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Tesla Inc on Monday broke ground on a Texas lithium refinery that CEO Elon Musk said should produce enough of the battery metal to build about 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2025, making it the largest North American processor of the material. 

The facility will push Tesla outside its core focus of building automobiles and into the complex area of lithium refining and processing, a step Musk said was necessary if the auto giant was to meet its ambitious EV sales targets. 

“As we look ahead a few years, a fundamental choke point in the advancement of electric vehicles is the availability of battery grade lithium,” Musk said at the ground-breaking ceremony on Monday, with dozers and other earth-moving equipment operating in the background. 

Musk said Tesla aimed to finish construction of the factory next year and then reach full production about a year later. 

The move will make Tesla the only major automaker in North America that will refine its own lithium. Currently, China dominates the processing of many critical minerals, including lithium. 

“Texas wants to be able to be self-reliant, not dependent upon any foreign hostile nation for what we need. We need lithium,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at the ceremony. 

Musk did not specify the volume of lithium the facility would process each year, although he said the automaker would continue to buy the metal from its vendors, which include Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp. 

“We intend to continue to use suppliers of lithium, so it’s not that Tesla will do all of it,” Musk said. 

Albemarle plans to build a lithium processing facility in South Carolina that will refine 100,000 tons of the metal each year, with construction slated to begin next year and the facility coming online sometime later this decade. 

Musk did not say where Tesla will source the rough form of lithium known as spodumene concentrate that will be processed at the facility, although Tesla has supply deals with Piedmont Lithium Inc and others. 

‘Clean operations’

Tesla said it would eschew the lithium industry’s conventional refining process, which relies on sulfuric acid and other strong chemicals, in favor of materials that were less harsh on the environment, such as soda ash. 

“You could live right in the middle of the refinery and not suffer any ill effect. So they’re very clean operations,” Musk said, although local media reports said some environmental advocates had raised concerns over the facility. 

Monday’s announcement was not the first time that Tesla has attempted to venture into lithium production. Musk in 2020 told shareholders that Tesla had secured rights to 10,000 acres in Nevada where it aimed to produce lithium from clay deposits, which had never been done before on a commercial scale. 

While Musk boasted that the company had developed a proprietary process to sustainably produce lithium from those Nevada clay deposits, Tesla has not yet deployed the process. 

Musk has urged entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business, saying it is like “minting money.” 

“We’re begging you. We don’t want to do it. Can someone please?” he said during a conference call last month. 

Tesla said last month a recent plunge in prices of lithium and other commodities would aid Tesla’s bruised margins in the second half of the year. 

The refinery is the latest expansion by Tesla into Texas after the company moved its headquarters there from California in 2021. Musk’s other companies, including SpaceX and The Boring Company, also have operations in Texas. 

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Arash Arabasadi

“We are proud that he calls Texas home,” Abbott said, saying Tesla and Musk are “Texas’s economic juggernauts.” 
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Most Democrats and Republicans agree that the federal government should better regulate the biggest technology companies, particularly social media platforms. But there is little consensus on how it should be done. 

Concerns have skyrocketed about China’s ownership of TikTok, and parents have grown increasingly worried about what their children are seeing online. Lawmakers have introduced a slew of bipartisan bills, boosting hopes of compromise. But any effort to regulate the mammoth industry would face major obstacles as technology companies have fought interference. 

Noting that many young people are struggling, President Joe Biden said in his February State of the Union address that “it’s time” to pass bipartisan legislation to impose stricter limits on the collection of personal data and ban targeted advertising to children. 

“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said.

A look at some of the areas of potential regulation: 

Children’s safety

Several House and Senate bills would try to make social media, and the internet in general, safer for children who will inevitably be online. Lawmakers cite numerous examples of teenagers who have taken their own lives after cyberbullying or have died engaging in dangerous behavior encouraged on social media. 

In the Senate, at least two bills are focused on children’s online safety. Legislation by Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, approved by the chamber’s Commerce Committee last year would require social media companies to be more transparent about their operations and enable child safety settings by default. Minors would have the option to disable addictive product features and algorithms that push certain content. 

The idea, the senators say, is that platforms should be “safe by design.” The legislation, which Blumenthal and Blackburn reintroduced last week, would also obligate social media companies to prevent certain dangers to minors — including promotion of suicide, disordered eating, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and other illegal behaviors. 

A second bill introduced last month by four senators — Democratic Senators Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Katie Britt of Alabama — would take a more aggressive approach, prohibiting children under 13 from using social media platforms and requiring parental consent for teenagers. It would also prohibit companies from recommending content through algorithms for users under 18.

Critics of the bills, including some civil rights groups and advocacy groups aligned with tech companies, say the proposals could threaten teens’ online privacy and prevent them from accessing content that could help them, such as resources for those considering suicide or grappling with their sexual and gender identity. 

