Ford Motor Co. has stepped up technology in its popular F-150 pickup to combat the ever-evolving techniques car thieves have at their disposal.It is the latest cat-and-mouse move that the automaker hopes will help customers avoid the costly and frustrating process that occurs when vehicles are swiped and includes a feature that won’t allow an engine to start even if a key fob is in the pickup.Motor vehicle thefts recently have been on the decline in the U.S. after several years of increases. Still, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that more than 850,000 vehicles were stolen in the U.S. in 2024, pegging losses at $8 billion.But thefts dropped 23% during the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, according to an analysis by the National Insurance Crime Bureau.Ford’s F-150 was in the top 10 of most stolen models.“F-150s have been the bestselling vehicle for decades, so there are a lot of them on the road,” said Christian Moran, Ford Secure general manager. “Thieves do like to go after pickup trucks. They also like to go after the contents that are often in pickup trucks. Oftentimes, there are people who have thousands of dollars worth of tools and products in the back that are valuable above and beyond what the vehicle is worth.”Ford’s Stolen Vehicle Services, which was launched with the 2024 F-150 model year, added a “Start Inhibit” feature that allows owners to disable an F-150’s engine from a smartphone by using the FordPass app. This makes it impossible for a thief to start the pickup.That was expanded in the 2025 model year to include the F-250 Super Duty pickup. Ford plans to extend it to other vehicles in the 2026 model year.The security package comes with the purchase of a pickup and is included for one year once activated. The cost after the first year is $7.99 per month.
Technology matching wits with thieves
F-150 owners can receive alerts to their smartphones of potential thefts that include an unauthorized person entering their pickup, whether doors are ajar and if the vehicle is moved or towed.One of the strongest features of the security package is the coordination with police agencies, Moran said.It works this way. Once an owner realizes or is notified that their pickup has been stolen, the owner is encouraged to call police and file a report. The owner then contacts a Ford call center, which confirms with police that a theft report was completed. The call center coordinates efforts with police to use “Start Inhibit” to shut down the engine and to pinpoint where the pickup stopped.“Usually, within an hour is when we try to work as hard as we can to get those vehicles,” said Officer Ibrahim Kakish, a member of the Detroit police commercial auto theft section. “The sooner we get the vehicle, the better. The vehicle is more likely to be intact.”
Security measures up, thefts trending down
Auto theft is lucrative as some vehicles, especially high-end and luxury models, are targeted for resale. Other stolen vehicles are used to commit crimes like carjackings and smash-and-grab robberies at jewelry, liquor and other retail stores.“We used to say most of the people stealing cars were joyriders,” said Thomas Burke, a retired New York City police detective and a current director with the Chesapeake, Virginia-based International Association of Auto Theft Investigators.“There are very few joyriders, now,” Burke added. “It’s all professional. They steal them, change the (vehicle identification) numbers and sell them.”Thieves seek out easy targets like key fobs left in vehicles. They also break into a vehicle to reprogram its computer to accept another key, Burke said.But it appears security measures are working.“In New York in 1990, we had 196,000 cars stolen in one year,” Burke said. “This year, so far, a little over 10,000 have been stolen, and that’s out of more than 3.5 million cars registered.”Motor vehicle theft in Detroit decreased from 9,260 in 2023 to 8,408 last year, according to the city’s police department. So far this year, there have been 1,837 fewer thefts than in 2024.“We’re finding out ways that they’re stealing vehicles, and we work with companies to try to get that stopped,” Kakish said.
Corey Williams, Associated Press
In the past decade, AIs success has led to uncurbed enthusiasm and bold claimseven though users frequently experience errors that AI makes. An AI-powered digital assistant can misunderstand someones speech in embarrassing ways, a chatbot could hallucinate facts, or, as I experienced, an AI-based navigation tool might even guide drivers through a corn fieldall without registering the errors.
People tolerate these mistakes because the technology makes certain tasks more efficient. Increasingly, however, proponents are advocating the use of AIsometimes with limited human supervisionin fields where mistakes have high cost, such as health care. For example, a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2025 would allow AI systems to prescribe medications autonomously. Health researchers as well as lawmakers since then have debated whether such prescribing would be feasible or advisable.
How exactly such prescribing would work if this or similar legislation passes remains to be seen. But it raises the stakes for how many errors AI developers can allow their tools to make and what the consequences would be if those tools led to negative outcomeseven patient deaths.
