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• A new legal filing is pushing to stop the transition of millions of student-loan borrowers off the SAVE plan.
• Beginning July 1, borrowers will start to receive their 90-day timeframe to leave the plan.
• The lawsuit said that borrowers who reached the relief threshold would be harmed by the transfer.

A new legal filing asks a federal judge to pause the forced transfer of millions of student-loan borrowers off of SAVE, the income-driven repayment plan that the Trump administration eliminated in March.

On Tuesday night, the law firm Public Goods Practice filed a motion in a US District Court seeking to block borrowers enrolled in SAVE from being automatically moved to a new, more expensive repayment plan while their broader lawsuit continues.

The case, filed in March, challenges the Department of Education’s decision to eliminate SAVE, a Biden-era plan that reduced monthly payments and shortened the timeline for debt relief.

The motion argues that legal procedure requires the department to make the benefits of REPAYE, a precursor to SAVE, available to borrowers and to pause forced transfers to a new plan while the case proceeds.

A Department of Education spokesperson disputed the merits of the argument and recommended that borrowers enroll in “a lawful repayment option,” such as the new Repayment Assistance Plan, which will become available on July 1.

Also beginning July 1, borrowers enrolled in SAVE will start receiving notices from their servicers on their 90-day timeframe to transfer to a new plan. If they do not voluntarily switch, those borrowers will automatically be placed in the standard repayment plan or the new tiered plan, both of which are the most expensive options.

Austin Hinkle, a managing partner at Public Goods Practice, said he’s pushing to pause that transfer before borrowers reach the deadline.

“Once borrowers start getting transferred over, injuries for lots of borrowers could start to happen right away,” Hinkle said, referring to the higher monthly payments borrowers would face under new repayment plans.

Democratic lawmakers have previously pushed the department to give borrowers more time to transition to a new plan. They wrote in an April letter that “borrowers deserve to have the time, critical information, and support necessary to successfully enroll in another affordable repayment plan and continue to pay down their loans.”

Have a story to share about student loans? Contact this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.

• Garfield, an AI-powered law firm, has helped a freelancer win a court case in England.
• The freelancer used Garfield’s software to draft a legal letter to try to recover unpaid fees.
• Garfield is part of a new class of startups using technology to make legal services more accessible.

An English court has handed a victory to a law firm that uses artificial intelligence more than lawyers to bring legal claims.

Garfield, a tech company that is also a regulated law firm, helped a freelancer recover £7,000 in unpaid fees from a former client after a trial in Wandsworth County Court in May.

The case was small, but its implications are big. Garfield is part of a new class of startups trying to use artificial intelligence to make legal services cheap enough for the everyman to pursue. The company believes it is the first robo-firm to win a case in an English court.

Garfield’s software helps users chase unpaid invoices by uploading documents such as contracts and invoices, then producing legal letters and court documents. Its founder, Philip Young, a longtime litigator, said the company is starting with small debt claims because they are common, painful, and often costly for businesses to solve with traditional lawyers.

“You don’t want to spend a lot of money on lawyers to collect a £4,000 debt,” Young said. “It’s just not worth it.”

In this case, Tamires Camal Taquidir, a human-resources consultant, said she had not been paid for work she performed for a hospitality company. Young said she was originally owed about £6,000.

When she pressed the claim, the defendant denied owing her anything and brought a counterclaim of about £1,500, Young said. He said he believed the counterclaim was meant to pressure her into dropping the case or accepting a steep discount.

“To her credit, because she did have a meritorious claim, she wasn’t willing to accept that,” he said.

Garfield drafted the pretrial materials. A human barrister ultimately represented Camal Taquidir in court. She paid Garfield about £400.

After the hearing, the judge issued a decision weeks later. Her claim succeeded, and the counterclaim failed.

Young said the outcome was “very satisfactory” for Camal Taquidir and for Garfield.

The ruling has already brought Garfield a surge of attention. Young said visits to the company’s website spiked 1,000% on Monday, after The Financial Times and The Guardian published articles about the case.

Garfield has processed more than 600 claims and recovered about £500,000 for clients, Young said. He said usage has been increasing over the past six months, with early adopters giving way to larger businesses and even a regulator in England using the platform.

Young began his career at the white-shoe law firm Baker McKenzie before starting his own boutique, Cooke, Young, & Keidan. After retiring from the London firm, he started playing with ChatGPT on a family road trip. He believed the technology would transform how legal services are delivered.

