JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon isn't particularly worried about the plight of millennials and Gen Z.
He predicted young people will work less, live longer, and be healthier than past generations.
The billionaire banker flagged gaping wealth inequality as a far more pressing problem.
Many young people feel distraught at the state of the world, priced out of owning a home or having kids, and worried that artificial intelligence will steal their jobs.
They've also weathered a pandemic and are now dealing with historic inflation and the highest interest rates in two decades — when they've had less time than previous generations to build wealth and prepare for those challenges.
Jamie Dimon, the billionaire CEO of America's largest bank, has little sympathy for them. He made that clear during JPMorgan's investor day on Monday, per a transcript provided by AlphaSense.
"I don't feel so bad for Gen Z and millennials," Dimon said, noting his grandparents were Greek immigrants who arrived in the US with nothing but "a shirt on their back."
"Let's put things in perspective a little bit," the Wall Street titan continued. "They're going to be working probably 3.5 days a week. They're going to live to 100. They're not going to have cancer. They're going to be in pretty good shape, provided the world doesn't destroy it all with nuclear weapons, which is the biggest risk in the world."
Dimon also emphasized that in the decades ahead, younger generations will inherit trillions of dollars and benefit from mammoth investments in healthcare, education, and other areas.
Research suggests 25-year-olds are outearning the past six generations at that age, Gen Z owns homes at higher rates than millennials and Gen X — and they're set to spend a smaller percentage of their incomes between the ages of 22 and 30 on basics like rent and utilities than millennials did.
Money matters
However, Dimon did bemoan the plight of the bottom 20% of earners in the US.
"They've gotten a raw deal," he said. "They're dying 10 years younger. They have less medical insurance. They drive through crime in their neighborhoods. Their schools are failing those kids. Half the kids don't graduate in inner-city schools and stuff like that. What the hell did we do as a society?"
Dimon called out the drastic inequality and its potential consequences in his shareholder letter this year.
"I do believe this is tearing at the social fabric of America and is among the root causes of the fraying of the American dream," he said.
Dimon clearly sees the gap between the rich and poor as a far more pressing problem than the differences between the old and the young, who have plenty to celebrate in his book.
Things are so bad that even tech workers, who make some of the highest salaries of any profession, are feeling the crunch. Tech workers earning the industry's average salary of $135,089 a year could only afford — defined as spending up to 30% of gross income on housing and upfront costs — 35% of rentals on the market in New York City last year, according to a report published on Tuesdayfrom the rental platform StreetEasy and industry group Tech:NYC.
Almost 90% of NYC's tech jobs are located in Manhattan, where rents are steepest. In that borough, the median asking rent last year was $4,000 — and $3,500 for studios and one-bedrooms. Entry-level tech workers made an average of $75,262 in 2023, and could only afford 2.1% of studio and one-bedroom rental apartments in the city, StreetEasy found. In Manhattan, that number drops to 0.6% of studios and one-bedrooms.
"The crunch around housing is incredibly widely felt," Julie Samuels, the president and executive director of Tech:NYC, told Business Insider. "If these tech employees can't afford housing, then who can?"
Tech workers — defined in the report as those in computer and mathematical occupations — make the third-highest average annual wages among occupational groups in the city, according to the New York State Department of Labor.
Meanwhile, those who work in management positions could afford 71.5% of rentals on the market last year, while those in legal jobs could afford 64.7% of rentals.
New York City has seen a surge of growth in tech jobs over the last decade-plus, encouraged in part by government programs designed to boost tech education and welcome tech companies into the city. Despite many remote workers leaving New York during the pandemic, tech workers have resumed flooding into the city, including from hubs like San Francisco, in part to enjoy New York's lively social scene. But even as New York City has created 800,000 new jobs in the last 10 years, it's only built 200,000 new homes.
Samuels said she hears from tech companies concerned that many of their younger employees, particularly those who have kids, can't afford to stay in the city. "People who work in tech really want to live in New York," she said. "That drives the companies here as well, so that they can hire those people who want to live there. But if the people who want to live here can't afford to live here, that cycle gets messed up."
Of course, lower-income New Yorkers are being hit much harder by the housing crisis. The average tech worker makes 52% more per year than the average worker in New York City, the StreetEasy report noted.
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New Yorkers who make the city's average wage could afford fewer than 5% of rentals on the market last year, according to the StreetEasy report.
Those in healthcare support jobs and food serving and preparation could afford the fewest homes. Half of the 22 occupation groups measured in the report could afford fewer than 1% of rentals on the market.
"Essential workers earning average wages in their occupations — for example, firefighters, transportation workers, nurses, and homecare aides — they could afford less than 1% of the rentals in the city in 2023," Kenny Lee, a senior economist at StreetEasy and the author of the report, told Business Insider.
