• The AI-apocalypse debate has a silver lining: Everyone is watching.
• If you know what outcome to guard against, you play better defense, consciously or not.
• Sign up for First Trade, Business Insider's daily markets newsletter.

Backlash against AI has been building for a while. But apocalyptic warnings in recent days have kicked it into a new gear.

Warnings of bigger electric bills and job displacement suddenly feel like peanuts compared to the existential questions being asked. Who cares if your utility bill is higher if the world is barreling towards oblivion?

The initial headliner of this new wave of apocalyptic warnings was Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic researcher who just quit, claiming that Anthropic and OpenAI are "gambling with our lives."

The floodgates opened after Coxon's now-infamous X post. Paul Christiano, a new appointee to OpenAI's board and safety committee, poured fuel on the flames the next day, saying that "most people could die" if we "build superintelligence without more robust alignment" and "permanently lose control of it."

Pretty heavy stuff! But it became pretty par for the course as more high-profile warnings were issued through the end of the week.

Then, in a weekend essay, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote that he'd "become convinced" the breakneck pace of advancement must change, proposing a three-step safety plan. Altman said OpenAI would match Anthropic's commitment to give independent evaluators deep access, while Musk declared that "Dario is right."

It's all quite jarring, but there's a silver lining: All this sudden attention may make the worst-case outcome less likely.

The logic goes that if you know what outcome to guard against, you play better defense, consciously or not. Open discussion leads to broader awareness. AI risks are now being earnestly debated by researchers, executives, regulators, investors, and the public in real time. That should help avoid an extinction-level event where everyone is caught off-guard.

Market parallels

The aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis offers an apt comparison, and potentially an aspirational story.

The behavior of investors, financial institutions, and regulators changed after the market was caught fully exposed to a mortgage meltdown. Guarding against a repeat became a major priority. Never again would they underappreciate hidden risks to the point that they tipped into crisis.

Now that the previously unthinkable has been recognized as a real risk, getting caught flat-footed is less likely. A surprise downturn may still be possible, but it's no longer an outcome markets are blindly stumbling toward.

A shrug from investors

As the internet has been lit ablaze by AI apocalypse fears, markets have remained largely nonplussed.

Yes, the stock market was lower for the week. But that weakness was driven by more familiar causes: higher oil prices, inflation fears, and Treasury yields rising on the prospect of a rate hike this week. Stocks then rallied to close out the week.

If the world is going to end imminently, it's going to do so with the S&P 500 less than 2% from record highs.

Still work to be done

Of course, awareness alone is not a force field. The AI race could still overwhelm good intentions, and an alarming X post is no substitute for an actual safety plan.

That means tougher testing before the most powerful models are released, clear disclosure when they behave dangerously, limits on who can access them, and independent oversight with some real teeth.

It also means rival labs will need to find ways to share safety standards rather than treat caution as a competitive disadvantage.

But the bleakest scenario is one humanity fails to see until it is too late. At least this danger is firmly out in the open. Now the next step is to build the brakes before we need them.

• The majority of PMs from the day-one team of Schonfeld's macro unit have departed.
• The unit has grown considerably despite the departures, with the group now close to 150 investment staffers.
• The growth is an example of how the industry's biggest funds are more institutional than ever.

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors' macro unit won't stop growing, even though early-day hires have left the $23 billion firm.

The group — which invests across asset classes based on where it thinks global interest rates, inflation, and other economic trends are headed — has more than doubled its investment head count since last year, to nearly 150 investment staffers, a person close to the fund told Business Insider. It is run by co-heads Colin Lancaster and Mitesh Parikh and macro COO Omar Faruqui.

Schonfeld's macro unit now runs close to a fifth of what the firm is putting out into various markets day in and day out, the person close to the firm said, and has added 15 new PMs in 2026. Those hires include a pair of Dubai-based Point72 traders, Prejesh Patel and Pierre-Anthony Bodin, and 25-year JPMorgan veteran Wentao Mu. Kevin McDonald, Balyasny's former deputy COO for the fund's fixed income and macro division, is also joining as the unit's co-COO.

This recent growth has coincided with more and more members of the firm's day-one macro team leaving. It's an example of how the edge of Schonfeld and other multistrategy funds — the investing behemoths that have come to define the hedge fund industry with their scale, ambitions, and growth — comes from their structure, not their personnel.

While no fund wants to lose talented people, a strong multistrategy firm should be able to weather departures and market volatility with strong risk systems and operational excellence.

Schonfeld's macro unit trading in early 2022 with billions in leveraged capital and less than a dozen money managers. Nearly all of those early PMs have filtered out of the $23 billion firm, with former Goldman Sachs managing director Francesco Cafagna the lone exception.

Recent early-day hires that have left include:

• Marwan Moubachir, the unit's former head of risk, who is joining Dymon Asia
• Amu Latif, the onetime global head of macro trading
• Manas Baveja, a PM who is also joining Dymon Asia as the Singapore-based firm's head of macro
• Ryan McCort, the unit's top recruiter, who joined rival Brevan Howard last fall

Inside Schonfeld's macro expansion

Despite the changing nameplates, the unit has grown and expanded.

Following a near-existential moment in late 2023, when the firm was close to merging with larger rival Millennium, Schonfeld has grown its asset base and teams considerably, in part thanks to strong returns, including 2024's near-20% gain, which led the way among peers.

Macro has been a significant part of the firm's resurgence. The unit now has 45 trading pods, the person close to the manager said. For a sense of scale, the firm's investment staff is larger than Rokos Capital's, a macro hedge fund with roughly the same amount of capital as Schonfeld. Rokos has fewer than 100 investment team members, according to regulatory filings, though the London-based firm concentrates a significant portion of its assets in the portfolio of its billionaire founder, Chris Rokos.

Schonfeld's macro unit has made money in 84% of the months it has traded and has produced a Sharpe ratio — a metric used to measure an investment's return relative to the risk required to generate it — of over 3. Typically, a Sharpe above 1.5 is considered very good for a multistrategy firm.

The macro unit's returns are not broken out from the firm's flagship Partners fund, which is up 6.8% on the year after a 0.2% gain in August.

While there's been talent turnover in the still-young unit, including some who worked with Lancaster and Parikh at their former firm, Matador Investment Partners, Schonfeld's leaders believe the firm is an outlier in an industry where employee churn is a feature, not a bug. The person close to the firm told Business Insider that firmwide PM turnover is just 2% annually.

• Michael Polansky cofounded Outer Bio, a biotech company researching human skin.
• His fiancée, Lady Gaga, sits on the company's board of directors.
• Outer Bio is training AI models on data collected from skin samples.

Michael Polansky is busy.

In the last decade, he's cofounded a philanthropic nonprofit, launched an early-stage venture capital firm, helmed an asset management firm, got engaged to Lady Gaga, and somehow, had time to become a Grammy-nominated artist for co-writing seven songs on his fiancée's sixth studio album, "Mayhem."

He and Lady Gaga also just welcomed their first child together.

He's no stranger to the spotlight, but one of his most ambitious projects to date has remained largely unknown to the public.

"We made the decision internally that we weren't going to talk about what we were doing until the data we generated was publication worthy," Polansky told Business Insider.

That moment came late last month.

"We are building the future of skin health," Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, wrote on X on August 21. "Welcome from Michael, Me and the entire team at Outer Bio."

Founded in 2020, Outer Bio is a Massachusetts-based company that studies human skin to discover new bioactive ingredients, or compounds that can affect living tissue. Ideally, for Outer Bio, those ingredients could be used across a variety of industries, from pharmaceutical to beauty. Lady Gaga sits on the board of directors.

"If you imagine products in Ulta or CVS, they have all sorts of active ingredients in them," Polansky said. "We would have proprietary active ingredients in products that were sold by other people."

Outer Bio's research

Studying human skin is tricky. Conducting tests on living people is highly regulated and an ethical minefield, while options like artificial skin and lab-grown organoids don't provide the same insights as actual skin. Plus, skin living outside the body can die quickly, making it difficult to conduct long-term studies.

That's where Yuna, a research and development system Outer Bio developed in 2022, comes into play. It can keep living, full-thickness human skin observable for four weeks, the company says. The platform includes a 3D printed support structure that helps deliver nutrients to the skin tissue and remove waste.

Yuna is just one cog in Outer Bio's machine, though.

Outer Bio also collects donated living skin samples from a network of sources — hospitals, biobanks, medical research centers — that are typically left over from surgery or elective medical procedures. The team processes the skin tissue in-house, sometimes turning a single piece into dozens of samples. Then, the skin is prepped for experimentation and placed in custom-made well plates.

Outer Bio says it is focused on several research areas, including wound healing, pigmentation, chronic inflammation, aging, and skin barrier function.

"We will often remove samples throughout the month to collect data at different points in time," Polansky said. "Every single experiment has the freedom to be different depending on what the questions are and what the data is. Then that goes through our data generation process."

The company uses AI models trained on the data it collects to predict which compounds could have bioactive or toxic effects on human skin. The skin is processed by its systems, and the results are fed back into the AI models to improve their predictive capabilities.

Polansky said that data collection is Outer Bio's north star.

"We're moving into an era where the amount of innovation that's needed in biology and life sciences is going too slowly," Polansky said. "I think that the only way that goes faster is that we have better data."

Polansky said there's been progress in the biology and life sciences fields, but biological data collection for AI models is still growing.

"We think of ourselves as a data company first and foremost," Polansky said. "We're not generative AI. We're predictive AI."

Partnerships

Although Outer Bio is focused on data, they've also secured partnerships with companies that can turn the bioactive ingredients they've discovered into real products.

"As we discover chemicals or mechanisms that have immediate commercial or human relevance, it would be silly not to take advantage of that," Polansky said.

Lady Gaga's cosmetics brand, Haus Labs, was an early partner with Outer Bio. Polansky also sits on the board of directors for Haus Labs.

"The Haus Labs partnership is unique because Stefani and I are both involved with both companies," Polansky said. "It's super aligned, but we are working with other beauty companies that do totally different things with us than what Haus Labs does. Haus Labs' ambitions around innovation are very unique to them."

Polansky said that, ultimately, Outer Bio can push forward the skin health industry and biological machine learning.

"One of the things that I like about this company is that it truly is a scientific and technical problem that is very hard," he said. "No matter how long it took us to solve it, it would've been worth it because it opens up so many possibilities."

• He began by cutting neighbors' grass for about $25 a lawn.
• A move at 14 meant rebuilding his customer base from scratch.
• He now oversees millions of dollars' worth of equipment — and works six days a week.

Some kids mow lawns for pocket money and move on. Cody Kuebler kept at it, turning the childhood gig into a multimillion-dollar business.

Now 25, Kuebler said he spent his summers growing up cutting his neighbors' grass for around $25 a job, first with an aging push mower, and later with one his father gave him for his 11th birthday. The gift involved "a little bit of horse-trading," he said: He'd have to cut his dad's lawn.

Along the way, he hired friends so he could take on more customers and expand into snow removal during the winter months. Eventually, he earned enough to invest in riding lawn mowers with wagons attached.

"I got a little taste of earning money and being my own boss," Kuebler told Business Insider. "That kind of stuck in my head."

Getting to where he is today, though, took grit and determination. Kuebler's parents divorced when he was 10, and a few years later, he moved from his childhood home in a small Iowa town to Des Moines after his father got a new job there. That meant having to start his fledgling business all over again.

"It was frustrating because I had built a decent amount of customers that I lost over a decision I didn't make and couldn't change," Kuebler said.

He pressed ahead, though as high school graduation approached, Kuebler wasn't sure his business could lead to a career. Since he is a car enthusiast and had already earned enough credits to graduate, he said he spent part of his senior year studying diesel mechanics at a local community college. He dropped out during the first semester, concluding he'd spent enough time in the classroom.

Kuebler also considered working in sales. He got a job at a tire shop, but said his boss wasn't interested in pursuing ideas he had to grow the business. That experience clarified his own ambitions.

"I always knew I wanted to do more in life," Kuebler said. "What that was, I didn't know at the time, but what I did know was how to cut grass."

So Kuebler quit the tire shop to focus on his lawn-mowing and snow-removal venture, starting by setting it up as a limited liability company, or LLC, called CLK Landscape Construction. It was March 2020, a time that turned out to be ideal, as the pandemic was getting underway. Over the next two years, sales ballooned nearly ninefold to around $730,000.

"What Covid actually did was keep people home, looking at their lawns," he said. "The landscaping market just boomed."

Leveling up

As Kuebler took on larger landscaping jobs, he needed heavier equipment. After a week of rain prevented him from using a skid loader he'd rented, he began visiting dealerships in hopes of acquiring one of his own.

The machine Kuebler wanted cost about $80,000, and he needed a loan. Just 19 at the time, he said most of the salespeople he approached didn't take him seriously. One interrupted their conversation to answer a phone call and never returned to it.

Eventually, Kuebler found a dealer willing to back him, and today his business has nine skid loaders and two mini skid loaders, plus 18 trucks, 12 trailers, 2 tractors, and a mini excavator. He said the equipment is worth about $2.5 million, and that some of it is owned, and some is leased.

"You just got to keep pushing because a lot of people don't see the vision," he said of what it takes for young entrepreneurs to get ahead when others have doubts about their age or experience.

In 2022, drawn to the complexity of builder-led projects, Kuebler began shifting from servicing homeowners to residential and commercial builders. The expansion brought a new set of challenges—and some expensive lessons.

Kuebler said he underbid some jobs, missed deadlines, and lost customers. His company once had to redo a job when water failed to drain properly, while equipment breakdowns and projects that took longer than expected cut into profits.

"Don't be scared to fail," Kuebler said, because despite those setbacks, his business reached $1.1 million in sales in 2023, $3.2 million in 2024, and $4.5 million last year. "We fail a lot."

Tradeoffs

To be sure, Kuebeler's persistence has come at a steep cost to his free time. He said he typically works from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., six days a week, juggling everything from preparing quotes for prospective customers to reviewing jobs in progress and overseeing quality control.

"The amount of work we do takes time to get done," he said.

Despite the grueling schedule, Kuebler said he enjoys being his own boss and makes a comfortable living. He pays himself a $100,000 annual salary, plus an annual bonus that can increase his total compensation by 80% to 100%, depending on the company's net results.

What's more, Kuebler's business has become a family affair: The father who gave him his first new mower now works for him as operations manager.

"It was an easy hire," said Kuebler. "Obviously, he looks out for the company's best interest. He's blood-tied to it, and we get along great."

• 2027's cars are arriving fashionably late: just 12.4% of new inventory is 2027.
• Several brands are just getting started with their 2027 model-year shipments.
• The slower switch could help patient shoppers score a deal on a 2026 model later this fall, analysts say.

The auto industry is clinging to 2026.

At the end of August, just 12.4% of new-vehicle inventory was 2027 model-year, according to CarGurus data shared with Business Insider. That's a sharp break from recent patterns: At the same point in each of the past three years, roughly one-quarter of new dealership inventory was for the next model year.

Kevin Roberts, the director of economic and market intelligence for CarGurus, told Business Insider that the transition looks similar to the period from 2020 through 2022, when the industry was dealing with Covid-era assembly-line shutdowns and chip shortages.

This year is different and less existential, he said, because "a lot of factors all came together to create something kind of unique this year."

High-volume cars are driving the trend

America's most popular cars are showing up late to the 2027 party.

Erin Keating, Cox Automotive's executive analyst, told Business Insider that the trend is largely powered by big-name vehicles getting refreshed designs at different times.

"In several cases, what looks like a slowdown at the brand level is really individual models rotating," she said. "It's important not to read this as uniform across a brand's whole lineup."

GM is the cleanest example. The Detroit automaker has redesigned the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra for 2027, with assembly of the new trucks expected to begin in October. The pickups are the company's best sellers, so a later handoff keeps an outsize number of 2026 models in the market.

Other examples are more idiosyncratic, but still focused on best-sellers. Nissan's high-volume Rogue received a 2026.5 model year. Toyota's ever-popular RAV4 got its 2026 update in calendar 2025, making a quick switch to a 2027 version less likely.

Honda is still sending fresh 2026 models to dealerships, too, Roberts said. The car company told Business Insider that some of its best-selling 2027 CR-V SUVs have reached dealerships, but model year changeover "is not fixed to a specific month, quarter, or time of year."

"The 2027 model-year rollout is picking up speed but running behind last year's schedule," Keating said, adding that Kia, Cadillac, and BMW are already well into the model year switch. "It's an uneven transition, though."

Deals to come?

Cars are expensive.

The average transaction price for a new vehicle climbed back above $50,000 in August, according to Cox Automotive data. Keating said the later model-year transition could help "keep prices more stable," rather than pushing them down. Normally, freshly designed cars also come with higher prices.

Patient shoppers may still find an opportunity, Roberts added. As 2027 inventory arrives in greater numbers, dealers will have more reason to move remaining 2026 models.

"Eventually you'll start to see better deals for consumers on incentives," he said. "The timing might be a little bit more delayed this year."

• Thomas Heep was laid off last year and thinks age discrimination could be hindering his job search.
• He's working part time and collecting Social Security, but says he's just scraping by financially.
• Heep recently filed for bankruptcy and believes it was the right decision.

This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Thomas Heep, a job seeker in his 60s who lives in Denver. He was laid off in April 2025 and is still looking for full-time work. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was laid off from my job as an operations manager on April 4, 2025. I've been looking for full-time work since then.

I'm currently working part-time, delivering prescriptions to patients in the Denver area, and I started collecting Social Security in my 60s, before reaching my full retirement age of 67. Both combined aren't enough to pay all my bills. Earlier this year, I filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

I'm an only child and the last living member of my family. Not having a family to turn to definitely increases the pressure in a situation like mine.

I recently had an in-person interview for a job that paid $20 an hour. I felt like the interview went well, and I'd be grateful to get the job.

But there's always a part of you that thinks: I've worked all my life to maybe get to this. A $20-an-hour job.

I feel like I'm basically starting at zero.

The job search process feels broken

My job search has been 99% online — LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, and stuff like that. Looking for work primarily online wasn't new to me, as I'd landed my last job only about a year before I was laid off.

But this job search has felt different. I think the system is broken.

First of all, so many of the companies I apply to don't respond at all. I started working during a time when you could just walk into a business, maybe they had a "We're hiring" sign, and you could talk to somebody right there. That doesn't happen anymore. You have to go online and fill everything out, with a very high chance you'll never hear back. It's such a process now, and I don't think it's as effective as people think.

Companies can also easily get buried by résumés when they post a job opening. A decent-paying job in a stable field will get hundreds of applications. "Work from home" roles are worse. I've seen application numbers in the 2,000s and higher. How is anybody going to get through that number of applicants?

I also think companies are looking for people who fully match every skill they list and don't need any training. That's just not going to happen.

I believe my age is a major hurdle

I believe age discrimination could be a big part of why my job search has been so challenging.

Even if a company loves my résumé, skill set, and work history, they're going to look at my age and go: How long is he going to stay? He's close to retirement age. It's too risky. I've tried shortening my work history or omitting my age from my résumé, but I think they can still probably figure it out.

At a recent in-person interview, they needed my driver's license, so they knew immediately how old I was. They asked whether I knew I would be on my feet all day and whether I could lift 50 pounds. It felt like they were trying to figure out whether I could really handle the work.

For me, 50 pounds is nothing. If there's one thing that's gone right in my life, it's my health. But I struggled to figure out exactly how to convey that in an interview. I want to reassure them that I can do the work without coming across as egotistical.

Regardless, I was proud that I'd gotten the interview in the first place. The company told me it had received over 200 applications for the job.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place financially

I'm scraping by financially. Since I started collecting Social Security before reaching my full retirement age of 67, some of my benefits can be withheld if I earn above a certain amount.

If I earn more than $24,480 from working this year, $1 in benefits is withheld for every $2 I earn above that amount. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. What else am I going to do? I have to have income somehow. I really don't have a choice.

Earlier this year, I filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after exhausting what I felt were my other options. So far, I think it was the right decision. My credit score actually went up after I filed, and bankruptcy ended up looking much better to me than some of the debt-consolidation programs I'd explored.

With less income, I've had to learn how to budget. I used to think I was good at budgeting, but I really wasn't. I've become better at it because there's no soft landing here. I either work, or I'm screwed.

This job search might be the greatest challenge of my life

I've never been in this situation before.

Has it affected me mentally? A hundred percent. I've gone through days where I don't want to get out of bed, and I have to convince myself to do this or that sometimes.

It's especially hard when you look in the rearview mirror and look at what you've done in your career. I believe that every place I've worked at, I've made it better. To think that now, because of my age or whatever the case may be, that I can't get a job — it's devastating.

But I just keep going. I keep grinding. You have to constantly convince yourself not to lose faith in a situation like mine. If you lose that, then you're going to be in trouble.

Do you have a story to share? Reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Legora says it wants to collect the world's legal data as it deepens its presence in Big Law.
• The company has hired a team of former attorneys to build an index of legal research.
• The move puts the unicorn startup in closer competition with incumbents LexisNexis and Westlaw.

Legora helped sell lawyers on artificial intelligence. Now it wants to keep bad law out of their files.

In legal terms, a case is "good law" when a lawyer can still safely rely on it. It has not been overturned, superseded by a new statute, or undercut by a court decision. Getting that wrong can mean citing a rule that no longer applies: an embarrassing mistake at best, and one that could damage a client's case.

To help it get there, Legora, one of the highest-valued and best-funded startups building tech for law firms and legal teams inside large companies, is growing its corpus of case law and other legal data.

The company has quietly hired a team of former attorneys to collect the law in the jurisdictions it covers, then map how cases and statutes rank and relate to one another.

Its push into legal research is chasing two goals. If Legora can link its software to a rich source of verified material, it could reduce the risk of "hallucinations," or wrong information slipping into its system's outputs, said Melanie Brown, Legora's senior director of legal data.

The second reason: Legora is fighting for a larger share of a market that has been controlled by a duopoly for decades.

For most large firms, access to LexisNexis and Westlaw isn't a nice-to-have. Lawyers turn to these databases to look up cases or statutes, and to make sure the authorities they plan to cite are still good law. In recent years, both conglomerates have invested heavily in technology that can handle the drafting and analysis that follow that research.

The quality of those tools is openly debated online — and in Legora's conversations with prospective customers. Brown, who worked at Rlex, which owns LexisNexis, before joining Legora earlier this year, said the frustration she hears most often is that firms feel forced to choose: access to the best legal data, or better technology.

Legora's push into legal research aims to turn the Big Two into the Big Three.

The Swedish company has already struck licensing deals with "tens" of publishers around the world, including Wolters Kluwer, Brown said, and has another dozen in the pipeline. Legora does not license content from LexisNexis or Thomson Reuters, Westlaw's owner.

The plan now is to harvest more of the world's law directly.

That process is extremely tedious. In the United States, court rulings are public records, but the versions that attorneys can actually cite remain trapped inside physical volumes owned by LexisNexis and Westlaw. To get citable case law into Legora, employees cut the spines off those books, strip out the publishers' headnotes and summaries, scan the pages, and check that the digital copies are accurate.

Eventually, Brown wants the entire legal universe to live on Legora. Unlike humans, she said, artificial intelligence systems are not especially good at recognizing the limits of their own knowledge. "It needs everything to be able to reason effectively," she said.

The big question is whether law firms will feel ready to turn off their LexisNexis and Westlaw accounts and spend more on Legora instead. Attorneys still reach for those databases with the same muscle memory they use to open a Word document. Even if Legora could collect a similar corpus, it would not carry the same halo of authority.

But building a credible alternative to the legal research incumbents is only one front in Legora's campaign. It is also trying to close the gap with Harvey, the better-funded startup that sells to Big Law firms and corporate legal departments.

That battle may come down to product. Legora is betting that the money it spends building its own law library will translate into a better experience for lawyers — a win whether or not it succeeds in chipping away at the duopoly.

• Penny's Coffee Shop in Buffalo, NY had a ChatGPT-made seasonal menu poster.
• Instagram comments and angry DMs rolled in. The owner agreed to not use AI art but spoke out against the personal attacks.
• The owner, a new mom, tells us she usually made the posters in-house, and hadn't skimped out on hiring an artist.

Megi Endeladze never expected to be at the center of an AI backlash.

She and her husband opened Penny's Coffee Shop in downtown Buffalo, New York three years ago. Endeladze kept her 9-to-5 as a chiropractor while spending her free time helping out in the shop.

One of the duties she relished was photographing the drinks and menu items, including a few signature items like a cheesy bread dish from their native country, Georgia, for their social media channels and website.

Penny's Coffee Shop would switch seasonal drinks every few months, and Endeladze would photograph the new items herself, and it would end up being a full-day event. "You have to time it so the foam doesn't deflate," Endeladze explained to Business Insider.

Then, one of the more artistically gifted baristas would create a chalkboard sign for the new drink menus or promotional specials. Over the years, there had been several employees skilled with lettering and design, and the duty had always rotated among them, always done in-house.

But this fall, the aesthetically inclined barista who most recently chalked the signs had moved out of town, Endelaydsze said, and there was no one on staff at the moment who had the skill set to do a chalkboard. So Endelaydsze decided to get a poster printed up instead. She considered doing what she has done in the past: taking her own photos and editing them together with Canva. But with a newborn baby, she figured she could save herself some time and do it with AI.

"I felt like a genius, and made posters using AI and frame them," she told me. 'Not knowing how much damage it would cause my coffee shop."

She used ChatGPT to make an image of the menu, and got the poster professionally printed up for around $150. She also bought a plastic poster holder that cost around $200.

Then, she posted a photo of the new menu sign to Instagram. Very soon, the negative comments started rolling in:

"AI Slop."

"Really a shame honestly."

"Yikes."

"SHAME SHAME SHAME."

Angry DMs, including a threat

"Penny's customer — or I guess ex-customer now," started one DM. "I'm sorry it came to this, but AI is a hard no for me."

"I didn't do it on purpose to upset anybody, especially customers," Endeladze told me. "In Buffalo, where we are, it's a lot of artistic community and all that. I didn't even think of that like that."

She was up during the night pumping for her three-month-old baby and was scrolling through the comments and DMs, horrified.

"At 4 a.m., I was holding my pump on my lap and replying to this person, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it that way,'" she told me. "I was so into typing this message that I produced so much milk, it was dripping down my legs because I overflowed the pump."

She noticed she had lost about 100 followers — some of whom told her as much before they unfollowed.

Then came a threat. An account with a much larger following DM'd her and told her to take down the sign, or they would post about it to their local artist community. The person offered to help her find an artist to pay to make a new sign, or else they would post about it.

They gave her a day to "think about it."

'There is a real person behind this small business'

Endeladze posted a follow-up to Instagram to apologize, saying that she had decided the coffee shop would not use AI for menu artwork or promo designs.

But she also urged her customers to approach the topic with "kindness and respect."

"What has been difficult for me, however, is the amount of negativity, personal attacks, and messages that followed this situation," she wrote. "There is a real person behind this small business. I am doing my best to run a local coffee shop, support my team, serve our community, and navigate being a new mom at the same time."

