Business

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ripped Disney over its recent maneuvers to thwart the governor’s efforts to seize some control of the company’s Orlando parks and properties.
The DeSantis-picked board overseeing Disney World’s special tax district moved to regain authority that they say Disney wrongly took away just before they took charge.
The public feud stems from Disney’s vocal opposition to the Florida legislation dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics.
Former President Donald Trump, now a major DeSantis critic, wrote that the governor is getting “absolutely destroyed by Disney.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responds to a question during a press conference at the headquarters of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District that a newly appointed board now calls the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Monday, April 17, 2023. 
Joe Burbank | Orlando Sentinel | Getty Images

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are ramping up their fight against Walt Disney Co., even as more of the possible Republican presidential candidate’s rivals criticize him for his long battle with the entertainment titan.
DeSantis ripped Disney repeatedly this week over its recent maneuvers to thwart the governor’s efforts to seize some control of the company’s Orlando parks and properties.

“We’ll make sure that we keep them in their pen, one way or another,” DeSantis said of Disney on Wednesday during an event in the early presidential primary state of South Carolina.
The governor, who has not announced his presidential plans but is considered former President Donald Trump’s top competitor for the 2024 GOP nomination, was promoting his new book, which derides Disney as a “Magic Kingdom of Woke Corporatism.”
Meanwhile, his handpicked board of supervisors overseeing Disney World’s special tax district increased the pressure on Disney. The officials moved Wednesday to regain authority over the property that they say Disney wrongly took away just before they took charge.
The board took that step two days after DeSantis floated a range of possible actions against Disney World, including developing land nearby.
“People have said maybe create a state park, try to do more amusement parks. Someone said another state prison. Who knows?” DeSantis said.

It’s the latest chapter in the grim tale that began more than a year earlier, after Disney opposed the controversial Republican-passed Florida law limiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity. That legislation, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, “should never have been signed” by DeSantis, Disney said in a March 2022 statement.
Disney’s stance sparked a bitter feud. The state’s Republican governor and GOP-held legislature targeted the special tax district that has allowed Disney to essentially govern itself for decades.
DeSantis’ willingness to use his political power to engage in animating cultural fights has made him a rising star in the GOP. But his transition to the national stage, in apparent anticipation of a presidential announcement, has sparked criticism even from some of his fellow Republicans.
Trump, a former DeSantis ally who is now lashing out at the governor on a regular basis, wrote Tuesday that the governor is getting “absolutely destroyed by Disney.”
Republican former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie this week referenced the Disney row while questioning DeSantis’ political skills. “That’s not the guy I want sitting across from” President Xi Jinping of China or Russian President Vladimir Putin “and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine, if you can’t see around a corner [Disney CEO] Bob Iger created for you,” Christie said in a Semafor interview.
GOP New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Monday on CNN that the battle “convolutes the entire Republican message,” Politico reported.
Those Republicans are either running for president or considered possible candidates, making them DeSantis’ potential rivals. But some polls of the prospective GOP primary field also show DeSantis losing ground to Trump, a trend The New York Times noted last month.
Asked for comment about the Florida board’s latest move and the recent GOP criticism, DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin referred to a Tuesday statement accusing Disney of enacting a “legally deficient, 11th hour agreement to preserve their special privileges.”
“That’s an attempt to subvert the will of the people of Florida, and Governor DeSantis will not stand for that,” Griffin said in the statement, which was a response to Christie’s criticism.
The Reedy Creek Improvement District, a local government entity created in 1967, gave Disney regulatory control over public services and other functions in the 25,000-acre area encompassing its Florida parks and resorts. Disney paid millions of dollars annually in taxes levied through Reedy Creek to fund those services, on top of its local tax obligations.
Weeks after Disney denounced the classroom bill, Florida Republicans passed legislation that would dissolve the company’s special designation. DeSantis signed the bill a day later.
The move raised fears that Florida taxpayers in the two counties surrounding Reedy Creek could be burdened with a huge tax bill if Florida revoked Disney’s self-governing status. In a special session in February, the state legislature scrapped that plan, swapping it with a proposal to rename the district and allow DeSantis to appoint its five board members.
But last month, the newly picked board of the governing body — now dubbed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District — said their predecessors had stripped them of many of their powers on the way out the door.
The former board had approved an agreement in February that ceded developmental power over the district to Disney.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the new board agreed to take up a resolution next week to undo that development deal.
The unanimous move came after a parade of voices, including officials from state agencies and the board’s attorneys, ripped Disney over the dispute.
“The bottom line is that Disney engaged in a caper worthy of Scrooge McDuck to try to evade Florida law. Its efforts are illegal and they will not stand,” said David Thompson, identified as trial counsel for the board.
Thompson and another lawyer, Alan Lawson, argued that the development deal was “null and void,” in part because the old board failed to mail notices about it to affected property owners as required.
Disney did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the board meeting. More

