Flagship

No US shutdown breakthrough

The US government shutdown will stretch until at least Friday, after lawmakers failed to break a spending deadlock. As a slew of federal services ground to a halt Wednesday, the White House warned mass firings of government workers would begin within days. With both Republicans and Democrats sticking to their demands, the possibility of an extended showdown weighs on the economy. Investors and policymakers are increasingly relying on unofficial data as a substitute for federal sources. A new report from payroll provider ADP painted a grim portrait of the job market, sending the US dollar to a two-week low on Wednesday. Wall Street appears unbothered, however: The S&P 500 hit a new high as traders bet the shutdown wouldn’t last long.

BYD notches rare sales decline

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD’s quarterly sales fell for the first time since 2020 as domestic competition intensified. The contraction — the company also notched a monthly sales decline in September, unlike other large Chinese EV brands — comes as BYD slashed its sales goal for the year. BYD has been ramping up exports and “doesn’t care about the domestic market any more,” one analyst said. Rather than attract regulatory scrutiny by further cutting prices, a step many rivals have taken, the company “chose to lie down in China.” But overseas markets, too, are proving challenging: BYD recently offered discounts of up to 50% in the “notoriously brutal” Japanese auto sector, Electrek wrote.

AI upends Chinese education

China is integrating AI into more aspects of childhood, spurring the growth of a multibillion-dollar industry. Robot toys that help with tutoring, homework-grading systems, and AI-enabled tablets are becoming more common in Chinese homes and classrooms, accompanying a government directive for AI to be embedded throughout early education. The push has created a vast business opportunity for Chinese tech firms, though analysts say AI hasn’t yet positively transformed education, Rest of World reported. “People are buying things randomly because it’s AI,” one expert said. Some Chinese teachers have complained the new systems only add to their workload, and that their adoption is performative.

Chatbots enforce caste bias

OpenAI’s products including ChatGPT are steeped in caste bias that affects Indian users, according to a new report. Caste-based discrimination is outlawed in India, but persists through stereotypes depicting some groups as unhygienic and poor, and others as scholarly and sophisticated. An MIT Technology Review investigation found that ChatGPT, as well as OpenAI’s video generator, gravitated toward stereotypes when assigning characteristics to different castes. It shows the ongoing challenges surrounding bias in AI, especially in India, which is OpenAI’s second-largest market — but also reflects the paradoxical nature of such concerns. AI models are trained on bodies of text from across the internet, so chatbots inevitably reflect real-world prejudices. “The experience [of AI] actually mirrored society,” one Indian user said.

AI video generation roils film studios

An upgrade to OpenAI’s text-to-video generator reinvigorated a debate over AI’s place in entertainment. The release of Sora 2, which can create videos that look ever-realistic, threatens to roil Hollywood, especially studios’ legal departments, as companies contend with AI-generated videos that encroach on their IP, The Hollywood Reporter wrote. While the tech can’t yet handle dialogue, the recent debut of an “AI actress” sparked pushback from actors who don’t want their likenesses to train AI. A recent lawsuit in India could set a precedent for such use cases: A Bollywood power couple asked a judge to block the creation of AI videos that violate their image, calling on YouTube to prevent such content from being used as training material.

AOL shuts down dial-up service

AOL’s dial-up internet has uttered its last screech. A cornerstone of the early internet, the service was perhaps best known for its connection sound — a “noisy, garbled series of computerized tones that sounded like a drowning robot,” often followed by, “You’ve Got Mail,” NBC News wrote. AOL counted more than 20 million US users at its peak, but lost customers as broadband internet became more accessible. US census data showed more than 150,000 Americans were still using dial-up to get online in 2023, mostly in remote areas where affordable broadband doesn’t reach. It’s not the only early internet relic that’s disappeared: Skype shut down this year, Internet Explorer died in 2022, and AOL discontinued its “AIM” Instant Messenger in 2017.

Jane Goodall dies

Jane Goodall, the British primatologist and conservationist best known for her intimate studies of chimpanzees, died aged 91. Goodall in 1960 discovered that chimps made and used tools — characteristics that were long thought to be exclusive to humans. Her research “transformed basic conceptions of humankind” by demonstrating that the apes exhibited emotions similar to ours, such as filial love, grief, and anger, The Los Angeles Times wrote. Goodall overcame initial skepticism from other scientists, especially over her unusual personalization of the animals, and she ultimately opened the doors for more women in primatology.

Leslie Masdoorp, CEO, British International Investment, will join the stage at the Fall Edition of Semafor’s World Economy Summit. Hosted in the Gallup Great Hall and spanning eight sessions over two days, Semafor editors will feature on-the-record interviews on the state of global growth and finance, AI advancements, powering global energy needs, and the forces reshaping the world economy.

Each session brings together the leaders and forces most directly shaping the global economy, with programming powered by Semafor’s world-class editorial and executive leadership.

China’s fertilizer use peaked in 2014

China’s use of agricultural fertilizers peaked more than a decade ago, thanks to the rise of precision agriculture and a change in government subsidies. Our World in Data noted that while China’s population has doubled since the 1960s, its food production per capita has increased in that time. Fertilizers played a key role, but subsidies led to their overuse, with considerable environmental impacts. In 2015, the government reduced those subsidies, and instead incentivized precision agriculture, machinery, and education, making farms much more efficient. Europe saw a similar curve — its fertilizer use per hectare has halved since 1990. Global use may have peaked in 2020, even as available calories per capita worldwide continue to increase.

Europe’s modern-day Machiavelli

A Swiss-Italian writer is playing the role of a modern-day Machiavelli for European leaders. Giuliano da Empoli accompanies French President Emmanuel Macron on state visits and is quoted in his speeches; the Danish prime minister consults him regularly. Da Empoli writes fiction — his bestseller The Wizard of the Kremlin is a thinly veiled portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle — and also analysis, examining how strongman leaders such as Putin or Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman gain and keep power. His modus operandi is to understand, rather than condemn, the autocrats, Politico wrote. The comparison to the 16th-century diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli is irresistible, not least because da Empoli once worked in the office next door to Machiavelli’s in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.

Woolf’s unpublished works found

Three works by Virgi