Author: openjargon

• Bill Gates said he learned an important scheduling lesson from fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.
• The Microsoft founder used to schedule his day down to the minute.
• But Buffett's intentionally light calendar helped him ditch the overbooked schedule. 

Microsoft founder Bill Gates says you should stop overbooking your calendar.

The billionaire shared a scheduling tip in a Friday Threads post, citing fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

"It took far too long for me to realize that you don't have to fill every second of your schedule to be successful," Gates wrote. "(In hindsight, it's a lesson I could have learned a lot sooner had I taken more peeks at Warren Buffett's intentionally light calendar.)"

While at Microsoft, Gates was known for his meticulous schedules, literally planning his day down to the minute — an approach Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also been said to take.

Last year, Gates admitted that he previously thought sleep was "lazy" and competed with his colleagues to see who could get the least rest.

"I thought that was the only way you could do things," Gates said of his packed schedule in a 2017 interview alongside Buffett.

Gates said things changed for him when he saw Buffett's intentionally sparse calendar.

"You control your time," Gates said. "It's not a proxy of your seriousness that you fill every minute in your schedule."

Buffett, who is CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has long been a champion of increasing productivity by decreasing busy work — an approach supported by science.

People who have the freedom to focus their time on creative work as opposed to performative busywork are happier, more productive, and more engaged at work, Business Insider previously reported. 

After seeing Buffett's schedule, Gates relaxed his own calendar. In 2020, BI documented a day in the life of the Microsoft billionaire, which included ample amounts of time for playing tennis, reading, blogging, and spending time with his family.

• Signal's CEO criticized OpenAI's handling of the Scarlett Johansson controversy in a TechCrunch interview.
• Meredith Whittaker said OpenAI's leadership is pulling "disrespectful" and "unnecessary" "Edge Lord bullshit."
• Johansson accused OpenAI of stealing her voice for its "Sky" assistant, which OpenAI denies.

Meredith Whittaker isn't holding back against OpenAI.

Signal's CEO has weighed in on the OpenAI-Scarlett Johansson controversy, accusing the buzzy AI company of having a "dorm room" culture.

In an interview with TechCrunch published on Friday, Whittaker was asked what she thought about allegations that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked Scarlett Johansson to provide her voice for the company's AI assistant and then, after Johansson declined, released a voice for their product that sounded similar to the actor.

"It's just like … 'Edge Lord' bullshit. It's so disrespectful. It's so unnecessary," Whittaker told TechCrunch.

She continued: "And it really tears the veil on this mythology that you're all serious people at the apex of science building the next Godhead, when it's very clear that the culture is dorm room high-jinks egged-on by a bunch of 'Yes men' who think every joke you say is funny, because they're paid to do that, and no one around there is taking this leadership by the shoulders and saying 'What the fuck are you doing!?'" 

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Whittaker's interview.

Earlier in the week, Whittaker took to X, formerly Twitter, to voice her opinions on the topic.

In response to an account reposting Johansson's statement accusing OpenAI of ripping off her voice, Whittaker wrote on Tuesday, "The edge lord disrespect, unprofessionalism, strategic blundering typical of actual decision making in the AI industry speaks infinitely louder than all the voluntary safety pledges ever could."

"In fact," Whittaker continued, "Those pledges serve mainly to highlight how far the walk is from the talk."

OpenAI unveiled the "Sky" artificial intelligence voice option last week alongside an announcement about the company's new GPT-4o large language model. People immediately began noting the voice's similarity to Johansson's, particularly her performance in the 2013 film "Her," where the actor played an AI assistant that the main character falls in love with.

On Monday, Johansson released a statement alleging that Altman had previously approached her about voicing Sky, which she declined.

Altman has said in a blog post that OpenAI did not intend for Sky's voice to resemble Johansson's, and that the voice belongs to a different actress the company hired. But Altman had posted a single-word statement on X after the product's launch: "her."

The company has paused using the Sky voice in its products, OpenAI said.

• AI tools have become increasingly popular in the workplace, but adoption can feel daunting.
• Three business leaders told Business Insider education is the key to unlocking AI's possibilities.
• The discussion was part of BI's event "Human-AI Collaboration: The Key to Workplace Efficiency and Innovation," presented by Dell Technologies and held on April 23.
• Click here to learn more.

Artificial intelligence is virtually everywhere now. Companies are recognizing that they need to adopt the technology in their businesses, but given all the possibilities it offers, it's hard to know where to start.

During Business Insider's virtual event "Human-AI Collaboration: The Key to Workplace Efficiency and Innovation," presented by Dell Technologies, a panel of business leaders and innovation experts advised workplaces on how to integrate AI into their systems.

One of the biggest hurdles to adopting AI is demystifying the technology and shifting its narrative to being a learnable tool. "This is well within your reach," said Matt Baker, the senior vice president of AI enablement at Dell Technologies. "And that big ecosystem is something that is approachable today."