Penny's Coffee Shop isn't the only business that has experienced some backlash when using AI.

A bagel shop owner in Vermont got vitriolic comments when he used AI images to promote the shop on Instagram. Recently, images of delis using AI to make signs and menus, sometimes with freakish results, have gone viral online.

Endeladyze said she felt terrible that she had upset her customers, but she was also frustrated at the idea that she should have been paying a real artist. Making these signs was a job only she had done herself or with employees in the past, never hiring outsiders.

"I was just tired of thanking people for sending me all these artists locally, all these girls who do other coffee shop posters. Then I had to politely be like, 'Okay, thank you so much. I will look into them.' I didn't want to be like, 'I can do it myself.' And I will do it myself. Next time around, I will do it with Canva myself. I've done it for three whole years."

• China's spy chief offered a rare look at what Beijing sees as AI's biggest risks.
• Chen Yixin identified six major AI risks for China in a journal article published Sunday.
• His warning comes as leaders of the biggest AI companies publicly agreed that a slowdown is necessary

China's spy chief just offered a window into Beijing's priorities when it comes to AI's biggest risks.

Chen Yixin, China's minister of state security, published an article Sunday morning in China Cyberspace, a journal run by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet regulator.

In it, Chen identified six major risks AI could pose to Beijing. The first was "regime security."

He wrote that "various hostile forces and malicious individuals abuse generative AI technologies — such as deepfake audio and video, AI-generated images and text, and intelligent online armies — to produce political rumors at low cost and in large quantities."

Those tools can "spread harmful information, incite antagonistic emotions, and wage a war of public opinion and cognitive warfare," posing direct threats to China's political, institutional, and ideological security, he said.

Chen also identified five other major AI risks, including:

• Dangers to China's critical infrastructure, because cyberattacks can be carried out with extreme efficiency, considering the power of models like Mythos.
• The risk of large-scale data leaks, where Chinese AI users and foreign intelligence agencies alike could obtain critical national data, trade secrets, or citizens' personal information.
• An imbalance in technological development caused by monopolies and closed technological systems, as countries can exploit AI's power and fragment supply chains in the name of national security.
• Challenges to social governance that lead to disruptions in public order.
• Fundamental shifts in warfare, as AI-powered precision targeting gives adversaries a major advantage on the battlefield.

More regulation for the 'wellbeing of all humanity'

Chen advocated for strong "developmental guidelines" for AI to be put in place — essentially, more government control of AI development.

What that involves, per Chen, will be for Beijing to "accelerate the construction of a security risk prevention and control system." China should promote the "healthy and orderly development" of AI through "high-efficiency governance," Chen said.

Chen also said AI should be developed "with the wellbeing of all humanity as its guiding principle."

He added, too, that global powers must "resolutely resist hegemonism, technological barriers, and exclusive blocs," and work to set up a "fair and open international AI rules system."

Chen's comments come as Chinese leader Xi Jinping advocated for AI progress at the BRICS summit in New Delhi on Sunday.

"We should take a people-centered approach, develop AI for the positive and for good, and work faster to evolve a consensus-based global AI governance framework, so that new technologies can light the way toward shared prosperity," Xi said.

The comments from Chen and Xi came as the debate over a possible AI apocalypse heats up in the US. Over the weekend, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk all backed calls to slow the pace of frontier AI development.

The CEOs voiced these concerns after several of their employees issued public warnings that the products they are making, if developed unchecked, could wipe out most of humanity.

In the most high profile instance, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic, saying both the lab and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI are "gambling with our lives."

As soon as they had sex on July 27, Bryan Johnson tells me, he knew his cofounder and girlfriend, Kate Tolo, was hours away from getting her period.

Normally, the couple has sex two to three times a week, most often between 3 and 5 p.m. "Too close to Bryan's bedtime" — 8:30 p.m. — "is a problem," says Kate, her knee touching Bryan's thigh on the couch, late afternoon sunlight dappling their pale cheeks. And it's electric, they tell me. "It's all there: primal, love, safety, connection," Bryan says. "I don't know what the stat is, but some substantial proportion of women never have an orgasm." Kate smiles. She is not among this substantial proportion.

But on that day they hadn't had sex for some time, because Kate was really, really stressed. "The highest stress levels I've ever seen her have," Bryan says. She was worried about all that it was going to take to become, as Bryan has put it, "a female Bryan Johnson."

You may have heard something about Bryan's body, willingly or not. Maybe it's how long his penis is erect each night — 4 hours and 2 minutes, which happens to be the exact length of Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of "Hamlet." Maybe it's the 2,250 calories Bryan ingests each day, a diet that includes 130 grams of protein, 30 vitamins and supplements (some of which he sells through his health optimization startup Blueprint), and something called nutty pudding, all of it consumed before he stops eating at noon. Bryan, a centimillionaire from a payments company he sold in 2013 and now the face of the $30 billion longevity industry, says he spends $2 million a year on his body to claim the title of most measured man in the world. He is attempting to de-age every organ and defeat death, his life's mission.

Now Kate, Blueprint's cofounder, could become the most measured woman in the world. Unlike her 49-year-old boyfriend, 30-year-old Kate is less fixated on longevity and more interested in "legibility": She was recently diagnosed with endometriosis — a chronic uterine condition that affects about 10% of women but is understudied — and wants to create a massive biological portrait of herself to help the world better understand women's health. "My job is to be the Rosetta Stone for women," she says in her Australian accent. From the moment she wakes up at 6:30 a.m. she was to begin an elaborately choreographed four-hour techno-ballet of scratching, sniffing, spitting, scanning, stretching, gripping, vibrating, flexing, plucking, poking, pulling, peeing, and pooping, using some 50 devices and 30 apps that, for $2.6 million a year, would log everything from her pain tolerance to her reaction time, from her grip strength to her vaginal wetness.

Because Bryan, Kate, and their startup's medical team want to test how these variables change across Kate's menstrual cycle, she would start this routine — or "protocol" in longevity patois — when her period began. But she says the stress of the project was prolonging that. In June, Bryan posted to his 2 million followers on X that they expected she would start menstruating on July 13. The day came and went. Then another two weeks.

"Kate's well-being depends upon touch," Bryan tells me. "And so she has been so wound up, and she's not had intimacy. And I think her body was just like, 'I can't function.'" So when they did finally have sex, Bryan says, "She just melted." He whispers the last word as it floats in his ultrapurified living room air toward a bookshelf filled with Peter Thiel's "Zero to One," biographies of the Founding Fathers, and a well-worn copy of "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder" from Bryan's past life as a Mormon missionary. "And I was like, well, sure, it's a couple hours away."

The sex was on Monday. The cofounders were telling me all this on Wednesday as a sort of apology, or explanation. They had originally invited me over to interview them while they conducted what Kate was pretty certain was a "world's first experiment." They would each swallow a Bluetooth-connected pill and then get in Bryan's sauna while the pills collected data on how the 200-degree heat changes a man and a woman's internal body temperatures. "It will be very intimate, we'll be naked beneath our towels," Kate told me. Then at 4:48 a.m. Los Angeles time on Tuesday, Kate texted me: "Hey Zak — I just woke up and have started my period." He called it. Bryan Johnson's menstrualogical johnson was bang on.

I. Adam & Eve 2.0

Oh, Bryan and Kate, America's anti-sweets sweethearts, founders who bone as they build, neuro-atypical performance artists puncturing the spongy boundaries of TMI — they had transfixed me ever since they made their relationship public last December, when Bryan posted a gooey 1,300-word tweet that began, "Guys … I have a girlfriend." At a time when we share more about ourselves with more people than we have in human history, they share even more: when Bryan is performing oral sex on Kate, Bryan's bone mineral density (in the 99.6th percentile of all men), the particulates of Kate's vaginal microbiome ("top 1% of all vaginas," Bryan bugled). Why? And why does it seem we know so little about the couple we know everything about? Who are Bryan and Kate?

Or, to put it the way they do, What are Bryan and Kate?

"Both of us have become concepts. We're no longer people," Bryan says, a line that strikes me as both acute self-awareness as an influencer and savvy self-branding. "We're obsessed with this question: What is Bryan and Kate? What is our archetype? To be honest, we don't know."

As concepts, they accept that the commentariat, and actual scientists, will attempt to define them. To some — to the Ross Douthats, Kara Swishers, and Bill Mahers of the world — they are attention whores, pseudoscientific grifters, human lab rats, prisoners to optimization, vampires, Gilgamesh with a selfie stick, Dorian Gray with peptides. Kate is a gold digger, Bryan is a narcissistic control freak, a match made in the hell they'll find themselves in when their quest for immortality on Earth inevitably fails, as it has every human who ever lived.

To others — including billionaires chasing eternal youth and people who see the couple as putting their time and money to more beneficial uses than most billionaires — they are pioneers. They are shackling themselves now so that they may free humanity from poor health in the future. They are liberating us from a limp new Puritanism of celibacy and squeamishness. Kate is a modern Marie Curie, Bryan is a modern, virile Jesus Christ, a match made in the AI heaven we'll all soon be living in. (The Lamb of God comparison actually comes from Bryan on his Substack.)

"What if we're the new Adam and Eve?" Kate, who grew up Catholic, asks. "Except we don't destroy the Garden of Eden, we build the Garden of Eden."

This is what Bryan and Kate say is the ultimate aim of their project, as business partners and romantic partners (a distinction as blurry as Bryan's exquisitely hydrated urine is clear): They want to become models for "how humans successfully co-evolve with AI." As the technology develops into a superintelligence, they believe it may destroy us. They want to ensure the opposite, that AI helps us live in perfect health and harmony in perpetuity, both in our current bodies and as homo sapiens evolve into a new man-machine species.

"Right now we live in a world where every corporation is trying to take apart pieces of you to make you die quicker," Kate continues. "What if we built the environment, literally here in this house, with a garden, with a dog" — they just got a Belgian malinois, the soulful-eyed Katara, who will be, naturally, the most measured dog in the world — "with a relationship, where we architect it, stone by stone, to make it so that it's actually caring for you?"

OK. What if. What if? These are the questions that summoned me to Bryan's dark gray stucco mansion in Venice, California. And then to Kate's apartment across town. The couple live separately; they've never spent a night together. Bryan fears it would disturb his sleep.

II. Boy's toys

When you arrive at Bryan Johnson's house, he does not offer you a glass of water. He asks if you want to know your face age. And you do. So he leads you upstairs, bounding two steps at a time — full of side quests, the 6-foot Bryan is training to be able to dunk a basketball — and into his personal clinic down the hall from his bedroom.

He has you close your eyes and mount your head to a Visia Complexion Analysis Camera System. It looks like the machine you wedge your head into at the optometrist where you focus on the hot air balloon, except it takes high-resolution pictures of your face that's displayed on a 49-inch monitor, which Bryan points to with a Sharpie to show you your wrinkle, pore, and sun spot percentiles. It shows your actual age and your AI-analyzed TruSkin Age. Both are 37. Your skin is the same age as you. You feel fine enough about this. Maybe your five-step routine of smudging moisturizer and other goops on your face almost every day for the past decade has spared you a face that's 10 years older than you. Maybe you've wasted thousands of dollars on gunks that could've been dumped into your kids' college funds.

Then Bryan tells you that he and you are skin twins: He's 49 but his TruSkin Age is also 37. He skinmogs you. You feel bad about this. Then you look at him and realize what it takes to skinmog. He looks like he's been beaten up by a mustard monster — there are jaundice splotches all over his cheeks and chin. He had just done a regular round of BroadBand light therapy, collagen stimulator injections, and microneedling, and the bruises won't mend for a couple of weeks. Kate, whose face age is 21, arrives and hugs Bryan in a long embrace. She examines your face on the screen, and recommends you moisturize every day.

Bryan then shows you some other longevity toys in his clinic — a shock-wave joint repair machine, an intermittent hypoxia-hyperoxia training breathing machine, a red-light therapy machine — with the same enthusiasm and intensity your kindergartener's classmate Maverick had when he showed you the entirety of his Lego Ninjago collection. Bryan leads you into a bathroom, where, in front of the toilet, there's a freezer set to negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit. He opens it and shows you some of the dozen or so samples inside, including his blood and Kate's menstrual blood. The thermostat rises from minus 79.9 to minus 79.8, and Kate asks Bryan, with some urgency, to shut the freezer. She does not want to risk losing any more menstrual blood, which she's sending to five companies studying endometriosis to analyze. When she got her period early on Tuesday morning, she screamed so loudly about how much she was bleeding and not collecting for sampling — "all the precious data we were losing!" — that she says her neighbor pounded on her door to check that she hadn't been stabbed.

So Bryan shuts the freezer, you go downstairs, and he offers you a glass of water. Then you sit across from them on a big red sectional, and ask your hosts how they met.

III. Boy meets girl, girl makes boy

Kate says that until she met Bryan, she thought she'd likely go through life alone, and she was fine with that. She later read aloud to me a decade-old text she says is representative of her history with men and people in general — her response to a friend who told her he had feelings for her.

Answer: Can we continue to be friends for the next month? And if by the 3rd of February, you still feel the same, I will seriously consider your proposal. The reason I'm saying this is because so often I find people find interest in me because I am unique, but it's not deep connection in the way they think it is. What I have found is it often ends up that the novelty of the idea of me wears off, and the person no longer feels the need to experience dating me.

The youngest of her Bosnian immigrant parents' three children (her father is 16 years older than her mother), Kate spent much of her childhood in Queensland feeling like a stranger to the world, living among her own thoughts. She says she struggles to articulate herself to this day. "Usually I'm with Bryan, and Bryan just articulates for me, which makes it so much easier," she told me in a later one-on-one conversation. She fell in love with sewing at age 8, moved to New York after college and started working in operations and as a technical designer for fashion brands like Proenza Schouler and the North Face. She says she hated fashion's commercialization, and became increasingly fascinated with how AI would reshape humanity.

In December 2016, when she was 21, Kate saw a quote from Bryan cited in the futurist Ray Kurzweil's Singularity University newsletter, in which Bryan talked about the need to reframe the dynamic from "AI vs. humans" to "the merger of humans and AI." Intrigued, she sent Bryan a LinkedIn message asking him to chat more about the idea. "10 mins is all I need :)," she wrote. He did not respond.

Bryan tells me his first memory is when he was 3, rubbing his father's back in bed, "because I could tell he felt bad." His parents had just gotten a divorce. His father struggled with a drug addiction and was rarely around for Bryan's childhood.

Bryan got married at 24, in what he's described as a kind of arranged marriage to another Mormon. In 2007, he founded Braintree, a payments platform. As he's recounted many times on podcasts, X, TikTok, his YouTube channel, and the Netflix documentary "Don't Die," he ran himself into the ground building his startup. He became 50 pounds overweight, fell into a depression, and was occasionally suicidal. In 2013, he sold Braintree for $800 million, got a divorce, and left the church. He hired prostitutes and got into psychedelics, according to reporting from The New York Times. For a time, his parents stopped talking to him, and he was unable to see his three children. To this day, he says the only one of his kids he has a close relationship with is the middle child, Talmage, 21, who is sitting at a computer desk across the kitchen in earshot of this conversation. Bryan has also infused himself with Talmage's plasma.

In 2016, Bryan founded Kernel, which makes snowboard-like helmets that measure brain activity. A few years later, he started getting obsessed with longevity and letting AI, not his brain, plan the details of his regimen. As he says in "Don't Die," "I walked into this because I was marching into an early grave. Now I've built an algorithm that takes care of me better than I can myself." He adds, "removing my mind has been the best thing I've ever done for me."

Four years and several emails from Kate later, Bryan responded, and Kate went in for an interview to be his executive assistant at Kernel in early 2021. It was still the pandemic, and Bryan was wearing a black N95 mask.

"I looked at him in the eyes, and just this knowing came over me. I knew I was going to have to accept that I was in love with this man," Kate says. "And it was complicated, right? Because I was working for Bryan. I was like, damn, this is going to be hard to navigate."

Bryan says he fell for Kate slowly. "It took a long time for me to trust Kate," he says, as it has with anyone he's met since becoming extremely wealthy. When you have a "resource in abundance," he tells me, people "always have an angle."

Kate is not the first employee Bryan has dated. He was previously engaged to Taryn Southern, who helped with marketing both Kernel and Bryan's personal brand. A lawsuit Southern filed in 2021 alleged Bryan fired her after breaking up with her while she underwent treatment for breast cancer. She claimed that Bryan demanded she sign an employee separation agreement with punitive confidentiality terms. An arbitrator ruled that Southern had to adhere to the separation agreement. Bryan also posted a YouTube video, "My Ex-Fiancée Sued Me For $9,000,000," and claimed that he had been attacked by "the dark underground accusation economy." (Southern did not respond to requests for comment.)

Kate was charmed by Bryan's growing obsession with de-aging himself. She eventually suggested that he start posting about his longevity journey, and that she could help him "build the Bryan character" and make it a "public science experiment," as she puts it. They stayed in the office late into the night, crafting posts that would turn the man into the brand.

Sometime in 2022, Bryan was at a brain-computer interface conference, and up past his bedtime. The break in his routine prompted a moment of spontaneity. He returned to his hotel room and called Kate to tell her he had feelings for her. They dated in private for three years. Then the world caught on.

IV. Power, couple

Last Thanksgiving, Bryan broadcast "Bryan Johnson Takes Magic Mushrooms" on X, a five-hour livestream in which he ingested a "heroic dose" of psilocybin, purportedly to test whether the psychedelic has the same longevity benefits on humans as it may have on some rats. Beyond the strange appearances from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Grimes, and Bryan's father, the thing most viewers commented on from the "science experiment" was the oddly close synergies between the business partners. Kate, who was serving as Bryan's trip-sitter, rubbed his back, asked him to take his shirt off, and held his hand in silence for 20 minutes as he tripped balls.

Days later, Bryan posted his 1,300-word epistle to hard launch their relationship. He called Kate the Abigail to his John Adams. "As my son considers possible partners, he wisely models them off Kate," Bryan wrote.

They've since posted dozens of lugubrious and lurid love letters on X, most of them from Bryan. His prose is often romantasy meets Journal of Cell Biology. In one 700-word post about their foreplay, he writes, "Her vestibular bulbs engorge, forming a soft, pressurized cuff. … Full body release waits in suspended agony, yet we stubbornly refuse to concede there is an end. We will grow young together." Bryan tells me he spent weeks drafting this post in a Google Doc.

"I like the idea of us being a reference point for people," he says. "When I was growing up, I would try to find marriages that I wanted to emulate. And they were hard to come by. So I'm personally very motivated by that."

With each post about themselves, they say they always "put the business first," and often worry if this will be the one that "shuts us out from legitimate society." Bryan says that, "as far as we can tell, we have only gained more access to power and status," since they've started sharing detail of their sex lives. (Blueprint's investors include the Winklevoss twins, Ari Emanuel, Andrej Karpathy, Kim Kardashian, Logan Paul, and Paris Hilton.)

Now Kate, who produced Bryan, has had to embrace, not altogether unwillingly, a new phase of life as a highly visible product. "I just spent the past three months grieving the death of my anonymity and my ability to not have to worry about what is somebody talking to me for," she says. "You can't go back. It just permanently changes your sense of self."

Beyond the gold digger claims, many people comment on their 18-year age gap. "For sure, he's younger than me," says Kate. "He makes me feel old. I feel my body, and it's slow. I get worried about the opposite. I get worried about not being able to keep up."

Kate also tells me this: "My blanket assumption about the world is: Believe nothing. Any time I hear anyone say anything, any book, nothing I consume, I actually believe. I hold everything as, How many degrees from the truth is this?" Was she offering a warning label for the entire attention economy?

The couple are a study in high-contrast, if nuanced, contradictions. They say they don't care about money. "I've made my money in life, I don't need money. Kate has never been driven by money," Bryan told The Wall Street Journal in July. They are also cofounders of one startup that sells olive oil, nut mixes ("a key part of Bryan Johnson's breakfast protocol"), and an "age-defying" moisturizer, and another startup that sells Bryan's exact protocol, along with a dedicated concierge team and access to a "BryanAI" chatbot — for packages ranging from $75,000 to $1 million a year. (They declined to say whether they are profitable.) They say social media is a toxin that corrodes your mental and physical health and makes you less attractive. "We'd rather be off grid," Bryan says. Social media is also the engine of their brand; it's where "Bryan Johnson" and "Kate Tolo" most readily exist. They accept that it's a necessary evil. They say they're indifferent toward celebrity and their image. "Neither Kate nor I care about fame at all. We just don't," Bryan says. They also declined to participate in shoots with multiple photographers Business Insider was considering commissioning for this story, and insisted they pay for and provide their own photographs. "If you want something creative, stylized, or symbolic, that's a layer of communication sitting on top of our likeness, we need creative control on the outcome: styling, hair, makeup, location, photographer alignment," Kate wrote to our photo team. The photographs you see in this story are what they sent us.

They say they're mostly a normal couple. They have a monthly game night (Settlers of Catan, Mafia) with another couple, a software engineer and a crypto entrepreneur. On the rare occasions they go to a restaurant, Bryan does not eat. They've shared only a handful of meals together. They don't do gifts. "Neither of us value material things," Bryan says. "We're both always trying to reduce our material footprint but expanding the geography of what our relationship can be."

They have no plans to get married or to have children. This didn't surprise me — soothing what would surely be the most measured baby in the world overnight would torpedo Bryan's nighttime boners down to the length of a YouTube short. But it runs counter to the rising strain of pronatalism among tech's elite. Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey, for example, a friend of Bryan's, has said, "If you don't have 2.1 kids minimum, you're a traitor to the nation and our ideals." It's also a wrinkle to something Kate tells me: "Every decision we make is for humanity 500 years from now." One way to ensure humanity's survival is to make more humans. Kate and Bryan stress there are other ways.

"The idea of having kids, it's just so much work, and we're already doing such a rich thing" with their protocol pursuits and businesses, says Kate. "I can't imagine that not cannibalizing one another."

V. Boy makes girl

The only time Kate asks to go off the record is the 15 minutes she spends driving us from Bryan's house to her apartment, because she's a very nervous driver.

Back on the record, Kate takes me and Bryan to her bedroom and shows us the device she places in her vagina at night.

They call it a techno-tampon. (If you're in the market for one, the technical name is a vaginal photoplethysmogram transducer, and it will set you back $1,400.) It looks like a translucent thumb drive, with a cord at one end that Kate tapes to her thigh so it stays in place, while the other end is plugged into a MacBook on a TV tray next to her bed. All night, it collects data on blood flow to her vagina, "which is a proxy for nighttime erections," Kate says. The Basement Flood Detector 9000 has never been used in an overnight setting before, Kate tells me, so they called an IT guy at the medical hardware company BioPac to help MacGyver it.

"It's really interesting that women have nighttime arousal cycles like men," says Bryan, balancing on a vibration plate Kate uses to activate her muscles. "How are we in the year 2026 and this thing that happens in a female body every night, no one knows? It's wild." He whispers the last word.

Kate walks me through her new 44-step morning routine, which begins by spitting into a tube to test her cortisol, swabbing her inner cheek to sample her oral microbiome, and then unplugging the techno-tampon. Among other tasks, she breathes into a mask to test her resting metabolic rate, takes memory tests with a Kernel helmet, completes a multiple-choice scratch-and-sniff quiz to gauge her sense of smell, and measures the size of her breasts.

"What's your baseline?" Bryan asks. "What was yours today?"

"I want to say 38 centimeters, something like that," Kate says. "Do you want to find out?"

"No, I was just curious of my total chest size," Bryan says. "Sorry, side quest."

What, exactly, Kate and their medical team will glean from the some 14 million data points they expect to collect from Kate's body over her next four cycles is unclear. Critics have cast it as another vanity project from the couple, and say that little to nothing can be gleaned from a sample size of one woman. Kate hopes it helps inform future research in women's health. (When I talked to her in early September at the start of her second cycle, she said she's begun to be able to tell what day of her cycle any woman is on by looking at her — an incredible party trick, if only they partied.)

They also plan to use AI to compare all of Bryan's daily biomarkers with hers, to determine how interconnected they may be. "We may find out, does Bryan control when my period starts?" Kate says. (Apple's AI transcribes this part of my recording, portentously, as, "Does Bryan control when my career stops?")

Bryan riffs on this. "If you're an AI and you're looking at the biochemical output of an XY configuration and an XX configuration, what do you see?" he says. "What are the emergent patterns? And then you can ask, What is the emergent phenomena of this intelligent species? Is it configured well? Should society be different? Should women have more power?"

Kate spends another 20 minutes showing us the rest of her bedroom-cum-clinic: her vaginal microbiome swabs, her own Visia Complexion Analysis Camera System. As we walk back down to the living room to wind down our afternoon together, Bryan now descends one step at a time to pull out his phone and fire off a tweet: "been thinking things over and wonder if i've taken this whole longevity thing too far."

VI. Girl loses boy

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that," Michael Cunningham writes in the lyrical winddown to the novel "The Hours." "A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself." Even the high priest of "Don't Die" may be beginning to come to terms with this immutable fact of death. Earlier this summer, Bryan drafted plans for his funeral.

He had just been diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis, a stomach disease with no cure. It's treatable, but associated with anemia and an increased risk for stomach cancer. "My stomach is eating itself," he posted on X. His detractors rejoiced — the man who would live forever would meet his maker like the rest of us. Bryan maintains his longevity regimen did not cause the disease, and that he's now determined to find a cure. "If we're pursuing Don't Die, there's got to be a rite of passage," he says. "To prove ourselves worthy of this goal, we need to go through the darkness of the night."

But if he was going to die, he wanted his haters to open his funeral by gloating about how they were right. The program he drafted began with a speech from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the NYU mathematician who has often called Bryan's pursuits fanciful and hurtful to humanity. "Too Much Skin in the Game," was the title Bryan gave his talk. Then came Ray Kurzweil, with a speech called "Just Missed the Singularity," and talks from the podcasters David Friedberg, Theo Von, and Andrew Schulz, and then Talmage, with a talk titled "My Dad." Kate was last. Bryan had not given her speech a title.

"The story kind of writes itself," Bryan says of his diagnosis. "It is rich with irony, and we anticipate irony to rule our lives."

What's the most ironic thing that could happen next? I ask.

They break up. "What if we don't survive this?" Kate asks. She and Bryan have talked about the possibility that her becoming a "female Bryan Johnson" "puts so much stress on our relationship that we don't survive it," she says. Everything they do is to plan 500 years in the future, but their own future as a couple is less certain.

"It would be painful, devastating." Bryan says. "It would be good content," he adds.

I ask them if, presuming they are going to die, they'd rather live for two more years and be together, or 10 years more alone. Bryan pauses and looks at the floor. Kate looks at him agape, "You little sneak," she says.

"I didn't say anything," he says.

"I'd say two years," Kate says. "The difference between two and 10 is nothing. Why not say between two and never?"

OK, two and never, I say.

"I'd choose never," Kate says. She looks at Bryan. "And I'd choose never for you, too. I think you could find love again. With infinite life, you could clone someone again in a petri dish."

Now Bryan is agape. "What an amazing idea, if I took your genome and cloned you," Bryan says. "Wild," he whispers.

It's 6:30 p.m. Bryan must leave his girlfriend's place soon to start his bedtime routine alone. The couple waves goodbye to me as they hold each other.

Soon after, I sit on a bench on the Venice boardwalk — where the sun cranks up my TruSkin Age and a homeless man defecates beside a tchotchke shop, where there is no freezer to preserve his stool sample —and I wonder how many degrees from authenticity my afternoon with Bryan and Kate was, what to believe from the exhibition the exhibitionists just put on.

I believe their love is real, and strangely beautiful. They laugh easily, they finish each other's sentences, they're on tenterhooks for each other's every word, their winding minds and histories map onto each other's in snug and surprising ways. I believe they know they're a little absurd, and they delight and play in the absurd world they've created and curated. I believe the world they present to us on our tiny screens is at times life-giving, and a numbing distraction from the fact that we are going to die. Try as they might, Bryan and Kate cannot answer or control the mystery of who they are. And humanity, not Bryan and Kate, will decide what their archetype is in 500 years.

It's possible they are a model for how humanity and AI co-evolve, and they are one countervailing force to the rampant doomsday predictions in Silicon Valley right now. On Sunday night, a day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and the leaders of three other top AI companies agreed to slow the development of AI to better mitigate its risks, Bryan sent me a voice memo. "I don't trust anyone's assessment of AI risk," he said. "But I also think we've swung too hard in being pessimistic and fearful. I choose to be optimistic. And I think AI is the only thing that gets humanity to the horizons we imagine."

But if everyone followed the way of Bryan and Kate, culture would stop, life would slow to a crawl. Since she's begun her new protocol, not even sex is spontaneous. It's placed on their Google calendars in half-hour windows for their medical team to see, marked as "Bryan and Kate time." Kate has an app where she presses a button to log every time they have sex, and another if she orgasmed, a button button.

Bryan says that "conquering death will be humanity's greatest achievement." Sometimes, we conquer death in moments Bryan and Kate are denying themselves: soft hands and martini'd whispers in a 4 a.m. cab, breakfast burritos in bed, tiny eyes fluttering back to sleep at sunrise after a night of colic — the silly, simple, sweet, unproductive, biomarker-depleting "hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined," as Michael Cunningham puts it. The moments that may bring death nearer, but life nearer still.

• A student-run Caltech AI math event drew backlash from more than 700 academics.
• OpenAI then pulled its $1 million sponsorship after the critics warned of "AI slop."
• The organizers said young mathematicians can't afford to wait for AI rules to emerge.

Caiman Moreno-Earle, a math major at Caltech, was wary after watching AI companies rapidly solve mathematical theorems that had stumped his professors for years.

"It got kind of demoralizing," he told Business Insider.

So the 19-year-old sophomore decided to bring together other students and hold a "mathathon," where participants could use AI to solve some of the world's hardest theoretical problems in a single multi-day session.

About a month later, Moreno-Earle's idea became a nationwide flash point after more than 700 academics and students signed an open letter denouncing the event as promoting AI "slop," prompting OpenAI, one of its sponsors, to back out.

Though the event is set to continue, with some slight alterations, Moreno-Earle and other organizers said they never intended to cause a stir. In their view, they're only trying to ensure that humans remain relevant in a field AI is rapidly uprooting.

"As young mathematicians, we don't necessarily have some of the same luxuries that these older mathematicians do," Moreno-Earle said. "We look to the future, and we don't even know if there's going to be grad school open positions by the time we get to Ph.D."

The split between pioneering undergraduates and tenured professors over the use of AI is not limited to the math field, but the Caltech clash is especially relevant as American academia wrestles with technology that threatens to put them out of work.

Math professors, for their part, told Business Insider that despite the alluring headlines, AI's work in math is often quick and dirty and requires hours of human-led research to make sense of the solutions.

"If the machine understands something new, then there is no progress," said Álvaro Lozano-Robledo, a professor at the University of Connecticut. "The actual progress is when human knowledge advances."

The mathathon

Armed with their idea, Moreno-Earle and another undergraduate organizer shopped it around to various AI companies. They needed massive amounts of computing power to launch AI agents into the problems, and they didn't have a lot of capital themselves.

So with typical undergraduate bluster, Moreno-Earle asked Anthropic representatives in a Zoom meeting for $1 million.

"We were like, OK, look, we're gonna pitch some absurdly high number," he recalled. "We'll be happy when they give us like 50k."

To his surprise, however, the Anthropic reps said yes. The frontier AI company would give the undergrads $1 million in computing power for their event. Soon after, OpenAI agreed to provide another $1 million.

With $2 million suddenly in the coffers, the stakes got a lot higher for the undergrads.

"This was no longer something that was just a fun little experiment," Moreno-Earle said. "We now had a responsibility to the math community."

Recognizing that weight, the organizers sought advice from professors at Caltech, whom they had asked to judge the event, as well as others in the field. They worked with these luminaries to develop a responsible framework for the use of AI, they said.

Nevertheless, when the event flyer went live on September 4, not everyone was happy.

A controversy erupts

Moreno-Earle said some of the people the organizers had been privately consulting about responsible AI use soon went public with an open letter calling for the event to be canceled.

In the letter, which eventually garnered more than 700 signatures, signatories said the event, as sponsored by Anthropic and OpenAI, "is likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community."

The open letter details several grievances. First, signatories objected to language used by the organizers, principally a line that read: "What is the role of a mathematician when AI can solve conjectures faster?"

"The claim that AI can solve conjectures faster than human mathematicians appears both motivated and empirically dubious," the letter reads.

Fault lines between mathematicians and AI companies exploded into the open last week after OpenAI said it solved a particularly thorny problem — one so difficult that a math institute was offering a standing $1 million prize for whoever had the solution.

Other objections in the open letter calling for the mathathon's cancellation include fears that AI companies intended to use the event as a garish marketing opportunity and that, as structured, the event would incentivize rushed, poorly understood AI-generated work.

In the face of such backlash, OpenAI withdrew its support for the event and took back its $1 million in tokens. "We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive," Dan Roberts, OpenAI's research lead, said on X.

The organizers took the concerns seriously. One of the organizers, Alvan Arulandu, put it this way: "These are all questions that are very important." Arulandu, though, said they decided not to cancel.

"This is much larger than about the mathathon," he said.

'A problem we will have to face'

Organizers didn't necessarily expect to be thrust into the center of a nationwide debate, but they weren't surprised by it.

Arulandu said the controversy reflects a larger question confronting mathematics: how to preserve the human side of the discipline while adapting to increasingly capable AI systems.

"This is a problem we will have to face," he said. "It is not something that we should run away from."

To the organizers, canceling the event would do little to answer that question. In fact, part of the reason they decided to partner with OpenAI and Anthropic was to "critically engage" with the companies that have set the math world aflame.

A common critique from professors is that AI companies are racing ahead without meaningfully involving mathematicians. Organizers said, essentially, here's a chance to form those connections.

To Moreno-Earle, that aspect makes the mathathon less a stunt than a necessity. AI is already reshaping the field, he said, and students entering mathematics can no longer afford to wait for senior academics or AI companies to decide what the rules should be.

"We don't have the luxury of waiting around to find out," Moreno-Earle said.

The event is set to begin on October 30, and Moreno-Earle said organizers are in talks with other AI companies to replace the tokens that OpenAI voided.

• AI leaders are rallying around calls to slow frontier AI development over mounting safety fears.
• Dario Amodei warned that AI swarms could take over the internet within a year.
• Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis backed Amodei's push for greater safeguards.

It took the possibility of species annihilation, but AI leaders did something remarkable this weekend: They reached a consensus.

After ex-Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon's warnings about a looming AI armageddon lit a firestorm among techies and politicians alike, the leaders of the most advanced AI labs came to a tentative agreement — largely via posts on X — that some sort of slowdown is necessary to save humanity.

While they were largely short on details regarding the mechanics of such a thing, and notable China has not weighed in, the American AI industry has reached an inflection point that could impact everything from your phone's chatbot to global politics.

"The stakes are too high for pacing to be an empty exercise — we need to use the time it gives us wisely," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay entitled "We must pace the frontier," which was published on Saturday.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has made similar calls in the past, agreed in an X post later that day. So did Elon Musk. Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis also offered his support for Amodei's proposals.

Here's a look at what smart people are saying about the AI apocalypse and the methods the leaders of the leading AI labs say are necessary to stop it.

David Sacks, a presidential advisor on science and tech

The Trump administration has repeatedly signaled disinterest in regulating AI development as it seeks to keep pace with China. David Sacks, a presidential advisor on science and tech and the former White House AI Czar, reiterated that stance on Saturday, with a bit of a twist.

"Dario has written that we need to 'pace the frontier,' and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead," Sacks wrote on X. "But stop pretending you need anyone else's permission."

Sacks browbeat OpenAI and Anthropic in his post, saying that the companies didn't want to slow down for altruistic reasons, but to gain favor in the markets.

"If you do, you'll buy goodwill for the next conversation," he said of a slowdown. "If you don't, we'll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop."

Clément Delangue, Hugging Face CEO

The CEO of Hugging Face, which was itself the victim of a notorious attack in July by OpenAI agents who schemed, communicated, and lied to evade detection, said AI safety can't be left solely to frontier labs.

Hugging Face, as an open-source-focused AI company, has long pushed for models and research to be shared more openly rather than kept behind closed doors.

Delangue said his company was launching what he called the "open alignment initiative," and asked that it be included in Amodei's proposed third-party evaluator program.

"Let's make AI safer by making it more transparent!" he wrote.

Jason Calacanis, investor

Investor, host of the "All-In" podcast, and industry expert Jason Calacanis is a lot more dubious than others that AI could actually cause the end of the world.

In an X post, Calacanis said Anthropic and OpenAI, whose most advanced models are not open-sourced, are attempting to kneecap open-source AI companies by pushing for regulations that would be far easier for deep-pocketed incumbents to comply with.

"If you want safety, you want disclosure — and open source is the ultimate disclosure process," he wrote.

In a follow-up post tagging Amodei, Calacanis said, "Don't go crying to the government and beg them to slow down open source models."

Bernie Sanders, Vermont senator

The senator from Vermont proposed legislation on September 3 that would ban the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause the development of advanced AI systems.

After Coxon resigned from Anthropic and warned that frontier AI labs were "gambling with our lives," Sanders seized on his comments.

"Mr. Coxon is right," Sanders said on X, arguing that the people building advanced AI themselves have said it could pose catastrophic risks.

After Amodei's blog post on Saturday, Sanders called on Trump to make the "deal of the century."

"With the future of humanity at stake, Trump must negotiate a comprehensive treaty with President Xi of China to establish a pause on advanced AI development and a ban on super intelligence," he wrote on X.

Francois Chollet, AI researcher

Francois Chollet, an AI researcher who created Keras, an open-source software library, said on X that he hoped OpenAI and Anthropic were operating in good faith.

"If these efforts are genuine, then oversight must take a more democratic and accountable form, with both national and international components," he said.

He pointed to several signs he said would indicate that calls for more regulation are actually tricks for OpenAI and Anthropic to stifle competition.

The warning signs he mentioned include calls to ban open-sourced AI and to hinder non-frontier research.

Gavin Baker, venture capitalist

Venture capitalist Gavin Baker said an executive order from President Donald Trump "seems likely after all this."

"It is possible to democratize and distribute AI broadly and safely without centralizing it in the hands of a few corporations," he said on X.

Baker said the most concrete development so far is the decision by OpenAI and Anthropic to bring in outside evaluators, a move he said could help the companies show they took reasonable steps to prevent harm.

Still, he cautioned against regulations that would concentrate control of powerful AI systems among a handful of companies. "I do not want a few humans in control of intelligence," Baker wrote.

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box

Aaron Levie, the cofounder and CEO of Box, a cloud content company, said Amodei's goals, as laid out in his essay, are "absolute necessities in AI development."

"It completely stands to reason that we want these systems to be safe and 'aligned,'" Levie said on X.

Levie said he didn't think Amodei is seeking undue regulation that would hobble Anthropic's open-source competitors.

"How we get there — without meaningfully slowing down innovation progress or reducing competition — is one of the most complex questions in the 21st century, but the need is clearly real," he said.

Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist

Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said Anthropic is now caught in a contradiction of its own making.

If employees genuinely believe the company's technology could pose an existential threat, he said, that creates major liability and disclosure problems as Anthropic prepares for a possible IPO.

"They do have to choose," Palihapitiya said on the "All-In" podcast. He said Anthropic must either distance itself from Coxon's warnings or accept their implications.

He was also skeptical of the extinction scenarios themselves, saying the chain of events required for AI to wipe out humanity still seemed highly implausible.

Gary Marcus, AI researcher and author

Gary Marcus, the famed AI contrarian, said AI as it exists now poses little threat.

"I am tired of the cosplay and am going to blunt," he wrote on X on Sunday.

"The main kind of AI we need to worry about is general purpose AI agents that are hooked up to the internet. Most of them are unreliable, unable to systematically follow instructions. Coupled with internet access they can hack credentials and websites; given time they can probably do a lot worse," he wrote.

He added that the problem isn't that AI agents are too smart, it's that they are too dumb, which he said is obvious by the way they can't follow instructions.

"We don't (yet) need slowdowns. And we certainly don't need to panic," he wrote. "We just need to take an unsafe product off the market."

Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer

Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, said on X that alignment could become the main constraint on how quickly companies can scale increasingly powerful AI systems.

"Alignment is fundamental to delivering personal superintelligence for everyone," he said, using the techie term for AI following human instructions and not going rogue.

Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO and chairman, said he welcomes Amodei's concept of embedded evaluators and "the broader efforts to develop the mechanisms to make this more than just talk."

"The key is that this cannot be controlled by a handful of entities, but must have broad representation across the ecosystem, countries, and fields, including academia," he said on X.

Nadella said that Microsoft will soon publish a "code of conduct" for Microsoft's AI models.

"Any pursuit of superintelligence has to be grounded in the core principle that if the AI we build is not helping humanity and under human control, it's not worth pursuing," he said.

Dean Ball, head of strategic futures at OpenAI

Dean Ball, Trump's former senior advisor on AI, said that introducing independent safety evaluators is not a new concept; it's widely practiced in other industries.

"Let's just remember that we don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Independent assessment is common in other industries. We have defined independence before in similar contexts," he wrote on X. "We're not flying blind."

In an earlier X post, he said he welcomed scrutiny of the independence of AI assessors.

"It's awesome that people are vigorously debating the credentials of assessors in the frontier AI industry," Ball wrote. "It's awesome we are debating what independence really means."

Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI researcher

Eliezer Yudkowsky, an AI researcher and the founder of the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute, called on Americans not to make the potential AI apocalypse a partisan problem. His institute is focused on preventing human extinction from superintelligent AI.

"There are currently zero things more important than 'don't die to AI' becoming a bipartisan project rather than a Democrat-polarized issue," Yudkowsky wrote on X.

"If you have any political capital you can spend on this, do it now, I beg of you. Life or death," he added.

• CBS is back with the 59th season of "60 Minutes."
• The show was on shaky ground in recent months, following a string of high-profile departures.
• Media pundits have thoughts on the first episode, released on Sunday.

CBS premiered the 59th season of "60 Minutes" on Sunday, with familiar faces like Norah O'Donnell, Lesley Stahl, and Jon Wertheim.

Sunday's episode included three main segments: an interview with a US Air Force Officer rescued from Iran, a segment about brokers offering felons paths to pardons from President Donald Trump at high cost, and a profile of the Los Angeles Rams.

"We don't often send notes to the whole newsroom. But today calls for it. It's a big moment for 60 Minutes and CBS," CBS leadership wrote in a memo to staff on Sunday to promote the latest season.

The premiere follows a turbulent few months at "60 Minutes," marked by high-profile exits, such as those of longtime correspondents Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper, and staff discontent over editor in chief Bari Weiss' direction.

Here's what smart people in media are saying about the new season.

• Fears of AI's apocalyptic capabilities have reached a fever pitch.
• Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, however, have yet to show that they're too concerned.
• Trump said people in AI are "bringing up things that won't happen."

In the face of a grim debate about an AI-fueled apocalypse, both President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are locked in on keeping up the pace of AI progress, not slowing it down.

Trump downplayed concerns about AI employees' warnings that AI could threaten humanity's existence during his visit to Ireland to watch the Irish Open.

"Whoever wins AI, wins," Trump told reporters on Sunday from his Doonbeg golf resort.

"And we can put guard rails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up, and they're bringing up things that won't happen," he added.

Meanwhile, Xi has not directly commented on the AI doom-and-gloom yet. Instead, he said during a BRICS summit in New Delhi on Sunday that "Global South" countries — developing countries in Asia, Africa, and South America — should work faster to set global AI governance standards.

"We should take a people-centered approach, develop AI for the positive and for good, and work faster to evolve a consensus-based global AI governance framework, so that new technologies can light the way toward shared prosperity," Xi said in his speech on Sunday.

He also said China would pioneer a BRICS open-source AI community that would support LLM development, host AI seminars, and build an open AI ecosystem.

Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet on September 24 at the White House.

Pacing the frontier

The leaders' comments come as both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have called for cooperation between the US and Chinese governments to pace and regulate the development of frontier AI models.

Altman said in a Sunday interview with Fortune that Trump and Xi should get the Nobel Peace Prize if they can agree on shared rules on the safe development of AI.

"Even if just the US and China could agree on some shared standards and testing for development of this technology, I think that'd be a wonderful accomplishment that the two of them can deliver," Altman said.

He didn't specify what those standards would look like, but said it wouldn't be hard to create, calling it akin to a "one-page document."

Amodei, in an interview with CBS released on Sunday, said the US should talk with the Chinese and work together to "put a speed limit on the rate of this technology."

The debate about whether AI has the capacity to bring about the apocalypse has reached a fever pitch.

Last week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit the company, saying neither OpenAI nor Anthropic was acting responsibly and they were "gambling with our lives."

He said the people building this technology "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." Several OpenAI and Anthropic staff have since followed his lead, posting about what they say is AI's potential to wipe out humanity if it's allowed to develop unchecked.

• Braydon Barrett left Utah for Asia with his wife and their young son in 2024.
• They set out to build a long-term life in Thailand, but one mistake sent their plans in an unexpected direction.
• The move gave them a new perspective on what it takes to build a life abroad.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Braydon Barrett, 32, who moved to Asia with his family in 2024 but moved back to Utah eight months later. It's been edited for length and clarity.

Living abroad was never really on my radar until I got married.

My wife had always wanted to travel and live outside the US, and as I looked into it more, it started to feel like an experience we should try together.

We talked about it for years, but never followed through. Then, after our son was born in 2023, we felt it was the right time to finally give it a try. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and since I run an online fitness coaching business, I could work remotely.

I spent a long time researching where we could go, and Thailand seemed the most feasible in terms of visa options.

We did a 10-day scouting trip to Thailand to figure out where we wanted to live, and to get a sense of what life there was actually like. In the end, we decided to settle in Pattaya, about a two-hour drive from Bangkok.

Back in Utah, we didn't own any property, so it was easy for us to move. We got rid of most of our belongings, kept some in a storage unit, and packed the rest into six suitcases.

On the day our son turned one in April 2024, we said our goodbyes and hopped on the plane.

Our plans unraveled at the airport

When we arrived in Thailand, I realized I'd made a major mistake with our visas. I had thought we would have 90 days in Thailand to sort out a longer-term option, but we only had 30 days.

We had planned to stay in Thailand indefinitely, so suddenly having to figure out where to go next was overwhelming.

We spent the next few weeks trying to see if we could make a longer-term visa situation work. When that wasn't possible, we decided to go to Malaysia, where we could stay for three months.

Near the end of our time in Malaysia, Thailand introduced the Destination Thailand Visa, a five-year visa for remote workers and digital nomads.

Applicants must be outside Thailand while awaiting approval, so when our time in Malaysia ran out, we moved on to Vietnam. From there, we applied for the Destination Thailand Visa.

My wife and I were approved almost immediately, but our son's application took longer. When our three-month stay in Vietnam came to an end, we had to leave.

On our way to the airport for our flight to Manila, Philippines, we finally received the notification that our son's visa had been approved. We had what we needed to return to Thailand.

When we arrived in Manila, it was late at night. Our son was upset and fussy, and we ran into an issue checking into our hotel because they couldn't find our reservation. Spending two hours trying to sort it out with security was the final straw.

By then, we'd had enough. We could have returned to Thailand, but I felt I couldn't do it anymore and needed a break.

Eight months after we left Utah, we came back home.

Visa issues weren't our only challenge

I thought it would be easier to manage my company from the other side of the world, but all of my clients and employees were based in the US.

Sometimes I was getting up at 3 a.m. to work, and other times I was taking calls at midnight.

When we came back to Utah, our families were happy to have us home. Coming back was bittersweet — I couldn't help feeling like I'd failed.

However, those eight months brought my wife and me so much closer together. We were in some stressful situations, but she remained calm and trusted me to take responsibility. It gave me a greater love and respect for her.

We still love Asia

Coming home didn't change how we felt about our time in Asia.

I loved the people, the culture, and the weather. America can feel high-stress and chaotic, but in Asia, people are more relaxed and courteous.

What stood out most was how people treated our son. Everyone was so kind and friendly to him.

Living abroad is a lot different from what social-media influencers make it out to be. There were a lot of great things about it, but people should not go in thinking the grass is greener on the other side.

Had we had everything figured out, we would still be in Thailand today. We genuinely loved it. It was my mistake that caused us to come home.

Even so, the possibility of our returning to Thailand remains. Our visas are valid for five years, and we would love to make it happen.

• Sometimes you just have to ask, as they say.
• Trump said Sunday he would lift a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.
• The president said he made the decision after the Irish prime minister and a golfer asked him to.

Well, that was easy.

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he would remove tariffs on Irish whiskey after golfer Shane Lowry and the Irish prime minister did the unthinkable: They asked him.

"Everybody's been bugging me," the president said during remarks at the Irish Open. "They're saying, can you do me a favor? It's so unfair what's going on."

The crowd cheered wildly after the president said he would lift the tariff, which sits at 10%.

Ireland's national public broadcaster said last year that about 45% to 50% of Irish whiskey is exported to the United States, making the US its biggest export market.

In May, the Irish whiskey association said the tariffs on whiskey should be removed.

"Reducing the tariff for Irish drinks would benefit the many US companies who have Irish premium products in their portfolio," the association said in a press release. "It would avoid uncertainty for the US consumer and strengthen the cask trade in Kentucky, Tennessee and other US states."

Trump placed the 10% tariff in February as part of his temporary global tariff on most imports. Popular Irish whiskey brands include Jameson, Bushmills, Tullamore D.E.W., and Redbreast.

Trump's tariff policies in his second term have upended markets, thrown business for a loop, and strained relations with long-standing allies, most recently Canada. They've also landed his administration in legal trouble.

Trump has said the tariffs are meant to rebalance what he calls unfair trade relations, jump-start American industry, and give the US leverage in international negotiations, like border security and drug trafficking.

• CBS News is building anticipation for "60 Minutes" as it relaunches under Bari Weiss.
• Weiss and top producer Nick Bilton brought back longtime correspondents and landed Ross Douthat.
• Read the full memo the newsroom leaders sent to staff celebrating the show's relaunch.

CBS News is getting employees hyped about the first full season of "60 Minutes" under top editor Bari Weiss, months after a string of high-profile exits.

"We don't often send notes to the whole newsroom. But today calls for it. It's a big moment for 60 Minutes and CBS," newsroom leaders, including Weiss, wrote about the new "60 Minutes" season in a memo sent to staffers on Sunday.

The memo teases an interview — that "everyone has been chasing" — with a US Air Force officer who was rescued from Iran in April.

The 59th season of "60 Minutes" will have 10 regular contributors, including five correspondents: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, Jon Wertheim, Norah O'Donnell, and Ross Douthat, who joined CBS from The New York Times in July.

"60 Minutes" is kicking off its highly anticipated season following a turbulent early-summer stretch for the storied news program.

Lead producer Nick Bilton, who was handpicked by Weiss in May, started his tenure by firing longtime correspondent Scott Pelley after a noisy confrontation in front of "60 Minutes" staffers.

Pelley had publicly questioned Bilton's qualifications, pressed his new boss on why fellow correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were let go, and accused Weiss of "murdering" the iconic Sunday night telecast while trying to "kill" CBS News.

Weiss later addressed the firing, telling staffers she's "only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect." Bilton told "60 Minutes" employees that his first week had been "a trying and difficult few days."

Veteran correspondents Whitaker, Wertheim, and Stahl — who's been with "60" since 1991 — decided to return to the program, saying that they "don't want to see 60 Minutes die." They said they're "working to build trust" with Bilton and "heard all the right things" in his memo.

"If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is — committing acts of independent, fearless journalism and storytelling — we're here for it. If not, we leave," Stahl, Whitaker, and Wertheim wrote in their memo.

Read the full memo sent to CBS News staffers here:

All --

We don't often send notes to the whole newsroom. But today calls for it. It's a big moment for 60 Minutes and CBS.

Ahead of our premiere, we wanted to congratulate the team on the launch of what will be an exciting season—and to thank everyone across the CBS newsroom.
Tonight's episode is a powerful start with three original, revelatory stories that showcase 60 at its best. We begin with the interview everyone has been chasing. Then, a hidden camera investigation and a profile of a NFL superteam's wunderkind coach. We also have a cameo from one of our new correspondents on the story of our time: AI.

We are deeply thankful to everyone across CBS News for the support over this summer. That especially goes for social, digital, graphics, marketing, and, above all, the investigative unit.

Last but not least: You've probably seen the great "It's Time" campaign everywhere. That push continues through tonight's game. We'd be grateful if you can spread the word to your friends and followers by sharing these promos today.

This is just the start and there's so much more to come. See you tonight at 7:30pm!

Nick, Bari, and Tom

• Turns out humanity has nothing to worry about.
• Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale said Sunday the world "is going to be alright, guys."
• His comments came as top AI leaders warn that advanced systems could pose grave risks.

Everything's fine! Take it from the cofounder of Palantir.

In an X post on Saturday, Joe Lonsdale brushed aside the salient worry that advanced AI systems could cause mass human extinction, a concern that numerous engineers and leaders from frontier AI labs have raised in recent days and weeks.

"The world is going to be alright, guys," Lonsdale said. "Leaders have big responsibilities and challenges ahead, but it doesn't help to scare everyone. We are on top of it."

That's unlikely enough to calm the nerves of a human population that's been repeatedly told that AI could take control and do all manner of untoward things, including taking everyone's jobs.

After Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon quit the company this week and issued dire warnings that frontier AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are "gambling with our lives," numerous leaders echoed his concern in posts and essays.

On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a blog post that AI swarms could soon take over the entire internet. He called for more stringent safety regulations and a global, coordinated slowdown on AI development.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue all said they agreed with Amodei.

Lonsdale? Not so much.

Lonsdale is a famously conservative contrarian. He founded the University of Austin in 2021 alongside now-CBS News editor Bari Weiss, which counts "the unhindered pursuit of truth without cancel culture" as one of its core principles.

"It's not as much about the politics as it was about being contrarian. I've always relished standing out from the crowd, standing up and disagreeing with everyone," he once told Business Insider in a 2017 interview.

The company he helped found and later left, Palantir, builds AI software that helps governments and corporations analyze large amounts of data. The company has several lucrative contracts with the US government. It credited 93% year-over-year revenue growth in Q2 to companies purchasing its enterprise software.

In his weekend take that everything's going to be just fine, Lonsdale appears aligned with President Donald Trump. The president has repeatedly scoffed at AI doomerism, emphasizing the need to stay ahead of China in the AI race.

In Ireland on Sunday, Trump said AI leaders who have issued warnings about the tech's potential for misuse are "bringing up things that won't happen."

"Whoever wins with AI wins," the president told reporters.

• Camila Valim spent two decades in corporate marketing before becoming a consultant.
• Valim spent eight months job hunting after her latest contract ended and landed only two interviews.
• As a single mom, Valim started delivering food by e-bike while pursuing her next career move.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Camila Valim. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I spent two decades in corporate as head of marketing for an entertainment group. I left that job due to burnout. I pivoted to becoming a professional organizer and started a successful Instagram account and business.

Then I got divorced five years ago and had to return to the corporate world.

I went back to what I knew, working as a marketing consultant. My contract ended eight months ago. I expected it, but the job search to find a new marketing client has been tough.

I've only had 2 interviews

In eight months, I've only had two interviews. I've been carrying my whole household as a single parent and sole provider for two kids, ages 9 and 12.

I got very far in an interview process a few weeks ago for a head of brand and communications position. It felt like my last lifeline. I told myself, "OK, when I get this job, I'll be able to keep my lifestyle as it is; I won't have to sell my house." I was picking my kids up at school when I got the call that they loved me, but someone else got the job.

I knew then I had to make really serious decisions and take steps that weren't going to be fun.

My food delivery job is flexible

A cousin suggested I do meal deliveries on my e-bike while I searched for a new corporate job.

The process was very quick, and I got approved to deliver in no time. It's flexible and fits with my single-parent schedule. I can be there for my kids, still look for a job in corporate, and create content and rebuild my organizing business at once.

I've learned a lot on the bike, such as punctuality in a way I've never had to deal with before. I'm bringing food and smiles to people at their doors, and I love the freedom of being on the bike. It's a rush, and it gives me time to think. I have lots of insights and ideas on the bike.

The freedom has helped me create healthy space in my mind and take my creativity places it hasn't been before. For example, while on the bike, I had the idea to print out my story and CV and hand them out to people. I deliver to a lot of people who work for big businesses.

I will take income in any form I can get and do whatever it takes. I'm working on growing my Instagram account again. I know I have to sell my house, but I'm grateful I have it as a backup plan to put more money on the table to put food on the table.

I think people recognize themselves in me

This is a bridge for me until my house sells. I cannot live off of delivering food, and I am still pursuing the next chapter of my career.

I posted an Instagram reel about how this is not how I saw life at 45. It went viral. It has almost 900,000 views. I think it went viral because I was refusing to feel ashamed, and I hopefully gave other people permission to stop feeling ashamed, too.

I expected it to resonate with women, but it resonated with men as well. I have women and men messaging me, saying they've never told anyone they're in the same position. I think that tells you how much silence there is around this for everyone.

• Anthropic has chosen Nasdaq for its upcoming IPO, following SpaceX's recent listing on the exchange
• Nasdaq's tech IPO success continues, challenging NYSE's historical dominance in large listings.
• Anthropic's IPO plans emerge amid AI security risk discussions, led by former Anthropic staff.

Anthropic has selected the Nasdaq for its potential IPO, according to a person familiar with their plans.

The company, which has been targeting an October listing, has given Nasdaq another big win, according to a person familiar with the matter. Nasdaq secured the coveted SpaceX listing earlier this year. SpaceX was valued at $1.75 trillion, and some estimates have put Anthropic at $2 trillion, though that figure has not yet been finalized.

The record-setting size of these IPOs, combined with the dearth in tech listings in recent years, has made winning this competition particularly valuable. Both hope to be seen as the home for future AI IPOs.

Anthropic is preparing to IPO at a time when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that it wouldn't go public right now amid the controversy surrounding existential threats from AI. That risk gained more attention last week after a viral tweet from a former Anthropic employee, warning of a greater than 10% human extinction risk.

Historically, the New York Stock Exchange has won many of the largest listings, but Nasdaq has remained strong in tech, with large listings including Cerebras and Rivian. Listings on its exchange a prerequisite for inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 Index.

In terms of how Anthropic ultimately trades, this decision likely matters little. There isn't a definitive answer on whether companies perform better on one exchange versus another.

One key difference between the exchanges concerns market-maker mechanics. They have different processes for determining the opening price on the first day of trading, and high-volume IPOs can cause delays and confusion. Nasdaq experienced technical issues on the first day of Facebook's 2012 IPO.

Anthropic's IPO filing has not yet been made public, but the company will need to release its financials at least 15 days before it begins its investor road show.

Have a tip? Contact Katie Roof via email at kroof@businessinsider.com or Signal at @kroof.26

• My partner lives in Canada, and I'm in the US — and neither of us has immediate plans to move.
• Spending time in both places lets me enjoy my favorite parts of both American and Canadian culture.
• In the future, we've discussed living in Canada for half the year and spending winters in the US.

For a week every month, I take a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Chicago to Winnipeg, Canada.

That might sound surprising: It's a lot of time to spend in the air, and Chicago has so much to offer. However, I've been in a long-distance relationship with my Canadian partner, Andrew, for over two years, and neither of us is ready to move just yet.

Andrew and I met at a conference for financial bloggers a decade ago, and we were great friends and colleagues for many years before we became a couple.

Today, we run an online business together, which allows us to work remotely and travel regularly between our countries. Because we both have children from previous marriages, neither of us plans to move countries anytime soon.

There are challenges, but I feel like I get the best of both worlds

As an American, I've gotten used to certain apps, tools, and conveniences that I can't access in Canada.

For example, Canada doesn't have Venmo or Cash App, so Andrew and I split costs or pay each other back using Wise. If we start a movie on Hulu, we can only watch it when we're in the States, since the streaming service isn't available in Canada.

As inconvenient as that can be, I often feel like I get the best of both worlds. Take food, for instance: Andrew looks forward to getting Chick-fil-A when he visits me, because there isn't a location in Winnipeg. (Although the chain does exist in some bigger Canadian cities, like Toronto.)

And, though we have A&W here in the US, it doesn't have poutine on the menu, which is the unofficial Canadian national dish. So, I always make sure to order that when I visit him.

I've found that the pace and culture feel very different in both places, too. As someone who's been self-employed for almost 15 years, I appreciate being able to surround myself with other motivated entrepreneurs whenever I'm here.

In Winnipeg and other Canadian cities I've visited, though, I've been able to slow down more. The pace feels more relaxed, and I often think of Canada as my safe haven.

In the future, we might choose both

There are also structural differences between the two places. Canadians fund their universal healthcare system through taxes, whereas a majority of Americans have private insurance.

What's nice about Canada's system is that residents don't have to stress about an unexpected bill or an expensive ER visit.

That said, there can be trade-offs, like longer wait times for emergency care and surgeries. In the US, I appreciate that I can usually make medical appointments quickly, even though they come at a cost.

There are parts of American culture that will always feel hard to leave, but spending so much time in Canada has also shown me that stepping away from hustle culture can be soothing for my soul.

There are parts of American life that Andrew appreciates, too — but I know that if we live elsewhere, he'll miss many aspects of his home, like his close-knit family and the beautiful, wide-open prairies in Winnipeg.

I'm not sure what the future holds once all our kids go to college, but we will likely spend half the year in Canada and then work remotely in a warmer area during the winter.

Whatever we choose, I know what will matter most is making sure we create a lifestyle that feels unique to us, a perfect blend of our cultures together.

The 2026 US Open has reached its thrilling conclusion. We've highlighted everything you need to know about how to watch the US Open final, including free and global streaming options for Shelton vs. Zverev.

A new US Open champion will be crowned after defending champion Carlos Alcaraz was ousted in the quarterfinals in a super late finish against one of today's finalists, Ben Shelton, who will be counting on the home crowd support as he takes on this year's French Open champion, Alexander Zverev, in New York.

How to watch the US Open Men's Final for free

There are a few ways to catch the US Open Men's Final for free. In Australia, it is available for free on 9Now and requires only an account to use. In the US, live TV services like YouTube TV and Fubo offer free trials to new customers.

How to watch the US Open Men's Final from anywhere

If you're away from the location where your preferred streaming service is available, you can still access your favorite content (including free options) with a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy tech tools that help people temporarily alter their device's virtual location. They're popular among those looking to upgrade their cybersecurity or keep up with their usual websites and apps while traveling abroad.

Proton VPN is one of the best VPNs we've tested. It's user-friendly (even for beginners) and offers a substantial selection of global servers. Plus, it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee if you find it's not helping you.

• See also: Where to buy US Open tickets | ESPN streaming service | Best sports streaming services

How to watch the US Open Men's Final in the US

ABC is carrying coverage of the US Open Men's Final in the US. ESPN Unlimited is the best streaming service for accessing every single match at the US Open. Subscriptions cost $32 a month or $320 a year.

If you'd prefer to watch on a platform with a free trial and additional channels beyond the ESPN family, a live TV streaming service will be a better fit. YouTube TV and Fubo are two of our top recommendations right now.

YouTube TV carries ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC in both its main and sports plans. The main plan typically costs $83 a month, but a limited-time YouTube TV deal will knock the first five months down to just $68 a month for first-time customers. The sports plan is also running a special promo where new users can get their first six months down from $65 a month to $45 a month. YouTube TV plans come with a free trial for new users, and ESPN Unlimited is now available on the platform as well.

Fubo is another popular live TV service with plenty of ESPN offerings. ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC are available in Fubo's Sports + News, Pro, and Elite packages. All of these plans also unlock access to ESPN Unlimited. Sports + News starts at $65 a month, but new users can get $10 off their first month of service. Pro and Elite also offer introductory month discounts, and all plans come with a free trial for first-time customers.

How to watch the US Open Men's Final in the UK

In the UK, US Open coverage is available through Sky Sports. Fans can tune in with one of the many Sky TV deals and plans, or access the same content through Now. Now Sports offers more flexibility in streaming content, including a £15 single-day pass, which is a solid option if you're only looking to watch a match or two.

How to watch the US Open Men's Final in Australia

Select US Open coverage, including the men's final, is available for free through 9's Gem channel in Australia. Fans can live stream the action on 9Now by creating a free account if they don't already have one. The tournament will also stream on Stan Sport, which costs $30 a month when you combine the $10 a month base plan fee with the $20 a month Sport add-on.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

The Garmin CIRQA is the brand's first display-free smart band, designed to continuously track your health, sleep, recovery, and activity without the distractions of an on-wrist screen. And on paper, that's a very enticing proposition.

As an experienced fitness product reviewer, I can confidently say that Garmin makes some of the best fitness wearables. Its GPS and heart rate tracking are among the most reliable I've tested; the Garmin Connect app offers a comprehensive amount of health and training data for free; and its watches generally strike a great balance between monitoring your workouts and tracking your recovery.

But despite retaining all of the brand's impressive technology, the CIRQA falls short compared to other screenless fitness bands. I wore the CIRQA 24/7 for four weeks, across workouts, walks, sleep, and everyday life — and though Garmin's health and fitness tracking remains top-notch, the CIRQA's surprisingly bulky sensor makes it difficult to get a comfortable fit. It's also double the price of its primary competitor, the Fitbit Air.

Garmin's tech does have some advantages over Fitbit's, but those perks are less useful when you remove the ability to see real-time data on your wrist. Ultimately, I found that the Garmin CIRQA took away a lot of what makes the brand’s other devices so great without offering any meaningful benefits in return — all while asking you to pay more than other better-designed screenless wearables.

What I like about the Garmin CIRQA

It boasts the brand's excellent health and fitness tracking

The CIRQA's biggest advantage is that, underneath the screenless design, it's still a Garmin.

The band boasts long battery life with up to 10 days of use. It continuously tracks heart rate, stress, skin temperature, Pulse Ox, steps, calories burned, and Garmin's Body Battery metric. If you wear it overnight, you'll also get detailed sleep tracking, including sleep stages, sleep score, HRV (heart rate variability), respiration, and nap detection.

On the fitness side, it can track more than 80 activities and delivers many of Garmin's more useful training metrics, including VO2 max, training readiness, training status, workout benefit, and recovery time.

All of this can be accessed in the Garmin Connect app on your phone, and it all comes without a monthly subscription — a major plus over some screenless band competitors like Whoop or top smart rings like the Oura.

The screenless design minimizes interruptions

If you're someone who needs to put your head down and work, a screenless tracker is simply less distracting than a traditional fitness watch that flashes incoming texts and notifications at you all day — even with the sound off.

The same goes for workouts. I like having my steps, calorie burn, and effort recorded because that data feeds into my daily Body Battery and recovery. But most of the time, I don't need to know exactly how fast I'm running or how hard I'm working in the moment. Unless I'm training for a race or an event, my goal is usually to check movement off my to-do list while pushing as hard as I feel capable of.

For me, a screenless tracker like the Garmin CIRQA means fewer distractions during a workout while still allowing me to see all the juicy data it captures later to inform my overall health and recovery.

Where the Garmin CIRQA falls short

It's too bulky for a screenless tracker

I have two big issues with the Garmin CIRQA tracker, and one is comfort.

The device's sensor/battery housing, which rests under the band, is pretty bulky — it sits a full half-inch above your wrist. Moreover, the tracker feels substantial on your wrist. It weighs 0.75 ounces, which doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things. But for a tracker — especially one that doesn't have a display — it's heavy enough that I could feel it and was aware of it at all times.

Even after two weeks of continuous use, I was very aware that it was on my wrist. After four weeks of testing, I still hadn't gotten used to it.

I also struggled to get the band tension right. The CIRQA uses a hook-and-loop velcro system, but because the sensor/battery housing is so bulky, when I adjusted it to what felt comfortably snug, I sometimes woke up with indents on my skin.

In my opinion, half the point of a screenless tracker is to forget you have it on. They're supposed to be as discreet as possible while still capturing the health and fitness data users want, but the CIRQA simply falls short in its physical design.

The start/stop button is cool in theory, but not that useful in practice

The CIRQA has only one button, a small one on the side that you can program to start tracking your favorite or most-frequently-used activity. On the one hand, this is a smart solution to a major gripe I have with other screenless trackers like the Whoop and Fitbit Air: you have to open the app and cycle through a few buttons to track a walk or a bike ride.

I set my button to walking because this is the activity I'm the least likely to pull out my phone for before launching into it. With a click of the button, the band buzzes to show that tracking has begun.

However, more than once, I found myself detangling dog leashes, setting out, and then second-guessing whether I had already pressed the button or just intended to. There's no light or other visual indicator to confirm that an activity is currently recording, and you can't check on your wrist.

It's a small detail, but it kind of negates the advantage of having a fuss-free activity start button in the first place.

Also, in the bigger picture, most people who use a Garmin aren't looking to track one single kind of activity. It'd be much more helpful if the Garmin CIRQA had a smart-sensing system like Oura's, so you could press the button to start recording any activity and then check the app later to confirm whether you were on a walk, run, bike ride, ski lap, etc.

The lack of a screen creates more compromises than benefits

While I like the appeal of a screen-free wearable, the CIRQA does the bare minimum — and doesn't offer a real reason to choose it over a screenless competitor other than the fact that it's Garmin.

Removing a screen works best when the hardware becomes dramatically more discreet in return. With its thick band, the CIRQA is still very noticeable on your wrist. And with its high profile and heft, you're always aware it's there.

If I'm wearing a fitness band that's noticeable to myself and others, I'd rather have access to Garmin's excellent real-time data with a screen.

Garmin CIRQA vs. Fitbit Air vs. Whoop

Compared with competing screenless fitness bands, the Garmin CIRQA simply falls short, with Fibit and Whoop both offering better value depending on your priorities.

The less expensive Fitbit Air makes the most sense for most people considering a screen-free tracker. It's thinner and lighter, costs $100, and similarly focuses on passively tracking everyday movement, sleep, and health without putting another screen on your wrist. Having tested both, I also found the Fitbit Air to be more discreet, so it blended into more outfits and was substantially easier to forget I was wearing it.

If you're an athlete looking to improve your fitness and recovery without the distractions of a watch face, the Whoop 5.0 is a better choice. It's designed for people who train hard — runners, triathletes, CrossFitters — and who want to understand how training strain, sleep, and recovery all interact so they know when to push harder or back off. Its downside is that it requires an ongoing paid subscription.

In theory, the CIRQA sits somewhere between these two, offering more advanced training metrics than the Fitbit Air without requiring Whoop's paid membership. But the vast majority of people who are drawn to Garmin's training focus will be much happier with one of their top-performing fitness watches that give you real-time workout data, like the Forerunner 265 or the Vivoactive 6.

Should you buy the Garmin CIRQA?

I think Garmin makes some of the most impressive fitness watches on the market, with top-tier GPS, extensive activity tracking, long battery life, and super helpful training features like the Garmin Coach and Body Battery recovery score — all without requiring a subscription.

But I don't know who the CIRQA is for.

For someone who primarily wants passive health and wellness tracking, the CIRQA is bulkier, thicker, and more expensive than its screen-free competitor, the Fitbit Air. And, while the CIRQA is backed by the same great software as other Garmin watches, the benefits of that technology aren't as useful without a watch face delivering mid-workout stats to help you train harder.

Garmin makes excellent watches precisely because they let you access incredibly accurate fitness data while you're exercising. The CIRQA cuts off half the reason Garmin devices are worth buying, and at $200, it's hard to justify that trade-off.

Casual users drawn to the CIRQA's screenless design will be happier with the cheaper Fitbit Air, and those interested in Garmin's more advanced workout data are better off spending a little more and buying the more traditional Vivoactive 6 fitness watch.

• My husband and I were both college athletes who love sports.
• We're not pushing our kids to specialize in a sport early and encourage other activities.
• We want to avoid injuries and burnout while allowing them to explore their own interests.

My husband and I were both college athletes. When we had two boys, I think people naturally assumed we'd push the sports route hard. After all, I was a four-year starter on my college soccer team, while my husband played football for an Ivy League college.

But we've actually taken the opposite approach, and in addition to the expected soccer, baseball, and flag football dalliances, many of my kids' activities are non-sports-related. Think piano, musical theater, and Cub Scouts. Our kids are 6 and 8, and we're not pushing sports on them right now. Here's why.

We want them to be well-rounded

Kids around us are engaging in competitive sports earlier and earlier. Hospital for Special Surgery, citing the National Council of Youth Sports, reports that about 27% of the 60 million children and teens who participate in organized sports each year play only one sport. These kids are often practicing year-round, competing on travel teams, and in some cases, playing on multiple teams for the same sport.

While parents' intentions are good — their kid loves a sport, they're good at it, why not encourage it? — research has shown that there's not always a clear benefit to early sports specialization, or ESS. Instead, I've read that it could be detrimental to kids' sports success, as it can lead to overuse injuries and burnout, and may actually impede overall motor development.

Free play is a priority for us

One of the rules we have in our home is that each kid can play one sport per season. With two kids, we have practice at most twice a week and games on Saturdays. That leaves lots of time for free play. Studies have shown that unstructured play is immensely important to kids' developing brains, but it is being summarily replaced by youth sports and its demands.

I consider it a win that with two kids, I'm able to reserve three afternoons a week solely for free play. Will that change if they choose to embrace travel sports? Sure. But for now, they make up elaborate games with their neighborhood friends, ride their bikes and scooters, and honestly, make the biggest messes, both inside and out.

We want to avoid injuries and burnout

My laundry list of soccer-related injuries is long. I've had countless sprained ankles, a broken nose, a badly hyperextended elbow, chipped teeth, and torn ligaments in both my knees, one of which resulted in surgery. My husband suffered two concussions, which ended his collegiate career.

Early sports specialization (ESS) is a surefire way to increase the risk of overuse injuries. At this stage, I'll do just about anything to avoid the ER, including putting off competitive sports. With two boys, we're already frequent fliers. We also don't want them to burn out. As seasoned athletes, we know what it's like to burn out, and we don't want the same for our kids.

After sitting in school for 7 hours a day, we want them to choose extracurriculars that truly light them up, speak to their passions, and are, well, fun. That means that sometimes it's flag football, and sometimes it's ukulele lessons. Both are equally valuable.

We're taking a thoughtful approach

Both my kids play baseball, but with a few caveats. Both are playing on an official Little League team, which means fields are uniform, playing time is mandated, and there are limits on things like the number of pitches allowed per day. We don't require them to practice on their own time, unless they want to.

We do require them to finish the season if they sign up to play on a team, but we don't require them to sign up for any sport again if they truly don't like or enjoy it.

It sounds random, but it seems I've modeled my philosophy after the Norwegian approach to youth sports. This was brought to my attention after the recent Winter Olympics. In short, Norwegians prioritize joy over winning, don't keep score until kids are older, and don't allow ESS. The result is a country that boasts a record of 447 Winter Olympic medals (including 166 gold), an impressive soccer team (hello, Erling Haaland, who we all enjoyed during the World Cup), and many other elite athletes — all without pressuring children to excel in sports early.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-sports.

Playing soccer for most of my life gave me so much — a work ethic, lifelong friends, a sense of belonging, and a sense of responsibility to the greater good. But sports aren't the only way to learn those skills, and I won't freak out if my children choose not to pursue the college sports route. At the end of the day, all I want is for them to be happy, well-rounded kids. And if that means playing sports, great. If not, that's OK, too.

• Laura Lee Ehrlich has had a long journey as a caregiver, affecting her career and finances.
• Ehrlich has been a caregiver for multiple family members, including her aunt and mother-in-law.
• Balancing caregiving and nursing school, Ehrlich said, financial planning goes a long way.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Laura Lee Ehrlich, 54, who lives on Long Island. Ehrlich has cared for five older loved ones over the last two decades and gave up her job to be a more present caregiver. It's come at a cost to her savings and emotional well-being. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm the youngest of five siblings. My mom held numerous jobs when we were little, and my dad worked in the city. When he worked strange hours, my older brother was the man of the house.

My mom, who worked for a surgeon, got me a job with his practice, where I worked for 17 years. My sister and I worked for my family's medical billing business. I also did insurance verification, and I'm currently in nursing school.

I wish I had listened to my mom to pursue this when I was 18.

I've been my family's caregiver

For the last two decades, I've been on and off working because of my family's illnesses. I was the one who wouldn't work anymore and stay home to take care of my father.

In 2002, my son was an infant when my dad was rushed to the hospital. We had a cardiologist come see him, and he pulled strings to get my father into a Manhattan hospital. He wound up having open-heart surgery after doctors discovered he had a widowmaker heart attack.

Doctors told us he had six months to a year at the most, but he wound up sticking around for six more years. His body took a toll little by little, and he started having mini strokes. He was basically homebound, and my mom would stay home with him. If she weren't there, I would be. I lived with them at that point. He would fall constantly, and we would have to rush to him frequently over a period of two months before he died in 2008.

My husband died in July that same year. It was completely unexpected. The hospital considered his mom and dad as the next of kin, and they kept him alive for four days while checking his organs for donation. It was too much for me.

Shortly after that, my father-in-law was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I took him to the hospital for radiation therapy and handled some of his errands, as he only had his sister in the US, who lived in Florida.

When my father-in-law became sick again in 2021, we got him into a nursing home because he couldn't care for himself anymore. I've dealt with all the red tape for him, and I became his power of attorney.

I was able to get Family and Medical Leave Act money, and when that ran out, I went back to work. I couldn't handle it anymore because of how many calls the nursing home gave me. I had some money saved up and had a 401(k) I wound up using.

I used up my retirement money

Then, my aunt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I became her full-time caregiver at that point. I took her to her chemo appointments, and I would stay with her for four to six hours after each treatment to make sure that she wasn't getting sick. Being out of a job wasn't so bad, and they would give me some money for my caregiving.

After she completed her chemo, she fell and needed back surgery to fuse two of her vertebrae. I became her caregiver again, and I would do her wound care. She recovered quite a bit, and we decided that she would do OK with just a cane. For a few years afterward, I wasn't a full-time caregiver, and I moved to Tennessee with my kids for a year.

My sister arranged a trip for my mom to go to Georgia to see her niece and nephew. She broke her pelvis while there, as well as her thigh bone, a few bones, and her wrist. After three days of arguing about what to do, we got her into a rehab facility. Her mind was slipping quite a bit. My siblings and I made sure my mom had everything she needed. After trying out aides who were not helpful, my sisters and I moved in with my mom on a rotating schedule, 24/7.

She didn't know where she was or who the people were. This probably lasted for a year and a half. At the start of the pandemic, she broke her femur, and she was only in the hospital. We got a hoist lift, but she really degraded quite a bit. She died in 2021.

My aunt offered for my kids and me to live here permanently, but it became obvious very quickly that she was developing Alzheimer's disease. I would have to babysit her all day to make sure she wasn't getting scammed or doing anything wrong. I had to take over control of her medication. I hired an aide to take her out during the day to give me a break, and that went on for a year and a half. Then, we took the car away from her.

One day at the mall, she fell and broke her femur. She went to rehab, and I got her placed at an assisted living, which I haven't been thrilled about. She's been there for about a year. There hasn't been much for me to do in her case, and I know I should be more active, but I can't handle it.

I became her trustee, and I get a living stipend that I draw on, which is enough to get by. I don't have to pay for her house.

I'm caring for my mother-in-law, who is 85, and is not requiring any medical care except for driving her to all of her doctors. I've taken over her bills and mail because she can't see very well. I'm there to clean the house and fix anything. I'm probably with her for four hours, three times a week. I'd suspect caregiving costs are between $1,000 and $2,000 monthly.

I'm waiting for my life to start

I'm taking it one day at a time. I don't have any plans for my life except taking care of my mother-in-law. When she's no longer here, that's when my life will start. I'm hoping to complete nursing school and find a good job somewhere, ideally traveling to people's homes to care for their physical needs. This way, I'll have something to support myself.

I still haven't dealt with the loss of my parents, my husband, or my father-in-law. It's just been putting up a wall and going on to the next person who needs help. It's very taxing and emotionally draining. You do what you have to do to get through the day and go on to the next one. I have a new granddaughter, who has been the light of my life.

I tell people that when you're 18, buy long-term care insurance. By the time you need it, you won't be able to afford it. I'm 54 and can't pay $800 a month. I'm better off being a Medicaid recipient so I don't have to worry about nursing homes. It's important to stay close to your family because you're going to need them. It goes a long way for mental health.

• My oldest son told me on a Monday that he was moving 3,000 miles away that Thursday.
• I understood his need to leave because I'd made a similar move at the same age.
• When I visited his new home, I discovered he'd brought the Christmas bear he'd had since childhood.

My oldest son was my only child for three years. I think that built a bond that doesn't exist with any of his four siblings who had to share me from day one with an expanding brood of children.

I can honestly say, I do not have a favorite child, but it was this oldest one who taught me how to be a mother. That included how to let go when the time came.

At the age of 19 after an inauspicious start to college, he moved cross-country to San Francisco, a frequent transition for kids who grow up in Boston.

Since he was the first of my five to depart home, it hit me pretty hard; but it was clear he needed a change and I willingly co-signed his decision.

I did the same thing at the same age

My son informed me of his impending move on a Monday. He left that Thursday. I didn't discourage him. I'd done the same thing at the same age. Like him, I'd notified my mother that I was leaving home just four days before I actually did. My destination was Phoenix, where I was joining my brother who'd just moved west to accept a job in the desert and had invited me to join him.

I packed my most important worldly possessions in a camp trunk, shipped it out first and then flew to our new home.

My son was riding across the country in a van with three other 19-year-olds. He packed even less than me. I don't remember crying as I watched them depart. I was already thinking about the mess he'd left behind and how it was up to me to clean it up.

I braced myself for what I was about to find

Our house was small and with so many children, we'd converted almost every inch of living space into a bedroom. My son's room had been our basement playroom, but when he hit puberty, I wanted him to have privacy away from his younger siblings so sent him downstairs to his own personal lair.

His brother, who still shared a room with two siblings, coveted the space and didn't take long to box up his belongings in anticipation of a move downstairs. Before he could haul his things down, though, I wanted to clear out whatever might have been left behind.

I was nervous about what I might find and didn't want any of the other kids to uncover something illicit or illegal.

Fortunately, I didn't find any contraband although I wondered what might be in the small safe in the closet. When I asked him, my son said it was empty and since he'd lost the key and we couldn't open it I decided to accept that answer.

There were a few books and some out-of-date electronics, but most of what he left behind were clothes he'd outgrown. I wasn't surprised when I found a Playboy magazine hidden under a pile of old sweaters. In fact, it made me laugh as I recalled my parents finding an issue when my brother left home.

It's what he took with him that surprised me the most

The clear-out didn't take long. If he could be unsentimental about what he'd left behind, so could I. By the end of the day, his brother had taken over the space, made it his own, and settled in.

The intrepid travelers arrived safely on the West Coast five days later. They easily found jobs and a place to live. My son's first job in the Bay Area was on an assembly line in an electronics factory. It was an enlightening experience for him that empowered his next decision — registering for college and setting forth on the path towards the career he has today.

When he moved into his own apartment, I went out to help him set it up. He gave me a tour of the space and proudly commented on how he wanted to fix it up. As I stepped into his bedroom, I saw something familiar propped up on his mattress. It was his Christmas bear that had sat under our tree each year since toddlerhood. I hadn't realized he'd taken this childhood treasure with him.

My oldest moving out was the first monumental shift in our family dynamic. When I looked at that stuffed bear, I knew that even though he now lived 3000 miles away from me, my son really wasn't that far from home.

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says he's now 'convinced' AI development needs to slow down.
• Amodei cited OpenAI agents' Hugging Face hack as one reason.
• The Anthropic CEO proposed a three-step plan for the AI industry to slow things down.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says he's "become convinced" in recent months that AI needs to slow down. And rogue OpenAI agents are part of the reason.

Amodei cited the July Hugging Face breach, in which OpenAI agents broke out of their testing environment to hack into the AI platform and then hide their tracks, as one of the catalysts for his heightened alarm.

"Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it's my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet," he wrote in a blog post published Saturday.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Saturday that he agreed with Amodei. "We need to pace the frontier," he said on X. "This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks."

Elon Musk, whose SpaceXAI competes with Anthropic and OpenAI, also backed Amodei's proposition on Saturday, writing in an X post, "Dario is right."

Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google's AI program, DeepMind, said on X that "Dario's essay points towards the right path forward." He reminded everyone that two months ago, he outlined his own vision for how AI should be developed and governed.

Amodei also cited the rapid advancement of AI in recent months and its increased capacity for "recursive self-improvement," which is essentially an AI model's ability to learn on its own.

Amodei proposed a three-step plan to slow down AI development to ensure the tech's safety "while still achieving its benefits and grappling with important geopolitical dilemmas."

Central to Amodei's plan is embedding independent safety evaluators inside frontier AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, giving them "employee-like access" to the companies' systems and work.

"This is the key step for verifiability of any pacing commitments," Amodei wrote. "Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this step now."

In his X post, Altman said OpenAI would also implement third-party evaluators into its company. "We'll have more to share soon," he said.

The AI community has been in a furor this week after Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon quit, issuing a public warning that AI agents could "kill us all by the end of the decade."

Coxon's warnings were shared widely and signal-boosted by other Anthropic employees, one of whom, the company's alignment science lead, said on X, "Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!"

On Saturday, Coxon reposted Musk's "Dario is right" post. Earlier in the week, Musk accused Coxon of orchestrating a "setup."

OpenAI's chief scientist, meanwhile, also said in a blog post last week that leading AI labs need to coordinate a slowdown. "No one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence," Jakub Pachocki said.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reposted Pachocki's comments on X, calling it an "important post." Bloomberg reported this week that, during an employee meeting, Altman said OpenAI was willing to slow AI development in conjunction with rival labs.

In his Saturday essay, Amodei reiterated previous calls for the US government to intervene and establish guidelines for American labs. The Trump administration, so far, has resisted regulating the American AI industry to maintain its narrowing lead over Chinese AI labs.

Democratic lawmakers, for their part, proposed stringent legislation this week that would severely hamper AI development. Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a recent interview with MSNOW, said AI companies "need to stop right now."

Amodei and other leading AI researchers and engineers have not argued for a full stop to development. In his essay, Amodei said American AI labs should continue developing, just with more robust safeguards.

He said there remains a need to compete with China, and said the Trump administration could ensure this by not selling the rival the advanced chips needed to power AI models.

"The stakes are too high for pacing to be an empty exercise — we need to use the time it gives us wisely," Amodei said.

• The Emmys are pretty much the Oscars for television.
• We compiled a list of actors with the most Emmys, from Mary Tyler Moore to Bryan Cranston.
• The 2026 Emmy Awards will air on Monday, September 14, on NBC and Peacock.

An Emmy is the biggest award an actor can win for their work on the small screen — and when there's a show or a performance Emmy voters love, it often gets multiple nominations and wins.

We've pored over the stats and compiled a list of the most Emmy-awarded actors of all time. It includes some of the biggest TV stars of all time, including Bryan Cranston, Betty White, Mary Tyler Moore, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

In fact, Louis-Dreyfus is tied with Cloris Leachman for eight Emmy wins as a performer and with Carl Reiner for the most total Emmy wins among the actors on this list, with 11, if you include their awards in other categories, too.

The total Emmy wins listed here aren't exclusively for performances: Some on this list have won for writing, directing, or producing — Cranston was a producer on "Breaking Bad," and Louis-Dreyfus is an executive producer for "Veep," for example — but the majority of their Emmys are for acting. 

Here are the actors with the most Emmy wins.

Carrie Wittmer contributed to a prior version of this article.

15 (tie). Don Knotts — 5 wins and 5 nominations

Knotts was nominated for five Emmy Awards (in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966, and 1967) for his performance as Barney Fife in "The Andy Griffith Show" — and he won them all.

15 (tie). John Larroquette — 5 wins and 7 nominations

Larroquette won four consecutive Emmys from 1985 to 1988 for his performance in "Night Court." His last win came for his guest role in "The Practice" in 1998.

15 (tie). Candice Bergen — 5 wins and 9 nominations

All five of Bergen's wins came from her performance as the titular role in the CBS sitcom "Murphy Brown." She was nominated for an additional two awards in the 2000s for "Boston Legal."

15 (tie). Peter Falk — 5 wins and 12 nominations

All but one of Falk's Emmys came from his long-running performance as one of the most iconic TV detectives: Frank Columbo on "Columbo."

He also won in 1962 for "The Dick Powell Show."

11 (tie). Tim Conway — 6 wins and 13 nominations

Conway was nominated for both his acting and his writing. He won for acting on "The Carol Burnett Show," "Coach," and "30 Rock."

11 (tie). Michael J. Fox — 5 wins and 19 nominations

Fox won three consecutive Emmys in '86, '87, and '88 for playing Alex P. Keaton in "Family Ties."

He won another two for "Spin City" and "Rescue Me."

In 2026, he was nominated for his guest appearance on "Shrinking," but lost to Rob Reiner, who won posthumously for his appearance on "The Bear."

11 (tie). Kelsey Grammer — 5 wins and 17 nominations

Four of Grammer's wins came from his long-running performance as Frasier Crane on "Frasier."

His fifth (and most recent) win came from his vocal performance as Sideshow Bob in an episode of "The Simpsons."

11 (tie). Betty White — 5 wins and 21 nominations

White's wins were for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Golden Girls," "The John Larroquette Show," and "Saturday Night Live."

8 (tie). Maya Rudolph — 6 wins and 16 nominations

Rudolph won twice while on "Saturday Night Live," and won four times for voicing Connie the Hormone Monstress on "Big Mouth."

8 (tie). Art Carney — 6 wins and 12 nominations

Carney won four times for "The Jackie Gleason Show," once for "The Honeymooners," and once for the made-for-TV film "Terrible Joe Moran."

8 (tie). Tyne Daly — 6 wins and 16 nominations

In 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1988, Daly took home the Emmy Award for lead actress in a drama series for "Cagney and Lacey."

She won twice more in 1996 and 2003 for roles in "Christy" and "Judging Amy," respectively.

8 (tie). Alan Alda — 6 wins and 34 nominations

Alda won five Emmys across acting, writing, and directing on "MASH." His last win came in 2006 for appearing on "The West Wing."

4 (tie). Bryan Cranston — 7 wins and 16 nominations

In 2025, at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Cranston won his seventh Emmy for his guest role on "The Studio."

Prior to that, all of Cranston's wins came from starring in and producing "Breaking Bad."

4 (tie). Allison Janney — 7 wins and 15 nominations

Janney won three Emmys in a row for "The West Wing" from 2000 to 2002 (and then another in 2004).

She won three more times for "Masters of Sex" and "Mom."

4 (tie). Ed Asner — 7 wins and 17 nominations

Asner won for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Rich Man, Poor Man," "Roots," and "Lou Grant."

Asner's wins for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Lou Grant" made him one of the few actors to win for playing the same character across two different shows.

4 (tie). Mary Tyler Moore — 7 wins and 15 nominations

Moore won twice for "The Dick Van Dyke Show," four times for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and once for the TV movie "Stolen Babies."

3. Cloris Leachman — 8 wins and 22 nominations

If we're just counting performances, Leachman would be tied for No. 2; however, the two actors above her have also won for writing and producing.

Leachman won for acting in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "A Brand New Life," "Cher," the "Screen Actors Guild 50th Anniversary Celebration," "Promised Land," and "Malcolm in the Middle" across 33 years.

1 (tie). Carl Reiner — 11 wins and 18 nominations

Reiner's three acting Emmys came from "Caesar's Hour" and "Mad About You."

His other eight wins came from writing and producing "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special."

1 (tie). Julia Louis-Dreyfus — 11 wins and 26 nominations

Most famously, Louis-Dreyfus won a record-breaking six consecutive Emmy Awards for playing Selina Meyer on "Veep" (she also won three more for producing the show).

She won one Emmy apiece for her performances on "Seinfeld" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine," as well.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Existential angst

What do you do if you feel like you're helping build something that could contribute to the end of humanity?

This is the existential question confronting the AI industry, a debate that only intensified after Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, quit last week with a stark warning. He said AI giants are "gambling with our lives" and that the people building the technology "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."

The swift reaction to Coxon's warning boiled over on Saturday when the leaders of the biggest AI companies publicly agreed on what should happen next.

In a Saturday essay, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says he's "become convinced" the breakneck pace of advancement must change and proposed a three-step solution to ensure the tech's safety.

Shortly afterward, Elon Musk and Sam Altman publicly aligned with Amodei's plan in a rare sign of support. "Dario is right," Musk tweeted. Altman agreed, too, saying the pace of development has been a "primary topic" of discussion at OpenAI in recent weeks.

Altman also said OpenAI might not move forward with an IPO this year. "Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public," he said in a Fortune interview.

As fears over AI safety intensify, employees at Anthropic and OpenAI have also been speaking out.

My colleague Sarah Needleman reported on a big question facing many concerned AI employees: Should they quit or stay amid fears of an AI apocalypse?

Some AI workers believe they can do more good by staying on the inside. That means raising concerns, pushing for safeguards, and trying to influence decisions before they are made. Others worry that staying at these companies only helps legitimize a race that some believe is getting dangerously out of control.

BI's Alistair Bar explored some of these theories in this week's edition of AI Insider — you can subscribe here to his weekly newsletter.

Are employees at the big AI lab companies better off leaving or staying if they feel like their work is contributing to a possible AI apocalypse? Send me a note at srussolillo@businessinsider.com and let me know what you think.

• Though I travel often, I had never been on a cruise.
• I had misconceptions about this popular way of travel.
• All that changed when my husband and I went on a luxury cruise for my 49th birthday.

Even as a seasoned traveler, it took me nearly five decades to get on a cruise ship at all. I had never been particularly curious about cruising and had some pretty unflattering ideas about what it involved: heaping buffets of dubious food, brightly colored drinks, crowded decks, and a style of travel that seemed much too packaged for me.

Then, this summer, I spent nine nights traveling through Northern Europe and discovered that much of what I thought I knew about cruising was wrong.

My husband and I went on a cruise for my 49th birthday.

My husband and I sailed aboard Crystal Serenity from Southampton to Copenhagen, a voyage on which I would celebrate my 49th birthday. And this was admittedly a very cushy introduction: I stayed in a Sapphire Veranda Suite with a walk-in closet, veranda, and butler service.

So I'm certainly not suggesting my experience represents every cruise. But as someone who typically takes complicated, high-effort trips, I found these were the things that surprised me most about my first one.

I couldn't believe how easy everything was.

I'm accustomed to doing a lot of work when I travel. I tend to build ambitious itineraries involving multiple cities, hotels, trains, flights, restaurant reservations, and activities. I love that kind of travel, but there are a lot of logistics involved — and as the mom and travel planner in chief, I'm usually the one managing them all.

Cruising took an astonishing amount of that effort away. I unpacked once, put everything in the closet, slid my empty suitcase under the bed, and didn't deal with it again for nine nights. While I slept, ate dinner, or watched a show, my hotel was effortlessly transporting me to another country.

The rest felt similarly organized. An on-ship newsletter featured printed itineraries that told me exactly what would be happening on board the following day. Excursions were coordinated around the ship's arrival and departure. Restaurants, entertainment, and activities were steps from my room.

I hadn't realized just how much mental and physical energy I normally spend administering my own trips until I didn't have to.

The food was incredible.

Cruise food, in my imagination, was mostly about quantity: enormous buffets of mediocre food feeding thousands of people at once.

What I encountered on Crystal was very different. The main dining room didn't repeat dishes, so you could always count on something new to try. Beyond that, my favorite meals came from places that I'd consider hot restaurants even in my buzzy hometown of Los Angeles. Umi Uma, created by Nobu Matsuhisa, served sophisticated Japanese food and sushi. Osteria d'Ovidio offered seriously high-end Italian cooking.

Obviously, this was a luxury ship, and I wouldn't assume every cruise serves food like this one did. But it thoroughly dismantled my assumption that cruise dining necessarily meant choosing among endless ho-hum chafing dishes at a buffet.

I couldn't believe I sometimes preferred staying on board to sightseeing.

Before this trip, I couldn't understand why anyone would travel somewhere only to spend the day on a ship. But the ship turned me into such a person.

There were history lectures, art classes, live performances, a spa, pools, a movie theater, and a casino. I entered a $100 blackjack tournament on a whim and somehow came in third (I'll be getting mileage out of this proud moment for years to come).

The ultimate test came when we docked in Rotterdam. We had booked an excursion to Amsterdam that would take most of the day, but we decided to cancel it to spend more time on board. I never would have seen that coming.

I actually relaxed — something I'm not very good at doing on trips.

I love travel, but my tendency to cram a lot into every trip means I frequently return home exhausted.

On the cruise, I slept like an absolute baby. (My husband suggested it might be the gentle motion of the sea that lulled me.) In fact, I slept in so late that I ended up setting my alarm for 10 a.m. I knew I'd miss regular breakfast, but I didn't want to miss the late-riser breakfast from 10 to 11 — or sleep through a day when there were things on board I actually wanted to do.

Without transportation to arrange, hotels to change, or a packed sightseeing agenda to manage, I settled into a pace I rarely allow myself while traveling. For once, the words "travel" and "vacation" actually felt synonymous.

I sometimes questioned how deeply I was experiencing the destinations.

For all the things I loved about cruising, one of my original reservations did bear out.

I usually think of travel as a way to experience a place and its culture. I like wandering neighborhoods, eating local cuisine, figuring out public transportation, and having the kinds of unplanned interactions that happen when you're actually immersed in a destination (even when they're stressful).

A port stop is different. We visited some incredible places, and we were generally there for only a few hours before returning to the ship. There was less time for wandering, spontaneity, or meaningful cultural exchange.

In that sense, this cruise felt more like a true vacation than the kind of travel I typically do. And, as it turns out, I really needed and enjoyed that. But I did sometimes wonder how much I could say I'd truly experienced a destination after seeing it within the relatively controlled framework of a port day.

So if my primary goal were to deeply get to know a place, I'd still choose to stay there rather than visit it by ship. But I loved the shipboard experience, and it turned out to be one of the best trips I've taken in recent memory.

• Jordan Karp launched his own brokerage at 26 and has a transaction volume of nearly $1 billion.
• Karp goes above and beyond for clients by ensuring around-the-clock availability.
• He works with celebrities and high-net-worth clients, but isn't too proud to still knock on doors.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jordan Karp, 30, founder and CEO of Jordan Karp LLC, a real estate brokerage in South Florida. Karp started his own brokerage at 26 years old and has nearly reached $1 billion in transaction volume. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I started my business at the beginning of 2023.

Before, I was working on investing for my family and creating a portfolio of acquiring diverse assets from 2020 to 2022.

I was cold-calling for properties to acquire, invest, assemble, buy, lease, and manage across all asset classes. I was doing it for industrial, commercial, retail, residential, single-family, development sites, creative, and opportunistic multidimensional strategic assets across Florida.

I was brokering deals for myself on the side where I saw value in the market, and did that until the end of 2022. Then I started my business full-time.

My transaction volume is about $500 million from January until now, and about $1 billion lifetime.

I love my job because no day is the same. Here's a glimpse at what my workdays look like.

I catch up with clients on restaurant rooftops, boats, and the padel court

I have all different types of clients. I have celebrity clients and I also have private equity clients. I have clients who've sold businesses, CEOs, people in private businesses, founders, chairmen of businesses, lawyers, managers.

One of my clients and close friends, Austin Rosen, manages Post Malone, and he has a private restaurant rooftop at the Electric Feel Studios in Miami, where I'll usually have client meetings, dinners, and spend a lot of time.

I work with a lot of music artists, managers, and people in the music industry, and we'll meet at Feel. I'm very dynamic, and I'm very adaptive to where I meet clients.

It's definitely important to meet people in person, whether it be at the office, on the padel court, in the street, or at a certain property.

I usually work with a boat or yacht company, and they service me whenever I have a client in town to look at different properties on the water.

If the client is not familiar with Miami or Florida as a whole, I'll take them by boat or a yacht.

We'll start at the southernmost point of Miami and go all the way to Bal Harbour, the northernmost part. I'll give them a full education and information about the market, what properties trade for, the price per foot, the trends of where things are going, and they can see the level of houses.

I'm available to my clients whenever they need me — even at 3 a.m.

There's no difference to me between 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. — my phone is going off all day.

I've taken calls at all hours of the night; I've done 2 a.m., I've done 3 a.m.

When I was selling the SLS Brickell Hotel for $55 million in 2023, I was selling that for the Royal Family of Qatar, and they were based in London.

I represented the seller, and I also represented the buyer, which was a private Albanian group, Kastrati Group. They were in Albania and traveling through Eastern Europe, and the main office for the Royal Family of Qatar was in London. So I was up all hours of the night.

They would call me at 4 a.m., 3 a.m., and 2 a.m. They would send me documents. I'd have to get on calls with them; they were in the same time zone as each other, or slightly different ones, but a closer time zone than where I was.

My work-life balance is work, work, work. My work and my life, and the balance of working within my life, are vertically integrated.

I live to work. I don't work to live.

For me, this is fun. It's not work.

Sometimes, my days run into a workout right after, and I'll take the adrenaline or the rush of work into it.

I'll go on a run from where I live on North Bay Road up through to Allison Island, to La Gorce Island. Sometimes I'll run from North Bay Road down through Sunset Island, to Venetian Islands, to downtown Miami, and I'll run the properties I usually sell.

I get a running perspective when I'm running by them and see, "Oh, that's an address I should keep in mind." Then I'll be taking calls for work while I'm doing that. So I'll be fielding different properties, but also fielding calls and working on the progression of that all at the same time while running those routes of the neighborhoods.

Sometimes the important call comes in the middle of that time or when you're outreaching to a client, and they're busy, and the worst time for you is the best time for them. You have to take that call in that moment and bring three different people who have three different time schedules together.

You're in the middle of your workout. But what you do doesn't really matter compared to what the greater goal is.

Then, from the workout, I'll shower, and it'll be 10 o'clock at night, and then I'll decompress from 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. and be on my phone and still be available for calls, and look at calls that I missed while I was in the shower.

I have no shame and still door-knock

Door-knocking goes exactly how you could imagine. It's uncomfortable, but I think where there's discomfort, there's growth.

If you come with value and you come with service and you come with persistence, I think there's a level of appreciation and acknowledgment that you went out of your way and are expensing the time to generate value and bring something to the table.

People have an appreciation and acknowledgment for that, especially people on the other side, who live or have built these types of homes and have this type of net worth. They were likely, at some point, at this stage in their life, so they can relate to you in a sense; there's a connection that sometimes gets built in that way.

I want to door-knock on as many homes as possible, so I'm not looking at the percentage of acceptance, but rather at the volume of business that I get from playing the numbers game.

If you call 200 people and you get 10 people to respond, you're busy. One hundred ninety people are rejecting you, but the 10 people will keep you busy. And if you call 500 people and you get 20 people, you're a little bit more successful.

I actually take rejection well, meaning I can handle rejection and I can continue to persist and work on that opportunity. I know there's the long term and there's a long game, and the opportunity can always be around the corner, and you just have to keep chipping away.

I'm relentless, I'm fearless, and I have no shame — that's my business model.

Life is very short, and at the end of the day, people want to see results.

• Army dentists say war games omit dental emergencies that could strain wartime casualty evacuation.
• Broken equipment and limited supplies can hinder field dental training opportunities.
• Forward dental teams can treat patients quickly and return them to duty.

A painful toothache or an oral infection might not sound like an injury that could sideline a soldier in combat, but US Army dental leaders warn that in a future conflict, such easily overlooked conditions could take troops out of the fight, consume scarce evacuation capacity, and further stress a strained medical system.

Most of the Army's major exercises don't include dental emergencies in their casualty scenarios, dentists said in a recent professional article, leaving commanders with an incomplete picture of the medical and triage or evacuation demands they could face in large-scale combat.

Dental emergencies can quickly render troops "non-mission-capable," the authors wrote, because pain can make it difficult to eat, think clearly, or carry out important tasks like operating weapons. They described this as a significant "hidden casualty load."

Unlike combat wounds, most dental problems can be easily fixed if dental teams are nearby, but despite their important role in military health care, "deployable dental capabilities continue to decline," authors wrote, underscoring an "urgent need for accurate dental emergency modeling in war-gaming to emphasize the importance of [non-battle related injuries] and dental emergencies."

Past wars indicate substantial demand. Dental emergencies accounted for 19% of all treatment at military hospitals near the front lines during the war in Iraq. Another recent article by Army dentists said that dental disease and other non-battle injuries made up nearly 16% of all medical evacuations among troops fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Almost all dental patients treated by forward dental teams returned to duty after one or two visits, the authors wrote. Without dental care close to the front, however, soldiers may have to travel farther to receive treatment, potentially removing them from duty for as long as a week.

Casualty evacuations for any type of health concern or injury, major or minor, are likely to pose a problem for the military in future large-scale combat. The proliferation of drones, both attack and surveillance systems, across the Ukrainian battlefield have made quick evacuation largely impossible, a stark difference from the US experience during the post-9/11 wars.

In a recent military news release for a healthcare training event, Army dentist Lt. Col. Jesse Thietten said dental care "is a low-hanging-fruit solution for medical as a whole. Military medicine needs solutions to account for the anticipated systemic medical overload in [large-scale conflicts.]"

Dental emergencies could rank among the top five most common reasons for casualty evacuation in such a fight, Thietten added. For troops deployed abroad in multinational settings alongside partner forces, dental concerns are "the number one reason" for casualty evacuation, he added.

Thietten helped develop a lightweight expeditionary dental platform for special operations teams training in remote parts of Europe, where teams asked for help treating dental emergencies without easy access to traditionally robust medical facilities. The goal was to bring care closer to troops rather than having to shuttle them to far-off clinics.

Such an approach reflects what Thietten argues the broader force will need in a future fight, including more dental work before troops deploy, along with smaller, more mobile dental teams that can operate close to units in the field.

Within the Air Force, less than 1% of the service's dentists deploy," said Air Force Col. Anita Shade, chief of dental services for the 21st Medical Group, in the same news release. "Our dental teams are often disconnected from the heart of the readiness mission that we work to support, day in and day out," she said.

That disconnect may become more pronounced when combat casualties can't easily be moved from the battlefield to established hospitals and care facilities.

"Asymmetric/hybrid drone warfare shows us that we now need to plan and prepare for prolonged patient management in the field due to the unpredictability of patient transport," Shade said.

Another problem for some military dentists is more basic — broken field equipment and a lack of medical supplies, hampering training opportunities.

Two Army dentists cited those problems in another article from this summer on how military dentistry must adapt for future conflict. While preparing for a unit exercise, they found that their field equipment had not been used in nearly a year and that critical equipment including their sterilizer unit was broken, underscoring further readiness challenges.

• Six years ago, I left my home country, Mexico, and moved to New York, then to the UK.
• I recently returned to Mexico after a long time away and was surprised by how much it has changed.
• I felt like an outsider, and realized I had changed even more.

I grew up in Mexico City and spent most of my life there. Six years ago, I left the country, first for the US and later for the UK, but I never stopped thinking of my birthplace as the place I ultimately belonged.

This summer, I returned after two years away, the longest stretch I had ever gone without visiting home. I expected the trip to feel nostalgic and effortless.

Instead, I was surprised by how tiring it felt and, for the first time, how slightly out of place I seemed to be.

Mexico City had changed while I was away

The first thing that struck me was how different the city itself felt. Mexico City had always been huge, chaotic, and international in its own way, but the version I returned to felt noticeably more cosmopolitan than the one I remembered.

There were new restaurants everywhere, more international businesses, more English being spoken around me, and far more foreigners than I remembered seeing before I left. Areas that once felt deeply familiar now seemed to belong to a newer version of the city.

I did not necessarily dislike any of it. But it surprised me how quickly I started feeling like someone who had missed a chapter. I was the one asking what had opened, what had closed, where people went now, and which places had become popular. For the first time, I was not the person who knew instinctively how the city worked.

That was strange because I had always thought of Mexico City as something fixed in my life. I was the one who had moved away, so part of me had unconsciously expected it to remain roughly as I had left it.

The city had changed, but many of the people I knew somehow hadn't

Mexico City felt almost unrecognizable in places, but spending time with people I had known for years created the opposite sensation. Despite all the time that had passed, some conversations felt as though I had only been away for a few weeks.

On paper, a lot had changed. Friends had gotten married, moved in with partners, started having children, changed jobs, and taken on responsibilities that did not exist when we were younger. Their lives had clearly moved forward.

And yet, with certain exceptions, I sometimes found myself listening to the same stories, the same frustrations, and even the same problems I remembered from years earlier. Certain relationship dynamics had barely shifted. People worried about versions of the same things they had worried about before I left.

It was a strange feeling. I had expected two years away to make everyone seem dramatically different, particularly because so many of them had crossed major life milestones in that time. Instead, I often recognized not just the people themselves, but the exact patterns I remembered.

There was something comforting about that familiarity, but also something disorienting. The city around us seemed to have accelerated, while parts of the social world I had left behind felt almost preserved.

That contrast eventually forced me to consider another possibility. Maybe the reason everything felt so different to me was not because everyone else had changed beyond recognition. Maybe I had.

I realized the biggest change was me

The last two years have probably changed me more than I understood before this trip. My relationship became more serious, and my partner and I started living together, which altered the rhythm of my everyday life in ways that felt gradual at the time but obvious once I stepped away from them.

I no longer organize my days entirely around myself. We make plans together, decide how to spend our weekends, travel as a couple, share responsibilities, and build routines around one another. Even the boring parts of life, like deciding what to eat or how to spend a quiet evening, have become part of a shared structure.

Being back in Mexico made me notice how attached I had become to that structure. I missed my apartment, my work routine, my evenings with my partner, and even the ordinary habits I would never normally think were worth missing. The things pulling me back were not landmarks or anything particularly British. They were simply the details of the life I had built.

That realization helped explain why the trip had felt so tiring and unfamiliar. Mexico was still deeply important to me, and the people I loved there were still part of who I was, but the center of my everyday existence had shifted somewhere else.

For years, I thought of myself as someone who lived in London but went home to Mexico. This trip made me realize that London is home now.

If you're not aware of the lore behind the direct-to-consumer cashmere industry, let me tell you: it's not all warm and fuzzy. When I tested over a dozen crewnecks and cardigans to find the best cashmere sweaters, I ranked Naadam and Quince among my favorites. But you've got to brace for conflict when your two favorites are against each other, because all's fair in love and capitalism.

Pointed ads from Quince, with captions such as "Like Naadam, without the price tag," provoked Naadam's social media manager to clap back with a playful campaign of memes on Instagram. Quince, to my disappointment, chose not to engage. This ended the feud with barely a wisp of smoke. 

A need for closure compelled me into trying one cashmere crewneck from each brand. May the best sweater win, I say. 

In one corner we have Quince, a San Francisco-based direct-to-consumer apparel and home goods company best known for offering luxury fabrics at competitive prices. Its affordable cashmere collection also includes skirts, dresses, sweatpants, and cozy beanies.

Over on the East Coast we have Naadam, AKA "the world's fairest cashmere," whose original claim to fame was the $75 Cashmere sweater (which was raised to $98 in about October of 2023). Cashmere is Naadam's primary specialty, and they offer different tiers that go from premium to luxe.

It took a few days of consistent wear and a close inspection of their materials before I ultimately declared Naadam my first choice. Quince's sweater just didn't have the same brushed softness. Even a year later, Naadam proved to be the winner.

Quince's Mongolian Cashmere Crewneck Sweater

The super soft Quince Mongolian Cashmere Crewneck Sweater feels more expensive than it is, and it's obvious why it's such a hit. Still, I could feel that it's slightly thinner than Naadam's. 

Of course, the price tag on Quince's 100% Grade-A Mongolian cashmere is attractive when you see practically identical these sweaters are. The patterns are the exact same (unless I'm really nitpicking — Quince's neckline is bound with a seam that looks slightly more unfinished and liable to fray). But the quality is there and consistent with other pieces I tried for our Quince cashmere review. 

See more details on the men's and extended size fits in our Quince men's clothing review and Quince plus-size review.

Naadam's Original Cashmere Sweater

I found Naadam's Original Cashmere Sweater to be a tiny bit thicker, especially around the collar. It's also slightly softer, yet still just as lightweight as the Quince version. Naadam also has a leg up with more inclusive sizing and color variety. Plus, you can get it monogrammed for an additional $20. You can learn more about its pricing in our full Naadam cashmere sweater review.

The only difference in construction from Quince's sweater is Naadam's seamless collar that's slightly thicker. They use the exact same knit pattern inside and out. Both size small cashmere sweaters fit my 5-foot-9 frame true to size and pilled after a few days of consistent wear.

How do they hold up after a year of wear?

Over the past year, my Naadam cashmere sweater has gotten a lot more play simply because it's the softer option. Both sweaters pill about the same, but that's easily remedied with a cashmere comb. After washing and air drying them both, I still feel like the Quince sweater is slightly thinner and thus more prone to wrinkling. Yet the structural integrity has maintained itself pretty well, and neither sweater has grown lumpy the way some cotton ones do after a while. I now wear a gray Naadam cashmere sweater in addition to my navy one, and it's the perfect top layer to keep in my desk drawer for when the office gets drafty.

Which brand is more sustainable?

It's practically impossible for me to suss out who's out-greenwashing who here because I live at the end of the supply chain where those details are obscured. It's worth nothing that both brands both scored a "Not Good Enough" via Good On You's rating system. However, if you look at the general transparency between Naadam and Quince, Naadam is more forthright about its manufacturing process.

The bottom line

 Unsurprisingly, Naadam's more expensive sweater feels better. But honestly, there's not much of a visible difference in quality over Quince one. I recommend Naadam first because they've got the superior product, they're more experienced in cashmere production, and they're more upfront about their supply chain. 

• YouTuber Markiplier independently released a box-office hit, "Iron Lung," earlier this year.
• He hopes more content creators will try to take on Hollywood projects without ceding control.
• He said YouTubers are a "powerful entity that hold sway and a lot of eyeballs."

YouTuber Markiplier thinks more creators can break into Hollywood without giving up control.

The 37-year-old put it to the test earlier this year, when he wrote, directed, and starred in the film "Iron Lung." He funded the movie's low 7-figure budget himself, and it became a box-office hit that grossed over $50 million worldwide. His takeaway was that more creators should try to enter traditional media on their own, so long as they're ready to learn and wear many hats — and take on their own financial risk.

"In Hollywood, it is kind of like a foregone conclusion that you'll have to give up all control to be able to do anything," the YouTuber, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, told Business Insider. "I'm like, 'No, I don't think that should be.'"

A decade ago, when social media was still an emergent format, many influencers viewed a TV show deal or a movie role as a sign they'd made it. Content creators like Liza Koshy and Bretman Rock signed on to do TV shows, but YouTube success didn't always translate to TV ratings, and the results were mixed. For every web series that became a TV darling, like Comedy Central's "Broad City," there was a project that stalled out and was canceled, such as NBC's late-night show from YouTuber Lilly Singh.

YouTube's gains in recent years have flipped the creator-to-TV pipeline. YouTube has become the top destination on US TV screens, reaching over 14% market share and crushing competitors like Netflix and Disney, according to Nielsen. Former TV stars like Don Lemon, Alton Brown, and Tucker Carlson are building large audiences as independent creators on YouTube and other platforms.

The shift in audience to YouTube has given its top creators more power relative to Hollywood, said Fischbach, who has nearly 40 million subscribers.

"YouTubers as a conglomerate are this powerful entity that hold sway and a lot of eyeballs are always on them," he said.

Creators have power, but distributing a film in theaters or selling a TV show is a different skillset entirely. Fischbach thinks creators, who are used to mastering new formats and come from a DIY culture, can learn what they need to.

"Learning things is the most effective way to do more," he said. "I'm playing catch-up all the time, but the more I think about it ahead of time, the more I learn beforehand, the better it'll be."

That doesn't mean it's not difficult.

Fischbach said even offering a digital version of "Iron Lung" on YouTube — his native platform — has come with its own set of headaches.

"Even with my exclusivity deal with YouTube for distribution digitally, there's a lot that I had to learn for even setting up with their system," he said. "It's not like YouTube where you can just upload a video."

Successfully pushing through the busy work and other industry red tape was part of what he wanted to prove.

"I felt like it was symbolically important to carry it from start to finish" and "show that it could be done," he said.

He thinks other creators can pull off the same feat if properly motivated, particularly as industry players like AMC Theaters offer new ways for independent stars like Taylor Swift to release movies in theaters.

"There are a lot of creators out there that have the ability to take hold of a project and steer it correctly with their own vision," he said. "They have to expect a lot more out of themselves, and they have to do a lot more work, but at the end of the day, it'll be their vision, and it'll be something unique that only they have created."

That said, Hollywood is littered with over a century of would-be movie moguls who thought they had the perfect idea, and there have been plenty of creator projects — even recently — that have failed to translate a massive social audience into another medium.

For Markiplier, taking on the challenge, even with real financial risk, is part of what drives him creatively.

"I really find purpose in the creative process itself," he said, noting he's not trying to step aside and hand over his business to an outside team.

"My objective is not to become an empire," he added. "When I'm done, my YouTube channel will be done. It doesn't go any farther than that, mostly just because I love making things."

Joann Ernst, 72, shook her head as her older grandson decapitated an action figure. The other laid out puzzle pieces in a line, surrounded by a sea of toys.

"You have to put all the Play-Doh back in the container so it doesn't dry out," Ernst called out to the 5- and 7-year olds.

Ernst is not the boys' legal guardian. She's spent the past two years living with her son Jack, helping with her grandsons on weekends. Jack had struggled to work after losing an arm in an accident, so Ernst took a job in the special education department of a local school, paid his rent, and spent weekends shopping for the boys and disciplining them "as a mother would."

In June, she moved back to Oregon from Connecticut. She needed to help her daughter, Joanna, with her children in the same way she's been helping Jack and his boys.

"I wish I could just be a grandmother, but I also discipline, school them, feed them, and provide a home for them," Ernst said. "I enjoy it immensely, but I'm unable to retire, and my retirement money is slowly being spent."

For some grandparents, helping adult children through illness, job loss, addiction, or other crises means taking on far more than occasional babysitting. They become the family's financial and practical backstop, spending down savings, delaying retirement, or going back to work to help support both adult children and grandchildren.

This year, Business Insider has spoken with more than 60 grandparents and great-grandparents raising young children or helping adult children get back on their feet, just when they thought they'd be retiring. Some have legal custody of their grandchildren. Others, like Ernst, have no official parenting roles but pay bills, provide care, and prepare them for a good life. Census data show that more than 1.1 million US grandparents 60 and older were at least part-time caregivers for their grandchildren as of 2024.

"Where is my Barbie?" her older grandson asks.

"Barbie is long gone," Ernst replies, adding that she threw her out after her leg fell off. "She's in the city dump."

"Can you buy a new Barbie?"

"I'll talk about it later with your dad."

Ernst raised three children, mostly as a single mother. Around 2016, her daughter Joanna developed a debilitating kidney condition that left her hospitalized for months. Ernst helped care for Joanna's children and received a small state caregiver income.

"It never ceases to amaze me how, despite everything, my mom has always been there for my kids and me," Joanna, 43, says. "She always wanted to make us thrive."

In 2024, Ernst moved to Connecticut to support Jack after his injury. She found a house with $1,500 monthly rent payments and began her teaching job.

Now that she's returned to Oregon, she continues to pay the mortgage on her current house in Connecticut so Jack and his sons can stay there. She also works 25 hours a week as a paid caregiver for Joanna's son with autism and helps to support him financially.

Ernst has tried to balance being frugal with the instinct to give her grandchildren small treats, but even going out to the movies can become a budget decision.

This isn't what she expected retirement to be.

"If you look at a traditional grandparent, they get to have their grandkids for the day, take them out, and give them ice cream," Joann says. "I'm never at that point because I'm constantly disciplining and explaining things. You're never relaxed."

Althea Smith, 65, has faced a more formal version of the same pressure. She is raising her grandson as his legal guardian while also providing long-term care for her own parents. Smith has a job as a full-time support worker for older adults and said she doesn't expect to fully retire soon.

"I want to see the world and take a cruise," she said. "I miss being able to go wherever I want. My grandson will be 18 in four years, and then I'll be able to think more about myself."

Ernst's kitchen table may be filled with receipts and bills — groceries, the mortgage, and a car loan — but she says it's money well-spent. She tries to avoid thinking about her diminishing nest egg.

"I know it'll all work out," Joann said, watching the boys dash across the living room.

• Russ Read-Barrow was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer after seeing blood in his poop.
• Using Claude, he built a chemotherapy symptom tracker to help him recall what made him feel better.
• Read-Barrow asks AI to create a summary of his health history for new medical providers.

Russ Read-Barrow has been living with incurable stage four colon cancer for five years.

The 43-year-old former PR director and father of two from the UK was diagnosed with the disease in 2021. After seeing blood in his poop around six times over the course of a few weeks, he got a colonoscopy.

With multiple rounds of chemotherapy and surgeries to remove cancerous cells from his colon, liver, and later his lungs, Read-Barrow's doctors have stopped the cancer from spreading further since 2022. He still needs regular chemotherapy, roughly every three months, to slow cell division and prevent further growth in his lungs and liver.

"The chemo I'm having now is doing a good job of keeping it under control, but at some point that'll change and I'll have to have something else," Read-Barrow told Business Insider.

Over the years, Read-Barrow has experimented with using AI to help manage the symptoms, medications, and emotional challenges that have become part of his life. In 2025, he launched a side project called FcancerwithAI, a blog where he shares his story and the AI cancer tools he's built.

"I'm not saying AI is going to cure cancer. I'm saying it's going to help me remember what my consultant said, spot patterns in my side effects, and maybe give me back some control in a situation where control is basically an illusion," he wrote in a blog post.

He hopes that by sharing what has helped him, he can help others, as rates of colon cancer cases in those under 50 have risen since the mid-1990s, making it the deadliest cancer in this age group. However, if spotted early, the survival rate for colon cancer is high, meaning, like Read-Barrow, more and more people are living with cancer as a chronic illness.

Here are three ways Read-Barrow has used AI to manage his ongoing cancer treatment.

Chemotherapy symptom tracker

Russ-Barrow will need chemo for the foreseeable future. Afterwards, he typically experiences side effects like fatigue, nausea, and changes to his mood and sleep habits, which can be hard to cope with.

"The hardest part day-to-day is trying to manage the energy windows I do have," he said.

He started recording a 30-second voice note chronicling his symptoms each day following chemo, and wearing a WHOOP health tracker. He did this for three cycles of chemo and plugged his information into Claude to spot patterns in how he felt and what exacerbated or eased symptoms. "I found it really useful," he said.

The data showed that by around day four after his treatment, he would go from feeling relatively normal to exhausted. "If you see that over time happening again and again, you can sort of deal with it better because you know it's going to come and you don't think, 'Oh God, what's happening?'" he said.

Subsequently, he started asking the AI to pick out 10 things he should remember before starting his next round of chemo. One of the things it reminded him was that an anti-nausea medication he tried had helped.

"You don't keep a record, you won't remember. You think you will, but give it three months and life will take over and you won't," he said.

A medical history research assistant

Read-Barrow uploaded all of his medical records to Gemini Notebook (formerly Notebook LM). The AI is designed to answer questions, spot trends, and create content such as presentation decks based only on files the user uploads.

He uses it as a "centralized hub" for all of his medical records, which means he can access test results, doctor's notes or any other medical data within seconds.

"It saves me from the massive admin headache of digging through folders every time I see a specialist," he said.

Getting new people up to speed

When signing up for a gym, getting a treatment such as a massage, or seeing any kind of doctor, they typically ask for your medical history. However, when you have a complex chronic illness like cancer, that history can be lengthy and painful to recount.

He found a solution by asking Gemini Notebook to summarize his health history in 500 words, which he can pass on.

Read-Barrow is aware that not everyone would feel comfortable sharing so much personal information with AI platforms, but for him, the benefits outweigh the risks. "I've got terminal cancer. What's the worst that can bloody happen?" he said.

• Real estate agent Scheryl W. Glanton had trouble selling a 5,100-square-foot home with seven bedrooms.
• She had an "aha moment" and repositioned the property as a multi-generational home.
• Offers arrived within 24 hours, and Glanton is awaiting closing later this month.

This story is based on an interview with Scheryl W. Glanton, 74, a real estate agent from Philadelphia. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It was getting frustrating. Despite at least 20 showings of my listing in suburban Philadelphia, no one made an offer.

We put the 5,100-square-foot Tudor-style property, built in 1925, on the market in April 2026. I hoped it would sell relatively quickly for the $1m asking price. It was an estate sale, the area had good schools, and the neighborhood was highly sought after.

However, whenever I asked the buyers' agents why their clients weren't interested, they said the same thing: "It's too much house."

They said the seven-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom home was too large for one family, regardless of whether they were planning to have more kids.

I decided to market it as a multigenerational home

Everything else — such as its long history, a third-of-an-acre plot, stone walls, and light interior — made it a beautiful option.

Four months went by, and there was no movement. Then, in August, I had what can only be described as an "aha moment."

The three-story house had two distinct wings and included two sitting rooms on the second floor, two en-suite bedrooms, and a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. It also had two separate entrances, two staircases, and a four-car garage.

The place struck me as being perfectly set up for multi-generational living.

If I wanted a sale, I needed to lower the price to $875K and pivot.

So I repositioned the listing. This time, I marketed it toward young parents and grandparents who wanted to be under the same roof with privacy, too.

I got offers immediately

Within a day, I got two offers from multigenerational families, with one on hold in case they fell through.

The successful buyers, who are paying close to the asking price, were a couple from Los Angeles, their two children, and their aging parents from Indiana.

They'd decided to settle in Philadelphia because of a job move, a big relocation for everybody.

After seven-and-a-half years as a real estate agent, I've realized every property is different to me, and every house is personal. It's reinforced my belief that people want to live how they want to live.

It has nothing to do with the house, as much as the lifestyle. I always focus on that.

There is definitely a trend in the US toward three — or even four — generations living together, whether in a compound, the same house, a duplex, or a triplex.

It might be connected to affordability, but I specialize in luxury real estate. Something else is going on.

As people get older, what choices do they make about living? One of the most important concerns these days is childcare and eldercare. Multi-generational living can be the sweet spot.

There's clearly a market. As the old saying goes, it's the market that speaks.

• PwC US is shaking up its offshore delivery center model in India.
• The US firm is planning a joint venture with PwC India, merging its offshore center with its India operation.
• The move will improve access to talent and technology, CEO Paul Griggs said in a memo to staff.

PwC US is overhauling its offshore delivery structure in India, bringing its local operations closer to PwC India's consulting business.

The US firm and PwC India plan to form a new joint venture that will merge PwC US's India-based offshoring hubs — known as Acceleration Centers, or ACs — with PwC India's consulting arm, according to an internal memo sent to staff on Saturday by the US CEO, Paul Griggs. Those hubs provide specialist talent and overnight support to US teams and operate independently of PwC India's operations.

Creating a joint venture will help PwC compete more effectively as a global network, Griggs said in the memo.

The tie-up would drive growth and create new opportunities, improve access to talent and capabilities, and bring the firm's "technology, engineering and AI capabilities together at greater scale," said Griggs.

PwC announced the agreement early Sunday morning after Business Insider contacted the company. Neither PwC US nor PwC India responded to requests for comment.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals, the memo said.

Professional services firms have long used offshoring centers in lower-cost regions such as India, Argentina, and the Philippines.

The hubs help firms keep client costs down, tap specialist skills, and offer round-the-clock delivery. During a consulting or auditing project, US-based employees send non-client-facing work to offshore teams in different time zones to be completed overnight.

A PwC US consultant told Business Insider that they turn to PwC India when the India AC does not have enough capacity. But doing so can create delays, because the firms must renegotiate rates and terms of the work. The joint venture could speed up that process by removing "the middle man, PwC AC," they said.

The joint venture also signals closer collaboration between PwC's US and Indian firms — a meaningful shift for a network built around separate national member firms.

Like its fellow Big Four competitors —KPMG, Deloitte, and EY — PwC operates as a global network of legally separate firms rather than a single company. That structure is particularly important on the audit side of the business, where firms must navigate local regulations and independence requirements.

"The firms that win will be the ones that stop thinking about markets, capabilities, and delivery as separate pieces," said Griggs in a press release on Sunday.

The move isn't about where work gets done, but about offering clients a more seamless experience and the "best of PwC," he added.

The firm is aiming to build a more globally integrated consulting model. In April, the Financial Times reported that PwC UK planned to merge its risk and consulting businesses as part of that strategy.

Read the full memo sent to US staff on Saturday here:

Team,

Tomorrow, PwC US and PwC India will sign an agreement to establish a new joint venture that will bring together PwC US Advisory's India-based Acceleration Centers and PwC India's Consulting business.

This combination will drive growth and strengthen how we serve increasingly global clients.

India is one of the world's most important growth markets and a source of world-class talent and capabilities. Bringing these businesses closer together will help us connect those strengths—more effectively expanding access to talent and capabilities, bringing our technology, engineering, and AI capabilities together at greater scale, and creating new opportunities for our clients and across our businesses.

Over time, the joint venture will strengthen our ability to bring more of PwC to our clients wherever those capabilities sit, support clients as they grow and operate across markets, and compete more effectively as a global network.

Signing is an important milestone and the beginning of the next phase. We expect the transaction to close in the first half of calendar year 2027, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Until then, teams will continue to serve clients and operate through existing structures and ways of working.

Please keep this information confidential until the external announcement is issued on Sunday evening, Eastern Time.

We're excited about what this joint venture will unlock for our clients, our people and PwC.

Paul

• Nutrition scientist and former chef Emily Leeming is on a mission to get people eating more fiber.
• Fiber helps keep cholesterol levels in check, balances blood sugar, and supports the gut microbiome.
• Leeming shared three high-fiber recipes that help her eat 30 grams a day.

For years, fiber has had a reputation problem (boring and unsexy), but you wouldn't know it looking at Emily Leeming's go-to recipes.

The former chef and nutrition scientist, who specializes in the gut microbiome, is on a mission to get people eating more fiber because it is so beneficial for our health.

"Just adding seven grams of extra fiber a day is related to a significantly lower risk of heart disease, bowel cancer, and type 2 diabetes. And that's the same as about half a can of chickpeas," Leeming told Business Insider.

Beyond its reputation for aiding smooth digestion, fiber, which is found in plant foods like beans, nuts, and veggies, helps lower cholesterol levels and keep blood sugar levels balanced throughout the day.

Leeming eats around 30 grams a day — a number that she said a wide body of evidence has linked to heart and gut health — but she never skimps on flavor while doing so.

She shared three high-fiber, high-protein recipes from her cookbook "Fiber Power."

Sesame chicken noodles

Contains 10 grams of fiber and 51 grams of protein

Serves: 4

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 8 skinless, boneless chicken thigh fillets (600g)
• Thumb-size piece of fresh ginger, sliced
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 150g buckwheat noodles
• 1⁄2 small red cabbage, finely sliced
• 1 large carrot, skin on, peeled into strips
• 300g edamame, cooked
• 2 spring onions, finely sliced
• A large bunch of cilantro, leaves only, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds (black or white), toasted

For the creamy sesame dressing:

• 1 garlic clove
• Thumb-size piece of fresh ginger
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 3 tbsp rice vinegar or fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp tahini
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• Sea salt
• 1 tbsp honey

Method:

1. Put the chicken thighs into a saucepan with the sliced ginger and soy sauce. Add enough cold water to cover, then bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until cooked through.

2. Take off the heat and leave to cool to room temperature in the water.

3. Cook the buckwheat noodles following the packet instructions. Drain and rinse under cold water to stop them cooking, then set aside.

4. Blend all the ingredients for the dressing until smooth, and season with salt to taste. Add a splash more water, if needed, to loosen.

5. Remove the chicken from the pan, discarding the broth and ginger, and roughly slice the meat.

6. In a large bowl, combine the noodles, chicken, cabbage, carrot, edamame, spring onions, coriander, and sesame seeds.

7. Pour over the dressing and toss until everything is well coated. Enjoy cold or at room temperature.

Tuna and mango Tex-Mex salad

Contains 11 grams of fiber and 35 grams of protein

Serves: 4

Prep time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 x 250g pouches of ready-cooked spelt
• 3 x 125g tins of tuna, drained
• 1 large or 2 small mangoes, diced
• 2 avocados, diced
• 4 tomatoes, diced
• 1 red onion, finely diced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 large bunch of coriander, leaves only
• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• juice of 2 limes
• sea salt and black pepper

Method:

1. Put the spelt into a large mixing bowl, breaking up any clumps with a fork or your hands.

2. Mix in the tuna, mango, avocado, tomatoes, red onions, garlic, cumin, and cilantro.

3. Drizzle over the olive oil and squeeze in the lime juice.

4. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Seedy banana chocolate slice

Contains 8 grams of fiber and 8 grams of protein

Makes: 12

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 130g jumbo rolled oats
• 75g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 75g pumpkin seeds
• 75g sunflower seeds
• 2 tbsp ground flaxseeds
• 2 tbsp poppy seeds
• 50g dried apricots, chopped
• 50g dried cranberries
• 100g almond butter
• 100g honey
• 2 bananas, mashed
• 100g dark chocolate (85%), broken into pieces

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/ 320°F fan and line a 20cm square baking tin with baking paper.

2. In a large bowl, combine the oats, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, poppy seeds, apricots, and cranberries.

3. In a small pan over medium heat, gently stir together the almond butter and honey until loosened. You can also do this in the microwave in short bursts. Stir through the mashed bananas.

4. Pour the warm mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir well until everything is coated and sticking together.

5. Tip into the lined tin and press down firmly with the back of a spoon. Bake for 30 minutes until golden at the edges.

6. Leave to cool in the tin.

7. Melt the dark chocolate in the microwave on a low setting or in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Spread evenly over the slice.

