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Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine when he did if he'd had AI tools, says Anduril founder Palmer Luckey
David Fitzgerald/Getty
Many are concerned about how AI will change wars. Anduril founder Palmer Luckey believes the technology will lead to better decision-making and fewer blunders.Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine when he did if AI had helped him strategize, Luckey told Bloomberg.AI has been compared to the next atomic bomb and sparked fears about the future of warfare.
But Anduril founder Palmer Luckey believes the technology will improve war for everyone.
"AI is going to be a tool to put all the cards on the table for everyone," Luckey told Bloomberg's Emily Chang in the latest episode of "The Circuit."
"My hope is that you're going to have dictators who make better decisions because even they have better information from AI."
Pointing to the example of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Luckey said that had the Russian leader used AI to better understand what would happen he wouldn't have launched his attack when he did.
"I don't think he would've launched this invasion in Ukraine if he would've understood what was actually going to happen," Luckey said.
"Remember, they believed this was like a three-day special operation they were going to roll in. It was going to be over very, very quickly.
"If he had had a better understanding of what he had and what they had, I think he probably would not have made the play."
Luckey's defense tech startup, Anduril, owns an AI-powered solution to solve just those kinds of problems for the US military and its allies.
On top of a range of flashy autonomous drones and vehicles, the foundation of Anduril is its proprietary AI-powered software system, named Lattice.
Lattice acts as a command center for a human operator to control a network of autonomous devices that can go out into the line of danger and conduct surveillance or other missions.
The Anduril Long Range Sentry Tower uses AI to provide autonomous surveillance.Anduril
It's with this kind of software, rather than heavy military machinery, that the Anduril founder still believes the US has an advantage over other nations, he told Chang.
"Using software to make decisions twice as fast or ten times as fast is a capability I don't think our adversaries are close to copying," said Luckey.
Anduril is fast cementing itself as one of the leading companies providing the US military with futuristic technology.
In April, the Air Force selected the LA-headquartered startup over legacy firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman for a major modernization contract.
Cressida Cowper is getting a redemption arc in 'Bridgerton' season 3. Here's how it differs from the books.
Laurence Cendrowicz / Netflix
Cressida Cowper has a central role in "Bridgerton" season three.But her redemption never happened in the books.Here's how the show and novels differ.Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Bridgerton" season three, part one, and "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton."
"Bridgerton" season three is making a big change to the former villain Cressida Cowper.
In the Netflix show, Cressida (Jessica Madsen) is the typical pretty, mean girl. She spends the first two seasons bullying and gossiping about main characters like as Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan).
In season three, part one, Cressida turns a new leaf after befriending Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie), Daphne's younger sister and Penelope's former best friend. However, she is still under a lot of pressure from her parents to find a husband.
"Bridgerton" book fans may be surprised by that — it's nothing like the source novels by Julia Quinn. Eloise and Cressida never become friends there, and she is successful in finding a husband.
Changes like this are not uncommon to "Bridgerton." The series has been a grand success for Netflix, with the first two seasons numbering in its 10 most-watched series ever.
It got there in part by taking a lot of liberties with the books that are its inspiration.
Cressida Cowper is a great example.
In the books, Cressida marries before Penelope and Colin's love story
Jessica Madsen as Cressida Cowper and Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton in "Bridgerton" season three.Liam Daniel / Netflix
Cressida appears in two "Bridgerton" books: "The Viscount Who Loved Me," which was source material for season two, and in "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton," which underpins season three.
In "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton," Cressida is a vain, mean bully of London society. The unmarried Penelope Featherington is one of her main targets.
The book is set many years after "The Viscount Who Loved Me," so Cressida and Penelope are now in their late 20s. Cressida married a noble, Lord Twombley.
At this age Penelope is considered a spinster, a woman who fell short of the social expectation to marry early and well.
Lord Twombley, who has yet to appear in the Netflix series, dies before the beginning of "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton," leaving Cressida a widow and struggling for money.
Cressida pretends to be Lady Whistledown and later blackmails Penelope
Joanna Bobin as Lady Cowper and Jessica Madsen as Cressida Cowper in "Bridgerton" season 3.Liam Daniel / Netflix
A major story thread in "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton" that is absent from season three is the race to discover Lady Whistledown's identity.
Near the beginning of the book, Lady Danbury offers 1,000 pounds — a huge sum — to anyone who can discover the gossip writer's identity.
The hunt forces Lady Whistledown's retirement.
In the shows, that arc happens in season two, but with Queen Charlotte pursuing Whistledown instead.
Since Cressida is struggling for money, she admits to being Lady Whistledown in the hope of claiming the bounty, but neither Lady Danbury nor Penelope believes her.
Going against the wishes of Colin Bridgerton, who figures out Penelope is Lady Whistledown, Penelope writes one last gossip paper to expose Cressida as a fraud.
This leads to Cressida discovering Lady Whistledown's real identity and she blackmails Penelope for money. When Colin hears this, he hatches a plan with his family to reveal Penelope's identity before Cressida can expose her.
Despite Colin's fears, Penelope and the Bridgertons are still welcomed in society, and it is Cressida who goes into exile.
Jessica Madsen said that the show's writers wanted to take Cressida in a "different direction" from the book
Jessica Madsen as Cressida Cowper and Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton in "Bridgerton" season 2.Liam Daniel / Netflix
Madsen told Business Insider she didn't read "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton" before filming season three because "Bridgerton" showrunner Jess Brownell told her that Cressida's story would be changed.
"I always read the book before we started shooting, but I talked to Jess, and she said they're taking her in this slightly different direction," Madsen said. "We get a look into her life. We see how she's grown up, we see her house, and the house does an awful lot of speaking for itself."
"As the season progresses, we really see the weight of her situation and what her options are, which are incredibly limited," she added.
This could mean that "Bridgerton" writers may change the circumstances of Lady Whistledown's public reveal and remove the part of the story where Cressida blackmails Penelope. The series already made a significant departure from the book's story in season three, part one, by having Colin propose to Penelope before finding out that she's Lady Whistledown.
In part one, Cressida also seems more intent on getting married than harming Penelope.
"I do think that we're still seeing a very soft side to her at this point," Madsen said of Cressida's journey in part one.
However, Madsen teased that Cressida's personality may change in part two: "We will see her shrink a little bit because she's really left to fend for herself."
"Bridgerton" season three, part two, premieres on June 13.
A millennial who got laid off says he's encountered ghost jobs and scammers in his struggle to find a remote role
Felipe Martins
A Utah-based millennial was laid off shortly after he received a concerning health diagnosis.He's had little luck in his search for a remote job over the past year.He thinks ghost jobs and scammers have made his search more challenging.In April 2023, Felipe Martins was recovering from knee replacement surgery when his surgeon called and said he needed to see him immediately.
Tests had identified a non-cancerous tumor in his knee, the 36-year-old told Business Insider via email. If it started to spread, his leg might have to be amputated, and the several months he spent in physical therapy for his knee replacement would be all for nothing.
At the time, Martins was working in Utah for the sales department of a tech company, a position he'd held for roughly nine years. He'd kept working while undergoing physical therapy, and he planned to do the same while receiving any necessary treatment related to his diagnosis.
But on May 1, Martins got a call from someone he didn't know who worked for his employer. They said they needed to schedule a meeting with him for that afternoon to discuss something.
It wasn't good news. Martins, along with a few others in his department, was laid off. He would be given one month of severance pay.
"You see memes on the internet saying that companies are not loyal," he said. "And I thought 'Sure, but my company actually likes and respects me. I'm valued.' No. I wasn't."
In the 12 months since his layoff, Martins said he's been actively looking and applying for jobs but hasn't had much luck. He thinks several factors could be working against him, including layoffs in the tech industry, his focus on remote roles, being transparent with employers about his health condition, and the prevalence of "ghost jobs" — listings on job platforms that companies are no longer actively hiring for.
