What appears to be a NASA Space Shuttle seen in CNSA's video of the lunar base.
China National Space Administration
China's new teaser for its lunar base appeared to show a NASA Space Shuttle taking off.
It's a peculiar detail in the clip, because China and the US don't work with each other in space.
The Space Shuttle was later blurred out in a state media version of the CGI video.
A new concept video showcasing China's planned lunar base appeared to feature a NASA Space Shuttle lifting off from the facility — a detail that was then omitted in a later broadcast of the clip.
Released by the China National Space Administration on April 26, the video contained a CGI rendering of Beijing's vision for its International Lunar Research Station in 2045.
The rendering shows an astronaut waving a Chinese flag over a research campus on the moon, while a spacecraft shaped like a Space Shuttle takes off in the background with a signature orange rocket booster.
American rocket boosters were orange because of a foam used uniquely by NASA to insulate fuel tanks during the Space Shuttle era of 1981 to 2011, during which the administration ran 135 missions.
Stacked Space Shuttle For Mission 51-J With Orbiter Atlantis, August 1985.
Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The apparent Space Shuttle's appearance in China's video is peculiar. The US prohibits NASA from working with China in space, and Beijing has long touted its new space station and ambitions for a lunar base as independent and China-led.
Meanwhile, the US and NASA have been signaling an urgent need to establish their own base on the moon before China, marking a race between both nations to put their astronauts on the lunar surface.
It's unclear if showing a Space Shuttle was intended by China's space administration, but the spacecraft using a Chinese base in 2045 would be nearly impossible.
That's because the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, with NASA now focusing on its new Orion Spacecraft with a heavy-lift rocket system for its trips to the moon. The administration typically relies on Elon Musk's SpaceX to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.
The apparent video gaffe was noticed on China's side. In the same video posted by state broadcaster CGTN the day after, the Space Shuttle was blurred out — a censorship tool often deployed in China on short deadlines.
China's State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.
Beijing says it plans for its international lunar base to be built jointly by other countries as a collaborative effort. In the lead-up to that endeavor, CNSA launched a robotic probe to the moon on Friday in the world's first attempt to retrieve samples from the moon's far side.
However, the US has warned amid tense Sino-American relations that Beijing's track record with controlling resources on Earth means NASA shouldn't allow it to establish a base on the moon first.
NASA's spending on its Artemis project, its effort to put US astronauts on the moon a second time, is expected to reach around $93 billion by 2025.
Jon Stewart says Joe Biden, 81, is just too old to be president.
"When you watch him on television, you're nervous, aren't ya?" Stewart said on Friday.
If Biden wins in November, he will be 82 on Inauguration Day and 86 by the time he leaves office.
A second Trump term may be frightening, but President Joe Biden is just too old to be reelected, says comedian Jon Stewart.
"I know liberals say, 'Don't say Joe Biden is old' — don't say what people see with their own eyes," Stewart said of the 81-year-old president. "I know you know how fucking old he is, and I know you don't want to say it because Trump is so scary, but he's so fucking old."
"When you watch him on television, you're nervous, aren't ya?" Stewart continued.
"I'm not saying that Biden can't contribute to society, he just shouldn't be president," Stewart told his audience.
Putting both Biden and Trump on the ballot, Stewart said, was a mistake.
"Why are we allowing this? And now we're going to have a president that's the two oldest people that have ever run for the office of the presidency," Stewart said earlier in his segment.
"These two candidates. They are both similarly challenged," Stewart said on February 12. "And it is not crazy to think that the oldest people in the history of the country to ever run for president might have some of these challenges."
Both Biden and Trump will make history no matter who prevails in this year's presidential election.
If Biden wins, he would be 82 years old on Inauguration Day and 86 by the time he leaves office. Likewise for Trump, who will become oldest person ever to be inaugurated if he beats Biden. Trump will turn 78 on June 14.
But criticisms about Biden's age hasn't dulled the octogenarian's confidence in his campaign. In fact, Biden says his age is actually an asset for his candidacy.
"I have acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom and know more than the vast majority of people. And I'm more experienced than anybody that's ever run for the office," Biden told MSNBC in May.
