Author: openjargon

• United Airlines' new inflight safety video is creative but also extremely distracting.
• The video's busy and engaging theatrics overshadow key safety information.
• Japan Airlines' straightforward safety video likely helped save 379 people escape a fire in January. 

I didn't retain much from United Airlines' new inflight safety video. And I doubt passengers will either.

The video, released on Thursday, is the latest in United's series of entertaining briefings that attempt to combine required safety and fun into a heavily regulated part of flying.

The mini-movie follows a shiny blue ball as it snakes its way through lively and colorful sets that focus on key safety information, like seatbelt usage and how to use the oxygen mask.

In a press release, United said the video was designed with the goal of capturing the focus of passengers clearly and succinctly in hopes the creative scenes and transitions will help people pay more attention to its emergency instructions — especially frequent flyers who have likely memorized the spiel by now.

"The safest safety video is one that people will want to watch even on your 45th viewing," United's creative director, Meg Mitchell, who oversaw production, told NPR. "People start to tune out. And so we wanted something that felt like you could watch over and over and over again and still want to pay attention to."

However, the blue ball isn't just rolling slowly across the screen — it's bouncing across windows, knocking down dominoes, and being launched across seats. All the while, the crewmembers are simultaneously giving safety instructions and demonstrating the equipment.

I found the theatrics to be distracting

As someone who worked in airline safety before becoming an aviation journalist, I understand United is using entertainment to get people to focus on the video instead of their phones.

Despite good intentions, the video's in-your-face theatrics are just as distracting.

Throughout the entire video, I found myself focusing more on where the ball was going next in its winding web of tracks rather than on the core safety message.

For example, the ball overshadowed information like where the life jackets are located and how to use the exit doors. The seatbelt presentation was interrupted by a close-up of the ball instead of what the camera should focus on — the flight attendant giving the safety instructions.

There was simply a lot going on, and I can't imagine passengers — particularly first-time flyers or those who only travel once or twice a year — absorbed the important safety elements.

The video's launch comes shortly after the airline faced heightened FAA oversight after a string of safety incidents earlier this year.

In a statement to Business Insider on Thursday, United pointed to its collaboration with the agency on the video, saying it believes it is one "passengers will actively watch."

"We worked closely with the FAA throughout the production process to ensure the video aligned to their standards, culminating with the FAA's approval of the video," the airline said.

United and Japan Airlines' safety videos are polar opposites

United's video piggybacks on a similar discussion I wrote about in January after a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 caught fire in Tokyo.

All 379 passengers on board that plane survived, and the airline's no-nonsense safety video likely helped.

Instead of humor and Hollywood-style sets, JAL takes a straightforward approach to its safety instructions, providing clear and concise information without any extra pizzazz that could distract from the core content.

Notably, its warning to leave luggage behind during evacuations included a visual explanation of how to go down the slide — including arms crossed and heels off — and showed the consequences of failing to follow instructions.

United, as well as many other Western carriers, lack this level of detail in their videos.

Don't get me wrong; I do think there is room for creativity in an airline safety video so long as it clearly conveys the message — but, in my opinion, United's got lost in the theatrics this time.

• A possible bug in iOS 17.5 has left some iPhone owners seeming freaked out.
• Users said deleted pictures were restored to their Photos app after the latest software update.
• The alleged issue sparked debates about Apple's privacy.

Photos that were thought to be long gone are popping back up for some iPhone owners.

Apple's iOS 17.5 update is here, but some users are saying that the update brought back deleted pictures from years ago.

In a Tuesday post to the r/ios subreddit, one user said they were "thoroughly freaked out" to find photos from 2021 that they'd believed had already been permanently deleted.

"I went to send a picture and saw that the latest pictures were nsfw material we'd made years ago," the poster said. "WTF."

"Same here. I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly," another user responded.

A different poster reported a similar issue, saying, "A photo I took two years ago has suddenly reappeared at the top of my photos app. I regularly delete photos from my photo library to export them to my PC, which makes this even stranger."

MacRumors was the first to spot the concerns about Apple's Photos app.

Users also expressed privacy concerns.

"Apple is a privacy advocate," one person wrote in reply to the first Reddit post, but said if deleted files are not really deleted after so many years, "how can we trust it?

The iOS 17.5 update includes updates to the Lock Screen, "bug fixes," and security updates. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Last year's job cuts weren't the end of layoffs. Further reductions have begun in 2024.
• Companies like Tesla, Google, Microsoft, Nike, and Amazon have announced plans for cuts this year.
• See the full list of corporations reducing their worker numbers in 2024.

A slew of companies across the tech, media, finance, and retail industries made significant cuts to staff in 2023. Tech titans like IBM, Google, Microsoft, finance giants like Goldman Sachs, and manufacturers like Dow all announced layoffs.

This year is looking grim too. And it's only May.

