• A real-estate investor was fined $180,000 by the city of Las Vegas for running an illegal Airbnb. 
• Oregon engineer Xin Tao said he bought the house as an investment property to rent out longer term. 
• Tao said his tenant rented it out on Airbnb and the city didn't say daily fines were adding up.

In November, the city of Las Vegas issued a $180,000 fine against a homeowner who officials say ran an unauthorized Airbnb near the Las Vegas strip.

The homeowner, however, told Business Insider he believes he is the victim of a scam run by the tenant renting his house at the time.

In June 2021, Xin Tao purchased a five-bedroom, two-bathroom property in Las Vegas for $378,000.

Tao, an engineer who lives in Oregon full-time, told BI he bought the house as an investment property. While he did initially consider listing it on Airbnb, he added, he abandoned that plan when he signed a lease with a long-term tenant in September 2021. (Business Insider viewed a copy of the lease.)

Shortly after, multiple neighbors called the city with complaints about the property, complaining about an overflow of cars parked in the driveway and that activity at the house "regularly disturbs" neighbors, according to enforcement logs from the city of Las Vegas.

On two separate occasions in October 2021 and February 2022, Las Vegas city officials knocked on the door, according to government logs. The people who answered said they were renting the property through Airbnb, the logs said.

Tao was issued $2,132 in fines from the February 2022 incident — $500 per day for the four days the alleged Airbnb guest said they were staying in the home, plus additional fees, according to city records.

Tao said he believed that, after the February 2022 incident, his tenant had stopped renting out his property on Airbnb and the issue was resolved. He claimed he was unable to confront the tenant directly because he was managing the property remotely from Oregon.

The tenant vacated the property in September 2023, and a cleaner was sent to the premises to tidy up, Tao said. Stuck to the window was a notice of a $180,000 fine.

"I was shocked. I didn't know what was going on. I thought it might be fraud," Tao told Business Insider. "How do we go from $2,000 to $180,000?"

Las Vegas is cracking down on Airbnb hosts

In January, Tao asked the Las Vegas City Council to reconsider the fine, but lawmakers unanimously upheld the decision by a vote of 7-0, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

In 2019, Las Vegas instituted sweeping regulations of short-term rentals, including banning out-of-state investors from owning Airbnbs, amid outcry from local residents who complained of an influx of "parties, prostitution, and drugs into residential communities," according to the Las Vegas Sun.

Some Sin City residents are still frustrated by short-term rentals in their neighborhoods.

"I am constantly getting texts, emails, calls, pulled aside in the grocery store about short-term rentals," Councilman Brian Knudsen told local outlet Fox 5 in January. "If we continue to erode laws by not enforcing the fees and fines associated with them, we continue to lose the dignity of our neighborhoods."

The city arrived at the $180,000 fine based on a $500-a-night penalty for each of hundreds of nights it tracked as booked at Tao's property, according to documents submitted to the City Council.

Tao told Business Insider he will continue to fight the fine in part because he argues the city did not notify him properly that charges continued to accrue after February 2022.

He added that the current fine would have devastating effects on his family.

"We have a mortgage and car payments," he said. "One hundred eighty thousand dollars is definitely something I cannot afford."

• A former Amazon employee criticized the company's handling of its Alexa voice assistant.
• Mihail Eric said on X that technical and bureaucratic issues hindered Alexa's development.
• He said Amazon had the resources to become the "unequivocal" leader in conversational AI, but failed. 

A former employee said Amazon "dropped the ball" with its voice assistant Alexa.

Mihail Eric, a former senior machine learning scientist at Alexa AI, wrote in a lengthy X post about how he felt Amazon missed its opportunity to turn Alexa into a leading product as competitors make headway with their own AI-infused voice assistants.

"We had all the resources, talent, and momentum to become the unequivocal market leader in conversational AI," Eric wrote on Tuesday.

He added: "But most of that tech never saw the light of day and never received any noteworthy press. Why? The reality is Alexa AI was riddled with technical and bureaucratic problems."

Eric, who left Amazon in 2021 according to his LinkedIn profile, said Amazon might have fumbled its chance to dominate the conversational AI space due to a "bad technical process," "fragmented org," and "product-science misalignment."

