The UAW’s organizing drive is heating up.

Fresh off winning record contracts with Ford, GM, and Stellantis, the union has set its sights on organizing auto workers at foreign car companies and EV startups. It went public on Thursday with an organizing campaign at Volkswagen’s only US plant, in Chattanooga, Tenn. The union said that more than 1,000 workers, or around a third of the workforce that builds cars like the Atlas and electric ID.4, had signed union cards.

The campaign could pave the way for the plant to unionize, and marks the UAW’s latest attempt to win over workers in a region that has long resisted organized labor.

“This is a major win for the union, coming at a critical moment,” Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, told Tech Brew. “And this is particularly significant, given VW’s history with organizing.”

The UAW attempted to organize workers at the Chattanooga plant in 2014 and 2019. Both efforts resulted in narrow losses for the union and were met with “fierce opposition” from Tennessee elected officials, Shaiken said.

Resistance is likely to crop up again, but Shaiken believes the UAW has some advantages this time: the foundation of the previous organizing drives, the US labor movement’s hot streak, and having the “most pro-union president in US history” in the White House.

“One other thing: The UAW has hired three key organizers, which are the contracts at the Detroit-based automakers,” Shaiken said.

Keep reading here.—JG

There’s nothing more momentous than two powerhouse brands coming together to design next-level tech you can wear…and it’s happening right now.

Meta and Ray-Ban combined the perfect blend of style and cutting-edge technology in an unforgettable partnership: Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. That’s right—the next gen of smart glasses has ~arrived~.

With a variety of styles to choose from, the Ray-Ban Meta collection has a built-in 12 MP camera and five-microphone system so you can capture moments, make calls, listen to tunes, livestream, and even ask Meta AI for info without missing the moment.

Available as both sunglasses and optical glasses, step into—and see through—the future with your very own pair, just in time for gift-giving season.

If the hype around generative AI is indeed losing any steam, you wouldn’t know from the lengthy, meandering check-in and lunch lines at the annual AI Summit in New York this week.

Tech execs, academics, and experts descended on the Javits Center for what attendees said was an especially hectic iteration of the conference focused on how businesses are putting the latest AI breakthroughs to use.

The event offered a look into how companies like FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, and Fossil are grappling with large language models (LLMs) and the inherent risks.

After a year in which it seemed like there was a big new enterprise AI tool debut every other week, many companies are still in the process of figuring out how the tech best fits their business. “Like a lot of companies right now, we’re kind of trying to figure [it] out,” FedEx CTO Adam Smith said in an onstage interview.

FedEx’s experimentation with generative AI covers three broad areas, Smith said: Finding the right partnerships, making “core processes” more efficient, and supporting the company’s developers with features like coding assistance.

The shipping and logistics company has experimented with everything from using LLMs to improve delivery estimates on orders to using a form of generative AI to design more efficient ways of stacking boxes through partner Dexterity AI, FreightWaves reported.

“If leaders don’t have small teams working in the generative AI space right now with very focused outcomes, they’re behind,” Smith said. “Because the reality is it’s evolving, and it’s evolving fast.”

Keep reading here.—PK

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?

I cover stories at the intersection of transportation and technology—topics like EVs and how automation and AI are changing transportation as we know it. There’s a lot happening in this space at the moment, from major policy and investment bets being placed on electrification as the future of personal travel to a huge effort to establish new supply chains to the ups and downs of autonomous-vehicle tech. I see my role as investigating the ways technology is reshaping transportation, understanding how stakeholders are navigating this shift, and breaking down relevant trends, policies, and innovations for our readers.

What technologies are you most optimistic about? Least? And why?

At the moment, I’m most and least optimistic about artificial intelligence.

Beyond its applications in the automotive industry, I didn’t pay much attention to AI until I started to observe the ways it was being used in my profession. I was involved in some discussions about developing an AI policy for a newsroom and the ways in which tools like ChatGPT could assist in reporting—for example, summarizing long documents it would otherwise take hours for a harried reporter to read through. But stories about news organizations using AI in baffling and ethically dubious ways also made me think more deeply about the ways these tools can have negative implications for journalists.

I’ve been reading a ton about AI lately, in part because it’s been in the news so much with the drama at OpenAI. It’s made me think about the potential positives—for example, AI helping workers like me better manage our day-to-day tasks (looking at you, overwhelming email inbox!) and helping people accelerate their careers.

But I remain skeptical of just how useful generative AI tools really are for the average person, at least for now. Some of the existing uses feel like a reflection of society’s obsession with optimization and, at their worst, can be actively harmful.

Keep reading here.—JG