Nearly 40% of business leaders surveyed by ResumeBuilder think layoffs are likely at their companies this year, and about half say their companies will implement a hiring freeze. ResumeBuilder talked to about 900 leaders at organizations with more than 10 employees. Half of those surveyed cited concerns about a recession as a reason.

Another major factor is artificial intelligence. Around four in 10 respondents said they'll conduct layoffs as they replace workers with AI. Dropbox, Google, and IBM have already announced job cuts related to AI.

Here are the dozens of companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2024.

Nike's up-to-$2 billion cost-cutting plan will involve severances.

Nike announced its cost-cutting plans in a December 2023 earnings call, discussing a slow growth in sales. The call subsequently resulted in Nike's stock plunging.

"We are seeing indications of more cautious consumer behavior around the world," Nike Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said in December.

Google laid off hundreds more workers in 2024.

On January 10, Google laid off hundreds of workers in its central engineering division and members of its hardware teams — including those working on its voice-activated assistant.

In an email to some affected employees, the company encouraged them to consider applying for open positions at Google if they want to remain employed. According to the email, April 9 will be the last day for those unable to secure a new position.

The tech giant laid off thousands throughout 2023, beginning with a 6% reduction of its global workforce (about 12,000 people) last January.

Discord is laying off 170 employees.

Discord employees learned about the layoffs in an all-hands meeting and a memo sent by CEO Jason Citron in early January.

"We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020," Citron said in the memo. "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."

In August 2023, Discord reduced its headcount by 4%. According to CNBC, the company was valued at $15 billion in 2021.

Citi will cut 20,000 from its staff as part of its corporate overhaul.

The layoffs announced in January are part of a larger Citigroup initiative to restructure the business and could leave the company with a remaining head count of 180,000 — excluding its Mexico operations.

In an earnings call that month, the bank said that layoffs could save the company up to $2.5 billion after it suffered a "very disappointing" final quarter last year.

Amazon-owned Twitch also announced job cuts.

Twitch announced on January 10 that it would cut 500 jobs, affecting over a third of the employees at the live-streaming company.

CEO Dan Clancy announced the layoffs in a memo, telling staff that while the company has tried to cut costs, the operation is "meaningfully" bigger than necessary.

"As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible," Clancy wrote. "Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch."

BlackRock is planning to cut 3% of its staff.

Larry Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, and Rob Kapito, the firm's president, announced in January that the layoffs would affect around 600 people from its workforce of about 20,000.

However, the company has plans to expand in other areas to support growth in its overseas markets.

"As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources," the company leaders said in a memo.

Rent the Runway is slashing 10% of its corporate jobs as part of a restructuring.

In the fashion company's January announcement, COO and president Anushka Salinas said she will also be leaving the firm, Fast Company reported.

Unity Software is eliminating 25% of its workforce.

Around 1,800 jobs at the video game software company will be affected by the layoffs announced, Reuters reported in January.

eBay is cutting 1,000 jobs.

In a January 23 memo, CEO Jamie Iannone told employees that the eBay layoffs will affect about 9% of the company's workforce.

Iannone told employees that layoffs were necessary as the company's "overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business."

The company also plans to scale back on contractors.

Microsoft is reducing its headcount by 1,900 at Activision, Xbox, and ZeniMax.

In late January, nearly three months after Microsoft acquired video game firm Activision Blizzard, the company announced layoffs in its gaming divisions. The layoffs mostly affect employees at Activision Blizzard.

"As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business," Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in a memo obtained by The Verge.

The cuts come a year after the tech giant announced it was reducing its workforce by 10,000 employees. It then slashed a further 1,000 roles across sales and customer service teams in July 2023.

Salesforce is cutting 700 employees across the company, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Salesforce announced a round of layoffs that the company says will affect 1% of its global workforce, The Journal reported in late January.

The cuts followed a wave of cuts at the cloud giant last year. In 2023, Marc Benioff's company laid off about 10% of its total workforce — or roughly 7,000 jobs. The CEO said the company over-hired during the pandemic.

Flexport lays off 15% of its workers.

In late January, the US logistics startup laid off 15% of its staff which is around 400 workers.

The move came after Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen initiated a 20% reduction of its workforce of an estimated 2,600 employees in October.

Flexport kicked off 2024 with the announcement that it raised $260 million from Shopify and made "massive progress toward returning Flexport to profitability."

iRobot is laying off around 350 employees and founder Colin Angle will step down as chairman and CEO.

The company behind the Roomba Vacuum announced layoffs in late January around the same time Amazon decided not to go through with its proposed acquisition of the company, the Associated Press reported.

UPS will cut 12,000 jobs in 2024.

The UPS layoffs will affect 14% of the company's 85,000 managers and could save the company $1 billion in 2024, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said during a January earnings call.

Paypal CEO Alex Chriss announced the company would lay off 9% of its workforce.

