Boeing Union Rejects Latest Deal & Anthropic’s AI Controls Your PC?
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Boeing is back to square one after its striking workers rejected another labor deal. Then Anthropic wants you to turn over the keys to your computer and let an AI agent do your work for you. It's Thursday, October 24th. Let's ride. Let's ride.

So if you follow Morning Brew Daily on Instagram, you may have seen some stories recently promoting Morning Brew Run Club. It's a New York City-based run club where every Thursday morning, myself, Neil, and a few other people from the brew meet up with listeners to go for a quick four-mile jaunt. But we've gotten so many messages from people not in New York City wishing they could join. So in the spirit of getting all of you involved, if you go for a run this morning, tag

at MBDailyShow or me and Neil on Instagram, and we'll repost you on our story. Call it a distributed Morning Brew Daily Run Club. And of course, running is not everyone's thing to do in the morning, so you can do it with any other exercise option, whether you just want to walk, walk with your dog, walk with your cat,

biking, swimming, yoga, Pilates, planking, jump roping, hula hooping, parkour, whatever you do in the morning to get a little active, definitely tag us because I don't think we're even going to be running going forward in the next few months because the temperatures might dip. So if you're down in the south, then keep up that outside exercise.

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Yesterday could have been the day Boeing's costly strike would end and the planemaker could begin the process of turning its business around. Workers had other plans. Members of Boeing's machinist union rejected a new labor deal, extending their strike that has already lasted more than one month and brought nearly all plane production to a halt. It is a major setback for CEO Kelly Ortberg, who earlier in the day said that getting striking workers back on the assembly line was priority number one for him.

This is the second deal put on the table by Boeing. This one was more generous than the first, featuring a 35 percent wage increase over four years and increased contributions to retirement plans. But it wasn't nearly generous enough in workers' minds, and nearly two-thirds voted against it. Yeah, you mentioned the new CEO, Kelly Ortberg. This is a big loss for him. Yesterday morning, when Boeing reported earnings,

He released his plan to make Boeing great again, which focused on an overhaul of the company's culture. That could only be kick-started by coming to an agreement with the striking workers. So this rejection pushes back the Boeing turnaround timeline. Meanwhile, it was another doozy of a quarter for Boeing. It lost $6.1 billion, its biggest quarterly loss since 2020. Let's start with this labor deal. So 65% of Boeing.

workers rejected it, which shows really the deep resentment they still feel around the last contract that was agreed upon in 2014, which they say they were totally take advantage of by Boeing. This one had a 35% general wage increase over four years, a $7,000 one-time signing bonus, revival of an annual bonus with a guaranteed minimum payout of 4% and a 401k pension match of 100%, which was

All of those are bigger boosts than they got over the first deal, which led to the strike in the first place. 95% of them rejected that. 65% of them rejected this one. So I guess Boeing is getting a little closer to an agreement, but the two sides are still far apart. And these workers have so much leverage. Boeing can't make a plane without them. So they are holding Boeing's feet to the fire.

Last night, you and I were talking about if we thought a deal would get done. You thought potentially a new deal was worthy of consideration because labor leaders had said as much. I was kind of on the opposite side because some of these reports of reporters talking to people going in to vote, a lot of accounts were people saying that they want their pensions back. You talked about the last time that Boeing kind of negotiated a strike. One thing they did do is get rid of the pension benefits for a lot of these workers. A lot of

Boeing and Machinist still have resentment around that. So I think this whole deal potentially hinges on the fact whether the Machinist Union will accept improvements to their 401ks in lieu of reinstating the pension benefits because Boeing has pretty much flatly come out and said, we refuse to concede on this specific point. While a lot of

of the workers are saying, we would really like our pension plans back. So even though that they got that 35% raise, even though they're getting these bonuses, even though they're getting increased 401k contributions, it looks like this is potentially the big sticking point. And then earlier in the day, I mean, it was a really busy day for Boeing because they reported their earnings in the morning and Kelly Ortberg, the new CEO released a four page memo talking about how to make 401k

Boeing great again and get it back on its feet. He said that Boeing was really at a crossroads and that there were serious performance lapses that had led to an erosion of trust, mounting debt and customer disappointment. It's really been a string of six years of frustration.

Bad headlines for Boeing, starting with those fatal crashes of the 737 Max's in 2018. And then earlier this year, there was that door panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight that was 16,000 feet in the air, which exposed shoddy safety practices and that rotten workplace culture that had been going on at Boeing.