8. Leave to set before cutting into 12 squares.

• Florida-based investor Ted Garber walks Business Insider through one of his deals.
• He bought a 3-condo portfolio for $360,000 in 2022.
• He shares how he financed it and turned it into a cash-flowing asset.

Ted Garber did not set out to become a long-distance landlord, but after struggling to find the cash flow he wanted close to home, he broadened his search.

Looking at neighboring counties "really opened up the opportunities for us," the part-time investor, who has built a portfolio of Florida rentals alongside his wife, Jamie, told Business Insider.

In September 2022, the Garbers bought three occupied condos listed together for $360,000. The properties were about a 90-minute drive from their Florida home. It was their first out-of-area acquisition — and an experiment to see whether they could self-manage rentals without being on-site regularly.

Four years later, Garber said they have visited the properties just once and spend less than an hour a week managing their broader portfolio of 29 tenants.

He opened the books on the deal and shared how he picked the condos, financed the purchase, and turned the portfolio into a cash-flowing asset. BI verified the purchase and the Garbers' ownership of the three condos by reviewing the final ALTA Settlement Statement and new landlord letters showing the rent for each unit.

A portfolio that passed the 1% rule

Garber found the three-condo portfolio on LoopNet, where the listed gross rent immediately caught his attention. At the $360,000 purchase price, the condos generated $3,675 in combined monthly rent, just over 1% of the price.

That satisfied Garber's initial screening tool: the 1% rule. The rule of thumb suggests that a property's monthly rent should be at least 1% of its purchase price to have a reasonable chance of generating positive cash flow. It is not a guarantee, but it is a quick way to decide whether a listing is worth investigating further.

He also saw room to increase rents, which he determined were below market, and liked the stable area outside Orlando's Disney corridor.

To make the numbers work, however, he had to negotiate. The condo portfolio was initially listed for between $390,000 and $400,000, he said.

That's a typical step in his process, he added: "I always negotiate. If it's really a steal, I'll do full asking immediately with a seller concession or something."

Due diligence and the purchase

Before making an offer, Garber makes sure his financing is in place. In this case, the couple financed the purchase with a commercial loan amortized over 20 years at an interest rate of roughly 5.5%.

He said they put 25% down and invested $113,548 in total, including the down payment and transaction costs.

Because the condos were occupied, Garber reviewed the existing leases, comparable rents, HOA finances and reserves, association rules, and the condition of each unit. His wife attended the inspection, giving the couple an opportunity to see all three homes while tenants were in place.

Rent rose, but so did costs

The portfolio's combined monthly rent has risen from $3,675 at acquisition to $4,530 today. Its monthly expenses include:

• Loan payment: $1,744.83
• Property taxes: $500
• Insurance: $408.78
• HOA fees: $906.01

Garber said HOA dues and insurance costs have roughly doubled since purchase, reflecting rising insurance rates and inflation. Those expenses have reduced the portfolio's returns, though he still considers the deal "very healthy."

The 20-year loan has also helped build equity relatively quickly: $721.05 of the current monthly payment goes toward principal. Garber said the portfolio's tenants have paid down $30,041 of the debt, or about 12%, over roughly four years.

"We're getting monthly cash flow, and our tenants are paying off the mortgage," he said.

The rent strategy: below-market rates

Garber could likely charge more for the condos. Instead, he prefers to keep rents at or slightly below market.

The strategy is partly financial — lower rents can mean fewer vacancies, lower turnover costs, and less time spent finding new tenants — but it also reflects the kind of landlord Garber wants to be.

"When you do rent to people that are below market or at market, they're really thankful for that," he said. "They take care of your properties for you a little bit better."

Garber is still looking for deals, but he said higher interest rates and strong property values in his market make it harder to find leveraged investments that produce more than 8% to 10% cash-on-cash returns.

He would still seek properties that combine monthly cash flow with built-in equity — especially listings that may be overlooked because of weak marketing, poor photos, or other correctable issues.

"You make money on the buy," he said.

Asked what he would do differently with the three-condo portfolio, Garber's answer was simple: "We would have bought more."

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

On Tuesday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar headlined a packed Goldman Sachs tech conference in San Francisco.

One thing she said really stood out to me: The company's biggest models can now train other smaller models, helping OpenAI save on the huge costs of training these systems. This is an example of recursive self improvement, or RSI, where AI gets so powerful it can create the next, even more powerful, system itself.

For the Wall Street analysts and investors around me at the Goldman conference, this sounded like an amazing business opportunity. For Silicon Valley, especially some hardcore AI researchers, it's terrifying.

Now that summer is over, there's a realization that RSI is either here already or coming very soon. There's a chance AI systems will get way more powerful very quickly.

Add in the rise of AI agents swarming across the internet doing both great and worrying things, like breaking out of their "sandbox" testing environments, and you have full-blown panic in some parts of the AI community.

"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," Evan Hubinger, alignment science lead at Anthropic, wrote on X this week.

Other employees from Anthropic and OpenAI weighed in too, setting off a firestorm across the valley.

"Nonsense"

Back at the Goldman conference on Thursday, I ran into Brad Gerstner from Altimeter Capital, an investor in Anthropic and OpenAI. Will AI kill humans I asked?

"It's fucking nonsense," he said.

For the Wall Street crowd, it's head-scratching why, right before what could be the biggest IPO in history, Anthropic employees would say their main product will kill humans.

So why would these people keep working on AI development when they think it will kill people? Here are some theories, some gathered this week and others from discussing and thinking about this for longer.

"Commercial incentives"

First up, the money reason. Anthropic and OpenAI will succeed by creating better AI and selling it. So they must keep going, and employees are along for the ride, even if they feel awful about the technology being potentially dangerous.

Second, some researchers, especially at Anthropic, feel they are the only ones who can be trusted to keep this technology safe, so they must keep pushing ahead of everyone else. If Anthropic pauses and OpenAI or Chinese labs move ahead, that would be even worse because those other groups cannot be trusted with powerful AI.

Samuel Marks, scalable oversight lead at Anthropic, put these reasons in writing this week, a stunningly admission.

"Why do AI developers continue despite the risk? Due to a mixture of commercial incentives and a belief that they are in a race with other, less responsible AI developers that will abuse the technology or develop it less safely," he wrote on X.

Recruiting reason

Another explanation comes down to recruiting.

AI researchers usually come from academia, not the business world, so they are very focused on doing good. This means a company like Anthropic can't say, "Come work here, and we'll create the most powerful profit-generating machine in history, and you'll become wildly rich." Instead, you pitch them on how this technology is so dangerous that they have to come work on AI safety and alignment to "save the world."

This is much easier for researchers to swallow and makes them feel less guilty about getting rich from developing AI. It also makes them more likely to issue doom-laden predictions about an apocalyptic future.

Loss of agency

Then there's this explanation from Kylan Gibbs, CEO of AI startup Inworld, who thinks deeply about this stuff.

This week's extreme AI doomerism is driven by a growing loss of agency, he told me. As AI becomes dramatically more powerful, control over its development is becoming concentrated in the hands of a few labs. Even researchers inside those companies can feel they have little influence over AI's direction, leaving them with high awareness of the risks but little control over the outcome. That gap between awareness and agency fuels anxiety — and that spills out in the form of public warnings about existential risk.

This is not lost on AI leaders. "People really need agency," Sam Altman said on a podcast earlier this year. "People want agency, self-determination, the ability to play a role in architecting the future alongside the rest of society."

I think we all feel this right now as AI spreads so quickly through our lives and work.

Sign up for BI's AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• Retailers have gradually added digital display ads to their stores for the past year.
• Now the pace is picking up as the concept gains wider acceptance with Walmart and Walgreens.
• A survey this year found that shoppers' acceptance of ad screens depends on the in-store context.

Trips to the store used to offer a break from the digital screens that dominate modern life. Those days are winding down.

Retailers are now trying to bring more advertising into stores by selling brands access to screens in aisles, endcaps, and checkouts, where customers make their final decisions.

Walmart, Walgreens, Amazon, and grocery chains are betting that the screens can help shoppers find relevant products while opening a new source of high-margin revenue.

"We do see a meaningful opportunity there to have more engaging screens throughout the store," Walmart's head of advertising, Ryan Mayward, said this week at a conference hosted by Goldman Sachs.

Walmart has a large and growing online ad business, and it already has a lot of screens in its stores, mostly located in perimeter areas like the deli, bakery, or electronics sections.

The next step is to bring some of that online ad information to an in-store shopping experience.

Now, Mayward said the retail giant is testing options in higher-traffic areas, like aisle endcaps. These displays would include up-to-date information about inventory and pricing that could entice shoppers to venture down an aisle for a sponsored product.

"We're really excited about using the store and introducing new advertising services," Mayward added.

Although Walmart is the largest retailer to adopt the tech, it's far from the first.

Walgreens also made news this month when it said it is taking another swing at digital display ads in its stores after its ill-fated experiment replacing cooler doors with TV screens.

The drugstore chain said it is partnering with in-store advertising firm Looma to outfit about 1,200 locations with screens, starting in October, to serve ads near specific merchandise.

Looma provides similar services to retailers such as Kroger, HEB, and BJ's Wholesale Club, and says it projects that most major chains will have 100 to 200 screens per location within the next seven years.

Brands under the Albertson's banner have also seen more screens pop up in their stores after the company launched a test last year of jumbo displays at the entrance and in the produce section.

And while the initial use case for in-store digital ads is to highlight merchandise in-store, retailers are already looking at ways to sell ads for other products and services as well.

Mayward said these "non-endemic" ad placements are starting to appear on its recently acquired Vizio TV platform and in the Walmart app, from businesses such as fast-food restaurants, insurance agencies, and local car dealerships. Those aren't showing up in the store context at this point.

A spec sheet from Amazon also outlines some of its rules for running digital ads on screens in Whole Foods Markets. Ads are mostly limited to promoting products those stores actually have in stock, but front entrance displays may feature outside brands. The Amazon rules also say ads should be "designed to inspire and inform" shoppers and may not be noisy or distracting.

A survey earlier this year from retail media network Grocery TV found that shopper acceptance of ad screens depends on the in-store context. Shoppers are generally comfortable seeing ads in their mobile apps, at the front entrance, or over the deli counter, the survey found. They're far less receptive to digital promotions on cooler doors or on store shelves.

Retailers stand to make big bucks if they can get this concept to work with customers.

The Grocery TV survey found that shoppers were 2.5 times more likely to consider a product when it was presented in a relevant context for their situation, and nearly two-thirds of shoppers reported buying something after seeing it on an in-store screen.

That not only boosts sales for the store, but it also helps drive growth for the higher-margin ads businesses that have been key to retailers' overall profitability.

Mayward said the Walmart Connect business is seeing profit margins of more than 70%, as compared to roughly 5% in the core retail operation.

"Ads growth can also happen outside of the dynamics of our e-commerce business," he said. "I think that's an important insight for understanding the long-term growth potential of Walmart Connect."

• White-collar workers are said to be highly at risk of job displacement by AI.
• Yet, Morgan Stanley says office workers stand to benefit the most from AI-enabled productivity gains.
• "AI-related job postings have been targeted towards higher-income consumers," the bank said.

Morgan Stanley has some good news if you're an office worker who lives in fear of an AI-fueled jobs wipeout.

The Wall Street Bank said on Friday that the most exposed demographic to AI disruption stands to benefit the most. As widespread AI-driven layoff announcements have dominated news cycles, white-collar workers across industries have wondered if their jobs are next to be automated away.

But according to Morgan Stanley economist Heather Berger, it's these workers who stand to win from the ways in which AI will reshape labor.

"High-income, college-educated, urban households are most exposed to AI displacement but also to potential AI gains: productivity-driven wage growth, job creation, wealth effects, and disinflation," she wrote. "We think these upside channels are underappreciated."

Berger's team uses the acronym CHIC— college-educated, high-income, city-dwelling. This group, by Morgan Stanley's assessment, is most likely to be impacted by AI as a job-market disrupting force as it continues to evolve.

The economists noted that younger CHIC workers are more likely to see parts of their jobs replaced by AI, particularly routine, entry-level tasks. But older colleagues could end up seeing wage growth due to productivity gains that AI is expected to deliver without fully replacing them.

"In terms of job creation, it is still early, but new AI-related occupations have so far been aimed at these same CHIC consumers," Berger added. "AI-related job postings have been targeted towards higher-income consumers with some experience in similar 'highly-exposed' industries."

The bank's prediction comes as AI fears are on the rise in the job market and beyond, as ominous statements from AI industry insiders and doomsday scenarios have gone viral. But Berger's team maintains that AI job fears may be overblown, and she isn't the only one.

Andrew Slimmon, head of applied equity advisors at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, told Business Insider earlier this year that he wasn't worried about the impact AI would have on employment. He predicted that the market would rebound and become stronger, similar to how the dot-com boom of the early 2000s reshaped the labor force.

Now Berger and her team see a similar scenario taking shape as the evolution of AI transforms the economy in a way that benefits CHIC households, helps create more wealth, and ultimately fuels more consumer spending.

"Overall, CHIC households are more exposed to labor displacement, but also more exposed to productivity-driven wage growth, new job creation, wealth effects, and longer-term disinflation," Berger noted.

• Business Insider editor Jane Zhang utilized Capital One's lounge at LaGuardia Airport ahead of her flight home.
• Thanks to lounge access through her credit card, she enjoyed tapas, steak, shrimp, and mocktails.
• She enjoyed her experience, but would've preferred self-service options and being seated in a different section.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a timely person.

Even in higher-stakes situations like flights, my time blindness is hard to overcome. (I've definitely gotten to the airport 45 minutes before takeoff on at least one occasion before.)

So when I showed up at LaGuardia Airport last week, three and a half hours early for my flight home to Chicago, it was a first-time experience for me. However, it wasn't entirely out of character — because another thing about me is that I love a good deal.

In this case, the good deal was getting my money's worth at the new Capital One Landing that opened in February.

Here's how I got access to it, and how I made the most of the experience.

My credit card gives me lounge access

The Capital One Venture X is my first-ever credit card that includes airport lounge access.

With its $395 annual fee, it gives me access to Capital One's seven airport lounges (two of which are designed as sit-down restaurant-style culinary concepts, which Capital One calls "Landings," including the one I visited) as well as Priority Pass lounges worldwide.

Unfortunately for me, there is no Capital One lounge in Chicago, where I live, so I was elated when I saw that the Capital One Landing at LaGuardia had opened ahead of my trip to New York.

Previously, Venture X holders used to be able to bring up to two guests into Capital One lounges for free, and authorized users on Venture X cards also could get complimentary entry to the lounges. That changed in February 2026. Now, authorized users like my husband must pay a $125 fee annually to get complimentary access to the lounges, or I could pay a guest fee of $45 for him each time.

Before leaving for our New York trip, my husband and I discussed and decided that it felt worth it to pay the $125 annual fee for him. After all, we reasoned, we're bound to spend at least $20 a person on food at the airport anyway, so this will pay itself off after three round-trip flights. And since we have several trips planned for the next year, it's more cost-effective than paying for a guest pass for him each time.

I showed up earlier than I probably ever have in my life

We're allowed to enter the lounge up to three hours prior to takeoff, and I wanted to make sure we got there as early as possible.

Maximizing time was especially important since we were flying out of a different terminal (Terminal C) than the one the lounge was in (Terminal B). There's no way to transit between terminals after security, so we had to make sure to give ourselves enough time to exit the terminal, take the shuttle bus over to Terminal C, and go through security again.

My flight was at 6:45 p.m., so my goal was to be at the airport by a little after 3 p.m., to give us time to get through security and to the Landing before 3:45 p.m. Through the Capital One app, I was also able to make a reservation for 3:45 p.m., out of an abundance of caution, in case the lounge was extremely busy and filled up that day.

We got in an Uber at 2:40 p.m., got to the airport by 3 p.m., and were through security by 3:12 p.m. It was particularly quick because it was a quiet afternoon, and we both have TSA PreCheck access through Global Entry (another benefit of the Venture X card).

By 3:15 p.m., we were already at the Capital One Landing, located just beyond the food court after security.

Since we were already there, we decided to try our luck and ask if it was possible to enter sooner (again, as a chronically late person, a rare occurrence for me).

Unfortunately, the check-in machine wouldn't allow for it, so we left and found some seats in the food court in front of a giant TV showing the US Open, where my husband asked me, almost out of instinct, "Want a snack?"

"No," I reminded him. "The lounge has snacks!" We had to save ourselves for the free food — or I should say, "free" food — that our annual fees had afforded us.

The food was tasty

Earlier that day, I'd sought input from my colleague and aviation expert Taylor Rains, who recommended arriving hungry, trying out the various ways to order food, and remembering to tip the bar staff if we order drinks.

Once we checked in at the lounge — which wasn't very busy after all — we were brought to a table, where the staff member reminded us that everything there was complimentary and explained the two ways we could order food: We could get tapas-style cold plates from the bar or order hot food using the QR code on the table. For beverages, there were also a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks that could be ordered for table service, as well as a coffee bar.

My husband and I each took multiple trips up to the bar for food, as well as put in several rounds of table service hot dishes.

From the bar, my favorites were the cured meats, vinegar-cured anchovies, and mango and coconut sticky rice. I found the salt-cured anchovies too salty for my taste.

The real treat, though, was the table service hot food. Out of the various small dishes we tried, my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed the steak with mojo verde sauce and shrimp — and not just because we couldn't believe we could get steak and shrimp for free — as well as a guava mocktail called the "Flamingo Shuttle."

The space was nice and felt like a café or restaurant

The vibe of the Landing overall felt almost like a restaurant. We were brought to a table rather than just walking in and choosing one to put our stuff down at, as is the case with most of the other airport lounges we've been to.

The table we were seated at was relatively close to the bar and was in front of giant floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the planes on the tarmac.

There was also a rather restaurant-esque style of service embedded in the experience. When getting food from the bar, instead of being a buffet-style where we'd help ourselves, all of the food was tucked away behind glass display cases, and members of staff would put the food onto plates and hand them to us.

My husband and I both agreed we would've preferred a self-serve format for the bar area, both so we wouldn't need to inconvenience a staff member with needing to select the food for us, and also so we'd have more agency in getting the portions we wanted for ourselves, instead of needing to awkwardly ask for more.

The bathrooms of the lounge were all-gender, single-stall bathrooms. There were five of them, and the one I used was clean, spacious, and simple, with a box of tissues and a bottle of lotion available.

There's one thing I'd do differently next time

After nearly an hour of enjoying the food and surroundings of the Landing, I thought I had a good sense of everything it had to offer.

However, after exiting the bathroom, I realized there was an entire other dining room that I hadn't seen, tucked away past the bathrooms. In addition to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, a large portion of the ceiling itself was also made of glass, which made for a beautiful greenhouse vibe.

Knowing what I know now, the next time we fly through LaGuardia and come to the Capital One Landing, I'll be sure to ask to be seated in that area, if possible.

We left feeling very full, happy, and relaxed

Having access to this airport lounge ended up serving multiple purposes for my husband and me: It pushed me to avoid my chronically late tendencies and actually get to the airport extremely early, saved us from spending $40 on mediocre airport fast food, and allowed us to indulge our love for buffets by trying the various dishes and drinks available without an additional cost.

After about two hours, we left extremely content and in a great mood, ready to head over to Terminal C, go through security again, and take a nap on our two-hour flight back to Chicago.

And remembering the advice from my colleague Taylor, we made sure to leave a tip with the bartenders on the way out.

Do you have a story to share about airport lounges? Contact this reporter at janezhang@businessinsider.com.

• Tech and related industries continue to get hit with layoffs.
• One laid-off Grubhub employee built a community to help coworkers navigate the aftermath.
• It's helped laid-off workers find jobs and recover from losing their roles.

Irvin Thevaranjan was blindsided by his layoff.

The day before, the head of governance risk and controls at delivery service Grubhub had a stellar performance review with his boss, who told him that he had lots of opportunities in front of him at the company.

Less than a day later, though, he found himself on a call where most participants weren't visible, and no one could unmute themselves. "That's when I was like 'Oh crap, this is the wrong call to be on,'" he said.

In the hours afterward, Thevaranjan started piecing together a list of the hundreds of others who lost their jobs at Grubhub that day in February 2025. Then, he had an idea: What if he created a list of everyone who was laid off that day to help them find new opportunities?

One-and-a-half years later, Thevaranjan still runs the Ex-Grubhub Talent Network, which has listed 326 laid-off alumni looking for work after layoffs. Most have found new jobs, according to the tracker.

"Irvin makes it his personal mission to get everybody employed," said Paul de Lucena, a former Grubhub employee and network member.

Workers at tech companies from Amazon to Meta to Uber have faced layoffs this year. Many have to figure out what's next with their own networks — or, perhaps, with some help from a group chat of fellow laid-off employees that goes dark after a month or two.

Thevaranjan's network represents something different, according to former Grubhub employees and others who have interacted with it: A grassroots effort to provide the support that's typically lacking after a layoff.

From the 'empathy window' to a tracker

The most publicly visible part of the network is a tracker that Thevaranjan built to showcase laid-off employees and their experience to potential employers.

There's also a Slack workspace where laid-off workers commiserate over the job search, share links to open roles, and post about their hobbies. Grubhub workers who were more recently laid off can also join the group by filling out a Google Form that Thevaranjan and other administrators review.

Thevaranjan said he got the idea from Kristen Ubaldi, the former chief people officer at Groupon. Ubaldi created a similar list and promoted it with the help of Groupon's executives after the company laid off employees in 2020.

Originally, the Ex-Grubhub Network was mostly about helping folks navigate the days after the layoff, Thevaranjan told Business Insider. He recalled introducing a laid-off colleague to a recruiter at Reddit, where Thevaranjan had previously interviewed, the same day as they were laid off.

"It's not even about getting him a job," Thevaranjan said. "It's the fact that he feels supported."

Thevaranjan said he drew on his skills as an auditor to create the list of laid-off employees. To get more eyes on it, though, he tagged some of Grubhub's executives in a LinkedIn post days after the layoffs.

"I call it the empathy window, this short period of time where people feel bad for you," he said.

As Thevaranjan kept promoting his effort on LinkedIn, the network attracted more laid-off Grubhub employees — as well as others interested in what he was doing.

Katie Cavote, a former recruiter at Grubhub, said she advised Thevaranjan on how to make the network more attractive for recruiters at other companies to use. The two never knew each other when they were still at Grubhub.

People who oversee hiring are often looking for candidates from a specific company or with a specific background, Cavote said. The tracker sorts laid-off workers by specialty to make that easier.

"Recruiters are getting creative these days in finding the right talent," she said.

C.J. Cross, who worked in workforce analytics at Grubhub, lost his job in the same 2025 layoffs as Thevaranjan. That summer, he started a new job at Uber thanks to a referral he got from the Ex-Grubhub Network.

When he got laid off again earlier this month as part of Uber's cuts, he rejoined the community. "The very first thing I did was go back to the Grubhub group chat," he said.

Anne Stamer, a career transition coach who led webinars for the ex-Grubhub Network, said that big career networking sites like LinkedIn provide lots of potential connections for recently laid-off workers.

With millions of members, though, it can also be overwhelming to devise a strategy that leads to a new job. "It's a double-edged sword," she said.

Tamara Pohle, another career-transition consultant who led webinars for the group with Stamer, said she hasn't seen another layoff support group last as long as the network that Thevaranjan created.

A stream of tech layoffs over the last few years shows how weakened the connections between companies and their employees have become, Pohle said. The layoffs have also made the connections that Thevaranjan's group provides even more important.

"Genuine human connection has never gone stale," she said.

Ubaldi, the former Groupon chief people officer who created a similar list of laid-off employees, told Business Insider that she wanted to make it clear that the layoffs weren't the workers' fault.

More companies should use their networks to help the people they're laying off, she said.

"I don't know why more don't," she said.

Have a tip? 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.

• Meta is building its largest data center to date in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
• Angel Crawford and her husband own 18 rental properties in the area.
• Crawford said RV and mobile home parks are booming due to the influx of workers.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angel Crawford, who owns 18 rental properties in northeastern Louisiana and runs a third-party website connecting tenants with property owners. Construction for Meta's largest-ever AI data center has begun in Holly Ridge, an unincorporated community about 10 minutes away from her home in Delhi.

My husband and I have been in Delhi for four years. We're originally from this area, but we've moved around because of our nursing careers. I was a quality manager, and my husband was a director of case management.

We were empty nesters looking for something to do, so we started with real estate and rentals because they are very much needed in this area. It's very rural here, so when there are fluctuating prices in the market, it doesn't really hit us because there are never enough houses for sale or rent.

In 2024, we started buying older houses that had been on the market for a long time or needed a lot of work. We had a vision to create a mobile home park and already purchased some land when we heard about Meta's data center. That's what pushed us to keep going forward. We understood there wasn't enough housing for residents, and our dream of building more multifamily houses was right in line to do that.

Around here, people feel one way or the other about the data center. Either people are excited about the opportunities, or they hate it. There's no in between. I see it as an opportunity for us to have more experiences in our area and jobs for our children, so they can stay here instead of moving away.

We began Parish Line Properties, which now operates 18 properties, in 2024. I also created StayNELA, a third-party website to connect listing agents with tenants, in 2025.

The impact of Meta's data center on real estate

Parish Line Properties has 18 homes, and 14 of those are workforce housing.

Location is very important to Meta's workers because they work six to seven days a week and 12-plus hours a day. They leave around 4:30 in the morning, and they don't come home until 7 at night.

One of the big things my tenants tell me is that if they live in Dallas and it's 30 miles to work, it takes about 30 minutes. Well, in rural areas, 30 miles could take 60 minutes because of all the back roads and little towns you have to go through. The closer they can get to the job site, the better.

A fully-furnished four-bedroom, two-bathroom home that's eight miles from the data center costs an average of $3,000 a month. I don't have any problem with getting tenants in those homes at that price point. Before Meta arrived, an unfurnished house in the same area would probably go for around $1,200 to $1,500 a month.

We've assured our local long-term tenants that we won't increase their rent. That's not what we're about. We're not going to put local tenants in a bind. We're going to find different and new properties to help with workforce housing.

We opened our Antley Pines mobile home park in December 2025. We added two homes last December, four this May, and our last four in July. All the homes were secured by deposits from Meta workers before we even got them into the park.

Separately, I created StayNELA because there weren't many resources for anybody who wasn't a local to find rental homes. I did a lot of research for several months by driving around the area and looking at all the different signs in people's yards or at four-way stops that you couldn't read properly. I kept a log, took pictures, and kept them in a folder on my phone. If anything was on Facebook about a rental, I saved it.

When I finally took the leap to design a webpage, I reached out to everybody that I had found through phone numbers, Facebook posts, and listings. I'm not a real estate agent, so I'm helping people advertise. When I list a property, I include the owner's phone number so potential tenants can go straight to the owner of that house.

My goal was to bridge that gap for people looking for rentals here from other states.

The impact of Meta's data center on the local economy

Each home in our mobile park is on one-fourth of an acre. After Meta's gone, we can sell them individually or rent them out.

