

• Enterprise System Engineer, Major Accounts (Austin, TX, USA)
• Manufacturing Quality Engineer (Changsha, Hunan, China)
• AIML – Partnerships Lead, Siri Response (Cupertino, CA, USA)
• Field Sales Supervisor – North Region (Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)
• Enterprise Pre-Sales Systems Engineer (Minneapolis, MN, USA)
• Enterprise Systems Engineer (Dallas, TX, USA)
• Browser Security Researcher (Seoul, South Korea)
• Facilities Manager (Cincinnati, OH, USA)
• Carrier Sales Manager – T-Mobile Consumer Lead (Seattle, WA, USA)
• NL-Manager (Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands)
• Threat Intelligence Analyst, SEAR (Washington D.C., USA)

The Benefits of Working for Apple

As is common with virtually all big tech firms, working at Apple is a pretty good gig. The company is known for providing not only competitive financial compensation, but also a wide range of employee perks and benefits that can make life a little bit easier, even when working from home.

For starters, Apple is definitely one of those companies that takes care of its people in terms of salary, with an annual range that gets as high as $208,000 per year. In fact, according to Indeed, 66% of employees think they are paid fairly at Apple, a decidedly impressive majority given the looming recession across the globe.

While money certainly talks, it’s not the only benefit of working at Apple. The tech giant provides its employees with a wide range of other perks, including robust parental leave packages, stock purchasing offers, and Apple product discounts. There are also plenty of resources to help you with side hustles, family care, and even travel.

Apple also makes it easy to give back. It has an excellent charity program that will match your donations dollar-for-dollar to eligible organizations, so you can make double the impact when you give.

The Perks of Remote Work

Having a flexible work schedule is obviously a boon for workers in 2024. But what many don’t realize is that there are dozens of notable perks to remote work that will make life better for everyone. In fact, if you can’t get a role at Apple, you could explain these perks to your manager to convince them to let you work from home.

Firstly, remote work has been shown time and time again to actually improve productivity in many workers. Whether it be the lack of office distractions or just a more flexible work experience, our research found that 47% of businesses notice increased productivity levels amongst employees who work remotely.

On top of that, if you’re worried about the environment, remote work has been shown that remote workers lower the carbon footprint of a business by as much as 54% in the long run. Suffice to say, there are plenty of reasons why remote work is the way to go for you and the company you work for.

Finding a Remote Job in 2024

While remote jobs are fewer and farther between in 2024, that doesn’t mean Apple is the only company hiring for positions that allow you to work from home. In fact, we at Tech.co have been collecting some of the best remote jobs you can find in the modern era, so that you don’t have to do a lot of searching for your next position.

That’s right, companies like Microsoft and Google both offer a vast selection of remote jobs that could have you posted up for meetings in your pajamas. And if you think Apple employee perks are good, wait until you see what you could get from other tech firms.

The US job market might be slowing down faster than anticipated, with recent employment data showing that it added 818,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

Finding a job has been quite a rollercoaster over the last few years. From the global furloughing during the pandemic to the Great Resignation, the job market has seen its fair share of tumult in a very short period of time.

By all reports, though, the previous year has been rock-solid, adding a lot of jobs to improve the economy. Unfortunately, a new employment report tells a slightly different story.

Jobs Report Shows 818,000 Fewer Than Reported

This week, the Department of Labor made a statement noting that the number of jobs added for the year — which ended on March 31st for the report — was likely 818,000 jobs less than the monthly updates reported throughout the year.

“The labor market appears weaker than originally reported.” – Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial to CBS

While the final report is not out yet, the estimates note that monthly job additions were likely 70,000 less than reported at the time, which was around 231,000 per month.

Should You Be Worried?

Obviously, this sounds like pretty bad news. Nearly a million jobs being absent from the report must point to a troubling future for the economy, right? Well, not exactly.

“This preliminary estimate doesn’t change the fact that the jobs recovery has been and remains historically strong, delivering solid job and wage gains, strong consumer spending, and record small business creation,” Jared Bernstein, Council of Economic Advisers Chair for the Biden Administration in a statement.

The reality is, the job market is still doing quite well, even with this somewhat egregious miscalculation. And given the official report won’t be available until February 2025, it’s safe to say that all this speculation is just that: speculation.

