After five months of stopped work, days spent picketing outside studios, and countless pithy sign quips—e.g., “Alexa will not replace us”—the Writers Guild of America (WGA) secured a contract that will include historic provisions around how AI can be used in writers’ rooms across Hollywood.

But for other creative and writing-centric professions in flux amid a new wave of language- and image-generating models, the battle is only beginning. Some experts and labor leaders think that the rules hammered out by the WGA could serve as a blueprint for what’s expected to be a lengthy struggle over how this technology is implemented.

“The Writers Guild contract helps level up an area that previously no one really has dealt with in a union contract,” NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss told Tech Brew. “It’s a really good first step in what’s probably going to be a decade-long battle to protect creative individuals from having their talent being misused or replaced by generative AI.”

The contract comes as an AI arms race in Silicon Valley has thrust myriad industries onto the front lines over the new technology. From screen and voice actors involved in the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike to fashion models and authors, creative professionals have concerns about how AI could exploit their existing bodies of work or be used to automate parts of their jobs.

Keep reading here.—PK

Lithium is so essential to EVs that car companies are racing to secure lithium supplies. When demand for lithium is projected to grow 20x by 2040, getting an edge matters.

So when EnergyX revealed their technology could extract 300% more lithium than traditional methods, that got General Motors’ attention.

Now GM is the lead investor in EnergyX’s $50m funding round. And you can join them.

That means you have the unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a fast-growing company—just as they’re set to unlock the US’ lithium supply.

Don’t miss your chance. Click here to become an EnergyX shareholder and transform the future of renewable energy.

Should high school students have to learn the basics of how computers, networks, and programs work to get their diploma? Code.org thinks so.

The education nonprofit has previously issued nine policy recommendations for states to expand and sustain access to computer science classes for K–12 students, including funding and supporting certification of CS teachers and requiring all schools not only offer the classes, but allow them to count towards graduation requirements. This summer, it added a 10th: requiring students to satisfy a CS requirement to graduate.

In a blog post, Code.org argued that these requirements are necessary to push students to actually take the classes and pointed to success in Arkansas, South Carolina, and Rhode Island, all of which already have such rules. Hadi Partovi, Code.org’s CEO, spoke with IT Brew about why the nonprofit thinks it’s time to make computer skills mandatory.

Keep reading here.—TM

Coworking is a weekly segment where we spotlight Tech Brew readers who work with emerging technologies. Click here if you’d like a chance to be featured.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

To people not involved in product development and product management, I like to draw the following parallel: In 1960, President John F. Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon. That was the vision and the goal. He never explained how.

My job is to take that vision/program and translate into discrete products and their requirements. To identify the individual products, I talk to all kinds of engineers, astronomers, biologists, etc. With their input, I build specifications for each product (e.g., the rocket, the fuel for the rocket) and what the road map looks like (which product we deliver when). Then, each product team starts executing on their product. During this phase, I make sure that things stay on track, designs don’t change without communication to dependent teams, and that the products meet their quality goals. Once a product is ready for field testing, I keep track of how well it’s doing, what stakeholders like or don’t like about it, and plan updates or entirely new designs based on the feedback.

Keep reading here.