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The trade association representing Americas largest gig companies is backing President Trumps nominees to lead the Department of Laboran endorsement that could shape the future of worker classification in the gig economy. Flex, the lobbying group founded in 2022 by names including Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, said Wednesday its in favor of Lori Chavez-DeRemer to lead the department and for Keith Sonderling to serve as deputy secretary. The Department of Labor has a key role in helping build a future-forward, modern economy, Flex CEO Kristin Sharp said in a press release. That includes supporting app-based independent work, which benefits millions of earners, consumers, and communities . . . Once confirmed, we look forward to working with these leaders to advance policies that continue the innovation and economic opportunities of the app-based platform industry. Spokespeople for Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash did not respond to Fast Company‘s requests for comment on the nominations and Flex’s support. Instacart pointed to the Flex statement. Gig companies, at their core, rely on models that classify the workers who ferry people and goods at the click of a button as independent contractors rather than traditional employees. This allows them to keep costs low and aids them in their missions to turn profits, ultimately pleasing shareholders. If gig companies were forced to classify their workers as employees, labor costs would dramatically rise. A Trump-led Labor Department could also roll back workplace protections on wages, overtime, and collective bargaining rights. Policies around independent contractors often intersect with broader labor issues, such as whether gig workers qualify for benefits like health insurance or minimum wage protectionskey points of contention between businesses and labor advocates. Still, certain lawmakers and advocacy groups are arguing that this new way of work deserves to have the same protections and classifications as full-time employees. Most of the efforts so far have fallen to cities and local governments. But the Trump administration’s picks could take a federal stance to update what it means to classify independent contractors. A more business-friendly stance at the federal level could embolden gig companies in ongoing legal battles and policy debates across states. “It’s almost highly likely that the Trump DoL will make it easier for companies to classify (many would say, ‘misclassify’) gig workers as independent contractors, and far harder for gig workers to get employee status,” John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, says in an email to Fast Company. “Of course, the Labor Department is only one player here, albeit an important one: the ‘pro-business’ position of the Labor Department will also be used by platform companies in ongoing litigation at the state level and unions and companies will continue to fight this out in the courts and through state politics.” Chavez-DeRemer, who served one term as congresswoman in Ohio, was widely seen as a pro-worker pick. During her time in office, she seemed to support the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, which was extremely important to labor unions and could alter independent contractor classifications, and was endorsed by the Teamsters Union. However, Chavez-DeRemer appeared to have reassured Republicans during a Republican-led Senate committee confirmation hearing last month. She told members she was in full support of Trump’s agenda and walked back support of the PRO Act. “If confirmed, my job will be to implement President Trumps policy division, and my guiding principle will be President Trumps guiding principle,” she said. Sonderling’s position as deputy secretary, meantime, “is intended to reassure members of the business community, and groups that are hostile to organized labor,” Logan says. Sonderling served under Trump in the Department of Labor in the past and as a Republican commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2019, Sonderling issued an opinion letter that essentially said an unidentified company, whose workers appeared to clean residences, were contractors, not employees. Many argued that the move signaled the Trump administration’s broader approach to gig companies. “On the issue of gig workers, unions have consistently argued that workers should be classify as employees and not independent contractors; that they should be covered by the NLRA and other federal labor and employment laws and have the right to unionize and bargain collectively,” Logan says. “I do not expect they will have much joy on this issue under the Trump administration, even with Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary.”