Finding a Job in 2024

When you’re looking for employment, seeing the latest jobs report probably doesn’t fill you with a lot of hope. Fortunately, not all jobs are being reported as lower, with transportation and warehousing industries actually expected to add even more jobs that previously reported, according to data from the Department of Labor.

Beyond that, there are honestly plenty of jobs out there, depending on what you’re looking for. At Tech.co, we do monthly roundups of the top remote jobs that are available right now from a wide range of companies. We even provide some guides to helpful resources, like image generators for professional headshots.

All that to say, don’t let the jobs report get you down if you’re currently in the market for a new job. Because you don’t need to find 818,000 positions, you just need to find the right one.

Cash App is a mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payments app that has taken the world by storm in recent years. The bad news? It’s popular with scammers, too.

Fraud is on the rise, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reporting that scammers claimed $10 billion in stolen funds last year. As a financial platform, Cash App is an obvious target, with 9% of its users falling victim to predatory practices, according to CNBC.

Below, we’ve outlined some of the biggest scams to watch out for in 2024, with steps you can take to make sure you’re not caught out.

What Are Cash App Scams?

Cash App scams are cases of fraud perpetrated on leading P2P payments platform, Cash App. As the third most popular payments app, behind PayPal and Venmo, it has become a hotbed of illicit activity, with customer complaints increasing by a scarcely believable 472% in 2020 compared to 2019.

Cash App enables users to send and receive money instantly from their phone, buy stocks and bitcoin (BTC), and take advantage of a raft of savings features. This functionality has allowed Cash App to shoot to the top of the payments space, attracting millions of users around the world. Unfortunately, it hasn’t escaped the notice of opportunistic criminals, who are deploying tried and tested tactics – along with increasingly sophisticated methods of deception.

Below, you’ll find some of the most common Cash App scams.

• Cash App Phishing Scams
• Cash App Flipping Scams
• Cash App Giveaway Scams
• Cash App Fake Security Alert Scams
• Cash App Fake Debit Card Scams

Cash App Phishing Scams

One of the most common scams around, phishing occurs when bad actors attempt to extract your sensitive information by posing as trustworthy figures – which can include people, organizations, and websites. Most phishing cases unfold over email, but fake text messages and phone calls are growing in prevalence.

On Cash App, fraudsters may send you a legitimate-looking email requesting that you verify your login or payment credentials, or direct you towards to a fake website.  The image below illustrates a classic case of attempted phishing.

Phishing email on Cash App. Source: Trend Micro

This email did not originate from Cash App. Rather, a fraudster has obtained access to your email and is using scare tactics to try and manipulate you into giving up your account information. With this, they can access your account at will – and send funds wherever they please.

How to avoid this scam: With phishing scams, it can sometimes be hard to separate fact from fiction. There are, however, a few red flags to watch out for. Chiefly among them is contact information. Look at the sender’s email address – are there any spelling mistakes? Does it have an authentic domain? CashAppSecurity@gmail.com, or similar, should get alarm bells ringing.

Cash App Flipping Scams

If you’re unlucky enough to be subject to a flipping scam, a fraudster will make contact with you online – through Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or similar – with a tantalizing ‘get-rich-quick scheme.’ And if it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is.

They’ll ask for a relatively small amount – say, $100 – and promise to turn it into much more. They might provide images of fake cash alerts or bountiful bank balances, to make it all seem above board. To gain your unimpeachable trust, they might even ‘flip’ some money for you, proving that whatever their methodology is, it works.

Unlike a traditional bank account, Cash App isn’t Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured, so if your money is stolen, you’re not getting it back.

Flipping scam in action. Source: Avast

It may seem innocuous enough, but the scammer above could amass thousands of dollars from this scheme. By asking for a relatively inconsequential amount of money, victims are more likely to part with their cash – and recommend their friends do the same.

How to avoid this scam: You should never, ever send your money to anyone that you don’t know. And before sending it to somebody you do, you should verify that it’s actually them who is asking. As mentioned above, scammers can gain illicit access to your account through phishing and other means. It’s possible that your friend who urgently needs to borrow $1000 isn’t really your friend at all.

