Cava is on its way to becoming the next Chipotle

Good morning,

The next time you ask for career advice, the answer might come from a chatbot.

Employers and employees are increasingly using artificial intelligence-based apps and programs that can help them with everything from negotiating a raise to delegating work to teammates. AI coaching, Offered by startups and even LinkedIn, human interaction is increasingly proving to be a cheaper alternative for businesses, costing an average of $244 per hour.

Of course, some employees worry about privacy and the quality of advice. “We’re still a long way from the typical person expecting (coaching) from a machine,” says a Harvard Business School professor. But given the rapid advances in AI, he adds, “it’s pretty foolish to bet against it.”

FIRST

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the “time has come” for interest rate cuts in his most important speech of the year in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, sparking a positive reaction on Wall Street. Powell suggested the central bank would “do everything it can” to support a strong labor market, and the S&P 500 gained more than 1% within five minutes of the minutes being released.

Two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station are expected to return to Earth in a SpaceX capsule in early 2025, NASA said. There are no safety concerns with the spacecraft, but rather with the Boeing Starliner on which they arrived. Boeing is estimated to have lost more than a billion dollars on the Starliner program, and the situation could jeopardize the troubled aerospace company’s lucrative contract with the space station.

BUSINESS + FINANCE

Cava wants to convince investors that it is the next Chipotle, and with the all-time high reached on Friday, the Mediterranean fast-casual food company is on the right track. Cava’s shares rose nearly 20% After reporting better-than-expected earnings and despite a strong year for fast-casual food stocks, the company is worth nearly 30% more than rivals Shake Shack and Sweetgreen combined.

The USA depends on Taiwan for its supply of semiconductorsand in 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS Act to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, development, and research. But the application process is lengthy and arduous for smaller companies with few resources, and the vast majority of the funds awarded have gone to giants like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC.

TECHNOLOGY + INNOVATION

Billionaire Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on Saturday, as the controversial messaging and social networking platform is apparently being investigated into whether it allows crime on its app, in part due to a lack of moderation. Investigators believe the messaging app – which has over 950 million users –has not curbed criminal users or properly cooperated with law enforcement when the app is used for drug trafficking, child sexual content, and fraud.

Butlr, a San Francisco-based startup co-founded by Forbes 30 Under 30 graduates Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng make people-detection sensors that anonymously measure space and movement in buildings. The company announced Monday that it has raised $38 million to to expand its presence in senior living communitiesand hopes to counteract the massive labor shortage in nursing homes by using its sensors to monitor the health and well-being of residents.

MONEY + POLITICS

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race on Friday and endorsed former President Donald Trump, adding that he would withdraw his name from the ballot in 10 swing states. Kerry Kennedy, one of RFK Jr.’s sisters, posted a statement on X signed by her and four other siblings saying that her brother’s support of Trump “is a betrayal of the values ​​that are most important to our father and our family.”

Several Secret Service officials, including the head of the agency’s Pittsburgh field office, have reportedly been placed on leave for their roles in responding to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last month. The Secret service is under surveillance A source told NBC News that a number of security violations occurred during and before the shooting and that more officers would likely be placed on leave while the agency’s investigation continues.

SCIENCE + HEALTHCARE

Thailand confirmed that a case of Mpox reported last week was a new, more dangerous variant, the first known case of the variant in Asia. only the second known case outside Africa. Governments step up surveillance measures to identify Mpox cases that could enter their countries after the WHO chief declared an international health emergency due to an escalating outbreak in Central Africa.

DAILY COVER STORY

The foreign pro-Trump fake news industry has turned to American patriotism

TOPLINE The idea of ​​America is big business on Facebook: The social network has hosted dozens of pages that has adopted American patriotism as its theme. But a large portion of these sites are not American at all.

Instead, they are run by foreign click farmers, many based in Macedonia, who use AI to produce a seemingly endless ocean of clickbait soup. Posts sharing prayers for American soldiers, rewritten tweets, memes, and pictures of old Hollywood pin-up girls link to AI-generated articles that the click farmers can sell advertising against. The sites they promote feign Americanness because they get paid every time someone clicks on one of their links, and in the advertising world, American clicks are among the most valuable.

A Forbes The review found 67 Facebook pages – which have since been deleted – that claimed to be champions of American news, culture or identity but were actually based abroad. As of August 20, they had a total of more than 9 million followers – more than the Facebook pages of the Wall Street Journal or the ^ “Washington Post: The Secret World”.

Click farmers, particularly from Macedonia, have a long history on Facebook. During the 2016 presidential election, teenagers in the small Eastern European country spread fake news on Facebook to millions of Americans, generating tens of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue. In 2019, similar Eastern European sites followed the same pattern—this time reaching nearly half of all Americans on the platform. Thanks to artificial intelligence, these companies are now able to produce almost unlimited amounts of low-quality (or downright fake) news.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT “Every platform has incentives … and they provide insight into what’s going on at the heart of Facebook, what drives it,” said Jeff Allen, co-founder of the Integrity Institute and a former Facebook data scientist who tracked networks of spam page administrators from the inside. ForbesFor him, click farmers are a “big magnifying glass … into the more reptilian parts of our brain.”

MORE How fake videos allegedly showing the Trump shooter are spreading on social media

FACTS + COMMENTS

Chili’s reported better quarterly results than expected, which at least partly to a TikTok campaign around its “Triple Dipper” appetizer offering. The casual dining chain outperformed competitors Applebee’s and Outback Steakhouse:

15%: The increase in the chain’s sales in the last quarter

More than 30 million: The number of views of Triple Dipper content according to the Daily Dot publication

40%: The share of quarterly profit that the CEO of parent company Brinker International attributes to the viral triple-dipper deal

STRATEGY + SUCCESS

When it comes to the markets, nobody has a crystal ball, warned legendary portfolio manager Bill Miller in an interview with ForbesMiller, who beat the market for 15 years in a row, says it is to understand more critically what is happening now. Having an edge is crucial, he says, like in poker, whether in terms of information, analysis or behavior.

VIDEO

QUIZ

After a strong summer, it was a lackluster weekend at the box office despite two new films. One of the films that received poor reviews is a remake of which movie from 1994?

A. “Hoop Dreams”

B. “The Crow”

C. “The Mask”

D. “Four Weddings and a Funeral”

Check your answer.

Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire.