American Airlines flight attendants are asking federal officials for the right to go on strike, possibly before the end of the Christmas and New Year’s travel rush, but American said there was “no possibility” of a walkout over the holidays.

Leaders of the flight attendants’ union say they are frustrated with the lack of progress in negotiations over a new contract for workers who have not seen raises since 2019, and on Monday they asked the National Mediation Board on Monday for permission to strike after a 30-day “cooling-off period.”

Meanwhile, pilots at Southwest opened a “strike center” in Dallas this week. Officials with the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association say they too will ask for the right to strike if they don’t have a contract deal with the airline in the next few days.

Musical chairs among AI execs

The company that created ChatGPT is in turmoil after Microsoft hired its ousted CEO and many more employees threatened to follow him in a conflict that centered in part on the safest way to build artificial intelligence.

The developments followed a weekend of drama that shocked the AI field and fueled speculation about the future of OpenAI.

The startup’s new CEO vowed to investigate the firing of co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.

He’s been instrumental in OpenAI’s transformation from a nonprofit research laboratory into a world-renowned commercial startup that inaugurated the era of generative artificial intelligence.

Microsoft scooped up the ousted exec and announced that Altman and OpenAI’s former president, Greg Brockman, would lead its own new advanced AI research team.