In his view, Amazon's infrastructure was "agonizingly painful" for its developers because of guardrails put in place to protect user data. He added that computing resources to carry out experiments were limited.

Eric also claimed that progress on Alexa was hindered by a organizational structure that resulted in overlaps between teams that sometimes worked on similar challenges.

"This introduced an almost Darwinian flavor to org dynamics where teams scrambled to get their work done to avoid getting reorged and subsumed into a competing team," he wrote.

According to Eric, the Alexa team had to "constantly justify" its existence to senior leaders, and there was a conflict between the product and science teams in weekly meetings. He said this led to a churn of managers every few months and the sunsetting of its efforts to make Alexa a multimodal agent in Amazon customers' homes.

Eric also said that after OpenAI unveiled its multimodal GPT-4o model, which has a voice assistant called Sky, he received a message from a former Alexa colleague, who he says told him: "You'd think voice assistants would have been our forte at Alexa."

Amazon and Eric didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

I had just turned 9 when I discovered Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations." It wasn't like the other Travel Channel shows. Sure, the premise was straightforward: Bourdain traveled around the world to meet up with locals and try their cuisine. But instead of focusing on tourist hot spots and flashy, curated experiences, "No Reservations" was about traveling by the seat of your pants and getting as close to the local culture as any outsider could be allowed. I was an immediate disciple.

Travel shouldn't be about checking off items on a bucket list by sticking to sanitized excursions marketed to foreigners; it should introduce you to someone else's slice of life. On family trips to New York City, I cringed when my mother pulled out a paper map. "Everyone is going to know we aren't from here," I thought.

Though I grew less self-conscious over the years, that mentality remained. Others in my generation — I'm on the cusp between Gen Z and millennial — were on the same page, determined to seek out "authentic experiences." For years, people explored the world with the help of travel agents. But those services — sending you to places curated just for tourists — seemed to fly in the face of the Bourdainian ethos. Travel agents felt like vestiges of the preinternet world, like video-store clerks or pay phones, and I couldn't imagine ever needing them. What could they tell me that Reddit couldn't? Isn't it simpler to just book my own flights? Doing everything myself felt easier.

As of late, though, my attitude has changed.

Ever since the pandemic-era travel restrictions subsided, travel has boomed. Everyone is jetting off to Italy, Japan, and Costa Rica. Money spent on travel and entertainment surged 30% in 2023, fueled largely by young people. We're all desperate to make up for lost time, but there's a catch: Many of us 20- and 30-somethings are tired. It turns out that aspiring to be a DIY traveler takes a lot of energy — energy that we've already exhausted on careers, relationships, and day-to-day responsibilities. When we do finally have the time to venture away from home, we're burning ourselves out trying to coordinate all the details of our trip. Meanwhile, the sense of precarity we all felt during the pandemic hasn't left. Flight delays and cancellations from weather, short staffing, technical issues, and random bad luck are more common than before. The odds that something could go wrong feel higher.

That's precisely why some are turning back to travel agents. In 2014, the number of travel agents was half of what it was at the industry's mid-'90s peak, with many expecting it to become obsolete. But by 2021, 76% of advisors were seeing more customers than before the pandemic. And in a 2023 survey of 2,000 American travelers, 38% of Gen Z and millennial respondents said they preferred a traditional travel agent over online booking. Only 12% of Gen Xers and 2% of boomers said the same. Whether we're bopping around the Mediterranean or just posting up at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico for a week, a lot of us are deciding we'd rather put the planning in someone else's hands.

---

Matt James, a 29-year-old software engineer in New York City, was initially excited to plan his summer trip to Vietnam himself. Like many his age, he's primarily interested in sightseeing in cities. "I found myself going down hourslong internet rabbit holes trying to hone in on a perfect itinerary," he said, "Googling 'best neighborhoods in Hanoi Reddit,' 'two-week Vietnam itinerary Reddit,' etc."

After a while, though, he said it was hard to find the time and energy to plan. Doing his own research was mentally exhausting. He decided to give up the hunt and hand the work over to a travel advisor who was also a family friend. "He was able to take care of booking visas, flights, hotels, and a few excursions," James said. "It was very tempting to have him take care of it all in one email thread for a couple-hundred-dollar fee." Now, he said, all that's left is deciding what to see and eat at each location — something that lets him satisfy his urge to rabbit-hole.

