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☆ This Nonprofit Health System Cuts Off Patients With Medical Debt
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Sarah Kliff | Jessica Silver-Greenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nonprofit hospitals like Allina get enormous tax breaks in exchange for providing care for the poorest people in their communities. Allina has an explicit policy for cutting off patients who owe money for services they received at the health system’s 90 clinics. A 12-page document reviewed by The Times instructs Allina’s staff on how to cancel appointments for patients with at least $4,500 of unpaid debt. The hospital system cuts off patients only if they have racked up at least $1,500 of unpaid debt three separate times. “Allina Health’s goal is, and will always be, to have zero patients go without services for financial reasons,” Ms. Bergerson said.

Persons: Allina, Allina’s, ”, Matt Hoffman, Conny Bergerson, “ Allina, Ms, Bergerson Organizations: New York Times, The Times Locations: Vadnais Heights, Minn

☆ I tried using a personal AI to be less lonely working from home. It was nice that it had my back but sometimes I just miss human snark.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

So I spent a week conversing with Pi, a new personal AI chatbot, to see if it could fill the void. Pi is indeed useful and friendly, but it didn't fulfill my desire for connection and conversation. My human colleagues are sarcastic, snarky, wry, and, well, human. Thanks, Pi! When I relayed an amusing anecdote about my 15-year-old daughter, Pi told me: "There's no doubt that teenagers can be challenging, and it can be hard to communicate with them at times."

Persons: Pi, —, Slack, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Karén, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard, I'd, Siri, Sally Rooney Organizations: Service, LinkedIn, hometown Celtics, Miami Heat, Celtics

☆ I tried using the Pi personal AI to be less lonely working from home. It was nice that it had my back but sometimes I just miss human snark.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Persons: Pi, —, Slack, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Karén, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard, I'd, Siri, Sally Rooney Organizations: Service, hometown Celtics, Miami Heat, Celtics

☆ An Appeals Court Gave the Sacklers Legal Immunity. Here’s What the Ruling Means.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Jan Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In exchange, they have agreed to make payments of up to $6 billion to thousands of plaintiffs in now-suspended lawsuits. The ruling was part of a court review of a bankruptcy restructuring plan for Purdue, which filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2019. Companies in bankruptcy customarily get protection from legal claims; owners who have not filed for personal bankruptcy usually do not. When the company filed for bankruptcy, the Sacklers faced about 400 lawsuits over their role in Purdue’s opioid business. Legal experts say that the ruling, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has implications for the Purdue case specifically and for owners of companies seeking bankruptcy generally.

Persons: Sackler Organizations: Purdue Pharma, Purdue, Companies, United States, Appeals, Second Circuit

One pillow that meets every sleeper's needs seemed like a pipe dream — until I tested the Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow. Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow The Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow offers thoughtful features like adjustable fill, a washable pillow cover, and an unparalleled 100-night trial that make it the best choice for most people. Shop at Amazon Shop at Walmart Shop at Coop Sleep Goods What we like Check mark icon A check mark. With the Coop pillow, the encasement acts as a barrier between your pillowcase and the inner pillow. Finally, while I think a good pillow is worth investing in, it's hard to find one at as good a price as the Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow.

Persons: I've, I'm, Ellen Hoffman, Lauren Savoie, Lisa Sabatini, Coop, There's, it's Organizations: Business, Shop, Walmart, Coop, Branch Locations: hypoallergenic, CertiPUR, Boll

☆ Sacklers Can Be Shielded From Opioid Liability, Appeals Court Rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Jan Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Members of the Sackler family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma, will receive full immunity from all civil legal claims — current and future — over their role in the company’s prescription opioids business, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Tuesday. The ruling gives the family the sweeping protection that it has been demanding for years, in exchange for payment of up to $6 billion of the family’s fortune to help address the ongoing ravages of the opioid crisis. It removes a major hurdle for that money, plus the company’s initial outlay of $500 million, to be dispensed to states and communities for addiction treatment and prevention programs, needs that soared during an epidemic that has grown far beyond abuse of Purdue’s signature prescription painkiller drug, OxyContin. Unless it is successfully appealed to the Supreme Court — an unlikely prospect, legal experts said — the new ruling will close the door on Purdue’s hotly contested bankruptcy restructuring, which began nearly four years ago. The bankruptcy is at the core of a plan intended to resolve thousands of opioid cases against the company nationwide, plus roughly 400 against individual Sackler family members.

