ICYMI: Baby boys want all the energy and books, Google/Meta lawsuits, and shareholders cower before Exxon

Tech Bro Nonsense

1. Former Google CEO Tells Congress That 99 Percent of All Electricity Will Be Used to Power Superintelligent AI

1. billionaire tech tycoon and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt comments to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce: "What we need from you is we need the energy in all forms, renewable, non-renewable, whatever. It needs to be there, and it needs to be there quickly."

2. "Many people project demand for our industry will go from 3 percent to 99 percent of total generation... an additional 29 gigawatts by 2027 and 67 more gigawatts by 2030. If [China] comes to superintelligence first, it changes the dynamic of power globally, in ways that we have no way of understanding or predicting.”

2. Meta Says It's Okay to Feed Copyrighted Books Into Its AI Model Because They Have No "Economic Value"

1. In the ongoing suit Richard Kadrey et al v. Meta Platforms, led by a group of authors including Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company has argued that its alleged scraping of over seven million books from the pirated library LibGen constituted "fair use" of the material, and was therefore not illegal.

2. Meta's attorneys are also arguing that the countless books that the company used to train its multibillion-dollar language models and springboard itself into the headspinningly buzzy AI race are actually worthless. Meta cited an expert witness who downplayed the books' individual importance, averring that a single book adjusted its LLM's performance "by less than 0.06 percent on industry standard benchmarks, a meaningless change no different from noise." 

3. Thus there's no market in paying authors to use their copyrighted works, Meta says, because "for there to be a market, there must be something of value to exchange," as quoted by Vanity Fair — "but none of [the authors'] works has economic value, individually, as training data." Other communications showed that Meta employees stripped the copyright pages from the downloaded books.

4. Tellingly, the unofficial policy seems to be to not speak about it at all: "In no case would we disclose publicly that we had trained on LibGen, however there is practical risk external parties could deduce our use of this dataset," an internal Meta slide deck read. The deck noted that "if there is media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, this may undermine our negotiating position with regulators on these issues."

3. Lauren Sánchez in Space Was Marie Antoinette in a Penis-Shaped Rocket

1. Katy Perry Boasts About Ridiculous Rocket Launch While NASA Is Scrubbing History of Women in Space

1. “It’s about a collective energy and making space for future women. It’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth.”

2. Last month, the Orlando Sentinel first reported, NASA scrubbed language from a webpage about the agency's Artemis missions declaring that a goal of the mission was to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon; just a few days later, NASA Watch reported that comic books imagining the first woman on the Moon had been deleted from NASA's website.

3. A webpage for "Women at NASA" is still standing, but pictures of women and people of color — astronauts, engineers, scientists — have reportedly been removed from NASA's real-world hallways amid the so-called "DEI" purge. Per Scientific American, the word "inclusion" has been removed as one of NASA's core pillars. And as 404 Media reported in February, NASA personnel were directed to remove mentions of women in leadership positions from its website.

OpenAI Nonsense

1. OpenAI Is Secretly Building a Social Network

1. OpenAI has been secretly building its own social media platform, which The Verge reports is intended to resemble X-formerly-Twitter — the social media middleweight owned by CEO Sam Altman's arch-nemesis, Elon Musk

2. OpenAI updated its safety framework—but no longer sees mass manipulation and disinformation as a critical risk

1. OpenAI said it will stop assessing its AI models prior to releasing them for the risk that they could persuade or manipulate people, possibly helping to swing elections or create highly effective propaganda campaigns.

2. The company said it would now address those risks through its terms of service, restricting the use of its AI models in political campaigns and lobbying, and monitoring how people are using the models once they are released for signs of violations.

3. OpenAI also said it would consider releasing AI models that it judged to be “high risk” as long as it has taken appropriate steps to reduce those dangers—and would even consider releasing a model that presented what it called “critical risk” if a rival AI lab had already released a similar model. Previously, OpenAI had said it would not release any AI model that presented more than a “medium risk.”