Moving within the city is out of the question for many. To begin with, there are shockingly few homes even on the market — the city's home vacancy rate is just 1.4%, the lowest in over 50 years, according to a recent city report. And if someone is lucky enough to find a rental they can afford, up-front costs — including brokers' fees, security deposits, and first months' rent — have also soared. The average New Yorker moving homes spent $10,454 on upfront costs last year, not including hiring movers.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York State Governor Kathy Hochul have declared the housing affordability crisis a central priority for their administrations. But neither has had much success in implementing solutions so far. Hochul's plan to encourage the construction of about 800,000 new homes across the state failed in the state legislature last year. It was brought down in part by local leaders in New York City's suburbs, who strongly oppose building more multi-family housing in their extremely low-density communities.
But Hochul has managed to find agreement with the legislature on a new version of her housing proposal that excludes the suburbs, but loosens restrictions on home construction and boosts protections for tenants.
Adams last year unveiled his "City of Yes" plan, which calls for a slew of zoning reforms to incentivize more and denser housing construction — and would create 100,000 new homes for 250,000 New Yorkers over 15 years. In its report, StreetEasy and Tech:NYC endorse Adams' plan, and call for even looser restrictions on housing density.
A conscript enters a recruiting center in Lviv, Ukraine.
Anastasiia Smolienko/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Mykola Sokalskii, a Ukrainian film producer, is being enlisted to fight against Russia.
He is also one of the powerful moderators of r/Ukraine — a huge clearinghouse for news of the war.
The subreddit grew more than tenfold during the war — and gave Sokalskii a vivid insight into the fight he's joining.
A man who spent two years moderating one of the internet's most influential sources of information on Ukraine is being called up to fight against Russia.
Mykola Sokalskii, a 39-year-old film producer from Kyiv, started live-streaming on Reddit in 2020 after the pandemic began.
Then, a few months before Russia invaded in February 2022, he joined r/Ukraine as a moderator, one of the users empowered to help shape the subreddit's conversation.
Speaking to Business Insider, Sokalskii said the subreddit "skyrocketed" in popularity on Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, swelling from 80,000 members to 906,000.
It became a key source of information on the war, often breaking news of major events and featuring gritty combat videos that mainstream journalists scrambled to confirm.
Sokalskii — who uses the username "JesterBoyd" — said he uses Reddit to convey what he sees as "objective truth" about the war to its members, predominantly in the US, UK, and Germany.
A shift in perspective
His days as a moderator are filled with reviewing heartbreaking posts detailing the tragedies in his country. He monitors the responses — giving him a unique perspective on how the West is viewing the invasion.
"We can see how the public opinion shifts and transforms based on the information they consume, and the responsibility we have is to give information that is objective," he told BI.
"When you travel through a war-torn landscape, you will see one house that will be completely obliterated, and then the neighbor's house will be pretty much fine — and it's kind of unfair in a way," he said.
"But that's just the way things are, and that's also the way you can portray war. You can focus on one house, or you can focus on another, or you can try to give a wider, more general picture and try to convey some kind of objective truth."
Ukraine's weakness
One issue often discussed on the subreddit is Ukraine's need for more troops.
Ukraine has recently stepped up its efforts to replenish soldiers. It lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25, eliminated some draft exemptions, and created an online registry for recruits.
Ukraine's parliament also passed a bill earlier this month that would allow the country's military to recruit prisoners to fight.
That effort now includes drafting Sokalskii.
The need is clear — US estimates have suggested Ukraine has already lost some 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers, The New York Times reported.
Skolskii knows it better than most. He said he had long been thinking about what would happen if he went to the frontline.
Writing in a thread in April, Skolskii said he'd been served a drafting notice, and was going through the process of getting ready to serve.
One person asked: Wouldn't he be more valuable to Ukraine helping run the subreddit?
"In a perfect world, I could do both more effectively by being in the army," he said. But the world isn't perfect.
A memorial for fallen defenders of Ukraine at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti on May 14, 2024 in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
"In reality, an army is an army and I expect it to be exceedingly difficult to post content regularly without endangering anyone and still being informative and engaging enough to make a difference," he said.
Flaws in Ukraine's conscription process
Sokalskii spent a long time thinking about the country's conscription process, which has been plagued by corruption. He said he believes it would work better as a lottery where "everybody has to suffer equally" — with the option to trade with a family member or friend willing to take your place.
"I think everyone should be equal… I don't really care whether you are a CEO or a plumber," Sokalskii said.
Sokalskii declined to share specifics on enlistment, citing that he was still going through the process.
But he said working as a moderator helped to set basic expectations for war.
Two Ukrainian soldiers of the 42th Brigade in training at an undisclosed location in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast on February 27, 2024.
Narciso Contreras/Anadolu via Getty Images
"My mom is very worried and wouldn't want me to go. What can you do?" he said.