“Lawmakers should focus on educating and empowering families to control their online experience,” said Carl Szabo of NetChoice, a group aligned with Meta, TikTok, Google and Amazon, among other companies. 

Data privacy 

Biden’s State of the Union remarks appeared to be a nod toward legislation by Senators Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, that would expand child privacy protections online, prohibiting companies from collecting personal data from younger teenagers and banning targeted advertising to children and teens. The bill, also reintroduced last week, would create an “eraser button” allowing parents and kids to eliminate personal data, when possible. 

A broader House effort would attempt to give adults as well as children more control over their data with what lawmakers call a “national privacy standard.” Legislation that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee last year would try to minimize data collected and make it illegal to target ads to children, usurping state laws that have tried to put privacy restrictions in place. But the bill, which would have also given consumers more rights to sue over privacy violations, never reached the House floor. 

Prospects for the House legislation are unclear now that Republicans have the majority.

TikTok, China 

Lawmakers introduced a raft of bills to either ban TikTok or make it easier to ban it after a combative March House hearing in which lawmakers from both parties grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew over his company’s ties to China’s communist government, data security and harmful content on the app. 

Chew attempted to assure lawmakers that the hugely popular video-sharing app prioritizes user safety and should not be banned because of its Chinese connections. But the testimony gave new momentum to the efforts. 

Soon after the hearing, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, tried to force a Senate vote on legislation that would ban TikTok from operating in the United States. But he was blocked by a fellow Republican, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who said that a ban would violate the Constitution and anger the millions of voters who use the app. 

Another bill sponsored by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida would, like Hawley’s bill, ban U.S. economic transactions with TikTok, but it would also create a new framework for the executive branch to block any foreign apps deemed hostile. His bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, and Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican. 

There is broad Senate support for bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and South Dakota Senatpr John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, that does not specifically call out TikTok but would give the Commerce Department power to review and potentially restrict foreign threats to technology platforms. 

The White House has signaled it would back that bill, but its prospects are uncertain. 

Artificial intelligence 

A newer question for Congress is whether lawmakers should move to regulate artificial intelligence as rapidly developing and potentially revolutionary products like AI chatbot ChatGPT begin to enter the marketplace and can in many ways mimic human behavior. 

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York has made the emerging technology a priority, arguing that the United States needs to stay ahead of China and other countries that are eyeing regulations on AI products. He has been working with AI experts and has released a general framework of what regulation could look like, including increased disclosure of the people and data involved in developing the technology, more transparency and explanation for how the bots arrive at responses.

The White House has been focused on the issue as well, with a recent announcement of a $140 million investment to establish seven new AI research institutes. Vice President Kamala Harris met Thursday with the heads of Google, Microsoft and other companies developing AI products.
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Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia’s elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity.

But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the check mark has disappeared. That’s made it harder to distinguish @phillyvotes from a list of random accounts not run by the elections office but with very similar names.

The election commission applied weeks ago for a gray check mark — Twitter’s new symbol to help users identify official government accounts – but has yet to hear back from the Twitter, commission spokesman Nick Custodio said. It’s unclear whether @phillyvotes is an eligible government account under Twitter’s new rules.

That’s troubling, Custodio said, because Pennsylvania has a primary election May 16 and the commission uses its account to share important information with voters in real time. If the account remains unverified, it will be easier to impersonate – and harder for voters to trust – heading into Election Day.

Impostor accounts on social media are among many concerns election security experts have heading into next year’s presidential election. Experts have warned that foreign adversaries or others may try to influence the election, either through online disinformation campaigns or by hacking into election infrastructure.

Election administrators across the country have struggled to figure out the best way to respond after Twitter owner Elon Musk threw the platform’s verification service into disarray, given that Twitter has been among their most effective tools for communicating with the public.

Some are taking other steps allowed by Twitter, such as buying check marks for their profiles or applying for a special label reserved for government entities, but success has been mixed. Election and security experts say the inconsistency of Twitter’s new verification system is a misinformation disaster waiting to happen.

“The lack of clear, at-a-glance verification on Twitter is a ticking time bomb for disinformation,” said Rachel Tobac, CEO of the cybersecurity company SocialProof Security. “That will confuse users – especially on important days like election days.”

The blue check marks that Twitter once doled out to notable celebrities, public figures, government entities and journalists began disappearing from the platform in April. To replace them, Musk told users that anyone could pay $8 a month for an individual blue check mark or $1,000 a month for a gold check mark as a “verified organization.”

The policy change quickly opened the door for pranksters to pose convincingly as celebrities, politicians and government entities, which could no longer be identified as authentic. While some impostor accounts were clear jokes, others created confusion.

