Author: openjargon

• OpenAI is best known for popularizing AI chatbots with ChatGPT.
• But the company that created the AI chatbot has a history with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.
• Here's everything you need to know about OpenAI, from being founded by Elon Musk to its eye-popping tech.

OpenAI has taken the world by storm since its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, went viral upon its release in November 2022.

The company counts Elon Musk among its cofounders, though he has since cut ties and become a vocal critic of it (while launching his own competitor). Since then, OpenAI CEO and cofounder Sam Altman has become a household name, and even survived an ousting by his board.

OpenAI has kept busy, releasing updates to its massively popular chatbot at a rapid pace as well as new products, like the image-generation tool DALL-E and its upcoming video-generation tool Sora.

Last week, it showed off its latest AI model, the omnimodal GPT-4o, which can do things like translate conversations in real time and assess your physical surroundings to reason and problem-solve.

But the story of OpenAI started years before the first version of ChatGPT was launched to the masses.

Here's a look at how OpenAI came to be one of the biggest players in the industry.

OpenAI released an early demo of ChatGPT in November 2022, and the conversational chatbot quickly went viral on social media.

Within five days the chatbot had over one million users, as people took to social media to share examples of ChatGPT's many capabilities — from casual conversation to essay writing and coding.

The artificial intelligence company that created it is now backed by Microsoft, but has a long history with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.

Elon Musk and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015.

Musk, Altman, and other prominent Silicon Valley characters, including Peter Thiel and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, pledged $1 billion to the project in 2015.

The group aimed to create a nonprofit focused on developing artificial intelligence "in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole," according to a statement on OpenAI's website from December 11, 2015.

At the time, Musk said that AI was the "biggest existential threat" to humanity.

"It's hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it's equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly," the statement announcing the founding of Open AI continued.

In 2016, OpenAI released two products.

There was Gym, a platform that allowed researchers to develop and compare reinforcement learning systems. These systems teach AI to come to decisions with the best cumulative rewards.

Later that year, OpenAI also released Universe, a toolkit for training intelligent agents across websites and gaming platforms.

In 2018, three years after helping found the company, Musk resigned from OpenAI's board of directors.

The company said in a blog post at the time that the Tesla CEO resigned to "eliminate potential future conflict" due to the carmaker's focus on AI.

The company added that Musk would continue to donate to the nonprofit.

Musk had been telling Tesla investors for years about his plans to make the electric cars autonomous.

Musk later said he quit the company because he "didn't agree with some of what [the] OpenAI team wanted to do."

In 2019, the billionaire said on X, formerly Twitter, that Tesla was also competing for some of the same employees as OpenAI, adding that he hadn't been involved with the company for "over a year."

"Add that all up & it was just better to part ways on good terms," he said.

Musk has continued to take issue with OpenAI in recent years.

In 2020, Musk said on Twitter that his confidence in the company was "not high" when it came to safety.

"OpenAI should be more open imo," the billionaire tweeted in response to an investigation into the company by MIT Technology Review.

The publication said that an investigation into OpenAI revealed a culture of secrecy that ran counter to the nonprofit's purported commitment to transparency.

Musk also said he paused OpenAI's access to Twitter's database for training its software.

"Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward," he said in December 2022. "OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true."

In 2019, the company built an AI tool that could craft fake news stories.

At first, OpenAI said the bot was so good at writing fake news that they decided not to release it. Later that year, the company released a version of the AI tool as GPT-2.

The company released another chatbot called GPT-3 in 2020.

That same year, OpenAI shed its status as a nonprofit.

The company announced that it had become a "capped profit" corporation in a blog post.

"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," the company said. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."

The profit structure introduced at the time meant OpenAI investors could earn up to 100 times their original investment, but nothing over that. The remaining money would go to not-for-profit work.

OpenAI announced a partnership with Microsoft at the end of 2019.

Microsoft invested $1 billion in the AI company, and OpenAI said it would exclusively license its technology with the tech company.

"The scope of commercial and creative potential that can be unlocked through the GPT-3 model is profound, with genuinely novel capabilities – most of which we haven't even imagined yet," Microsoft said in a blog post.

"Directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language – the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table," it said.

The partnership allows Microsoft to compete with Google's DeepMind AI company.

In 2021, OpenAI released an AI art generator.

Dall-E is an AI system that can create realistic images and even art based on descriptions of the images.

OpenAI released the first version of GPT-4 in March 2023 and the next generation of the model, GPT-4 Turbo, that November.

Musk, meanwhile, is still commenting.

"We are not far from dangerously strong AI," Musk tweeted in response to a post from Altman.

He also called ChatGPT "scary good."

The same month GPT-4 launched, Musk and more than 1,000 other people, including AI experts, signed an open letter calling for a 6-month pause on advanced AI development until "we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."

—Sam Altman (@sama) December 3, 2022

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Meanwhile, Musk was readying his own rival AI company, xAI, and later launched an AI chatbot through X, formerly Twitter, called Grok.

 

 

In January 2023, it was reported that Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI over the next few years.

Microsoft said it was making a "multiyear, multibillion-dollar" investment in OpenAI.

Citing people familiar with the issue, Semafor reported at the time that the investment would give Microsoft a 75% share of OpenAI's profits until the investment was earned back and then a 49% stake going forward.

In November 2023, OpenAI was rocked by the board's decision to fire CEO Sam Altman.

"Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities," OpenAI said in a blog post at the time. "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."

OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman quit in light of the news, and CTO Mira Murati was named interim CEO briefly before former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear was named to the position days later.

Microsoft hired Altman and Brockman to join a new AI team. Shortly after, nearly the entirety of OpenAI's employees signed a letter calling on Altman to be reinstated as CEO and demanding the board be fired, or else they'd jump ship to join Altman and Brockman at Microsoft.

Altman ultimately returned to OpenAI as CEO, just days after his ousting, and multiple board members were replaced.

In February 2024, OpenAI unveiled a new tool, Sora, that creates eerily realistic videos based on users' text prompts.

Sora can also generate videos from still images and "extend" existing videos. OpenAI has reportedly been shopping around the tool to Hollywood.

In May 2024, OpenAI released GPT-4o, its newest flagship AI model.

GPT-4o can process text, image, video, and audio as both inputs and outputs. It can do things like translate in real time, make sense of your physical surroundings, and even sing (kind of).

It's far more natural in its conventional skills too, and can be interrupted by the questioner for a more engaging communication flow.

Days later, actress Scarlett Johansson put out a statement accusing OpenAI of using a voice "eerily similar" to hers for GPT-4 and GPT-4o.

Johansson says OpenAI copied the voice of her character in the movie "Her," in which a man falls in love with an AI chatbot. She says Altman reached out last year asking her to provide a voice for GPT-4, but she declined, so she was "shocked, angered, and in disbelief" to hear how much the new "Sky" voice feature sounds like her.

"We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky's voice in our products," Altman said in a statement in response. "We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn't communicate better."

OpenAI has paused the use of the voice feature.

• Ukraine is mounting rockets onto its naval drones, an official told the Financial Times.
• It's used them to strike Russian positions in occupied Mykolaiv, the official told the FT.
• A video of a reported attack shows a sea drone firing several rockets toward Russian targets.

Ukraine has placed rockets onto its feared sea drones and is using them to attack Russian land targets, according to a Ukrainian official.

In a post on X, citing an unnamed Ukrainian intelligence official, Christopher Miller, the Financial Times' Ukraine correspondent, said that sea baby naval drones are now being mounted with a Grad multiple launch rocket system.

The official said that they'd been used to strike Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit in the occupied Mykolaiv region on Monday.

An unnamed security source seemed to confirm the upgrade and the attack to the Kyiv Independent.

"This technological solution is already showing powerful results," the source told the outlet.

"So new surprises await the enemy," they added.

The Security Service of Ukraine didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

But a video shared by Russian and Ukrainian sources showing a naval drone firing several rockets appeared to back up the reports.

According to Anton Gerashchenko, a former advisor to Ukraine's internal affairs ministry, who shared the footage on X, the video shows an unmanned surface drone "launching missiles" at Russian positions near the Kinburn Spit.

The Ukrainian military website Militarnyi reported that the video shows a Ukrainian unmanned boat mounted with an MLRS firing at least six shells at Russian positions.

In a post of its own, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said that sea baby drones were equipped with "Grad" rocket launchers and that they had become "even deadlier" for the Russian fleet.

Business Insider couldn't independently verify the time or location of the video.

Ukraine has frequently deployed its naval drones over the course of the war, outfitting them with larger warheads and using them to devastating effect against Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

The Kyiv Independent reported that six of them took part in what may be Ukraine's biggest sea drone attack last week, with targets including the two major Russian naval ports of Sevastopol and Novorossiysk.

Ukraine previously used sea drones fitted with missiles to attack Russia's Black Sea Fleet in January, and with what appeared to be heat-seeking missiles to strike Russian naval assets earlier this month.

• The share of US households making just enough to get by but not getting assistance is rising nationwide.
• They're known as ALICE — asset-limited, income-constrained, employed. 
• The income threshold for this group varies widely between states and cities.

Almost a third of Americans are falling through the cracks of the US economy. Here's how to know if you're one of them.

These households face an economic predicament: They earn too much money to receive most government assistance, but they're still barely getting by.

That can look different, depending on a family's circumstances. It might be an income of $130,000 for a family of six near St. Louis or $25,000 for a family of three in Michigan.

These families are part of a group economists call ALICE, or asset-limited, income-constrained and employed. The latest figures from United For ALICE, shared exclusively with Business Insider, reveal that, from 2021 to 2022, the number of ALICE households rose by nearly 1.6 million. That means at least 29% of households in the US are considered ALICE.

This compares to 13% of Americans who live at or below the federal poverty line, which is $31,200 a year for a family of four. Created in the 1960s, the poverty line is determined solely by household income and is not adjusted based on a family's circumstances, location, or cost of living. Still, government assistance programs that use the metric to assess need are leaving out a large swatch of the population.

Because ALICE households tend to live just above the poverty threshold — sometimes by less than $100 — they aren't covered by America's safety nets. Many live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to afford necessities like rent, groceries, transportation, and healthcare. Families have told BI that their financial situation has forced them to make tough decisions, like choosing between paying their electricity bill or their rent.

"I'm not homeless enough to get certain help because I have a roof over my head," an ALICE woman living in Wilmington, North Carolina, previously told BI. "But I'm too homeless to get a job because I don't know where I'm going to live in three weeks. What do you do?"