Representatives for Stewart, Biden, and Trump didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
Stewart's remarks about Biden and Trump come months before the November polls, with the two presumptive nominees now locked in an intense fundraising battle.
Biden's campaign revealed last month that it raised more than $90 million in March. The campaign accumulated over $187 million in donations in the first quarter of this year.
And on Saturday, Trump's team told donors they raised more than $76 million in April, Politico reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Qantas was accused in 2023 of advertising tickets to flights that were already canceled.
Regulators announced Sunday that the airline agreed to pay $13.2 million to impacted customers.
Qantas will pay $149 to domestic ticket holders and $298 to international ticketholders.
Regulators said on Sunday that Qantas Airways has agreed to pay about 20 million Australian dollars to more than 86,000 customers to settle allegations that the airline misled them by selling them tickets for canceled flights.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in a Sunday press release that the Australian airline company will pay 225 Australian dollars to domestic ticketholders and 450 Australian dollars — about $149 and $298 in US currency — to international ticketholders.
A spokesperson for Qantas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In August 2023, the ACCC accused Qantas of misleading customers by advertising tickets for over 8,000 flights that had already been canceled.
The regulators alleged that the airline kept the tickets up for sale online for an average of two weeks after the flights were canceled.
"We allege that Qantas' conduct in continuing to sell tickets to canceled flights, and not updating ticketholders about canceled flights, left customers with less time to make alternative arrangements and may have led to them paying higher prices to fly at a particular time not knowing that flight had already been canceled," the ACCC said in 2023.
Qantas responded that it did not "delay communicating with our passengers for commercial gain" or cancel flights to "protect slots."
The airline is now agreeing to pay up to $13.2 millionto settle the case brought by the ACCC. According to the ACCC, the payments to impacted customers will be in addition to any refunds or alternative flights that the airline may have already paid.
In addition to paying customers, the airline agreed to pay a civil penalty of 100 million Australian dollars or $66.1 million.
He's delved into the tumultuous rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake (briefly; he's Team Kenny), preached about X being "freedom technology," and unfollowed over 2000 accounts — leaving only Julian Assange's wife, Stella Assange, Edward Snowden, and Elon Musk.
However, for a man who has had a lot to say this weekend on X, Dorsey's announcement that he left Bluesky — the Twitter offshoot he helped get off the ground — was briefer than his comments on Lamar's and Drake's monthlong back-and-forth.
Dorsey, who led a team at Twitter to begin building Bluesky in 2019, replied to a comment on X Saturday asking if he was still on the Bluesky board.
The company later confirmed Dorsey's departure, thanking him for "funding and initiating the Bluesky project."
"Today, Bluesky is thriving as an open-source social network running on atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built," a statement from the official Bluesky account read. "With Jack's departure, we are searching for a new board member for the Bluesky public benefit company who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience."
Neither Dorsey nor Bluesky clarified when Dorsey decided to drop out of the project, and neither immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. However, Dorsey deleted his account on the social networkhe backed last September, TechCrunch noted, citing social media posts at the time.
Dorsey initially created the Bluesky initiative while working at Twitter, and the social network became a separate entity in 2022.
At the time, the company announced it had received $13 million in funding from Twitter to get off the ground and that Dorsey was on the board of directors.
It formed as a Public Benefit LLC, Vox reported, meaning its mission to design its decentralized protocol supersedes its priority to make a profit.
CNBC reported that Dorsey also helped financially support Nostr, an open app protocol, by donating 14 bitcoins, or $245,000, to the company in December 2022.
Dorsey hasn't posted about Nostr or Bluesky on X since the summer of 2023.
When Musk took over Twitter and turned it into X, Dorsey advertised the alternative social network, which provides a "decentralized" experience by allowing users to create their own communities and moderation rules.
It is still unclear why he left the social network. Maybe he'll reveal it in his own diss track.
Sahil Dua said that speaking at conferences like QCon, KubeCon, PyCon and MLConference have played an important role in his career.
Donat Kekesi and Sahil Dua
Sahil Dua taught himself the basics of software engineering while at university.