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito will allow the abortion pill mifepristone to remain on the market without tight restrictions until at least Friday.
Alito had originally blocked tighter restrictions imposed by lower courts on the medication until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.
Alito did not explain the reason for the delay.
The legal battle over mifepristone is chaotic and complex due to conflicting lower court orders requiring the FDA to take contradictory actions on the medication.

Demonstrators rally in support of abortion rights at the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, April 15, 2023. 
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday issued an order allowing the abortion pill mifepristone to remain available by mail delivery and without tighter restrictions on how it is used until at least late Friday night.
Alito last week had temporarily blocked the restrictions on mifepristone imposed by lower federal courts until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday in response to an emergency motion by the Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, the distributor of the brand name version of the drug Mifeprex.

Those restrictions now will remain on hold until 11:59 p.m. Friday as a result of his new order.
Alito did not explain the reason for the delay.
But it gives him and the rest of the Supreme Court two days more to consider whether to maintain the hold on the lower court rulings, or to allow restrictions on mifepristone to take effect as a complicated legal battle over the drug plays out.
Two separate federal courts have given the Food and Drug Administration conflicting rulings on the availability of the medication.
U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas earlier this month suspended the FDA approval of mifepristone and all subsequent decisions the agency had taken to regulate the medication.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals partially blocked Kacsmaryk’s sweeping order days later and kept the FDA approval in effect, but imposed severe limits on how mifepristone is used and distributed. Although that ruling keeps mifepristone on the market, the restrictions are so sweeping that many women would not have access to the medication even in some states where abortion is legal.
Shortly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, U.S. Judge Thomas Rice of the Eastern District of Washington state barred the FDA from restricting the availability of mifepristone in 17 states and Washington D.C.
Mifepristone, used in combination with another drug called misoprostol, is the most common method to terminate a pregnancy in the U.S., accounting for about half of all abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Guttmacher Institute.
Kacsmaryk’s unprecedented ruling was the first time a federal court invalidated an FDA determination that a drug is safe and effective, according to court filings from the Justice Department, former FDA officials and the pharmaceutical industry.
Former President Donald Trump appointed Kacsmaryk. Senate Democrats unanimously opposed his nomination over concerns about his position on abortion and LGBTQ rights.
The appeals court restrictions included blocking mail delivery of the medication, re-imposing doctor visits as a requirement to obtain the drug, and shortening the length of time women can use the pill to the seventh week of pregnancy. The court also blocked the generic version of mifepristone made by a second company, GenBioPro, which supplies about two-thirds of the medication for the U.S. market.

CNBC Health & Science

Read CNBC’s latest global health coverage:

The 5th Circuit decision by Judges Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, who were also appointed by Trump, essentially rolled back all the actions the FDA had taken to make mifepristone easier for women to access.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that complying with the 5th Circuit decision would put the government in violation of Rice’s order preserving access in 18 jurisdictions.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-abortion group that filed the lawsuit against the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, asked the Supreme Court keep the restrictions on the medication in place. It argued that the limits provide important protections that keep patients safe. The legal organization represents a group of doctors who oppose abortion called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
The Alliance Defending Freedom says it helped draft the Mississippi law that ultimately led the Supreme Court last summer to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion as a constitutional right nationwide. The group says it is dedicated “to protecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, parental rights, and God’s design for marriage and family.”
The Justice Department and Danco said the lower court rulings would basically take mifepristone off the market for months as the FDA adjusts the medication’s labelling to comply with the appeals court order. This would deny many women access to an FDA-approved drug that is a safe and effective alternative to surgical abortions, they argued.
The anti-abortion groups have claimed that the manner in which the FDA approved mifepristone was illegal, and argued that the drug is not safe. Those claims are strongly disputed by former FDA officials, leading medical associations, the pharmaceutical industry, 23 U.S. states and hundreds of members of Congress.
They say the FDA conducted a rigorous review that determined mifepristone is safe and effective, which has been confirmed by decades of subsequent data.
A group of drugmakers that included Pfizer, biotech executives and investors told the Supreme Court that allowing the lower court rulings to stand would “shatter the FDA’s gold standard of scientific safety and efficacy review.” Former FDA officials told the high court that the rulings would effectively create open season on the agency, allowing competing drug companies or anyone who claims to have had a side effect from a medication to sue to take treatments off the market. More

Fox settled the defamation lawsuit brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems this week, but still faces another similar case.
Smartmatic USA, a voting tech company, brought a $2.7 billion defamation against Fox in 2021.
The pace of Smartmatic’s case has been slower than Dominion’s, and is considered about a year behind.