Some Reddit users offered well-wishes, while others, who appeared to have military experience, offered advice on survival.
"Keep a safe distance from your buddies when out in the open. And stay dry — this is a survival thing: being miserable grinds people down mentally so they make stupid decisions," one person wrote in the thread he started.
Another wrote: "If I might offer one piece of advice as a combat vet myself, make sure you have plenty of dry socks."
"I know this may sound stupid to a lot of people, but it is arguably the most important piece of kit you'll have," they said. "It's hard to fight when the skin on your feet is rotten and falling off in chunks."
Sokalskii said the support he has received from the subreddit community has made him "proud to be a part of it."
However, investigators said in the affidavit that Bui somehow identified the wrong property, and instead set alight the home of a Senegalese immigrant family.
The fire resulted in the deaths of five people, including a 21-month-old child and a six-month-old baby.
According to NBC News, as part of a plea deal, Bui had 60 other charges, including first-degree murder and arson, dropped.
He now faces 60 years in prison, Denver's District Attorney's office said, with sentencing scheduled for July 2.
Bui is the last of three people to enter a plea in connection to the fire.
Dillon Siebert, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder under a plea deal, was sentenced last year to three years in juvenile detention and seven years in a state prison program for young inmates.
Gavin Seymour was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to a count of second-degree murder in March, according to The Denver Post.
The Washington Post reported last year that while apps like Find My can be incredibly accurate, they're not entirely reliable.
In addition to the house fire incident, a SWAT team in Denver mistakenly raided the home of a 77-year-old woman in 2022 while searching for a truck with stolen guns and an iPhone.
According to the Post, a lawyer for the woman stated that police relied on the Find My app, which ultimately led them to the wrong address.
The GOP frontrunner's plans were made clear outside the jury's hearing on Tuesday morning.
The defense rested just after 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Trump's final decision follows weeks of speculation. Last Thursday, lead defense lawyer Todd Blanche told the judge that the defense team still needed time to "think through" whether Trump would take the stand.
Without any testimony from Trump, the trial is on track to wrap up next week. The judge has told prosecutors and defense attorneys that he expects jurors will hear closing arguments next Tuesday, after a long Memorial Day weekend.
Trump has relentlessly attacked the case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office as a political "witch hunt," "scam," and "sham."
Nearly every morning and afternoon since the trial opened on April 15, the former president has fumed to the press gathered in the hallway of the 15th-floor downtown Manhattan courtroom that there was "no crime" and that the charges against him should have never been brought.
Trump, while in the courtroom hallway, has also repeatedly slammed New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, as "totally conflicted" and "corrupt."
In some of those hallway appearances earlier in the trial, Trump has told reporters that he planned to testify. But in more recent weeks, as more witnesses testified against him, Trump has ignored questions from pool reporters in the hallway asking if he would still take the witness stand.
Trump's legal team put only 2 witnesses on the stand
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege Trump illegally disguised records reimbursing his attorney-turned-nemesis Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money payment made to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election.
The prosecution called 20 witnesses to testify during the trial. Trump's defense attorneys put only two witnesses on the stand in his defense.
One, Robert Costello, is a criminal defense lawyer who met with Cohen in 2018. At the time, Cohen was in his own legal trouble after being the subject of an FBI raid. He later pleaded guilty to an array of crimes, including violating campaign finance laws by making the hush-money payment.
Costello backed up arguments from Trump's lawyers that Cohen — not Trump — drove the scheme to silence Daniels. He told jurors that Cohen told him that Trump didn't know anything about the payments. Cohen, for his part, testified earlier that he didn't trust Costello and misled him, viewing him as a "backchannel" to Trump because of his closeness to Trump ally Rudy Giuliani.
During his testimony in court Monday afternoon, Costello acted dismissively toward the judge's rulings, heavily sighing and audibly muttering "jeez" and "ridiculous" when Merchan upheld objections from prosecutors against questions from Trump's attorney Emil Bove. At one point, Merchan ordered the removal of journalists from the courtroom and dressed down Costello, threatening to hold him in contempt.
"If you don't like my ruling, you don't give me side-eye, and you don't roll your eyes," Merchan told Costello before he cleared the room.
Judge Juan Merchan, left, castigates witness Robert Costello about his "decorum" in the courtroom in Manhattan criminal court.
Elizabeth Williams via AP
Trump's lawyers also called Daniel Sitko, a paralegal working for lead defense attorney Todd Blanche, to serve as a custodial witness so that jurors could see records of phone calls between Costello and Cohen.
The Trump team had also intended to call former Federal Elections Commissioner Brad Smith to the stand, where he would serve as a pricy expert witness racking up $1,200 an hour to testify about campaign finance law. But on Monday, Merchan ruled that Smith's planned testimony would have little relevance, deeming that, as the judge, he's the final arbiter of how the law should be applied.