While the "constant rejection" has been discouraging, Martins said he plans to keep trying.
Most American men who want a job have one — the male unemployment rate is low compared to past decades. But Martins is among the men who have struggled to find work recently — or have stopped looking entirely. In 1950, about 97% of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job or were actively looking for work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of April, that figure had fallen to about 89%.
One of several potential explanations for this decline is that, in recent decades, health issues have kept many men out of the workforce. In a 2022 analysis of Census data by the San Francisco Fed, nearly 40% of US men between age 25 and 54 cited disability or illness as the reason they weren't working. As a result, more men have turned to Social Security disability benefits to help them get by.
In recent years, the rise of remote work and historically high job openings have helped more people with health issues find employment. In 2023, nearly 23% of Americans with a disability were employed — the largest share on record since data collection began in 2008, according to the BLS.
But remote jobs aren't as common as they used to be — and there's competition to land one.
The share of US remote job postings on LinkedIn fell from over 20% in April 2022 to about 10% in December 2023. Despite the decline, LinkedIn said remote roles accounted for 46% of all applications in December.
Martins shared how he's responded to his layoff and the challenges he's faced during his job search.
Ghost jobs and scammers have made the job search more frustrating
When Martins was laid off, he said it wasn't the loss of income he was primarily focused on.
"I needed to get through this meeting so I could learn how to continue being insured once the month ended," he said, referring to the meeting where he learned he lost his job. "I didn't have time to cry and collect myself."
When he learned he could retain health insurance through COBRA for $800 a month, he set to work on the paperwork almost immediately to make sure it would be processed quickly — and he wouldn't be "left hanging" without insurance if a necessary procedure arose, he said.
While the cost is hard to stomach, he thinks it's worth it given his health concerns — he said he could retain the coverage for up to three years. Thankfully, his tumor hasn't spread and he hasn't needed surgery. Martins said he gets a checkup every few weeks to check monitor its status.
But without a job, he's had to deal with some financial stresses.
Martins said he'd saved up a fair bit of money and collected unemployment benefits for a while, both of which helped him pay the bills. He's also planning to move to Washington to live with his parents, who want to be closer to him as he navigates his health challenges. This will also save him money on housing.
In part due to his upcoming move, Martins said he's focused his job search on remote roles. He said he hopes to find a job that would allow him to continue his physical therapy and take some time off for treatment if necessary.
But his search has been difficult so far, in part because layoffs across the tech industry have heightened the competition for a limited number of jobs, he said.
When Martins does come across job postings, he doesn't always know if they're real. He thinks he's encountered a lot of ghost jobs.
"There are some firms on LinkedIn that are always advertising the same position and have been for almost a year now," he said. "I've applied to these positions at least half a dozen times now."
Martins also thinks some job postings he sees are created by "scammers."
For example, he said he recently got an email from a company with a website domain name that was the name of a real company, followed by the word "jobs." However, the real company's website had a different domain name, and the quality of the site made Martins suspicious.
Using the Whois lookup tool, he discovered that the suspicious website had been created on April 18th.
"I got an email from the scammer on April 19th, so they certainly didn't waste time going after people," he said.
Martins said the "company plus jobs" domain name format is common in his experience with scammers. He added that recruiters who can't answer basic questions about a role and pay that seems too good to be true are all potential red flags.
"They hook you in, throw out a huge pay rate, and hope people are too blown away imagining themselves making bank to ask questions," he said.
Business Insider has spoken with several people who said they were nearly duped into sending scammers money. The Federal Trade Commission has more information about job scams and how to avoid them.
Lastly, Martins said he sometimes wonders how much his health issues, which he discloses to potential employers, are working against him in his job search.
"Maybe I'm being a bit too honest about my condition, and no one wants someone like me," he said.
Despite these challenges, Martins said he plans to continue his job search and explore some in-person roles once he gets to Washington.
"There's no harm in continuing to try," he said. "What's the worst that can happen? Your résumé ends up in the recycle bin."
Are you a man who's not looking for work or has struggled to find a job? Are you willing to share your story? If so, reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.
Mortgage Interest Rates Today, May 16, 2024 | Rates Drop to 5-Week Low as Inflation Cools
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Average 30-year mortgage interest rates dropped to a five-week low as data showing that inflation cooled in April stoked optimism that the Federal Reserve may reduce the federal funds rate sooner rather than later.
Mortgage rates, which according to Zillow data had spiked above 7% late last month, fell below 6.7% after the Consumer Price Index report released Wednesday showed an inflation rate of 3.4% for April. That's down from 3.5% in March and in line with what economists were forecasting. Inflation also slowed on a monthly basis, rising just 0.3% last month.
This latest read on inflation is good news for mortgage rates. Inflation has remained elevated this year, pushing rates up. Cooler CPI data makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will be able to start lowering the federal funds rate this year, which would allow mortgage rates and other consumer borrowing costs to finally trend down.
One month of data likely isn't enough to spur the Fed to start cutting rates. But as long as inflation continues to show signs that it's decelerating, we could get a cut at the Fed's meeting in September. This means mortgage rates could start to go down more substantially as we approach the fall.
Current Mortgage Rates
Current Refinance Rates
Mortgage Calculator
Use our free mortgage calculator to see how today's mortgage rates would impact your monthly payments. By plugging in different rates and term lengths, you'll also understand how much you'll pay over the entire length of your mortgage.
Click "More details" for tips on how to save money on your mortgage in the long run.
Mortgage Rates for Buying a Home
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Inch Down (-0.05%)
The current average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.66%, down 5 basis points from where it was this time last week, according to Zillow data. This rate is down compared to a month ago, when it was 6.89%.
At 6.66%, you'll pay $643 monthly toward principal and interest for every $100,000 you borrow.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is the most common type of home loan. With this type of mortgage, you'll pay back what you borrowed over 30 years, and your interest rate won't change for the life of the loan.
20-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates Drop (-0.21%)
The average 20-year fixed mortgage rate is 21 basis points down from where it was last week, and is sitting at 6.25%. This time last month, the rate was 6.64%.
With a 6.25% rate on a 20-year term, your monthly payment will be $731 toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed.
A 20-year term isn't as common as a 30-year or 15-year term, but plenty of mortgage lenders still offer this option.
15-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates Nearly Flat (+0.02%)
The average 15-year mortgage rate is 6.05%, just 2 basis points higher than last week. It's down slightly compared to this time last month, when it was 6.12%.
With a 6.05% rate on a 15-year term, you'll pay $847 each month toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed.
If you want the predictability that comes with a fixed rate but are looking to spend less on interest over the life of your loan, a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage might be a good fit for you. Because these terms are shorter and have lower rates than 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, you could potentially save tens of thousands of dollars in interest. However, you'll have a higher monthly payment than you would with a longer term.
7/1 ARM Rates Fall More Than Half a Percentage Point (-0.53%)
The 7/1 adjustable mortgage rate is down 53 basis points from a week ago, currently at 6.94%. It's up compared to a month ago, when it was at 6.80%.
At 6.94%, your monthly payment would be $661 toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed — but only for the first seven years. After that, your payment would increase or decrease annually depending on the new rate.
5/1 ARM Rates Plunge (-0.60%)
The average 5/1 ARM rate is 6.53%, a 60-basis-point decrease from last week. It's down compared to where it was a month ago, when it was 6.87%.
Here's how a 6.53% rate would affect you for the first five years: You'd pay $634 per month toward principal and interest for every $100,000 you borrow.
30-year FHA Rates Increase (+0.22%)
The average 30-year FHA interest rate is 6.16% today, which is 22 basis points up from last week. This rate was 5.93% a month ago.
At 6.16%, you would pay $610 monthly toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed.
FHA mortgages are good choices if you don't qualify for a conforming mortgage. You'll need a 3.5% down payment and 580 credit score to qualify.