Dua shares the résumé that helped him land his first job, a software development role in Amsterdam.
He also emphasizes the importance of gaining visibility both in-person and online.
Sahil Dua's journey into software and computer science began with a robotics competition.
In his first year of college in Delhi, where he studied electronics engineering, he started building some robots with friends. He soon realized he was more passionate about software than hardware, which led him to learn outside the classroom.
"Everything I learned in computer science is actually what I learned in my own time on top of studying for my electronics degree as well," he told Business Insider.
Over the next three years of university, Dua taught himself coding and learned about different operating systems and networks. He applied those lessons at several tech internships and by cofounding a startup.
While students in India often seek job placements through their university, Dua proactively applied to jobs on his own as well, including opportunities overseas.
This is the résumé he used to land a software development graduate program role at Booking.com in Amsterdam right after college. Later, he used an updated version of that résumé — with the same template — for a software engineering role at Google, where he's worked for more than four years.
Dua is currently a senior machine learning engineer at Google's Zurich office.
BI has verified his employment history.
The résumé template Dua used to apply to Booking.com in 2016.
Sahil Dua
Looking back on the document, Dua said two things on his résumé helped in his job search. He would also change two things if he were a junior developer now.
Emphasize projects: Dedicating a section to projects and listing them out helped give interviewers starting points for discussion before he had a lot of job experience, he said. "Those projects would make me stand out because they demonstrated that I had practical experience, even when I was looking for a job straight out of university." Dua said he applies the same principle to his LinkedIn profile, where he lists 26 projects.
Use unique formats: Dua wanted a template to solve two purposes. First, he found that a single-column résumé would not give him enough space to list everything. "The second reason was that I wanted my résumé to stand out" but also not be so "extreme that it seems weird to look at," he said about his two-column template. He found this template on GitHub.
While he would make a couple of tweaks, such as removing links to his personal Twitter account and decreasing emphasis on education, there are two other ways he would enhance his profile now.
Build a personal brand: Dua said that he would revamp the "achievements" section of his résumé to include projects such as giving talks at technical conferences. Speaking at events like Python-focused conference PyCon gave him visibility within the industry, even in the early years of his career, and led to the opportunity to write a book.
Make yourself searchable online: Dua adds links to his online profiles on his résumé and takes steps to build more online visibility. "Anytime I'm doing any courses online, I make sure that I post it on LinkedIn as a certificate," he said about learning new skills like machine learning. This ensures that "my profile is getting clicks or it's getting up there when people are searching for those fields." On LinkedIn, he uses his current job section to add more about his role and achievements than his one-page résumé allows.
Career experts recommend Dua's approach to enhancing LinkedIn profiles to be more search-friendly.
Recruiters actively seek candidates using keywords, said Nick Shah, founder of Peterson Technology Partners, a 26-year-oldtech staffing agency based in Park Ridge, Illinois.
"Job seekers should research the keywords that are relevant to their industry and incorporate them into their profile to increase their chances of appearing in search results and catching the attention of recruiters," Shah previously told BI.
Shah said job seekers should clearly define their roles in LinkedIn's work experience section and provide examples and achievements, much like what Dua does on his profile.
Do you work in tech, finance, or consulting and have a story to share about your personal résumé journey? Email this reporter at shubhangigoel@insider.com.
A Tesla Cybertruck had to be helped out of the sand on Nantucket Island on May 2.
iPullOut Beach Towing
Tesla's Cybertruck doesn't appear as "apocalypse-proof" as Elon Musk first suggested.
Since its November debut, the vehicles have gotten stuck in rough terrain and are facing recalls.
When the $80,000+ car was first revealed, its windows were smashed during a live demonstration.
Tesla's Cybertruck hasn't had quite the debut Elon Musk said it would.
Since its November launch, the $80,0000+ vehicle has repeatedly made headlines for issues including displaying inexplicable "critical steering error" warning alerts, becoming stuck in rough terrain, and facing widespread recalls — a far cry from being the "apocalypse-proof" behemoth it was touted as.