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What if extreme heat not only leaves you feeling exhausted but actually makes you age faster? Scientists already know that extreme heat increases the risk of heat stroke, cardiovascular disease, kidney dysfunction and even death. I see these effects often in my work as a researcher studying how environmental stressors influence the aging process. But until now, little research has explored how heat affects biological aging: the gradual deterioration of cells and tissues that increases the risk of age-related diseases. New research my team and I published in the journal Science Advances suggests that long-term exposure to extreme heat may speed up biological aging at the molecular level, raising concerns about the long-term health risks posed by a warming climate. Extreme heats hidden toll on the body My colleagues and I examined blood samples from over 3,600 older adults across the United States. We measured their biological age using epigenetic clocks, which capture DNA modification patterns methylation that change with age. DNA methylation refers to chemical modifications to DNA that act like switches to turn genes on and off. Environmental factors can influence these switches and change how genes function, affecting aging and disease risk over time. Measuring these changes through epigenetic clocks can strongly predict age-related disease risk and lifespan. Research in animal models has shown that extreme heat can trigger whats known as a maladaptive epigenetic memory, or lasting changes in DNA methylation patterns. Studies indicate that a single episode of extreme heat stress can cause long-term shifts in DNA methylation across different tissue types in mice. To test the effects of heat stress on people, we linked epigenetic clock data to climate records to assess whether people living in hotter environments exhibited faster biological aging. We found that older adults residing in areas with frequent very hot days showed significantly faster epigenetic aging compared with those living in cooler regions. For example, participants living in locations with at least 140 extreme heat days per year classified as days when the heat index exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.33 degrees Celcius) experienced up to 14 months of additional biological aging compared with those in areas with fewer than 10 such days annually. This link between biological age and extreme heat remained even after accounting for a wide range of individual and community factors such as physical activity levels and socioeconomic status. This means that even among people with similar lifestyles, those living in hotter environments may still be aging faster at the biological level. Even more surprising was the magnitude of the effect extreme heat has a comparable impact on speeding up aging as smoking and heavy alcohol consumption. This suggests that heat exposure may be silently accelerating aging, at a level on par with other major known environmental and lifestyle stressors. Long-term public health consequences While our study sheds light on the connection between heat and biological aging, many unanswered questions remain. Its important to clarify that our findings dont mean every additional year in extreme heat translates directly to 14 extra months of biological aging. Instead, our research reflects population-level differences between groups based on their local heat exposure. In other words, we took a snapshot of whole populations at a moment in time; it wasnt designed to look at effects on individual people. Our study also doesnt fully capture all the ways people might protect themselves from extreme heat. Factors such as access to air conditioning, time spent outdoors and occupational exposure all play a role in shaping personal heat exposure and its effects. Some individuals may be more resilient, while others may face greater risks due to preexisting health conditions or socioeconomic barriers. This is an area where more research is needed. What is clear, however, is that extreme heat is more than just an immediate health hazard it may be silently accelerating the aging process, with long-term consequences for public health. Large swaths of the U.S. population are experiencing long stretches of extreme heat, as this map of cumulative heat days from 2010 to 2016 shows. [Image: Eunyoung Choi, CC BY-ND] Older adults are especially vulnerable because aging reduces the bodys ability to regulate temperature effectively. Many older individuals also take medications such as beta-blockers and diuretics that can impair their heat tolerance, making it even harder for their bodies to cope with high temperatures. o even moderately hot days, such as those reaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.67 degrees Celcius), can pose health risks for older adults. As the U.S. population rapidly ages and climate change intensifies heat waves worldwide, I believe simply telling people to move to cooler regions isnt realistic. Developing age-appropriate solutions that allow older adults to safely remain in their communities and protect the most vulnerable populations could help address the hidden yet significant effects of extreme heat. Eunyoung Choi is a postdoctoral associate in gerontology at the University of Southern California. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. TSMC’s new $100 billion U.S. chip investment could ease Taiwan tensions TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) said it would invest another $100 billion in U.S.operations over the next ten years. This will go toward building three new fabrication plants, two advanced packaging facilities and an R&D center, the company said. TSMC had already committed $65 billion to building three new chip fabrication facilities near Phoenix, Arizona. One of these fabs, which makes 4-nanometer process chips for smartphones, went into production last year; the other two, which will fab 2-nanometer process chips used in AI acceleration, remain under construction. This move underscores TSMCs dedication to supporting its customers, including Americas leading AI and technology innovation companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm, the company said in a press release. The U.S. government currently collects no tariffs on imports from Taiwan, but the Trump administration is said to be considering 100% tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors and electronic devices containing the chips. TSMCs investment promise could go a long way toward forestalling any such plans. TSMC isnt exactly a household name in the U.S., but it plays a huge and growing role in the global economy. As AI moves further into business operations and consumer products, the demand for the powerful and sophisticated graphics processing units (GPUs) that power AI models will continue to grow. U.S.