• GitHub Copilot is partly responsible for bringing a focus on generative AI to Apple, a report says.
• Apple's senior vice president of software engineering became a "convert" after trying it, per The Wall Street Journal.
• Apple execs were also impressed by ChatGPT and subsequently wanted to upgrade Siri, The New York Times previously reported. 

An Apple exec was inspired to drive a focus on generative AI in his division after using one such tool from the competition, a new report says.

Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, became a "convert" over the 2022 Christmas break after using GitHub Copilot, an AI code completion tool, according to a Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday, citing people familiar with his experience.

Federighi subsequently asked employees in his software engineering division to devise ways to integrate generative AI into products, former engineers and execs told the Journal.

It's not the first time competitors' generative AI tools reportedly motivated Apple to work on its own.

Federighi and John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, decided Siri needed an upgrade after spending weeks using ChatGPT themselves, The New York Times reported last month, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Apple hopes generative AI will help Siri perform better at existing tasks and take on new ones, like summarizing texts and chatting, the Times reported, citing three sources familiar with Apple's work.

Apple is expected to make some sort of AI announcement at WWDC, its annual developers conference, next week.

Apple did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• A recent study looked at different cat breeds to try and determine which live the longest.
• Burmese and Birman cats topped the list, but it's unclear clear why.
• Many factors can impact how long a cat lives, including whether it lives indoors or outdoors.

Burmese cats are active, outgoing, and excessively fond of grooming, according to some research. They may also be one of the cat breeds that live the longest.

Most cat breeds are less than 150 years old, and there isn't a lot of information on how differences between the various types affect their lifespans.

To help change that, a recent study compared 12 common cat breeds to determine which ones live the longest.

Learning more about the different breeds will allow cat owners "to predict the future life expectancy for their cats based on novel scientific methods and the power of big data," said study co-author and veterinarian Dan O'Neill in a statement.

The researchers found Burmese and Birmans live the longest, with an average of 14 years, about two years longer than the average cat. But why these breeds outlive their peers isn't clear.

Predicting the life expectancy of cats

For this recent study, researchers from London's Royal Veterinary College (RVC) and the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan looked at the ages of 7,936 cats who died between 2019 and 2021.

Over 7,000 of the cats in the study were mixed breeds. Most of the other 11 breeds included breeds like British cats, Maine Coons, Ragdolls, and Persians.

Typically, cats' life expectancies ranged from about 9 to 14 years, the researchers found.

For example, siamese and mixed-breed cats' life expectancies were over 11.5 years, whereas others — Norwegian Forest, Maine Coon, Russian, and British — were over 9.5 years.

Here's a table of what the researchers found:

Breed	Life expectancy (years)
Burmese	14.42
Birman	14.39
Crossbred	11.89
Siamese	11.69
Persian	10.93
Ragdoll	10.31
Norwegian Forest Cat	9.95
Maine Coon	9.71
Russian cats	9.65
British cats	9.58
Bengal	8.51
*Sphynx	6.68

*Some breeds, like Sphynx cats, may not have had enough data to accurately reflect lifespans, said Leslie Lyons, who studies domestic cat genetics at the University of Missouri.

While the researchers' findings did indicate Burmese and Birmans lived longest, almost every breed had at least one cat that lived to be over 20 years old.

Limitations with the data

One potential issue with some of the data is that it can be tricky for people to know their cats' breeds, Lyons said.

"Some of these cats listed as a particular breed might not really be what we would call a pedigreed breed," she said. An owner may assume their shelter cat with silvery fur is a Russian Blue, for example, when it's actually a mixed breed.

Unlike dogs — some of which have been used for hundreds of years to hunt, corral sheep, or pull sleds — cats were often bred for aesthetic reasons rather than personality or athleticism.

That's why breed differences aren't as dramatic in cats as they are in dogs and might not impact cats' health in the same way.

It's not like comparing a Doberman to a Pekingese. That's because cats' aesthetic traits are genetically less complex than dogs' behavioral and functional ones, Lyons said.

However, these breed preferences can still have unintended consequences, like Persian cats' short noses, which can cause breathing difficulties.

How long a cat lives depends on plenty of factors

In addition to breed, the study looked at a number of factors, like sex, weight, and whether the cat was spayed or neutered. Females and fixed cats both tended to live a bit longer.

