But behind that demand lies a huge amount of inefficiency and fragmentation. Are logistics businesses ready for AI to help run their services better' A startup called Boon thinks the answer is yes. It has now raised $20.5 million to prove that out, by way of a platform to help them make better use of data from disparate applications, to improve their operations, planning, and overall efficiency. 'Think of Boon as the second employee in the back office,' said Deepti Yenireddy, the company's founder and CEO, in an interview. 'Our AI agent is like another teammate doing critical work so that people can focus on tasks that actually make them more money.' Taking just goods carriers alone, there are more than 60 million fleet vehicles globally, according to research from Berg Insight, with the vast majority of the companies operating them classified as SMEs. Meanwhile, the tools they use are equally scattered: accounting, routing, sales, HR ' on average between 15 and 20 different apps and pieces of software are used to run a logistics or fleet company, all existing in silos surrounded by reams of physical paperwork....

These images were created by an artist known as Botto, which exhibited at Sotheby's in New York this October and has made more than $4 million from sales of its work. In truth though, Botto needs only GPUs to get creative juices flowing. Botto contains an AI image generator similar to Dall-E or Midjourney but its output is also shaped by a 'taste model' that selects the most pleasing images generated by a prompt. The taste model is tuned to reflect the preferences of a community of Botto enthusiasts who vote on the images Botto produces and posts online here. Botto is also governed by a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, meaning enthusiasts can buy $Botto cryptocurrency and influence how the system is managed and developed. The recent Sotheby's show is just the latest in a string of successful exhibitions for Botto. The October event alone racked up $350,000 in sales. Botto has made around $4 million in total since 2021, its creators say. Klingemann and Hudson say those who control Botto through the associated DAO have chosen to add a modified version of Mistral's biggest open source large language model and a knowledge base that allows it to converse about its artwork, and which will be further fine tuned through interactions with the Botto community. 'Through this interaction and through various channels of input, its knowledge will grow and it will develop a personality and interests,' Klingemann suggests....

California has long been able to set its own emissions standards under the Clean Air Act provided they are more stringent than federal regulations. Under that authority, the state announced in 2022 a plan to phase out fossil fuel cars in stages, culminating with the ban in 2035. California's phase-out would begin in 2026, when the state will require 35% of automakers' sales to be zero-emissions vehicles (ZEV), either electric or hydrogen. In the third quarter of this year, ZEV market share was 26.4%. However, the Biden administration's decision is certain to be reversed by the incoming Trump administration; the last Trump administration rescinded California's waiver in 2019, though the EPA under Biden restored it three years later, after 23 states sued the federal government. Automakers have wavered on the waiver. Many have agreed to recognize California's authority in the area, agreeing to limit emissions and wind down sales of fossil fuel vehicles in the state. But they have also asked for more time and have pressed the Trump administration to intervene....

Hyundai has a lot riding on a patch of rural Georgia. In October, the South Korean auto giant opened a new electric-vehicle factory west of Savannah at the eye-watering cost of $7.6 billion. It's the largest economic-development project in the state's history (one that prompted the Georgia statehouse to pass a resolution recognizing 'Hyundai Day'). For now, workers at the so-called Metaplant are building the company's popular electric SUV, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and soon more EVs will be built there, too. And to power those vehicles, Hyundai is set to open a battery plant at the site, and is spending billions to open another one elsewhere in Georgia. Hyundai's plan will allow the Ioniq 5'and other future electric cars already in the works'to qualify for tax credits implemented by the Inflation Reduction Act. American-made EVs are eligible for rebates that can knock thousands of dollars off their price, making them far more appealing to consumers. But Hyundai's nearly $13 billion investment may soon hit a snag. In his second term, President-elect Donald Trump has said he will make those tax credits history. If he follows through on that promise, EV sales will surely slow, and Americans will buy more gas guzzlers that will produce emissions for the decade-plus they'll be on the road. The problem is worse than it might look: The auto industry is investing more than $300 billion to meet the Biden administration's EV goals. Most automakers are hemorrhaging money on EVs, and revoking these incentives may give them an excuse to roll back their plans to introduce electric cars, which would give consumers more clean-driving options....