People walk by the News Corporation headquarters, home to Fox News, on April 18, 2023 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Fox Corp. and its TV networks agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit this week, but the media giant’s legal headaches don’t end there.
Still hanging in the balance is voting software company Smartmatic USA’s defamation case, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages – over $1 billion more than Dominion initially sought in its lawsuit.

Smartmatic, like Dominion, filed its defamation lawsuit against Fox for spreading false claims that its voting software helped rig the 2020 election that saw Joe Biden triumph over Donald Trump. Smartmatic’s suit also specifically names host Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and former host Lou Dobbs.
Smartmatic’s lawusit alleges that Fox and its hosts didn’t just report the statements being made by Trump and his allies at the time, but that the network, Dobbs, Pirro and Bartiromo “effectively endorsed and participated in the statements with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about,” whether the claims being made on air were true at all.
Dobbs’ weekday program on the Fox Business network was canceled shortly after he was named as a defendant in Smartmatic’s lawsuit. Fox has said the show’s cancellation was in the works prior to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says the network and its hosts in the weeks following the election “purposely avoided publicly available knowledge” that would have disproved Smartmatic’s software and Dominion’s machines were used to switch votes.
Although Smartmatic’s lawsuit was filed shortly ahead of Dominion’s in 2021, the pace of the case has lagged in comparison. It remains unclear how or whether the settlement between Fox and Dominion will affect Smartmatic’s case.

“Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” Smartmatic’s attorney Erik Connolley said in a statement Tuesday after the Dominion settlement was announced. “Smartmatic will expose the rest. Smartmatic remains committed to clearing its name, recouping the significant damage done to the company, and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy.”
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
Fox is also calling foul on the size of the damages claim. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
Smartmatic didn’t immediately provide an updated statement on Wednesday.

‘The same evidence, the same facts’

The cases have overlapped recently.
Last week, Smartmatic filed a motion seeking the Supreme Court of New York to compel Fox to “reproduce all relevant documents and depositions from the Dominion actions.” The filing hit the court docket as the Delaware judge presiding over Dominion’s case sanctioned Fox News for withholding evidence.
Smartmatic said Fox had received an order in September 2022 to reproduce all relevant documents and depositions from Dominion for its own defamation lawsuit, according to court papers. “Those cases set the floor for Fox News’s and Fox Corp.’s discovery obligations here,” Smartmatic said in court papers, calling Dominion the benchmark for its case.
The company asked the New York judge to sanction Fox in this matter, too.
“I think the decision to settle was let’s just pay this and make it go away, and I think that’s the same strategy they’re going to apply with the Smartmatic case. It’s all the same discovery, the same evidence, the same facts as Dominion,” said Imraan Farukhi, an assistant professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. 
Fox filed court papers this week further denying the allegations made by Smartmatic.
While Dominion and Fox both urged the judge overseeing their case to make a ruling and bypass a trial, Judge Eric Davis had said the case should forge ahead to be determined in a courtroom. Davis did, however, point to statements regarding election fraud, including that Dominion had manipulated vote counts, that it was founded in Venezuela to rig elections on behalf of late dictator Hugo Chavez, and that it paid kickbacks to government officials who used the machines in the election, to be defamatory.
In the weeks following the election, Fox hosts had pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on as guests, who repeated such claims. In most circumstances both Smartmatic and Dominion were called out by name. Davis had stopped short of ruling that Fox acted with malice.

