Google has announced it’s allowing more people to interact with “Bard." That's the artificially intelligent chatbot the company is building to counter Microsoft’s early lead in a pivotal battleground of technology. In Bard’s next stage, Google is opening a waitlist to use an AI tool that’s similar to the ChatGPT technology that Microsoft began deploying in its Bing search engine to much fanfare last month. Until now, Bard had only been available to a small group of “trusted testers” hand-picked by Google. The company isn’t saying how many people will be given access to Bard in the next step of the technology’s development.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is telling employees in a memo that the company plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks. The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history. Amazon had already cut 18,000 in the past few months. In the memo on Monday, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month and led to the additional job cuts. This time around, the job cuts will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. Twitch, the gaming platform Amazon owns, will also see some layoffs.

Still grappling with persistently high inflation, the Federal Reserve faces an entirely new — and in some ways conflicting — challenge as it meets to consider interest rates this week: How to restore calm to a nervous banking system. The two simultaneous problems would normally push the Fed in different directions: To fight elevated inflation, it would raise its benchmark rate, perhaps substantially, for the ninth time in the past year. But at the same time, to soothe financial markets, the Fed might prefer to leave rates unchanged, at least for now. Most economists think the Fed will navigate the conundrum by raising rates by just a quarter-point when its latest policy meeting ends Wednesday.

Farmworkers are leading a five-day, 45-mile trek on foot this week from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest. The farmworkers say they are marching to highlight the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted companies like McDonald’s and Whole Foods to leverage their purchasing power with growers for better working conditions and wages for farmworkers. The farmworkers hope to use the march to pressure other companies, like Publix, Wendy’s and Kroger, to join the program, which started in 2011. Wendy's says in a statement it's not in the program because it uses a different supply chain.

The government’s response to the failure of two large banks has already involved hundreds of billions of dollars. So will ordinary Americans end up paying for it, one way or another? And what will the price tag be? It could be months before the answers are fully known. The Biden administration said it will guarantee uninsured deposits at both banks. The Federal Reserve announced a new lending program for all banks that need to borrow money to pay for withdrawals. The goal is to prevent a broadening panic in which customers rush to pull out so much money that even healthy banks buckle.

Republican lawmakers pushing to prevent Kansas from investing its funds using socially and environmentally conscious principles disagree about imposing rules for investment managers handling private funds. That's complicating their efforts to thwart what they see as “woke” investing that could hurt the state's investment earnings. Committees in the Kansas House and Senate this week approved competing versions of anti-ESG legislation. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. The Senate version would require private money managers to get their clients’ written consent before investing their funds along ESG principles. The House bill contains no such provision. Supporters say it gives investors a broader and better view of risk.

The average long-term U.S. mortgage inched back down this week after five straight weeks of increases, good news for homebuyers as the housing market’s all-important spring buying season gets underway. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average on the benchmark 30-year rate slid back to 6.60% from 6.73% last week. The average long-term rate hit 7.08% in the fall — a two-decade high — as the Federal Reserve continued to raise its key lending rate in a bid to cool the economy and quash persistent, four-decade high inflation.

President Joe Biden says his administration is focused “intensely” on lowering health care costs. He is also taking aim at “MAGA” Republicans who he says are intent on dialing back Medicare coverage for millions of Americans. Biden used a speech Wednesday in Las Vegas, where he was wrapping a three-day Western swing, to make the case there are stark differences in how Democrats are tackling skyrocketing drug prices compared with their Republican counterparts. The remarks could serve as an early preview of the expected reelection campaign ahead as Biden aims to make his efforts at lowering drug costs central to his policy and political agenda.

The Federal Reserve is facing stinging criticism for missing what observers say were clear signs that Silicon Valley Bank was at high risk of collapsing into what became the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. The Fed was the primary federal supervisor of the bank, based in Santa Clara, California, though the bank was also overseen by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Critics point to many red flags that had surrounded Silicon Valley Bank, including its rapid growth since the pandemic, its unusually high level of uninsured deposits and its over-investment in long-term government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which tumbled in value as interest rates rose.

The Biden administration is approving a major oil-drilling project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope. The decision, announced Monday, is one of President Joe Biden’s most significant climate moves, and it brought quick condemnation from environmentalists who said it flies in the face of the Democratic president’s pledges. Climate activists say allowing oil company ConocoPhillips to move forward with the Willow drilling plan breaks Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil drilling on public lands. ConocoPhillips says the project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, a major advance for the nation.

Depositors withdrew savings, and investors broadly sold off bank shares as the federal government raced to reassure Americans that the banking system is secure following two bank failures. President Joe Biden insisted Monday that the system is safe after the second- and third-largest bank failures in the nation’s history happened in the span of 48 hours. In response to the crisis, regulators guaranteed all deposits at the two banks. They also created a program that effectively thew a lifeline to other banks to shield them from a run on deposits.