Last May, Garfield became the first regulated law firm of its kind when it won approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the ruling body for lawyers in England and Wales. Domestic rules let non-lawyers own or invest in law firms — a structure that makes room for law firms to take on outside capital.

Even so, Young said Garfield has not raised institutional capital. So far, the company has been funded by him and his close friends.

Young said the idea for Garfield was inspired in part by his brother-in-law, a plumber in South Yorkshire who would call him when customers failed to pay.

“In England, we’ve got a choice,” Young said. “Either we can build things to solve access to justice gaps, or we can rearrange it so that every plumber has a brother who happens to be a litigation partner.”

Manufacturers have invested in connected sensors, machine monitoring, and dashboards to gain a clearer understanding of what is happening across their operations. This visibility has delivered real value, helping teams identify inefficiencies, reduce downtime, and respond to problems faster. Today, however,  industrial firms look beyond visibility to focus on how technology can respond as conditions change. Most industrial environments already generate more information than teams can reasonably analyze. More and more, what’s needed is faster, more effective responses when operational issues emerge. This is  Industrial IoT beyond monitoring toward autonomous decision systems that can recommend actions, trigger workflows, and, in some cases, automatically execute predefined responses.

Why Full Autonomy Is Not the Goal

Despite growing interest in autonomous decision systems, many companies are still working to extract value from basic monitoring and analytics initiatives. The transition toward automation is rarely linear, and sophistication levels vary significantly between industries and facilities.

Despite the attention surrounding autonomous factories, the reality is far more practical. Most industrial firms are not pursuing fully self-managing operations. Instead, they are focusing on targeted use cases where automation can improve speed, consistency, and performance without removing human oversight. In many facilities, the immediate priorities remain reducing downtime, improving quality inspection, and streamlining maintenance workflows rather than achieving full autonomy.

From Visibility to Action

Connected assets generate data that can be monitored remotely, giving operators a better understanding of equipment health and production performance. Analytics then helps identify anomalies, predict failures, and uncover opportunities for improvement. The next stage introduces decision support, where platforms don’t merely report issues, but also begin recommending responses.

Only after operators gain confidence in the underlying data and recommendations does automation typically enter the picture.

A common example is predictive maintenance. A company may initially monitor vibration and temperature data to detect abnormal equipment behavior. As confidence in the data grows, analytics can predict potential failures before they occur. Eventually, those same insights may automatically create maintenance work orders, schedule inspections, or alert the appropriate teams.

Most organizations expand automation gradually through well-defined workflows rather than attempting large-scale transformation from the outset.

How Industrial Autonomy Is Applied in Practice

Autonomous decision systems in industrial settings allow platforms to execute specific actions within tightly defined rules, safety limits, and escalation paths. The degree of automation depends heavily on industry risk, meaning adoption varies significantly between use cases. Warehouses may safely deploy autonomous robots to optimise routing and task coordination in real time, while sectors such as utilities, chemicals, and critical infrastructure require far more validation before automating any operational decisions.

In most cases, organizations are adopting bounded autonomy, where systems handle routine responses, and humans retain oversight of exceptions and high-impact decisions, reducing response times while maintaining control and accountability.

Why Edge AI and Interoperability Are Driving Change

Many industrial responses cannot wait for data to travel to the cloud and back. On a high-speed production line, waiting even a few seconds for a cloud response may mean hundreds of products have already passed through inspection. That is one reason companies are increasingly moving AI inference closer to machines and production assets.

Running AI models at the edge helps reduce latency and support faster responses when timing directly affects production performance.

Similar principles apply in other data-intensive industries that rely on real-time decision-making.  For example, a crypto trading platform may use AI models and streaming data to execute transactions based on predefined conditions, highlighting how low-latency decision systems are becoming increasingly important across a range of digital and industrial environments.

Faster responses also depend on how effectively data moves between technologies.

Many organizations still operate environments where decades-old equipment sits alongside modern cloud platforms. Sensors, PLCs, SCADA systems, historians, MES applications, and ERP platforms frequently exist in separate silos, making it difficult to move from insight to action.

Interoperability has become a critical part of Industrial IoT deployments. Standards such as OPC UA and MQTT are helping industrial firms connect data sources more effectively, making it easier to coordinate workflows across mixed-vendor environments.

