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Cue the George Orwell reference.

Depending on where you work, there’s a significant chance that artificial intelligence is analyzing your messages on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other popular apps.

Huge U.S. employers such as Walmart, Delta Air Lines, T-Mobile, Chevron and Starbucks, as well as European brands including Nestle and AstraZeneca, have turned to a seven-year-old startup, Aware, to monitor chatter among their rank and file, according to the company.

Jeff Schumann, co-founder and CEO of the Columbus, Ohio-based startup, says the AI helps companies “understand the risk within their communications,” getting a read on employee sentiment in real time, rather than depending on an annual or twice-per-year survey.

Using the anonymized data in Aware’s analytics product, clients can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign, according to Schumann. Aware’s dozens of AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors, he said.

Aware’s analytics tool — the one that monitors employee sentiment and toxicity — doesn’t have the ability to flag individual employee names, according to Schumann. But its separate eDiscovery tool can, in the event of extreme threats or other risk behaviors that are predetermined by the client, he added.

CNBC didn’t receive a response from Walmart, T-Mobile, Chevron, Starbucks or Nestle regarding their use of Aware. A representative from AstraZeneca said the company uses the eDiscovery product but it doesn’t use analytics to monitor sentiment or toxicity. Delta told CNBC that it uses Aware’s analytics and eDiscovery for monitoring trends and sentiment as a way to gather feedback from employees and other stakeholders, and for legal records retention in its social media platform.

It doesn’t take a dystopian novel enthusiast to see where it could all go very wrong.

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Jutta Williams, co-founder of AI accountability nonprofit Humane Intelligence, said AI adds a new and potentially problematic wrinkle to so-called insider risk programs, which have existed for years to evaluate things like corporate espionage, especially within email communications.

Speaking broadly about employee surveillance AI rather than Aware’s technology specifically, Williams told CNBC: “A lot of this becomes thought crime.” She added, “This is treating people like inventory in a way I’ve not seen.”

Employee surveillance AI is a rapidly expanding but niche piece of a larger AI market that’s exploded in the past year, following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. Generative AI quickly became the buzzy phrase for corporate earnings calls, and some form of the technology is automating tasks in just about every industry, from financial services and biomedical research to logistics, online travel and utilities.

Aware’s revenue has jumped 150% per year on average over the past five years, Schumann told CNBC, and its typical customer has about 30,000 employees. Top competitors include Qualtrics, Relativity, Proofpoint, Smarsh and Netskope.

By industry standards, Aware is staying quite lean. The company last raised money in 2021, when it pulled in $60 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Compare that with large language model, or LLM, companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which have raised billions of dollars each, largely from strategic partners.

‘Tracking real-time toxicity’

Schumann started the company in 2017 after spending almost eight years working on enterprise collaboration at insurance company Nationwide.

Before that, he was an entrepreneur. And Aware isn’t the first company he’s started that’s elicited thoughts of Orwell.

In 2005, Schumann founded a company called BigBrotherLite.com. According to his LinkedIn profile, the business developed software that “enhanced the digital and mobile viewing experience” of the CBS reality series “Big Brother.” In Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” Big Brother was the leader of a totalitarian state in which citizens were under perpetual surveillance.

I built a simple player focused on a cleaner and easier consumer experience for people to watch the TV show on their computer,” Schumann said in an email.

At Aware, he’s doing something very different.

Every year, the company puts out a report aggregating insights from the billions — in 2023, the number was 6.5 billion — of messages sent across large companies, tabulating perceived risk factors and workplace sentiment scores. Schumann refers to the trillions of messages sent across workplace communication platforms every year as “the fastest-growing unstructured data set in the world.” 

When including other types of content being shared, such as images and videos, Aware’s analytics AI analyzes more than 100 million pieces of content every day. In so doing, the technology creates a company social graph, looking at which teams internally talk to each other more than others.

“It’s always tracking real-time employee sentiment, and it’s always tracking real-time toxicity,” Schumann said of the analytics tool. “If you were a bank using Aware and the sentiment of the workforce spiked in the last 20 minutes, it’s because they’re talking about something positively, collectively. The technology would be able to tell them whatever it was.”

Aware confirmed to CNBC that it uses data from its enterprise clients to train its machine-learning models. The company’s data repository contains about 6.5 billion messages, representing about 20 billion individual interactions across more than 3 million unique employees, the company said. 

When a new client signs up for the analytics tool, it takes Aware’s AI models about two weeks to train on employee messages and get to know the patterns of emotion and sentiment within the company so it can see what’s normal versus abnormal, Schumann said.

“It won’t have names of people, to protect the privacy,” Schumann said. Rather, he said, clients will see that “maybe the workforce over the age of 40 in this part of the United States is seeing the changes to [a] policy very negatively because of the cost, but everybody else outside of that age group and location sees it positively because it impacts them in a different way.”