A flight to Mexico City and five nights at a boutique hotel in Coyoacán, however, feels a little more firmly within our grasp.

In a Business Insider survey, in collaboration with YouGov, millennials cited travel as one of their most important goals for the next five years, more important than having fulfilling romantic relationships, owning a home, advancing their career, or starting a family. In fact, the only two goals millennials considered more important than traveling were being financially stable and improving their health. Amid rising costs for housing, childcare, and everything else, key milestones get pushed further down the road. A flight to Mexico City and five nights at a boutique hotel in Coyoacán, however, feels a little more firmly within our grasp. In a 2023 Morning Consult survey, both millennials and Gen Zers were more likely than older generations to travel frequently, with half of each cohort saying they took three or more leisure trips a year. Gen Zers were also more likely to go overseas than their older peers.

For as little as $100 — or nothing at all, given that some agents work on commission from the hotels and other travel companies they work with — overwhelmed young travelers can have someone take all the pressure off the experience. There are travel agents specializing in just about every type of travel imaginable, from multicountry group tours to luxury all-inclusive trips. And different types of agents can offer different perks.

For complex overseas trips, where a million things could go wrong, it makes sense to hire an agent to not only ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible but also handle the rebookings in the event of a hiccup. When something goes awry, it's someone else's problem.

While James decided to have his agent handle just the basics of his Vietnam vacation, many agents can help curate the experiences in between, promising to find their clients the coolest markets to shop at or the most-recommended museums. On a different trip, to Oktoberfest in Germany, James' travel agent — a native German speaker — was able to secure all sorts of reservations that James would never have been able to land on his own.

---

Increasingly, travel agents are luring people in through social media, where they can speak straight to the millennial and Gen Z desire for a unique experience and a relaxing trip. "We can give you the special slice-of-life experience you want," they pitch, "just without the hassle." Companies like Fora, for example, use TikTok and Instagram to seed sleek ads for package trips to the Croatian coast or boutique hotels in the Florida Keys, with extra attention given to "sustainability" and travelers' specific "aesthetic" desires.

Agents elsewhere on TikTok tout all-inclusive trips where the point is to just lie on the beach and chill the hell out for a second. Searches for topics like "best all-inclusives Cancún" heavily feature travel agents promoting their services, ranking their favorite resorts and highlighting the perks they can offer clients who book with them. One of their main selling points: Their services are free. And many agents also claim that their customers can receive better deals thanks to the special pricing and perks available to agents.

"We can give you the special slice-of-life experience you want," they pitch, "just without the hassle."

"Many of my Gen Z clients are in entry-level careers, graduate programs, or saving for other big expenses, so they're often looking for destinations that allow them to relax while making the most of their limited vacation days and budget," said Kayla Smith, a travel advisor for Sojourney Travel, a company specializing in beach vacations, cruises, and theme-park trips.

Smith is a Gen Zer and said that over half her clients are Gen Z. "Going from school to the workforce is already a huge life transition, and when you add on a pandemic and varying career expectations, you're bound to see a generation who is experiencing burnout at a rapid rate," she said.

For that reason, resort groups like Sandals are seeing an influx of Gen Zers and millennials. Ashley Kooker, a senior business-development manager for Unique Vacations, a sales and marketing affiliate of Sandals and Beaches Resorts, said that these properties had been attracting younger customers in part by blending the all-inclusive format with the opportunity for more exploration. At Sandals Royal Curacao and Sandals Royal Bahamian, guests can opt to go off-resort and visit local restaurants as part of their all-inclusive plan — allowing experience-minded vacationers to have their cake and eat it, too.

---

Exhaustion aside, many of us 20-somethings still yearn for these hard-to-get-to, out-of-the-box journeys — the trips that make us feel like travelers rather than tourists. William Lee, a travel agent at Chima Travel, a family-owned agency in Ohio that's been operating for over 100 years, told me he often gets requests for obscure destinations young clients see on social media. "We had a client come in and ask us about Oeschinen Lake in Switzerland," he said. "They saw the lake on TikTok and wanted to go there. I had to let them know that to do so would require hiking into the Swiss Alps and going a bit off the beaten path."