On social media Monday night, Smith called Merchan "biased" and the trial "a farce." He told The Washington Examiner that he would have testified about past applications of campaign finance law, and that he did not believe that a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to silence her ahead of the 2016 election using a non-disclosure agreement amounted to a campaign expense.
"My personal belief is that clearly paying hush money, or paying for a nondisclosure agreement, does not constitute a campaign expense," he said.
During the trial, jurors heard testimony from both Daniels and Cohen, key witnesses for the prosecution.
Cohen wrapped up his testimony on Monday. He told jurors how Trump approved of his payment to Daniels, and knew he was reimbursing Cohen for the hush money in 2017.
S-400 Triumph systems rehearse before the World War II anniversary in Moscow in 2017.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
Russia's S-400 air-defense system is feared.
But Ukraine has been able to destroy some, including, it seems, with older weapons.
Experts say it's still a formidable system, but the West could learn from Ukraine's wins.
The performance of the Russian military's top air-defense system in Ukraine has shown it's vulnerable to even some older Western missiles, and wins against it could give the West new ideas on how to defeat it, experts say.
The Russian S-400 is considered one of the world's most advanced air-defense systems, but in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, multiple units have been destroyed, including by older Western weapons the system should be able to handle.
Russian S-400 surface-to-missile systems in the Victory Day parade in Moscow's Red Square on i in May 2023.
Contributor/Getty Images
Experts told Business Insider the system is clearly very capable, but it does have some weak points that Ukraine has been able to exploit.
Fredrik Mertens, an analyst at the Hague Center for Strategic Studies, said "we clearly know that Ukrainian missiles are getting through and at rates that they really pose a problem for the Russians."
A flagship system
Russia's S-400 Triumf, known to NATO as the SA-21 Growler, is a long-range, road-mobile surface-to-air missile system and the successor to the older S-300 system.
It was designed to target missiles and aircraft, but it can also be used for surface-to-surface strikes. Russia has used it to hit Ukrainian cities.
Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the International Institute for Strategic Studies called this weapon "one of the world's more sophisticated" air-defense systems.
It first became operational in 2007 and is considered Russia's equivalent of the US Patriot system.
The head of Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned military company that oversees most of Russia's military exports, in February called it the "best long-range air defense system in the world."
Russian S-400 Triumph/SA-21 Growler medium-range and long-range surface-to-air missile systems drive during the Victory Day parade at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, in 2015.
Reuters
While losses have been relatively rare, especially compared to other systems like Russian tanks and armored vehicles, the system has not always lived up to the hype.
John Hoehn, a researcher at the RAND Corporation with a specialism in air warfare, told BI its international popularity shows that it's seen as "one of the best air defenses that was available."
"Overall," he said, "I think the Ukrainian Air Force has viewed it as a substantial threat." But, Hoehn added, Ukraine has also found ways to counter S-400s and even destroy some of them.
Ukraine is hitting S-400s
Ukraine has destroyed multiple S-400 systems in its fight.
Ukraine in September said it destroyed two Russian S-400 batteries in Crimea, a region annexed by Russia in 2014. There were only five S-400s there before Russia invaded, Forbes reported.
A video captures the moment an S-400 explodes in Crimea.
Screengrab/Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine
It said that one of these attacks used a modified Neptune anti-ship missile, a Ukrainian-made missile derived from an older, Soviet missile.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said the attack may signal Russia's air defenses in Crimea may suffer from "systemic tactical failures."
Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which claims sources in Russia's police and military agencies, said that ATACMS were used in the attack. ATACMS, tactical ballistic missiles developed by the US, have been in service since 1986.
An ATACMS missile is fired during a joint military drill between the US and South Korea in October 2022.
South Korea Defense Ministry via AP
Mertens said the S-400s appear to have "troubles in intercepting ballistic missile targets," something that the US-made Patriots have proved they can do, even against advanced missiles like Russia's overhyped Kinzhals.
A video in February also shows what Ukraine said was a Storm Shadow missile, also known as a SCALP missile, flying unimpeded over an S-400 in Crimea.
Mertens described it as "incredible footage" that likely serves as a "terrible indictment" of the system. He said that Russia may have been unlucky with the system being passive at that moment, saying if so, "it can be forgiven, but still it's painful for Russia."
He said Ukrainians "have been hitting targets in the Crimea with depressing regularity for the Russians."
Hoehn said it was possible the system hadn't been set up, so its radar was not properly functioning yet, or that Ukraine used electronic warfare against it.
Ian Williams, formerly the deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said last year the S-400s "seem to have struggled against Storm Shadows, but without better insight into intercepts, it's hard to assess with certainty."