Many Industrial IoT projects stall long before model performance becomes an issue because data quality, system integration, and coordination between teams remain unresolved. Data may already exist across the business, but it is often fragmented across departments, facilities, and platforms.

Where Adoption Is Advancing First

Adoption is happening fastest where the benefits are clear and automation is only allowed to act within set, controlled limits. Predictive maintenance is one of the most established use cases, with many companies moving from simple alerts to automated maintenance actions triggered by set thresholds.

Machine vision is also advancing quickly. AI inspection systems can detect defects in real time and trigger sorting, rework, or quality-control steps, particularly in automotive and electronics manufacturing, where results are easy to measure.

Energy optimization is another growing area, with systems adjusting schedules, equipment settings, and load levels to reduce waste while maintaining output. Most successful deployments focus on specific problems rather than full autonomy, delivering faster and more measurable returns.

The Challenges Ahead

Data quality, integration complexity, cybersecurity concerns, and skills shortages continue to slow progress across industrial environments. Creating reliable data foundations is often more difficult than deploying new analytics tools, and poor information can scale mistakes just as quickly as good information can scale efficiencies.

Before expanding automation, organizations need confidence that their data is accurate, recommendations are explainable, and appropriate safeguards are in place when outcomes differ from expectations.

The Shift Toward Trusted, Controlled Automation

The companies making the most progress are not necessarily those using the most advanced AI, but those with enough trust in their data and workflows to allow safe automation when speed matters. For most industrial firms, the future is not full autonomy, but steady adoption of automated workflows that handle routine decisions, while humans focus on complex, high-value judgement.

The post How Industrial IoT Is Evolving Into Autonomous Systems appeared first on IoT Business News.

California has a lot of billionaires, more than any other state and more than most countries. So a proposed wealth tax on its billionaires could be a windfall.

Under the Billionaire Tax Act, California residents with a net worth of over $1 billion would face a one-time tax equal to 5% of their net worth.

The tax plan got one step closer to becoming reality after garnering enough signatures to appear on the ballot. The deadline for ballot measures is June 25, so unless opponents can cut a deal with the groups backing the measure before then, California voters will decide on the tax in November.

If passed, the tax would apply retroactively to billionaires living in the state as of January 1, 2026. The tax would be due in 2027, with the option to spread the payment out over five years, with interest.

The tax plan has drawn sharp reactions from lawmakers and business leaders.

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin moved entities tied to them out of the state in December ahead of the deadline, Business Insider first reported.

Nvidia CEO and billionaire Jensen Huang said he was “perfectly fine” with the tax. Palmer Luckey, the billionaire founder of defense tech startup Anduril, said it would force companies to “immediately pivot into profit obsession over mission or long-term sustainability.”

Critics of the tax, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have warned it will encourage ultrawealthy residents to flee the state and hurt California’s economy. They’ve also said the one-time tax would not provide a sustainable source of funding.

Several left-leaning groups have come out against the tax in recent weeks, including the California Teachers Association and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

Supporters, including SEIU-UHW, a healthcare workers union, say the tax would provide crucial funding for healthcare services to offset federal funding cuts, as well as for education and food assistance programs.

As of January 1, there were 214 billionaires in California, according to Forbes data compiled by Americans for Tax Fairness, a group that advocates for higher taxes.

Below is the full list of billionaires in California. Names with asterisks have recently moved at least some of their business entities out of the state.

• Aldi launched free “Blind Boxes” featuring mystery grocery items for budget-savvy shoppers.
• On day one, the boxes sold out quickly, leaving some fans frustrated.
• The giveaway taps into consumer trends for budget-friendly and nutritious food options.

The giveaway is on, as Aldi bets shoppers’ love of mystery boxes extends to the grocery aisle.

The discount grocer, known for its low prices and private-label products, announced last week that it will give away free “Aldi Blind Boxes” for four days, with a limited number of mystery grocery packages available daily through AldiBlindBox.com.

A different-themed box will drop each day from Monday, June 22, through Thursday, June 25, at noon ET, and shoppers can claim one while supplies last.

The first round sold out quickly, with no more boxes available within minutes of the launch — leaving some on social media complaining they waited in the checkout line for nearly an hour only to be told the boxes had sold out as they waited in the queue.

“What’s the point of using queuing for Aldi Blind Box if it can still sell out while you’re finalizing check out,” one user on X wrote on launch day.

“That Aldi blind box was sold out in 3 MINUTES. I’m pissed!” another lamented.