How to know if you're an ALICE

United For ALICE's criteria depend on four main factors: a household's location, size, estimated survival budget, and access to government assistance.

• Location determines how much a family can expect to pay for everyday expenses. For instance, two full-time hourly wages of $15 could support a family of four in Clarke County, Alabama, but not one in Cook County, Illinois.
• Household size measures whether a family has one or two incomes and the number of dependents. Single-income households with multiple children are highly likely to be ALICE.
• Survival budgets include the annual costs of housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare, technology, taxes, and miscellaneous spending. The amount varies based on a household's location and number of dependents — and can also be impacted by tax credits. The lowest household survival budget in the US is still around $60,000 for a family of four with two younger children.
• Access to government assistance is frequently based on the federal poverty line. An ALICE family might be low-income but fall short of qualifying for housing assistance or out of reach of programs like SNAP and Medicaid.

If you live above the poverty threshold but are unable to cover all expenses in your survival budget, you're probably an ALICE.

Certain groups are more likely to be ALICE

Demographically, ALICE Americans are more prevalent across some generations and professions.

• Americans who are ALICE often work in retail, healthcare, and food services, and just 61% of all full-time workers earn enough to match their household survival budget.
• Black and Hispanic families are more likely to fall at or below the ALICE threshold compared to white families.
• More Gen Zers and boomers are ALICE compared to millennials and Gen X. Inflation has forced many boomers, especially, to continue working into their 60s and 70s. In 2022, over half of US households 65 or older were below the ALICE threshold because it's becoming increasingly difficult for millions of Americans to survive solely off of Social Security benefits or their retirement funds. The ALICE 65+ Survival Budget ranges from anywhere between $767 and $2,780 per month more than Social Security payments nationwide.
• Parents are hit especially hard by the high costs of raising children and the national lack of affordable childcare options. Between 2010 and 2022, married ALICE households with children grew 12%, single-female-headed ALICE households grew 14%, and single-male-headed households grew 35%. However, childfree adults also struggle to get financial help when they need it — having financially dependent children is often a prerequisite for tax credits and government assistance programs.

With the cost of living rising across the US, United for ALICE predicts more families to become ALICE over time. The end of pandemic-era assistance has also made it more difficult for ALICE families to recover from financial hardship.

Do you live above the federal poverty line but struggle to afford daily expenses? Are you open to sharing your story? If so, reach out to these reporters at allisonkelly@businessinsider.com, nsheidlower@businessinsider.com, and jkaplan@businessinsider.com.

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

Halfway to the weekend! Capri Sun is selling giant jugs for customers whose appetites — but not tastes — have grown up. (Or maybe they're still struggling to get those yellow straws through the pouches.)

We're also running a Memorial Day sale for 80% off our Business Insider subscription. More on that here.

In today's big story, all eyes are on if Nvidia's earnings report will send its shares surging even higher.

What's on deck:

• Markets: We could be on the cusp of another crypto ETF getting approved.
• Tech: A new streaming bundle's price offers clues about the economics of the industry.
• Business: The dawn of stupid neighborhood names is upon us.

But first, here comes Nvidia.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

The big story

AI, for better or worse

The stock market's darling takes center stage today when Nvidia reports earnings after the bell.

No company has captivated investors quite like Nvidia over the past year. Even amid a bullish market, the AI chipmaker has stood out.

Nvidia's performance reads more like a meme stock than a company with a market cap north of $2.3 trillion. This year alone it's up nearly 100%.

But can it keep climbing?

Business Insider's Matthew Fox has a rundown on what Wall Street expects from Nvidia. Even with its upcoming release of a next-generation chip potentially dimming demand for its current chips, some analysts see Nvidia still having room to run.

As complex as stock analysis can be sometimes, the case for Nvidia is fairly simple. Big Tech has big plans — and budgets — for AI. The only way to get there is using Nvidia's chips.

It might not always be that way. The Financial Times recently reported Nvidia's rivals and customers are supporting an effort to break the company's dominance in the space.

But for now, it's Nvidia or bust.

Elsewhere in AI land, things aren't going as swimmingly.

The buzz from OpenAI's humanlike voice feature for ChatGPT has quickly faded. Self-congratulations quickly turned to backtracking after Scarlett Johansson threatened legal action over how "eerily similar" one of ChatGPT's voices is to hers.

On the one hand, AI being accused of misusing creative work isn't new. (Not that that makes it OK.)

But tussling with Johansson is particularly risky, writes BI's Eammon Jacobs. The actor went head-to-head with Disney over the release of "Black Widow" and secured a settlement.

It also begs the question: Are we sure these OpenAI people are as smart as we think? BI's Katie Notopoulos has more on that.

Even if Johansson doesn't escalate things — OpenAI already pulled the voice — it's another setback for a company looking to gain people's trust that has plenty of skeptics, including its own former executive.

It's also an example of what some allege is OpenAI's "ask forgiveness, not permission" strategy, writes BI's Hasan Chowdhury. (It's giving "move fast and break things.")

