Reuters World News - Political extremism, Macron, Wendy’s surge pricing and Google AI

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Political extremism is US voters’ top worry according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Google is working to fix its Gemini AI tool after photo diversity scandal. French President Emmanuel Macron has sparked confusion and irritation among some allies after discussing the idea of Western troops in Ukraine. Wendy’s trial of surge pricing is unnerving the fast food industry. Plus, Gaza protest vote in Michigan and Apple pulls plug on electric cars. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, political extremism emerges as the top concern for US voters the head of the election. The French president shakes up NATO allies, but it may be more than a diplomatic foepar. Google's Gemini causes a blip in its stock. And Wendy's plan to introduce surge pricing has fast food owners nervous. It's Wednesday, February 28th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front line. in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London,

and I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. Political extremism is now the greatest worry for US voters ahead of the election. That's according to a new Reuters Ipsos poll, with one in five voters ranking threats to democracy and extremism is the biggest problem facing the US. US politics editor Scott Malone is in D.C. and has been pouring over the numbers.

So, Scott, how do the issues break down between the two parties? We see the greatest concern about this issue of political extremism and threats to democracy. Among Democratic voters, 44% of them said that was their top concern. That's far in a way Democrats' top issue. It eclipses everything else. Independent voters, about 29%. Aside of that is their top concern. That's ahead of immigration, which comes in, number two, 22%.

and the economy, 14%. And that's much more pronounced concern than you find among Republicans. Republicans, just 13% of Republicans cited this is their top concern. Republicans, top concern, remained what it was last month, immigration, which 38% of them said was their main worry. Do the findings offer an advantage to one candidate over the other? It is telling that this is important to independence. Independence is going to be critical, very important for both Biden and Trump.

And when we asked respondents, you know, which of the two candidates, Biden or Trump, they thought had the better plan for handling extremism and threats to democracy, they gave Biden the edge narrowly. 34% likes Biden for that. 31% said Trump, but it looks like this is an area that breaks to Biden's advantage. You can read more about the latest polling and dig further into the numbers at loiters.com. Joe Biden easily won the Democratic primary in Michigan, but a protest vote over his support for Israel. Israel far exceeded expectations. Arab-American voters and progressives protesting Israel's war in Gaza marked their ballots with the word uncommitted. Out of nearly half the votes counted,

more than 58,000 had that marking, surpassing a target of 10,000 set by protest organizers. Gary Walker, a Detroit pizza delivery worker, was one of those voters. I don't think the Democrats take us seriously, and they're going to have to start if they plan to win in November. Donald Trump easily won the Republican primary in the primary in the battleground state, continuing his undefeated primary streak.

The funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny will be held on Friday in Moscow. His spokesperson posted the details of the ceremony on X and told people to get there early. Apple has unplugged its electric car project. Project Titan, as the car effort was known internally, had been 10 years in the making. Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried are seeking a lenient prison sentence for the FDX founder. They argue he should serve between five and a quarter and six and a half years, far less than the maximum sentence of 110 years for his fraud conviction. The former billionaire will be sentenced on March 28th.

The godson and a childhood friend of Jam Master Jay have been found guilty of his murder. The run DMC pioneer was fatally shot in 2000. in one of the most infamous killings in rap history. Headaches for Google over its AI chatbot Gemini led to a $90 billion sell-off on Monday. The stock price were covering some of its losses on markets by close yesterday. Tech reporter Jeffrey Daston is in San Francisco.

Jeffrey, what do we know? Google's AI chatbot Gemini was accused of being woke because in its focus on diversity in images, it produced incorrect things. So for it's a picture of Nazis where some were varying ethnic identities, which was not the case in World War II. Or it equivocated when it was asked reportedly, is Elon Musk or Hitler or is Hamas or Israel worse and all these sorts of things? And so as a consequence, Google stock has fallen because people are saying, is this a reliable AI

provider? Is this an AI provider that's going to alienate large swaths of the world because it has a political bias? And Google is now managing this crisis. How serious is this issue? Isn't this an easy fix? At the core, Google's reputation is at stake. It's not that people aren't going to use Google search anymore, but it is a risk that people will not view it as the best AI provider. And its stock and its future potential is really wound up right now in AI. That's all the company talks about practically on its earnings, hold, and so forth. So if it can't produce reliable, accurate information with its AI, if it's seen as a lagger to open AI and others, then it's a problem. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has told employees the company is working to fix Gemini. French President Emmanuel Macron has created a diplomatic brouhaha moment by floating the idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine.

The White House quickly responding in the negative, along with Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic. The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, warning... ...that if it did happen, it would mean direct conflict between Russia and NATO. Macron is well known as a diplomatic disruptor. So I called up European Affairs Editor Andrew Gray to understand what may lie beneath the president's comments. Andrew, what was he thinking? Well, it's of course hard to know of what's going to.

on inside the mind of a president, but one of the things that he did mention was the idea of strategic ambiguity, and that's a phrase that's sometimes used with nuclear weapons, and it's the idea of leaving unclear what your true intentions are, partly to keep your adversary off balance. So it's possible that one thing Macron was doing here was just planting some doubt in Vladimir Putin's mind, or trying to do that, about how far the West is willing to go to help Ukraine. Up until now, there's been a general general. view that this is a taboo, a red line that would not be crossed, sending Western troops to Ukraine. And so he was opening up at least the possibility that that might not be a red line after all.

Is the fact that the US had not passed a military aid bill for Ukraine motivating Macron here? Whether the specific proposal from Macron was influenced by what's going on in the US, I'm not sure. But one thing that definitely is a result of what's happening in the US is the fact that Macron said he would, now be in favor of European allies, going on a kind of global shopping spree, going around the world to try and find artillery ammunition for Ukraine. That's something he, France, has been hesitant about in the past, but the fact that the US Congress has not passed this big military aid bill for Ukraine means there's a big shortage of artillery ammunition. So the hunt is on along the Europeans to try and find some ammunition that will fill that gap.

So that was another significant announcement from Macron, and that is definitely related to what's going on in the US. Wendy's plan to experiment with surge pricing a la Uber has provoked a major response on social media. It's also been the talk of the town at a conference for restaurant executives near Dallas, Texas. Wayland Cunningham covers fast food and is at the conference. Wayland, Wendy's plan has been causing some noise there. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's been brought up a few times when I talk to some of the attendees here who are, they're executives from, you know, a lot of them have been regional chains. It's the talk of the town right now. It's dynamic pricing is a very big buzzword, but one that receives some hesitation and even awareness if you actually talk to a lot of operators about it. And I was actually talking to a pricing analyst earlier who has been helping these chains priced for 25 years.

He was a bit nervous about it. What are the concerns? Well, customers right now are already skittish just because the price increase we've seen in fast food. Prices at McDonald's, Starbucks, at everywhere you go, have gone up pretty quickly, and consumers have really noticed that. There's already been some decline in the foot traffic that goes to these places. With that, a lot of these restaurant executives and operators don't want to scare customers any more so. And dynamic pricing is pretty scary for a lot of consumers, I think. And by the way, the price increases or decrease we're talking about,

will probably be measured in the order of cents rather than dollars. Now, again, Wendy's has not come out and said that, but if we look at other industries and dynamic pricing elsewhere, that's more of the scale we're going to be talking about here. So not a $20 burger? No, no. That is your Wednesday. As I'm sure you know by now, we will be back tomorrow

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