As a researcher studying complex systems, I investigate how different components of a system interact to produce unpredictable outcomes. Part of my work focuses on exploring the limits of scienceand, more specifically, of AI.
Over the past 25 years, I have worked on projects including traffic light coordination, improving bureaucracies, and tax evasion detection. Even when these systems can be highly effective, they are never perfect.
For AI in particular, errors might be an inescapable consequence of how the systems work. My labs research suggests that particular properties of the data used to train AI models play a role. This is unlikely to change, regardless of how much time, effort, and funding researchers direct at improving AI models.
Nobodyand nothing, not even AIis perfect
As Alan Turing, considered the father of computer science, once said: If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent. This is because learning is an essential part of intelligence, and people usually learn from mistakes. I see this tug-of-war between intelligence and infallibility at play in my research.
In a study published in July 2025, my colleagues and I showed that perfectly organizing certain datasets into clear categories may be impossible. In other words, there may be a minimum amount of errors that a given dataset produces, simply because of the fact that elements of many categories overlap. For some datasetsthe core underpinning of many AI systemsAI will not perform better than chance.
For example, a model trained on a dataset of millions of dogs that logs only their age, weight, and height will probably distinguish Chihuahuas from Great Danes with perfect accuracy. But it may make mistakes in telling apart an Alaskan malamute and a Doberman pinscher, since different individuals of different species might fall within the same age, weight and height ranges.
This categorizing is called classifiability, and my students and I started studying it in 2021. Using data from more than half a million students who attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México between 2008 and 2020, we wanted to solve a seemingly simple problem. Could we use an AI algorithm to predict which students would finish their university degrees on timethat is, within three, four or five years of starting their studies, depending on the major?
We tested several popular algorithms that are used for classification in AI and also developed our own. No algorithm was perfect; the best oneseven one we developed specifically for this taskachieved an accuracy rate of about 80%, meaning that at least 1 in 5 students were misclassified. We realized that many students were identical in terms of grades, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and other featuresyet some would finish on time, and some would not. Under these circumstances, no algorithm would be able to make perfect predictions.
You might think that more data would improve predictability, but this usually comes with diminishing returns. This means that, for example, for each increase in accuracy of 1%, you might need 100 times the data. Thus, we would never have enough students to significantly improve our models performance.
Additionally, many unpredictable turns in the lives of students and their familiesunemployment, death, pregnancymight occur after their first year at university, likely affecting whether they finish on time. So even with an infinite number of students, our predictions would still give errors.
The limits of prediction
To put it more generally, what limits prediction is complexity. The word complexity comes from the Latin plexus, which means intertwined. The components that make up a complex system are intertwined, and its the interactions between them that determine what happens to them and how they behave.
Thus, studying elements of the system in isolation would probably yield misleading insights about themas well as about the system as a whole.
Take, for example, a car traveling in a city. Knowing the speed at which it drives, its theoretically possible to predict where it will end up at a particular time. But in real traffic, its speed will depend on interactions with other vehicles on the road. Since the details of these interactions emerge in the moment and cannot be known in advance, precisely predicting what happens to the car is possible only a few minutes into the future.
AI is already playing an enormous role in health care.
Not with my health
These same principles apply to prescribing medications. Different conditions and diseaes can have the same symptoms, and people with the same condition or disease may exhibit different symptoms. For example, fever can be caused by a respiratory illness or a digestive one. And a cold might cause a cough, but not always.
This means that health care datasets have significant overlaps that would prevent AI from being error-free.
Certainly, humans also make errors. But when AI misdiagnoses a patient, as it surely will, the situation falls into a legal limbo. Its not clear who or what would be responsible if a patient were hurt. Pharmaceutical companies? Software developers? Insurance agencies? Pharmacies?
In many contexts, neither humans nor machines are the best option for a given task. Centaurs, or hybrid intelligencethat is, a combination of humans and machinestend to be better than each on their own. A doctor could certainly use AI to decide potential drugs to use for different patients, depending on their medical history, physiological details, and genetic makeup. Researchers are already exploring this approach in precision medicine.
But common sense and the precautionary principlesuggest that it is too early for AI to prescribe drugs without human oversight. And the fact that mistakes may be baked into the technology could mean that where human health is at stake, human supervision will always be necessary.