Announced in late January, this round of layoffs will affect about 2,500 employees at the payment processing company.

"We are doing this to right-size our business, allowing us to move with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive profitable growth," CEO Alex Chriss wrote in a January memo. "At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth."

Okta is cutting roughly 7% of its workforce.

The digital-access-management company announced its plans for a "restructuring plan intended to improve operating efficiencies and strengthen the Company's commitment to profitable growth" in an SEC filing in February.

The cuts will impact roughly 400 employees.

Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told staff in a memo that "costs are still too high," CNBC reported.

Snap has announced more layoffs.

The company behind Snapchat announced in February that it's reducing its global workforce by 10%, according to an SEC filing.

Estée Lauder said it will eliminate up to 3,100 positions.

The cosmetics company announced in February that it would be cutting 3% to 5% of its roles as part of a restructuring plan.

Estee Lauder reportedly employed about 62,000 employees around the world as of June 30, 2023.

DocuSign is eliminating roughly 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.

The electronic signature company said in an SEC filing in February that most of the cuts will be in its sales and marketing divisions.

Zoom is slashing 150 jobs.

The latest reduction announced in February amounts to about 2% of its workforce.

Paramount Global is laying off 800 employees days after record-breaking Super Bowl.

In February, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish sent a memo to employees announcing that 800 jobs — about 3% of its workforce — were being cut.

Deadline obtained the memo less than a month after reporting plans for layoffs at Paramount. The announcement comes on the heels of Super Bowl LVIII reaching record-high viewership across CBS, Paramount+, and Nickelodeon, and Univision.

Morgan Stanley is trimming its wealth management division by hundreds of staffers.

Morgan Stanley is laying off several hundred employees in its wealth-management division, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, representing roughly 1% of the team.

The wealth-management division has seen some slowdown in recent months, with net new assets down by about 8% from a year ago. The layoffs mark the first major move by newly-installed CEO Ted Pick, who took the reins from James Gorman on January 1.

Cisco slashes more than 4,000 jobs amid corporate tech sales slowdown.

In February, networking company Cisco announced it was slashing 5% of its workforce, or upwards of 4,000 jobs, Bloomberg reported.

The company said it was restructuring after an industry-wide pullback in corporate tech spending — which execs said they expect to continue through the first half of the year.

Expedia Group is cutting more than 8% of its workforce.

Cutbacks part of an operational review at online travel giant Expedia Group are expected to impact 1,500 roles this year, a company spokesperson told BI.

The company's product and technology division is set to be the worst hit, a report from GeekWire said, citing an internal memo CEO Peter Kern sent to employees in late February.

"While this review will result in the elimination of some roles, it also allows the company to invest in core strategic areas for growth," the spokesperson said.

"Consultation with local employee representatives, where applicable, will occur before making any final decisions," they added.

Sony is laying off 900 workers

The cuts at Sony Interactive Entertainment swept through its game-making teams at PlayStation Studios.

Insomniac Games, which developed the hit Spider-Man video game series, as well as Naughty Dog, the developers behind Sony's flagship 'The Last of Us' video games' were hit by the cuts, the company announced on February 27.

All of PlayStation's London studio will be shuttered, according to the proposal.

"Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences – allowing PlayStation gamers to explore our worlds in different ways – as well as launching games on additional devices such as PC and Mobile, requires a different approach and different resources," PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst wrote.

Hulst added that some games in development will be shut down, though he didn't say which ones.

In early February, Sony said it missed its target for selling PlayStation 5 consoles. The earnings report sent shares tumbling and the company's stock lost about $10 billion in value.

Bumble is slashing 30% of its workforce

On February 27, the dating app company announced that it would be reducing its staff due to "future strategic priorities" for its business, per a statement.

The cuts will impact about 30% of its about 1,200 person workforce or about 350 roles, a representative for Bumble told BI by email.

"We are taking significant and decisive actions that ensure our customers remain at the center of everything we do as we relaunch Bumble App, transform our organization and accelerate our product roadmap," Bumble Inc CEO Lidiane Jones said in a statement.

Electronic Arts is reducing its workforce by 5%

Electronic Arts is laying off about 670 workers, equating to 5% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported in late February.

The gaming firm axed two mobile games earlier in February, which it described as a difficult decision in a statement issued to GamesIndustry.biz.

CEO Andrew Wilson reportedly told employees in a memo that it would be "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry."

Wilson also said in the memo that the cuts came as a result of shifting customer needs and a refocusing of the company, Bloomberg reported.

IBM cutting staff in marketing and communications

IBM's chief communications officer Jonathan Adashek told employees on March 12 that it would be cutting staff, CNBC reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

An IBM spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that the cuts follow a broader workforce action the company announced during its earnings call in January.

"In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM's global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with," they said.