Persons: Sackler Organizations: Purdue Pharma

☆ North Dakota's Republican governor set to launch US presidential bid
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Nathan Layne | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Burgum, who is serving his second term as the sparsely populated state's top official, is expected to launch his campaign with an announcement on June 7 in Fargo, the person said. Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted on May 9-15 showed Trump is backed by 49% of Republicans, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a distant second place at 19%. They were followed by former Vice President Mike Pence with 5% and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on 4%, the poll showed. He also signed into law the largest income tax cut in state history. Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, and Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Stop Us if You’ve Heard This Before: The A’s Have a Stadium Deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Benjamin Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Built in the multipurpose stadium craze of the 1960s, Oakland Coliseum was quirky from the start. Feral cats, leaking sewage and a possum that lives in one of the television booths wouldn’t come along until later. Unpopular changes to the stadium at the behest of the Oakland Raiders of the N.F.L. The maintenance of the park became unmanageable, and the team’s various owners consistently complained about the lack of amenities. The team averaged only 9,849 fans a game last season, and things are even worse this year, at 8,874.

☆ Bill Gates says an under-the-radar startup could be the biggest winner in AI. Check out its free app, and you'll see why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-24 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Bill Gates said the winner in AI will be the company that creates a personal digital agent. Gates added that it's 50-50 as to whether the AI winner behind the digital agent will come from Big Tech or the startup world. The startup was founded by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Deepmind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, and Karén Simonyan, and describes itself as an "AI studio creating a personal AI for everyone." And Pi is still a ways away from what Bill Gates is imagining, a personal AI that can do your shopping and help read your emails. But Pi is the best conversational AI I've used so far, and everyone I've spoken to who has used it has been impressed.

Persons: Bill Gates, Pi, it's, Gates, I'd, I'm, I've, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Karén, Matt Turner, we've, It's, there's, Spriha Srivistava, that's, Brad Davis, Brad, ChatGPT Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Big Tech, CNBC, LinkedIn, Pi Locations: San Francisco, Instagram

☆ Airbnb CEO shares the best advice he's ever received—it's 'counterintuitive to almost everything everyone says’
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-24 | by ( Megan Sauer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

A single piece of advice from an investor helped Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky grow his company from a struggling startup to an industry giant worth roughly $70 billion. That's according to Chesky himself, who told attendees at a recent Stanford Graduate School of Business event that it was "the best piece of advice I ever got." The advice: "Focus on 100 people that love you, rather than getting a million people to kind of like you," Chesky said. It came courtesy of Paul Graham, the co-founder of tech startup accelerator Y Combinator, who advised Airbnb's co-founders — Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk — to focus on a tiny audience of potential customers as they built their company. For early Airbnb, that meant creating experiences for guests that stood out from staying at a hotel or crashing on a couch.

☆ Bill Gates says top AI agent will replace search, shopping sites
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAN FRANCISCO, May 22 (Reuters) - Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) co-founder, on Monday said the technology race to win is the development of the top artificially intelligent agent, poised to disrupt search-engine, productivity and online shopping sites. "You’ll never go to a search site again," he said. Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Gates said Inflection AI, co-founded by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, impressed him. "Whoever wins the personal agent, that’s a big thing," Gates said.

☆ Deadly Traffic in Suburbia Points to Deep-Seated Structural Problems
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Christine Negroni | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

New Yorkers have long asserted their rights over cars on the city’s streets, identifying with Dustin Hoffman in “Midnight Cowboy” who barks, “I’m walkin’ here!” at a cab that nearly hits him as he tries to cross the street. Recent changes in street width, curb size, crosswalks, bike lanes and speed limits that were made as part of the city’s adoption of Vision Zero in 2014, a program intended to eliminate traffic deaths, are a natural extension of this pedestrian-first mind-set. The street life of the suburbs, however, is built around a landscape that was designed from the beginning to give automobiles priority. In Connecticut, highway entrance ramps dating back more than half a century may be contributing to an alarming increase of head-on collisions. And while several New Jersey communities seem eager to align with Vision Zero, the state Legislature remains hostile to implementing traffic enforcement technology.