Ukraine's wins come, as with most of this war's developments, with the caveat that there is no objective proof of how many systems Ukraine has hit compared to how many it has targeted or how many times the S-400 has been successful.
Mattias Eken, a missile defense expert at the RAND Corporation, noted Russia has kept much about the system a secret, and neither country has been fully open about their loss rates.
Rajan Menon, the director of the Grand Strategy program at the US think tank Defense Priorities, described the S-400 as Russia's "top-of-the-line air defense system."
Russian troops S-400 systems at a military base in Kaliningrad in March 2019.
REUTERS/Vitaly Nevar
But, he said, "the performance of the S-400 has been mixed in the sense that although it's talked up as this super air defense system, the Ukrainians have been able to take out not a few of them."
Ukraine has figured out how to hit some
Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army and a military strategist, described the S-400 as a "very capable system," but one that Ukraine has figured out how to sometimes foil.
"The way you take down these highly capable systems is you take a systems approach. It's not 'just fire a weapon against it,' you've got to unpickall the things that defend it, whether it's sensors or other weapons systems, other air and missile and drone defense systems."
Doing that "is very hard. It's expensive, and it's a big targeting challenge."
A rocket launches from a S-400 missile system at the Ashuluk military base in Southern Russia in September 2020.
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
But Ukraine has repeatedly been able to do it, something Ryan described as "a very impressive feat."
He said Ukrainians, aided by help from NATO nations and the alliance's joint targeting doctrine, have "become far more systematic and sophisticated in how they undertake the very complex and systemic taking down of highly capable Russian systems."
And he said Ukraine has been better at protecting its own missile systems than Russia has.
"They use deception, they move them frequently, they use dummies," he said. "There's a whole range of operating modalities around having their sensors on and off. And the Russians haven't been as good at this."
Air-defense systems typically work as part of a layered network rather than in isolation, with different systems working to detect an incoming attack and neutralize it, as well as protect the most valuable systems in the network, like the S-400.
Hoehn said Ukraine may be able to hit some S-400s because of flaws in Russia's network, with it perhaps not being set up adequately, creating gaps because other systems like the Pantsir missile system, which hasn't really lived up to expectations either, are not playing enough of a role to protect and support the S-400s.
Russian S-400 missile air defence systems parade through Red Square during the general rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade in Moscow in May 2022.
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images
Hoehn said that Ukraine has been able to "come up with some very creative tactics to be able to engage and destroy some of these sophisticated Russian systems."
"I don't know if this is higher or lower than what expectations might've been, but certainly they've changed how they have gone and tried to attack these systems before the war versus what we're seeing now."
Eken described the S-400 as "highly capable but not impervious to attack."
He said "the Ukrainian air force is still cautious and keeps a safe distance from the front lines due to the threat of the S-400 and other Russian SAM systems."
But, he said, it "is not invulnerable, particularly if it is not adequately protected. Ukraine has demonstrated its ability to destroy S-400 systems farther away from the front lines, such as in Crimea."
Older Western weapons seem to be performing better
Some of the experts said the S-400's performance, its troubles in particular, stands out compared to the Patriot, the system it was built to rival.
Patriots are older and had a somewhat chequered record before being used in Ukraine. But they have been hailed as a huge success in this war, and none of these have been confirmed lost, though there have been claims and rumors.
A Patriot air defense system test-fired during a training in Chania, Greece, on November 8, 2017.
Anthony Sweeney/US Army
Menon said of the S-400 systems defending Crimea, "if you compare it to the Patriot, for example, it doesn't seem to have worked as quite as well."
But Ukraine has been running low on Patriot and other air defense missiles, as well as the long-range missiles it uses to target Russian equipment like the S-400, after support from the US stopped for six months.
And the S-400s remain a threat.
Hoehn said any F-16s Ukraine is due to get from allies this summer that get into the range of S-400s will be targets.
He said trying to destroy Russia's air defense systems could be a priority for Ukraine's F-16 pilots, but doing so against S-400s will be a big challenge as those are the jets' "most capable" threat.
Mertens said that while the S-400s should not be underestimated, it seems they "have a few potentially glaring deficiencies that could make them vulnerable against a capable and advanced opponent like the United States or NATO, which will be a very serious cause for concern for the Russians."
Ryan said that Ukraine's success against some S-400s helps its allies in the West and NATO learn how to defeat the system in the future, explaining that "the reality is this is a significant opportunity for Western military and intelligence organizations to collect on the capability of the Russian military across the board."
OpenAI's John Schulman says artificial general intelligence could be two to three years away.
Schulman emphasizes the need for tech companies to cooperate for the safe development of AGI.
Experts have long warned that AGI represents various existential threats to humanity.
The age of AGI is coming and could be just a few years away, according to OpenAI cofounder John Schulman.