Carlos Gershenson is a professor of innovation at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The U.S. Mint unveiled the designs for coins commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence next year. They depict the founding documents and the Revolutionary War, but so far, not President Donald Trump, despite a push among some of his allies to get his face on a coin.The Mint abandoned designs developed during Joe Biden’s presidency that highlighted women’s suffrage and civil rights advancements, favoring classical depictions of America over progress toward a more inclusive society.A series of celebrations are planned next year under the banner America 250, marking the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. All U.S. coins show the year they were minted, but those made next year will also display 1776.
Trump, at least for now, isn’t getting a coin
No design was released for a $1 coin, though U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, whose duties include oversight of the U.S. Mint, serving as a liaison with the Federal Reserve and overseeing Treasury’s Office of Consumer Policy, confirmed in October that one showcasing Trump was in the works. A draft design showed Trump’s profile on the “heads” side, known as the obverse, and on the reverse, a depiction of Trump raising his fist after his attempted assassination, The words “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” appear along the top.By law, presidents typically can’t appear on coins until two years after their death, but some advocates for a Trump coin think there may be a loophole in the law authorizing the treasury to mint special coins for the nation’s 250th birthday.Neither the Mint nor the Treasury Department responded when asked whether a Trump coin is still planned.
The new designs depict classical Americana
New designs will appear only on coins minted in 2026, with the current images returning the following year.The nickel, dime and five versions of the quarter will circulate, while a penny and half dollar will be sold as collectibles.Five versions of the quarter are planned depicting the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Gettysburg Address.The dime will show a depiction of Liberty, a symbolic woman facing down the tyranny of the British monarchy, and an eagle carrying arrows in its talons representing America’s fight for independence.The commemorative nickel is essentially the same as the most recent nickel redesign, in 2006, but it includes two dates on the head’s side instead of one, 1776 and 2026.
Two collectible coins are planned
A half dollar coin shows the face of the Statue of Liberty on one side. The other shows her passing her torch to what appears to be the hand of a child, symbolizing a handoff to the next generation.The penny is essentially the same as the one in circulation, which was discontinued earlier this year and will be produced only as a collectible with two dates.Prices for collectible coins were not released. The Mint sells a variety of noncirculating coins on its website, with a vast range of prices reflecting their rarity.In honor of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps founding, for example, a commemorative half dollar coin is available for $61, while a commemorative $5 gold coin goes for $1,262. Up to 750,000 copies of the former will be minted, but no more than 50,000 of the latter.
The abandoned designs
Congress authorized commemorative coins in 2021. During the Biden administration, the Mint worked with a citizens advisory committee to propose designs depicting the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, abolitionism, suffrage and civil rights.Those designs included depictions of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Ruby Bridges, who was escorted to school by the National Guard at age 6 years amid opposition to racial integration at public schools.Those designs represented “continued progress toward ‘a more perfect union,'” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, quoting a phrase from the preamble to the Constitution.“The American story didn’t stop at the pilgrims and founding fathers, and ignoring anything that has happened in this country in the last 162 years is just another attempt by President Trump to rewrite our history,” Cortez Masto said in a statement.
Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press
Multiple news reports this week said that President Trump is expected to reclassify marijuanas drug scheduling, which would lessen restrictions on its use and potentially allow companies that operate in the cannabis space to increase business.
After the news broke, the stock prices of several cannabis industry companies skyrocketed. Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
On Thursday, multiple outlets reported that the Trump administration is considering reclassifying marijuana from its current level as a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug.
The Washington Post was the first to report on the potential reclassification, citing six sources familiar with the matter.
As with most things Trump does, he is expected to issue a reclassification directive via an executive order.
While the Post notes that the rescheduling would not legalize marijuana on a federal level, it would loosen restrictions on its use and potentially be a boon to companies operating in the burgeoning cannabis space.
A White House official told Fast Company Friday that no final decision has been made on the reclassification.
Marijuana could go from Schedule I to a Schedule III drug
If the reclassification goes ahead, marijuana would be reduced from a Schedule I classification level to a Schedule III.
A Schedule I drug is any drug with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Drugs in this category include ecstasy, heroin, LSD, peyote, and, currently, marijuana, among others.
A Schedule III drug is a drug with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence, the agency notes.
Current Schedule III drugs include anabolic steroids, ketamine, testosterone, and Tylenol with codeine.
If the rescheduling of marijuana does go ahead, it will then be lumped in with products such as Tylenol with codeine as far as classification goes.
That would make marijuana less regulated than Schedule II drugs like Adderall, cocaine, Demerol, fentanyl, OxyContin, Ritalin, and Vicodin.