I recently wrapped up a 10-day trip to Peru, where I hiked for three days through the Lares District, ate quinoa soup in the San Pedro Market in Cusco, and bar-hopped in Lima. It was a trip packed with experiences — the kind that my generation is always talking about prioritizing — but I don't think I relaxed for a moment. And that's despite leaving all the planning to my friends.

I'm already plotting my next big, multiweek international trip — I'm looking at Vietnam, myself — but before then, I need to book a few days somewhere where I can be by a pool with a margarita in hand. Where will I go? I'm not sure. That's for a travel agent to decide.

---

Magdalene Taylor is a writer covering sex and culture. She lives in New York City and publishes the newsletter Many Such Cases. 

• "Bridgerton" season three, part two has the longest sex scene of the franchise so far.
• Colin and Penelope have an intimate scene that lasts over 5 and a half minutes.
• The actors, Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton, have been teasing this scene for months.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Bridgerton" season three, episode five.

"Bridgerton" season three gets a whole lot sexier in part two.

For years, "Bridgerton" has been praised for its female gaze-focused, explicit sex scenes. Season one and the "Queen Charlotte" spin-off were filled with raunchy romps that weren't common in the Regency series.

But Colin Bridgerton and Penelope Featherington take this to a whole new level in season three, episode five.

A day after his sudden proposal (and that steamy carriage hook-up), Colin (Luke Newton) takes his childhood friend Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) to see the Bridgerton property that will become their home after their marriage.

While alone, Colin tells Penelope he loves her and begins describing all the parts of her body he adores. As the pair look at each other in the mirror, Colin starts touching Penelope up and down her body and then strips her of her clothing.

Though there have been many shirtless scenes with male leads, this is the first scene in "Bridgerton" history where a female lead character is fully nude in front of the camera.

Colin and Penelope then have an extended lovemaking scene on a chaise lounge chair while a string cover of Ariana Grande's song "POV" plays in the background.

The scene is sensual, and Penelope, a virgin, is a lot more of an active participant in the sex scene compared to the previous lead couples' first times.

The physical foreplay to the end of the scene lasts over five and a half minutes, which is the longest sex scene of the show, according to Business Insider's extremely scientific calculations.

Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton have been teasing this scene for a long time

For months, Coughlan and Newton have been steadily building anticipation for this sex scene in numerous interviews, sending fans into a frenzy.

Coughlan told Entertainment Weekly in April that she and Newton broke "a piece of furniture" while filming one of the intimate scenes.

She wouldn't say what the furniture was at the time, but the chaise lounge chair in the episode five scene fits Coughlan's description when she spoke about it again to CapitalFM in May.

"I would say it's like a piece of furniture that you would more see in the past than the present, but yeah, we did break it during a sexy scene because we were really going for it," Coughlan said.

In May, Coughlan also told the Stylist that she specifically asked to be "very naked on camera" during an explicit scene to clap back at people who have commented on her body in the past.

"It just felt like the biggest 'fuck you' to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering," Coughlan said, referring to people who have body-shamed her on social media.

Netflix's marketing team also helped create buzz around season three's sex scene by releasing promotional material showing Colin and Penelope in front of a mirror. Fans of the books that "Bridgerton" is based on immediately saw this as a signal that the show was adapting the "mirror scene."

All these teases made "Bridgerton" fans believe they would see some very spicy scenes this season. Sure enough, season three, part two finally rewards their patience.

All episodes of season three of "Bridgerton" are now streaming on Netflix.

• Quinn is the audio erotica app that Gen Z is loving right now.
• CEO Caroline Spiegel founded Quinn in 2019 during her senior year at Stanford University.
• Celebrity collaborations and viral TikToks have fueled Quinn's 440% year-over-year revenue growth.

Quinn founder and CEO Caroline Spiegel knows she's supplying a niche demand, but she likes it that way.

And it's working. Quinn, an app that lets subscribers listen to scripted erotic scenarios, is seeing listeners tune in for about 24 million minutes every month.

"It sort of takes the best elements of romance novels and condenses it into a 15 or 20-minute audio experience," Spiegel said.

Quinn is a hit with Gen Z. According to metrics, about 56% of its user base are adults between the ages of 18 and 24. Its popularity on TikTok — also the home of BookTok, which has been instrumental in fueling a boom in "romantasy" fiction, which usually features a lot of so-called "spice," or erotic scenes — may have something to do with that. Many of the categories listed on its website match "tropes" regularly seen in romance novels, like "enemies to friends" or "co-workers."