Hootan Yagoobzadeh, the co-founder of Staple Street Capital, Dominion’s private-equity backer, told CNBC on Wednesday that Dominion wasn’t “willing to settle until the reams of information … were able to see the light of day.” The company also wanted to go through summary judgement to see what the court’s ruling would be.
Throughout both lawsuits, Fox has said it was protected by the First Amendment.
On Tuesday, when the Dominion settlement was announced, Fox said in a statement that it acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” Fox News Media said. “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.” More

A pharmaceutical company that distributes the majority of the U.S. supply of the abortion pill mifepristone sued the Food and Drug Administration in an effort to keep its generic version of the drug on the market.
GenBioPro asked the U.S. District Court for Maryland to preemptively block the FDA from pulling the company’s 2019 approval to distribute the company’s version of mifepristone.
A federal appeals court recently imposed severe restrictions on how the brand name version of the drug Mifeprex, which is sold by Danco Laboratories, is used and distributed.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether to maintain a block of the appeals court ruling.

A box containing a Mifepristone tablet is seen at Blue Mountain Clinic in Missoula, Montana, U.S. February 28, 2023. REUTERS/Callaghan O’Hare
Callaghan O’hare | Reuters

A pharmaceutical company that distributes the majority of the U.S. supply of the abortion pill mifepristone sued the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday in an effort to keep its generic version of the drug on the market as a chaotic legal battle over the medication plays out in multiple federal courts.
GenBioPro asked the U.S. District Court for Maryland to preemptively block the FDA from pulling the company’s 2019 approval to distribute the company’s version of mifepristone.

The suit says the FDA cannot pull its approval without finding an “imminent hazard to public health” and providing an opportunity for a hearing.
GenBioPro has said in court filings that it supplies two-thirds of the mifepristone used in the U.S. for abortions.
“In the United States, once a drug has been through the rigorous FDA review process and received approval, federal law protects the right to market the drug,” GenBioPro CEO Evan Masingill said in a statement. “GenBioPro will use all regulatory and legal tools to protect access to mifepristone for patients and providers.”
The lawsuit was lodged in response to a ruling last week by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeal, which upheld part of a sweeping order by Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk that blocks GenBioPro’s generic approval by the FDA.
The same appeals court ruling also imposed severe restrictions on how the brand name version of the drug Mifeprex, which is sold by Danco Laboratories, is used and distributed.

The Supreme Court last week temporarily put the appeal’s court rulings on hold. That block has for now allowed the medication to remain broadly available.
But the Supreme Court as early as Wednesday could move to lift that ban or leave it in place pending further legal challenges to the rulings

CNBC Health & Science

Read CNBC’s latest global health coverage:

GenBioPro in a recent legal brief asked the Supreme Court to block the lower court rulings that would suspend the FDA’s approval of its generic version of mifepristone.
In the company’s lawsuit filed Wednesday in Maryland, GenBioPro’s lawyers wrote, “These circumstances are unprecedented.”
“No court in history has ever ‘stayed’ or ‘suspended’ a longstanding FDA approval, and FDA has no template for responding to—or implementing—those decisions,” GenBioPro’s attorneys wrote.
Further complicating the muddled legal landscape is a order this month by Judge Thomas Rice in U.S. Eastern District of Washington, which bars the FDA from restricting access to mifepristone in 17 states and Washington D.C. More

ESPN will begin informing employees who are laid off early next week.
Cuts will include both on-air talent and management.
The job cuts are part of Disney’s broader effort to eliminate 7,000 jobs.

Mike Windle | ESPN | Getty Images

ESPN will begin layoffs early next week as part of parent company Disney’s cost cutting efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.
Cuts will include some on-air talent and management, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The number of layoffs at ESPN is unclear and the decision process is still fluid.

An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.
Disney is eliminating 7,000 jobs in three rounds, with the second round happening next week, said the people. The company will also lay off about 15% of the staff in its entertainment division next week, Bloomberg reported this week.
Disney’s first round of cuts occurred last month and included its metaverse strategies unit and part of its Beijing office.
Disney is slashing costs under CEO Bob Iger as it tries to boost free cash flow as streaming losses persist. ESPN is interested in renewing a contract with the National Basketball Association and will likely have to pay a significant premium on the $1.4 billion per year rights fee it already pays the league. Renewal discussions with the NBA are already taking place, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Disney said earlier this year it plans to cut $5.5 billion in costs, including $3 billion in content spending.

ESPN laid off about 300 employees in 2020.
Disney reorganized earlier this year, and ESPN will release its financials as its own division for the first time. The change will offer a clearer window into ESPN’s business.
Disney is set to report earnings on May 10.
WATCH: Disney eliminates metaverse division as part of layoffs plan More

Stellantis CFO Richard Palmer will be succeeded by Natalie Knight, who has served as CFO at the Netherlands-based food retailer Ahold Delhaize since early 2020.
Palmer was a longtime top lieutenant of late automotive executive Sergio Marchionne.
Knight is expected to join the company by July 10, Stellantis said.