Cash App Giveaway Scams

‘#CashAppFridays’ – in which free money, BTC, or stocks are given away via social media – have seen the platform’s popularity soar in recent years. It couldn’t be simpler for respondents to get their hands on the goodies. Simply reply to the relevant post with your unique ‘$cashtag’ and follow the company page on X, Instagram, or similar.

Now, criminals have jumped on the bandwagon, hijacking the hashtag for their own sinister ends. They’ll reach out to people who responded to the original post, congratulating them on their ‘victory,’ and leaving instructions on how to claim their prize. Usually, this includes sending them money via Cash App.

Scammer tries to take advantage of Cash App Friday. Source: Tenable

Social media has made it easy for fraudsters to practice scams like the one above. Often, offenders will set up an account with the sole intention of tricking people out of their money. On other occasions, however, they’ll put more thought into it, with profiles being set up months in advance to lend a degree of credibility to their wild promises.

How to avoid this scam: You will never be required to send money to Cash App. Full stop. If you’re being asked to, you’re being scammed. Put the phone down and don’t be tricked.

Find out how to avoid Venmo scams here

Cash App Fake Security Alert Scams

With data breaches in 2024 reaching epidemic levels, this particular scam works by provoking fear in the victim. The scammer will send them a fake security alert – usually via email or text message – claiming that their account has been compromised and an immediate password change is required.

They’ll then be directed to a website and prompted to update their credentials – and the scammer will seize full access to their account. From there, they can lock you out and send money as they please.

Fake security alert scam. Source: Avast

These scams play into real fears around privacy and online security to extort money from unaware victims. As previously mentioned, your funds on Cash App are not FDIC-insured, so it’s almost impossible for them to be recovered.

How to avoid this scam: With scams of this kind, the key is to not panic. The scammers want you to act out of urgency, so that you’re less likely to verify the information that they’re feeding you. Take a breath, and reach out to Cash App through official channels to determine whether or not it’s true.

How to avoid LinkedIn Scams

Cash App Fake Debit Card Scams

This works on the basis of fraudsters already having access to your information. Once they’ve acquired it, they can request Cash App debit cards – a legitimate Cash App offering – to be sent to your address with instructions to download the app and get started.

Behind the scenes, they’ve already set up an account in your name – with control of the login credentials. As soon as you put funds into the account, they have access to them. Scams of this kind are less common, but equally as malicious.

The Dark Web has given rise to an illicit marketplace in which your personal information is traded for as little as $5 per Social Security number (SSN). In this climate, we recommend exercising caution with all official communications related to matters of finance and information security.

How to avoid this scam: Receiving a debit card that you didn’t request is a clear indication that your data has been stolen. You should contact Cash App immediately and follow their instructions.

AI should not be used for medical diagnoses, according to new research published in the PLOS One journal. The study, conducted by the University of West London, found that, when faced with a series of medical questions, ChatGPT gave a correct diagnosis less than half of the time.

The researchers asked it to choose the correct diagnosis from a variety of options, as well as provide an explanation for its choice. It was found to be correct just 49% of the time – while proving capable at simplifying complex medical terminology.

Amid a flurry of activity in the healthcare space, with researchers keen to explore potential use cases for the fast-growing technology, these findings suggest that robots will not be prowling the hospital wards anytime soon.

AI Not Ready for Healthcare

Researchers presented ChatGPT with 150 complex medical cases. The platform was asked to provide the correct diagnosis from a multiple-choice format, along with its rationale. The team observed that it was only right 49% of the time – although it gave competent, simplified answers that sounded convincing.

Published in July, the study set out to evaluate the “diagnostic accuracy and utility of ChatGPT in medical education,” according to CBC. Said lead researcher Dr. Amrit Kirpalani: “We wanted to know, how would it deal with…those complicated cases that we see in medicine?”

While the accuracy rate will do nothing to pour cold water on the swirling misinformation debate, researchers were encouraged by the platform’s capacity to simplify complex medical terminology. Kirpalani continued: “I think we can harness this for education.”

Researchers Exploring Potential Use Cases

These findings are another twist in what is turning out to be a long-running saga – with researchers determined to find uses cases for AI within the healthcare industry. A Stanford University study recently set out to evaluate whether or not LLMs could be used to diagnose OCD, a notoriously difficult condition to identify.