Subscribers pay $4.99 per month or $47.99 annually to have access to erotic audio clips from voice actors. Quinn said its revenue has grown 440% year-over-year for the past two years.

Celebrity collaborations no doubt also help.

One specific corner of the internet went feral in May when they found out actor Andrew Scott would voice a series for Quinn. The "Fleabag" star has already got an admiring fanbase after his role as what is now known as the "Hot Priest" in the series, and as of Wednesday, the official account where the announcement was posted has over 460,000 followers.

"I've never downloaded an app this quickly in my life," one of the top comments on Scott's video for Quinn reads.

Audio clips on Quinn offer something for everyone's taste. Scott, for example, is the voice of "The Queen's Guard," a historical fantasy with some explicit scenes.

Spiegel, the younger sister of Snap cofounder Evan Spiegel, said she began working on Quinn in 2019 while recovering from an eating disorder and experiencing sexual dysfunction (an issue that often isn't addressed in women).

"I felt like the way that I experienced desire wasn't really reflected in the options that were out there," she told Business Insider.

She found solace in audio erotica on Reddit and Tumblr and wanted to bring the unique format to the masses, so Spiegel dropped out of Stanford University and launched Quinn in 2021, according to Forbes.

Today, women make up 77% of Quinn's entire base.

Quinn could be compared to OnlyFans, albeit without visuals, in that it's a platform for creators to get their content in front of a paying audience. But according to Spiegel, it's more like Peloton, in that its creators are sort of like the fitness company's instructors, and "people have their favorites that they go really hard for."

To become a Quinn creator, applicants can answer a brief questionnaire and submit an audio recording sample similar to those already on the app.

Quinn's other original celebrity collaborations — including "You" actor Victoria Pedretti and Jesse Williams from "Grey's Anatomy" — have clearly appealed to Gen Z, and she teased that there are at least two more big names coming to the app in 2024.

"I feel like the biggest clue is that one is a woman and one's a man," Spiegel said.

• Giovanna Ventola was laid off for the third time in three years in November 2023.
• After struggling to find another corporate job, she tried to land a "bridge job" in the meantime.
• She always thought she could fall back on a bridge job but has been met with rejection or silence.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Giovanna Ventola, a 34-year-old job seeker in South Carolina. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was laid off three times in three years in the real-estate industry, most recently in November 2023.

Since then, I've applied to around 180 corporate jobs and have only gotten six interviews, none of which have led to getting hired.

I've also applied for 18 "bridge jobs" — in-person roles in the service industry, many of which pay minimum wage or very low wages. I went through two rounds of interviews for one before being rejected for what felt like an arbitrary reason.

Failing to land a bridge job completely changed my outlook on the job market. I knew it would be difficult to land a high-paying corporate job with benefits, a 401(k) plan, and stock options, but not being able to get a job pouring coffee or stocking shelves has made me lose faith.

I've held service industry jobs before

I started my career as a professional dancer in Chicago. To supplement my income, I also worked as a personal trainer, bartender, server, dance teacher, and babysitter.

I got into real estate after one of my personal training clients recommended that I interview for an open role at the real estate development firm he worked for.

I got hired and became the executive assistant to the CEO. I learned the business over the course of the first year, got my broker's license, and became a leasing manager. I worked there for almost five years.

After 2 layoffs, the third came after only 90 days on the job

In October 2019, I left the firm for a better opportunity with a bigger developer. I thought this would be my career path for at least 10 years, but when COVID-19 hit, my job switched from growing the brand to just surviving.

I was only there for a year before getting laid off in October 2020. That was the first time I'd ever been let go.

I was unemployed for seven months before joining WeWork as a leasing manager. I worked for WeWork for two years, but in March 2023, I was laid off again.

Four months later, I got a new job but was only there for around 90 days before they laid me off in November 2023.

I've since applied for over 180 corporate jobs

I applied to 11 jobs in December, 30 in January, around 60 in both February and March, and 20 in April.

I applied for jobs I was qualified for in Chicago and elsewhere and to any and all types of roles — in-person, remote, and hybrid. I even applied for jobs I'm overqualified for, with much lower salaries than I wanted.