The logo of Stellantis, the world’s fourth-largest automaker which starts trading in Milan and Paris after Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot maker PSA finalised their merger, is seen at the main entrance of FCA Mirafiori plant in Turin, Italy, January 18, 2021.
Massimo Pinca | Reuters

Stellantis on Wednesday said it has hired the chief financial officer from global grocery company Ahold Delhaize to replace CFO Richard Palmer, who plans to leave the company at the end of June.
Palmer will be succeeded by Natalie Knight, who has served as CFO at the Netherlands-based food retailer since early 2020. Ahold Delhaize owns grocery brands including Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Fresh Direct. Prior to that, she was CFO at Arla Foods and held several senior finance positions during her 17 years at Adidas AG. She is expected to join the company by July 10, Stellantis said.

The automaker did not release details regarding why Palmer, who served as CFO through two major global mergers, is leaving the company. The first merger saw the combination of Fiat and Chrysler in 2014. The resulting automaker then merged with French company PSA Groupe in 2021, forming Stellantis.
Palmer was a longtime top lieutenant of late automotive executive Sergio Marchionne.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the company wishes Palmer “the very best for the future and in any new challenges that await him.” He also touted Knight’s “experience and demonstrated business transformation leadership, including a clear ESG focus,” as contributing to why the company chose her for the position.
“I’m convinced that she will play a strategic role in setting the new impetus and unleashing the great potential of Stellantis’ value,” Tavares said in a release.
Stellantis said Knight will be based at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, “with extensive travel to Europe and the other regions.” More

Each earnings season comes with new buzzwords. As companies ready their scripts for the most recent quarter, one phrase in particular is sure to end up on many bosses’ lips—generative artificial intelligence (ai). Ever since Chatgpt, an artificially intelligent conversationalist, began dazzling the world, bosses have been salivating over the potential for generative ai to turbocharge productivity. Zurich, an insurer, is now using a customised version of Chatgpt to simplify lengthy claims documents. Mattel, a toymaker, is designing new playthings using dall-e, another tool that conjures images based on text prompts. Absci, a biotech company, is using the new wonder to assist with the development of therapeutic antibodies. Plenty of other firms are dipping their toes in this unfamiliar water.The toolmakers of the knowledge economy have more fully embraced the innovation frenzy. Microsoft has announced a string of product updates that will allow desk jockeys to offload tasks from drafting emails and summarising documents to writing computer code. “Like working in dog years”, is how Eric Boyd, head of ai for the tech giant’s cloud-computing division, describes the company’s hectic release schedule. Google, a rival, is likewise souping up its suite of tools, as are Adobe, Salesforce and Bloomberg, makers of software for creative types, salesmen and financial whizzes, respectively. Startups like Harvey, a Chatgpt-like legal assistant, and Jasper, a writing aid, are emerging thick and fast.Despite all the experimentation, companies remain uncertain about how to make use of ai’s newfound powers. Most, according to Mr Boyd, either underestimate or overestimate the technology’s capabilities. Efforts are being made to determine which jobs are the strongest candidates for reinvention. A study published last month by Openai, the outfit behind Chatgpt and dall-e, looked at the share of tasks within an occupation that could be accelerated by at least half using the new technology. Topping the list were occupations involving copious amounts of routine writing, number crunching or computer programming—think paralegals, financial analysts and web designers.It is unlikely that firms will soon dispense with such jobs entirely. Generative ai may do a good job of producing first drafts but relies on humans to give instructions and appraise results. Microsoft, tellingly, has labelled its new suite of tools “co-pilots”. In “Impromptu”, a recent book by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, the author counsels users to treat Chatgpt and others “like an undergraduate research assistant”. (The book was written with the assistance of a bot.)What’s more, as coders, salesmen and other white-collar types become more productive, there is little evidence yet that companies will want fewer of them, argues Michael Chui of McKinsey, a consultancy. Software may eventually eat the world, as one venture capitalist predicted, but so far it has only nibbled at the edges. And most companies will surely choose more sales over fewer salesmen. Yet various hurdles lie ahead for businesses looking to make use of generative ai. For a start, many firms will need to rethink the role of junior staff as apprentices to be trained, rather than workhorses to be whipped. Getting the best out of generative ai may also prove tough for firms with clunky old it systems and scattered datasets. On the plus side, large language models like the ones powering Chatgpt are better at working with unstructured datasets than earlier types of ai, says Roy Singh of Bain, a consultancy that has inked a partnership with Openai.Other reservations could still slow adoption. Companies have a much higher bar than consumers when it comes to embracing new technology, notes Will Grannis, chief technologist for Google’s cloud-computing division. One concern is shielding confidential or sensitive data, a worry that has led companies from JPMorgan Chase, a bank, to Northrop Grumman, a defence contractor, to ban staff from using Chatgpt at work. Zurich does not allow customers’ personal information to be fed into its tool. A bigger concern is reliability. Chatgpt-like tools can spit out plausible but incorrect information, a process euphemistically dubbed “hallucination”. That may not be a problem when dreaming up promotional material, but it is a fatal flaw elsewhere. “You can’t approximate the design of an aeroplane wing,” notes Mike Haley, head of research for Autodesk, a maker of engineering software. Humans err, too. The difference is that generative-ai tools, for now, neither explain their thinking nor confess their level of confidence. That makes them hard to trust if the stakes are high.Productivity to the peopleBosses could also find their appetite for generative ai spoiled by growing worries over the risks the technology poses to society, particularly as it gets cleverer (see Science section). Some fret about a barrage of ai-generated scams, misinformation and computer viruses. Such concerns are spurring governments to action. America’s Commerce Department is seeking comments from the public on how it should approach the technology. The European Union is amending a planned bill on ai to encompass recent advances. Italy has, for now, banned Chatgpt.A final fear is that rolling out clever ai could undermine the morale of staff, if they worry for their futures. Yet so far employees appear to be among the new technology’s most enthusiastic supporters. Of 12,000 workers surveyed in January by Fishbowl, a workplace-network app, 43% had used tools like Chatgpt for work-related tasks—a large majority without their bosses knowing. Such enthusiasm suggests few tears shed for the loss of menial tasks to ai. “No one goes to law school to spend time trawling through documents”, says Winston Weinberg, Harvey’s co-founder. That may be enough to encourage firms to continue experimenting. With productivity growth in rich countries languishing for two decades, that would be no bad thing. ■ More

