Exclusive: letter to Rachel Reeves from drinks, tourism and farming bodies calls for freeze on spirits duty in budget
A coalition of drinks, tourism and farming bodies has urged the chancellor to protect the Scottish whisky industry from a steeper sales slump and further job losses by freezing spirits duty in her budget next month.
The grouping, which includes the Scottish arms of the National Farmers’ Union, the Institute of Directors and UKHospitality, has written to Rachel Reeves to argue that a freeze in duty would be a “strategic investment” that could increase tax revenues.
Louise Shackleton says current law is traumatising families and she wanted jury to assess her innocence
A woman who was under police investigation for accompanying her husband to an assisted dying clinic in Switzerland said she wished her case had gone to trial so she could have proved her innocence in front of a jury.
Louise Shackleton, 59, spent 10 months under investigation for assisting a suicide before North Yorkshire police announced this week that the Crown Prosecution Service had decided it was not in the public interest to prosecute her.
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. A woman who’s been driving for Uber for more than a decade explains how she’s looking for new work as her pay drops.
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This week’s dispatch
Side-hustle shakeup
An Uber Eats driver on the job.
Shuji Kajiyama/AP Images
The gig economy is facing a reckoning.
Two stories this past week caught my eye. Uber unveiled a new way for its drivers to earn money. No, not by giving rides, but by helping train the ride-sharing company’s AI models instead.
Both moves point toward the same future: one where the very workers who built the gig economy may soon find themselves training the technology that replaces them.
Uber’s new program allows drivers to earn cash by completing microtasks, such as taking photos and uploading audio clips, that aim to improve the company’s AI systems. For drivers, it’s a way to diversify income. For Uber, it’s a way to accelerate its automated future.
There’s an irony here. By helping Uber strengthen its AI, drivers could be accelerating the very driverless world they fear.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said human drivers won’t vanish overnight. Still, he has warned that the eventual decline of driving jobs poses a significant societal challenge to the gig economy. Uber already offers autonomous rides in Waymo vehicles in Atlanta and Austin, and plans to expand.
Meanwhile, Waymo is rolling out its pilot partnership with DoorDash, starting in Phoenix. DashMart stores are expected to be the first retailer on the platform.
BI reported that customers may be asked to pay a delivery charge — just like they would for typical DoorDash orders — but there will be no need to tip the driver because, well, there’s no driver.
All of this is ripe fodder for a virtual event Business Insider is hosting on Wednesday, where we’ll explore how AI and automation are reshaping the self-driving revolution. I’ll be speaking with automotive innovators, AI experts, and urban mobility leaders.
The best part about the event — it’s free! Hope to see you there.
In the Friend zone
Christian Rodriguez for BI
AI startup Friend offers a $129 necklace that aims to help solve the loneliness crisis by going with you everywhere. If the oft-graffitied subway ads are any indication, New Yorkers aren’t buying it.
BI’s Amanda Hoover tested out the necklace for a week. While the bot could hold a conversation, Hoover wasn’t convinced it really counted as a friend.
Last month, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban joined the ranks of broken-up couples where the woman outearns the man. That particular ending is more common than you may think.
Divorce rates for heterosexual couples go up when a woman is more professionally successful than the man, and they go down when the opposite is true. It shows how women’s economic progress is clashing with old expectations about marriage, an executive coach said.
As of this month, the Nvidia CEO has 36 direct reports, according to an internal list obtained by BI. The list offers a glimpse into the group of leaders at the top of the world’s most valuable company.
Last year, Huang said he had 55 direct reports. He’s known for having many people report into him, and has said it helps with information flow.
Amazon Web Services is feeling a shift in one of its biggest clientele segments, according to internal documents obtained by BI. Startups, which typically allocate a significant portion of their budgets to AWS, are instead spending it on AI tools.
“Founders tell us they seek to adopt AWS at a later stage,” the company warned in one of the documents. The shift represents a massive threat to AWS, which holds a firm grip on the lucrative startup ecosystem.
Thieves used a basket lift to break into the Louvre on Sunday morning, forced a window, smashed display cases and escaped with jewels of “inestimable value,” France’s interior minister said, as the world’s most visited museum closed for the day during the investigation.”A…
Israeli media have reported that the IDF has launched multiple attacks in the southern Gazan city of Rafah after reports of armed skirmishes between Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers.