3 things in markets

1. Wall Street's biggest pessimist isn't backing down. JPMorgan's Marko Kolanovic is the lone top strategist among the big banks predicting a market downturn. He recently doubled down on his take that the S&P 500 will fall about 20%. "We do not see equities as attractive investments at the moment and we don't see a reason to change our stance," Kolanovic wrote.
2. The crypto world is getting excited about another ETF. Approval for an ethereum ETF could come as soon as this week, sending the price of the cryptocurrency surging more than 20%. It could also be a step toward further legitimizing bitcoin, and the wider crypto market, according to one expert.
3. China dumped a record amount of US bonds last quarter. The country sold $53.3 billion worth of Treasurys and agency bonds over the first three months of 2024, Bloomberg reported. The acceleration is another symptom of deteriorating trade relations between Beijing and Washington.

3 things in tech

1. We have some theories about the discount for Comcast's new streaming bundle. For $15 a month you can get Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV+, which is about $8 cheaper than if you bought them separately. One reason could be subscribers coming from broadband companies, like Comcast, are less likely to churn.
2. ICYMI: Here's what went down at Microsoft Build. At its annual developer conference, the company unveiled Team Copilot, which will bring its AI agent to Microsoft Teams chats and meetings. OpenAI's Sam Altman also made a surprise appearance to talk about GPT-4o and offer advice to founders and developers.
3. How the leaders of the world's biggest tech companies spend their spare time. From Mark Zuckerberg's newfound love of the UFC, to Elon Musk's obsession with gaming, to Bill Gates' luxury car collection, here's a list of wealthy tech execs' favorite hobbies.

3 things in business

1. Neighborhood names are getting much, much dumber. You may have noticed that in booming cities, the names of neighborhoods are getting weirder — take Denver's RiNo, SoBo, LoDo, and LoHi areas, for example. It's all an attempt by builders to redevelop neighborhoods in their image.
2. Trump's proposed tariffs could cost Americans $500 billion a year. Researchers at the Peterson Institute warned Trump's planned taxes on imports could have households spending an additional $1,500 each year. They also said the plan would hit lower-income households harder.
3. These are the most affordable cities to buy a home in the US. SmartAsset identified 12 areas where the median home price is below $175,000 and no higher than 2.5 years' worth of local incomes. The Midwest dominated the top of the list.

In other news

• Trump rests his brief, tumultuous hush-money defense without testifying. Prosecutors turned his key witness against him.
• Gen Z to older workers: We're just like you.
• I became a data analyst and grew my salary 5x without working in Big Tech. Non-tech companies offer more flexibility and less stress.

What's happening today

• Today's earnings: Nvidia, Target, and other companies are reporting.

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. George Glover, reporter, in London.

• Graceland is the 13.8-acre estate in Memphis, Tennessee, that Elvis Presley once called home.
• The King of Rock 'n' Roll lived in the house from 1957 until his death in 1977.
• Now, Presley's granddaughter is fighting to stop an auction of the estate.

It's been 47 years since Elvis Presley died, but legions of fans still flock to Memphis, Tennessee, to see the sprawling Graceland estate the star once called home.

Per the official Graceland website, Presley lived in the mansion from 1957 until his death in 1977. Located off a highway that was renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard in 1971, the two-story residence sits on 13.8 acres of land.

Since 1982, Graceland has operated as a museum dedicated to the star. Ticket packages offer access to the mansion, with prices for adults starting at $82. According to the website, it has hosted over 20 million visitors from across the globe.

On May 19, 2024, a public notice announced the foreclosure sale of the property, claiming that Promenade Trust — which operates Graceland — owes Naussany Investments and Private Lending $3.8 million to repay a loan that Presley's late daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, took out in May 2018.

However, Lisa Marie's daughter, the actor Riley Keough, filed a lawsuit to prevent the auction of the estate, alleging that the signatures on the loan documents were forged.

A temporary restraining order was granted, delaying the auction. An injunction hearing is scheduled for May 22, per USA Today.

Also known as the "King of Rock 'n' Roll," Presley was a cultural icon of the 20th century.

Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Mississippi. Heavily influenced by the country, gospel, and blues music that he listened to as a child, Presley started his singing career in 1954.

With hits such as "Hound Dog" and "Can't Help Falling in Love with You," he would go on to become one of the most successful performers of all time, with 14 Grammy nominations and millions of records sold, per the Recording Academy.

On August 16, 1977, Presley collapsed in his Graceland home and was found unconscious by his girlfriend, Ginger Alden. She documented the moment she found him on the master bathroom floor in her 2014 memoir, The Mirror reported.

According to The New York Times, coroners pronounced him dead on the same day, with the official cause of death attributed to heart failure. He was 42 years old.

Presley purchased the Graceland estate in 1957 for $102,500.

The Colonial Revival-style mansion, which was built in 1939, has eight bedrooms and four bathrooms, The Guardian reported after a tour of the house. About half of the 23 rooms in the house are off-limits to visitors, including the entire second floor — where the star's master suite is located.

According to the Graceland website, visitors are only allowed access to common spaces, including the living room, the kitchen, and the TV room. Spanning 17,552 square feet, the sprawling residence has five sets of staircases, three fireplaces, and a kidney-shaped swimming pool.

Presley frequently had friends and family over at the mansion, including an entourage of confidants and associates the media dubbed the "Memphis Mafia." Some members of the group were childhood friends of Presley's, including his bodyguards Red and Sonny West.

In 2006, Graceland was designated a National Historic Landmark, per the National Park Service.

One of the most iconic features of Graceland is the entrance gate. Designed to resemble a musical score, there are figures on the gate depicting the star with his guitar.

