Getting Sirius About Cancellations

Plus: Pilots use Southwest as a launchpad for other jobs. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

December 21, 2023

SPONSORED BY VINOVEST

Good morning. Everybody's better off with this bird's wings clipped.  Bird, the alternative transportation company that provides electric scooters for short-term rental in more than 350 cities — plus near-death experiences free of charge for anyone in close proximity — has filed for bankruptcy. The company said its decision to go Chapter 11 was due to inflation and "significant litigation expense" in regard to more than 100 lawsuits, mostly personal injury claims. Plus, plenty of cities just don't want the pesky scooters around anymore. Cities like Las Vegas and New Orleans have bans on rideshare scooter services like Bird, and in September, Paris became the first European capital to just say "non" and outlaw e-scooters entirely. It's just a matter of time before startups switch to offering e-bikes, which go faster and weigh more than e-scooters.

MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT New York AG Sues SiriusXM for its Annoying Cancellation Process A great man of the '90s once said he wanted to quit both the gym and the bank. He accomplished neither. That's how we feel about our countless media subscriptions. New York Attorney General Letitia James wants to make it easier to quit. James sued SiriusXM Radio on Wednesday for "trapping consumers in subscriptions and maintaining deliberately long and burdensome cancellation processes." It's the latest case of governments calling out businesses that prey on consumers' lack of time, know-how, and patience.  Click to Subscribe, Call to Cancel Film and television streaming services were partly designed to replace costly cable packages, but all you've done is swap in a streaming bundle with subscriptions to Max, Netflix, Hulu, and Paramount+.  A Forbes survey earlier this year found that 86% of Americans pay for more than one streaming service, spending roughly $40 each month. But nearly half of those paying customers admit to barely using the services, if at all. Plus, plenty of consumers have additional software, news, and fitness subscriptions billed monthly even if they, too, go mostly unused.  Many of us have been there: It's simple to sign up for a subscription, but discontinuing one can be migraine-inducing. You might face outrageous termination fees or you're required to have a lengthy phone call with a representative trying to get you to reconsider with special offers or complicated red tape: The lawsuit from James' office alleges that SiriusXM committed fraud for failing to provide customers with a cancellation mechanism that is simple, timely, and easy to use. SiriusXM trains its agents to not take "no" for an answer when customers try to cancel, according to James' office. In one case, a subscriber was kept on the phone with a rep for 40 minutes despite the customer's repeated requests to end their subscription. Once the call had ended, Sirius continued to bill the person and the company said it hadn't received any cancellation request. One-Click: To counter such hardball tactics, the Federal Trade Commission is proposing a click-to-cancel provision, which would require businesses to make canceling a recurring payment as easy as signing up for one. It sounds great for consumers, but it has unsurprisingly received pushback from publishers, advertisers, and video game companies. In its comments to the proposal, the Association of National Advertisers said the provision risks accidental cancellations of essential deliveries of food, water, and medical products. We know we're just newsletter writers, but how about adding an "Are You Sure?" prompt?  Written by Griffin Kelly

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INDUSTRIALS Southwest Is Attracting Pilots, But Not For Long Photo by Sven Piper via Unsplash Are pilots using Southwest Airlines to, you know, land a new job? Southwest executives told Bloomberg that they've seen an increase in pilots who apply to the airline, stay around a year, then leverage that experience to get a job at a bigger carrier that pays better.  Jump Jet Jobs In most industries, job-hopping is a pretty well-worn path, but for pilots the usual route to a major carrier is via smaller, regional airlines. Major carriers like Delta and United have relationships with regional airlines, so they have a steady pipeline of pilots for future hires. However, if that pipeline is too slow and steady it can create a career bottleneck for individual pilots, and Bloomberg noted that major carriers also poaching pilots from delivery airlines like FedEx with juicy six-figure bonuses has added to a sense of impatience.  Pilots deplaning for greener pastures is a more sensitive issue for airlines, too, as the air travel industry has been rife with labor shortages following the pandemic. Southwest, which reached a tentative deal on Wednesday with its pilots' union to improve pay, is clearly not used to being a career stepping stone: Southwest COO Andrew Watterson told Bloomberg that regional pilots are using the company as a "premeditated way station," and referred to the practice as "resume-washing." Another post-pandemic piece of workplace vocabulary (see: quiet-quitting, loud-quitting, etc.) to throw on the fire. CEO Bob Jordan told Bloomberg that the company was seeing higher-than-usual attrition. Watterson seems to be taking a fatalistic approach, saying it's "literally impossible" to stop pilots from doing it. Air Traffic Control Jam: While airlines reckon with fast-adapting pilots, airports will need to be creative when it comes to hiring air traffic controllers. An analysis by The Wall Street Journal of Federal Aviation Administration staffing data found that the vast majority of air traffic control towers are lacking in staff. Combine that with the fact that aircraft at major airlines are turning out to contain fake engine parts, and you're heading for a very turbulent 2024. Written by Isobel Asher Hamilton

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Top UK Court Rules AI Can't Be 'Inventors' Robots get no respect.  First, the Writers Guild of America pondered whether AI could be credited for writing an episode of "Blue Bloods." And on Wednesday, the UK's top court ruled that AI programs cannot be named as an inventor of patents. Fair or not, humans sneer at the work of non-humans.  The Wheels on DABUS The UK case originated well before college students could count on ChatGPT to scribble out countless essays. In 2018, British computer scientist Stephen Thaler sought patents on two different inventions: one for a type of flashing light and another for a particular shape of food packaging. Instead of listing himself as the inventor, he registered the patents under an AI machine he had developed and named DABUS. The UK Intellectual Property Office rejected DABUS's patent ownership on the simple premise that the law stipulates a human being be listed as the inventor. Thaler appealed the decision, only for the UK's Supreme Court to reaffirm that existing patent law clearly states that  "an inventor must be a "natural person." Other jurisdictions have made similar rulings about the sanctity of the human touch: Thaler, something of an AI activist, had already pulled this stunt before. In 2020, the EU's top patent court similarly rejected DABUS's authorship of the two patents, and earlier this year the US Supreme Court declined his appeal after the US Patent and Trademark Office also rejected DABUS's patent applications. However, all is not lost for DABUS. Given AI's rapidly developing nature, the legal issue "may need to be addressed again in the future," Yohan Liyanage, a partner at law firm Linklaters, told Bloomberg. Face Lift: This wasn't AI's only loss of the week. On Tuesday, the FTC banned bankrupt pharmacy/retailer Rite Aid for five years from using an AI facial-recognition surveillance system after it generated thousands of false-positive matches — thus incorrectly accusing innocent shoppers of wrongdoing and shoplifting. It's good to know that, if we are indeed drifting toward a Minority Report-esque future, all the dystopian technology will have been invented by humans, not robots. Written by Brian Boyle

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