Can Climate Policy Survive the GOP-

In the year since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) became law, I’ve heard versions of the same question keep coming up on the road from people interested in taking advantage of the law’s programs: will the incentives last if Republicans take over?

It’s a good question. The law received zero Republican support in Congress, and, in the past, Republicans have made overturning influential Democratic policies a centerpiece of their agenda, a trend underscored at last week’s Republican presidential debate where leading GOP presidential candidates trashed the Biden Administration’s climate agenda. Entrepreneur-turned-politician Vivek Ramaswamy called the climate agenda the “wet blanket on our economy” and promised a “war” on “toxic regulations.”…

OpenAI Pauses ChatGPT Voice

Scarlett Johansson said Monday that she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” when she heard that OpenAI used a voice “eerily similar” to hers for its new ChatGPT 4.0 chatbot, even after she had declined to provide her voice.

Earlier on Monday, OpenAI announced on X that it would pause the AI voice, known as “Sky,” while it addresses “questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT.” The company said in a blog post that the “Sky” voice was “not an imitation” of Johansson’s voice, but that it was recorded by a different professional actor, whose identity the company would not reveal to protect her privacy.

But Johansson said in a statement to NPR on Monday that OpenAI’s Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman had asked her in September to voice the…

Bill Ford on Michigan Central, Detroit and EV Politics

Bill Ford, the executive chair of Ford Motor Company, partly credits his experience in Silicon Valley with helping him come up with a plan to restore Detroit’s Michigan Central Station. The 111-year-old Beaux-Arts building, designed by the same firm that did New York City’s Grand Central Station, had fallen into disuse after closing in the 1980s, becoming a symbol for the city’s decline—something Ford had long wanted to change. 

Ford, a great-grandson of the automaker’s founder, Henry Ford, served on eBay’s board in the early 2000s and later went on to found a venture-capital firm to invest in the future of mobility. “I was acutely aware of all the vitality, all the startup energy, and all the funding available for new ideas in the Valley—and I would come back…