People walk past a billboard advertisement for YouTube in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 27, 2019.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images
YouTube is taking steps to fight against medical misinformation, especially when it comes to finding immediate tips on how to handle an emergency.
The company on Wednesday introduced a feature called First Aid Information Shelves, a library of step-by-step videos that show people what to do if they’re witnessing a drug overdose, heart attack or other life-threatening event.
Videos from accredited health organizations such as Mass General Brigham will appear pinned to the top of relevant search results so they’re easy to discover. YouTube users in the U.S. can find videos on 12 topics, including CPR, seizures, choking, bleeding and psychosis. Most are a minute or two long.
“The whole idea is timing and conciseness and trying to share that information as quickly as possible,” Garth Graham, global head of health care and public health at YouTube, told CNBC in an interview. Graham said people should always call first responders right away in the case of an emergency.
The videos will not contain ads, which means Google-owned YouTube won’t make money from them, Graham said.
YouTube was not involved with the content creation, which Graham said was left to experts. In addition to Mass General Brigham, health organizations such as the Mexican Red Cross and the American Heart Association have partnered with YouTube to help make the videos.
Content moderation has long been a challenge for YouTube, which removes videos if they’re found to be in violation of the company’s guidelines. The process is often slow and costly. Medical misinformation became a bigger problem during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the constant spreading of inaccurate messaging related to the effectiveness of vaccines and masks.
In July 2021, more than a year after the onset of the pandemic, YouTube announced plans to label videos and promote credible sources after facing criticism for its role in spreading misinformation. The company banned several high-profile anti-vaxxer accounts and said in September of that year that it had removed more than 130,000 videos for violating its Covid policies.
Even as the pandemic has subsided, medical misinformation continues to proliferate. Researchers recently found that popular videos on YouTube about insomnia and sleep contain both “misinformation and commercial bias,” according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
YouTube announced a new framework for combating medical misinformation in August, outlining how the site will remove content that contradicts established guidance from health officials on subjects including cancer, Covid and reproductive health.
An example of what First Aid Information Shelves will look like on YouTube.
‘First videos that you see’
Mass General Brigham, the largest health-care system in Massachusetts, started officially partnering with YouTube in 2021 “to offer patients easier access to credible medical information,” according to a press release at the time.
The hospital has a dedicated content team with an expertise in medical education that determines the topics and substance of the videos, said Dr. Merranda Logan, the health system’s associate chief academic officer.
For YouTube’s First Aid Information Shelves, Mass General Brigham’s team produced 11 videos across topics such as heart attacks, strokes and seizures.
Logan said there’s a lot of medical information and misinformation online and distinguishing between the two can be a challenge. She said people should be able to turn to trusted experts in an emergency when “every minute, every second counts.”
“We wanted to make sure that these videos are the first videos that you see when you’re on YouTube and you search for any of those topics,” Logan said in an interview. “These videos really are not meant to replace calling 911, but to provide clear and concise information that can help during an emergency.”
When searching for videos on CPR, users will find content from the AHA, which writes the guidelines on the procedure and, since the 1990s, has worked to educate people about how to handle emergency situations.
“We have a really strong interest in partnering with our search engines that we know where people are going for content to make sure that they’re getting scientifically accurate content,” said Dr. Comilla Sasson, the AHA’s vice president for health-care business solutions for emergency cardiovascular care.
Videos will initially be available in English and Spanish, thanks to the help of the Mexican Red Cross, Graham said. Mass General Brigham is also using one of YouTube’s artificial intelligence-powered translation tools to present content in Spanish.
YouTube plans to add more topics, countries and languages in the future.
Graham said YouTube will regularly work with its partners to ensure the videos remain as accurate and up to date as possible. The shelves are part of an “ongoing evolution of information quality” at YouTube, he said.
“It’s important for us all to be prepared to respond to a series of common medical conditions that could happen to us, family, loved ones, people who are passing by,” Graham said. “We should be up to speed on that.”
White House Senior Advisor Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) on March 9, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Samuel Corum | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Tesla shares fell in premarket trade on Monday after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to form a new political party.
