ChatGPT stans have been saying for months now that the AI-powered chatbot will revolutionize the way we work—and their predictions could finally be coming true.

Your boss may now be considering adding Microsoft Copilot to your company’s enterprise Microsoft 365 subscription. The ChatGPT-powered tool, which Gizmodo described as “if Clippy went to get his MBA,” is a smart assistant intended to save you time by turning Word documents into PowerPoint presentations, drafting email responses, summarizing video meetings, and automating other tasks within the Microsoft 365 suite.

Interested businesses have to buy a minimum of 300 user licenses—for $30 each—to add Copilot to their Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 subscriptions, on top of the existing subscription fees of $36 and $57 per person per month, respectively.

Will “proficient in Copilot” be the new resume skill?

Microsoft is the first to integrate ChatGPT’s technology into a wildly popular business software product, which has some people wondering if this is Microsoft’s “iPhone moment.” Having a little AI guy ride shotgun throughout white-collar workdays could earn Microsoft $10 billion in annual revenue by 2026, Piper Sandler analysts project.

Some high-revenue-earning US companies got early access to Copilot months ago, and at one, employees reported that the tool saved them five to 10 hours per month, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Analysts are optimistic that it’ll scale:

• By the end of next year, almost 6.9 million knowledge workers in the US could be using Copilot, market research group Forrester estimates.
• Piper Sandler also projects that FOMO will push businesses to purchase Copilot to stay competitive with industry rivals using the tool.

But…if nearly one year of ChatGPT has taught us anything, it’s that AI can often get things wrong, which is why tech experts advise Copilot adopters to check the bot’s work for anomalies before hitting “send” on that deck.—ML

Lithium is essential for batteries in electric cars, renewable energy storage, and even smartphones. That’s why demand for lithium is projected to grow 20x by 2040.

So when EnergyX revealed that their technology could extract 300% more lithium than traditional methods, investors everywhere took note—General Motors included, BTW.

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 company just as they’re set to unlock the US lithium supply.

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The US Treasury laid out its plan for new bonds. Even though the Federal Reserve announced its interest rate decision yesterday, Jerome Powell wasn’t the government official investors were most anxious to hear from. Instead, he was upstaged by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who gave an update on the size of upcoming bond auctions. Although many were concerned about the US selling new debt into a market where interest rates are high and demand for bonds has flagged (pushing yields way up), the market liked what she had to say. Yellen explained that the government would focus on shorter-term notes rather than longer-term ones, which prompted a rally for 10- and 30-year bonds.

Toyota gives its US factory workers a raise. The UAW’s big wins on wages and benefits for its members working at Detroit’s Big Three seem to have pushed Toyota to boost pay in its US factories. Come January, the Japanese automaker’s US manufacturing workers, who are not unionized, will receive a ~9% pay bump. The company is also shortening the time it takes employees to make it to the highest pay group to four years from eight and offering more PTO.

SCOTUS looks ready to rule against “Trump Too Small” trademark. The activist who wants to trademark the naughty phrase for t-shirts didn’t appear to get much sympathy from Supreme Court justices of either political persuasion during yesterday’s oral arguments. Members of the court seemed skeptical of his attorney’s claims that refusing to allow him to register the trademark without Trump’s permission ran afoul of the First Amendment, noting that no one was stopping him from selling the t-shirts, only from gaining the ability to prevent others from using the slogan.

Like all those suburban fro-yo shops that opened the summer of 2014, many planned offshore wind energy projects just aren’t as profitable as they used to be.

Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, announced this week that it’s pulling the plug on two big projects in New Jersey—which will leave the Biden administration’s clean energy ambitions wheezing. The Danish company said financing the operation became unsustainable due to higher interest rates and supply chain delays, forcing it to write off $4 billion.

Building a wind farm in the US is anything but breezy. Orsted CEO Mads Nipper told the NYT that while the renewable energy industry has also struggled in Europe, its problems are “more acute” in the US. In addition to the financing issues, public opposition and inadequate subsidies plague the industry.

• Orsted warned in August that NJ’s tax break wasn’t enough for the projects to continue amid rising costs.
• Republican lawmakers and Jersey Shore residents challenged the projects in court, leading to costly delays.

And yet…yesterday, the federal government greenlit the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, which would be the largest offshore wind farm in the US. So, there’s still a chance offshore wind production can have its “we are so back” moment.—CC

Tear down your fake cobwebs and light your leftover Lemonheads on fire: Gourds are out and tinsel is in, according to Mariah Carey. The untrademarked Queen of Christmas tweeted a video of her being unthawed and belting out the first few notes of her iconic holiday song the second October 31 switched to November 1, kicking off the yearly spike in Google searches for “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

The unofficial song of the holiday season and official earworm of retail workers was first released in 1994, and almost every year since it has been back on the charts in the months leading up to Christmas. Last year, it was one of 25 songs the Library of Congress chose to add to the National Recording Registry.

Not everyone’s a fan. A Texas bar went viral in 2021 for banning the song before the month of December.

Big picture: It’s not just Carey kicking off Christmas before we’ve even started thawing the turkey. Starbucks and Dunkin’ added peppermint and other holiday drink flavors to their menus this week. And Rockefeller Center announced it had selected its 12-ton tree for this year.—MM

Stat: Want those tacos it seemed like a good idea to order after a night out to show up fast? Remember to tip your delivery driver. DoorDash has been testing out alerts reminding customers to include a gratuity if they want their food to arrive in a timely manner. The delivery company pays drivers between $2 and $10 per order—and lets them keep the entire tip. Because its delivery people get to pick which orders they want to shuttle, the ones without tips tend to take longer to get selected, leading to slower delivery.

Quote: “If he hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about.”

Tom Cruise not only still does his own stunts at age 61, but he also apparently influences global AI regulation. White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed told the Associated Press that a viewing of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, in which the villain is an evil AI, helped drive home the dangers of the tech for President Biden. News of the president’s cinematic revelation broke as he issued an executive order for putting safeguards on AI this week. A two-day global summit on AI safety kicked off in the UK yesterday with VP Kamala Harris, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman in attendance, but, as far as we know, Cruise wasn’t invited.

Read: The economy is great. Why are Americans in such a rotten mood? (Wall Street Journal)

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Farewell, WFM woes: Workday’s handy new guide outlines 3 outdated workforce management practices to ensure you’re not wasting time and resources. Take a look.*

In the green room: We went behind the scenes of Fresh Invest, our investing pod with Fidelity, to ask a subject-matter expert some rapid-fire bonus Q’s. Watch here.*

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