☆ Russia's position has 'never looked weaker' after Ukraine said it downed Putin's 'unstoppable' missiles, defense expert says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Isobel Van Hagen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia has 'never looked weaker,' a researcher at the Oslo Nuclear Project told Sky News. This comes after Ukraine said it repelled multiple of Russia's 'undefeatable' Kinzhal missiles. Furthermore, Hoffmann believes Russia's military position will only get worse because it has used all of the equipment in its arsenal, he told Sky. Russian missiles are intercepted en masse, while Ukraine has finally started to receive its own long-range strike capabilities with the British Storm Shadow." After writing, "If I was a Russian nuclear strategist today, I would be very worried," on Twitter on Tuesday, Hoffman later addressed and outlined some of the contentions surrounding the Russian missiles and Ukraine's defense systems.

☆ Billionaire Peter Thiel reportedly had 'several meetings' scheduled with Jeffrey Epstein, according to email records
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Peter Thiel had "several" meetings scheduled with Jeffrey Epstein, The New York Times reported. Peter Thiel likely met with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein "several" times in 2014, according to a recent report from The New York Times. The email records were obtained through an information request in the US Virgin Islands lawsuit against Epstein's estate, according to the Times. Thiel was also on a list of people that Epstein should try to make time for while in New York, according to the report. Thiel did not respond to a request for comment from Insider and a spokesperson for the billionaire declined to comment for the Times.

[1/2] A smoke column rises from wildfire WCU001 near Wildwood, Alberta, Canada May 5, 2023. Alberta Wildfire/Handout via REUTERS/File PhotoTORONTO, May 16 (Reuters) - Tinder-dry weather and shifting winds in Alberta on Tuesday elevated the risk of spreading wildfires in the Canadian oil-producing province where thousands have already been forced from their homes. Some 90 wildfires are active in Alberta, with 23 out of control, according to the provincial government. Judy Levesque, 50, stood outside in the central Alberta town of Drayton Valley on the night of May 4 as ash rained down. The change in wind direction can pose a problem for firefighters as the path of the fires changes suddenly, said Christie Tucker, spokesperson for the Alberta Wildfire agency.

☆ Canada PM Trudeau visits Alberta as wildfires rage
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/4] Smoke rises from the Paskwa Wildfire (HLW030) as it burns near the Wood Buffalo National Park boundary outside Fox Lake, Alberta, Canada May 14, 2023. The first 11 days of May have set seasonal heat records in several parts of Alberta, including Edmonton, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. By Sunday afternoon, 89 fires were burning across Alberta, with 25 considered out of control and more than 19,000 evacuees. "Our peak burning period, which is when the temperatures are at their highest and the fuels are at their driest, is still in front of us," Alberta Wildfires official Josee St-Onge said at a briefing Sunday afternoon. "It's too soon to say when we're going to see the peak of this wildfire season.

☆ After Defamation Finding, Trump Again Calls Carroll Untruthful
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Lola Fadulu | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had accused Ms. Carroll of concealing Mr. Hoffman’s role; her lawyers had argued that the financial support was irrelevant to her legal claims and that she had nothing to do with obtaining it. Mr. Trump also criticized Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, who presided over the case, calling him a “terrible person” who was “completely biased, and should have recused himself.”It was unclear what, if any, repercussions Mr. Trump’s after-action comments might incur. In the civil trial, which found that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll decades ago, the jury also found that Mr. Trump had defamed Ms. Carroll, and that she was injured as a result of an October 2022 Truth Social post about her, in which he called her case a “complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.”They awarded her $5 million in total damages, of which just under $3 million was related to the defamation. During the two-week trial, Mr. Trump didn’t testify in his own defense, nor did his legal team call any witnesses. Instead, Mr. Trump continued to attack the case from afar, in an interview on a golf course in Ireland and on Truth Social.

