Longtime Zulily employees reflect on company’s impact | Microsoft addresses AI labor concerns in AFL-CIO pact

Over the weekend, Zulily promoted a “going-out-of-business sale,” the latest stage in the Seattle retailer’s collapse. Its sudden evaporation is a stunning turn of events for a business once valued at more than $7 billion. Longtime employees took to LinkedIn to share how the company, founded 14 years ago, impacted their lives and careers. Read more. 

Microsoft announced a new union agreement Monday with the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of unions, that seeks to address concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence on American workers as part of a concerted public campaign by the tech giant to separate itself from its industry rivals on the issue. Read more. 

Amazon’s formal response to the FTC’s landmark antitrust suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, asserts that the company has "relentlessly innovated, delivering previously unimagined benefits for consumers and pushing competitors to do likewise, all to make every penny of a consumer’s purchase count for more." Read more.

Google raised the stakes in the generative AI race last week with the launch of Gemini, sparking debates over whether we’ve finally created artificial general intelligence, or AGI. It also poses more questions about AI safeguards. In training and testing Gemini, Google reportedly used technology developed at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence called Real Toxicity Prompts. Read more. 

Google’s top trending search topics in the Seattle area this year included Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour”; HBO’s “The Last of Us” TV series; and more. Read more.

Hot Links:

• Amazon / MGM Studios scored 16 Golden Globe nominations for a mix of TV shows and movies. Netflix led all streamers/studios with 28 nominations. (Variety)
• Walmart is taking a page from Target's playbook by fulfilling e-commerce orders from its retail stores. (Business Insider)
• Amazon CTO Werner Vogels offers his tech predictions for 2024, from education to femtech. (YouTube)