I was networking and doing everything you're "supposed" to do, but I couldn't get any traction on anything.

I moved on to applying for bridge jobs

In March, I started looking for bridge jobs. I applied to about 18 bridge jobs, like barista, grocery-store shelf stocker, and store manager. I heard nothing back besides some auto-rejections.

Many of these bridge jobs also required cover letters. I explained that I'd lost my corporate job and wanted to change industries. I talked about wanting to learn something new from the bottom and why I was interested in the job. I still got zero responses.

I started wondering, are they not hiring me because my résumé is too corporate? Bridge jobs may not want to hire people they think will leave. I understand that, but I don't know what they can expect if they pay minimum wage.

I moved back in with my parents

In April, I had to leave my life in Chicago and move back in with my parents in South Carolina.

I applied for a guest itinerary designer role at a luxury resort down the street. There were a lot of requirements, but it paid $18 an hour plus potential commission, and I thought it'd be a great bridge job.

I connected with the interviewer and landed a second interview, which also went great. I was excited for the third interview, sent my availability, and promptly stopped hearing back.

After multiple follow-up emails and calls, I was told they couldn't hire me because I lived too close to the business, and they didn't want to hire anyone living in the neighborhood. I still don't understand why that's their policy.

Being rejected from minimum wage bridge jobs makes me feel even worse than my other job rejections

I'm pretty strong and confident, and I feel very lucky to have an amazing, supportive network of people. Yet, being unemployed has caused me to feel a lot of self-doubt, insecurity, and isolation.

I got my first bartending job years ago because I was watching a football game at a dive bar and mentioned to the manager that I needed a job. It was slammed, and he said, "Yeah, come in on Monday." Now, I have to answer 10 questions about my personality and tell the hiring manager something fun about myself in 120 characters, and I still don't hear back.

One of my friends recommended I share my experience on TikTok. I quickly realized that my For You page was all other people who had been laid off.

When I saw how many people were in the same boat, I started a Slack networking community that now has over 1,500 members. The people who have joined are so smart — there are molecular biologists and people with PhDs. If even they can't get a job, I'm screwed.

It feels like I've gone backward

It feels like everything I've learned and the knowledge I've gained from my amazing mentors is obsolete because nobody will give me a chance.

I'm 34. I've built a career, am educated and smart, and have accomplished many things.

I don't want to work somewhere for minimum wage — I've scrambled and worked five jobs before, and now it feels like I'm taking a hundred steps backward to when I was 22. I don't want to work at a bar until 4 a.m. anymore.

Freelance work is tiding me over

I started an hourly freelance social media job for a construction company, which I heard about through a friend. I'd be willing to take on a second job, but what happened to being able to have one stable job with benefits?

I'm still applying for jobs. I've never worked this hard trying to figure out what to do. I feel like I'll never stop looking for jobs because I'm afraid that any job I get won't last. I'll never approach the job market the same again.

If you have struggled to find a bridge job and want to share your story, email Jane Zhang at janezhang@businessinsider.com.

• The European Commission announced additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports on Wednesday.
• The tariffs follow a probe into Chinese subsidies and include up to 48.1% in duties.
• Stocks of China's EV makers surged despite the tariffs, driven by perceived manageability.

The European Commission, or EC, announced it will be slapping hefty tariffs on China's electric vehicle imports — but most investors seem unfazed.

On Wednesday, the EC said it will impose tariffs of up to 38.1% on Chinese EV imports from next month — on top of existing 10% duties.

All Chinese EV imports will be subject to additional tariffs from next month, but the commission singled out three major EV makers: BYD, Geely, and SAIC.

BYD will be subject to an additional 17.4% in duties, while Geely will pay an extra 20%. State-backed SAIC will be subject to additional levies of 38.1%.

On Thursday — less than a day after EC dropped its bombshell announcement — the shares of most Chinese EV automakers were up.

EV giant BYD was surging as much as 8.8% in Hong Kong, while Geely gained as much as 2.4%. The shares of EV startups Nio and Li Auto were also higher.

Shanghai-listed SAIC was an outlier in Thursday's Chinese stock rally, declining by as much as 3%.