According to the museum's website, Presley had the gate — which cost $1,339 — installed shortly after he purchased the residence. Throngs of fans would wait by the gate in hopes of catching a glimpse of their idol. Occasionally, he would also sign autographs for them through the gate.

"Back in the day, if you were ever at the gates of Graceland and you saw the cars around the front of the mansion, that meant Elvis was home," Angie Marchese — the Graceland archivist — told The Daily Express.

The brick wall that surrounds the estate is also popular with fans, the website states. Over the years, it has been covered in personal messages that fans have left in memory of their idol.

The interiors of Graceland are lavishly decorated. The living area has a custom-built 15-foot sofa and a 10-foot coffee table.

The sofa was originally a metallic blue, but Presley later had it reupholstered in white — which is what it still looks like today, per the Graceland website. He added the stained-glass windows in 1974 and chose to use a peacock design, which symbolizes eternal life and resurrection in ancient Christianity.

The dining room, which has black marble flooring in the center, was a place for Presley and his friends to gather.

"Elvis sat at the head of the table because it did give him one of the best views of the TV that's over to the corner on the right," Marchese said during a 2020 Instagram Live on the estate's official account.

She added that there was also a button under the table where they could call the kitchen for more food.

One of the most famous rooms in Graceland is the Jungle Room.

The room's name only came about after the mansion opened to the public.

Presley personally picked out the Polynesian-inspired furniture because it reminded him of Hawaii, which was his favorite holiday spot, per the museum's website. He installed a waterfall and covered the room with plants to complete the look.

A shag carpet covers both the floor and the ceiling, per the website. This soundproofed the room and allowed Presley to turn the space into a makeshift recording studio. Presley recorded some of the songs on his album "From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee," here.

The pool room features fabric-lined walls and ceiling, which took 10 days to install.

The Graceland website states that Presley worked with a designer, Bill Eubanks, to develop the room's concept.

A crew of three was needed to cut and attach 350 to 400 yards of cotton fabric strips to the walls and ceiling.

Presley died upstairs in his master suite, and it has been preserved exactly as he left it.

"It looks as if he just got up and left," Marchese said during the 2020 Instagram Live. "The record on the record player is the last record he listened to. There's a styrofoam cup that sits on a bookshelf."

Towards the end of his life, Presley spent much of his time holed up in his bedroom upstairs, especially if he was "in pyjamas or unshaven," Alden told The Daily Express.

The TV room, which is designed in a navy, white, and yellow color scheme, has three television sets.

Inspired by US President Lyndon Johnson, who liked to watch three news broadcasts simultaneously, Presley also wanted three television sets in his TV room, per the official Graceland website.

Although the upper floor remains off-limits, Presley's office desk has been brought down and turned into an exhibit for fans to see.

Presley's record label, RCA, gave him the desk as a gift for selling one million copies of the "Blue Hawaii" soundtrack, Marchese told The Daily Express.

Presley's gold records are on display in the Hall of Gold in the Trophy Building.

Presley constructed a new wing in the mansion in the mid-1960s to store a slot car track, as stated in Graceland's National Historic Landmark Nomination application.

Connected to the main house via a sheltered walkway, the estate renamed the new wing the "Trophy Building" and remodeled it to house his awards.

The estate updated the building in 2017 to feature an exhibit that focuses on Presley's personal life and his family, per the Graceland website. Some items on display include his wedding outfit, family photos, and his daughter's childhood toys.

Presley enjoyed playing racquetball. After he died, the racquetball building was transformed into an additional trophy hall for a few years.

The entire room was filled with posthumous awards and included a display of his famous jumpsuits, per the museum's website. In 2017, the racquetball court was restored to its original condition and all the trophies were moved into a new exhibit.

Presley has been laid to rest alongside his parents on the grounds of the Graceland estate, in the Meditation Garden.

Elvis Week, which commemorates the anniversary of Presley's death, takes place between August 9 and August 17, per the museum's website.

Every year, fans from around the world flock to Graceland to leave flowers at his grave. The estate hosts around 500,000 visitors every year.

Presley's only daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, is also buried in Graceland, next to her late son Benjamin Keough and close to her father.

Lisa Marie Presley died on January 12, 2023, at 54. The announcement of her death came hours after her mother, Priscilla Presley, confirmed she had been rushed to the hospital.

In an August 2022 essay she wrote for People Magazine, Lisa Marie spoke about grief and how she was "destroyed" by her son Benjamin Keough's death. She also blamed herself "every single day."

Keough died by suicide in July 2020, at 27, and was buried at Graceland.

In January 2023, a representative for Riley Keough, Lisa Marie's eldest daughter, confirmed in a statement to BI that her mother would be buried next to her son.

Elvis Presley saw a resurgence in popularity in 2022 when the Baz Luhrmann movie, "Elvis," starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, came out in theaters.

Members of the cast showed up at Graceland for the Memphis premiere of the film on June 12, 2022, per the daily Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal.

A press junket to promote the film was also in the screening, including a GMA interview with Tom Hanks and Austin Butler recorded in the Jungle room.

 

May 22, 2024: This story has been updated to reflect details of the ongoing lawsuit regarding the property's foreclosure.

• Captain Emma Henderson MBE was a pilot for Easyjet for over a decade. 
• She told Business Insider passengers should keep their seatbelts on at all times to avoid injury.
• It comes after a Singapore Airlines flight was hit by extreme turbulence, and one passenger died.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Emma Henderson MBE, a former EasyJet pilot. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a former airline captain. I started flying 30 years ago when I was at University.