Remarkably, AI was found to outperform healthcare professionals in several instances, with ChatGPT-4 correctly identifying OCD in every patient it was presented with. By contrast, psychology doctoral trainees were only able to diagnose OCD 81.5% of the time, with primary care physicians coming in at 49.5%.

The University of West London study was originally conducted in 2023 with ChatGPT and the ChatGPT-3.5 LLM. In light of these Stanford findings, the scientists can only speculate as to how an updated model would perform when faced with the same diagnostic challenges.

Jury Still Out on AI

Even as the technology accelerates at a dizzying pace, AI continues to divide opinion among the general population. Its biggest cheerleaders – tech icons like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – believe that we’re on the cusp of a global revolution.

According to Pew Research Center, however, over half (52%) of US citizens are “more concerned than excited” about the potential of AI. A further 60% expressed discomfort at the idea of their healthcare practitioner relying on the technology.

In recent months, concern over the spread of misinformation has grown, with AI at the center of a number of high-profile gaffes. Earlier this year, for instance, Google’s Gemini drew the ire of Musk, who branded the platform “racist” and “anti-civilizational.”

While these findings hint at a promising future for AI in medicine, they also provide a cautionary tale – the industry, and wider public, should continue to practice a healthy skepticism where AI is concerned.

Ever felt like being humbled by an AI chatbot? Well, apparently you’re not alone, with almost 400k people taking part in a social media trend where they get ChatGPT to publicly “roast” their Instagram feed.

The results are savage, with the AI tool calling out everything from cringey gym selfies to questionable wardrobe choices – providing users with endless fodder for their Instagram stories, and leaving even more people wondering…when did ChatGPT get so funny?

Yet, with ChatGPT’s viral trend prompting waves of users to hand over personal information, the challenge is also reigniting old conversations around OpenAI’s questionable data collection practices, and lackluster approach to security. Read on to learn more about Instagram’s meanest viral trend, and the risks associated with sharing data with ChatGPT.

Users Are Asking ChatGPT to Insult Their Instagram Profile

If you’ve been on Instagram recently, you’ve probably been inundated with paragraph-long AI-generated roasts tearing down the feeds of your fellow users.

The “roast my feed trend” has been sweeping through social media like wildfire. At the time of writing 395k people have shared their results on their story thanks to a sharable template that lets you take part in a couple of taps – and its virality is hardly surprising.

ChatGPT doesn’t hold any punches. Its AI roasts, which are surprisingly funny, aren’t afraid to get personal, with the chatbot scrutinizing every part of a user’s Instagram feed, from their hobbies and clothing choices to their travel content.

It’s the same work of AI genius that congratulated Tech.co on being “the internet’s version of a lukewarm cup of coffee – completely forgettable and just as disappointing”. Ouch – we’ll pretend not to be offended by that.

Asking ChatGPT to roast me:

“Stefanos Tsitsipas: the guy who spends more time philosophizing on Twitter than actually serving up a solid second serve. He’s the only player who can turn a simple changeover into a TED Talk on Greek mythology and still come back to the court with…

— Stefanos Tsitsipas (@steftsitsipas) August 19, 2024

Despite flourishing on Instagram, the challenge’s origins can be traced back to X – specifically, a viral post where the Greek tennis star Stefanos Tsitsipas asks the popular AI chatbot to roast him. The post, which describes Tsisipas as a “guy who spends more time philosophizing on Twitter than actually serving up a solid second serve” received over 451k views in a day, and spawned a number of copycat trends across other social media platforms.

When Did ChatGPT Become Funny?

ChatGPT’s reputation as a “Swiss army knife for AI” is foundational to its popularity. When it comes to its uses, the limit really is your imagination (plus its 4,096-character limit), with the chatbot being used to compose essays, code computer programs, brainstorm business ideas, and more.

However, despite its versatility, ChatGPT hasn’t always been known for being funny, and its lack of wit has actually been backed-up by research. Last year, German researchers Sophie Jentzsch and Kristian Kersting decided to put generative AI’s comedic potential to the test by asking OpenAI’s ChatGPT3.5 to tell them a joke 1,008 times in a row.