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But Aware’s eDiscovery tool operates differently. A company can set up role-based access to employee names depending on the “extreme risk” category of the company’s choice, which instructs Aware’s technology to pull an individual’s name, in certain cases, for human resources or another company representative.

“Some of the common ones are extreme violence, extreme bullying, harassment, but it does vary by industry,” Schumann said, adding that in financial services, suspected insider trading would be tracked.

For instance, a client can specify a “violent threats” policy, or any other category, using Aware’s technology, Schumann said, and have the AI models monitor for violations in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Meta. The client could also couple that with rule-based flags for certain phrases, statements and more. If the AI found something that violated a company’s specified policies, it could provide the employee’s name to the client’s designated representative.

This type of practice has been used for years within email communications. What’s new is the use of AI and its application across workplace messaging platforms such as Slack and Teams.

Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute at New York University, worries about using AI to help determine what’s considered risky behavior.

“It results in a chilling effect on what people are saying in the workplace,” said Kak, adding that the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have all expressed concerns on the matter, though she wasn’t speaking specifically about Aware’s technology. “These are as much worker rights issues as they are privacy issues.” 

Schumann said that though Aware’s eDiscovery tool allows security or HR investigations teams to use AI to search through massive amounts of data, a “similar but basic capability already exists today” in Slack, Teams and other platforms.

“A key distinction here is that Aware and its AI models are not making decisions,” Schumann said. “Our AI simply makes it easier to comb through this new data set to identify potential risks or policy violations.”

Privacy concerns

Even if data is aggregated or anonymized, research suggests, it’s a flawed concept. A landmark study on data privacy using 1990 U.S. Census data showed that 87% of Americans could be identified solely by using ZIP code, birth date and gender. Aware clients using its analytics tool have the power to add metadata to message tracking, such as employee age, location, division, tenure or job function. 

“What they’re saying is relying on a very outdated and, I would say, entirely debunked notion at this point that anonymization or aggregation is like a magic bullet through the privacy concern,” Kak said.

Additionally, the type of AI model Aware uses can be effective at generating inferences from aggregate data, making accurate guesses, for instance, about personal identifiers based on language, context, slang terms and more, according to recent research.

“No company is essentially in a position to make any sweeping assurances about the privacy and security of LLMs and these kinds of systems,” Kak said. “There is no one who can tell you with a straight face that these challenges are solved.”

And what about employee recourse? If an interaction is flagged and a worker is disciplined or fired, it’s difficult for them to offer a defense if they’re not privy to all of the data involved, Williams said.

“How do you face your accuser when we know that AI explainability is still immature?” Williams said.

Schumann said in response: “None of our AI models make decisions or recommendations regarding employee discipline.”

“When the model flags an interaction,” Schumann said, “it provides full context around what happened and what policy it triggered, giving investigation teams the information they need to decide next steps consistent with company policies and the law.”

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Trump aims to cut $6 billion from NASA budget, shifting $1 billion to Mars-focused missions

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Trump aims to cut  billion from NASA budget, shifting  billion to Mars-focused missions

The Trump administration has floated a plan to trim about $6 billion from the budget of NASA, while allocating $1 billion of remaining funds to Mars-focused initiatives, aligning with an ambition long held by Elon Musk and his rocket maker SpaceX.

A copy of the discretionary budget posted to the NASA website on Friday said that the change focuses NASA’s funding on “beating China back to the Moon and on putting the first human on Mars.”

NASA also said it will need to “streamline” its workforce, information technology services, NASA Center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities, and terminate multiple “unaffordable” missions, while reducing scientific missions for the sake of “fiscal responsibility.”

Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, said in an agency-wide email on Friday that the proposed lean budget, which would cut about 25% of the space agency’s funding, “reflects the administration’s support for our mission and sets the stage for our next great achievements.”

Petro urged NASA employees to “persevere, stay resilient, and lean into the discipline it takes to do things that have never been done before — especially in a constrained environment,” according to the memo, which was obtained by CNBC. She acknowledged the budget would “require tough choices,” and that some of NASA’s “activities will wind down.”

The document on NASA’s website said it’s allocating more than $7 billion for moon exploration and “introducing $1 billion in new investments for Mars-focused programs.”

SpaceX, which is already among the largest NASA and Department of Defense contractors, has long sought to launch a manned mission to Mars. The company says on its website that its massive Starship rocket is designed to “carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.”

Musk, who is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration, leading an effort to slash the size, spending and capacity of the federal government, and influencing regulatory changes through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk, who frequently makes aggressive and incorrect projections for his companies, said in 2020 that he was “highly confident” that SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026.

Petro highlighted in her memo that under the discretionary budget, NASA would retire the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, the Orion spacecraft and Gateway programs.