I became a first officer at EasyJet in 2009, and worked there for 11 years until I took voluntary redundancy in 2020.

The Singapore Airlines incident this week is a reminder that passengers should always wear a seatbelt when flying, even if the seatbelt sign is off.

This is for people's safety. The basic truth is that an aircraft is a hard surface, and people are soft.

Turbulence does happen, and when the aircraft moves around, if you are not strapped into your seat, you can move out of it.

A sudden movement of the aircraft down will result in you staying where you are in that space until you catch up with the aircraft. And it means you risk injuring yourself if you are not strapped in.

Turbulence can be unexpected

Aircraft are equipped with weather radar, which shows what's ahead of you. If there's water ahead, it paints it as a certain color on a screen; if there are hailstones ahead, it paints it as a different color.

Some of the weather radar systems on the newer aircraft that I operated can also show thunderstorms and turbulence.

However, it's not possible to see everything all of the time.

The reason it's recommended that seatbelts are fastened during the flight, even when the seatbelt signs are switched off, is because anything can happen at any time.

Even if you're flying in very clear air with good visibility all around you, an aircraft might have crossed your path a couple of miles ago, and you could fly through their wake, and you'll get a slight jolt.

Putting on a seatbelt just means you know that if anything should happen, you are much less likely to become injured.

Singapore Airlines incident

What happened with the Singapore Airlines flight was an extreme case. It's very unusual for something like this to happen in such a way.

When flying in an area like that, you're flying through areas with a lot of high-energy air movement and thunderstorm activity. And at this time of year there's a lot of heat in the atmosphere and a lot of moisture in the atmosphere.

So it sometimes is the case that you might be flying through weather and be aware that there is a risk, but there's not any immediate risk visible.

You can't climb above the clouds in that situation, and sometimes you just have to punch through them. You avoid the worst areas, but you can't see everything.

If you're flying in an area where there are very few other flights around, there's less information available. So it's unsurprising that something like this could happen and take people unawares.

Pilots are trained to deal with situations like this, and it's a testament to the high caliber of training of the Singapore Airlines pilots that even though they knew there were injured people aboard and one fatality on board, they were able to land safely in Bangkok.

They still brought that aircraft to a safe landing. Their training kicked in, and that's what you have to do.

My own experiences with turbulence

I've never encountered anything like what happened yesterday because it is so rare.

There are three different types of turbulence: light, moderate, and severe.

I have experienced moderate turbulence while descending through bad weather into Geneva, for example.

If you have to land somewhere, you don't have much choice. You will divert around as much of it as you can, but at some point, you may have to fly through quite bumpy weather.

When you're in the flight deck, and that's happening, you have complete confidence in your aircraft because you know it can withstand the extreme forces that it can be subjected to.

You trust your instruments, your aircraft, your instinct, and your skill.

I don't ever worry about flying, and even after the Singapore Airlines incident, I wouldn't worry about flying because I know it's so unusual.

I know the aircraft can withstand those forces and because I know everything about what happens on a flight, I don't worry about it.

• Culdesac is a car-free neighborhood in Tempe, Arizona.
• The housing startup has 200 residents who use bikes, scooters, and ride-share services to get around.
• Take a look inside the walkable oasis filled with courtyards, local shops, and plenty of shade.

Walkable neighborhoods are on the rise. In a country run by cars, many millennials and Gen Zers are willing to spend more to live in a community where it's easy to get around without a vehicle, according to a 2023 study by the National Association of Realtors.

Enter Culdesac — the budding Arizona block making a name for itself as the "first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US."

Located in Tempe, home of Arizona State University, Culdesac is a community where cars are banned. It's been a project in the making since 2018. Last year, the neighborhood opened to residents. Now, 200 people live on the 17-acre block, a company representative told Business Insider. Eventually, Culdesac plans to house 1,000 residents.

As a New Yorker without a car, Culdesac intrigued me. So, on a recent trip to Arizona, I visited the car-free neighborhood and thought it felt like an urban oasis in the Phoenix suburb.

Culdesac is in the greater Phoenix area.

The neighborhood is located on the east side of Tempe, just about 10 miles from Phoenix.

I recently got a private tour — and the chance to chat with the CEO.

During my visit, I met with CEO and cofounder Ryan Johnson. After years of working in the real estate and transportation industries — and traveling to walkable places around the world — he was inspired to create a neighborhood free of cars.

From New York City to Budapest, Johnson says his travels launched a passion for cities.

"I saw those places and said, 'Wow, this is a much better way to build a city — with thoughtful architecture, great transportation systems,'" he told BI.

Johnson added that developments in the transportation industry, from ride-share apps to public transit systems and electric bikes, have made living car-free possible in places like Arizona.

Johnson, who grew up in Phoenix and currently lives at Culdesac, hasn't had a car in 14 years.

All around the property, I spotted electric bikes and scooters.

Visitors and delivery drivers can park their cars at Culdesac, but residents cannot.

The company representative told BI that for residents with cars, "it's regulated through their lease agreement that they won't park on-site or on any public streets within 0.25 miles."

Some residents park their cars elsewhere in Tempe, while others, like Johnson, don't have a vehicle at all. Residents get around on foot, bicycles, electric bikes, and electric scooters. The neighborhood has more than 1,000 bike parking spots.