One of his ideas to fix the culture is getting leaders on the factory floors. He said, we need to be on the factory floors in the back shops and in our engineering labs. We need to know what's going on, not only with our products, but with our people. And he's putting his...

feet where his mouth is because he literally moved to the Seattle area whereas previous Boeing CEOs had not been there which is you know they don't have their headquarters there but they have most of their manufacturing in the Puget Sound area so he moved there as a show of his support for workers but clearly those two are just not on the same page as of yet the final x-factor here that we haven't really spoken about much is that the last time Boeing workers went on strike was in 2008 and

What are the differences in the work culture between now and 2008? Gig work options exist. Again, a lot of reporters were talking to people voting yesterday and saying, I'm okay. I've found gig work. I've found part-time work elsewhere. Think about in 2008, no Uber Eats, no Lyft, no Fiverr, no gig work whatsoever. So potentially these options could be feeding into the employee's willingness to

plus the fact that they hold a ton of leverage here to keep this strike going. We're at 41 days now compared to the last strike in 2008, which was 54 days. If you had to set an over-under, do you think we're going above that line or below that line? I love putting you on the spot. How the heck would I know? Okay, that sounds like an over to me.

Apple and Goldman Sachs' once-hyped credit card partnership is looking a lot more like a Zach, Brian, Brianna, chicken fry level fiasco at this point. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is fining the two companies nearly $90 million for mishandling consumer disputes related to the Apple card.

Like users of any credit card, Apple Card customers often submitted disputes to the company. But according to the CFPB, Apple failed to pass on tens of thousands of those disputes to its partner Goldman. Even when Goldman did receive disputes from customers via Apple, the bank did not follow the correct requirements when it came to looking into the cases.

The result, some cardholders were left holding the bag on potentially fraudulent purchases with banged up credit scores as their reward. Neil, the Apple card was supposed to be Goldman Sachs' triumphant entry into the consumer finance world, but it's really been nothing but headaches ever since this partnership launched back in 2019. This was just a terrible mistake that keeps hitting Goldman always.

over and over again. Goldman is known for their prowess on Wall Street with investment banking and trading. They service corporate clients. They service super wealthy people. That was their core business. And they did a really good job because Goldman Sachs is Goldman Sachs. It's an incredible brand. And then a couple of years ago, under the leadership of CEO David Solomon, they tried to get into Main Street and start doing lending to consumers and getting into credit cards with this Apple card. And they also did one, a

GM-branded credit card as well. And we're just learning how much of a cluster this has been. And this fine is just sort of an example of how this transition from Wall Street to Main Street had gone so poorly. They're trying to back out of it, but they just can't keep back out of it. It was still hitting their hand on the wall. I mean, on the surface, this seems like such a smart partnership for both parties.

As you said, Goldman really did want to reach more consumers, build out their consumer credit operation. Apple wanted just to make it easier to buy Apple devices, so they launched this credit card with great financing, by the way, usually 0% APR for buying Apple devices.

They handle the marketing and tech side, which they're very good at. Goldman handles the financial piece. So it seemed like a win-win, but right from the start, they were kind of behind the eight ball. Four days before the cards launched, Goldman Sachs board of directors did learn that its dispute system was, quote, not fully ready because of some of these technology issues, but they decided to move forward anyway. That is a big part of the CFPB's suit here. They...

Apple had these penalties that potentially they could have levied against Goldman if they didn't have it ready. So that may have pushed Goldman to launch before they were quite ready. But yeah, it really just comes down to the consumers as well. Say you have this credit card dispute, you submit it, and then you just get stonewalled or you don't hear back. That hurts you and hurts your credit report. So that is part of the reason why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into this.