Lyons sees this study as a jumping-off point for further investigations into factors that impact life expectancies like time spent indoors or outdoors, which the study didn't account for.

Car accidents, parasites, and fights with other felines are just a few of the dangers for cats who venture outside. As a result, some research suggests outdoor cats have an average lifespan of only two to five years.

The authors, who published their study in the peer-reviewed "Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery," said further research is needed into the causes of death in companion cats, including in the Sphynx breed.

• The US is considering deploying more strategic nuclear weapons, a senior Biden official said.
• Russia, China, and North Korea are increasing their nuclear capabilities rapidly, said Pranay Vaddi.
• The US must modernize its nuclear arsenal to deter threats and preserve stability, the official said.

The US is considering deploying more strategic nuclear weapons after years of post-Cold War cutbacks, a senior Biden administration official said.

Speaking at the annual meeting Arms Control Association (ACA) on Friday, Pranay Vaddi, the top National Security Council arms control official, said, "We may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required. We need to be fully prepared to execute if the president makes that decision."

Vaddi warned that adversaries of the US, specifically referring to Russia, China, and North Korea,"are all expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace, showing little or no interest in arms control."

Along with Iran, these countries "are increasingly cooperating and coordinating with each other in ways that run counter to peace and stability, threaten the United States, our allies and our partners and exacerbate region tensions," he said.

Vaddi's comments contrast with the US government's position on nuclear proliferation outlined by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the ACA meeting last year.

Sullivan said that the US did not need to "deploy ever-more dangerous nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence" or engage in a Cold War-style arms race.

"We've been there. We've learned that lesson," Sullivan said.

In February last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew from the 2010 New START treaty, which placed controls on the number of nuclear weapons that Russia and the US could have at their disposal.

The limits meant that neither country could have more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads.

Putin said that to resume treaty activities, the US would need to stop its support for Ukraine and force France and the UK to attend arms control talks.

At the time, President Joe Biden called Putin's decision a "big mistake."

Last week, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened nuclear strikes on the West, Reuters reported.

The former president held office from 2008 to 2012 and currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council.

Reuters reported that Medvedev said, "Nobody today can rule out the conflict's transition to its final stage."

In May, Russia announced drills with tactical nukes near Ukraine, which it said are being held in response to recent "threats" from the West.

Speaking about the growing threat of a nuclear conflict, Vaddi said, "We will have no choice but to adjust our posture and capabilities to preserve deterrence and stability."

"We need to persuade our adversaries that managing rivalry through arms control is preferable to unrestrained competition," he said.

• Saudi Arabia's Neom megacity is facing some big challenges.
• The kingdom has struggled to attract the foreign investment needed for the project, experts say.
• They say the financial realities mean the project is unlikely to achieve its lofty goals.

Saudi Arabia's vision for its futuristic desert city, Neom, has always been the stuff of fantasy.

Touted as one of the most ambitious projects in the world, the megacity includes plans that could have been lifted from a sci-fi film. It features a high-tech linear city that will house more robots than people, a year-round ski resort featuring artificial snow, and theme parks that combine virtual and physical worlds.

When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman first revealed the high-tech project in 2017, it was met with some skepticism. Since then, details about the project have been relatively scarce, with planners reportedly bound by strict non-disclosure agreements.

But recently, a picture has emerged of a country beginning to feel the strain of its mighty ambitions.

"Neom was like was an imaginary city when it was announced," Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Business Insider. "Now, they're finding it much more difficult to turn that imaginary vision into some sort of reality on the ground."

The main issue is the enormous cost of Neom. Saudi Arabia has struggled to attract the foreign investment needed for the megaproject, and experts say it's not likely to secure it anytime soon.

Lack of foreign investment

The kingdom was counting on foreign investment to fund a large part of Neom, but things have not gone entirely to plan.

"When Vision 2030 was announced back in 2017, the assumption had been a lot of the funding would come in from foreign investment — that didn't happen," Ulrichsen said.

The drive for foreign cash hit an early stumbling block in 2017.

Just 10 days after the megacity was announced, 400 of the most prominent and influential Saudis were rounded up and detained in Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel, which had just hosted the Neom launch event.