One Culdesac resident previously told BI that living without a car can be challenging outside the neighborhood, as the surrounding city was built for vehicles.

However, according to the company's website, Culdesac provides residents with a mobility package worth almost $3,000 a year to make transportation easier. It includes a complimentary Valley Metro pass for the light rail that goes through Phoenix and Tempe and discounts on ride-share apps like Lyft and Waymo, a self-driving cab service.

My tour began in the plaza.

The plaza, located across from the neighborhood light rail stop, is the communal center of Culdesac. It's marked by a sculpture by artist Matthew Salenger that doubles as a canopy.

Here, there are games, shaded tables, and weekly events.

Every Thursday evening, Culdesac hosts Little Cholla, a public outdoor night market with music, vendors, food trucks, art, and activities such as line dancing and yoga.

There's also a two-story gym.

A two-story building in the plaza with giant windows is home to the neighborhood fitness center. It offers workout classes and is lined with equipment.

Across from the plaza, there are local shops run by residents.

From thrifted clothing to unique dishware and candles, there's plenty of local shopping at Culdesac.

According to the company's website, there are about 11 micro-retail shops, including a market, a laundromat, a medical spa, an art studio, and a plant shop.

These micro-retailers have the option to live in their workspace.

The company representative told BI that the small-business owners at Culdesac are residents, and some even live in their stores thanks to a zoning permit that allows them to do so.

All the stores have kitchens and bathrooms, and some have bedrooms.

Steps from the plaza, the neighborhood has a restaurant with outdoor seating.

In April 2023, Culdesac's Cocina Chiwas opened. It's a family-owned Mexican restaurant serving Chihuahuan cuisine.

As I strolled the communal paths, I noticed that Culdesac didn't feel as hot as the surrounding streets. That's because there's no asphalt on the property.

It's no secret that the Phoenix area is hot — sometimes dangerously so in the summers. So Culdesac was built to keep pedestrians cool without asphalt — a road material that gets hotter in the sun.

In the residential areas, the walkways are narrow.

Culdesac intentionally placed the buildings close together to create as much shade as possible.

The buildings' color is also no accident. Culdesac chose white because it reflects sunlight rather than absorbs it.

Between residential buildings, there are courtyards with grills, tables, hammocks, and firepits.

More than half of the entire property is open, landscaped space.

Culdesac has apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom floor plans.

Culdesac currently has 172 units. More will open in the fall, and the neighborhood will eventually have 760 units.

Studios start at $1,300 a month, one-bedrooms are $1,400, two-bedrooms are $2,100, and three-bedrooms are $2,900 a month.

On the outer rim of Culdesac, there's a bike shop with tune-up services.

Archer's Bike Shop sells manual and electric bikes. And Culdesac residents get complementary services and product discounts.

Culdesac seems like a place where people can not only live car-free but also get to know their neighbors.

After my visit to Culdesac, I chatted with Brad Biehl, a 24-year-old resident from Colombus, Ohio. Biehl has lived in the neighborhood for six months. He said one of the best parts of living there is the sense of community.

"We're usually in environments where we walk from our door to our car and from the car into the place," Biehl said. "But here, to go anywhere, I usually pass at least two or three of my neighbors, even when I'm just walking to the light rail right around the corner."

Biehl added that he's optimistic about the future of Culdesac when more residents and retailers come in.

"While there are still not a ton of people here yet, there's way more going on than I would've expected there to be," he told BI. "The number of serendipitous interactions that have taken place with the limited number of residents makes me super excited for what people will experience here."

• Disneyland performers voted over the weekend to unionize with the Actors' Equity Association.
• Mai Vo, a performer at the theme park, was part of the union push.
• She told BI that in the past her eye was stained by a costume, and her colleagues struggle with low pay.

Mai Vo began her career as a lookalike performer at Disneyland in 2004. She returned to the role in 2021.

In September 2022, she became involved in Magic United, culminating in an overwhelming vote by the Anaheim-based performers last week in favor of unionizing.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I realized that people felt unhappy at the happiest place on earth, which didn't make sense to me.

Initially, I was just seeing things that affected my colleagues: costume pieces that hurt them and being told that they needed to go out and perform anyway.

I'm doing partner work with another performer, a female who may weigh less than 100 pounds. Her costume includes a four-pound weight strapped to her back near her tailbone.

I don't understand why it has to be so heavy or why it's attached with just a waist strap instead of a harness. This is something we need to monitor, as it could cause injury over time.

My costume stained my eyeball

I have my own injury from a costume, which involved wearing sclera black contact lenses.

If I lift my eyelid, you can still see a gray stain around my eyeball.

When I show this to others, it really shocks some people, and it certainly doesn't make me feel very pretty.

I feel fortunate that it was just cosmetic and didn't leave me with vision damage, but I could still be injured by something else.

I feel like I've been relatively unscathed, but people around me haven't been, and that hurts.

Disneyland performers often push through pain and work really, really hard.

'Financial independence would be nice'

I've seen colleagues work extra hard, doing overtime and working six-day weeks just to survive in Southern California.

If I had to live on my own, I don't know if I'd survive on that salary.

I live at home, about 15 minutes from Disneyland, which is very fortunate. But living with my family as an adult isn't always easy.

Financial independence would be nice.