30-year VA Rates Inch Up (+0.07%)
The current VA mortgage rate is 6.12%, seven basis points higher than this time last week. This rate was 6.25% a month ago.
With a 6.12% rate, your monthly payment would be $607 toward principal and interest for every $100,000 you borrow.
Mortgage Refinance Rates
30-Year Fixed Refinance Rise (+0.81%)
The average 30-year refinance rate is 7.86%, 81 basis points higher than last week. It's also up compared to a month ago, when it was 6.98%.
Here's how a 7.86% rate would affect your monthly payments: You'd pay $724 toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed.
Refinancing into a 30-year term can land you lower monthly payments, but you'll ultimately pay more by refinancing into a longer term.
20-Year Fixed Refinance Rates Up a Full Percentage Point (+1.07%)
The current 20-year fixed refinance rate is 7.43%, which is up 107 basis points compared to a week ago. This rate was 7.69% this time last month.
A 7.43% rate on a 20-year term will result in a $801 monthly payment toward principal and interest for every $100,000 you borrow.
15-Year Fixed Refinance Rates Increase (+0.73%)
The average 15-year fixed refinance rate is 6.87%, which is 73 basis points higher compared to last week. It's also up compared to this time a month ago, when it was at 6.59%.
A 6.87% rate on a 15-year term means you'll pay $892 each month toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed.
Refinancing into a 15-year term can save you money in the long run, because you'll get a lower rate and pay off your mortgage faster than you would with a 30-year term. But it could result in higher monthly payments.
7/1 ARM Refinance Rates Hold Steady (-0.02%)
The average 7/1 ARM refinance rate is 7.46%, down just 2 basis points from where it was last week. It's up from a month ago, when it was 6.49%.
Refinancing into a 7/1 ARM with a 7.46% rate means your monthly payment toward principal and interest will be $696 for every $100,000 you borrow. This will be the payment for the first seven years, then your rate will change annually unless you refinance again.
5/1 ARM Refinance Rates Fall (-0.52%)
The 5/1 ARM refinance rate is 7.13%, which is 52 basis points lower than it was this time last week. It's up compared to this time last month, when it was 6.41%.
A 7.13% rate will result in a monthly payment of $674 toward principal and interest for every $100,000 borrowed. You'll pay this amount for the first five years of your new mortgage.
30-Year FHA Refinance Rates Flat (No Change)
The 30-year FHA refinance rate is 5.79%, which is the same as it was last week. This rate was 5.95% this time last month.
A 5.79% refinance rate would lead to a $586 monthly payment toward the principal and interest per $100,000 borrowed.
30-Year VA Refinance Rates Spike (+0.71)
The average 30-year VA refinance rate is 6.44%, which is up 71 basis points compared to where it was was last week. This rate was 5.91% a month ago.
At 6.44%, your new monthly payment would be $628 toward principal and interest for every $100,000 you borrow.
Are Mortgage Rates Going Down?
Mortgage rates started ticking up from historic lows in the second half of 2021 and increased over three percentage points in 2022. Mortgage rates also rose dramatically in 2023, though they started trending back down toward the end of the year. Though rates have been somewhat elevated recently, they should go down by the end of 2024.
For homeowners looking to leverage their home's value to cover a big purchase — such as a home renovation — a home equity line of credit (HELOC) may be a good option while we wait for mortgage rates to ease further. Check out some of our best HELOC lenders to start your search for the right loan for you.
A HELOC is a line of credit that lets you borrow against the equity in your home. It works similarly to a credit card in that you borrow what you need rather than getting the full amount you're borrowing in a lump sum. It also lets you tap into the money you have in your home without replacing your entire mortgage, like you'd do with a cash-out refinance.
Current HELOC rates are relatively low compared to other loan options, including credit cards and personal loans.
MrBeast has broken the curse of influencer success
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
MrBeast has broken the influencer curse of rapid growth followed by swift cancellation.He's no stranger to controversy, but his exponential growth hasn't been tempered by it.His success shows a power shift, with the value of creators being recognized.There's a familiar pattern in the world of people who skyrocket to fame on the internet.
Often, a period of massive success is followed by a nosedive in popularity, followers, or both.
Sometimes, this is because the creator is "canceled" for perceived wrongful behavior. Other times, the influencer doesn't evolve over time, and their audience loses interest.
MrBeast seems to have broken that mold. He's been a content creator since 2012, and although he's no stranger to controversy, his exponential growth hasn't been tempered.
Some attribute it to dumb luck, but others think Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson has changed content creation forever and set a new standard for what content creators can aspire to.
Amazon vs. MrBeast
Donaldson, YouTube's biggest star, is on track to have the most-subscribed channel in the world, steadily creeping up on Indian music label T-Series at 258 million subscriptions.
He also recently signed a deal with Amazon Prime to host a competition show called "Beast Games" on the streaming service.
Importantly, he is changing how influencers are viewed by traditional media.
There's been tension between influencers and traditional media for some time, with huge internet stars getting ignored when they show up to red-carpet events and complaints when YouTubers or TikTokers attend events such as the Met Gala. There has long been an attitude that those who won their fame online aren't as worthy as those who found it via more conventional routes.
Donaldson's business success may show how this power balance is beginning to shift.
Jamie Nudelman, a social media growth expert at the digital marketing consultancy Viral Marketing Stars, told Business Insider that Donaldson has become "more powerful than traditional media."
He added that Amazon Prime and other entertainment platforms have two options: "Try to beat him or win alongside him."
"Truthfully, Amazon Prime needs MrBeast more than MrBeast needs Amazon Prime," he said.
Donaldson is far from the first successful YouTuber, with many now mainstream creators starting off on the platform, including Justin Bieber, Liza Koshy, and Bo Burnham.
"It's quite likely that MrBeast had many more 'mainstream' offers before this, but he waited for the right opportunity," Rachel Pedersen, a social media and marketing coach, told BI.
"It does seem that we're entering a time where mainstream media is looking for fresh content to grace their platforms."
The cancel curse
Influencers have risen and fallen since their genesis.
Notably, there was Dramageddon in 2018, where a vicious feud left YouTube's beauty community in tatters and set the stage for more wars in the coming years (Dramageddon 2.0 and Karmageddon) that led to audiences seeing some then-beloved creators, including James Charles, Shane Dawson, and Jeffree Star, in a different light.
Many influencers have tried and failed to continue successful businesses once their star has faded. Jaclyn Hill, for example, recently closed down her cosmetics brand, and the once-reigning "Brit Crew" is now rarely heard from.
Nudelman said Donaldson differs from these cautionary tales because he doesn't seem to be changed by money or the pursuit of materialistic possessions.
"You don't see MrBeast wearing gold chains or buying a luxury mansion," he said. "MrBeast wakes up in the office and has a desk where he works and does the same things every day."
It's not all praise. Donaldson has an unusual setup with his business, calling employees "friends of friends." He has also faced allegations of a toxic workplace and has been accused of being a "white savior" by some who believe he is exploiting some of the people in his videos for views — specifically, those who were given cataract surgery or access to clean water in several African countries.
Donaldson has referenced his critics in social media posts, saying that despite his desire to use his money "to help people" and promising to give all his wealth away before he died, he was still branded as "bad." He hasn't responded directly about his work culture, but a spokesperson told Time that safety on set was "incredibly important and taken very seriously."
Nobody is safe from cancellation, with influencers increasingly facing backlash for not just the things they have done, but their political and ethical beliefs too. Internet celebrities appear more approachable than traditional ones, experts previously told BI, leading to "parasocial relationships" and more sensitivity around their actions.
It may be that Donaldson's time is on the horizon. But, Nudelman said, it seems unlikely. Donaldson is tough to criticize because he puts all his money back into his content, which enables him to help more people.
"He's still charitable during his controversy, which is hard to hate on," he said.