The chatbot offered them variations on one of 25 joke setups over 90% of the time, suggesting that ChatGPT’s comedic repertoire was likely learned during its training phases, not generated spontaneously. The study found ChatGPT’s jokes didn’t “withhold much logical scrutiny either”, which in non-academic language, means that they didn’t make much sense.

However, before stand-up comedians are able to breathe a sigh of relief, these results were far from unanimous. In fact, recent research suggests that the chatbot is actually funnier than the majority of humans, with 70% of participants preferring wisecracks from ChatGPT over their own species, and the researchers concluding that the chatbot can “produce written humor at a quality that exceeds laypeople’s abilities”.

Truth be said, humor is subjective, so objectively analyzing a chatbot’s ‘funniness’ is never going to be easy. Yet, as OpenAI works hard to improve ChatGPT’s capabilities, the AI is only going to become better and better at mastering traditionally human skills like cracking jokes, and lateral thinking. But as ChatGPT spearheading yet another viral Instagram moment, should we even be trusting that chatbot with our data at all?

The Darker Side of ChatGPT’s Viral “Roast Me” Trend

As ChatGPT’s ‘roast me’ trend gains momentum, thousands of users have willingly handed over personal data without much of a thought. However, as ChatGPT amuses Instagram users with AI-generated zingers, its creator OpenAI continues to attract backlash over its approach to data security.

OpenAI admits that it saves all of the conversations you have with the chatbot for training purposes, but when it comes to addressing how exactly it’s used, the company is notoriously hush-hush. OpenAI’s privacy policy explains that it might share your Personal Information with third parties too, sparking concerns about the commodification of user data.

What’s more, research by the University of North Carolina has found that handing over sensitive information could be irreversible. Due to the size of the large language model (LLM) powering ChatGPT, the study concluded that it’s extremely hard to permanently delete your data from the AI tool compared with other chatbots, and that ‘deleted’ information can often still be retrieved.

But what does this actually mean? Well, unless you intentionally opt-out of sharing your information, it means that the data you’re entering into ChatGPT will be used to train future models.

Even if you wholeheartedly trust OpenAI with your data, the company’s questionable security profile raises concerns about sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. In 2023, the Silicon Valley company fell victim to a cyberattack after a hacker gained access to internal messaging systems. While no user data was compromised, company insiders reveal that the incident was avoidable and that OpenAI wasn’t doing enough to protect confidential data from cybercriminals, and foreign adversaries like China.

To protect yourself, we recommend only sharing information with ChatGPT that you don’t mind potentially being shared online. When it comes to roasting your Instagram, we advise against sharing screenshots that expose personal information like names and addresses, clear images of your face, and examples of your creative work.

Learn more about what not to share with ChatGPT here.

Need a holiday but strapped for cash? Well, you’re in luck! Several countries will pay you to move there and work remotely, or set up your business. Yes, really.

There’s no better way to change the everyday 9-5 than by upping sticks and moving abroad. And with remote working possibilities on the rise, there’s never been a better time to reach for your passport.

Whether it’s sunning yourself in Sicily or meandering through Mauritius, read on for a list of countries that will pay you to move there, a summary of each offer, and what you can expect if you decide to take the plunge.

Countries Looking for Remote Workers

Switzerland – Grants up to almost $60,000

With a population numbering just 262 (as of December 2023), the picturesque village of Albinen wants to incentivize workers and families to join its diminutive community – with grants of up to $57,957 available.

The setting is breathtaking, with easy access to the Alps, as well as larger cities like Geneva and Zurich. Not only that, but the Swiss way of life is the envy of the world. The country boasts a healthy economy, great infrastructure, generous vacation allowances, and strategic proximity to European markets.

However, set your expectations accordingly. The scheme has proved so popular that officials are receiving hundreds of applications a day, so it might take them a while to get around to yours.

Here’s how you can get involved:

• Swiss citizenship or permit C residence, which can take up to 5 years to obtain.
• Under the age of 45.
• Must commit to living there as primary residence for 10 years.
• Chosen property must have a value of at least $214,593.

You can find more info and submit an application here.