"If you're ever in an argument with another car," Elon Musk pledged at the truck's launch event last year, "you will win."
But on May 2, a tourist on Nantucket found their Cybertruck trapped in the sand, requiring a tow truck to free it. According to the tow operator, the driver made one crucial error: He forgot to letair out of the tires.
Normally, Cybertruck tires are inflated to around 50 psi. In the Cybertruck owner's manual, though, Tesla warns drivers to lower tire pressure before off-roading, to increase traction and decrease the risk of punctures. The tow operator said the safe spot for beach driving is between 18 and 22 psi.
"Unfortunately, they had neglected to do that or did not know to do that," the tow operator, who asked to remain anonymous because he runs his one-man towing operation informally, told Business Insider. "So that set them three steps back, right from the word go."
The operator said most tow jobs like these stem from inexperience, adding that he's often called in the summer months to help tourists who've misjudged how soft the sand is near the coastline or were completely unaware of how tire pressure impacts a vehicle's off-roading capabilities.
What happened with the Cybertruck, the operator said, could have happened to any other pickup driver. He noted, though, that the Cybertruck's extra weight — about 1,000 lbs heavier than comparable gas-powered pickups — didn't help.
"There's always been a question as to how electric vehicles with the excess weight will handle beach driving," he said. "They'll wear the same size tires as a regular F-150 or, you know, insert your standard pickup truck here, but they will have a higher weight."
The all-electric pickup was eventually freed — though not before it attracted a crowd of bemused onlookers from the small island community.
The tow operator said he "wasn't all that" surprised to get the phone call, given the buzz surrounding the arrival of the first Cybertruck on the island "earlier that day."
"He immediately gets off the boat and then parks in the heart of town on a crosswalk," he said. "It sort of made the internet rounds — and then, by 5 o'clock, it was stuck on the beach."
"We were joking [that] we sort of applaud his ability to really check off all of the things not to do on Nantucket in very quick succession," he added. "Really made the most out of the day."
The incident went viral on social media as only the latest blunder involving the Cybertruck.
Cybertruck's problems aren't all user error
As in the Nantucket incident, the 6,600+ lb. vehicles have also been seen stuck in the snow and struggling to climb steep hills. While the official causes of these incidents remain unconfirmed, the Cybertruck's problems can't all be chalked up to user error.
Despite being marketed as an iron dome on wheels intended to protect occupants from anything the outside world can throw at them, the features inside don't all appear to offer the safety they're meant to supply. A YouTuber reported their finger got caught in the car's frunk after its sensor failed to detect the obstruction, leaving a dent and small cut on the skin despite a recent software update intended to prevent such issues.
Firsthand accounts of the Cybertruck's accelerator pedal getting stuck at full throttle also attracted regulators' attention, with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reporting concerns that an "unapproved change" during the production process likely caused the problem, increasing the risk of collision. The NHTSA report prompted Tesla to recall about 3,878 of the vehicles in April voluntarily, which impacted virtually every Cybertruck that had been shipped to customers since the launch.
Business Insider previously reported that safety experts called the Cybertruck a "guideless missile" and a "death machine" due to its size, speed, and autopilot features.
Problems with the tank-like car aren't limited to production models. When the prototype Cybertruck was first displayed in 2019, early demonstrations of its "shatterproof" glass were thwarted when the car's windows were easily smashed in a live test.
Musk warned investors last October during an earnings call that the car's unique design created massive problems with scaling production, saying: "We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck."
And with Tesla's stock down nearly 25% since the Cybertruck debuted last year — from $241.20 to $181.14 per share — it's possible he could be right.
Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
A product manage described the differences between working at Google and Meta based on his time at both companies.
Tayfun Coskun and Sebastien Bozon/Getty Images
A product manager wrote a blog about his experiences working at Meta and Google.
Both are great companies to work for, but Google employees may make less money, he wrote.
However, the search giant may also provide better work-life balance, according to the PM's blog.
What's the better company to work for, Meta or Google?
A Meta product manager who also worked at Google in a similar role revealed some differences between the tech companies based on his experiences over the past six years.