Changing the media landscape
Most people are not cut out for content creation full-time, said Pedersen. Donaldson has said this himself, suggesting people underestimate what it takes.
Working with friends and people who he trusts seems to help with Donaldson's longevity, Pedersen added.
"His primary focus is philanthropy, which brings joy to the giver and the receiver," she said. "And he has stayed true to his patient, humble, consistent roots."
His content has also changed significantly since the early days when he played games and performed challenges in his bedroom (like counting to 100,000 in one sitting).
"Most content creators ride on a trend and then get stuck in it," Nudelman said. "MrBeast adjusted his strategy and content because he knows what worked back then, doesn't work today."
Liz Germain, a YouTuber with 100,000 subscribers and an influencer marketing expert, told BI Donaldson has always been a bit introverted, which has helped him keep his eye on his long-term vision.
"His vision drove him to keep going, even when it wasn't working — and that's a big secret a lot of new creators have yet to grasp," she said.
Germain added that Donaldson obsesses over his content and analytics, making improvements to every video. Recently, he said he wanted to slow down his content and move away from the over-the-top, fast-paced genre he became known for.
Donaldson can experiment like this because his reach and impact "is infinitely bigger than the Super Bowl, and it's not going anywhere any time soon," Germain said. He's everywhere on the internet, soon to be on TV, and even in grocery store aisles.
"The man has changed the entire media landscape," she said. "More importantly, he's proven that it's not only possible to build a successful brand based on placing charitable giving at the forefront, but that it's also extremely profitable when you do it with heart."
The sad, disappointing return of Roaring Kitty
Roaring Kitty; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
It was kind of cool that Keith Gill walked off into the sunset after the GameStop craze. Gill, who goes by Roaring Kitty on X and YouTube and by DeepFuckingValue on Reddit, was at the center of the 2021 GameStop saga. He was the leader of the retail-trader Davids facing down the Wall Street Goliaths, if that's the storyline you buy into. After the mania subsided — and after a trip to testify before Congress — Gill, a 30-something dad from Massachusetts, fell off the map. The assumption was that he probably made a lot of money off of the whole thing, but nobody really knows. He didn't even participate in the big Hollywood movie about him that came out last year.
Now Gill seems to be back, sort of. His Roaring Kitty account started tweeting again this week: On Sunday night it shared an image of a guy leaning forward in his chair, followed up on Monday with a bunch of video compilations of different movies. The videos have a "we're so back" tenor, but it's not clear what we're back to. Does Gill have something cooking? Or is he just screwing around? It's all pretty cryptic and doesn't make a ton of sense. He hasn't explicitly said he's trading again or even really mentioned GameStop. It's giving midlife crisis — like, if you told me Gill was getting divorced and bought a Porsche, I would not be shocked.
Whatever the case, the market is into it. GameStop's stock has popped. It jumped by more than 70% on Monday and 60% on Tuesday, halting trading amid volatility multiple times. Short-sellers are once again hurting. Shares of AMC, GameStop's fellow meme stock, surged by nearly 80% on Monday and 30% on Tuesday. The movie-theater chain took advantage of the rally to raise $250 million of new equity capital the same day. Both gave back some gains on Wednesday, but they're still up quite a bit for the week.
The market casino is back open, at least for now.
The recent surge in these stocks doesn't make any more sense than it did in 2021. GameStop's fundamental business story hasn't changed — it's a struggling game retailer whose supposed turnaround has not come to fruition. The same goes for AMC: The actual business didn't get better overnight. What's changed is Roaring Kitty is tweeting, and not even really about a company. It's just meme time again. While Robinhood crashed during the fervor a few years ago, it's E-Trade that's having issues now.
Beyond the stocks, crypto has been bouncing back lately, too. Bitcoin hit a high in March, thanks in part to the launch of a bunch of bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Crypto trading volumes on Robinhood hit $36 billion in the first quarter of the year, a 224% increase from the year prior. Even the crypto commercials are back. Crypto.com is running an ad during the NBA playoffs repeating the "fortune favors the brave" line Matt Damon was delivering on its behalf during the Super Bowl in 2022; this time around it's showcasing UFC fighters and has Eminem doing the talking. This is all pretty familiar, though as my colleague Peter Kafka likes to point out, nobody is really pretending this crypto surge is about building anything or the coins doing anything. "Number go up" is the whole shebang.
All of this feels a little sad — like it's trying to recapture a moment and spirit that is well in the past. In 2021, people were stuck at home with money to blow, and buying shares of GameStop was a way to channel some energy. The whole episode was exciting, novel, and fun. Now it's just kind of like, OK, I guess we're doing this again. Even if the "little guys taking on Wall Street" story was overblown during the 2021 rally, the newness of it and the fervor around the movement made it feel like a brief market-warping event. This latest bout of meme-stock mania has a narrower bent: young, male, nihilist. It seems like more of a rush to a hot blackjack table than any sort of groundswell. And given that shares of GameStop and AMC have started to fall, it's already fading anyway.
Maybe this run will be different and these stocks and coins won't completely crash again, but I wouldn't count on it. People are out and about more, and there's more stuff to spend on. Said stuff is also more expensive because of inflation, and stimulus checks are not on the way. If you bought GameStop or AMC shares in 2021, it might not be a bad time to consider selling some to break even. Check on that dogecoin you put in your Coinbase account a few years ago, too.
America has become a nation of gamblers — or maybe it always was, and the proliferation of sports betting and meme stocks and cryptocurrency has just made that extra obvious. Roaring Kitty is back, and people are tossing their money into the GameStop slot machine. Just remember, the house always wins.
Here's what the economy could look like with a Biden or Trump presidency
Anna Moneymaker/Getty, Anna Moneymaker/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
Voters are concerned about issues like inflation and home prices ahead of the presidential election.BI analyzed Biden and Trump's plans for eight major economic categories.The analysis evaluated the candidates' past records as president and their campaign promises.American voters have a lot on their minds ahead of the November presidential election.
For starters, inflation is keeping the cost of living high in many US cities, and astronomical home prices are preventing aspiring homeowners from buying. Issues like abortion access and tax policy are also a key consideration for many voters.
With the election six months away, Business Insider looked at President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump's plans for eight major economic categories that affect Americans' daily lives: domestic manufacturing, higher education, healthcare, housing, labor, taxes, tariffs, and trade.
"President Biden is going to keep fighting for working families — lowering the costs of prescription drugs, housing, and childcare; investing in our future; supporting workers and small businesses; and making sure big corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share," Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council, told BI in a statement.
Business Insider reached out to Trump's campaign team but didn't receive a response.
The analysis is based on the candidates' past records as president and their promises on the 2024 campaign trail.
Jump to a category: Domestic manufacturing | Higher education | Healthcare | Housing | Labor | Taxes | Tariffs | Trade
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The future of domestic manufacturing will be shaped by federal labor and business policy. Although the president doesn't have complete control over the economy, the Oval Office has a role in shaping factors like job growth, tax incentives, and industry regulations. A March report published by The Economist and YouGov found that 22% of voters identified inflation and the price of goods as their most important issue this November. The poll is based on the responses of 1,594 likely voters between March 24 and March 26.
During their tenures in office, Trump and Biden both focused on costs and the labor force for two major American industries: auto manufacturing and steel.
If reelected, Biden plans to continue efforts to keep auto manufacturing in the US and push back against the growing Chinese auto industry. Trump has also expressed plans to protect American car manufacturers. At a March rally, Trump said he plans to raise tariffs on foreign-made cars and suggested there will be a "bloodbath" in the domestic auto industry if he isn't reelected.
As electric vehicles gain popularity, the Biden administration has said it wants to make EVs more affordable and invest in charging infrastructure across the country. Biden is also working to boost US EV manufacturing and increase tax credits for EV drivers. Trump, on the other hand, has said EVs could give Mexican and Chinese manufacturers an advantage and cut US auto jobs.
In light of the pending US Steel Corp sale to Japan's Nippon Steel for $14.9 billion, Biden has said steel should stay domestically owned — but has not yet taken regulatory steps to affect the deal. While Trump was in office, he also made efforts to protect the US metals industry, placing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
Sameeksha Desai, a professor at Indiana University and the director of the school's manufacturing policy initiative, told BI that the health of the country's domestic-manufacturing industry directly affects the labor market. Unemployment soared in many manufacturing industries during the pandemic but those jobs made a modest recovery during the remainder of Trump's time in office.
As far as environmental regulations go, Biden has worked to tighten standards for vehicle pollution and expand the use of renewable energy, while Trump has called for the dismantling of clean-energy and carbon-capture tax credits and more investment in fossil fuels.
Jon Lovette/Getty Images
Biden and Trump have major differences in how they view education policy, particularly student-loan debt.
Since Biden took office, his Education Department enacted a series of reforms to student-loan-repayment programs. For example, after Trump's Education Department ran up a backlog in applications to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program — which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments — Biden's department established a limited-time waiver. The initiative allowed students' past payments that had been deemed ineligible for the program since it was established in 2007 to count toward debt forgiveness.
Additionally, the Education Department is carrying out one-time account adjustments for borrowers on PSLF and income-driven repayment plans to bring borrowers' payment progress up to date. It also implemented the new SAVE income-driven repayment plan in July, which includes a provision to shorten the timeline for borrowers to have their monthly pay reduced.
During his term so far, Biden's administration has canceled $153 billion in student debt for 4.3 million borrowers. And there's still more to come — Biden unveiled details in early April about a new student-loan-forgiveness plan after the Supreme Court struck down his first attempt.
However, that new plan is not set to be implemented until the fall, and should Trump win the presidential election, it could jeopardize Biden's relief efforts. After the Supreme Court decision on debt relief, Trump posted on his campaign website that the ruling was "only made possible through President Trump's strong nomination of three distinguished and courageous jurists to the Supreme Court."
While in office, Trump worked to weaken the borrower defense to repayment, an avenue for relief for thousands of borrowers who were defrauded by the schools they attended. For-profit schools like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institutes, for example, misrepresented their programs and forced students to take on debt they could not afford. While Biden's administration enacted a range of relief for defrauded borrowers, it's unlikely those efforts would continue under Trump if he were reelected.
More broadly, student-loan borrowers would likely face very different outcomes under a Biden or Trump presidency. While plans for relief would likely continue should Biden win a second term, a Trump presidency could halt the efforts Biden's Education Department already enacted — meaning borrowers would continue to repay their loans without new avenues for relief.
Additionally, the Education Department would likely face more budget cuts under Trump. While in office, Trump proposed cutting billions of dollars from the department, which included eliminating PSLF.
However, he did support capping the amount parents can borrow through PLUS loans, which are loans parents can take out to cover up to the full cost of their kid's education. Those loans have the highest federal-student-loan interest rate, making them difficult to pay off. Trump's budget also called for an extension of the Pell Grant, a grant for those who demonstrate financial need, to incarcerated people.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Eighty percent of voters believe it's important for Biden and Trump to talk about healthcare costs on the campaign trail, a poll by KFF found.
Biden has worked to expand the Affordable Care Act, while Trump has said he hopes to "repeal and replace" the law and make cuts to Medicare. However, Trump has not publicly outlined an alternate affordable healthcare plan.
In March, the Biden administration expanded the 2022 PACT Act to provide healthcare for millions more veterans, including those who were exposed to toxins while in training or in active service during the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, and post-9/11 combat zones. This follows a 2018 law signed by Trump that allows some veterans to seek VA-funded care at their community medical facilities. Trump has not mentioned new veteran healthcare initiatives as part of his reelection campaign.
The price of pharmaceutical drugs is also a priority for voters, as some Americans say they are unable to access prescriptions due to high costs and drug shortages. While in office, Biden signed the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included provisions to lower the price of insulin to $35 a month. His administration is also negotiating lower prices for 10 major pharmaceuticals, including medications to manage diabetes, arthritis, and heart conditions. The Inflation Reduction Act would require Trump to continue these drug price negotiations should he win a second term. Trump has not focused on drug affordability in his 2024 campaign.
Ninety percent of Democratic voters believe Biden has done more to address healthcare costs, compared to 91% of Republicans who believe Trump did more to address costs while he was in office, a KFF poll of 1,309 US adults found.
Nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Biden — along with Vice President Kamala Harris — is emphasizing abortion access as part of his reelection platform. The president said he hopes to restore the Constitutional right to abortion if reelected, despite an evolving stance on the issue during his 50-year political career. Both Biden and Trump support access to IVF following an Alabama Supreme Court decision in February that ruled frozen embryos can be considered people under state law.
If reelected, Trump has said he would not sign a nationwide abortion ban if it were passed by Congress, but his personal stance on the issue has varied during his time in the public eye — and many Americans worry about GOP efforts to limit reproductive healthcare access. Trump said at an April campaign rally that abortion should be a state issue, which could allow state legislatures to continue passing bans that restrict abortion access and place doctors who perform the procedure at risk of prosecution. In an April interview with Time Magazine, Trump also said he would "let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans."
Trump has also said he will ban all gender-affirming healthcare and hormone therapies for minors if he returns to office. Biden signed an executive order in 2022 to enhance protections for transgender children and has taken steps toward banning so-called conversion therapy.
AP Photo/John Raoux, File
Housing costs present a major challenge for both Biden and Trump as millennials and Gen Zers find themselves priced out of many markets.
The state of the housing market can be summed up by two compelling statistics.
A Gallup survey of 1,013 adults released in April 2023 showed that only 21% of Americans said it was a good time to purchase a home, while 78% said it was a bad time to buy one.
Millennials will play a crucial role in this November as voters in their 30s and early- to mid-40s with growing families cannot live in the communities where they grew up because of the scarcity of available homes and elevated costs.
Affordable housing has been a top concern for Biden, who's aware of the saliency of an issue that could make or break his reelection bid.
With the current 30-year fixed-rate mortgage currently above 7%, many potential buyers simply aren't purchasing homes and are continuing to rent.
For decades, housing has failed to keep up with demand. After the Great Recession and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem only grew worse. Now, many would-be sellers have decided to stay put, exacerbating a housing shortage that has become one of the most pressing public-policy issues on the local, state, and federal levels.
In the swing state of Nevada, which Biden wants to keep in his column this fall, he recently talked about his efforts to tackle the housing crisis, including the 1.7 million housing units currently under construction. He also noted that his administration planned to create an additional 2 million affordable homes, with thousands of the units poised to be built in the Silver State. However, there's no official timeline for when these homes will be completed.
Housing affordability will also be a key issue in other battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Biden also called for more office-to-residential conversions, adding that the administration would create a program to "help communities build and renovate housing or convert housing from empty office spaces into housing."
Such conversions have become increasingly popular in recent years. With legions of employees able to work remotely during the pandemic, many companies have opted to not renew their office leases.
Trump has also zeroed in on the issue. While campaigning in Iowa last year, he said that the key to driving down housing costs was to lower energy costs.
"We'll get the prices way down," he said, referring to energy costs, "and then the interest rates down and then the home builders will start building again."
Trump's record on affordable housing has been mixed. In 2019, he created a White House council to remove impediments to the construction of affordable housing. But during his presidency, Trump also called for major cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's budget. In 2020, he sought to end the Community Development Block Grant program — which offers annual grants to states and local municipalities to fund redevelopment and community services — in the next year's budget, arguing that housing policies were best handled at the state and local levels.
A second Trump term would likely mean the federal government would be more hands-off in shaping housing policy than the Biden administration has been.
Reuters
Biden has long been an ally of organized labor — even becoming the first sitting US president to walk a picket line last year — but Trump is looking to chip away at the president's union support this fall.
