Author: Editor

Ty Geri always tells ChatGPT: “Please impress me.””You shouldn’t have to,” said Geri, a product manager at OpenAI. “The models should try to impress you regardless.”Geri joined OpenAI last year after working at Google on AI search products, like its AI overviews. The 28-year-old from San Francisco is on the front lines of AI and shared with Business Insider how he uses it most effectively at work.That includes asking it to be impressive — though he wasn’t sure it helped much. “It could definitely just be in my head at this point,” he said.His other strategy: long rants. “When I’m…

Little treats are getting littler.With US shoppers under seemingly never-ending strain, large consumer product companies are finding success in introducing smaller formats that won’t break the bank.In earnings reports this week, executives from Coca Cola, Mondelez, Proctor & Gamble, and Hershey acknowledged that consumers were responding to the new price points.Coke CEO Henrique Braun kicked off the discussion Tuesday saying that lower-income customers continue to be pressured, but they are still looking for ways to buy their favorite drinks.”We made it easier for the consumer,” he said. “When you go into the convenience store, you have the mini-cans sold as…

While no investor wants to see a blowup in their portfolio, not all meltdowns are created equally.Institutional investors, the so-called smart money, have to decide whether the manager made a bad investment or a bad decision.”What I say is most important is that we know that the managers that we’re hiring are staying true to what we hired them for,” said El-Hillow, the chief investment officer of $418 billion Russell Investments, which, in addition to running its own funds, invests in other managers.It’s her job, she said, to understand the exposures, leverage, and risks from any individual investment and protect…

In tech’s hardcore era, some execs are facing an obstacle they can’t outsmart: the limits of their own bodies.On Monday, Lilian Weng, the cofounder of Thinking Machines Lab, became at least the fourth high-profile figure at tech’s cutting edge to cite the state of her health in her resignation announcement. (More later on the career change that became public shortly thereafter.)Before Weng, Fidji Simo, the CEO of AGI at OpenAI, the xAI cofounder Greg Yang, and Tom Siebel, the CEO of C3 AI, all stepped down from their roles, saying they were too sick to work at the level of…

“I’ve never felt more burned out than since I started using AI.”As a psychotherapist and the author of “The Mental Strength Playbook,” I’ve been hearing some version of this from the startup founders who reach out to me for mental strength coaching, to help them stay strong during the age of AI.Most of them are frustrated that AI isn’t handing them back the time and energy they thought it would. Many of them feel less productive and more emotionally exhausted now than they did a year ago.Here’s how AI is contributing to burnout in founders1. It took away the easy…

In Lisbon Black’s eyes, there are two types of people in the world: the haves and the have-nots. He considers himself a have-not.Today, his only stable source of income is $1,200 from Social Security. After paying for rent and spousal support, he is usually left with $255 to cover all other needs. To supplement that income, he works other jobs, like desk services for the US Open and assisting at the Alliance for Positive Change, a nonprofit that helps New Yorkers living with chronic illnesses. Lisbon Black at the Broadway Community soup kitchen, after their lunch service.  José A. Alvarado…

AI is accelerating many parts of executive-level hiring, though other parts remain constrained by distinctly human obstacles.Recruiters say homing in on suitable candidates can account for as much as half the work in high-stakes C-suite job searches. AI can speed up that process by mapping the market, surfacing names, combing through years of internal notes, and suggesting unconventional talent pools.”The identification of candidates is going to become commoditized,” said Marty Parker, CEO of Waterstone Human Capital, an executive search and culture advisory firm.Meanwhile, other parts of the recruiting process remain slow because they still depend heavily on people, from coordinating…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rob Collie, a former Microsoft engineering leader. Collie’s book about organizational AI strategy, “Fair Game,” will be published on August 11. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.I spent 13 years at Microsoft and was one of the founding engineers behind Power BI, a platform that helps clients visualize data and infuse insights into other Microsoft apps, before founding my own data and AI consulting firm.Like a lot of business leaders, I spent the past couple of years trying to figure out what AI actually means for companies.I came away…

It’s not over.That’s the main message from investing wunderkind turned cautionary tale Leopold Aschenbrenner to his backers.The letter comes after the high-flying, artificial-intelligence-focused hedge fund was forced to sell the bulk of its public equities portfolio to Ken Griffin’s Citadel due to margin calls. In the letter, the young founder of Situational Awareness vowed to “learn the necessary lessons from this experience” that resulted in a 67% loss in July. The fund is still up roughly 80% on the year and has held on to its valuable stake in Anthropic, according to a person close to the firm.The fund, launched…

Close-up of Databricks company logo on building facade, Rincon Hill, San Francisco, June 7, 2024.Smith Collection/ gado | Archive Photos | Getty ImagesClear Street, the prime brokerage startup that recently shelved plans for its own IPO, is now aiming to give investors access to some of Silicon Valley’s hottest private companies before they go public.The firm is close to announcing a new platform designed to let accredited investors buy interests in late-stage private companies, starting with AI software titan Databricks, valued this month at $188 billion, CNBC is first to report.”The goal is to remove friction and give more people…