3. Saying 'please' and 'thank you' to ChatGPT costs OpenAI millions, Sam Altman says

1. Being nice to your AI chatbot requires computational power that raises electricity and water costs

2. Altman responded to a user on X (formerly Twitter) who asked how much the company has lost in electricity costs from people being polite to their models: “Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know,” the CEO wrote.

3. AI models rely heavily on energy stored in global data centers — which already accounts for about 2% of the global electricity consumption. Polite responses also add to OpenAI’s water bill. AI uses water to cool the servers that generate the data. A study from the University of California, Riverside, said that using GPT-4 to generate 100 words consumes up to three bottles of water — and even a three-word response such as “You are welcome” uses about 1.5 ounces of water.

Antitrust Nonsense

1. Trump DOJ's plan to restructure Google hurts consumers, national security, says exec: 'Wildly overbroad'

1. Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs: "We're very concerned about DOJ's proposal. We think it would hurt American consumers, our economy, our tech leadership, even national security. The proposed reform from DOJ "would result in unprecedented government overreach that would harm American consumers, developers, and small businesses — and jeopardize America’s global economic and technological leadership at precisely the moment it’s needed most."

2. 8 revelations from Mark Zuckerberg's 3 days on the witness stand in Meta's antitrust trial

1. The FTC alleges Meta "helped cement" its illegal monopoly in the social media market with its acquisition of Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp more than a decade ago.

2. 8 revelations:

1. Antitrust worries surfaced years ago

1. Two years before the FTC initially sued Meta over allegations that it violated US competition laws, Zuckerberg considered breaking Instagram out into its own company to avoid potential antitrust scrutiny, according to a 2018 internal email revealed by the government at trial.

2. "I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company," Zuckerberg wrote in the email to company executives. "As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway." If a break up were to happen, Zuckerberg wrote, history showed that companies could end up better off.

3. Asked about this view at trial, Zuckerberg said, "I'm not sure exactly what I had in mind then."

2. A 'crazy idea' to boost Facebook's relevance

1. Zuckerberg's "crazy idea" for Facebook in 2022 involved purging all users' friends. The CEO — fearful that Facebook was losing cultural relevance — made the proposal in a 2022 email to the social network's top brass.

2. "Option 1. Double down on Friending," Zuckerberg wrote in the message. "One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again."

3. Sheryl Sandberg wanted to play Settlers of Catan

1. Zuckerberg once offered to give Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta, a tutorial in the board game Settlers of Catan.

2. The lesson offer came up in 2012 messages in which the two discussed the fresh $1 billion purchase of Instagram, partially redacted missives presented by the FTC during Zuckerberg's testimony showed.

3. "We would love it. I want to learn Settlers of Catan too so we can play," Sandberg told Zuckerberg in the message. He responded: "I can definitely teach you Settlers of Catan. It's very easy to learn."

4. Meta's rivalry with TikTok has only just begun

1. During his testimony, Zuckerberg hammered home Meta's argument that the tech giant faces massive competition from other apps, especially TikTok.

2. "TikTok is still bigger than either Facebook or Instagram," Zuckerberg testified. "I don't like it when our competitors do better than us. You can sort of bet that I'm not going to rest until we are doing quite a bit better than we are doing now.”

5. Facebook Camera app struggles were a source of worry

1. Instagram's early rise shook Zuckerberg. As his company struggled to mount its response with the Facebook Camera app, the CEO began to lose his patience.

2. "What is going on with our photos team?" Zuckerberg wrote in a 2011 message to top executives, as revealed by the FTC in court. Zuckerberg then described a number of individuals, whose names were redacted, as being "checked out." He added another person didn't want "to work with this team because he thinks this team sucks."

3. In May 2012, Facebook launched a photo-sharing app called Facebook Camera, which aims to make it simpler for the social network’s users to upload and browse photos on smartphones. Only weeks after Facebook spent $1 billion on a similar photo-sharing app called Instagram. 

6. Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat for $6 billion

1. Zuckerberg's failed bid to buy Snapchat was highlighted by the government to bolster its argument that Meta sought to maintain its dominance in the social media market through acquisitions rather than competition.

7. Facebook isn't really for friends anymore

1. While under questioning by the FTC, Zuckerberg said that Facebook had greatly evolved since he launched the platform more than 20 years ago and that its main purpose wasn't really to connect with friends anymore.

2. The FTC argues that Meta monopolizes the market for "personal social networking services."

3. "The friend part has gone down quite a bit," Zuckerberg testified. He said the Facebook feed has "turned into more of a broad discovery and entertainment space."

8. Not impressed by WhatsApp cofounder

1. Zuckerberg wasn't too impressed with one of WhatsApp's cofounders after a 2012 meeting he had with company leadership.

2. "I found him fairly impressive although disappointingly (or maybe positive for us) unambitious," Zuckerberg wrote in an email to colleagues after the meeting, it was revealed at trial.

3. Jan Koum and Brian Acton cofounded WhatsApp in 2009. Zuckerberg said in his testimony that he thinks he was referring to Koum. Asked about his email, Zuckerberg seemed uneasy. He said that Koum was clearly smart but that he and Acton were staunchly opposed to growing their messaging app enough to be a real threat to Facebook. Zuckerberg would go on to buy WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion.

3. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms adds former Trump advisor to the board days before an antitrust showdown with the FTC

1. Meta Platforms is further boosting its lineup of heavy hitters with the additions of Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to the mix. Powell McCormick was the former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump during his first term. Married to Republican Senator Dave McCormick, former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds

Stakeholder/shareholder activism Nonsense

1. BP suffers investor rebellion at first AGM since climate strategy U-turn

1. BP suffered an investor rebellion on Thursday after facing shareholders for the first time since abandoning its climate strategy at a meeting marred by protest.

2. About a quarter of shareholders (24.3%) voted against the chair, Helge Lund, which marked the first time in at least a decade that more than 10% of BP’s shareholders voted against the re-election of the chair.

3. The outgoing chair told shareholders that the company had “pursued too much while looking to build new low-carbon businesses” but that “lessons have been learned”.

4. BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss (2.7% against), repeated his previous claim that BP’s optimism in the global green energy transition was “misplaced”, and that the board’s “one simple goal” was to “grow the long-term value of your investment”.

5. Mark Van Baal, the founder of the green activist investor group Follow This, said shareholders had “made it clear that weakening climate commitments is unacceptable”. He added: “This historical result serves as a wake-up call to BP’s board and emphasises investor expectation for robust governance mechanisms and genuine leadership on ESG issues.”

2. Starbucks CEO faces major backlash after details of his work routine are revealed: 'Ill-conceived decision'

1. A press release from the National Center for Public Policy Research reported on the hypocrisy of Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol's transportation practices when considering the company's public commitment to eco-friendly practices.

2. Niccol travels regularly from his home in Newport Beach, California, to Starbucks' headquarters in Seattle, Washington, via private jet. Each 2,000-mile round-trip commute releases nearly nine tons of carbon dioxide.

3. The National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project's director Stefan Padfield pointed out the discrepancy of policy and practice during his presentation of Proposal 8 requesting an annual report on emissions congruency. He noted that each round trip made by Niccol "is roughly the annual energy-consumption footprint of the typical American household."

4. This analogy paints a vivid picture of the hypocrisy between Starbucks' public environmental commitments and the practices of the CEO. Gaps are apparent. 

3. Target CEO Cornell meets with Sharpton to discuss DEI rollback as civil rights leader considers boycott

1. CEO Brian Cornell met with the Rev. Al Sharpton in New York on Thursday as the retailer faces calls for a boycott and a slowdown in foot traffic that began after it walked back key diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the civil rights leader told CNBC Wednesday.