In April 2019, Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign at a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh, putting his primary rivals on notice of his longtime relationship with organized labor. At that time, labor advocates were pushing hard to allow fast-food employees at restaurants like Chipotle and McDonald's to unionize.
Once in office, Biden prioritized passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law, with one of its selling points being the creation of thousands of well-paying union jobs. And last year, Biden's Department of Labor tweaked a rule in how it calculates prevailing wages for construction workers, with the changes affording them higher pay and more workplace protections.
In recent decades, public-sector unions have become increasingly diverse, with more female, Black, and Latino members who have often thrown their support behind Democratic candidates.
But Trump has been successful in earning endorsements from influential police unions like the Police Officers Association of Michigan and the Florida Police Benevolent Association.
Trump's mission is clear: He wants to win over more union households in battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin. In 2016, Trump made strong gains with these voters, but Biden flipped many of them back into the Democratic column in 2020, promising robust support for the automobile industry. In January, Biden earned the backing of the United Auto Workers after joining them on the picket line, with UAW president Shawn Fain saying: "Joe Biden bet on the American worker while Donald Trump blamed the American worker." Trump responded that Fain "didn't have a clue."
In March, Biden gave the auto industry slightly more time to adopt strict new rules for tailpipe emissions, in a huge win for organized labor, as automakers and unions were concerned about meeting the administration's initial electric vehicle transition proposals. In a second term, Biden is poised to continue his administration's push to advance EV production. Meanwhile, Trump has said that the transition to electric vehicles would decimate the auto industry and benefit China and Mexico.
A Gallup poll conducted in August found that 67% of Americans approved of labor unions, a marked increase from the 48% who backed unions in 2009.
With many Americans working multiple jobs and inflation continuing to take a toll on people, labor unions have fought for higher wages for employees. Looking at the Gallup survey, 61% of Americans said that unions help the economy more than they hurt it, a figure that exceeded the previous high-water mark from 1999.
Trump has made the economy the hallmark of his campaign, touting low pre-COVID-19 unemployment numbers, especially among Black Americans. In both September 2019 and February 2020, the overall unemployment rate hit 3.5%, which at the time represented a 50-year low.
When Biden took office in January 2021, the unemployment rate, which rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, sat at 6.4%. But unemployment hit a modern low of 3.4% in both January 2023 and April 2023, a figure that hadn't been seen since 1969. In April 2023, Black unemployment hit a record low of 4.7%.
The unemployment rate has risen since last year, but it remains below 4%.
Biden has overseen a strong job market throughout much of his administration. In March, employers added 303,000 jobs, far exceeding the 200,000 jobs that were projected. The latest figure represents the 39th-straight month of job growth, which is tied to the president's argument that his policies have created an economy in which the number of jobs — and wages — have risen.
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Earlier this year, the White House released Biden's tax priorities should he secure a second term. They're largely focused on ensuring big corporations and the wealthy pay what Biden deems their fair share.
According to the White House's fact sheet, Biden's tax plan would seek to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, and the minimum corporate tax rate from 15% to 21%. This differs from Trump's tax plan: His 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act established a 21% corporate income tax rate — a decrease from 35% — and Trump would maintain that rate, Bloomberg reported.
Additionally, Biden wants to require billionaires — the richest 0.01%, or people worth $100 million or more — to pay at least 25% of their income on taxes every year.
The White House said that Biden's tax plan would cut taxes for middle- and low-income people by $765 billion over 10 years. This would be accomplished by restoring the fully refundable expanded child-tax credit, which was first enacted under the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and gave $3,000 per child to families with children over the age of 6, and $3,600 per child to families with children under the age of 6.
Biden would also increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a refundable tax credit for working individuals or couples.
While Trump has not yet released a detailed tax plan, many of the provisions in his 2017 tax law are set to expire in 2025. Biden's tax plan would support extending Trump's tax cuts for households making under $400,000 a year, but some Republican lawmakers want all of Trump's provisions extended past 2025, and they introduced a bill last year to make the tax law permanent.
Trump has also proposed a 10% tariff on goods coming into the US, along with a 60% tariff on all imports from China. The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, has said the proposed 10% tariff would raise taxes for Americans by over $300 billion a year. Trump recently said during an interview with Time Magazine, however, that the 10% tariff could end up being higher.
Given that Democrats and Biden are on board to extend some of Trump's tax cuts for low- and middle-income households, there's likely to be some bipartisan agreement over taxes under either a Trump or Biden presidency. But there's a significant divide over how much wealthy individuals and corporations should be taxed.
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During his presidency, Trump imposed sweeping, unprecendented tariffs on imported goods. While Biden has left some of Trump's tariffs in places, he is far from the self-proclaimed "Tariff Man."
Unlike traditional Republicans, Trump is proudly a protectionist. While he's changed his views on many other policy issues, the former president has for decades bashed the US trade deficit and sweeping deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying the agreements had harmed workers.
Trump's tariff barrage relied on Section 232, a provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allowed his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, to declare some imports a national-security risk. The former president wasn't afraid to use this power against US allies, which outraged European and Canadian leaders. In response, other nations imposed retaliatory tariffs. But Trump's approach helped secure the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a NAFTA substitute.
But those disputes paled in comparison to China's reaction. Beijing, by far the biggest target of Trump's tariffs and other trade actions, responded by suspending purchases of US agricultural exports and imposing other retaliatory tariffs. The Trump administration spent billions bailing out US farmers as it tried to manage the political and actual costs of the trade war. Trump and China eventually announced a deal to soothe tensions, but Beijing never purchased the additional US goods it said it would under the so-called "Phase 1" agreement.
In response to criticism, Trump argued that foreign countries were footing the bill. Many economists pointed out that tariffs are paid by US importers. Consumers are also likely to face higher costs on goods that are subject to high tariffs. Both Biden and Trump's teams dispute that tariffs can lead to higher costs for consumers. Some economists have found evidence that Trump's actions caused a spike in the price of washers, dryers, new cars, furniture, and other goods. In an April interview with Time Magazine, Trump disputed that tariffs end up costing consumers more. In comments to reporters, Tai defended Biden's decision to keep in place some Trump-era tariffs, arguing that previous price increases "were about the chaos and unpredictability that it created."
Many economists have long been skeptical about countries engaging in trade wars and the tit-for-tat cycle of tariffs that result. An analysis by CNBC suggested that Trump's tariffs were equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades based on the revenue they generated for the Treasury Department. Unsurprisingly, not everyone on Trump's team was on board: Gary Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs who served as a Trump economic advisor, resigned his White House post shortly after Trump announced high tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
As a candidate, Biden criticized Trump's trade war with China. As president, Biden brokered a deal with the European Union to largely end Trump's tariffs on its member nations. But Biden has left Trump's tariffs on China largely untouched. In fact, Biden wants to triple US tariffs on Chinese steel. Biden also recently imposed higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, solar cells, and other goods.
If he returns to office, Trump wants to impose more tariffs. He's proposed everything from a flat 10% tariff on every product that enters the US to a 100% tariff on all imported cars.
Niels Wenstedt/BSR Agency/Getty Images
The US is not returning to a pre-2016 trade consensus, that much is clear.
Trump dramatically shifted the Republican Party away from its largely held belief that free trade would help all nations. Biden, like many Democrats in the 1990s, also championed this mindset, which led to the sweeping North American Free Trade Agreement and paved the way for China to join the World Trade Organization.
Biden and his top officials have signaled they also favor a paradigm shift. Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, has argued for a move away from a "colonial mindset" that all too often led to supply chains that preyed on developing countries. The Biden administration's focus is best seen in one of his biggest trade shifts: withdrawing US support for digital trade principles that some progressive lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, say were hijacked by Big Tech companies. Other Democrats have criticized the administration's approach.