Cannabis stocks get high after reclassification reports
As CNBC notes, the reclassification of marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug would have economic advantages for cannabis companies, mainly in the form of different tax regulations.
It could also help spur investment in those companies as stigma further reduces around the use of cannabis products.
Today, in early-morning trading, investors in those companies are cheering the news. Numerous cannabis industry firms are seeing their stock prices soar as of the time of this writing, including:
Aurora Cannabis Inc. (Nasdaq: ACB): up 12%
Canopy Growth Corporation (Nasdaq: CGC): up 30%
cbdMD, Inc. (NYSE: YCBD): up 77%
Tilray Brands, Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY): up 28%
However, it’s worth mentioning that while cannabis stocks are flying high today, there is no guarantee from the administration yet that marijuana will be reclassified.
Leaving marijuana classified as a Schedule I drug could weigh heavily on cannabis companies stock prices in the months ahead.
And even with todays price jumps, cannabis companies have had a pretty horrible run over the past five years as far as their share prices are concerned.
Aurora Cannabis shares are currently down 94% over the past 60 months. Canopy Growth Corporations shares are down 99% during that same time. Meanwhile, Tilray Brands is down 85% and CbdMD is down 99% during the same period.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at blocking states from crafting their own regulations for artificial intelligence, saying the burgeoning industry is at risk of being stifled by a patchwork of onerous rules while in a battle with Chinese competitors for supremacy.Members of Congress from both parties, as well as civil liberties and consumer rights groups, have pushed for more regulations on AI, saying there is not enough oversight for the powerful technology.But Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that “there’s only going to be one winner” as nations race to dominate artificial intelligence, and China’s central government gives its companies a single place to go for government approvals.“We have the big investment coming, but if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you can forget it because it’s impossible to do,” Trump said.The executive order directs the Attorney General to create a new task force to challenge state laws, and directs the Commerce Department to draw up a list of problematic regulations.It also threatens to restrict funding from a broadband deployment program and other grant programs to states with AI laws.David Sacks, a venture capitalist with extensive AI investments who is leading Trump’s policies on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, said the Trump administration would only push back on “the most onerous examples of state regulation” but would not oppose “kid safety” measures.
What states have proposed
Four states Colorado, California, Utah and Texas have passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals.Those laws include limiting the collection of certain personal information and requiring more transparency from companies.The laws are in response to AI that already pervades everyday life. The technology helps make consequential decisions for Americans, including who gets a job interview, an apartment lease, a home loan and even certain medical care. But research has shown that it can make mistakes in those decisions, including by prioritizing a particular gender or race.States’ more ambitious AI regulation proposals require private companies to provide transparency and assess the possible risks of discrimination from their AI programs.Beyond those more sweeping rules, many states have regulated parts of AI: barring the use of deepfakes in elections and to create nonconsensual porn, for example, or putting rules in place around the government’s own use of AI.
Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press
Soccer fans have accused FIFA of a “monumental betrayal” after latest prices for World Cup tickets began to circulate on Thursday.The governing body allocates 8% of tickets to national associations for games involving their team to sell to the most loyal fans.And a list published by the German soccer federation revealed prices ranged from $180-$700 for varying group stage games. The lowest price for the final was $4,185 and the highest was $8,680.Those group-stage prices are very different from FIFA’s claims of $60 tickets being available, while the target from United States soccer officials when bidding for the tournament seven years ago was to offer hundreds of thousands of $21 seats across the opening phase of games.Fan organization Football Supporters Europe (FSE) described the current prices as “extortionate.”“This is a monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup, ignoring the contribution of supporters to the spectacle it is,” it said in a statement.The English Football Association shared pricing information with the England Supporters Travel Club (ESTC) on Thursday evening, which showed that if a fan bought a ticket for every game through to the final it would cost just over $7,000.FIFA said in September that tickets released through its website would initially range from $60 for group-stage matches to $6,730 for the final. But those prices are subject to change as it adopts dynamic pricing for the first time at the World Cup.FIFA tickets are available in four categories, with the best seats in Category 1.In the price list published by the German federation, there were only three categories.The lowest priced ticket was $180 for Germany’s opening group game against Curacao in Houston. The lowest price for the semifinal was $920 rising to $1,125.The FSE called on FIFA to immediately halt ticket sales via national associations “until a solution that respects the tradition, universality, and cultural significance of the World Cup is found.”The Associated Press approached FIFA for comment.