Speaking on a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, Schulman predicted that artificial general intelligence could be achieved in "two or three years."
He added that tech companies needed to be ready to cooperate to ensure the technology was developed safely.
"Everyone needs to agree on some reasonable limits to deployment or to further training, for this to work. Otherwise, you have the race dynamics where everyone's trying to stay ahead, and that might require compromising on safety."
Schulman also said there would need to be "some coordination among the larger entities that are doing this kind of training."
AGI is a somewhat contested term, but is generally understood to refer to AI systems that have the ability to achieve complex human capabilities such as common sense and reasoning.
Experts have long warned that this level of advanced AI represents various existential threats to humanity, including the risk of an AI takeover or humans becoming obsolete in the workforce.
Tech companies are racing to develop this futuristic technology. OpenAI, where Schulman still works, is one of the frontrunners to achieve AGI first.
Schulman told Patel's podcast: "If AGI came way sooner than expected we would definitely want to be careful about it. We might want to slow down a little bit on training and deployment until we're pretty sure we know we can deal with it safely."
He added companies needed to be prepared to "pause either further training, or pause deployment, or avoiding certain types of training that we think might be riskier. So just setting up some reasonable rules for what everyone should do to having everyone somewhat limit these things."
Some industry experts called for a similar pause after OpenAI released its GPT-4 model. In March last year, Elon Musk was among multiple experts who signed a letter raising concerns about the development of AI. The signatories called for a six-month pause on the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
Last week, an OpenAI spokesperson, Kayla Wood, told The Washington Post that Schulman has taken over leading its safety research efforts.
The changes were made after Jan Leike, who led its Superalignment team, resigned last week and later accused the company of prioritizing "shiny products" over safety.
The team has since been dissolved following several departures of its members, including chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. A spokesperson for OpenAI told The Information that the remaining staffers were now part of its core research team.
Schulman's comments come amid protest movements calling for a pause on training AI models. Groups such as Pause AI fear that if firms like OpenAI create superintelligent AI models, they could pose existential risks to humanity.
Pause AI protesters held a demonstration outside OpenAI's headquarters last week as it announced its GPT-4o model.
Not every kid needs to go to college, according to one teacher.
Chris Ryan/Getty Images
Many of my college students told me they were in school because their parents forced them.
Parents should know that not every kid needs to go to college.
They can volunteer, take a gap year, go into trade work, or earn a certificate.
During my nine years of teaching college composition classes, I experienced a familiar student-teacher conversation on repeat. Students would confess to me — usually when we had a one-on-one about their plummeting grade — what was really going on. The overwhelming and overriding culprit of my students' college failures was their parents.
To be frank, many students were miserable. They had attempted to express to their parents that they didn't want to go to college —whether in the years leading up to high school graduation or after starting college life. Their reasons were diverse. Students were unprepared, disinterested, or inadequately supported — be it financially, emotionally, academically, socially, or physically.
No matter the reason, I chose to listen and believe my students, which is something their parents decided, for their own reasons, not to do.
Many didn't want to disappoint their parents. They were terrified of letting their parents know that money had been "wasted" or that they didn't meet their parents' own college dreams for their kids.
I wish I could have said to each of these parents that their child had other options.
Take a gap year
Yes, a gap year sounds incredibly privileged, but hear me out. Instead of parents hemorrhaging money or students going into debt for an education that won't end up in a degree and a job, a gap year could come with stipulations.
Those parameters could include the following: They must be employed part-or-full time, saving money, and working alongside a well-informed mentor to explore the next steps.
Nothing about a well-planned gap year is wasteful. Honestly, I rarely met a freshman who knew what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives. Parents, give your kid some time and wiggle room to mature and consider their future.
Consider a trade
When someone has a plumbing emergency in their home, they summon the first available plumber and (usually) pay whatever the repair cost is — no matter the sum. Desperate times call for desperate measures. That proves there is money in trade work.
The trades are a way for kids who prefer a more hands-on career to become something that brings in a great income — be it a welder, electrician, cosmetologist, dental assistant, or culinary artist.
Plus, they can usually start working earlier than their college-attending peers and accumulate less debt.
Look into community college
So many students told me their parents turned their noses up at the idea of their child attending a community college, and my question is: Why?
I attended a community college and eventually became a college teacher. Community college is cheaper, sometimes more conveniently located, and offers a less abrupt and extreme step between high school and a university.
Community colleges also can offer more of a community feel than a large university, meaning perhaps more comfortable social engagements for kids who tend to be more introverted or struggle with a social anxiety disorder.
Volunteer work is also a great option
Volunteering allows young adults to try different fields without the pressure of knowing how to do the job.
For the kid interested in veterinary medicine, volunteer at an animal shelter. For the kid interested in becoming a librarian, volunteer to gather books, stock shelves, or staff author events at a local library.
