Business

William Shatner, Monica Lewinsky and other prolific Twitter commentators — some household names, others little-known journalists — could soon be losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identity on the social media platform. They could get the marks back by paying up to $11 a month. But some longtime users, including Star Trek legend Shatner, have balked at buying the premium service championed by Twitter’s billionaire owner and chief executive Elon Musk. After months of delay, Musk is gleefully promising that Saturday is the deadline for celebrities, journalists and others who’d been verified for free to pony up or lose their legacy status. That's raised concerns about how easy it could be to impersonate high-profile users and spread misinformation in their names.

Across the United States, universities and school districts are scrambling to get a handle on new chatbots that can generate humanlike texts and images. Other teachers are leveraging the innovations to spur more critical classroom thinking.

For more than three months, Google executives have watched as projects at Microsoft and a San Francisco startup called OpenAI have stoked the public’s imagination with the potential for artificial intelligence.

The federal government is extending $500 million this year to promote innovation in 20 designated "Tech Hubs" across the country, and although competition probably won't rise to the level of an Amazon HQ2, Colorado is pushing hard to make sure it lands one of those hubs.

Based on quicker-than-expected moves to electric vehicles, a leading provider of data and analytics to the energy industry predicts that electric cars and light-duty trucks will make up 65% of new sales by 2030 and 85% by 2035.

"We're prepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court."