The unlikely rally for most Chinese EV companies appears to stem from the perception that the European Union's tariffs were "modest," as Vincent Sun, an equity analyst at Morningstar, wrote in a note on Wednesday.

After all, US President Joe Biden's administration is levying a 100% tax on Chinese EVs.

BYD, one of the world's largest EV makers alongside Tesla, would be less impacted by the new EU tariffs than its peers, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Joanna Chen said on Thursday.

"BYD will likely be able to absorb most of the burden from EU import duties, since its cars carry peer-beating profitability," said Chen.

Even though the market indicates that the EU's tariff hike on Chinese EVs is manageable, Beijing is still extremely displeased.

"I would like to stress that the anti-subsidy probe is typical protectionism," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said of the EU's tariffs on Wednesday.

"To levy additional tariffs on EVs imported from China violates market economy principles and international trade rules, disrupts China-EU economic and trade cooperation and the global automotive industrial and supply chains and will eventually hurt Europe's own interests," said Lin.

In recent months, Western countries have been lining up to criticize China for its barrage of cheap exports flooding the world's markets. They say China's dumping and unfair trade practices have hurt their economies.

However, Beijing has consistently pushed back on the West's criticisms. Chinese authorities say the West's accusations are protectionist and aimed at containing China's economic growth.

• Elon Musk scorned Apple and OpenAI after the companies revealed their team-up on Monday.
• But Musk's hating on the partnership may not be solely due to his misgivings about OpenAI.
• In a big blow to Musk's xAI, OpenAI will soon have access to Apple's sprawling user base.

Elon Musk has had an awful lot to say about Apple's partnership with OpenAI.

The deal, announced on Monday, involves integrating ChatGPT into Apple's operating systems. And boy, has it riled Musk up.

Besides threatening to ban Apple's devices at his companies, Musk has also floated the possibility of getting either his social media company X or his EV giant Tesla to make a smartphone themselves.

"We could, but hopefully it isn't needed," Musk said in response to a Morgan Stanley analyst predicting that Tesla could make its own phone one day.

"Tesla is one of the few companies that has its own tech stack (not iOS, Android or forked Android," he continued.

But Musk's full-throated condemnation of the Apple-OpenAI team-up may not be solely due to his misgivings toward OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.

To be sure, Musk does have a long-running feud with Altman and OpenAI. Musk filed a lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker in February, accusing the company of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft.

Musk might have dropped the lawsuit on Tuesday, but there's no evidence to suggest that that had anything to do with him wanting to bury the hatchet with Altman.

Moreover, Musk's contempt for the Apple deal may stem from more practical considerations. For one, Apple seems open to cutting deals with Google for the use of Gemini, but xAI doesn't appear to have been part of those conversations just yet — if the WWDC keynote on Monday was anything to go by.

Apple, an AI kingmaker

Bloomberg columnist Dave Lee called Apple a kingmaker in the AI race — and it's not hard to see why.

For one, the Cupertino-based tech giant has over one billion iPhone users at its disposal. Such a massive user base would be a boon for any AI company looking to gain a foothold in the highly competitive field.

In Musk's case, letting OpenAI grab the precious mindshare of Apple's users could prove to be a major blow to his AI company, xAI. This is because xAI doesn't have easy access to a wide-ranging consumer platform like OpenAI will soon own.

OpenAI can now count on both Apple and Microsoft to promote its AI offerings to their user bases. Even Google, whose AI products have been hit with scathing reviews, can turn to its mobile operating system, Android, which boasts over three billion users.

Musk still has X, but the social media platform averaged only 22 million daily active users in April, which pales in comparison to Apple's and Google's numbers.

That said, one shouldn't rule out Musk and xAI just yet. The company said in late May that it raised $6 billion for its Series B funding round, giving it a total valuation of $24 billion.

Altman's OpenAI, meanwhile, is worth around $80 billion.

And while Musk might not have a product with iPhone-levels of popularity, he still has the "Muskonomy" to back him up.

Musk's constellation of businesses, which includes Tesla and his satellite internet service Starlink, could give xAI the type of boost most AI startups can only dream of.

Musk may have been preoccupied with the Tesla shareholder vote, but there's no telling when he will refocus his attention on xAI and fire the next salvo in the AI race.