Despite long-seated fears that eventually AI will take over everything and render humanity obsolete, Anthropic just released some AI tech that can take over your computer and potentially render you obsolete. The startup, which is a major competitor of OpenAI, dropped its new computer use feature for its Cloud AI model this week. The so-called AI agent can autonomously perform computer tasks like

controlling your mouse movements and keyboard inputs to interact with your computer much in the same way you do with way less caffeine required. It can navigate apps and search the web to complete complex tasks. In a demo seen by reporters, the agent built websites from scratch, edited spreadsheets, even planned trips using multiple different applications. But it was also seen getting distracted,

taking a break from one task to begin browsing photos of Yellowstone National Park. Yes, even our AI agents have ADHD these days. Neil, this is the first big step towards AI models that can utilize the same tools as humans to accomplish the same tasks humans can and potentially supercharge productivity or render us obsolete. Yeah, well, Chapa,

were so 2022, AI agents are so 2024 and trying to conceptualize what the difference between a chatbot like ChatGPT is and an agent, AI agent like this anthropic model is. I was thinking about maybe your coworker. This is the chatbot, your coworker who literally can't get anything done without asking you a question for every single task. They finish one thing that you ask them to do. Then they come back to you like, what

What should I do next? And then you have to tell them. And there's this constant tug of war. And then this AI agent, all you have to do, they're very entrepreneurial. They're very autonomous. All you have to do is say, go do this particular task for me. And they won't ask you another single question until it's done. Of course, it may come back looking like something completely different than what you wanted. But at least they'll do it on your own. And there you get the promise and the peril of success.

AI agents. But when I was looking into this, I was like, oh my God, this seems amazing. Like I spent 45 minutes trying to book a flight yesterday and it was so annoying. And, you know, we also spend time copy pasting and doing other rote tasks that

you know, realize that you're doing on your computer and having an AI do that for you sounds kind of nice. Yeah, it took a little bit for people to adjust to the fact that these chatbots seem to have a mind of their own. Now they're asking us to take this next step to trusting AI to take over our computers too. The company is...

trying to strike the right balance here though as you said Mike Krieger who's a chief product officer at Anthropic said what would you do if you got rid of a bunch of hours of copy and pasting or whatever you end up doing I'd go and play more guitar so what they're trying to say is like this will take off those burdensome but not

wrote tasks like maybe booking a flight, like maybe copying a lot of data into a spreadsheet and doing that for you so you can focus on other things. He said, go and play more guitar, do more things that make humans humans. But it is pretty surreal to see this thing in action. I mean, these demos were crazy. One instance, Claude was asked to build a website to promote itself. So the model actually inputted a text prompt into its

own model. It opened up Claude AI, put the necessary prompt into it to get the necessary code, literally opened itself to write code to promote itself. And then when it had a problem too, the user asked it to fix a problem. You could see it going back into its code, identifying the snippet that was the issue. So it really was interacting with the computer much in the same way you do just

completely on its own. Like you said, got to have some safety precautions here because do you really want to give an AI agent access to your credit card and say, hey, go book me this flight to London? And then it comes back with a flight that's $4,000. So there's have to be some safeguards here. And these are closed demos at this point, but pretty wild to imagine the scope of what this could mean for how you interact with your computer going forward. Up next, you already know what time it is. Neil's numbers right after this.

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Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of strong leaders in your career. What traits do you think are the most important? In my experience, a few things do stand out, like leading by example, taking risks, and being passionate. And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven.

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Welcome to Neal's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give you the confidence you need to finally try out for Jeopardy. For my first number, the three hottest letters in the English language are M-B-A. Applications to MBA business school programs jumped 12% this year, reversing two years of declines, according to the Wall Street Journal. Who are these overachievers?

In a change from the recent past, American students are responsible for much of the growth instead of international applicants, also driving the rise full-time in-person degrees. Applications for these programs rose 32% to the highest level in a decade, showing that MBA-ers are desperate for face time with their future startup co-founders.

Whenever applications for grad programs are up, it is historically a sign that the job market is down. And that's the case here as well. Yes, the overall jobs picture is great. But for recent college grads in white collar positions, it's not as great. And they're having problems finding work. So they're taking the opportunity to level up their skills. This is indicative of just a little bit of a weird job market we are in because you're right. Unemployment remains unresolved.

incredibly low, but most of those positions that have been filled are in the retail and dining sectors, healthcare and government. They have fueled much of the labor market strength and growth over the past few years. What has not been happening is a lot of 20-somethings, post-college grads, college-educated people are finding it tough to find a job because less job hopping is happening. Some of the people who are more established in their careers aren't

moving on from positions like they used to. They are feeling maybe some apprehension around moving around. So all of those combined to lead to this surge in MBAs because what do you do when you're not quite sure what to do with your future? You maybe apply to grad school. It does sound fun too. I mean, you mentioned the rise in the in-person applications because people want to go to school with each other. MBA is fun. Like, let's be realistic. You're going back to school with a bunch of smart and fun people. Yeah, and I think the number one skill you learn is how to be

book big Airbnbs in exotic locations because whenever I talk to NBA people, I'm like, so is this thing where you all go and rent a huge Airbnb places for three weeks real? And they're like, yeah, that's kind of a big part of business school, which does sound fun. But

really the brand names here are doing the best applications to Columbia Business School. We're up 27 percent. Harvard Business School, 21 percent. University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, 22 percent. Kellogg at Northwestern, 23 percent. So it seems like people are discovering those brand name MBA schools.