IBM has also been clear about the impact of AI on its workforce. Last May, IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expected to pause hiring on roles that could be replaced by AI, especially in areas like human resources and other non-consumer-facing departments.

"I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," Krishna told Bloomberg at the time.

Stellantis is slashing 400 white-collar jobs

On March 22, the owner of Jeep and Dodge announced it's laying off employees on its engineering, technology, and software teams in an effort to cut costs, CNBC reported.

Workers learned they were being let go through video calls after the car company ordered them to work remotely for the day. The cuts are set to occur on March 31.

Amazon is laying off hundreds in its cloud division in yet another round of cuts this year

Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs from its cloud division known as Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg reported on April 3.

The reduction will impact employees on the sales and marketing team and those working on tech for its retail stores, Bloomberg reported.

"We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.

On March 26, Amazon announced another round of job cuts after the company said it was slashing 'several hundred' jobs at its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions earlier this year to refocus on more profitable products.

"We've identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact," Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in January.

This year's cuts follow the largest staff layoff in the company's history. In 2023, the tech giant laid off 18,000 workers.

Apple has cut over 600 employees in California

Apple has slashed its California workforce by more than 600 employees.

The cuts follow Apple's decision to withdraw from its car and smartwatch display projects.

The tech giant filed a series of notices to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program. One of the addresses was linked to a new display development office, while the others were for the company's EV effort, Bloomberg reported.

Apple officially shut down its decadelong EV project in February. At the time, Bloomberg reported that some employees would move to generative AI, but others would be laid off.

Bloomberg noted that the layoffs were likely an undercount of the full scope of staff cuts, as Apple had staff working on these projects in other locations.

Representatives for Apple did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside normal business hours.

Tesla is laying off over 10% of its workforce

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a memo to employees Sunday, April 14, at nearly midnight in California, informing them of the company's plan to cut over 10% of its global workforce.

In his companywide memo, Musk cited "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" as the reason behind the reductions.

An email sent to terminated employees obtained by BI read: "Effective now, you will not need to perform any further work and therefore will no longer have access to Tesla systems and physical locations."

On April 29, Musk reportedly sent an email stating the need for more layoffs at Tesla. He also announced the departure of two executives and said that their reports would also be let go. Six known Tesla executives have left the company since layoffs began in April.

Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive is reducing its workforce by 5%

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, said on April 16 that it would be "eliminating several projects" and reducing its workforce by about 5%.

The move — a part of its larger "cost reduction program" — will cost the video game publisher up to $200 million. It's expected to be completed by December 31.

As of March 2023, the company said it employed approximately 11,580 full-time workers.

Peloton is reducing its staff by 15% as the CEO steps down as well

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is stepping down, the company announced May 2. Along with his departure, the fitness company is also laying off about 400 workers.

McCarthy is leaving his role just two years after replacing John Foley as CEO and president in 2022. Peloton said the changes are expected to reduce annual expenses by over $200 million by the end of fiscal 2025 as part of a larger restructuring plan.

Microsoft-owned Xbox is cutting more jobs

Xbox is offering some employees voluntary severance packages in May after shutting three units and absorbing a fourth earlier in the month. Microsoft had already made cuts to the division at the start of 2024.

According to Bloomberg, the offers were extended to producers, quality assurance testers, and more staff at Xbox-owned ZeniMax. Others across the Xbox organization were told that more cuts are coming.

Xbox president Matt Booty told staff in a May 8 town hall that the studio closures are part of an effort to free up more resources, Bloomberg reported.

Indeed is cutting 1,000 workers after laying off 2,200 a year ago

Careers site Indeed says it will lay off roughly 1,000 employees, or 8% of its workforce, as it looks to simplify its organization.

CEO Chris Hyams took responsibility for "how we got here" in a memo in May but said the company is not yet set up for growth after last year's global hiring slowdown caused multiple quarters of declining sales.

Hyams said the latest cuts will be more concentrated in the US and primarily affect R&D and Go-to-Market teams. That's in contrast to last year's across-the-board reduction of 2,200 workers.

Walmart is axing hundreds of corporate jobs

Retail giant Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs and asking remote employees to come to work, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Workers in smaller offices, such as those in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto, are also being asked to move to central locations like Walmart's corporate headquarters in Arkansas or those in New Jersey or California, the Journal reported.

Under Armour is slashing an unspecified number of jobs, incurring $22 million in severance costs

Under Armour confirmed it was conducting layoffs in its quarterly earnings report, which was released May 16.

The company said it will pay out employee severance and benefits expenses of roughly $15 million in cash-related and $7 million in non-cash charges this year related to a restructuring plan, with close to half of that occurring in the current fiscal quarter.

"This is not where I envisaged Under Armour playing at this point in our journey," CEO Kevin Plank told investors on the company's full-year earnings call. "That said, we'll use this turbulence to reconstitute our brand and business, giving athletes, retail customers and shareholders bigger and better reasons to care about and believe in Under Armour's potential."