Spain – $3262 per person

The Spanish town Ponga – which sits in the northwest of the country – will pay $3262 to individuals who choose to relocate there. If you decide to have children, there’s an additional $3262 for each baby.

The population is small, numbering fewer than 1000, but the views are out of this world. Situated in the mountainous Asturias region, Ponga is famed for its lush greenery, rugged coast, and stunning medieval architecture. The Spanish climate and cuisine really need to be seen to be believed. All in all, it’s a fantastic opportunity that will satisfy your wanderlust.

To be considered, you’ll have to commit to living in Ponga for a minimum of five years. Visit the official municipal government website for more information.

Greece – $550 a month

The so-called ‘Cradle of Western Civilization,’ Greece is heralded as one of the most beautiful countries in the world. And for good reason. Boasting thousands of islands across the Aegean and Ionian seas, Greece is a place of blue skies, delicious food, and stunning architecture.

One of those islands, Antikythira, is undergoing a restoration, with houses to accommodate five families under construction. The island will give successful applicants $550 a month for two years to move to one of these houses. As of August, the program is not yet live – but it is expected to officially launch soon.

You can find more information on the official Kythira Tourism Department website.

Canada – $14,568 in tax rebates

Right on America’s doorstep, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has a unique scheme aimed at enticing international graduates to relocate. The Graduate Retention Program (GRP) welcomes college alumni from an exhaustive list of approved institutions around the world, including many in the US.

Scheme members will receive $14,568 in tax rebates upon completing their move. This is payable over 7 years, with recipients getting 10% of their rebate for each of the first four years. If that isn’t enough to tempt you, Saskatchewan is also home to cheap living expenses, beautiful scenery, and a bustling job market.

For instructions on how to apply for this amazing opportunity, visit the official Saskatchewan government website.

Italy – €1 house!

Okay, this country isn’t paying people to move there, but actually, what it does offer could be even better.

World-renowned for its stunning food and historical attractions, Italy is also the pioneer of the €1 Houses project. This scheme pairs fortunate recipients with – as the name suggests – €1 housing. That’s just over a $1 for your own Italian property. The catch? Most of these properties are in need of a lick of paint, to say the least. But you know what they say – one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Participating regions include Lombardy, Piedmont, Lazio, Tuscany, Sicily, and many more. If you like beautiful charcuterie, scenic views, and classical architecture, settling in Italy might just be for you. Check out the list of eligibility criteria below:

• Plan a renovation project within 1 year of purchase.
• Cover renovation costs.
• Complete renovation within designated timeline.
• Provide a $5900 deposit for the renovation period.

Find a full list of participating cities and apply here.

Countries Looking to Attract New Businesses

Chile – Up to $80,000

Chile is known the world over for its natural beauty – from the breathtaking mountains of Patagonia to the epic Atacama Desert, and everything in between. But did you also know that it’s home to a burgeoning technology sector with substantial investment?

Startup Chile, for example, is an innovation accelerator program offering a variety of grants for fledgling entrepreneurs. Eligible businesses can get up to $80,000 from the scheme. To be considered for selection, applicants must:

• Fill out and submit a form detailing your business.
• If successful, participate in an interview.

This is in addition to obtaining all the relevant work and residency permits. Check out the Startup Chile website for more information on how to apply.

Mauritius – $433 plus one staff salary

Start-up businesses could do a lot worse than relocating to Mauritius. Just east of Madagascar, this beautiful island is offering $433 to any small businesses that make the move. And that’s not all. If you hire a successful graduate of the local SME scheme, their wages will be covered for an entire year.

With its sandy beaches and gorgeous weather, Mauritius is a tantalizing prospect. Add a thriving economy, great schools, and free healthcare into the mix, and this opportunity becomes unmissable.

To be considered, applicants must:

• Present your business idea to a committee to determine its viability.

And that’s all! You can find out more and submit an application here.

The world’s largest flight-tracking platform FlightAware has recently warned customers that their personal data has been exposed since 2021, because of a rare “configuration error”.

According to FlightAware’s written statement, the company only discovered the issue on July 25, and sensitive information could include email addresses and passwords, as well as personally identifiable information (PII) like full names, years of birth and Social Security Numbers.