"There will be more to announce in the coming weeks," Musk said on May 27, shortly after xAI's funding announcement.

Representatives for Musk and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

• Millennials and Gen X have been known to call out their younger colleagues for their work ethic.
• But some envy Gen Z's ability to say "no" in the workplace, and prioritize a work-life balance.
• Gen Z has seen that following the workplace status quo hasn't always worked out for their older colleagues.

Actress Jodie Foster made headlines earlier this year when she called Gen Z "really annoying, especially in the workplace." She targeted their lackluster attitude to showing up to work and their inability to write professional-sounding emails.

But she's now admitted that she's envious of Gen Z's key skill: the ability to say "no" in the workplace.

"That's what is good about this new generation. They're very comfortable saying no, setting boundaries, and going, 'I don't like that, and I want to do this,'" Foster said during a Hollywood Reporter roundtable. "I didn't know that was possible."

And she's not alone in admiring the young people's ability to speak out in the workplace.

Gen Z's attitude to work

Millennials and Gen Xers have been rattled by Gen Z's work ethic: from skipping morning meetings to attend fitness classes, to refusing to work long hours, to asking about work-life balance in job interviews.

But in reality, this generation has seen what burnout culture did to the generations before them, and they're putting their foot down.

More Gen Zers are adopting an attitude of "work to live" instead of "live to work," future-of-work expert Ravin Jesuthasan previously told Business Insider. That means standing up for themselves to employers and, in some cases, refusing to do more work than is necessary — known as quiet quitting.

"Gen Zers are more likely to advocate for their rights, work-life balance, and their personal values in the workplace," Dan Schawbel, future-of-work expert and a managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, told Business Insider.

"If no one listens, then they choose action over complaints," Sophie O'Brien, a Gen Z hiring expert and the founder of the recruitment agency Pollen Careers, told BI.

"They question why we do things the way they do, not to defy authority, but to see if there are better ways," she added.

Intergenerational tensions

Older generations have spent their careers paying their dues, which can breed tension when the younger generation refuses to do the same.

Millennials and Gen X were more inclined to follow established hierarchies. "They're often taught to 'pay their dues' and be more deferential to authority figures or senior colleagues," Schawbel explained.

He added that this can lead senior employees to perceive Gen Zers as "entitled, impatient, or disrespectful of established norms."

Seeing Gen Z challenge these norms can be unsettling for older generations who may fear change.

"There was a sense of 'this is how things are done, these are the expectations, this is how you earn your stripes,' and they just got on with it," Alice Stapleton, a UK-based career change coach, told Business Insider.

"Perhaps some wish they'd had the courage to stand up for themselves at that age, especially if they're now feeling burned out and resentful at how their career has panned out since," she added.

Gen Z is showing older generations that there is a different way to work

Gen Zers have seen from previous generations that the status quo hasn't wielded the results they were promised.

Millennials were sold on a promise that landing a job and clocking the hours would lead to high salaries and a steady climb up the ladder, only to be met with layoffs and dwindling work benefits.

Gen Z doesn't want to fall victim to the same fate. Even if that means job-hopping.

"Instead of suffering in a job that doesn't align with their values, they'd rather leave than endure it just for a paycheck," O'Brien said. "This attitude is forcing the hand of organizations who want to attract Gen Zs."

Growing up with the internet and social media has made this generation acutely aware of injustice, and they're bringing this awareness to the workplace.

Groups of young people, like the youth-led nonprofit Gen Z for Change, have taken to TikTok to spread pro-union messages and educate their peers about their worker rights.

And that's helped fuel Gen Z's confidence to put their foot down when they spot workplace injustice.

But Gen Z isn't a monolith

Every generation that reaches adulthood in society is put under a microscope — we've seen it with millennials and even generations before, O'Brien explained. "But when it comes to Gen Z, a noticeable difference I see is that they choose action, so it almost forces change," she said.

That's not to say all Gen Zers are comfortable with confrontation; in fact, many experience more anxiety in the workplace.

Stapleton said that some of the Gen Z clients she works with still struggle with assertiveness and have concerns over how employers will respond to them saying no.

But as a generation, she said, they are much more willing to speak up if something feels unfair or unreasonable.

"Gen Z is showing that there is a different way, and that doesn't always go down too well with the previous generation," Stapleton told BI.