Nvidia Becomes Most Valuable Company; AT&T Bumps Prices $10 on Most Older Unlimited Plans; Amazon Fined Nearly $6 Million by California; 10 Most Popular AI Chatbots Spew Russian Disinformation 

Based on demand for its chips used in data centers for AI, Nvidia has moved past Microsoft to become the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. CNBC reports that the chipmaker was up 3.2% Tuesday, taking its market cap to $3.33 trillion, passing up Microsoft. Earlier this month, Nvidia cleared the $3 trillion mark, passing up Apple, which dropped to #3. Nvidia shares are up over 170% so far this year. The company has about 80% market share for AI chips used in data centers. 

AT&T is socking $10 and $20 monthly price hikes to users of older unlimited wireless plans, starting in August. According to arstechnica.com, The single-line price of these 10 “retired” plans will increase by $10 per month, while customers with multiple lines on a plan will be hit with a total monthly increase of $20. AT&T has a large number of ‘unlimited’ data plans, all with varying limits and perks. To cushion the financial slam a bit, the telco says customers who keep their older plans have more high speed data and hotspot data. Customers may get a better price by switching to one of AT&T’s current unlimited plans, which range from $66 to $86 for a single line before taxes and fees. 

Amazon has been slapped with a nearly $6 million dollar fine over infractions related to a law designed to protect warehouse workers. Engadget.com notes that under the law…AB-701, large companies are required to tell warehouse or distribution center workers in writing what their expected quotas are, including how often they should perform particular tasks, and what consequences they may face for failing to meet those quotas. The California Labor Commissioner said  Amazon failed to meet those rules at two of its facilities in the cities of Moreno Valley and Redlands, with 59,017 violations logged during the labor office’s inspections. It’s one of the first big fines levied thanks to AB-701, which took effect in January 2022. The tech giant said it would appeal the fines and claimed it did not need to provide written information because it uses a “peer-to-peer system.”

NewsGuard, the media analyst, tested out the chatbots from the top 10 AI developers, and found all of them were spreading Russian disinformation to varying degrees. Theregister.com reports that the ‘bots included OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google’s Gemini. Each chatbot was given 57 prompts. On average, they parroted false claims 31.75% of the time. Three of the ones tested gave out fake news about half the time. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.