It would also put an end to its green aviation spending and to its Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program, which sought to use rockets and robotic systems to “collect and send samples of Martian rocks, soils and atmosphere back to Earth for detailed chemical and physical analysis,” according to a website for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Some of the biggest reductions at NASA, should the budget get approved, would hit the space agency’s space science, Earth science and mission support divisions.

Petro didn’t name any specific aerospace and defense contractors in her agency-wide email. However SpaceX, ULA and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are positioned to continue to conduct launches in the absence of the SLS. Boeing is currently the prime contractor leading the SLS program.

“This is far from the first time NASA has been asked to adapt, and your ability to deliver, even under pressure, is what sets NASA apart,” she wrote.

President Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, still has to be approved by the U.S. Senate. His nomination was advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday.

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Temu halts shipping direct from China as de minimis tariff loophole is cut off

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Temu halts shipping direct from China as de minimis tariff loophole is cut off

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Chinese bargain retailer Temu changed its business model in the U.S. as the Trump administration’s new rules on low-value shipments took effect Friday.

In recent days, Temu has abruptly shifted its website and app to only display listings for products shipped from U.S.-based warehouses. Items shipped directly from China, which previously blanketed the site, are now labeled as out of stock.

Temu made a name for itself in the U.S. as a destination for ultra-discounted items shipped direct from China, such as $5 sneakers and $1.50 garlic presses. It’s been able to keep prices low because of the so-called de minimis rule, which has allowed items worth $800 or less to enter the country duty-free since 2016.

The loophole expired Friday at 12:01 a.m. EDT as a result of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in April. Trump briefly suspended the de minimis rule in February before reinstating the provision days later as customs officials struggled to process and collect tariffs on a mountain of low-value packages.

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The end of de minimis, as well as Trump’s new 145% tariffs on China, has forced Temu to raise prices, suspend its aggressive online advertising push and now alter the selection of goods available to American shoppers to circumvent higher levies.

A Temu spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that all sales in the U.S. are now handled by local sellers and said they are fulfilled “from within the country.” Temu said pricing for U.S. shoppers “remains unchanged.”

“Temu has been actively recruiting U.S. sellers to join the platform,” the spokesperson said. “The move is designed to help local merchants reach more customers and grow their businesses.”

Before the change, shoppers who attempted to purchase Temu products shipped from China were confronted with “import charges” of between 130% and 150%. The fees often cost more than the individual item and more than doubled the price of many orders.

Temu advertises that local products have “no import charges” and “no extra charges upon delivery.”

The company, which is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, has gradually built up its inventory in the U.S. over the past year in anticipation of escalating trade tensions and the removal of de minimis.

Shein, which has also benefited from the loophole, moved to raise prices last week. The fast-fashion retailer added a banner at checkout that says, “Tariffs are included in the price you pay. You’ll never have to pay extra at delivery.”

Many third-party sellers on Amazon rely on Chinese manufacturers to source or assemble their products. The company’s Temu competitor, called Amazon Haul, has relied on de minimis to ship products priced at $20 or less directly from China to the U.S.

Amazon said Tuesday following a dustup with the White House that had it considered showing tariff-related costs on Haul products ahead of the de minimis cutoff but that it has since scrapped those plans.

Prior to Trump’s second term in office, the Biden administration had also looked to curtail the provision. Critics of the de minimis provision argue that it harms American businesses and that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances because, they say, the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.

— CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report.

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Jeff Bezos discloses plan to sell up to $4.8 billion in Amazon stock

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Jeff Bezos discloses plan to sell up to .8 billion in Amazon stock

Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, takes the stage during The New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit, at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, Dec. 4, 2024.

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares in the company over the next year, according to a financial filing on Friday.

Bezos, who stepped down as CEO in 2021 but remains Amazon’s top shareholder, is selling the shares as part of a trading plan adopted on March 4, the filing states. The stake would be worth about $4.8 billion at the current price.

The disclosure follows Amazon’s first-quarter earnings report late Thursday. While profit and revenue topped estimates, the company’s forecast for operating income in the current quarter came in below Wall Street’s expectations.

The results show that Amazon is bracing for uncertainty related to President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs. The company landed in the crosshairs of the White House this week over a report that Amazon planned to show shoppers the cost of the tariffs. Trump personally called Bezos to complain, and Amazon clarified that no such change was coming.

Bezos previously offloaded about $13.5 billion worth of Amazon shares last year, marking his first sale of company stock since 2021.

Since handing over the Amazon CEO role to Andy Jassy, Bezos has spent more of his time on his space exploration company, Blue Origin, and his $10 billion climate and biodiversity fund. He’s used Amazon share sales to help fund Blue Origin, as well as the Day One Fund, which he launched in September 2018 to provide education in low-income communities and combat homelessness.

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