Daniel McKinnon was a product manager at Meta between 2018 and 2022. Afterward, he worked at Google for two years before returning to Meta in February to work on the company's Ray-Ban AI glasses.
Business Insider verified his employment history.
McKinnon wrote on his personal blog that while the companies may seem similar, prospective candidates should know some key differences between the two, from work-life balance to compensation.
"Meta and Google are both phenomenal technology companies where great PMs can thrive," McKinnon wrote, adding that if someone is looking for "growth at the expense of stress and pressure, Meta is probably a better fit."
"If you want to prioritize work-life balance, stability, and job security, Google could be a great place for you," he wrote.
A spokesperson for Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
Here are some of the differences, according to McKinnon.
Compensation
Meta and Google offer product managers a salary, bonus, and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) grants but have different pay structures, according to McKinnon.
McKinnon wrote that Meta evenly distributes its RSUs over four years, while Google front-loads its grants, in which 70% of the stock is provided within the first two years of employment.
Overall, the "typical Google employee" may make less each year because the company offers much smaller stock refreshers than Meta, he wrote. Some companies provide stock refreshers — essentially more stock after the initial stock grant is provided — as an incentive for employees to stick with the employer.
"Refreshers at Google are significantly smaller than Meta for the same level and role and performance multipliers are much scarcer," McKinnon wrote.
According to McKinnon, at Google, employees can be rated to have a "significant impact" on the company but receive no additional bonus or stock refresher.
In a statement to Business Insider, a Google spokesperson disputed McKinnon's assertion that employees make less each year partly because they aren't awarded additional bonuses or stock refreshers for having a "significant impact" rating.
"A 'Significant Impact' rating provides a generous multiplier for every employee who receives it, which boosts their bonus and equity refresh above the target amount. We know most Googlers are making a significant impact, and we want to reward them for that," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also noted that the "vast majority of Googlers received a compensation increase" in 2024,including a salary bump, equity grant, and bonuses.
One employee told BI that the stock refreshers were "noticeably smaller than what Google has historically offered," while a manager said some workers saw their total compensation drop despite receiving an "outstanding" rating.
Project opportunities
McKinnon describes Meta and Google as "bottom-up" companies, where ideas largely originate from small teams building prototypes and other colleagues joining in if the prototype gains traction.
"Both Gmail (Google) and Marketplace (Meta) were famously side projects that grew into major components of the businesses," McKinnon wrote.
However, the companies evaluate and support new ideas differently, McKinnon wrote, saying Meta's leadership can be enthusiastic about new projects and pursue them "aggressively," but the idea can be quickly dropped if it does not meet expectations.
The product manager recalled how he worked on an audio-social project when Clubhouse, an audio-based social media app, was popular.
"A couple hundred friends and I got invited to see if we could make social audio work inFacebook Blue," he wrote, referring to Facebook's attempt at the time to make an audio-social app competitor. "Less than a year later, when it was clear we weren't meeting expectations, our team was blown up."
According to McKinnon, Meta's leadership, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, can also intervene if they find conflicting visions among teams for a product.
"If Mark or his execs encounter two different visions for a product, they request reviews from the battling parties and make a call based on their judgment," McKinnon wrote. "This top-down control can cut both ways, depending on which side of the decision you're on."
At Google, however, teams can work on similar projects for "literally decades" without leadership intervening, McKinnon wrote, pointing to Maps and Waze, GPS apps that are both owned by Google.
This can be fruitful for product managers who want to pursue their visions for a product with their respective teams but also "frustrating for ambitious PMs who want to build products that require larger teams," he wrote.
In addition, project timelines can "span decades" at Google, according to McKinnon.
He wrote that when he pitched an idea to a Google VP, the executive responded back that the idea was great but that he'd rather have employees focus on Google's search business.
"This interaction encapsulates how Google thinks about change, which is likely correct from the perspective of Google shareholders but potentially not appealing to prospective product managers," McKinnon wrote.
A Google spokesperson pointed to CEO Sundar Pichai's statements regarding Alphabet's first-quarter performance, in which the CEO explained how the company is trying to move faster by simplifying team structures.