-based Nvidia, which now supplies almost all of the GPUs used for generative AI models, relies heavily on TSMC to fabricate its most powerful chips. If the AI industrys heavy reliance on Nvidia is a problem, its reliance on TSMC is an even bigger issue. TSMCs home country of Taiwan is only 90 miles from the Chinese mainland. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has long viewed Taiwan as a breakaway province, that will eventually have to be reunited with the Chinese homeland, even if by force. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan could cripple global semiconductor supply chains, as TSMC’s highly advanced fabrication processes rely on global partnerships, export-controlled technology, and proprietary expertise that may not be easily transferred. That’s why American lawmakers have been pushing for TSMC to move some of its chip manufacturing capability to the U.S. Such diversification also lets TSMC resist coming under complete Chinese control if Taiwan would ever fall. The company started expanding its fabrication facilities outside of Taiwan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but its offshoring efforts kicked into overdrive in the early 2020s as geopolitical tensions rose between the U.S. and China. Reagan Institute gives Pentagon a D for defense modernization Every year the Ronald Reagan Foundation issues a report card evaluating how well the Pentagon sources the nations best technologies. This years report finds that while the U.S. remains a global leader in technological innovationparticularly in artificial intelligence, which is playing a growing role in warfarethe Department of Defense (DOD) continues to struggle with modernization. The U.S. remains a global leader in innovation, setting technological standards worldwide and excelling in research, particularly in artificial intelligence, the report states. But the report gives the Pentagon low marks (a D) for modernizing defense systems, with the authors citing concerns about the DODs inability when it comes to integrating new capabilities into production. And while commercial technology adoption has increased in select areas, such as space communications, progress in many other sectors remains stagnant. To address these challenges, the DOD has launched accelerated contracting programs and established the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to source and fund promising defense-relevant technologies. But, according to the report, the Pentagon still struggles to acquire new technology quickly and efficientlyparticularly software, including AI. The reports advisory board includes executives from defense contractors Palantir, Anduril, and Microsoft, as well as a number of venture capitalists with ties to the defense sector including Joe Lonsdale of 8VC, Raj Shah of Shield Capital, and Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz. Ex-Google engineering VP Anna Patterson unveils her new AI training company A wave of AI infrastructure companies has sprung up to help enterprises (especially ones without teams of PhDs) more easily build and deploy AI models. Anna Patterson, an ex-Google VP of Engineering and founder of Gradient Ventures, is now bringing her new AI training-focused infrastructure company out of stealth. The company, Ceramic.ai, is made up of nine engineers and has so far raised $12 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates and others. Enterprises that decide to build AI infrastructure from scratch often run into problems and delays related to technical complexity, Patterson says. With AI infrastructure theres a real dichotomy between what is available to most enterprises, and what the biggest AI labs are using, Patterson tells Fast Company. This can be especially taxing with training and fine-tuning models, which involves both science and art. Ceramics training methods let models get the most out of the available training data and computing power (GPU time). The company organizes training data by topic before introducing it to the model. Ceramic can then help the enterprise customer train its model with its own proprietary domain knowledge. Ceramic gets some of its computing power for training from the cloud GPU provider Lambda. In fact, Patterson says, Lambda has begun referring its prospective enterprise customers to Ceramic for model training. As model developers become more focused on training data to improve their models, many will see the benefit of using a dedicated model training platform developed by AI training experts. More AI coverage from Fast Company: This DOGE stffers GitHub posts might help us understand how Elon Musk wants to bring AI into the government AI Chatbots have telltale quirks. Researchers can spot them with 97% accuracy Hollywoods obsession with AI-enabled perfection is making movies less human Curious about DeepSeek but worried about privacy? These apps let you use an LLM without the internet Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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Japan’s Seven & i, the parent company of the Japanese 7-Eleven convenience store chain, said Thursday it is selling its supermarket store assets to Bain Capital for about $5.4 billion.The company announced the deal a day after naming Stephen Dacus, its board chairman, to be its president and CEO.It also said it plans an initial public offering in the U.S. of 7-Eleven or SEI, its convenience store business in North America, by the end of 2026. Funds from the IPO and the sale to Bain will be returned to shareholders in the form of share