Fake accounts posing as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation falsely claimed the city was closing one of its main thoroughfares to private traffic. The fake accounts used the same photos, biographical text and home page links as the real ones. Their posts amassed hundreds of thousands of views before being taken down.

Twitter’s new policy invites government agencies and certain affiliated organizations to apply to be labeled as official with a gray check. But at the state and local level, qualifying agencies are limited to “main executive office accounts and main agency accounts overseeing crisis response, public safety, law enforcement, and regulatory issues,” the policy says.

The rules do not mention agencies that run elections. So while the main Philadelphia city government account quickly received its gray check mark last month, the local election commission has not heard back.

Election offices in four of the country’s five most populous counties — Cook County in Illinois, Harris County in Texas, Maricopa County in Arizona and San Diego County — remain unverified, a Twitter search shows. Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, has been targeted repeatedly by election conspiracy theorists as the most populous and consequential county in one of the most closely divided political battleground states.

Some counties contacted by The Associated Press said they have minimal concerns about impersonation or plan to apply for a gray check later, but others said they already have applied and have not heard back from Twitter.

Even some state election offices are waiting for government labels. Among them is the office of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

In an April 24 email to Bellows’ communications director reviewed by The Associated Press, a Twitter representative wrote that there was “nothing to do as we continue to manually process applications from around the world.” The representative added in a later email that Twitter stands “ready to swiftly enforce any impersonation, so please don’t hesitate to flag any problematic accounts.”

An email sent to Twitter’s press office and a company safety officer requesting comment was answered only with an autoreply of a poop emoji.

“Our job is to reinforce public confidence,” Bellows told the AP. “Even a minor setback, like no longer being able to ensure that our information on Twitter is verified, contributes to an environment that is less predictable and less safe.”

Some government accounts, including the one representing Pennsylvania’s second-largest county, have purchased blue checks because they were told it was required to continue advertising on the platform.

Allegheny County posts ads for elections and jobs on Twitter, so the blue check mark “was necessary,” said Amie Downs, the county’s communications director.

When anyone can buy verification and when government accounts are not consistently labeled, the check mark loses its meaning, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.

Griswold’s office received a gray check mark to maintain trust with voters, but she told the AP she would not buy verification for her personal Twitter account because “it doesn’t carry the same weight” it once did.

Custodio, at the Philadelphia elections commission, said his office would not buy verification either, even if it gets denied a gray check.

“The blue or gold check mark just verifies you as a paid subscriber and does not verify identity,” he said.

Experts and advocates tracking election discourse on social media say Twitter’s changes do not just incentivize bad actors to run disinformation campaigns — they also make it harder for well-meaning users to know what’s safe to share.

“Because Twitter is dropping the ball on verification, the burden will fall on voters to double check that the information they are consuming and sharing is legitimate,” said Jill Greene, voting and elections manager for Common Cause Pennsylvania.

That dampens an aspect of Twitter that until now had been seen as one of its strengths – allowing community members to rally together to elevate authoritative information, said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

“The first rule of a good online community user interface is to ‘help the helpers.’ This is the opposite of that,” Caulfield said. “It takes a community of people who want to help boost good information, and robs them of the tools to make fast, accurate decisions.”
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Billionaire Warren Buffett said artificial intelligence may change the world in all sorts of ways, but new technology won’t take away opportunities for investors, and he’s confident America will continue to prosper over time.

Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger are spending all day Saturday answering questions at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting inside a packed Omaha arena.

“New things coming along doesn’t take away the opportunities. What gives you the opportunities is other people doing dumb things,” said Buffett, who had a chance to try out ChatGPT when his friend Bill Gates showed it to him a few months back.

Buffett reiterated his long-term optimism about the prospects for America even with the bitter political divisions today.

“The problem now is that partisanship has moved more towards tribalism, and in tribalism you don’t even hear the other side,” he said.

Both Buffett and Munger said the United States will benefit from having an open trading relationship with China, so both countries should be careful not to exacerbate the tensions between them because the stakes are too high for the world.

“Everything that increases the tension between these two countries is stupid, stupid, stupid,” Munger said. And whenever either country does something stupid, he said the other country should respond with incredible kindness.

The chance to listen to the two men answer all sorts of questions about business and life attracts people from all over the world to Omaha, Nebraska. Some of the shareholders feel a particular urgency to attend now because Buffett and Munger are both in their 90s.

“Charlie Munger is 99. I just wanted to see him in person. It’s on my bucket list,” said 40-year-old Sheraton Wu from Vancouver. “I have to attend while I can.”

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Chloe Lin, who traveled from Singapore to attend the meeting for the first time and learn from the two legendary investors.

One of the few concessions Buffett makes to his age is that he no longer tours the exhibit hall before the meeting. In years past, he would be mobbed by shareholders trying to snap a picture with him while a team of security officers worked to manage the crowd. Munger has used a wheelchair for several years, but both men are still sharp mentally.

But in a nod to the concerns about their age, Berkshire showed a series of clips of questions about succession from past meetings dating back to the first one they filmed in 1994. Two years ago, Buffett finally said that Greg Abel will eventually replace him as CEO although he has no plans to retire. Abel already oversees all of Berkshire’s noninsurance businesses.

Buffett assured shareholders that he has total confidence in Abel to lead Berkshire in the future, and he doesn’t have a second choice for the job because Abel is remarkable in his own right. But he said much of what Abel will have to do is just maintain Berkshire’s culture and keep making similar decisions.

“Greg understands capital allocation as well as I do. He will make these decisions on the same framework that I use,” Buffett said.

Abel followed that up by assuring the crowd that he knows how Buffett and Munger have handled things for nearly six decades and “I don’t really see that framework changing.”

Although not everyone at the meeting is a fan. Outside the arena, pilots from Berkshire’s NetJets protested over the lack of a new contract and pro-life groups carried signs declaring “Buffett’s billions kill millions” to object to his many charitable donations to abortion rights groups.

Berkshire Hathaway said Saturday morning that it made $35.5 billion, or $24,377 per Class A share, in the first quarter. That’s more than 6 times last year’s $5.58 billion, or $3,784 per share.

But Buffett has long cautioned that those bottom line figures can be misleading for Berkshire because the wide swings in the value of its investments — most of which it rarely sells — distort the profits. In this quarter, Berkshire sold only $1.7 billion of stocks while recording a $27.4 billion paper investment gain. Part of this year’s investment gains included a $2.4 billion boost related to Berkshire’s planned acquisition of the majority of the Pilot Travel Centers truck stop company’s shares in January.

Buffett says Berkshire’s operating earnings that exclude investments are a better measure of the company’s performance. By that measure, Berkshire’s operating earnings grew nearly 13% to $8.065 billion, up from $7.16 billion a year ago.

The three analysts surveyed by FactSet expected Berkshire to report operating earnings of $5,370.91 per Class A share.

Buffett came close to giving a formal outlook Saturday when he told shareholders that he expects Berkshire’s operating profits to grow this year even though the economy is slowing down and many of its businesses will sell less in 2023. He said Berkshire will profit from rising interest rates on its holdings, and the insurance market looks good this year.

This year’s first quarter was relatively quiet compared to a year ago when Buffett revealed that he had gone on a $51 billion spending spree at the start of last year, snapping up stocks like Occidental Petroleum, Chevron and HP. Buffett’s buying slowed through the rest of last year with the exception of a number of additional Occidental purchases.

At the end of this year’s first quarter, Berkshire held $130.6 billion cash, up from about $128.59 billion at the end of last year. But Berkshire did spend $4.4 billion during the quarter to repurchase its own shares.

Berkshire’s insurance unit, which includes Geico and a number of large reinsurers, recorded a $911 million operating profit, up from $167 million last year, driven by a rebound in Geico’s results. Geico benefitted from charging higher premiums and a reduction in advertising spending and claims.

But Berkshire’s BNSF railroad and its large utility unit did report lower profits. BNSF earned $1.25 billion, down from $1.37 billion, as the number of shipments it handled dropped 10% after it lost a big customer and imports slowed at the West Coast ports. The utility division added $416 million, down from last year’s $775 million.

Besides those major businesses, Berkshire owns an eclectic assortment of dozens of other businesses, including a number of retail and manufacturing firms such as See’s Candy and Precision Castparts.

Berkshire again faces pressure from activist investors urging the company to do more to catalog its climate change risks in a companywide report. Shareholders were expected to brush that measure and all the other shareholder proposals aside Saturday afternoon because Buffett and the board oppose them, and Buffett controls more than 30% of the vote.

But even as they resist detailing climate risks, a number of Berkshire’s subsidiaries are working to reduce their carbon emissions, including its railroad and utilities. The company’s Clayton Homes unit is showing off a new home design this year that will meet strict energy efficiency standards from the Department of Energy and come pre-equipped for solar power to be added later.
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Google is planning to make its search engine more “visual, snackable, personal and human,” with a focus on serving young people globally, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents.

The move comes as artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as ChatGPT are rapidly gaining in popularity, highlighting a technology that could upend the way businesses and society operate.

The tech giant will nudge its service further away from “10 blue links,” which is a traditional format of presenting search results and plans to incorporate more human voices as part of the shift, the report said.

At its annual I/O developer conference in the coming week, Google is expected to debut new features that allow users to carry out conversations with an AI program, a project code-named “Magi,” The Wall Street Journal added, citing people familiar with the matter.

Generative AI has become a buzzword this year, with applications capturing the public’s fancy and sparking a rush among companies to launch similar products they believe will change the nature of work.

Google, part of Alphabet Inc., did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
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