As any business journalist or analyst might tell you, quarterly earnings reports can be a slog. The hour-long earnings calls tend to contain maybe a few key insights into how a business is performing, often buried among a slew of obligatory disclosures and self-congratulatory tangents.

For years, news companies and investment research firms have tried to condense these calls into neat briefs using rote automation tools. But without much advanced AI to guide them, these summaries tended to read a little, well, robotically—they were limited and formulaic in how they presented information.

Bloomberg’s new summarization tool for its Terminal users aims to improve on some of these efforts with the power of large language models. The system will “enable users to decipher complex financial information” and zero in on key insights across topics of interest to analysts, according to a press release.

It’s designed to help research analysts who use Bloomberg Terminal more easily navigate the information and, ideally, save time on reading long transcripts. The financial news and research company rolled out the tool in January, just in time for 2024’s first earnings season.

While the tool is billed as a summarizer, it’s more focused in practice on highlighting information and guiding analysts to relevant parts of call transcripts that back up that information, according to Bloomberg’s global head of research for listed core services product, Andrew Skala. He said the approach is an effort to help eliminate the possibility of so-called hallucinations, which could be costly in a high-stakes business like financial services.

“We use the term summarization, but I look at it slightly differently,” Skala said. “What’s different is we only put the summaries next to the transcripts, and we’re using them as a way for clients to dive deeper into the document themselves.”

Keep reading here.—PK

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The United Auto Workers’ campaign to organize nonunion auto workers is plugging along—even as the clock is ticking ahead of a possible White House changeover.

The Detroit-based union said last week that some 10,000 workers across the nonunion auto industry have signed union cards, a step in the uphill battle toward winning union representation and securing workers’ future, especially amid the EV transition.

The UAW launched the ambitious organizing effort after winning record contracts for roughly 150,000 workers at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis last year after a historic strike targeting all three domestic automakers. Now, the union has set its sights on dozens of plants operated by 13 foreign automakers and EV startups: Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Honda, Volvo, Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Subaru, Mazda, Rivian, Lucid, and Hyundai.

“Our Stand Up movement has caught fire among America’s autoworkers, far beyond the Big Three,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement announcing the 10,000-signature milestone. “These workers are standing up for themselves, for their families, and for their communities, and our union will have their back every step of the way.”

Workers at a VW plant in Tennessee, plus Mercedes and Hyundai plants in Alabama, have gone public with their campaigns.

Still, the union has its work cut out for it—and it could face greater obstacles if Trump takes back the White House later this year, one labor expert told us.

Keep reading here.—JG

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’m the super laid-back individual who shows up where there are hard-to-solve problems in tech policy and creates a supportive environment through resources and education for tech privacy professionals and lawmakers working in consumer health data to find the most effective policy interventions.

What’s the most compelling tech project you’ve worked on, and why?

I’m currently working on a pregnancy and fertility data privacy project to help health-tech companies and lawmakers navigate the post-Dobbs health-tech landscape. The Dobbs decision threw the data privacy world for a loop and had reverberating consequences that may have stifled the growth of consumer health tech. This project will help guide the way through this tumultuous landscape and set the compass to catch back up with progress in the health space for women and femmes in particular.

Keep reading here.