2. The meeting, which Target asked for, comes after some civil rights groups urged consumers not to shop at Target in response to the retailer’s decision to cut back on DEI. While Sharpton has not yet called for a boycott of Target, he has supported efforts from others to stop shopping at the retailer’s stores.

3. “You can’t have an election come and all of a sudden, change your old positions,” Sharpton told CNBC in a Wednesday interview ahead of the meeting. “If an election determines your commitment to fairness then fine, you have a right to withdraw from us, but then we have a right to withdraw from you.”

4. IBM Informs Staff of DEI Retreat as Trump-Era Scrutiny Grows

1. Employees were told of the changes earlier this week, in a memo that cited “inherent tensions in practicing inclusion.” Legal considerations and shifting attitudes to DEI were among the factors for the company. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna discussed the changes in his monthly video update to employees Thursday.

2. Anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck said he first contacted the company in February to question its policies. IBM confirmed it discussed its changes with Starbuck.

3. The company (-10% gender influence gap) also disbanded a diversity council that represents the views of employee groups as part of its reevaluation.

4. Exxon Faces No Shareholder Proposals for First Time in 25 Years

1. The absence of requests in Exxon’s proxy statement comes a year after the company sued two climate-focused investors to remove what it described as their “extreme agenda.” It also tracks with the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to back guidelines that make it easier for corporations to block votes on shareholder resolutions at their annual meetings.

2. Exxon said in a statement late Monday that it received only one proposal this year and the SEC agreed it should be discarded because “it tried to micromanage the company.”

3. Occidental Petroleum Corp., Valero Energy Corp. and Dow Inc. are other companies with no shareholder proposals up for vote at this year’s annual meetings.

4. Exxon said this year marks “the first time in recent history that our proxy includes zero proposals from activists.” It was just four years ago that a small fund scored a victory over Exxon, placing three directors on the company’s board.

5. Climate activist shareholder group Follow This pauses big oil campaign

1. Climate activist shareholder group Follow This said on Thursday a lack of investor appetite has forced it to suspend its nearly decade-long campaign seeking stronger commitments from major oil and gas producers to emission cuts

5. Harley-Davidson slams activist investor, saying its campaign is messing up its CEO search

1. In early April, H Partners’ Jared Dourdeville, who had been a Harley director since 2022, abruptly resigned from the board, saying among other things that Harley had “cultural depletion” because of its work-from-home policies and the exit of several senior leaders. And that was not his only point of contention with the rest of the board.

2. Investment firm H Partners, a major investor with 9.1% of Harley’s shares, in an open letter filed on Wednesday, urged fellow shareholders to remove three longtime directors from Harley’s eight-member board at its annual meeting in mid-May by withholding votes for them. H Partners said the board had not held Harley CEO Jochen Zeitz accountable for what it called his repeated “strategic execution failures” and “severe underperformance.”

1. CEO/Chair Zeitz (2007, 30%)

2. Lead DIrector Norman Thomas Linebarger (2008, 13%)

3. Sara Levinson (1996, 20%)

4. "We believe Mr. Zeitz, Mr. Linebarger, and Ms. Levinson should be held accountable for the destruction of shareholder value,"

5. Harley’s bylaws stipulate that directors who win less than 50% of votes in an election must tender their resignations.

3. Harley announced last week that Zeitz, CEO since 2020 and board member for 18 years, would resign but stay in his role until a successor is found. H Partners wants him out now.

4. That followed a letter issued a day earlier by Harley-Davidson, which accused H Partners of “publicly campaigning” against it and saying that those efforts are also “adversely impacting the CEO search process and ongoing execution of the Hardwire strategic plan,” referring to a turnaround plan it launched in 2021.

5. Harley said that it began a CEO search late last year after Zeitz expressed interest in retiring and has interviewed three potential CEOs, including one supported by Dourdeville, but declined to offer any the job. The company has also said that Dourdeville had cast only one vote against the majority during his time as a director and that as recently as November 2024 he had expressed support for Zeitz.

Harley-Davidson faces board fight from H Partners amid calls for CEO to exit soon