🌎 The cost of a walkout

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Here’s what you need to know

General Motors put a price tag on the first two weeks of its auto workers’ strike. The United Auto Workers’ walkout has already cost it $200 million, and it’s taking out a $6 billion line of credit.

Google’s new smartphones have a lot more AI. The senior vice president of devices and services likened holding the latest Pixel phones to having “AI in your hand.” Meanwhile, Apple fixed a problem that made iPhone 15s too hot for hands.

SoftBank’s CEO had some strong words about AI and urged Japanese firms to adopt it. “Artificial general intelligence will surpass the total intelligence of humankind by 10 times in 10 years,” Masayoshi Son said at a conference in Tokyo yesterday.

Rishi Sunak wants to make it so that future generations never light a cigarette again. The UK prime minister’s proposal to raise the legal smoking age one year, every year, would eventually apply to the whole population.

One big number: 75,000

Number of workers who walked off the job yesterday at Kaiser Permanente, one of the biggest healthcare providers in the US

The protest is now the largest healthcare worker strike in US history. Nurses and medical staff are demanding higher pay and solutions to unsustainable staffing levels that were plaguing the industry long before the pandemic supercharged the problem. Quartz’s Grete Suarez has more.

The world’s bidding war for nurses is hurting us all

US health systems have been hiring nurses from poor countries to plug some of the chronic vacancies that are leading workers, like those at Kaiser, to protest. The setup has been marketed as a solution for both: Shortages are filled, and foreign nurses get better pay and career advancement.

But what many migrant healthcare workers are finding once they arrive in the US is just another broken system.

With help from Type Investigations and the Pulitzer Center, we spent a year following these nurses from India, Nigeria, and the Philippines to the US, and documented their experiences in our Merchants of Care series. Read the reporting in its entirety:

🇺🇲 A hidden system of exploitation underpins US hospitals’ employment of foreign nurses

🇮🇳 How Indian brokers take the shine off the dreams of migrant nurses

🇳🇬 An exodus of nurses has caused a “medical brain drain” in Nigeria. Are rich countries to blame?

🇵🇭 Rich countries are importing a solution to their nursing shortages—and poor countries are paying the price

Zoom thinks AI will make it popular again

Microsoft Teams may command the lion’s share of the communication and collaborative software market (42.6%), but that’s not stopping Zoom from looking for ways to chip away at that and grow its own meager share (6.8%).

The path there, at least in Zoom’s eyes, is through AI tools. In its arsenal, Zoom has:

📃 A new Google Docs-like word processor

🔉 Technology that can read nonverbal cues that someone wants to talk

🤖 A conversation bot for users

🗒️ The ability to make a meeting summary in real time

But just because Zoom wants to become as relevant as Teams doesn’t mean it’s going to.

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Surprising discoveries

This year’s MacArthur fellows include a hula master and the US poet laureate. Many recipients were shocked to learn they were awarded the $800,000 “genius grants.”

Someone put a compilation together of songs that stop on the word “stop.” Stop what you’re doing right now and listen.

Mammals are much more fluorescent than we previously thought. When held up to UV light, 86% of species in a recent study glowed.

Meta’s new AI stickers are already causing a commotion. Winnie-the-Pooh holding a rifle is just one of the designs it generated.

Back in the late 19th century, guano was the world’s most used fertilizer, and Peru was its biggest supplier. That all changed after the 1877-1878 El Niño, a naturally occurring warming in the Pacific Ocean that has never been, and never should be, a force to overlook. Read why in the latest Quartz Obsession, and sign up here to get the email in your inbox each week.

Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, glowing cats, and El Niño predictions to [email protected]. Reader support makes Quartz available to all—become a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.