In a statement to Business Insider, Aldi representatives said demand for the boxes “blew us away.”

“This was a record response — the day one Snack Blind Boxes were claimed almost instantly,” Aldi said. “Our fans didn’t just like the concept of blind boxes in grocery form — they loved it. For fans hoping to secure a Blind Box later this week, we’re sharing helpful tips across our social channels ahead of the next drop.”

On Instagram, the official Aldi account shared a warning to claim your box “the second the clock hits” the drop time, and said that if shoppers were redirected to a purchase queue, they were likely already too late.

The second giveaway box, launched Tuesday morning, sold out just as quickly.

The giveaway arrives as many Americans remain focused on stretching grocery budgets while also seeking foods that align with popular nutrition trends. Aldi’s four themes include protein, fiber, and snack products, as well as a Mystery Blind Box, and will feature items such as meats, fresh produce, snacks, cheeses, and pantry staples.

The promotion also taps into the popularity of mystery-box shopping, which has fueled demand for surprise collectibles, beauty products, and other limited-time retail drops.

“Our shoppers come to ALDI for value, but they also come for discovery,” Bridget Kozlowski, Aldi’s director of communications, said in a statement. “People love the thrill of discovering something new here.”

To get a box, shoppers must visit AldiBlindBox.com when each day’s giveaway opens and submit shipping information, according to the FAQ. Aldi said it will reveal each day’s theme on its Instagram account.

The catch: The boxes are first-come, first-served — and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Representatives for Aldi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about the supply of boxes that would be included in the giveaway or whether the promotion might return later.

• A new lawsuit takes aim at Uber’s CEO and board over thousands of rider sexual assault claims.
• The shareholder lawsuit says that Uber cut corners “in the name of growing the company.”
• Uber said the lawsuit “ignores important facts and is based on misleading, false narratives.”

Uber is facing another lawsuit over sexual assault — one that puts the blame on the company’s board and C-suite.

The complaint by a minority Uber investor, Detroit’s Police and Fire Retirement System, alleges that the company “knowingly cut compliance corners in the name of growing the company.”

Uber is facing thousands of claims that its drivers sexually assaulted passengers. The shareholder complaint filed in a California federal court on Monday takes aim at Uber’s management, including CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and members of the company’s board of directors, accusing them of not doing enough to address the assault allegations.

“Uber faces significant liability in defending these suits and responding to inquiries, in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars at stake,” the complaint reads. “Uber has also seen its reputation irredeemably damaged by the negative ongoing media coverage of the wrongdoing.”

An Uber spokesperson said that the lawsuit “ignores important facts and is based on misleading, false narratives from other meritless lawsuits that we have already addressed publicly and in the courtroom.”

Uber has said that safety incidents are “exceptionally rare” on its app, and that the company is “constantly working to make every trip safer.”

The lawsuit says that Khosrowshahi, who succeeded Travis Kalanick as Uber’s CEO in 2017, “made cosmetic changes to Uber’s compliance practices and workplace culture, and became less brazen in pushing regulatory limits.”

“But Uber’s culture of prioritizing cost-cutting measures meant that it continued to skimp on compliance or even seek to tamp down on complaints,” the complaint says.

At odds with Uber’s gig-work model

The lawsuit claims Uber knew sexual assault and misconduct were persistent problems on its platform, yet failed to adopt measures that employees believed could reduce harm.

For example, the complaint alleges that Uber considered safety initiatives, including in-car cameras, more rigorous background checks, and programs that would better match women riders and drivers. Uber either implemented these proposals after delays or rejected them, the suit says.

Uber studied adding in-car cameras to its drivers’ vehicles around 2017, for instance, and “found the plan to be feasible, cost-effective, likely to reduce the incidence of misconduct, and help drivers,” the lawsuit says.

The company declined to add cameras to cars “because it would mean exercising greater control over drivers’ activities, weakening Uber’s argument that its drivers are independent contractors,” the complaint states. Uber drivers are paid per trip or task and do not receive benefits, such as healthcare, that employees usually receive.

The suit points to thousands of sexual-assault lawsuits filed against Uber and alleges that the board caused “Uber to engage in unlawful conduct.” As a result, the plaintiffs argue, Uber now faces litigation costs, regulatory scrutiny, and lasting reputational damage stemming from years of inadequate oversight.

Do you have a story to share about Uber? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.