This next number, I want you to confirm the next time you're on a busy street. Check to see how many cars are painted with an actual color, like red, green, yellow, or blue, because those numbers are dwindling rapidly, leaving our roadways looking like something out of Casablanca. Today, less than 20% of vehicles listed in a database of 1.7 million cars are a color other than black, white, silver, or gray, Business Insider reported, which is a relatively new phenomenon.

As recently as 2005, more than half of all automobiles on the road were painted a color other than black, white, silver, or gray. So what explains this shift? Yvonne Drury, the director of insights at Edmunds, told BI that offering fewer trim and paint options is a way for automakers to cut costs, which they began to do in the 2000s as margins got tighter. And then when the financial crisis came in 2008, walloping,

GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy. The graying out of cars only accelerated. Toby, is this a trend that you've noticed? Do you miss colorful cars? So I actually definitely noted this. I remember sitting with my parents one time in a Panera Bread back when I was kind of in middle school, high school, and I bet

that we'd see more red cars in the parking lot than gray cars, white cars, black cars. And I lost horribly. And it did make me a little sad because I do... Red was my favorite color at the time. But I did like this Business Insider article too because they showed... Talked about some events that led to this blanding out, some inflection points. One of them, they...

said was when Apple moved from its colorful area, remember those colorful backed Mac computers, to its more industrial chic area where all of a sudden sleek minimalism, sleek industrialism, black, white, gray was everywhere among their product lines. So they said that was one inflection point. And then another one more recently is

Tesla debuted its Model S car. And originally, they had a couple of other colors. But then soon after, they made it that you could buy only two other colors outside gray, black, and white, which was red and blue. So Tesla coming to the market also brought more of that industrialism forward, which probably led to this graying out as well. So very interesting to track other industrial design decisions that led to this big graying of our car market. My final number is, here we go.

2 to the 136,279,841st power minus 1, which is the largest known prime number in existence. It was discovered earlier this week by amateur researcher and former NVIDIA employee Luke Durant.

who took home a $3,000 prize as a reward for doing something actually productive with his free time. And I can't stress it enough. This number is so big. At more than 41 million decimal digits, the newest biggest prime number beats the previous title holder discovered in 2018 by over 16 million digits. And of course, since it's a prime number, it's only divisible by itself individually.

and one, theoretically, there are an infinite amount of prime numbers, but as they get this big, they get harder to find and confirm. Toby, where does this rank on the scale of impressive human achievements? I think it ranks very highly on the terms of...

human achievements. So Luke Durant is actually this former employee of NVIDIA. So what he did was leverage NVIDIA's GPUs to search for this next prime number, this Goliath number. I mean, 41 million decimal digits. You do get a little bit of a cash prize too if you find one of these numbers, $3,000. But

What I'm looking forward to is the first 100 million digit prime number will be rewarded $150,000. And the first billion digit prime will be awarded $250,000. So I don't know, Neil. Maybe we start hunting for these prime numbers because that's a significant cash prize right there.

Finally, let's run down some more headlines from yesterday's news in our segment we are calling More Headlines from Yesterday's News. First up, check your Venmos, everyone, because payments from Juul's $300 million class action settlement are finally getting sent out and people are making a lot more money than they expected. A quick scroll through social media will find plenty of people flaunting their hauls,

showing screenshots ranging from $4,600 all the way up to nine grand. But the sentiment was paid out to consumers who were misled about the safety and addictiveness of Juul's vaping products. So it's not exactly something you want to brag about too much. No, but who knew your vaping habit could be

So lucrative and just as big of a trend of people posting their receipts of getting $7,000, $8,000 from this jewel settlement was the same amount of people who said, oh, I didn't even apply for this settlement. I could have, and now I'm missing out on this big trend.

But yes, this is funny because usually settlements you get $20, $25 because there's so many claimants. But at this point, people are getting thousands of dollars and they are posting about it and letting everyone else know, which is what you should do when you get a couple thousand dollars from Juul that you weren't expecting.