Volunteering can have a lot of value, including showing the applicant's spirit on a resume or school application.
Earn a certificate
A certificate is earned by someone who puts in hours to get an overview or a deep dive into in a particular topic or skill set. Certificate programs can take as little as a few weeks, while others can take closer to a year or more.
Students can earn certificates or engage in short programs to become nursing assistants, massage therapists, court reporters, web designers, and more.
Some programs have minimum age requirements. This again gives the late teen a way to learn more about a certain topic or field to determine how interested they are in pursuing that as a degree and then possibly a career.
These aren't the only post-high school graduation or post-GED options. The important thing is for parents to listen to their kids, understand their needs, and take a team approach, especially at this stage in their almost-grown-up child's life.
OnlyFans creator Charlotte Lavish promotes her business on TikTok.
Charlotte Lavish
Unlike other platforms, OnlyFans does not have a discovery page, which can make it hard for creators to get noticed.
OnlyFans influencers typically have to advertise their accounts outside of the platform.
Learn how OnlyFans creators successfully promote their accounts on Reddit, TikTok, and more.
One of the keys to gaining an OnlyFans audience is to market yourself outside the platform. Many creators choose to post on a medley of social-media platforms — from the more sex-work-friendly sites like Twitter and Reddit to mainstream platforms like TikTok and Instagram — to get their names out there and entice potential subscribers.
OnlyFans creators may use multiple platforms to promote themselves, but each creator usually focuses on a few where most of their followers and subscribers come from. They master those sites and learn how to work them to reach as many people as possible.
These strategies can include scheduling posts, doing promotional shoutouts, collaborating with other creators, and experimenting with popular content on their chosen platforms, from audio and photos to short- and long-form videos. Some creators show off other interests like cooking and sports.
Isla Moon, who dropped her plan of pursuing a Ph.D. for OnlyFans, built most of her fanbase thanks to the short-video platform TikTok, where she shares a mix of revealing content and videos about her hobbies outside adult work.
Anne, an adult-content creator who traverses her home country of Canada in a van, uses Reddit to engage her community by diligently responding to comments on her posts.
"I love the community on there, and I make sure I respond to every single person I can who comments on a post that I've done," she told Business Insider. "I make sure to show them that I appreciate that they've seen my content and that they're important to my day."
Here are seven ways OnlyFans creators promote themselves:
1. Twitter
Twitter drove 75% of social media traffic to OnlyFans in the US, according to yearly data from April 2023 that web-analytics firm SimilarWeb shared with Business Insider. Many OnlyFans creators are active on the platform because Twitter's guidelines allow for nudity and pornographic content, with some exceptions.
2. TikTok
At a glance, TikTok isn't the ideal platform for OnlyFans creators due to its strict content guidelines that bar nudity and "sexually explicit narratives." But some OnlyFans stars prefer to promote on TikTok because its algorithm allows them to easily find viewers who could become subscribers.
"Anyone can grow a fan base on TikTok, and I like that algorithm the best," OnlyFans creator Charlotte Lavish told Insider.
Navigating the platform without getting banned can be tricky for OnlyFans creators, some of whom have said they've faced harassment on the site. However, several who use TikTok heavily said the platform can be a great promotional tool if you know how to work it.
Reddit can be intimidating because of its communities of subreddits that each have their own rules, but several OnlyFans creators who learned to navigate it said it was where most of their subscribers came from.
Farrah, an adult-content creator who makes content without her face showing, posts in eight to 10 subreddits daily, including styled as r/milf, r/fitnakedgirls, and r/Impressive_Apricot37, which she runs.
4. Promoting discreetly by using safe-for-work content
OnlyFans creators often adapt their promotional content for each social-media platform's content guidelines. It allows them to reach mainstream audiences while discreetly promoting their OnlyFans pages.
For example, MelRose Michaels, a creator who earns roughly $30,000 per month on OnlyFans and coaches adult-content creators on how to grow their businesses, creates safe-for-work content like ASMR videos on YouTube or livestreams on Twitch to plug her OnlyFans.
She recommends adult-content creators run their social accounts as any mainstream influencer would.
Rayna Rose was able to kickstart her career on OnlyFans thanks to a revenue-share deal she struck with her former boss, multimillionaire creator Bryce Adams. Through the deal, Rose receives promotion and advertisement from Adams — who has hundreds of thousands of fans — in exchange for a portion of her earnings.
Lizzy Capri, formerly a kids' YouTuber, pivoted her content in 2023 and began posting on OnlyFans. She also entrusted the promotion of her profile to Adams, whose team manages and promotes the account in exchange for 15% of her net earnings.
Lavish, one of the OnlyFans creators who uses TikTok to promote, often features other OnlyFans stars in her TikToks. They do dance challenges or lip sync over popular sounds together. This is another one of the ways OnlyFans influencers can cross-promote.