• A long list of prominent GOP politicians have flocked to Trump's ongoing trial in Manhattan.
• They include the speaker of the House, one governor, and several senators and House members.
• It's an effort to show loyalty — and for some, boost their VP chances.

Former President Donald Trump's hush-money trial in New York is suddenly the biggest magnet for ambitious Republican politicians hoping to demonstrate their loyalty.

In recent weeks, the Manhattan criminal courthouse has played host to the speaker of the House, several GOP senators and vice-presidential contenders, over a dozen House members, and even two state attorneys general.

It's resulted in at least one senator missing a vote, the postponing of a congressional mark-up, and a bevy of Republican heavyweights turning themselves into attack dogs for the presumptive 2024 nominee — who remains barred from criticizing jurors and witnesses via a gag order.

And Trump has yet to receive a courtroom visit from his own wife, Melania.

Here are all of the Republicans who've flocked to the trial so far.

Sen. Rick Scott was the first elected Republican to show up. He ended up missing a vote.

On Thursday, May 9, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida became the first elected Republican to show up to the trial.

"What he is going through is just despicable," Scott told reporters outside the courtroom, arguing the trial was "clearly criminal" and was being run by "political thugs."

Scott's visit came in the middle of the week, while the Senate was taking votes on a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years.

The Florida senator, who's up for reelection in November, ended up missing a procedural vote on the bill later that day.

That prompted his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell, to slam him as "sucking up to a defendant found liable for sexual abuse" and putting his "own extreme agenda before the people he was elected to represent."

Sen. JD Vance was the first VP contender to show up.

On Monday, May 13, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio was among the next crop of senators to show up — and the first vice presidential contender to do so.

He later took to social media, calling the courtroom "dingy" while suggesting that the "main goal of the trial is psychological torture."

Sen. Tommy Tuberville

Tuberville came to the trial alongside Vance, where he derided jurors as being "supposedly American."

He later told the conservative network Newsmax that he came to the trial to help Trump "overcome this gag order."

Gov. Doug Burgum was the 2nd VP contender to show up.

Burgum — another VP contender whose political stock has been on the rise recently — attended the trial on Tuesday, May 14.

He and the other Republicans in attendance quickly made waves on social media for wearing apparently matching outfits.

Gov. Burgum calls hush money trial a "sham trial" and a "scam trial." pic.twitter.com/2e5Ik4oS8i

— Emmanuel Touhey (@EmmanuelTouhey) May 14, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Vivek Ramaswamy showed up, too.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate, showed up to the trial on the same day as Burgum.

He also happens to be a vice presidential contender — albeit, a lower-tier one.

House Speaker Mike Johnson

The highest-ranking Republican to visit the trial has been House Speaker Mike Johnson, who traveled to Manhattan on the same day as Burgum and Ramaswamy.

The speaker delivered a series of remarks — including slamming the district attorney, the judge, and Michael Cohen — without taking questions afterwards.

"He is soon to be officially the nominee of one of the major parties in our country," Johnson said of Trump. "Running for president, and they have him tied up here in this ridiculous prosecution. That is not about justice, it's all about politics, and everybody can see that."

He concluded by insisting that he came to the trial "on my own" because he's "deeply concerned about this."

Over a dozen other House Republicans have also shown up

On Thursday, May 16, the biggest crop of House Republicans yet attended Trump's trial.

That included Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who was met with chants of "Beetlejuice" as she took to the microphones outside the courtroom.

I’ll never stop standing up for President Trump, even if I’m the last one standing. pic.twitter.com/ywPQpVWChR

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 16, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Here are the 14 rank-and-file House Republicans who've attended the trial so far:

• Andy Biggs of Arizona
• Lauren Boebert of Colorado
• Michael Cloud of Texas
• Eli Crane of Arizona
• Byron Donalds of Florida
• Matt Gaetz of Florida
• Bob Good of Virginia
• Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee
• Cory Mills of Florida
• Nicole Malliotakis of New York
• Ralph Norman of South Carolina
• Andy Ogles of Tennessee
• Anna Paulina Luna of Florida
• Mike Waltz of Florida

The top law enforcement officials in Iowa and Alabama have also flocked to a criminal defendant's defense.

One other intriguing cohort of trial attendees: two Republican state attorneys general.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall were among the cohort of Republicans who attended the trial on Monday, May 13.

Their attendance is particularly striking: both are the top law enforcement officials in their respective states, and they're publicly taking the side of a criminal defendant in another state.

Both may be seeking to burnish their credentials with the MAGA-right ahead of future gubernatorial or US Senate races.

• Sam Altman said he was in an "adrenaline-charged state" when he was ousted as OpenAI CEO.
• Altman said he didn't eat or sleep much, and wasn't fazed by texts he received from world leaders. 
• His takeaway from the experience is the "remarkable" human ability to adapt to new circumstances.