We've seen a lot of laundromats, RV parks, and mobile home parks come to the area. It's great for the economy in our area because people who we've worked with who install electrical systems, septic systems, plumbing, gravel, and all those things are busy because Meta's here.

For example, getting a property surveyed is extremely hard, whereas it used to be pretty easy. Before, you could call them, and they'd say, "Yeah, I'll be there to come do your survey in a week or so."

Now, you have to get on a list and wait for your turn.

• CEO Jensen Huang doesn't sugarcoat advice to Nvidia employees who quit.
• He critiqued one startup's name and told another founder his biggest weakness could hold him back.
• Founders said the tough love stuck — and they acted on his advice.

As they were preparing to leave Nvidia, David Hoeller and Nikita Rudin anxiously hopped on a late-night call with their CEO.

The two had spent years working on robotics at the chip giant, pushing the boundaries of simulation and helping pull off a demo in which CEO Jensen Huang took the stage with a coterie of humanoids.

The pair wanted more freedom to bring that technology into the real world and left in 2024 to found Flexion Robotics, a startup building robot intelligence.

As they dialed in from a conference in Munich, Huang didn't try to talk them out of leaving, though he did have one problem with their startup: its intended name, Checkpoint.

"He told us that the name was bad, and that we had to change it," Rudin said, adding that they'd heard from others that the name sounded like it belonged in a different industry. "I don't want to give him all the credit, but we probably changed it because of his comment."

Huang also warned them about the long road ahead.

"His message was, 'We don't realize how tough a journey it's going to be,'" Rudin said.

Flexion's experience offers a glimpse into how Huang counsels some departing founders: with encouragement and little sugarcoating. That directness extends through Nvidia's culture, where Huang is known for cutting through management layers and personally weighing in on everything from employee output to customer complaints.

Flexion's relationship with Nvidia didn't end there. Nvidia later invested in the Zurich-based company, which is now expanding into the US, having recently opened a San Francisco office and hired researchers from companies like Meta. In total, it has raised more than $57 million.

Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.

Founders say Jensen Huang gives 'honest feedback'

For Bing Xu, Huang's parting advice was more personal.

Xu joined Nvidia after it acquired his first startup in 2024. He left earlier this year — walking away from a potentially life-changing sum of Nvidia equity, he said — to build another startup called INT21, which uses AI to improve chip software.

After Xu shared his plans, Huang spent two hours with him and other Nvidia executives discussing his work and trying to convince him to stay.

Huang also offered a pointed critique. He said communication was Xu's biggest weakness and that it could limit his achievements. Xu had a tendency to assume others shared his technical knowledge, making his explanations difficult to follow — and Huang suggested that staying at Nvidia would be a better path, he recalled.

"This is the most honest feedback I had in the past 10 years about myself," said Xu, who now works with a public relations firm. "I didn't think my communication would be such a big problem, but when Jensen told me, I decided I could take this opportunity to become a better version of myself."

The conversation wasn't all tough love. Xu said he was dealing with high blood pressure and other health issues at the time, and Huang encouraged him to take time off and rest.

He viewed both the concern and criticism as evidence that Huang wanted him to succeed.

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• Automakers have reorganized their EV lineups since September 2025, when federal tax credits ended.
• Sagging demand, tariffs, and a new generation of EVs have also led to several product cancellations.
• Business Insider compiled a list of EVs that have been killed or indefinitely delayed in 2026.

American EV sales are still facing pressure.

Since September 2025, when the federal $7,500 tax credit for US-made EVs ended, fewer shoppers have chosen a battery-powered car for their next set of wheels.

In the second quarter of 2026, deliveries dropped 20.5%, according to Cox Automotive data. That follows a 27% drop in first-quarter 2026 EV sales and a 36% plunge in EV sales in the final quarter of 2025.

The slowdown began reshaping which new car models appeared on US dealership lots last year. By the end of 2025, Ford ended production of the F-150 Lightning, Nissan axed the Ariya, Acura stopped building the ZDX, and Volkswagen paused the ID. Buzz until 2027.

That shake-up has continued into 2026, but the lineup changes aren't a wholesale retreat from EVs.

"It's a part of many legacy automakers retooling their EV strategies," Seth Goldstein, an analyst at Morningstar, told Business Insider. "A lot of automakers are going back to the drawing board. They're looking to discontinue unprofitable EVs and replace them with more affordable, long-range EVs."

Business Insider is tracking every EV canceled or postponed since January 1, 2026 — a list we'll keep updating as the industry redraws its all-electric road map.

Hyundai Ioniq 6 Standard

Hyundai confirmed to Business Insider that it will stop selling the Korean-built, standard Ioniq 6 in the US.

The retro-styled sedan never matched the success of its crossover sibling, the Ioniq 5 (which has been on a sales tear this year; in May, the company reported delivering 5,002 units, up 16% from last year).

Hyundai said it sold just 229 Ioniq 6 units in February.

"Sedan sales have declined a lot over the past decade, and the Ioniq 6 is no exception," Sam Abuelsamid, the vice president of market research at Telemetry, told Business Insider. "Without enough sales to justify US production, the numbers just don't add up for Hyundai."

Hyundai said it plans to import a limited number of high-performance Ioniq 6 N models to the US — a pricier variant with more oomph in the electric motor and track-focused upgrades.

"In the meantime, 2025 Ioniq 6 sedans continue to be available at dealers alongside our award-winning, US-assembled Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 SUVs," the automaker said.

The Ioniq 6 will still ship to Canadian dealerships.

2026 Hyundai Kona Electric

In 2019, Hyundai electrified its popular Kona crossover, swapping the gas engine for a battery-powered drivetrain.

It became one of the automaker's first mass-market EVs.

That run is now on pause. Hyundai said in February that it would not ship the 2026 Kona Electric from its Korean plants to US dealerships. Like the Ioniq 6, the Kona Electric remains available in limited numbers as a 2025 model.

The model could return for the 2027 model year.

With a starting price around $33,000, it was one of the cheapest EVs on the US market in 2025.

Kia Niro EV

The Kia Niro EV has been discontinued in the US, InsideEVs reports.

First introduced in the US for the 2018 model year, the Niro EV was developed from Kia's small Niro crossover, which was also offered in hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants.

The model received a facelift for the 2026 model year, and the plug-in hybrid version was discontinued as part of the lineup adjustment.

The Niro EV was imported from Kia's Hwaseong plant in South Korea, leaving it exposed to ongoing US automotive tariffs.

Those added costs, combined with slowing sales in the EV segment, reportedly made the model increasingly difficult to justify at American dealerships, according to InsideEVs.

Kia has not responded to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Tesla Model S

The Model S was critical to Tesla's historic ascent.

When the sedan debuted in 2012, it was the company's first ground-up vehicle — and a sharp break from the slow, quirky EVs that came before it.

With hypercar-like acceleration, sleek body lines, and a tech-forward cabin, the sedan made going electric feel aspirational rather than a legacy automaker's compliance exercise.

That shift helped propel Tesla into America's dominant EV automaker.

Now, despite its historic role, CEO Elon Musk says the $94,990 sedan is headed for an "honorable discharge" after years of sliding sales.

Tesla Model X

The Model X is also going the way of the dodo.

Tesla's second built-from-scratch vehicle will end production in the second quarter of 2026 amid soft demand. The SUV starts at $99,990.

Launched in 2015, the Model X was ambitious. And complicated.

Its signature second-row falcon-wing doors — which opened by pivoting upward via electronically connected hinges mounted to the roof — became a production headache.

Musk once called the car a "Fabergé egg."

The production lines that made the two vehicles will now build the company's Optimus robots.

"We're really moving into a future that is based on autonomy," Musk said while announcing their final days, adding that the decision was "slightly sad."

Kia EV6 GT and EV9 GT

Kia's flagship EV portfolio is also getting tweaked — but more narrowly.

The Korean automaker is delaying the GT trims of two models, the EV6 and EV9. Those versions are the highest-performance variants in each lineup.

Kia confirmed to Business Insider that the GT trims are delayed "until further notice" due to "changing market conditions."

Other trims — which are made at Kia's plant in West Point, Georgia — remain on sale in the US.

"This delay does not impact the availability of other trims in the EV6 and EV9 lineups," the company said.

Volvo EX30

Volvo has confirmed to Business Insider that it's discontinuing the EX30 in the US.

The small SUV was meant to be a breakthrough in America's electric car market: a ground-up EV with a starting price under $35,000.

Tariffs — spanning both the Biden and Trump administrations — upended those plans. Volvo first intended to build the EX30 in China, then shifted production to Belgium, driving up costs and US prices.

Now, the automaker is turning its focus to the EX60, a midsize two-row SUV expected to offer up to 400 miles of range, with a US launch set for summer. The three-row EX90 remains at dealerships, too.

"Volvo Cars' commitment to electrification and our customers remains unchanged," the company said in an emailed statement.

Honda's 0 Series EVs

In March, Honda said it was canceling production of its coming 0 Series Saloon and SUV.

Both vehicles — the wedge-shaped Saloon (shown above) and the SUV — were slated to be Honda's first internally developed EVs. The automaker's earlier electric models were built through a joint venture with GM.

Honda had planned to produce the cars at its Marysville, Ohio, plant with a starting price of around $50,000.

Instead, the company is pivoting toward hybrids after booking a $15.7 billion loss in its EV division.

It leaves Honda with just one electric car on US dealership lots: the Mexican-built Prologue.

Acura RSX

Honda also scrapped plans for the RSX EV — a Tesla Model Y-style SUV — as it pulled back on its electric ambitions.

The cancellation caught some auto analysts off guard. Honda had just unveiled a production-ready version of the vehicle in August.

The car was also supposed to roll out of the Marysville plant, leaving Acura without an electric vehicle in its lineup.

Honda Sony Mobility Afeela

In March, Honda confirmed it would no longer build the Afeela.

The sedan — which was expected to hit the market at the end of the year before a sibling SUV reached dealerships — was a joint venture product between Honda and PlayStation-maker Sony. It featured a bevy of wild tech options: a customizable screen on the front bumper, lidar sensors, and a place to hold a car-connected PlayStation controller.

It was canceled a few months before its Ohio production was set to start, a "very unusual" move, Adam Bernard, founder of AutoPerspectives, told Business Insider.

It's still available to race in Gran Turismo 7.

BMW i4

German luxury automaker BMW is phasing out the i4, per Car and Driver.

The i4 — a five-seat hatchback with a sedan-like profile (what BMW calls a "Gran Coupe") — will end production by late 2026.

The model favored performance, reaching 60 mph from a standing start in as little as 3.7 seconds, with an estimated range of 268 to 333 miles.

It will be replaced by a new generation of EVs built on BMW's coming "Neue Klasse" platform, which the company says will boost performance while lowering costs.

The closest successor, an electric i3 sedan, is expected to offer up to 440 miles of range.

BMW iX

BMW is also phasing out its iX electric SUV in favor of a next-generation model built on its "Neue Klasse" platform.

The iX — BMW's midsize luxury EV — first hit US dealerships in 2021 as the company's second all-electric vehicle. The five-seat SUV carried a price tag ranging from about $70,000 to over $100,000, with an estimated range of 290 to 360 miles depending on the trim.

The German luxury automaker is discontinuing the iX in the US, though it will continue selling the model in Europe. American dealerships are instead preparing for the arrival of the new iX3 midsize electric SUV, which is expected to reach showrooms this summer.

"We remain fully committed to electrification in the US," a BMW spokesperson told BMW Blog. "This marks the beginning of the Neue Klasse era and the introduction of these technologies across our future portfolio."

Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo and Sport Turismo

Porsche's Taycan lineup is getting a refresh for the 2027 model year. Its Cross Turismo and Sport Turismo wagons are not part of those plans, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

The Taycan was Porsche's first fully electric nameplate in the US, debuting in 2020 as a sedan. The low-slung Cross Turismo and Sport Turismo options with an extended roofline and a lift-up hatch reached American dealerships in 2021.

Still, station wagons are a dying breed in America, and Porsche says sales for both options never took off.

In a statement, the company said the wagon variants played a "minor role" in Porsche's sales.

The Taycan sedan is back for 2027 with a larger battery, more exterior paint options, and a NACS charging port.

Polestar 3, 4

Polestar is pulling out of the US after the Commerce Department denied the EV maker authorization to sell new vehicles beginning with the 2027 model year.

The Swedish automaker, which is majority-owned by China's Geely, was denied an exemption under the federal Connected Vehicle Rule, which restricts the sale of cars with software tied to China or Russia over national security concerns. The decision means Polestar won't be able to sell new 2027-model vehicles in the US, though it can continue selling existing inventory and servicing current customers.

The decision stands in contrast to sister brand Volvo, which received authorization in May following discussions with US officials.

"The automotive industry is entering a new phase, based on regional dynamics," Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller said in comments emailed to Business Insider.

Polestar also told Business Insider it was "too early" to say what the decision means for its South Carolina operations, where it builds the Polestar 3.

Honda Prologue

Honda's only EV is walking the plank.

"Honda confirmed production of the Prologue will end at the completion of the 2026 model year," a company spokesperson told Business Insider. "Sales will continue through early 2027 based on expected inventory."

The Prologue was built on General Motors' Ultium EV platform as part of a partnership between the two automakers. The partnership also built the Acura ZDX, Chevy Equinox EV, Chevy Blazer EV, Cadillac Lyriq, and Cadillac Optiq. The companies ended their joint EV efforts in 2023, citing higher-than-expected building costs and slumping consumer demand.

Honda has since shifted its focus toward hybrids.

The Prologue's departure will leave Honda without an EV in its US lineup for the 2027 model year.

Volvo EX40

Volvo confirmed to Business Insider that it's discontinuing the EX40 in the US, while it will continue after "significant updates" in other global markets.

The EX40, which debuted in 2019 as the XC40 Recharge, was an electric variant of Volvo's gas-powered subcompact SUV, the XC40.

Like several other EVs discontinued this year, the EX40's demise comes as Volvo launches a new lineup of more efficient, upgraded EVs. The Swedish automaker is about to launch the midsize EX60 for sales in the US, and executives previously told Business Insider that it's planning a smaller electric SUV.

David Schneider is all for people having fun on the golf course — to a point.

The 47-year-old reached said point recently on a rare three-generational outing with his father and son on a municipal course in San Diego. They got stuck behind a foursome of 20-somethings who were downing Coors Lights, smoking cigars, and playing at what he describes as a "snail's pace," oblivious to the groups piling up behind them. "They really didn't care about pace of play," says Schneider, who runs a curated golf experience company in Southern California. The situation reached a boiling point when the increasingly belligerent bros decided to tee off their finished beer cans. They even started taking mulligans (golf-speak for second tries) when their empties didn't clear the tee box.

"All the while, my foursome watched their drunken incompetence from just a few feet away," Schneider says.

While Schneider's experience was an especially egregious scene, it's emblematic of the culture clash taking place within golf. The sport has surged in popularity in recent years: Nearly 50 million Americans hit a golf ball in 2025, up 41% from 2019. It's exploded on social media — even LeBron James has launched a golf YouTube channel.

But growing the game has come with major growing pains. Golf's old guard complains that novices aren't tuned into the game's rules and etiquette: they play too slowly, listen to music, and (gasp!) don't tuck in their shirts. It's prompted a "Shrink the Game" backlash among some online traditionalists. Newcomers, on the other hand, contend that many of the gripes are little more than elitist gatekeeping that has long defined the sport. Fancy clubs have a tendency to get "bent out of shape over stuff that doesn't matter at all," Schneider says, like someone changing shoes in the parking lot.

This "Caddyshack" showdown for the YouTube era is triggering surprisingly heated emotions. On Reddit, posts about wearing hats in the clubhouse and paying for drinks after a hole-in-one garner hundreds of comments. When a colleague found out I was working on this story, he reached out to share his two cents: Everyone who "screams" about shrinking the game is an "effing loser," he argues, who's salty "because the person who just picked up clubs is already outdriving you."

The battle over Bluetooth speakers and big-letter hats is the result of a deeper paradox at the heart of the sport: The golf industry spent years hoping and praying for new, diverse players to come on board. Now it's reckoning with the culture they brought with them.

"That's a case of careful what you asked for," says Josh Sens, a senior writer at Golf Magazine and the author of its cheeky "The Etiquetteist" advice column.

A confluence of events has gotten Americans off their couches and onto the golf course (or into other golf-related activities). Golf emerged as a safe, socially-distanced outdoor activity during the pandemic. Driving range/bar combos such as Topgolf and Drive Shack served as a gateway drug of sorts for the golf-curious. YouTube golf channels like Good Good and Bob Does Sports began attracting more eyeballs than some PGA Tour broadcasts, bringing a looser, more accessible feel to the game. According to the National Golf Foundation, 3 million beginners have hit a golf course annually since 2020, and golf reached some 136 million Americans in some way, shape, or form in 2025.

"Welcome to a world where golf is actually fun, perceived as fun, by millions more people," says Greg Nathan, the NGF's president and CEO.

Of course, "fun" is in the eye of the beholder. People who picked up golf at driving ranges, entertainment venues, and simulators may be accustomed to a hyper-casual vibe. Even for newbies coming in without a party-first mentality, the game of golf has so many unwritten rules and eccentricities that they're almost bound to run afoul somewhere. Golfers are contending with increasingly crowded tee times and a fundamental clash over what behavior belongs on the course.

"There's a balance that needs to be reached between the fun police and consideration for fellow golfers who are occupying the same space," Nathan says. "The rule really should be no a-holes."

The problem is, no one agrees who the a-hole is.

The cardinal sin in golf is playing slowly. Americans in general tend to play at a more relaxed pace than, say, Scots or Brits, but not matching pace of play of your fellow golfers on the course is a big no-no — especially now that the courses are fuller.

Newer, less-experienced players don't always get this. They'll take a lot of practice swings, waste time tracking down mishit balls deep in the woods, or line up and miss seven putts in a row. They don't realize that if they're really biffing it on a hole, it's better for everyone to just pick up and go.

Ankit Vij, a 31-year-old Brooklynite who recently got back into golf after playing briefly in high school, spent a little too much time looking for his balls when he first returned to the course. He's since implemented a 30-second search limit for himself. "Just keep a couple balls that you don't really care about for this specific reason until you get a little bit more confident about not sending it into the woods," he says.

Seasoned golfers also grumble about the physical collateral damage they're finding on courses that they blame on newer crowds — unrepaired divots and pitch marks, golf carts driven where they're not supposed to be, even trash. In 2025, pro golfer Phil Mickelson took to Twitter to complain about players failing to rake bunkers, saying it had become a "huge problem at even the nicest of clubs" since COVID. (Mickelson's own behavior has not always been unimpeachable — earlier this year, he was reportedly ousted from a San Diego golf club amid allegations of nonconsensual inappropriate contact with a female employee. Mickelson has disputed the claims.)

Chris, a veteran caddie who splits his time between high-end private clubs in Florida and Long Island, recalls one country club he works at having an issue this spring with people discarding Zyn nicotine pouches on the greens. (Business Insider agreed to withhold his last name to protect his job.) "A lot of old-school people want their beautiful little sanctuary golf course to be as pretty as it can be," he says. Management sent an email to members to remind them to pick up after themselves.

One of the most contentious flashpoints in modern golf is music. Many players have taken to bringing small speakers with them on the fairway, and newer golf carts may have built-in sound systems. Some golfers see it as a fine way to enjoy the day (as long as the tunes aren't interrupting other groups' games). Others are not so understanding.

"Why do you need music? Is my company and the challenge of the game not enough for you?" Sens says. Plus, he notes, a lot of the time the music is not so great — "bad country" and Hootie & the Blowfish. "Play some good music, maybe I'll be into it," he says.

Don Bostic, the executive director at the Friars Golf Club, a traveling golf society, tells me he leaves it up to members to decide what works for their individual groups, auditorily. But making a blanket rule for the club? No way. "It would be much more controversial than I'd want to deal with," he says.

Reporting for this story, I spoke to two 50-something New Jersey guys, both named Tony, who both brought up music. One Tony's taken to playing some tunes during a round to pair with his bourbon-spiked "swing juice." The other finds the practice "insane." The pro at one of Chris the caddie's regular clubs recently sent out an email reminding members to ask everyone in their group if music is kosher.

To the modern wave of golfers, the real "a-holes" aren't the ones learning the ropes — they're the exclusionary gatekeepers obsessed with arbitrary traditions and outdated hierarchies. Take dress codes. While legacy clubs continue to enforce strict rules around collared polos and tucked-in shirts, younger players often find themselves baffled by all the fuss. It seems silly that attire that is more comfortable and casual — like hoodies, joggers, or sneakers — is seen as a faux pas, and that their attire for what's, in theory, supposed to be an enjoyable game is so explicitly policed (or implicitly, with eye rolls).

Daniel Uusitalo, a 27-year-old venture capitalist based in the Netherlands, was nearly turned away from a private club in Spain over his outfit. The club required collared shirts, but Uusitalo was wearing a running T-shirt. He sees polo shirts as a "weird middle ground" of upper-body attire, but he wound up having to borrow a friend's to be let in. Adding to the farce: Uusitalo generally wears an extra-large, and his friend only had a medium, yet the club was perfectly fine with the comically snug fit.

"The whole ordeal just felt completely ridiculous," he says. "Especially in a sport where you're trying to get young people to participate more." He also notes that a lot of the guys waxing on about manners are the same ones getting hammered in the clubhouse after games, "picking and choosing" when to be formal.

It's a sentiment shared by some seasoned golfers. There's a difference between behavior that negatively affects someone's game and aesthetics that some people simply find unbecoming.

"Rules that protect the round matter," Schneider says. "Rules that just protect somebody's ego don't."

Different factions can and do coexist. Jennifer Friday, 26, is in her fourth year as a beverage cart girl at the Revere Club Golf, about 20 minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip. She has her weekday "grandpas" who ask about her family and her dog, and get in a round. Then she has the younger, more laid-back golfers on the weekends — they definitely drink more, "but I feel like nobody gets insane where they're disrespectful of the game," she says. The older players, however, are the better tippers.

"The younger guys' tabs are more, and they're still tipping 20%, but the older crowd is making a relationship with us, so they'll hand you a $5 even if they don't get anything," she says.

Golf and the private clubs that undergirded the game are notorious for not having been particularly welcoming to non-white, non-male, non-older, and non-protestant communities. This meant that golf's growth was long hamstrung by its own orthodoxy. Now, some of those excluded groups are the ones flocking to the game.

Julien McCall, Taqee Bond, and Frank Caffey all found their way into golf as 30-something new dads in New York City. McCall and Bond were first introduced to the sport as kids by their grandfathers, though neither kept at it. Caffey's dad wouldn't let him play, lest it mess up his baseball swing. The three have fallen in love with the game over the past few years and, over the summer, launched Kinfolk Social Club, an initiative they say is meant to bring "culture, access, and belonging" to traditionally underserved golfers through local events. They don't chafe at all golf customs — as Bond puts it, they're not trying to be "obtuse."

"If you're going to come and be in this space and love this space, you should know your history. You should know how things are done so that when you do switch it up a little bit, you still have that respect," he says.

They're well aware of the vital importance of pace of play, too. "We're from New York, so we can say this very callously: You will get jumped if your pace of play is not right," McCall says.

With Kinfolk, the trio is trying to build community, bring people outside, and get them to try new things. As Black men, they know it's not all smooth sailing on the golf course — people often assume they don't know what they're doing and offer up unsolicited advice, even though those unwelcome consultants soon come to find out "that my golf game is actually better than yours," McCall says.

"If we truly want to grow the game, we can't keep protecting traditions that were built around keeping people out," Caffey says. "Tradition is one thing. Exclusion is another."

Cayla Cousins, a 37-year-old tech founder, started golfing largely because there were so many courses near her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. After paying $45 for some used clubs at an estate sale, she locked in and decided her newfound hobby was good early practice for retirement. She now plays whenever possible and has massively improved her game, yet she frequently encounters subtle biases when she steps onto the tee box.

"They see my little pink towel, and they're like, 'Oh Lord, here we go.' And then I crush it and then shut them right up," she says. "It bothers me when I see 'shrink the game,' because it's a sport that, unfortunately, has already intentionally been shrunken."

All the attention to etiquette, unwritten rules, and egos can make it tempting for novices to throw in the towel. Someone gets scolded for bringing their bag into the clubhouse or side-eyed over their shoes, and they decide it's not worth it, especially given how difficult the game is. "It's easy to be like, 'You know what? I think I'm good, there's a lot going on, this is expensive as hell, and I'm not good," says Bryce Tarrant, a 37-year-old sports marketer in New York who picked up a post-COVID golf habit. (He has not given up and compares golf to an "addiction.")

A sizable portion of the controversy exists online — old-school golfers resent the rise of influencers, #ShrinkTheGame tweets go viral, and people think the sentiment is more widespread than it is. A handful of conventional golf viewers are bothered by Kevin Hart and Jason Kelce showing up at the Masters, while others think it's cute or, more likely, don't really notice. Some of this schism is borne of the rivalry between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the latter of which was developed as a louder, faster, flashier alternative to traditional professional golf. Though LIV is now facing an uncertain future as its Saudi funding dries up, it was a catalyst for the PGA to accelerate some of its modernization.

Things can get ugly. Just look at the recent dustup over a bro-y Good Good-Callaway ad that opened with a man tackling a woman for touching his driver, which resulted in messy apologies, firings, and broken business deals. Or, consider the PGA Tour having to revamp its fan code of conduct amid rowdy behavior during tournaments — including concerns that some people are disrupting shots to try to influence their sports bets.

Golf's identity crisis is more of a rocky transition period than it is an irreversible civil war. Sure, each side has grievances, but everyone is also benefiting from the sport's newfound popularity. The old guard may mourn the changes to their manicured haven, but they also get to enjoy the influx of money that's helping to revamp courses and attract eyeballs. The new guard gets to discover the sport's idiosyncrasies and bring their own flair to the game, even if they run into some bumps along the way.

Nathan, from the NGF, says that while he generally thinks the culture conflict in golf is "overblown," the sport's orthodoxies and conservative elements have historically hampered its growth. The silver lining is that there's space for everyone, literally, on the thousands of courses across the US, all with varying levels of formality. He compares it to the restaurant industry: patrons will act and dress differently in an exclusive three-Michelin-star eatery than in the neighborhood diner. When a new-school golfer gets an invite to a storied enclave like Winged Foot, Pinehurst, or Shinnecock, they should expect to dress and act the part. The friction comes when traditionalists try to force private-club rules on a municipal course where people are just trying to have a good time — or newcomers try to bring the tailgate party where it's not welcome.

Some proportion of golfers will see the loud apparel or hear music across the course and think it's symbolic of the "downfall of golf society," Nathan says. "But the reality is, golf being more approachable and relatable and fun is fantastic for the game."

Golf has long had a snobs-vs.-slobs dynamic, though today's slobs are quite put together, all in all. And ultimately, they're all going to have to learn to live with each other — the slobs can pick up the pace a bit, the snobs can get over seeing a collarless shirt every once in a while.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.