Some creators even pay others for "shoutouts" on their pages. Oftentimes, the creator being paid has a larger following and can reach more people, and some of these creators have turned shoutouts into a business in itself.
Some adult-content creators incorporate their mainstream interests like fitness and cooking into their content. Michaels, the adult-content creator coach, said this is a great way to bring creative or new ideas into OnlyFans content as well.
Isla Moon, who's made close to $5 million on OnlyFans, uses social-media platforms to promote her adult content but also to share her hobbies, like spending time in nature and fishing. This has allowed her to build a dedicated fan base of "the middle-aged man in the States who enjoys fishing and hunting on the weekends," she said.
Liensue, a German creator, makes cosplay a central element of her content, both on OnlyFans and on other social-media platforms. She's been able to build a strong community of subscribers who are into cosplay.
Influencer Chloe Sasha has been experimenting with different TikTok pages where she chats about sports, cooks Mexican recipes, teaches Spanish, and more. She also modifies some of these videos for her OnlyFans audience, such as filming similar videos in the nude.
7. Creative IRL strategies to promote OnlyFans without social media
Steph Mi landed an OFTV show after she flew an airplane banner at a baseball game with the link to her OnlyFans written out, "ONLYFANS.COM/STEPHMI." She also did this again at the Kentucky Derby.
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The Sonos Ace are the brand's first pair of wireless headphones.
Sonos
Sonos is one of the most popular audio brands around and it makes some of our favorite wireless speakers and soundbars. However, the company's lineup has been missing one notable category: headphones. That is, until now.
For the first time, Sonos is set to launch a pair of wireless headphones. Called the Sonos Ace, the new over-ear headphones are poised to compete with similar flagship offerings from Bose, Sony, and Apple. They promise all the essential features found on other top headphones, like Bluetooth support and noise-canceling, along with a few cool perks geared toward home theater fans, including Dolby head tracking and easy swapping between Sonos soundbars.
Below, we've broken down all the ins and outs of the Sonos Ace, including pricing and specs to help you decide if they're worth considering. We'll add more retail links once they become available.
Sonos Ace price and preorder details
Sonos
The Sonos Ace are now available to preorder for $449 from Sonos' online store and Best Buy. Color options include black and white. Preoders are expected to ship by June 5. We'll add more retail options once they become available.
Sonos Ace specs and features
Sonos
The Sonos Ace are packed with all the core features that we've come to expect from a pair of flagship wireless headphones. They use an over-ear design and integrate a custom 40mm dynamic audio driver in each ear cup. Active noise-canceling with eight microphones is included, along with an Aware mode that lets in outside sound when you want to hear your surroundings. Aware modes, sometimes called Transparency modes, have become handy on many of the best noise-canceling headphones, including the Bose QuietComfort, so we're curious to hear how natural Sonos' implementation sounds.
For wireless playback, the Sonos Ace support Bluetooth 5.4 and they're compatible with the aptX codec on Android devices for higher quality transmission. You can also use a wired connection via the included 3.5mm to USB-C cable to get full lossless audio.
Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality spatial audio formats are also supported via services like Amazon Music, Apple Music, Tidal, and Deezer. These formats use object-based mixing to create a 3D soundstage for music and movies. The Ace also make use of Dolby Head Tracking technology, which maps playback to your head movements as if you were in the middle of an actual surround sound system.
And unique to the Sonos Ace is an intriguing feature that allows them to seamlessly swap audio between the headphones and a Sonos Arc soundbar. By pressing a button you can go from listening to movies and TV shows through a Sonos Arc in a home theater setting to a private listening mode that's perfect for times when you don't want to disturb others. Best of all, this mode supports full lossless Dolby Atmos through the headphones, so you still get a full immersive surround sound experience. In addition to the Arc, this feature is set to expand to the Sonos Beam and Ray in the future.
Sonos says the Ace can last for up to 30 hours and they support a quick-charge feature that can provide three hours of battery life from just three minutes of charging. This is something that the Sony WH-1000XM5 also offer. Finally, rounding out the package is a slim case with a magnetic cable pouch.
Should you preorder the Sonos Ace?
Sonos
On paper, the Sonos Ace headphones look like worthy rivals to other top options in this space like the Sony WH-1000XM5, Apple AirPods Max, and Bose QuietComfort Ultra. And their ability to swap playback between Sonos soundbars makes them uniquely suited for buyers who are already plugged into the brand's ecosystem of wireless audio products.
However, we can't fully recommend a pair of headphones until we've had hands-on testing time. We'll begin testing the Sonos Ace soon, so check back for our full review with detailed thoughts about their performance. Our judgement will have to wait until then, but we're excited to see how Sonos' first pair of headphones stack up to the competition.