It’s unknown whether the exposed data has been stolen or compromised, and how many users have been affected. Yet, with FlightAware having 12 million registered users, the extent of the incident could be pretty widespread. Think you could have been affected? We also explain what steps you can take to steer clear of phishing attempts and identity fraud.

Flight-Not-So-Aware Notifies Users of Major Data Security Incident

If you’re one of FlightAware’s customers, you might have been asked to reset your account login and password due to a significant 2021 data incident that’s recently been identified by the company.

The popular flight-tracking company, which is based in Houston, Texas, recently released a statement notifying its users about security concerns, and requesting them to reset login details the next time they logged into the flight tracker.

The statement explained that on July 25, 2024, FlightAware discovered a configuration error that may have “inadvertently exposed” personal data in users’ FlightAware accounts. The reason for the error is unknown, but the company has confirmed the incident took place in 2021, leaving consumer data vulnerable for over three and a half years.

“FlightAware values your privacy and deeply regrets that this incident occurred. Once we discovered the exposure, we immediately remedied the configuration error. Out of an abundance of caution, we are also requiring all potentially impacted users to reset their password.” Statement from FlightAware

FlightAware apologized for the incident and has apparently remedied the situation. However, with lots of details being kept under wraps while the case is investigated, the full impact of the error is still yet to be determined.

What Type of Data Was Compromised?

According to FlightAware’s official notification, personal data exposed in the event includes personal account information including user IDs, passwords, and email addresses. However, depending on what information you entered into your account, it is possible that the following types of information have been compromised too:

• Full name
• Billing address
• Shipping address
• IP address
• Social media accounts
• Telephone numbers
• Year of birth
• The last four digits of your credit card number
• Information about aircraft owned
• Job title/ industry
• Pilot status (yes/no)
• Your account activity (such as flights viewed and comments posted)

While any type of leaked personal data opens users up to potential risks online, the fact that personally identifiable information like full names, year of birth, and social security numbers has been exposed is particularly alarming as this data is hot properly for hackers looking to carry out identity theft.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly common for PII data to fall into the wrong hands. Sensitive information, including Social Security Numbers, of around 2.9 billion people have recently been compromised in a global cyberattack targeting the National Public Data (NPD). New insights reveal that account details like email addresses and passwords were also accessed in the historical breach, leaving users even more vulnerable to identity fraud, as well as other attack vectors like phishing attempts.

There are actionable steps you can take to minimize risks though, and we cover some below.

Think You’ve Been Affected? Take These Steps Now

As FlightAware’s official notification reads, if you think you’re data has been exposed by the error, you should reset your password upon your next login by using the link provided. To lower the risk of your account being hacked in the future, we suggest using a strong password with a mix of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters.

The best passwords include at least 12 characters too. But don’t worry, you don’t need to commit these lengthy codes to memory. The best password managers create unique codes for you and store them in their vault before automatically entering them into apps like FlightAware when you log in again.

Since login information may have been compromised in the incident, we also recommend activating two-factor authentication on your accounts. This adds an extra layer of security by requiring a secondary form of verification. Finally, to avoid falling victim to a phishing attack, you should monitor your inbox for unusual activity – especially if the sender is claiming to be from FlightAware.

For further assistance, you can reach out to a member of FlightAware’s customer support center at privacy@flightaware.com or by mail at their Houston office.

Elon Musk is never too far from controversy, and now the world’s richest man is facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit for debts that have allegedly not been paid by X Corp.

The plaintiff in the case, the Wiwynn Corporation – a Taiwanese cloud IT infrastructure provider – is claiming damages of no less than $61 million.

The sum has been calculated as the amount it says it has spent on ‘custom components’ it bought in order to manufacture products for the use of X Corp, which it has otherwise been unable to recoup.

Three Counts of Action

All of the details of the claim can be seen in the full complaint document filed at the District Court of Northern California.

It shows three counts of action being brought by Wiwynn against X Corp: for breach of contract, promissory estoppel, and breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

In seeking relief for at least $61 million, the claim requests a trial by jury.