As the CEO of OpenAI, the last couple of years have been a whirlwind for Sam Altman.

Following the release of ChatGPT, Altman has been at the forefront of the AI race. He's met with world leaders, feuded with Elon Musk, joined the billionaire club, and was fired from the company he cofounded before quickly securing his return.

If he had "a little bit more mental space to step back," there would be something crazy to note every day, Altman said recently on the tech podcast "The Logan Bartlett Show."

But if he had to choose a surreal moment that stuck out to him, he said it would be the four-day period when he was ousted from OpenAI — and not because of the actual ousting. On the contrary, the time was surreal because of how he navigated what, in hindsight, was a very unusual series of events.

Altman describes the time as an "insane super jammed" four and a half days where his body was in an "adrenaline-charged state."

Within a day of his ousting, Altman said he received 10 to 20 texts from presidents and prime ministers around the world. At the time, it felt "very normal," and he responded to the messages and thanked the leaders without feeling fazed.

"It was just like weird," Altman told podcast host Logan Bartlett. "Like not sleeping much, not really eating, energy levels like very high, very clear, very focused."

Once he secured his reinstatement as CEO a few days later, he said he stopped at a diner on the way to Napa the day before Thanksgiving and realized he hadn't eaten in days. So naturally, he ordered four "heavy" entrées, including "two milkshakes just for me," he said.

Altman said the celebratory meal was "very satisfying."

But the CEO said the situation still didn't really hit him until he received a text from a president who said they were happy everything was resolved.

"Then it hit me that like, oh yeah, like all of these people had texted me and it wasn't weird," Altman said.

Altman said the odd part was realizing that it should've been weird to have multiple world leaders texting him during this situation — but it wasn't.

The CEO said the situation made him realize humans' ability to adapt to any circumstance.

"My takeaway is human adaptability to almost anything is just like much more remarkably strong than we realize," Altman said on the podcast. "And you can get used to anything as the new normal, good or bad, pretty fast."

Altman said this wasn't the first time he learned that lesson, and he's learned it many times over the last couple of years.

"But I think it says something remarkable about humanity and good for us and good as we stare down at this like big transition," he said.

• Inflation be higher for longer than people think because of multiple factors, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg TV.
• Markets are too optimistic about inflation, interest rates, and the US economy, Dimon said.
• "I think the chance of inflation staying high or rates going up are higher than people think," he said.

Markets underestimate inflation's likely endurance, as an array of factors keep price upside churning, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg TV.

"I think the underlying inflation may not go away the way people expect it to," he told the outlet at the JPMorgan Global Markets Conference. He added: "I think there are a lot of inflationary forces in front of us that may keep a little bit higher than people expect." 

Looking to the future, Dimon listed examples such as the green energy transition, infrastructure buildout, and geopolitical remilitarization as worrying sources of accelerating price growth. 

Upcoming policy changes could also play a role here: rising trade restrictions or continued fiscal overspending could propel price momentum.

It's a point Dimon keeps reiterating despite market bullishness, as investors keep trading on the premise that subsiding inflation allows interest rates to eventually ease.

To Dimon, this "a lot of happy talk," he said simply. In his view, chances that monetary policy stays unchanged — or that it tightens — are higher than most expect. What's more, soft landing hopes should be half of what they are, he added.

But in Bank of America's latest Global Fund Manager survey, positivity did shine through. In fact, Tuesday's report marked the highest bout of investor optimism since late 2022, brought on by rising confidence in interest rate cuts this year. 

Dimon's push back has been ongoing. In his annual letter to JPMorgan shareholders published last month, he expressed similarly doomy outlooks concerning inflation, interest rates and the economy's trajectory. Geopolitical tensions are also worrying the bank's head, he then said.

But recently, he's offered calming rhetoric when it comes to at least one global competitor: China. On this front, Dimon has argued that the US should not shy away from competitive engagement with Beijing, despite the country's growing ties to Russia. 

"Engagement is the right thing to do. China is not a natural enemy to the United States, they have a lot of their own problems. So to me, we can work together as best we can," he told Bloomberg.

• Consumers are finally slowing their spending and experts say that's a warning sign of the economy. 
• Americans have propped up the economy with a powerful spending spree in the last two years.
• But consumer confidence is starting to wane amid elevated inflation and a weakening job market.

Consumer spending is slowing, and it's a warning shot for the US economy as it navigates the approach to a soft or a hard landing. 

Americans are showing signs of strain under a higher cost of living and a cooling job market. After a wild spending spree that propped up the economy for most of the last two years, retail sales were unexpectedly soft in April, coming in basically flat compared to the 0.4% growth economists expected for the month. Meanwhile, March retail sales were revised downward, with spending rising 0.6% instead of the initially reported 0.7%.