The mass arrests spiraled into a full-blown purge and became the most contentious in the kingdom's modern history.

"The hotel basically became a detention recap of the Saudi business elites who might have been expected to be the ones partnering with foreign investors," Ulrichsen said. "Saudi foreign investment levels — they had been declining anyway — collapsed after this, and it's been very difficult for them to build back up."

In 2018, Saudi faced further global isolation after the brutal murder and dismemberment of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a crime the CIA said was likely committed on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's direct orders.

"Generally, no one in the West wanted anything to do with the Saudis at this time, and investors pulled out in large numbers," Andreas Krieg, a Gulf specialist at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London, said.

Spiraling costs

The Saudi Public Investment Fund has propped up the lion's share of the financial burden — but officials at the sovereign wealth fund are reportedly getting nervous about the spiraling costs.

The official estimate for Neom is $500 billion, but planners have dismissed the figure as unrealistically low. Other estimates have put the projected costs at as much as $1.5 trillion.

In April, Bloomberg reported that the financial realities of the country's Vision 2030 plan, which includes Neom as its centerpiece, had started to cause concern within the government.

In February, Saudi also started borrowing to help fund some of the ambitious megaprojects.

In public, the Saudis have been keen to insist the project and funding are on track. In private, though, recent reports suggest that the Crown Prince is open to having "tough conversations" about the Vision 2030 ambitions.

Krieg said Saudi Arabia's public spending bill was "extremely high," raising questions about wasteful spending on megaprojects. "Vision 2030 consumes a lot of money, and there's a lot of inefficiencies, especially when it comes to Western consultancy firms."

Renewed scrutiny

In April, the kingdom once again became the subject of international scrutiny over alleged human rights abuses.

An explosive BBC News report claimed Saudi Arabia had authorized the use of "lethal force" to clear the way for Neom. The area was mostly populated by the Huwaitat tribe, which traditionally dwelled on areas earmarked for the megacity.

One of the villagers, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, was later killed by Saudi authorities, according to Saudi activists.

In the wake of the report, human rights organizations began pressuring governments and businesses to act on the report — prompting at least one politician, UK deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, to raise the allegations with the Saudi government.

Lina al-Hathloul, a human rights activist and head of monitoring and advocacy at human rights organization ALQST, told BI that Neom was being "built on Saudi blood."

"This project symbolizes the current state of the country: it was decided without the people's consent, and when they oppose it, they are sanctioned in courts that lack independence," she said.

The country has long tried to silence those who speak out against the project. Last summer, a Saudi woman was jailed for 30 years for criticizing Neom on Twitter.

"The reality behind such futuristic projects is the brutal repression of citizens and residents," said Dana Ahmed, Amnesty International's Middle East researcher.

"Businesses have a responsibility to conduct a thorough human rights risk assessment before operating in an environment that poses credible human rights risks, such as in Saudi Arabia."

At least one company has withdrawn from Neom over human rights concerns. Malcolm Aw, CEO of Solar Water, previously told BI that he had pulled out of a $100 million Neom contract because of alleged Saudi human rights abuses.

Drawing The Line

There's no doubt Saudi Arabia is barrelling ahead with The Line — the most prominent aspect of Neom.

According to executives, the number of people working on the project doubled in the past year. Satellite images provided to BI also show the extent of construction underway at the site.

But many questions remain about the project. Saudi Arabia has already reduced estimates for the number of people set to live in Neom by 2030, per Bloomberg.

According to Ulrichsen, many of the project's lofty goals have always been "moving targets," with several deadlines already pushed back.

As the Saudi government nervously eyes the ever-growing bill, Neom needs to generate enough excitement to attract foreign funds.

Despite the fresh scrutiny over human rights abuses, Krieg says that Saudi is now more palatable than ever on the international stage, and the outlook for the kingdom is positive.

Krieg said Neom's very premise was built on levels of foreign investment that now seem unlikely to ever materialize. Meanwhile, competition from Saudi's regional rivals such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi is heating up.

"There's been some Chinese investments, but they are nowhere near where they need to be," he said. "There's always going to be a shortfall of foreign investment in Saudi to pay for all of these projects."

Representatives for Neom did not respond to a request for comment from BI.