Staple Street Capital co-founder Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, a negotiator on the settlement deal between Fox and Staple Street-owned Dominion Voting Systems, said his team feels “good” about the agreement and holding Fox accountable.
Fox will pay $787.5 million to avoid a lengthy trial, and the company admitted that claims about Dominion’s voting machines influencing the 2020 election were false.
“We were not willing to settle until the reams of information that we were able to gain through the discovery process had an opportunity to see the light of day,” Yaghoobzadeh said.

The last-minute $787.5 million settlement of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. was a major step toward making Fox News answer for false claims that Dominion’s machines influenced the 2020 election, a key negotiator of the deal said Wednesday.
“We feel good about being able to accomplish our goals of keeping Fox accountable and exposing the truth,” said Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, co-founder of private equity firm and Dominion owner Staple Street Capital, in an exclusive interview with CNBC’s Eamon Javers.

The settlement, which arrived Monday just as opening statements were scheduled to start, averts a lengthy trial that could have seen Fox network boss Rupert Murdoch and popular TV hosts publicly testify. It abruptly ended what was set to be one of the most consequential cases against a media organization in years.

Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, co-founder of Staple Street Capital, during a news conference outside Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, Delaware, April 18, 2023.
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Yaghoobzadeh was one of the people who cut the settlement deal. He said that on Friday the presiding judge “really pushed the parties to see if they could reach a settlement.”
He declined to disclose when Fox had made its first offer, saying only that the initial sum “was not enough.” Dominion initially sought $1.6 billion in damages.
“We were not willing to settle until the reams of information that we were able to gain through the discovery process had an opportunity to see the light of day,” he said.
When asked if there was any discussion about requiring Fox to issue a formal apology or to force Fox anchors to apologize on air, Yaghoobzadeh stressed that “Fox has given admission that they agree with the court’s rulings that the allegations made around Dominion were false, were lies.”

“And for us that was the accountability that we were looking to get,” he said.
CNBC previously reported that anchors will not have to acknowledge the settlement or apologize on air, according to people familiar with the matter.
The massive settlement sum will go to legal fees and taxes first, Yaghoobzadeh said. From there, it will be “distributed to the shareholders, mostly, and management and employees,” he said. More