Tesla's stock popped 10% after surprising investors with strong financial results last quarter as CEO Elon Musk hopes to reignite enthusiasm over a stagnant electric vehicle company. Among the highlights, the futuristic-looking pickup Cybertruck achieved profitability for the first time, and Tesla made gobs of money, $739 million, selling regulatory emissions credits to other automakers. Tesla's stock has been

Actually, it's the second best quarter for that business line ever. Toby, as the presidential campaign has heated up, it was easy to forget that Elon Musk is in charge of Tesla. This was a much needed confidence boost for the company. I mean, the much maligned Cybertruck, no matter what your thoughts are on it,

did pretty well. It became the third best-selling fully electric vehicle in the U.S., behind only the Model 3 and the Model Y, which are both from Tesla. It also accounts for nearly half of the entire national market for electric pickup trucks. So even though you may think it looks really weird, it looks like something from a Blade Runner, it is selling more so than maybe you expected.

Goldfish Crackers wants you to know that they aren't just for kids anymore, so they are rebranding to Chilean Sea Bass, according to its parent company, Campbell's. Now, it's only for a limited time. The rebranded bags will be available online for just one week. But even so, Neil, I'm not so sure I want to go elbows deep in a bag of Patagonian Toothfish, which...

by the way, was the original name of the Chilean sea bass before it was rebranded in 1977 by a Los Angeles seafood wholesaler who wanted to appeal to the U.S. market. Which is why I'm surprised Chilean sea bass doesn't have a trademark on it, to be honest. Well, yeah, this is a very interesting ploy by Goldfisher. I'm not, I don't really find it that funny or cool at all, but...

But my opinions aside, it does want to go back to its roots. In 1962, Goldfish launched as a bar snack for adults, and then it became more of a kid's thing in the 90s, and I guess it wants to project that it can be eaten by adults too, which I didn't even—of course it can be eaten by adults. I love Goldfish. Everyone eats Goldfish at all ages. But more interestingly, I'm zeroing on this new production line for Goldfish. They just added a new assembly line in.

innovation that can produce 5 million goldfish every hour. That's a lot of goldfish. And now they're going to be producing 5 million Chilean sea bass every hour. Yesterday, baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani's historic 50th home run ball of this MLB season was auctioned for $4.4 million, becoming the most expensive sports ball ever sold and

The record was broken not just because Otani hit 50 homers. Others have done that before. It was because this home run, swatted last month in Miami, made Otani the first player in league history to record 50 home runs and 50 steals in a season, an unprecedented feat of power and strength. And then the crazy part about this 50-50 ball is that there's a lawsuit going on over who first possessed it after it landed in the stands. One guy, Christian Zakic,

walked out of the stadium with the ball, so he claimed possession. But then there was this 18-year-old who filed a lawsuit saying he had it before it was taken from him by Zach Eck. A third guy also tossed his hat in the ring saying he had possession first. But despite this ongoing litigation, all parties did agree to let this auction proceed.

Finally, if you've ever wondered what Frankie Muniz was up to, well, boy, do I have an update for you. The former Malcolm in the Middle star is continuing his NASCAR career in 2025 with a full-time spot in the Truck Driving Series. Now, I know what you are thinking. Truck Series? Former agent Cody Banks couldn't make it to the highest level of stock car racing in

in the NASCAR Cup Series, not just the Truck Series for now, for the former actor turned race car driver. Yeah, I mean, it appears he's so passionate about this. I still think it's extremely impressive because he must be good to get a full-time spot in an interview with people. He said, I want people to know that I've literally dedicated my life to this. Like, I love it. When I'm not in the race car, I'm thinking about being in the race car. So even when he was acting,

He was acting in all those shows. He was thinking about being in the race car, but he's not even my favorite celebrity race car driver. That would actually be Keanu Reeves, who made his professional auto racing debut earlier this month at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He spun out.

All right. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And once again, we are putting on our Uncle Sam hat telling you to share Morning Brew Daily with your network. As for who in this network you should send a link to today, Toby has an idea. I want you to share today's episode with someone you want to go on a run with or get the blood pumping. Nothing like a little highball

habit stacking to start the day off right. So nothing better than a little exercise and a little pod time with your friends. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and Makeup has taken the leave of absence to get their MBA. Harvard Business School, look at you. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.