Latest phase
FIFA launched its third phase of widespread ticket sales Thursday, with fans now able to apply for specific matches for the first time through its “Random Selection Draw.”Following last week’s draw for the 2026 tournament, which will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, an updated schedule has been published.That means fans know when and where the likes of Lionel Messi and Argentina will play. Previous ticket ballots were blind as the qualification period had not even been completed and the draw was yet to take place.Now participating nations have been placed in groups, with their paths through the tournament determined. For instance, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo could go on to meet in the quarterfinals in Kansas City if both Argentina and Portugal top their respective groups.Not that fans are guaranteed to get tickets to the games they apply for.The draw opened Dec. 11 at 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT) and closes Jan. 13, 2026.FIFA says ticket applications can be made at any point during this window and the timing of entry will not impact the chances of success. Fans can apply via FIFA’s website for a maximum of four tickets per household per match and a maximum of 40 tickets throughout the tournament.Fans will need a FIFA ID to apply for tickets and can pick which matches and which pricing category they want to apply for.Successful applicants will be notified by email in February and charged automatically.
Prices
The last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994 prices ranged from $25 to $475. In Qatar in 2022 prices ranged from around $70 to $1,600 when ticket details were announced.Tickets for the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19 are already going for in excess of $11,000 on secondary resale sites.For this tournament FIFA has also set up its own resale platform where it charges a 15% fee based on the total resale price.FIFA said that closer to the tournament any remaining tickets will go on general sale on a first-come, first-served basis.It did not reveal a time frame for the release of those remaining tickets.
AP Sports Writer Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson
James Robson, AP Soccer Writer
Nobody wants to swipe anymore. Dating apps like Bumble and Tinder are scrambling to keep younger users engaged, and dealing with problems like bots on their platforms. But one brand is breaking the pattern and winning.
Hinges designed to be deleted tagline signals its strategy: focus on meaningful connection, not endless swiping. The app can feel slower and even harder to use, leading to fewer matches but ultimately more dates. Now, the big question is whether Bumble and Tinder can pull off a similar shift toward quality over quantity.
More than 18,000 Amtrak workers will receive a $900 bonus before the end of the year, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced on Thursday evening.Funding for the bonuses will come from Amtrak’s executive leadership team bonus packages, the statement said. The federal administration urged executive leadership “to forgo 50% of the bonus packages that would have been paid out under the misplaced priorities of the previous executive bonus structure.”Amtrak set all-time records for both ridership and revenue in the 2025 fiscal year, according to its annual report, with over $2.7 billion in ticket revenue from 34.5 million riders.The bonuses were applauded by some unions representing train workers.“End-of-year bonuses will now go to 18,000 front-line workers rather than being limited to the executive ranks. This long-overdue recognition of the employees who keep the railroad moving is a step in the right direction,” Mark Wallace, the president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen National union, said in a statement.The announcement comes amid ongoing controversy over the Trump administration’s decision to limit $10,000 bonuses to air traffic controllers and technicians who had perfect attendance during the government shutdown a measure that rewarded only 776 people, and left nearly 20,000 other workers without the payment.The disparity was blasted by air traffic controller unions at the time of the announcement in November.“We are concerned that thousands of air traffic controllers who consistently reported for duty during the shutdown, ensuring the safe transport of passengers and cargo across the nation, while working without pay and uncertain of when they would receive compensation, were excluded from this recognition,” the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union said in a statement.
Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press
This morning, OpenAI released the companys new GPT-5.2 model.
If youre a coder or someone who follows AI benchmarks for fun (hey, I wont judge), this model will excite you tremendously.
For everyone else, prepare to be underwhelmedor rather, prepare to wait another month or so for the real OpenAI new release to come out.
Keeping up with the Joneses
GPT-5.2 is fundamentally about making small tweaks and improvements to the already fairly new GPT-5.1 model.
Todays release improves OpenAIs performance on a variety of industry benchmarks. GPT-5.2 is faster and more efficient than its predecessor, and it does a better job solving scientific and technical problems.
In particular, its better at writing code and doing math, and performs better on so-called agentic tasks, where the model operates for a long time without human input.
OpenAI also says its better at solving real-world financial challenges. If it had existed when I did my ChatGPT investing experiment, maybe I really would have Lambo money by now!
Beyond that, theres nothing especially revolutionary in GPT-5.2.
So, why make a big fuss about releasing a whole new model before the holidays if it does fairly little thats truly new?
Because in the ongoing saga of the AI wars, OpenAI feels it needs to keep up with the Jonesesor in this case, specifically, to keep up with Google.