"The American consumer is losing some luster. The retail sales number was sluggish with a capital 'S,'" economist David Rosenberg said in a note this week. "The downward revisions to the sales numbers are an important yellow flag to macro 'perma-bulls,' Because these suggest the economy has been far less strong than previously displayed."

Rosenberg has been calling for a recession for months, predicting the economy to face a downturn later this year. A hard landing has been postponed partly because of the strength of consumer spending in 2023, he wrote previously. 

Americans are showing other signs that they're struggling to keep up with the pace of inflation. A survey conducted by financial services firm Primerica found that 67% of middle-class respondents said their income was falling behind the cost of living over the first quarter. Among those people, 74% said they were pulling back on discretionary purchases, such as eating out.

Americans are also saving less, though they likely depleted their excess savings from the pandemic in March of this year. The personal savings rate slumped to 3.2% in March, according to government data, down from 5.2% a year ago.

Meanwhile, the bills are piling up for US households. Total household debt surged to a record $17.6 trillion over the first quarter, according to the New York Fed's latest Household Debt and Credit Report. Nearly 9% of credit card loans and 8% of car loans became delinquent over the first quarter, Fed data shows.

The percentage of credit card loans that were at least 90 days overdue, which qualifies as serious delinquency, rose to 10.6% in the first quarter. That's the highest 90-day delinquency rate recorded since 2012, when the job market was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis.

Danielle DiMartino Booth, a top forecaster who's been making the case the US is already in a recession, says consumer spending has taken a hit partly due to the weakening job market. Job growth has slowed in recent months, with the US adding a softer-than-expected 175,000 jobs in April. Meanwhile, consumer confidence declined for the third month in a row, with just 12% of Americans expecting more jobs to be available in the future, according to the Conference Board's latest survey.

"Americans had been so confident that they were spending a lot on their credit cards, hoping that the income gains would follow through and allow them to spend beyond their means," Booth said in an interview with Schwab network last week. "The household is finally saying: oh wait a minute, those income gains that I've been planning for, those income gains that allowed me to buy that plane ticket when I should have mabe driven with the family on spring break, I shouldn't have spent that money."

The US hasn't entered a recession, but fears of a downturn have been rising as interest rates look poised to stay higher for longer. The New York Fed sees a 50% chance that the economy will tip into recession by April 2025.

• The HBO documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash" explores the rise and fall of movie-ticket subscription company MoviePass.
• "MoviePass, MovieCrash" is based on award-winning reporting from Business Insider.
• The documentary debuts May 29 on HBO and Max. Watch the trailer below.

The upcoming HBO documentary, "MoviePass, MovieCrash" chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the movie-ticket subscription company MoviePass.

After gaining millions of subscribers when the company dropped its monthly price to $10 a month back in 2017, MoviePass was hyped as the Netflix for movie theaters as moviegoers headed to their local cineplexes in droves. But it all turned out too good to be true as the company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars, eventually going bankrupt in 2019 (cofounder Stacy Spikes has since relaunched it).

"MoviePass, MovieCrash," based on my award-winning reporting, delves into what was happening behind the scenes at the company that led to its downfall, including the ousting of its cofounders, Spikes and Hamet Watt, and questionable activities done by the company's CEO, Mitch Lowe, and Ted Farnsworth, the head of MoviePass' parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics. (Both Lowe and Farnsworth were charged with securities fraud in 2022 and are awaiting trial.)

"MoviePass, MovieCrash" is produced by Assemble Media and Mark Wahlberg's Unrealistic Ideas ("McMillions"). It debuts Wednesday, May 29 on HBO and will stream on Max.

• Retrieval-augmented generation is enhancing large language models' accuracy and specificity.
• However, it still poses challenges and requires specific implementation techniques.
• This article is part of "Build IT," a series about digital tech trends disrupting industries.

The November 2022 launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT kicked off the latest wave of interest in AI, but it came with some serious issues. People could ask questions on almost any topic, but many of the large language model's answers were uselessly generic — or completely wrong. No, ChatGPT, the population of Mars is not 2.5 billion.

Such problems still plague large language models. But there's a solution: retrieval-augmented generation. This technique, invented in 2020 by a group of researchers at Meta's AI research group, is rewriting the rules of LLMs. The first wave of vague, meandering chatbots is receding, replaced by expert chatbots that can answer surprisingly specific questions.

RAG isn't well known outside the AI industry but has come to dominate conversations among insiders — especially those creating user-facing chatbots. Nvidia used RAG to build an LLM that helps its engineers design chips; Perplexity employs RAG to construct an AI-powered search engine that now claims over 10 million monthly active users; Salesforce used RAG to build a chatbot platform for customer relations.