Baker described AI's "embarrassment of riches." The market has exploded with new AI systems in the past year that tackle many different processes from task management to generative writing with competence. But with almost limitless applications, refining the use cases of AI will be the key to guiding its future in the workplace.

"We are so early in this phase of this really tremendous new technology that it's important to keep an open mind and also to just see what works and what doesn't work," said Dr. Mozziyar Etemadi, the medical director of advanced technologies at Northwestern Medicine. "The last thing we want is for this to create just another big vendor lock-in piece of software that everyone has to use and nobody likes using."

Baker and Etemadi were joined by Peter Miscovich, the global consulting practice lead, future of work for JLL. Miscovich said the biggest hurdle in AI adoption is figuring out exactly how to use the tech. "The need for training and change management and education could not be greater. I think I use generative AI every day, and it's taken me a year to become comfortable with that intervention and interface," he said.

At Dell, Baker's team has made education a core aspect of their AI adoption. "We have an entire educational pillar of what we're doing to ensure that we move our team members through that process so that they understand the technology," he said. "It's going to lead to better outcomes for them and ultimately and more importantly, better outcomes for our customers."

The panel also warned against a timid approach to AI. Demystifying the technology requires fully embracing AI's capabilities. For Dr. Mozziyar, that comes down to the design of the AI itself. "People should design the AI to kind of interact as close as you would interact with a person in a similar role," he said.

Baker added that building new systems around AI, rather than plugging AI into existing workflows, is crucial: "If it's a garbage process to begin with, you get a garbage outcome."

There should be intentionality behind these systems as well, Baker continued. "There's a framework for thinking through how you develop your own approach to that so that it's tailored to your company, your business, your organization," he said.

"We're very strong believers in use-case diagnostics," said Miscovich of his team's approach to configuring better ways to use AI. He explained that they first evaluate "how current processes are organized" before figuring out how generative AI can help make those processes "much more efficient and much more effective."

JLL recently launched multiple AI initiatives, including an HVAC energy-optimization platform to help reduce energy and service costs, and JLL GPT, a generative AI project built for the commercial-real-estate industry.

For Dr. Mozziyar, AI's greatest potential in the medical field is its ability to assess patients' conditions. His team is currently using AI tools that can analyze texts of patient appointments to find issues to follow up on. They're also using an in-house AI assistant that helps radiologists catch critical issues.

"We want the interaction with AI, or the use of AI, to paradoxically remove the barriers between, in our case physician and the computer," said Dr. Mozziyar. "Ideally it's just you and the patient."

But as the AI landscape accelerates and more companies begin adoption, Baker said that those who get on board now will reap the greatest rewards. "Run your own race, understand how it best applies, but understand it is a race," he said. "So get started."

• Trump threatened legal action over "The Apprentice" biopic that played at the Cannes Film Festival.
• It depicts Trump's rise in New York under the tutelage of Roy Cohn.
• Even if a lawsuit isn't successful, the threat can make it difficult for the movie to be released.

In the 1970s, the lawyer Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump a simple playbook for political fights: attack, counterattack, and never apologize.

Trump is employing that strategy on "The Apprentice," an independently produced biopic about him that premiered this week at the Cannes Film Festival.

In a cease-and-desist letter, one of Trump's attorneys threatened to sue over the movie's release, calling it "direct foreign interference in America's elections."

"If you do not immediately cease and desist all distribution and marketing of this libelous farce, we will be forced to pursue all appropriate legal remedies," lawyer David Warrington wrote in the letter, obtained Friday by Business Insider.

The movie depicts the rise of Trump as a New York real estate mogul in the 1970s and 1980s. Trump is played by Sebastian Stan, who is best known for his role in Marvel movies as an American soldier brainwashed by Russians.

In the biopic, he rises as a New York power broker under the tutelage of Cohn (played by "Succession" actor Jeremy Strong), a colorful and controversial figure in American politics who made his name in the 1950s as a Senate lawyer rooting out Communist Party members with US Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

According to critics who have seen it, the biopic depicts Trump undergoing liposuction, receiving surgery for hair loss, living with erectile dysfunction, and rejecting his brother, who suffered from alcohol addiction. It also shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana.

"The Apprentice," produced by Dublin-based production company Tailored Films, is still seeking deals with distribution companies that would put it in American theaters and on streaming services. Although a lawsuit against the filmmakers may not be successful, the threat of litigation may chill those negotiations.

The threat of a lawsuit may also work in the other direction, creating a Streisand Effect that draws more eyes to a movie that may have been otherwise relegated to the arthouse film market.

Warrington works for Dhillon Law, a firm that has represented Trump in several other cases — it collected nearly $900,000 from Trump's donor-funded PACs last year — and has brought defamation lawsuits against journalists in the past.

The cease-and-desist letter is addressed to director Ali Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, who directed Business Insider to a statement attributed to the movie's producers.