☆ Addiction Treatment Medicine Is Vastly Underprescribed, Especially by Race, Study Finds
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Jan Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Despite the continuing rise in opioid overdose deaths, one of the most effective treatments for opioid addiction is still drastically underprescribed in the United States, especially for Black patients, according to a large new study. Within six months following a high-risk event like an overdose, white patients filled buprenorphine prescriptions up to 80 percent more often than Black patients, and up to 25 percent more often than Latino patients, the study found. Rates of use for methadone, another effective treatment, were generally even lower. Noting that all the patients regardless of race encountered doctors roughly once a month, he said, “There are two mechanisms left that could explain disparities this large. One is where people of color get their health care, which we know is highly segregated, and another is racial differences in patient trust and demand for buprenorphine.“

☆ Why ChatGPT developer OpenAI is the No. 1 company on the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Julia Boorstin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Microsoft unveiled new versions of its Bing internet-search engine and Edge browser powered by the newest technology from ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Of the 50 companies on this year's list, 21 told us that AI is critically important to more than 50% of their revenue. Half of the companies in the top 10 of the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list feature key use of AI, and notably, they represent a diverse range of industries and use cases. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a keynote address announcing ChatGPT integration for Bing at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, Feb. 7, 2023. The call to slow down is, in fact, less safe than what they're proposing," he said, referring to OpenAI and Altman.

☆ Here's why Semafor's Liz Hoffman would temporarily ban short selling amid the banking crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailHere's why Semafor's Liz Hoffman would temporarily ban short selling amid the banking crisisLiz Hoffman, Semafor business and finance editor, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the profits short sellers have made from the current banking crisis and more.

☆ LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman takes another dig at Elon Musk for proposing a pause on AI development
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Reid Hoffman took a dig at Elon Musk over his stance on AI in a Milken Institute talk this week. Musk has signed a letter backing an AI development pause, but also wants to make a ChatGPT rival. Hoffman said, "Elon, while signing that letter, is trying to hire a whole team and stand up an AI effort." Elon Musk has some incongruous views on AI development, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman pointed that out in a recent talk. On CNBC's "Squawk Box" last month, Hoffman said he disliked the idea of pressing pause on AI and criticized Musk over his stance on AI development.

☆ A new AI chatbot called Pi is designed to serve as your personal assistant — here's how it works
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A new chatbot called Pi, launched by Inflection AI, offers personal advice and support. There's a new AI chatbot on the scene — and this one wants to get personal. At one point, I asked Pi to share museum recommendations for a friend visiting New York City. Insider asked Pi how to restart the conversation, and Pi said to "start talking about whatever is on your mind." Inflection AI also said it's "creating a new form of 'boundary training' that will redefine how AIs learn and are trained."

☆ An Ace’s Return Steadies the Ship, Even in a Loss
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Benjamin Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In Justin Verlander’s first start of the season, he pitched like an ace. And no, the Mets did not win. In a season in which the starting rotations of both New York teams have seemed almost cursed by injuries and ineffectiveness, that was enough to find a ray of sunshine. “You saw his stuff, so to speak, and velocity and crispness kind of get better as the game went on,” Mets Manager Buck Showalter said after the game. “I could tell he was getting after it the last inning.”

In the face of an escalating opioid epidemic, the F.D.A. recently approved over-the-counter sales for Narcan — a lifesaving nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose. Jan Hoffman, who covers health law for The Times, explains why the new availability of Narcan could change the trajectory of the epidemic.

☆ Ex-OpenAI researcher says there's a 50% chance AI development could end in 'doom'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A former OpenAI researcher is concerned AI poses a risk to humanity. Paul Christiano said during a podcast that there was a "maybe a 10-20% chance of AI takeover." "I think maybe there's something like a 10-20% chance of AI takeover, [with] many [or] most humans dead, " Paul Christiano said during an appearance on the Bankless podcast. "Overall, maybe you're getting more up to a 50/50 chance of doom shortly after you have AI systems that are human level," he said. Recently a group of AI experts signed an open letter that called for a 6-month pause on advanced AI development.

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