"For a long time we were looking at databases, and we had a lot of excitement for AI. But what was the unique use case? RAG was the first," said Bob van Luijt, the CEO and cofounder of the AI data infrastructure company Weaviate. "From a user perspective, there was a simple problem, which is that generative models were stateless." (Meaning they couldn't update themselves in response to new information.) "If you tell it, 'Hey, I had a conversation with Bob,' the next time you use it, it won't remember. RAG solves that."

The innovation that's sweeping AI

"Every industry that has a lot of unstructured data can benefit from RAG," van Luijt said. "That ranges from insurance companies to legal companies, banks, and telecommunications." Companies in these industries often have vast troves of data, but sifting through it to gain insights is a difficult task. "That's where RAG adds a lot of value. You throw that information in, and you're like, 'Make sense of that for me.' And it does."

That's accomplished by adding a step when an LLM generates a reply. Instead of offering a response rooted only in how the model was trained, RAG retrieves additional data provided to it by the person or organization implementing RAG — most often text, though the latest methods can handle images, audio, and video — and incorporates it into its reply.

Nadaa Taiyab, a data scientist at the healthcare IT company Tegria, offered an example from the chatbot she designed, which uses RAG to answer nutrition questions based on data from NutritionFacts.org. The nonprofit has highlighted studies linking eggs and type 2 diabetes, a correlation that most LLMs won't report if asked whether eggs reduce the risk of diabetes. However, her RAG-powered chatbot can retrieve and reference NutritionFacts.org's published work in its response. "And it just works," Taiyab said. "It's pretty magical."

But it's not perfect

That magic makes RAG the go-to technique for those looking to build a chatbot grounded in specific, often proprietary data. However, van Lujit warned, "Like any tech, it's not a silver bullet."

Any data used for RAG must be converted to a vector database, where it's stored as a series of numbers an LLM can understand. This is well-understood by AI engineers, as it's core to how generative AI works, but the devil is in the details. Van Lujit said developers need to adopt specific techniques, such as "chunking strategies," that manipulate how RAG presents data to the LLM.

Fixed-size chunking, the most basic strategy, divides data like a pizza: every slice is (hopefully) the same size. But that's not necessarily the best approach, especially if an LLM needs to access data that's spread across many different documents. Other strategies, such as "semantic chunking," use algorithms to pick out the relevant data spread across many documents. This approach requires more expertise to implement, however, and access to powerful computers. Put simply: It's better, but it's not cheap.

Overcoming that obstacle can immediately lead to another issue. When successful, RAG can work a bit too well.

Kyle DeSana, the cofounder of the AI analytics company Siftree, warned against careless RAG implementations. "What they're doing without realizing it, without analytics, is that they're losing touch with the voice of their customer," DeSana said.

He said that a successful RAG chatbot could carry its own pitfalls. A chatbot with domain expertise that replies in seconds can encourage users to ask even more questions. The resulting back-and-forth may lead to questions beyond the chatbot's scope. This becomes what's known as a feedback loop.

Solving for the feedback loop

Analytics are essential for identifying shortcomings in a RAG-powered AI tool, but those are still reactive. AI engineers are eager to find more proactive solutions that don't require constant meddling with the data RAG provides to the AI. One cutting-edge technique, generative feedback loops, attempts to harness feedback loops to reinforce desirable results.

"A RAG pipeline is usually one direction," van Luijt explained. But an AI model can also use generated data to improve the quality of the information available through RAG. Van Lujit used vacation-rental companies such as Airbnb and Vrbo as an example. Listings on these sites have many details, some of which are missed or omitted by a listing's creator (does the place have easy access to transit?), and AI is quite good at filling in these gaps. Once that's done, the data can be included in RAG to improve the precision and detail of answers.

"We tell the model, 'Based on what you have, do you think you can fill in the blanks?' It starts to update itself," van Lujit said. Weaviate has published examples of generative feedback loops in action, including a recreation of Amazon's AI-driven review summaries. In this example, the summary can not only be published for people to read but also placed into a database for later retrieval through RAG. When new summaries are required in the future, the AI can refer to the previous answer rather than ingesting every published review — which may span tens or hundreds of thousands of reviews — again.

Both van Luijt and Taiyab speculated that as the AI industry continues its growth, new techniques will push models to a point where retrieval is no longer necessary. A recent paper from researchers at Google described a hypothetical LLM with infinite context. Put simply, an AI chatbot would have an effectively infinite memory, letting it "remember" any data presented to it in the past. In February, Google announced it had tested a context window of up to 10 million tokens, each representing a small chunk of text. That's large enough to store hundreds of books or tens of thousands of shorter documents.

At this point, the computing resources required are beyond all but the largest tech giants: Google's announcement said its February test pushed its hardware to its "thermal limit." RAG, on the other hand, can be implemented by a single developer in their spare time. It scales to serve millions of users, and it's available now.

"Maybe in the future RAG will go away altogether, because it's not perfect," Taiyab said. "But for now, this is all we have. Everyone is doing it. It's a core, fundamental application of large language models."