"The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president," the producers. "We want everyone to see it and then decide."

At a Cannes Film Festival press conference this week, Abbasi said the movie was really about "the way the system is built and the way the power runs through the system," according to the Los Angeles Times, and seemed unconcerned about a potential lawsuit.

"Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people," he said. "They don't talk about his success rate, though."

In a statement issued earlier this week, Strong compared Trump's attacks on journalism to rhetoric from Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong — comparisons Warrington called "unhinged."

Warrington also criticized Sherman, a Vanity Fair reporter, for making what he said were "racist, Marxist, and otherwise disparaging statements" about Trump in the past.

"The Apprentice" was partly funded by foreigners, according to Warrington's letter. The letter warns that the movie's release in the United States would amount to "foreign interference in our elections."

"The Movie, released six months before the November 2024 election, is directed at influencing the 2024 election by falsely defaming President Trump," he wrote.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, said the independently produced movie "doesn't even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store" and "is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked."

"We sent a cease and desist letter to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers," he said in a statement. "This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.

• While rehearsing for the Eras tour, Taylor Swift wore the $185 posture-correcting Forme Power Bra.
• The bra is designed to "immediately improve upper body alignment" and fix your posture.
• Beth Linker, author of "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America," is skeptical of such products.

It appears that even global pop stars may have a hard time standing up straight.

In Taylor Swift's profile for TIME's 2023 Person of the Year, photos revealed that she wore the Forme Power Bra while rehearsing for the Eras Tour last year. This is a sports bra designed by an orthopedic surgeon to help improve body alignment.

It comes with a hefty price tag but, at least, for Business Insider's senior editor Conz Preti, it's worth it. "I love this bra so much," Preti said after wearing it for nine months to help prevent her shoulders from hunching forward too much when playing tennis.

For $185, wearers should feel their upper body alignment "immediately improve" as the bra "activates and supports key muscle groups, helping guide the body into proper alignment naturally, without any discomfort," according to Forme's website.

This bra isn't the only posture-fixing product on the market. In fact, there's an entire industry built around posture-enhancing devices and fitness programs, totaling $1.25 billion spent annually worldwide, Beth Linker reported in her new book "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America."

If you find that one of these products works for you, then go ahead and use it, Linker said. But otherwise, she advised against shopping for a quick solution because you risk wasting money and injuring yourself while using a product that may not be right for you.

Linker is an author, medical historian, and former physical therapist. In "Slouch," she takes readers on a journey through the history of our societal obsession with good posture. From her point of view, trying to fix posture with pricey, one-step products isn't the best approach.

"The kind of bra that Taylor is wearing is incredibly expensive," Linker told BI. Companies can get away with marking up products like this by promising that they'll fix posture, she said, but she's not convinced they'll work for everyone. Forme didn't respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Why she's skeptical

Linker considers posture-fixing products like Taylor Swift's bra to be "one-size-fits-all solutions." They're designed to work for everybody, and that's where Linker takes issue.

These products don't account for the unique, individual physiological characteristics, lifestyle choices, and injuries that could be contributing to a person's "bad" posture.

A quick Google search for "posture-fixing products" yields countless results, ranging in price from a few bucks to a few hundred dollars. For example, you can buy a $16 harness-like posture corrector that uses compression to align the spine, kind of like Swift's bra. Or, you can opt for a bigger purchase, like this $349 "posture pump" that inflates when you lie down on it to align, decompress, and lubricate the spine, according to posturepump.com.

Before purchasing one of these products, Linker recommended asking yourself whether your posture really needs fixing in the first place.

The idea that slouching is bad for your health and well-being isn't grounded in science, but rather decades of "cultural shaming," which Linker outlines in her book. She explains the history and stigma against "bad" posture in the US.

"What I show in the book is that there have been a few studies that indicate that there isn't solid scientific evidence to show that a person who slouches more is more likely to have back pain," she said.

However, if you are experiencing pain or discomfort and think improving your spinal alignment will help, here are some things you can do.

The right way to care for your spine

Linker recommended consulting a doctor, physical therapist, or body-work professional before beginning to work on your posture. That way, they can expertly assess your unique needs and help you achieve your specific goals safely.

"Each person's back pain is individualistic," she said.

Incorporating movement into your daily routine is also a great way to reduce back pain and create better spinal alignment, Linker said, especially for those who sit for long hours during the work week. It's important to get up from your desk, walk around, stretch, and make sure you're not sitting in the same position for too long.

For example, she always keeps a standing desk handy not because standing is necessarily "better" than sitting, but because it gives her the option of changing positions throughout the day.

She also suggests practicing yoga or pilates. These types of exercise stretch and strengthen the muscles throughout the entire body, and can foster healthy alignment.

The bottom line: be skeptical of one-size-fits-all products that promise to "fix" your posture, Linker said. Instead, seek professional advice, move your body, and don't obsess over achieving perfect posture.