Company transparency
Meta does maintain some of the transparency the company was known for in its earlier days, McKinnon wrote.
At Meta, McKinnon was aware of what other teams were working on, partly through the company's internal forums and dashboards.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg also still hosts the weekly Q&A sessions with his employees, taking questions "off the cuff," McKinnon wrote.
Managers are expected to be upfront in their reports about promotions and employee ratings, and "compensation is formulaic and predictable," he wrote.
One downside to the transparency is that employees have "nowhere to hide," meaning everyone knows what employees are working on, and people won't be able to "take a back seat," according to McKinnon.
At Google, employees mostly communicate through email or chat, so it's more difficult to know what everyone is doing, McKinnon wrote.
McKinnon also wrote that he felt Google CEO Sundar Pichai wasn't as candid with his answers to employees like Zuckerberg.
He wrote that compensation is also less predictable, and feedback from leadership is harder to obtain at the search giant.
"While this isn't great for those looking to learn and grow, this organizational style makes it much easier to let work drift into the background when other life priorities need your attention," he wrote.
Overall, transparency has declined for both companies, McKinnon noted.
'Expression' in the workplace
At Meta, McKinnon feels that dissent is welcomed.
"Meta feels like a quasi-academic, truth-seeking organization where decisions are made with data and dissent is encouraged," he wrote. "This environment can be quite unsettling to those used to a more consensus-based or non-confrontational culture."
Google is different when it comes to "free expression," and employees are more "reserved," according to McKinnon."
"Questioning priorities is generally not encouraged, which does tend to make for a more collegial work environment but can be frustrating for PMs who want to effect change," he wrote.
McKinnon wrote that the career ladder seems faster at Meta than at Google, where progression can often be based on seniority.
McKinnon mentions that Meta's leadership is filled with young VPs, including the company's chief financial officer, Susan Li, who assumed the role when she was 36.
"Google is much more time-based," McKinnon wrote.
Managers are given a quota for tenure-based promotions, and while promotions based on excellent performance can happen, they are "much rarer," according to McKinnon.
He adds a caveat: "However, these career progression observations cut both ways. I have never been in this situation, but I believe that it is much easier to get fired for poor performance at Meta than Google, which should certainly be a factor for those for whom job security is paramount."
PMs vs. Software Engineers
Product managers at Meta and Google can serve different purposes, according to McKinnon.
At Google, McKinnon saw that projects were largely created and led by software engineers, and PMs played a more auxiliary role.
At Meta, there's a stronger emphasis on product managers who are "responsible for both ensuring the broader team is building something useful and that usefulness can be quantified and iterated on," he wrote.
"Both approaches have their merit, but I never could shake the feeling that Google could delete its entire PM function and not feel much in the way of repercussions," McKinnon wrote.
Los Angeles' downtown has become a hot spot for residential growth in the city.
The neighborhood's office market, however, continues to languish.
Downtown LA is expected to be a major draw for residential living over the next few decades.
For generations, downtown Los Angeles was the region's nexus of commerce, as vast office spaces and old-line department stores made the neighborhood a business powerhouse.
But urban decay and suburbanization, which accelerated after World War II, made downtown into more of a 9-to-5 office hub. For decades, the city core was a destination for work but not much else.
That all changed after 2000 when there was sustained residential growth in downtown Los Angeles. And since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that growth has only strengthened. The neighborhood is now a major draw for residential development.
According to the DTLA Alliance, a coalition of more than 2,000 central business district property owners, there are nearly 100,000 residents living downtown in new developments like the 41-floor Figueroa Eight apartment building or the numerous historic buildings that have been restored in the area.
It's created one of the country's most unique downtown living dynamics: Most downtown residents don't work in the neighborhood, The Los Angeles Times reported.
While the neighborhood benefits from its Union Station transit hub and is home to Los Angeles City Hall, it has — like other cities — seen an exodus of businesses as work-from-home policies put into place during the pandemic caused many companies to either relocate to smaller spaces, cut the amount of office space that they needed downtown, or abandon their office footprints altogether.
