Top 3 tech, startup and sustainability stories of the week

1-EU's right-to-repair law: sellers to be liable after the product is fixed

My first story is about sustainability and coming from EU Europe's right-to-repair rules will force vendors to stand by their products an extra 12 months after a repair is made.

I saw this story at arstechnica.com (a part of Condé Nast ) and consumers will have a choice between repair and replacement of defective products during a liability period that sellers will be required to offer. The liability period is slated to be a minimum of two years before any extensions.

Here’s the official announcement of European Council: "If the consumer chooses the repair of the good, the seller's liability period will be extended by 12 months from the moment when the product is brought into conformity. This period may be further prolonged by member states if they so wish.” .

The 12-month extension is part of a provisional deal between the European Parliament and Council on how to implement the European Commission's right-to-repair directive that was passed in March 2023. The Parliament and Council still need to formally adopt the agreement, which would then come into force 20 days after it is published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

2-AI-related lobbying spiked in 2023

My second story is about AI and the lobbying expenses of AI companies. AI-related lobbying spiked in 2023 and it went up 185% in 2023, according to Open Secrets, an NGO working in transparency. I saw this story at CNBC and the main reason in this spike is the Biden administration’s new AI regulations. The AI companies want to understand how the new regulation will impact their business practices, including TikTok owner ByteDance, Tesla, Palantir, Nvidia, OpenAI and more. And there are more than 450 organizations participating, which marks a 185% increase from the year before, when just 158 organizations did so. Let me emphasize that the AI companies reported spending more than $957 million lobbying the federal government in 2023 on issues including, but not limited to, AI, according to OpenSecrets.

3-Global chip sales to go up this year: NGO

My third story is about global chip sales. And Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) is expecting a 13.1% jump in global chip sales in 2024. Let me add that the association is forecasting that the chip sales will reach to USD593 billion. There are two major reasons  behind this expectation: the first one is the huge demand for artificial intelligence and the second one is a steady rise in automotive chips, helping a rebound in global chip sales. Last year, weak demand for PCs and smartphones punished chipmakers such as Intel Corporation  and Qualcomm , partially contributing to a 1.1% increase in sales of logic chips to $178.5 billion.  Let me note that AI applications require large quantities of graphics processing units, namely GPU,  and a range of other types of chips around them to achieve the performance necessary. AI systems need massive amounts of high-bandwidth memory made by SK Hynix and fast networking processors to move data between.

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