The hiring manager who decides whether you get your next job may not be human as companies increasingly adopt AI tools for hiring. And a New York City law that took effect yesterday wants to make sure that if the AI doesn’t pick you, it’s not because of an algorithm’s baked-in bias.

The concern is real: AI can exhibit racist and sexist biases (machines, they’re just like us!), and a survey last year by the Society for Human Resource Management found that almost 1 in 4 companies already uses AI in the hiring process.

The first-of-its-kind law requires companies to:

• Notify job candidates who live in NYC that AI is being used and let them request info on what data is being collected.
• Conduct yearly independent audits of any AI tools they use to make employment decisions aimed at ensuring they don’t discriminate based on sex, race, or ethnicity and publish ratios to show whether they disproportionately impact specific groups.

Businesses that don’t comply can be fined up to $1,500 per violation a day.

Everyone’s a critic

As with all things AI, the new law drew impassioned responses. It was passed in 2021 but got delayed for years while lawmakers sifted through a boatload of public comments on how to enforce it—many from businesses that called it an impractical burden.

Some public interest groups and advocates now say the final version doesn’t go far enough to root out discrimination. Because it focuses on AI making substantial decisions, it may not even apply ​​to popular tools that winnow down job applicants before they’re screened by human staff.

Zoom out: NYC’s law will be the first to regulate bias in AI algorithms in the workplace, but it won’t be the last. And it’ll provide an important model for laws around the country. Legislators in California, New Jersey, Vermont, and New York are already drafting state-level laws.—AR

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Start your engines.

UPS contract talks fell apart with a strike on the horizon. America’s largest private-sector package delivery service and the Teamsters Union representing 340,000 of its workers accused each other of walking away from negotiations over pay yesterday. The union plans to go on strike if a deal isn’t reached before the current contract expires on July 31, a move that could hobble supply chains and weigh on the US economy. Rivals like FedEx might benefit from picking up extra business, but they would likely struggle to take on all the 20 million packages that UPS handles daily.

Japan gets green light to dump radioactive water in the ocean. The UN’s nuclear agency signed off Tuesday on the nation’s controversial plan to release more than a million metric tons of treated but still radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima power plant that was destroyed in 2011 into the Pacific Ocean. Some nearby countries object, but the experts are split on whether the plan is safe or could create a Godzilla situation. Other countries, including the US and China, have disposed of diluted nuclear waste in the ocean before, according to USA Today.

Subway now has meat slicers so you can eat fresher. The sandwich chain shelled out $80 million to stock its 20,000 locations with the $6,000 meat-cutting machines, and ~80% of stores will show them off at the front. The foray into non-pre-sliced cold cuts comes as the privately held chain seeks to find a buyer. To promote its new meat method, Subway plans to introduce new sandwiches and give away 1 million six-inch subs next week. But although it’ll be sliced in-store, the meat won’t be cut to order. The automated slicers will be run during prep hours only, Subway’s president of North America told Insider.

Japan Airlines wants you to never again feel the agony of zipping a bursting-at-the-seams suitcase and lugging it to the airport only to learn that it’s 3.4 pounds overweight.

Yesterday, the airline debuted its “Any Wear, Anywhere” service, which lets passengers rent and receive clothes upon arrival in Japan.

The country’s flagship carrier wants to study whether the offering will encourage folks to pack light, allowing its planes to burn less greenhouse-gas-spewing fuel. Plus, it seeks to reduce clothing waste by partnering with trading firm Sumitomo Corp., which will supply overstock garments.

Here’s how it works:

• Travelers assemble their Japan-trip wardrobe online by choosing up to eight sets of business or business casual clothes for $28–$49 each.
• The outfits are delivered to their hotel, and travelers can keep them for up to two weeks.

Japan Airlines is one of several airlines making moves to give an environmentally friendly sheen to aviation, which causes 3.5% of human-induced climate change, according to one study.

But…skeptics worry that some of the environmental benefits of the service, which will be available on a trial basis through August 2024, might be offset by the impact of delivering the rented clothes and tourists filling their freed-up luggage space with souvenir samurai swords and sake bottles other travel necessities.—SK

Stat: ChatGPT might still rise up and overthrow the human race one day, but, like the umpteenth installment in a dystopian sci-fi series, it’s not holding the public’s attention like it used to. Worldwide traffic to the chatbot’s website, which had been spiking since the bot was introduced and spawned a million think pieces, declined 9.7% from May to June, and visitors spent 8.5% less time on the site, according to Similarweb. François Chollet, an AI researcher at rival Google, thinks he knows why: School’s out for summer, so students don’t need an AI assistant to complete their homework.

Quote: “When’s the hottest day likely to be? It’s going to be when global warming, El Niño, and the annual cycle all line up together. Which is the next couple months.”

Get ready to feel the heat: Tuesday was probably the hottest day on Earth in ~125,000 years (one day after Monday set a record), with the global average temperature climbing to 62.92 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction. And as Oxford University geosystem science professor Myles Allen told the Washington Post, we’ll likely sweat through even hotter days soon as elements align to keep things toasty. “It’s a triple whammy,” he explained.

Read: Meet the CEOs who pull in more than $100 million a year. (Wall Street Journal)

Octopus’s garden in the shade: Watch the video scientists caught of baby cephalopods hatching. 

What comes after the summer of Barbie? Here are all the other movies Mattel is planning based on its toys. 

Little house on the podcast: This pod covers all things Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

Embrace the open road: Summer road trips to take on every continent.

SVB aftershocks: The fallout from Silicon Valley Bank created lingering economic impacts. Learn how CFOs and other business leaders can tackle these changes with resilience.

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Three headlines and a lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than a phone call about your auto insurance. Can you spot the odd one out?

1. Robot conductor gives a history-making orchestral debut
2. Iowa man’s collection of 70,000 pencils being evaluated as possible world record
3. Fans outraged after Grand Rapids July 4th drone show depicts spoiler for ‘Oppenheimer’
4. ‘Stoneos’ cannabis cookies look too much like Oreos, says FTC

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