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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.”

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire’s Mamdani comments

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire's Mamdani comments

Almost 600 people have signed an open letter to leaders at venture firm Sequoia Capital after one of its partners, Shaun Maguire, posted what the group described as a “deliberate, inflammatory attack” against the Muslim Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City.

Maguire, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and is out to advance “his Islamist agenda.”

The post had 5.3 million views as of Monday afternoon. Maguire, whose investments include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and X as well as artificial intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence, also published a video on X explaining the remark.

Those signing the letter are asking Sequoia to condemn Maguire’s comments and apologize to Mamdani and Muslim founders. They also want the firm to authorize an independent investigation of Maguire’s behavior in the past two years and post “a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and religious bigotry.”

They are asking the firm for a public response by July 14, or “we will proceed with broader public disclosure, media outreach and mobilizing our networks to ensure accountability,” the letter says.

Sequoia declined to comment. Maguire didn’t respond to a request for comment, but wrote in a post about the letter on Wednesday that, “You can try everything you want to silence me, but it will just embolden me.”

Among the signees are Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of ride-hailing service Careem, and Amr Awadallah, CEO of AI startup Vectara. Also on the list is Abubakar Abid, who works in machine learning Hugging Face, which is backed by Sequoia, and Ahmed Sabbah, CEO of Telda, a financial technology startup that Sequoia first invested in four years ago.

At least three founders of startups that have gone through startup accelerator program Y Combinator added their names to the letter.

Sequoia as a firm is no stranger to politics. Doug Leone, who led the firm until 2022 and remains a partner, is a longtime Republican donor, who supported Trump in the 2024 election. Following Trump’s victory in November, Leone posted on X, “To all Trump voters:  you no longer have to hide in the shadows…..you’re the majority!!”

By contrast, Leone’s predecessor, Mike Moritz, is a Democratic megadonor, who criticized Trump and, in August, slammed his colleagues in the tech industry for lining up behind the Republican nominee. In a Financial Times opinion piece, Moritz wrote Trump’s tech supporters were “making a big mistake.”

“I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised,” wrote Moritz, who stepped down from Sequoia in 2023, over a decade after giving up a management role at the firm. “Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?”

Neither Leone nor Moritz returned messages seeking comment.

Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s current lead partner, has taken a more neutral stance. Botha said at an event last July that Sequoia as a partnership doesn’t “take a political point of view,” adding that he’s “not a registered member of either party.” Boelof said he’s “proud of the fact that we’ve enabled many of our partners to express their respected individual views along the way, and given them that freedom.”

Maguire has long been open with his political views. He said on X last year that he had “just donated $300k to President Trump.”

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has gained the ire of many people in tech and in the business community more broadly since defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Samsung signage during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Thursday, March 20, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics on Tuesday forecast a 56% fall in profits for the second as the company struggles to capture demand from artificial intelligence chip leader Nvidia. 

The memory chip and smartphone maker said in its guidance that operating profit for the quarter ending June was projected to be around 4.6 trillion won, down from 10.44 trillion Korean won year over year.

The figure is a deeper plunge compared to smart estimates from LSEG, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

According to the smart estimates, Samsung was expected to post an operating profit of 6.26 trillion won ($4.57 billion) for the quarter. Meanwhile, Samsung projected its revenue to hit 74 trillion won, falling short of LSEG smart estimates of 75.55 trillion won.

Samsung is a leading player in the global smartphone market and is also one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers.

However, the company has been falling behind competitors like SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory that is being deployed in AI chips.

“The disappointing earnings are due to ongoing operating losses in the foundry business, while the upside in high-margin HBM business remains muted this quarter,” MS Hwang, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said about the earnings guidance.

SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has secured a position as Nvidia’s key supplier. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.

The company did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its deals with Nvidia.

Ray Wang, Research Director of Semiconductors, Supply Chain and Emerging Technology at Futurum Group told CNBC that it is clear that Samsung has yet to pass Nvidia’s qualification for its most advanced HBM.

“Given that Nvidia accounts for roughly 70% of global HBM demand, the delay meaningfully caps near-term upside,” Wang said. He noted that while Samsung has secured some HBM supply for AI processors from AMD, this win is unlikely to contribute to second-quarter results due to the timing of production ramps.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s chip foundry business continues to face weak orders and serious competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Wang added.

Reuters reported in September that Samsung had instructed its subsidiaries worldwide to cut 30% of staff in some divisions, citing sources familiar with the matter.

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar electric vehicle sits parked at an EVgo charging station in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2024.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Waymo said it will begin testing in Philadelphia, with a limited fleet of vehicles and human safety drivers behind the wheel.

“This city is a National Treasure,” Waymo wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It’s a city of love, where eagles fly with a gritty spirit and cheese that spreads and cheese that steaks. Our road trip continues to Philly next.”

The Alphabet-owned company confirmed to CNBC that it will be testing in Pennsylvania’s largest city through the fall, adding that the initial fleet of cars will be manually driven through the more complex parts of Philadelphia, including downtown and on freeways.

“Folks will see our vehicles driving at all hours throughout various neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, and from University City to as far east as the Delaware River,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.

The expanded testing, which will go through the fall, comes as Waymo aims for a broader rollout. Last month, the company announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York for testing, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan. State law currently doesn’t allow for such driverless operations.

Waymo One provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and is preparing to bring fully autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Alphabet has been under pressure to monetize artificial intelligence products as it bolsters spending on infrastructure. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes Waymo, brought in revenue of $1.65 billion in 2024, up from $1.53 billion in 2023. However, the segment lost $4.44 billion last year, compared to a loss of $4.09 billion the previous year.

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