For perennial powerhouses like GM and Ford, the development of wi-fi and 5G has opened the door for stronger and more flexible connectivity within their manufacturing plants, letting them more easily use robots and monitor operations on the factory floor.

Factoring it all in: A partnership with Verizon that started in November 2020 came on the heels of GM’s retooling of one of its factories just outside of Detroit, refitting it to be the central location for GM’s EV assembly.

• The factory, called Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, is the result of a $2.2 billion investment from GM, the largest investment the company had made up until that point into a single facility upgrade, according to Jennifer Korail, senior plant communications manager for Factory Zero and Ultium Cells at GM.
• It is GM’s first all-EV assembly plant, producing vehicles like the GMC Hummer EV and the Cruise Origin since its rededication in October 2020.

Playing backup to the backup

John Wells, IT operations manager for Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, told Tech Brew that Verizon’s 5G network primarily fills gaps in coverage or outages for the factory. Wells said that in the past, GM’s factories were mostly wired environments, and now that Factory Zero is partially wireless, the plant has more redundancies in its architecture and an improved ability to adjust in emergencies if they arise.

AT&T’s partnership with Ford is centered around its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, where Ford produces its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. Joseph Mosele, VP of enterprise mobility at AT&T Business, told Tech Brew that Ford is using 5G in its Dearborn plant to help facilitate what he called “smart manufacturing.”

Keep reading here.—JM

Elon Musk and other tech leaders signed an open letter calling on developers to “pause giant AI experiments.”

• The petition, which more than 1,000 AI experts have signed, warns that artificial intelligence poses “profound risks to society and humanity” and asks AI researchers to put their projects on ice for at least six months.

That’s asking a lot: OpenAI launched the latest version of its language model, GPT-4, this month; Google started rolling out its AI chatbot called Bard last week; and Microsoft added AI capabilities to its Bing search engine in February. Goldman Sachs even shared a report on Monday that said AI could boost worker productivity so much that annual world GDP would jump by 7%.

Why stop the progress now? For Frankensteinian reasons: Per the letter, developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one—not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

Keep reading here.—JW

In 2019, Walmart set a target for 10% of its employees at the Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters to stop using their cars for their daily commute. After experiencing difficulty meeting that target, the company hired Kourtney Barrett, a local entrepreneur, to help meet the goal.

• Cindi Marsiglio, Barrett’s manager and Walmart’s SVP for corporate real estate, told Bloomberg that this push will help the company cut its carbon emissions but also improve employee well-being and productivity. It’s also an effort to attract younger talent.

“This could be an effective way to reduce their Scope 3 emissions…employee travel is a significant part of [a company’s] carbon emissions,” said Şafak Yücel, assistant professor of operations management at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, to HR Brew after reviewing Walmart’s plan.

Keep reading here.—AK

Stat: 473%. Reddit claimed in its 2022 Transparency Report that it removed 473% more subreddits and 244% more user accounts it found to be in violation of its rules on posting non-consensual intimate media than the year before.

Quote: “This is nerdy, hardcore graphics engineering. It’s the stuff we love to do.”—Jan-Bart van Beek, art director for Guerilla Games’s Horizon Forbidden West, on the complexity of animating water in video games

Read: The dream of the metaverse appears to be in trouble as Disney and Microsoft shutter their metaverse divisions.

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Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Laugh now, pay later: Apple debuted Apple Pay Later for select US Apple Pay users. As the service’s name implies, it offers consumers the option to make purchases while postponing immediate, full payment. Those who use the feature will be eligible to postpone payments between $50 and $1,000 for purchases made on iPhone or iPad with vendors that accept Apple Pay.

“Unreal” game design: Fortnite content creators got a new suite of tools called the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). Unveiled at the Game Developers Conference 2023, the editor uses Epic Games’s Unreal Engine 5 assets to let creators build their own worlds. Creators will be able to do custom programming, import content from Unreal Engine, and collaborate with each other across platforms. Epic said it will share at least 40% of Fortnite revenue with content creators, with the hope that entire studios will eventually build games within the Fortnite ecosystem.

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• Mark Hamill has lent his voice to the English-language version of a Ukrainian air-raid warning app.
• Italy proposed a ban on lab-grown meat, citing a need to preserve the country’s “food heritage.”
• Vow, an Australian cultivated-meat company, brought the long-extinct woolly mammoth back to life in the form of a meatball.
• Waymo announced a plan to eventually move into autonomous motorcycles if it succeeds with cars.

Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• When fish feed runs low, insects step up to lighten the load
• Jack Ma’s ag-tech tour
• How Spotify’s new AI DJ works