Good morning Quartz members,
Welcome to Sunday Reads. It’s been a heck of a week. Joe Biden withdrew and Kamala Harris is transforming the presidential race. Elon Musk says he never said he’d give Donald Trump $45 million a month (as Tesla’s profits fall). And America’s corporations are still recovering from CrowdStrike’s Blue Screen of Death last weekend. But it’s Sunday, so sit back and enjoy some of our best articles of the week.
5 things we especially liked on Quartz
💰 Big Retail wants you to get off your laptop and into the store. Like a dating app, America’s retailers want you to make an IRL connection — to their stores. Once you’re walking down the aisles, you’re more likely buy things you hadn’t intended to purchase. In fact, in-person traffic is still the most profitable point of sale. But increasing foot traffic means that retailers have to create an in-store shopping experience that’s better than sitting on a couch and waiting for deliveries. Francisco Velasquez has the scoop.
💳 With interest rates still at a 23-year high, banks are bracing for consumers to stop paying off their credit cards. Credit card issuance and, subsequently, delinquency rates are both on the rise as people’s pandemic-era savings run out and they rely more and more on credit. As Quartz’s Rocio Fabbro reports, here’s what to look out for as provisions for credit losses rose at JPMorgan, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America last quarter.
👮 The Feds are taking on another expense-inducing corporate invasion of personal privacy. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating the process known as surveillance pricing, a term to describe the practice of charging consumers different prices for the same goods or services by using personal data to figure out how much a consumer is willing to pay. Companies employing it might use algorithms, personal information, and AI to set a price for their goods based on everything from where you live to your age to your browsing or credit history. Ben Kesslen explains.
🧔 Getting His & Hers Semaglutide. Hims & Hers, the mail-order drugstore, has brought a former Novo Nordisk executive onto its board as it gears up for a profitable future selling compounded versions of the weight-loss drug semaglutide, for a fifth the price of Wegovy and Ozempic. Quartz’s Bruce Gil tells the story.
🏅 Can AI make the Olympics smarter? Google is teaming up with NBC to showcase the abilities of its AI search engine. No more interns quickly shoving sheets of paper into the hands of an anchor when they suddenly need to know how many gold medals Michael Phelps took home from Beijing (eight — the most of any single athlete ever). And on social media, five Olympians and Paralympians will be shown exploring Paris using Google’s interactive AI tools.
1 sneak peek
🛟 Will AI bring us salvation or damnation? Laura Bratton looks at four ways AI might save the world from destruction or just leave us behind and destroy life on Earth as we know it.
It could fix climate change, help alleviate poverty, boost creativity, and solve some of the biggest challenges in healthcare, from devising new drugs and treatments to making diagnoses faster and more accurate. But handle it the wrong way, and we’ll end up in a world bedeviled by information and AI-run wars. Visit qz.com on Monday morning for a look at the future of everything.
1 smart chart
Last week’s CrowdStrike computer update glitch was costly. Just how costly? Here’s a look at the estimate offered by cyber insurance firm Parametrix (it’s much more than a $10 Uber Eats gift card).
What to watch for this week
Here’s what our newsroom will be keeping an eye on:
- Monday: Market reaction after Trump’s speech at the Bitcoin conference; McDonald’s earnings before the bell; Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is having a fireside chat with Mark Zuckerberg.
- Tuesday: Earnings are in for Airbus and JetBlue, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks and Oreo maker Mondelez, as well as Microsoft, Pfizer, and PayPal. Plus the government releases data on housing vacancies and homeownership, and the latest U.S. Consumer Confidence report.
- Wednesday: Earnings time for Mastercard, Boeing, and Meta.
- Thursday: Toyota, Apple, Amazon, and Coinbase report their earnings.
- Friday: Berkshire Hathaway, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron all share their tales of profit and loss.
Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with comments, questions, feedback, joy, or tips on how to prevent AI from gobbling up Planet Earth. Sunday Reads was brought to you by Peter S. Green, Morgan Haefner, and Audrey McNamara.