The real estate services firm CBRE recently reported that only about two-thirds (65%) of office space in downtown Los Angeles was occupied in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Times.
Despite the office emigration, living in downtown LA has become so desirable that Jessica Lall, the head of CBRE's downtown Los Angeles office, told the Times a plan endorsed by the city would allow the neighborhood to absorb 20 percent of the projected housing growth for the entire city through 2040, a significant figure in a city starved for affordable housing and a state where there's been an exodus of residents due to high housing costs.
ElevenLabs cofounders Mati Staniszewski (left) and Piotr Dabkowski (right) built a unicorn just a year after launching in beta.
ElevenLabs
AI voice tech company ElevenLabs is grappling with deepfakes.
The technology, while innovative, has the potential for misuse, leading to concerns from lawmakers.
ElevenLabs CEO said digitally watermarking synthetic voices is a solution.
Companies at the forefront of AI voice technology are grappling with how to regulate deepfakes without stifling innovation.
"It's going to be a cat-and-mouse game," Mati Staniszewski, the cofounder and CEO of ElevenLabs, told The Atlantic.
ElevenLabs — which vaulted to a $1.1 billion valuation after launching in beta last year — uses AI to generate convincing audio clips. That includes text-to-speech voiceovers, dubbing audio into 29 languages, and cloning voices. The company claims its users generated over 100 years of audio in the past year.
However, lawmakers worry the technology has a dangerous potential for abuse.
Advances in AI have correlated with a rise in supercharged phone scams in which imposter scammers cast themselves as love interests, family members, or government officials. Biden's AI chief, Bruce Reed, has even said "voice cloning" is the one thing that keeps him up at night.
And last year 4chan users exploited the tool from ElevenLabs to generate deepfakes of celebrities spewing racist and transphobic content, according to Vice.
But Staniszewski is an idealist.
He sees ElevenLabs' technology contributing to a world where patients with neurodegenerative diseases like ALS can still communicate in their voice after they lose the ability to speak. It also has potential as a tool to help people communicate across cultures and languages.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has been making robocalls in Mandarin, Yiddish, and Haitian Creole with ElevenLabs technology and said he's been able to reach more of the city's non-English speaking residents.
To capitalize on this potential while preventing fraud, Staniszweski said users should be able to identify AI-generated voices from human ones. The "true solution," Staniszewski told The Atlantic, is digitally watermarking synthetic voices so humans can differentiate real from fake.
The company is developing the technology, but it'll only be effective with the cooperation of other companies. ElevenLabs has signed an accord with several other AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta to combat deepfakes in the 2024 election.
ElevenLabs did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Onetime Rep. Ken Buck didn't have a very good impression of Capitol Hill upon his arrival in 2015.
Buck told The New York Times that he wanted out of Congress "about three weeks" into the role.
But the ex-congressman remarked that it took him a while to map out a plan to leave the House.
Former Rep. Ken Buck has not been shy about calling out what he says is the highly dysfunctional nature of Congress.
The Colorado Republican, who was first elected to the House in 2014 and resigned in March after declining to seek reelection this fall, has also been critical of the GOP in how they've handled their majority status in the lower chamber, recently telling The Washington Post that he got "more good work done" when Democrats were in charge.
And during an interview with the The New York Times, Buck — alongside 11 members of Congress retiring at the end of their terms — rattled off a list of why they were leaving the storied American institution.
But not even a month into his tenure in Congress, Buck revealed that he was already eyeing the exits.
"I knew it was time to leave about three weeks after I got to Congress. It just took me a long time to try to figure out how to get out of this place," the former congressman told the Times.
One of the biggest problems on Capitol Hill that the members — and Buck — identified in their interviews was the influence of money and special interest groups in politics.
"I was told at the beginning that I had to raise $250,000 if I wanted to be on certain committees. And if I wanted to be on more important committees — or committees with broader jurisdiction — I needed to raise even more money," the ex-congressman told the newspaper. "Buying a committee seat is not something that most Americans know that most members have to do."
Buck also said it was "very difficult" to maintain two residences on his $174,000 salary, noting that his compensation was significantly higher than what many of his one-time constituents earn each year.