This is an action for damages arising out of X Corp.’s failure to compensate Wiwynn for custom components ordered by Wiwynn with X Corp.’s approval, which were to be used in connection with Wiwynn’s manufacture of custom products for X Corp. – Summary of Wiwynn’s action against X Corp

“Abruptly Stopped Making Any Payments”

The detailed ‘Background’ section of the claim sets out the plaintiff’s case against X Corp, going all the way back to a 2014 agreement between the cloud IT infrastructure provider and Twitter Inc.

An ongoing arrangement – under which Wiwynn purchased custom components to be used in connection with the manufacture of custom products for the social media company – had been followed for around eight years “without issue.”

Wiwynn says, however, that at the start of November 2022, “X Corp. abruptly stopped making any payments to Wiwynn—including for delivered finished products—and failed to respond to multiple communications from Wiwynn inquiring about and demanding the past-due payments for delivered finished products.”

By Wiwynn’s account, it had procured to pay around $120 million for the components – $59 million of which it has since managed to mitigate through cancelling orders and reselling items.

Musk Misdemeanors

It is perhaps no surprise that the world’s richest man would have a target on his back, but the list of controversies and lawsuits courted by the man voted as the most overrated CEO in the US seems to be growing at an alarming rate.

Having previously been sued by another social media company called X, by the mother of his children Grimes over custody, and for defamation on multiple occasions, perhaps the most high profile lawsuit brought against him was by 2,000 ex-Twitter employees who were laid off when Musk bought the social media platform.

Earlier this year, several former X executives brought suits against Musk for unpaid severance claims.

And as recently as the last couple of weeks, Musk actively dared former First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf to sue him, following a bitter public spat.

The newly appointed CEO of Starbucks is being forced to wake up and smell the coffee, after it emerged that he will be permitted to work remotely when a hybrid model of three-days-a-week in the office is required for other staff.

Former Chipotle and Taco Bell chief Brian Niccol is due to start in his new role as Starbucks CEO on September 9th, replacing former incumbent Laxman Narasimhan.

But the company has stirred up bad feeling by publicizing the key terms of Niccol’s employment, which includes the provision for “a small remote office in Newport Beach, California” – over 1,000 miles away from Starbucks’ HQ in Seattle.

No Need to Blend

Stories about the new boss’ working arrangements began to percolate after a form that included Niccol’s management compensation and employment key terms was filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Alongside details of his $10 million signing bonus, $1.6 million salary, bonus, stock options and other benefits, the document confirms that the CEO “will not be required to relocate to the Company’s headquarters.”

Instead, Niccol will commute to Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle as required to perform his duties and responsibilities. The document also states that he will be permitted to use a company aircraft for travel between his California home and the HQ.

“Brian is a culture carrier who brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of driving innovation and growth… Our board believes he will be a transformative leader for our company, our people, and everyone we serve around the world.” – Mellody Hobson, Starbucks board chair

Not Your Average Joe

In addition to the right to work remotely, the document goes on to provide that Starbucks will establish a “small remote office” in Newport Beach to be maintained at its expense for Niccol, together with “an assistant of your choosing for such office.”

It’s a bitter shot to swallow for staff further down the Starbucks Corp food chain, who are required to work at least three days per week in the office.

When that mandate was announced by interim CEO Howard Schultz in January 2023, he cited the desire to “rebuild our connection to each other and synchronize teams and efforts” as one of the primary reasons for the policy shift.

He also suggested that a business in which some employees are able to work from home while others aren’t is “inherently not fair.”

Sour Taste in the Mouth

Unsurprisingly, there have been signs of condemnation for the decision – flavored by the fact Niccol has a reputation for opposing unionization.

“Starbucks’ new CEO chose a Newport Beach office while the rest of the org is on return-to-office. A $250K jet allowance to commute back to Seattle doesn’t help the optics. Leadership is about setting the tone — this one might be off-key,” posted one user on X, formerly Twitter. “Seems like one rule for the BoDs and a different one for normal employees,” wrote another.

While others seem to think it’s all just a storm in a coffee cup:

People are surprised that Starbucks is building a remote/satellite office for their incoming CEO Literally. every. single. company. I’ve worked for has built at least one satellite office to keep or entice a key executive. Not even the CEO

— BuccoCapital Bloke (@buccocapital) August 15, 2024