buybacks worth 2 trillion yen ($5.4 billion).Seven & i’s share price jumped 6.1% in Tokyo.The deal follows Seven & i’s rejection of a takeover bid by Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard. Dacus said earlier that the offer had undervalued the potential of the convenience store business and failed to fully address U.S. regulatory concerns.The 7-Eleven franchise includes 86,000 stores in the U.S., Japan, and other Asian nations.Last year, Seven & i announced a restructuring plan to strengthen its U.S. operations and streamline operations, closing some Ito-Yokado supermarkets in Japan.The omnipresent 7-Eleven convenience stores remain popular in Japan, having replaced many mom and pop shops. Convenience stores are a mainstay in many neighborhoods.Seven & i earlier sold its Sogo & Seibu department stores in Japan to Fortress Investment Group, a U.S. fund, for $1.5 billion. It said it also plans to reduce its share in Seven Bank Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer
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The U.S. government will stop sharing air quality data gathered from its embassies and consulates, worrying local scientists and experts who say the effort was vital to monitor global air quality and improve public health.In response to an inquiry from the Associated Press, the State Department said Wednesday that its air quality monitoring program would no longer transmit air pollution data from embassies and consulates to the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow app and other platforms, which allowed locals in various countries, along with scientists around the globe, to see and analyze air quality in cities around the world.The stop in sharing data was “due to funding constraints that have caused the Department to turn off the underlying network” read the statement, which added that embassies and consulates were directed to keep their monitors running and the sharing of data could resume in the future if funded was restored. The fiscal cut, first reported by the New York Times, is one of many under President Donald Trump, whose administration has been deprioritizing environmental and climate initiatives.The U.S. air quality monitors measured dangerous fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and lead to respiratory diseases, heart conditions, and premature death. The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills around seven million people each year.News of the data sharing being cut prompted immediate reaction from scientists who said the data were reliable, allowed for air quality monitoring around the world and helped prompt governments to clean up the air. “A big blow” to global air quality research Bhargav Krishna, an air pollution expert at New Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative, called the loss of data “a big blow” to air quality research.“They were part of a handful of sensors in many developing countries and served as a reference for understanding what air quality was like,” Krishna said. “They were also seen to be a well-calibrated and unbiased source of data to cross-check local data if there were concerns about quality.”“It’s a real shame,” said Alejandro Piracoca Mayorga, a Bogota, Colombia-based freelance air quality consultant. U.S. embassies and consulates in Lima, Peru, Sao Paulo and Bogota have had the public air monitoring. “It was a source of access to air quality information independent of local monitoring networks. They provided another source of information for comparison.”Khalid Khan, an environmental expert and advocate based in Pakistan, agreed, saying the shutdown of air quality monitoring will “have significant consequences.”Khan noted that the monitors in Peshawar, Pakistan, one of the most polluted cities in the world, “provided crucial real-time data” which helped policymakers, researchers, and the public to take decisions on their health.“Their removal means a critical gap in environmental monitoring, leaving residents without accurate information on hazardous air conditions,” Khan said. He said vulnerable people in Pakistan and around the world are particularly at risk as they are the least likely to have access to other reliable data.In Africa, the program provided air quality data for over a dozen countries including Senegal, Nigeria, Chad, and Madagascar. Some of those countries depend almost entirely on the U.S. monitoring systems for their air quality data.The WHO’s air quality database will also be affected by the closing of U.S. program. Many poor countries don’t track air quality because stations are too expensive and complex to maintain, meaning they are entirely reliant on U.S. embassy monitoring data. Monitors strengthened local efforts In some places, the U.S. air quality monitors propelled nations to start their own air quality research and raised awareness, Krishna said.In China, for example, data from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing famously contradicted official government reports, showing worse pollution levels than authorities acknowledged. It led to China improving air quality.Officials in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, which struggles with smog, said they were unfazed by the removal of the U.S. monitors. Environment Secretary Raja Jahangir said Punjab authorities have their own and plan to purchase 30 more.Shweta Narayan, a campaign lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said the shutdown of monitors in India is a “huge setback” but also a “critical opportunity” for the Indian government to step up and fill the gaps.“By strengthening its own air quality monitoring infrastructure, ensuring data transparency, and building public trust in air quality reporting, India can set a benchmark for accountability and environmental governance,” Narayan said. Adebayo reported from Abuja, Nigeria. Babar Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan, Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, Aniruddha Ghosal in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Steven Grattan in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Taiwo Adebayo and Sibi Arasu, Associated Press
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