Biden has left some of Trump's tariffs in place, illustrating the protectionist bent that continues to take hold in Washington. In April, Biden pushed for even higher tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum amid his reelection push. European leaders are also concerned about Biden's pursuit of climate-related tax credits that may lure green jobs away from their countries to the US.
If Biden and Trump have anything in common it's their stance on China. Biden has used his trade powers to restrict US investment in Chinese technology, particularly semiconductors, quantum computing, and some artificial-intelligence sectors. As Bloomberg News reported, Biden has even surpassed Trump in adding more Chinese companies and individuals to an export blacklist.
As president, Trump fixated on the US trade deficit even as some economists argued against reading too much into such figures. Still, the trade gap grew under his watch.
Overall, Trump's combative trade policy led to mixed results. He didn't see the fruits of his biggest trade deal, which went into effect in July 2020: the USMCA, a revamped North American trade deal known Experts at Brookings Institution have praised the treaty for growing regional trade. Unlike NAFTA, the USMCA also contains new provisions on digital trade and labor protections. The Biden administration has used the deal to push Mexico over its labor practices.
While Trump has bragged about brokering a historic trade deal with China, economists found that Beijing never lived up to its commitment to purchase an additional $200 billion worth of US exports. He successfully ended US support for the TransPacific Partnership, a massive trade deal that President Barack Obama supported with the hopes it would align much of the region more closely with the US. Trump has pledged to kill the Biden administration's new Asian trade talks, which the former president has dubbed "TPP two."
Some Trump allies have signaled that he'll push the envelope even further if he wins in November. Politico reported that some of the former president's top economic advisors are discussing how to devalue the dollar to boost US exports. It's a risky proposition, as it could drive up the costs of some items that have already risen because of inflation.
Another of the world's best airlines is giving its staff a huge bonus after a 2nd year of record profits
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Singapore Airlines staff will receive bonuses worth nearly eight months of salary, per Bloomberg.The airline posted a record net profit of $1.99 billion, up 24% from the previous fiscal year.It comes days after Emirates also announced record profits and reports of a five-month salary bonus.Singapore Airlines is giving staff a bonus worth almost eight months of their salary, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The carrier — one of just 10 in the world rated five stars by Skytrax — posted record profits for the second year running.
It reported a net profit of 2.68 billion Singapore dollars ($1.99 billion) for the last fiscal year. That's up 24% from the airline's previous record high in the 2022-23 fiscal year.
The company said demand "remains healthy" in the first quarter of this financial year, with more bookings to north and southeast Asia. However, it added that passenger yields could moderate as airlines expand capacity in the Asia-Pacific region.
Singapore Airlines also gave staff a huge bonus of up to eight months' salary last year. Part of that was a maximum of one-and-a-half months due to wage cuts during the pandemic, and Bloomberg reports that this year's bonus is, in effect, higher.
Last year, an airline spokesperson told Business Insider the bonus was thanks to "a long-standing annual profit-sharing bonus formula that has been agreed with our staff unions."
This year's announcement comes days after Dubai's airline, Emirates, also posted record profits — up 60% from the previous fiscal year. Local outlet The National reported that Emirates staff will get a bonus worth around five months' salary.
Both Dubai and Singapore are seen as emerging global cities, and both airlines are among the world's best — especially for business travelers.
Singapore Airlines and Emirates were last year ranked second and third for the world's best business class by Skytrax, behind Qatar Airways.
Jobseekers and recruiters are all using AI. It's chaos.
iStock; Alyssa Powell/BI
When Josh Holbrook, a software engineer in Alaska, was laid off in January, he didn't expect to spend too much time looking for a new job. He certainly didn't think he'd need to relearn the job-hunt process.
A few weeks into his search, however, Holbrook found himself out of his depth. Instead of speaking with a human recruiter at a local healthcare organization, he was screened by an AI chatbot. His résumé, created nearly a decade ago in a technical format popular among academics, was incompatible with new automated recruitment platforms. He signed up for a professional service to update it in an AI-friendly format.
"The experience was completely novel," Holbrook told me. "I've never seen that before."
Over the past couple of years, job seekers have been forced to contend with incessant layoffs, a brutal recruitment market, and days of unpaid assignments. They can now add AI recruiting systems to that pile. In 2022, the Society for Human Resource Management found that about 40% of the large-scale employers it surveyed said they were already deploying AI in HR-related activities like recruitment. Rik Mistry, who consults on large-scale corporate recruitment, told Business Insider that AI is now leveraged to write job descriptions, judge an applicant's skills, power recruiting chatbots, and rate a candidate's responses. Ian Siegel, the CEO of ZipRecruiter, estimated in 2022 that nearly three-fourths of all résumés were never seen by humans.
Some job hunters have decided to fight fire with fire, turning to programs that use AI to optimize their résumés and apply to hundreds of jobs at a time. But the emerging AI-versus-AI recruitment battle is bad news for everyone. It turns hiring into a depersonalized process, it inundates hiring managers, and it reinforces weaknesses in the system it's designed to improve. And it only seems to be getting worse.
Automation in recruitment isn't new: After job sites like Monster and LinkedIn made it easy for people to apply for jobs in the early 2010s, companies adopted applicant-tracking systems to manage the deluge of online applications. Now most résumés are first seen by software designed to evaluate a person's experience and education and rank them accordingly.
The automation has helped ease the burden on overstretched recruiters — but not by much. As the stacks of digital résumés have grown amid frequent changes to remote-work policies, the recruitment hamster wheel has spun ever faster.
We know AI isn't perfect, but we have to use it as there's pressure from the higher-ups.AI is supposed to fix this mess, saving companies time and money by outsourcing even more of the hiring process to machine-learning algorithms. In late 2019, Unilever said it had saved 100,000 hours and about $1 million in recruitment costs with the help of automated video interviews. Platforms like LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter have started using generative AI to offer candidates personalized job recommendations and let recruiters generate listings in seconds. The Google-backed recruitment-tech startup Moonhub has an AI bot that scours the internet, gathering data from places like LinkedIn and Github, to find suitable candidates. On HireVue, employers can let a bot with a set questionnaire conduct video assessments to analyze candidates' personalities. Newer startups combine these abilities in a centralized service, allowing firms to put "hiring on autopilot."
But hiring experts Business Insider spoke with weren't convinced it's all for the best. Many fear that over time AI will make an already frustrating system worse and spawn fresh issues like ghost hires, where companies are misled into recruiting a bot masquerading as a person.
Several seasoned recruiters told me they hadn't incorporated AI into their workflow beyond auto-generating job descriptions and summarizing candidate calls. Tatiana Becker, who specializes in tech recruiting, said software that claims to match résumés with jobs lacked the nuance to do more than keyword matching — it couldn't, for instance, identify desirable candidates who came from top schools or had a history of earning strong promotions. Chatbots that Becker's boutique agency experimented with would frequently mismatch prospects and roles, ultimately pushing the prospects away.
This résumé matching "might work for applicants of more entry-level jobs," Becker told BI, "but I would worry about using it for anything else at this point."
Despite the problems, many companies are marching forward. "We know AI isn't perfect, but we have to use it as there's pressure from the higher-ups," said a recruiter in a Fortune 500 firm who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss his company's hiring process.
Pallavi Sinha, the vice president of growth at Humanly, a startup that offers a conversational-AI hiring platform to companies like Microsoft, said that "AI in recruiting, similar to other industries, is very much at a nascent stage." But she predicted it would continue to be incorporated into hiring.
"AI isn't here to replace human interactions," she said, "but to make our jobs and lives easier — something that we'll see more and more of over time." Sinha declined to share how many applications Humanly had processed but said its chatbot service had over a "million conversations last year alone."
For candidates, though, AI has been a nightmare. Kerry McInerney, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, said AI increases the amount of labor for applicants, forcing them to complete puzzles and attend automated interviews just to get to the selection stage. She argued that it makes a "depersonalized process even more alienating."