The stock was down 7.13% by 4:27 a.m. E.T.
Musk said over the weekend that the party would be called the “America Party” and could focus “on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.” He suggested this would be “enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”
Now tech billionaire’s reinvolvement in the political arena is making investors nervous.
“Very simply Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period for the Tesla story,” Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Sunday.
“While the core Musk supporters will back Musk at every turn no matter what, there is broader sense of exhaustion from many Tesla investors that Musk keeps heading down the political track.”
Musk’s previous political foray earned him Trump’s praise in the early days, but he has since drawn the ire of the U.S. president.
The two have clashed over various areas of policy, including Trump’s spending bill which Musk has said would increase America’s debt burden. Musk has taken issue to particular cuts to tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.
Trump on Sunday called Musk’s move to form a political party “ridiculous,” adding that the Tesla boss had gone “completely off the rails.”
Musk is contending with more than just political turmoil. Tesla reported a 14% year-on-year decline in car deliveries in the second quarter, missing expectations. The company is facing rising competition, especially in its key market, China.
Jonathan Ross, chief executive officer of Groq Inc., during the GenAI Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, May 30, 2024.
David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence semiconductor startup Groq announced Monday it has established its first data center in Europe as it steps up its international expansion.
Groq, which is backed by investment arms of Samsung and Cisco, said the data center will be located in Helsinki, Finland and is in partnership with Equinix.
Groq is looking to take advantage of rising demand for AI services in Europe following other U.S. firms which have also ramped up investment in the region. The Nordics in particular is a popular location for the data facilities as the region has easy access to renewable energy and cooler climates. Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Europe and signed several infrastructure deals, including data centers.
Groq, which is valued at $2.8 billion, designs a chip that the company calls a language processing unit (LPU). It is designed for inferencing rather training. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI model interprets live data to come up with a result, much like the answers that are produced by popular chatbots.
While Nvidia has a stranglehold on the chips required for training huge AI models with its graphics processing units (GPUs), there is a swathe of startups hoping to take a slice of the pie when it comes to inferencing. SambaNova; Ampere, a company SoftBank is in the process of purchasing; Cerebras and Fractile, are all looking to join the AI inference race.
European politicians have been pushing the notion of sovereign AI — where data centers must be located in the region. Data centers that are located closer to users also help improve the speed of services.
Global data center builder Equinix connects different cloud providers together, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, making it easier for businesses to have multiple vendors. Groq’s LPUs will be installed inside the Equinix data center allowing businesses to access Groq’s inference capabilities via Equinix.
Groq currently has data centers in the U.S. and Canada and Saudi Arabia with its technology.
Don’t miss Groq CEO Jonathan Ross on Squawk Box Europe at 7:45 a.m. London time.
Hidden among the majestic canyons of the Utah desert, about 7 miles from the nearest town, is a small research facility meant to prepare humans for life on Mars.
The Mars Society, a nonprofit organization that runs the Mars Desert Research Station, or MDRS, invited CNBC to shadow one of its analog crews on a recent mission.
“MDRS is the best analog astronaut environment,” said Urban Koi, who served as health and safety officer for Crew 315. “The terrain is extremely similar to the Mars terrain and the protocols, research, science and engineering that occurs here is very similar to what we would do if we were to travel to Mars.”
SpaceX CEO and Mars advocate Elon Musk has said his company can get humans to Mars as early as 2029.
The 5-person Crew 315 spent two weeks living at the research station following the same procedures that they would on Mars.
David Laude, who served as the crew’s commander, described a typical day.
“So we all gather around by 7 a.m. around a common table in the upper deck and we have breakfast,” he said. “Around 8:00 we have our first meeting of the day where we plan out the day. And then in the morning, we usually have an EVA of two or three people and usually another one in the afternoon.”
An EVA refers to extravehicular activity. In NASA speak, EVAs refer to spacewalks, when astronauts leave the pressurized space station and must wear spacesuits to survive in space.
“I think the most challenging thing about these analog missions is just getting into a rhythm. … Although here the risk is lower, on Mars performing those daily tasks are what keeps us alive,” said Michael Andrews, the engineer for Crew 315.