Industry watchers have noted that Googles Gemini 3 model began to threaten GPT-5.1s spot on the kind of performance leaderboards that AI companies pay close attention to.
This reportedly caused a code red alert from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Altman reportedly ordered his teams to stop working on Sora and other projects to focus all their efforts on improving ChatGPT and its underlying models as quickly as possible.
When you order a bunch of incredibly intelligent peoplesome of them being paid upwards of $1 million a yearto do something quickly, theyre likely to oblige. Within a few weeks of the reported code red, the OpenAI team had todays incremental release ready to go.
GPT-5.2 will probably allow OpenAI to briefly leapfrog its archnemesis Googleand smaller competitor Anthropicin industry benchmarks, once again claiming its place as the undisputed leader in the AI wars.
The real main event
The code red reportedly isnt over yet, though. Earlier this month, analysts noted that OpenAI was testing a new reasoning model, codenamed “Garlic.”
GPT-5.2 might have been part of Garlic. But many in the industry expect an expanded Garlic model (probably under the GPT-5.5 moniker) to come out in Q1 of 2026, potentially as early as January.
Its likely to be a fully retrained reasoning model that brings efficiency improvements, but also genuinely impactful ones like a larger context window, new knowledge cutoff (OpenAIs most recent models have been stuck in 2024), better personality, and improved performance on image generation to rival Googles Nano Banana.
Its also broadly rumored to include a new Adult Mode that allows ChatGPT to engage in, ahem, risque conversations with users who are older than 18.
In the broader context of a potentially entirely revamped model with a January release date, todays GPT-5.2 model feels premature.
Releasing it makes OpenAI seem a bit jumpylike its nervous that someone will come along and unseat it, and is willing to go to great lengths to stop that from happening, even if everyday users barely care about coding and science benchmarks.
GPT-5.2 says less about OpenAIs technical prowess, then, and more about how Altman and his team are feeling. Google once seemed like it was floundering and slowly losing the AI racegoing the way of Polaroid or Xerox. Now, its back in the game, and seems poised and confident.
OpenAI isnt used to playing second fiddle. Faced with the prospect of real competition, the company is clearly getting nervous. Last year, OpenAI celebrated the holidays with a jolly and carefree Shipmas celebration. For Altman and his team, this holiday season is likely to be a lot less fun and carefree.
Lululemon might just be entering a newand improvedera.
On Thursday, December 11, the athleisure apparel company shared a mostly positive third-quarter earnings report and announced the departure of its CEO, Calvin McDonald.
McDonald will leave Lululemon Athletica on January 31, after seven years in the post. He previously served as CEO of Sephora Americas.
The last year has been one of underperformance for Lululemon. In October, the companys controversial founder and largest independent shareholder, Chip Wilson, took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal criticizing Lululemons direction.
While he didnt go as far as to name McDonald, Wilson wrote, The board insists on operator/finance CEOs who can speak Wall Street, rejecting the idea of a product-driven CEO. These types of finance focused CEOs dont know how to attract or motivate creative talent, and even worse, they think they understand great product when they dont.
Why is McDonald leaving?
In a post-earnings call, McDonald called his time as CEO a dream job but that the timing is right for a change. He will stay on as a senior adviser through the end of March.
Lululemon has named its CFO, Meghan Frank, and CCO, André Maestrini, as interim co-CEOs while the company searches for a permanent replacement.
In the announcement, McDonald claimed to have built a foundation for the future: I believe the outstanding product pipeline weve built, and action plan weve put into place, will yield positive results, and deliver value to shareholders in the months and years ahead.
How did Lululemon perform in Q3?
Quarter three was an improvement for Lululemon, with $2.57 billion in revenue, a 7% increase year-over-year (YOY) from compared to $2.4 billion.
It also beat Wall Streets predicted $2.48 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Lululemon further reported $2.59 earnings per share, above Wall Streets expected $2.25.
However, this was still lower YOY, compared to $2.87. Lululemon also projected sales below expectations for its current quarter.
During quarter three, Lululemon bought back one million common stock shares for a total of $189 million.
And the company announced that its board of directors has approved a $1 billion increase to its share repurchase program. As of Thursday, Lululemon had about $1.6 billion still available for its repurchase program.
Overall, the good outweighed the bad for investors. Lululemons shares (Nasdaq: LULU) rose over 9% on Friday in premarket trading. As of Thursdays close, the stock is down almost 50% year to date.
