This Week: Debt Tally, Pricesmart Earns, Consumer Sentiment

Business leaders across a range of industries agreed in a Wednesday discussion that the acceleration with which AI can transform society is practically unprecedented—and that, with proper regulation, that should be a good thing. “This thing is so transformational,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, speaking at the TIME100 Summit.

CEOs of start-ups and big tech companies spoke at the TIME100 Summit on Wednesday about innovating with artificial intelligence in an ethical way, just moments before a spirited debate on the future of the technology. “Regulation and innovation are two sides of the same coin,” said Rosanne Kincaid-Smith, Group Chief Operating Officer of Northern Data Group, which is a signature partner of the TIME100 Summit.

Enlarge (credit: Getty) Reddit has made it clear that it’s an ad-first business. Today, it expanded on that practice with a new ad format that looks to sell things to Reddit users. Simultaneously, Reddit has marketers who are interested in pushing products to users through seemingly legitimate accounts. In a blog post today, Reddit announced that its Dynamic Product Ads are entering public beta globally.

The Polestar Phone. Someday it will unlock your Polestar car. [credit: Polestar ] Polestar, the Volvo offshoot EV company, has made a smartphone. It's called, predictably, the Polestar Phone, and it's only available in China. There have been a lot of car-brand smartphones out there (it's often Lamborghini), but usually, these are licensing deals that the car company ignores.

Enlarge / M82, the site of what's likely to be a giant flare from a magnetar. (credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team) Gamma rays are a broad category of high-energy photons, including everything with more energy than an X-ray. While they are often created by processes like radioactive decay, few astronomical events produce them in sufficient quantities that they can be detected when the radiation originates in another galaxy. That said, the list is larger than one, which means detecting gamma rays doesn't mean we know what event produced them.

A judge in Centennial is weighing whether the sole owner of a tiny home construction company can be held personally liable for the alleged theft of a customer’s deposit. His decision will be the first court verdict regarding Holy Ground Tiny Homes in Englewood, which took $6 million in deposits from 180 customers who never received houses.