Holbrook, the software engineer, wrote on LinkedIn about his frustration. "AI is too stupid to recognize transferrable skills among tech applicants," he said, adding, "I had a resume bounced because I don't have c# listed as a fluent language, even though I've dealt with c# in my jobs and have worked with plenty of languages that are 90% the same as c#."
Danielle Caldwell, a user-experience strategist in Portland, Oregon, was confused when an AI chatbot texted her to initiate the conversation about a role she had applied for. At first, she thought it was spam. After the exchange, she was left with more questions.
"There was no way to ask questions with the bot — it was a one-way experience," Caldwell said.
The University of Sussex has found that AI video interviews can be disorienting for job seekers, who behave much less naturally in the absence of a reassuring human presence. Plus, Mclnerney said, assessing a candidate's personality based on their body language and appearance is not only "reminiscent of 19th- and 20th-century racial pseudoscience but simply doesn't work." Her research has demonstrated that even things like wearing a headscarf or having a bookshelf in the background can change a personality score.
With AI you are only accelerating the brokenness of recruiting.A cottage industry of tools has sprung up to help candidates game AI systems. One called LazyApply, for example, can apply to thousands of jobs online on your behalf for $250. "Anyone who has had to review over 50 résumés in one sitting wants to put a toothpick in their eyes," said Peter Laughter, who's been in recruitment for about three decades. With AI, he said, "you are only accelerating the brokenness of recruiting."
Bonnie Dilber, a recruiting manager at Zapier, said these services contributed to problematic behaviors on both sides of hiring. Candidates' submitting hundreds of applications leaves recruiting teams struggling to keep up and respond, which in turn pushes applicants to feel that they need to submit even more applications to stand a chance.
A more pressing issue, Dilber added, is that often these bots submit poor applications. Dilber and other recruiters told BI that some cover letters say only, "This has been submitted by [AI tool], please contact [person's email] with questions." When Aki Ito, a BI correspondent, tried using AI to apply for jobs, the system got her race wrong, made up that she spoke Spanish, and submitted an outdated cover letter.
"We had some people accidentally include ChatGPT's entire response," Hailley Griffis, the head of communications and content at Buffer, told BI. Griffis, who said she reviewed an average of 500 applications per open role, added, "There is a very distinct tone with a lot of AI content that hasn't been edited, and we saw a lot of that."
Recruiters and researchers also worry about AI's tendency to reinforce many of the recruitment industry's existing biases. Researchers from the Berkeley Haas Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership said in 2021 that of about 133 biased AI systems they analyzed, about 44% exhibited gender bias. Other recent studies have found that AI systems are prone to screening out applicants with disabilities and de-ranking résumés with names associated with Black Americans.
Unlike a human, an algorithm will never look at past hiring decisions and rectify its mistakes, said Sandra Wachter, a tech and regulation professor at the University of Oxford. It will always do as it has been taught.
Wachter, whose team developed a bias test that's been adopted by companies like IBM and Amazon, believes it's possible to use AI to make fairer decisions — but for that to happen, employers need to address systemic issues with more inclusive data and regular checks. Moonhub, for example, has a human recruiter who vets the AI's recommendations and speaks with candidates who prefer a human over a chatbot.
But until AI improves enough, humans will remain the most effective hiring systems. Becker, the tech recruiter, said humans were still critical for "getting to the heart of the candidate's decision-making process and helping them overcome apprehensions if they've gotten cold feet," as well as for "dealing with counteroffers."
David Francis, a vice president at Talent Tech Labs, a recruitment research and advisory firm, said that while "recruitment is still and will always be a very human-focused process," AI "is a tool and can be used effectively or poorly."
But when it's used poorly, both candidates and recruiters suffer. After four months of job searching, Josh Holbrook has yet to find a job.
Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India, whose work has appeared in Wired, The Verge, Fast Company, and more.
Moms are flocking to use desks that have cribs attached. They say it allows them to balance motherhood with their careers.
Courtesy of Bethany Crystal
The desks have a play area attached to keep babies and tots entertained.Parents say that the desks allow them to work near their children.They're best for short spurts of work, parents say.When Maegan Moore returned to work about two months ago after the birth of her first child, she found a unique solution for balancing her career with mothering: a work-play desk that lets her care for her baby, Eleanor, while also having a dedicated workspace.
"For her age, it's been awesome," Moore told Business Insider. "I'll try to time it so I can feed her, put her down in the play desk area, and do some work that doesn't involve calls."
The work and play desk is a sort of cubicle designed for parents and children. The desk has a flat work area for parents and a play-pen-like attachment for babies.
Moore uses the desk at a coworking space in New York, but the idea originally started at a library in Virginia that largely serves a disadvantaged population that has trouble accessing both childcare and reliable internet.
Maegan Moore uses the play desk at WorplayceCourtesy of Maegan Moore
Moore doesn't use the desk for long stretches of time — about an hour or two is her current limit. Although she has childcare during the middle of the day, she uses the desk most mornings and afternoons. She says that being able to have Eleanor nearby and nurse her, rather than pumping, has eased her transition back to work.
"That's been a real gift," she said.
A mom uses the desk to cope with days off school
Bethany Crystal, who contracts for multiple companies in tech and education, uses the work-and-play desk for her 21-month-old, Sydney. Because of the nature of her work, she doesn't have an office to report to. Before finding the work and play desk, she had instances of trying to nurse her baby in a WeWork coworking space or struggling to find a place to put her while she interviewed with firms. The work and play desk has solved that.
"It's really useful to be able to go places for an hour or two and have a place to put a baby," Crystal told BI.
Now that Sydney is a toddler, she's enrolled in a local Montessori school, but the frequent days off mean that Crystal still utilizes the work and play desk regularly.
"There's a lot of inservice days and holidays, which wreaks havoc for professional, entrepreneurial parents like myself," Crystal said.
Sydney is "so happy" to be next to her mother, and Crystal is able to get solid two-hour blocks of work done, which add up over the course of her 60-hour workweek.
"Even being able to put her in the crib for little stints made such a big difference," she said.
To Crystal, the desk is representative of a modern work-life balance.
"I believe we are in a new era of work, where it's no longer about what job you want, it's about what kind of lifestyle you want," she said. "For me, it's critically important to have spaces to do work that lean into the messy complications of an imperfect life with a lot of demands."
Solving the problem of the generation
Both Moore and Crystal use the work and play desk at Workplayce, a family-friendly coworking facility on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In addition to the desks, the building offers quiet work space, a communal area for parents to work while kids play, and dedicated on-site childcare that can be booked by the hour.
For Crystal, who also has a 4-year-old, the community aspect has been as important as the physical space.
The viral desk and crib helps working parents without childcare be able to get some hours of work in.Courtesy of Maegan Moore
"Not only do I have a place where kids can be kids and I can be at work, but I have fellow parents who are in work-hybrid mode," she said. "It's the first time I've felt like I've been part of a peer-parent community."
"It's refreshing to me," she added, "and helpful for us to see each other and learn how we are all making it work."
When Moore heard about Workplayce, she thought, "This is incredible. What a cool tool to equip working parents."
Prior to this, Moore tried working from home with a babysitter for Eleanor. But living in a small apartment, it was difficult "to not look around and see all the tasks and to-dos," which could distract from work, she said.
Now, she typically goes to the coworking space about four times a week, enrolling Eleanor in childcare when she has a meeting, a call, or work that requires deeper concentration.
"It's great having her around and getting to pop in and see her, but when I need full separate space, I have the ability to do that as well," Moore said.
That setup more accurately matches the lives of many modern working parents, Crystal said.
"There's a unique opportunity for parents to make work and kids fit with their lives. Decoupling work and kids from these arbitrary 9-to-5 work days or 9-to-3 day care days is the first step to making a life that works for you," she said. "This is a really important thing for our generation to solve for."
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