For many Disneyland performers, this is their dream job. They often say, "This is my dream job. I'm here, but I'm struggling."

That's really sad.

'We get to create magic for guests'

However, there are great aspects of this job — we get to create magic for guests, which is unique.

As a lookalike performer, I aim to create change in the world one person at a time, whether a child or an adult.

I typically have 45 to 75 seconds with guests, and in these fleeting moments, I try to teach them something historical or something about culture or values.

That could make a difference in the world, so I might as well try.

The push for unionization was driven by several factors, including a shift in opinion on unions across the US.

I also think people in the Characters and Parades department began to see their peers speaking up, saying things they'd been too scared to say before because Disney can be scary.

I'm hoping that people maybe just got inspired to be brave, finally.

Since we voted to unionize, I've felt less unhappy because I've put my energy into doing something about it. I'm using every talent I can think of to steer this group toward a better working environment.

It makes me happy to support my colleagues and listen to them.

I'm also just happy to perform.

• European nations say they're planning a $4.3 billion joint air and missile defense system.
• Creating an Iron Dome similar to Israel's 'is necessary," Poland's PM Donald Tusk said.
• The European Sky Shield Initiative involves 21 countries and aims to enhance NATO's defenses.

European countries are preparing to reveal plans for a $4.3 billion Iron Dome-style air and missile defense system, Poland's prime minister announced on Monday.

Donald Tusk told Polish broadcaster AVN that the proposal, which involves the cooperation of 21 nations, will be presented to the European Council in a matter of days, the Kyiv Post reported.

The European Sky Shield Initiative, or ESSI, is conceived as a means to jointly procure ground-based interoperable air defense systems.

"The recent attack on Israel showed how essential such systems are. There is no reason for Europe not to have its missile defense shield," Tusk said, per The Telegraph.

"Creating an iron dome against missiles and drones is necessary," he added.

In a not-too-subtle reference to Russia, Tusk also said that it doesn't take much imagination to figure out where a potential attack on Europe might come from, the Telegraph reported.

Israel's Iron Dome has long been seen as one of the world's most advanced air defense systems, protecting the country's skies from rockets and other projectiles.

In April, Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones against Israel, which Israel's air defenses almost completely shot down, with the assistance of US and UK forces.

While a direct hot-war attack by Russia on NATO Europe is not considered an immediate likelihood, many countries — particularly those that border Russia — are deeply alarmed. Many are also beefing up their defense spending in ways unimaginable before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

ESSI was first mooted by Germany's chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2022, not long after Russia had begun pounding Ukraine's civilian infrastructure with rockets. It's been led by Germany ever since.

In July 2023, Austria and Switzerland — both traditionally neutral states — signed up to the initiative, and as of February this year the number of countries has grown to 21, with the participation of Turkey and Greece.

German think tank SWP outlined in a report last year some of the systems the German government is seeking to buy or replenish as part of ESSI. These included US-made Patriots, the IRIS-T SLM — a short-to-medium-range system capable of targeting drones, aircraft, and cruise missiles — and the long-range Arrow system currently in use in Israel.

SWP also noted that although it considers an attack on NATO countries from Russia to be unlikely in the immediate term, "improving air and missile defense in Europe could curb Russia's coercive power vis-à-vis NATO and thereby strengthen the cohesion of the alliance."

Despite Tusk's own championing of ESSI, it has faced challenges from Poland's own president Andrzej Duda, who has opposed joining it on the grounds that the country already has its own joint air defense agreements with the US and the UK.

• The US economy is headed for a recession and a wave of corporate failures, Jeffrey Gundlach said.
•  Several sectors are slowing and higher interest rates are squeezing people and businesses, he said.
• Higher prices and interest costs are spurring consumers to rack up credit card debt, Gundlach said.

Prepare for a recession to strike and companies to collapse as stubborn inflation and sticky interest rates take their toll, Jeffrey Gundlach warned.

The economy will suffer a prolonged downturn this year or next, the billionaire investor told Fox Business on Tuesday. Gundlach pointed to "quite concerning" data released in the past month showing the majority of economic sectors are declining and others are growing more slowly.

The DoubleLine Capital founder and CEO also underlined the pain caused by inflation — which soared to over 9% in 2022 and remains well above the Fed's 2% target — and interest rates, which have surged from virtually zero to over 5%.

Consumers have faced a double whammy of higher prices for basics such as food, gas, and housing, while also owing more interest each month on their car loans, credit cards, mortgages, and other debts.

"All of these things are up tremendously, the things you have to buy," Gundlach said, citing car insurance and homeowners' insurance as examples. "Those credit card bills are really starting to add up."

Persistently higher rates will drive some companies to ruin and tank the wider economy, he predicted.

"I think that higher for longer is going to lead to a recession," Gundlach said. "You're not going to take out Tesla necessarily — they might have other problems, but it's not going to be because of interest rates.

"What you take out is the people, small businesses, medium businesses," as they'll run out of cash borrowing at 10% instead of 4%, he said.

Gundlach did note that softening economic data has raised the probability of two Fed rate cuts this year, but he doesn't expect that to stave off disaster.

It's worth emphasizing that the veteran fund manager has been ringing the recession alarm for more than two years.

He predicted last fall that a downturn would occur in the first half of this year, which seems unlikely at this point. Yet Gundlach is one of several experts who see cracks forming in the economy.