Ben & Jerry's row deepens as three board members removed Three members of Ben & Jerry's independent board will no longer be eligible to serve in their roles, after the ice cream company introduced a new set of governance practices. These include a nine-year limit set on board members' terms. Chair Anuradha Mittal, who earlier said she had no plans to resign under pressure, is among those affected. The move was criticised by the company's co-founder Ben Cohen, who called it a blatant power grab designed to strip the board of legal authority and independence. His remarks are the latest in a long-running row between Ben and Jerry's and its owner over the Cherry Garcia maker's social activism and the continued independence of its board.

Ben & Jerry's brand could be destroyed, says co-founder Ben & Jerry's will be destroyed as a brand if it remains with parent company Magnum, the company's co-founder Ben Cohen has told the BBC. His remarks are the latest in a long-running spat between the ice cream brand and its parent company over its ability to express its social activism and the continued independence of its board. The comments came on the day that the Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC) started trading on the European stock market - spinning off from owner Unilever. A spokesperson for Magnum said the firm wanted to build and strengthen Ben & Jerry's powerful, non-partisan values-based position in the world. Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever in 2000 in a deal which allowed it to retain an independent board and the right to make decisions about its social mission.

Ben & Jerry's co-founder quits over social activism row Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield has left the ice cream maker after almost half a century at the firm, deepening a dispute with parent company Unilever. In a letter shared on social media by fellow co-founder Ben Cohen, Mr Greenfield said the Cherry Garcia maker had lost its independence after Unilever put a halt to its social activism. His exit marks the latest episode in a row that started in 2021 when Ben & Jerry's said it would stop selling its ice cream in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. A spokesperson for The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which is being spun off from Unilever, said it was grateful to Mr Greenfield but disagreed with his stance. In his letter Mr Greenfield said leaving the firm was one of the hardest and most painful decisions he had ever made but he could no longer in good conscience work for a business that had been silenced by Unilever.

Products developed to manage artificial intelligence data are still largely fragmented, solving one problem at a time for developers, but not the entire life cycle. Enter Sama, a company providing high-quality training data that powers AI technology applications. CEO Wendy Gonzalez said the company is developing the first end-to-end AI tool for training data through machine learning. To do this, the company secured an oversubscribed $70 million in Series B financing led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), with participation from First Ascent Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Vistara Growth and all existing investors. The new capital infusion comes two years after the company raised $14.8 million in a Series A round.

This is a Women in AI Podcast transcript, for this interview we have Wendy Gonzalez, CEO at Sama, speaking with us about high-quality data training and what she's getting up to in her current role. We hope you enjoy the episode. Listen to the podcast here. So today I'm joined by Wendy Gonzalez on our Women in AI podcast episode, who is the Interim CEO of Sama, and I'm really excited to speak to her today. Hi, Wendy, how are you?

In today's landscape, the AI space is one of the fastest growing sectors in technology. And there's no shortage of companies searching for the best solution to solve problems using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Despite their best intentions, many young people remain skeptical of AI and how it might affect them in terms of automation and job loss. One company that strongly believes AI can be developed to do good and make a positive change in the world is California-based startup Halfcode. We caught up with its 17-year-old founder and chief executive Richard Black shortly after the company announced its seed funding round to find out what being a social entrepreneur means to him and what his plans for the future are.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be human rights' best advocate and its worst enemy. Either it can help us reach the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or, to quote internationally renowned AI scientist Yoshua Bengio, it can "increase discrepancies between the rich and the poor and be a threat to democracy." Fears of job loss and psychological manipulation are real and require a united front. To help us better understand and shape the social impacts of AI for the greater good, the inaugural conference AI on a Social Mission was held last month in Montreal. "AI is both a hope and a danger," warned Bengio, who was the keynote speaker at the conference.