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☆ Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days. Is it a mass exodus from X?
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-13 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days — on Tuesday the company said it had gained 1 million new sign-ups in the past week alone, bringing it to more than 15 million total users. “X usage is at an all-time high and continues to surge,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post Wednesday. Bluesky also saw daily visits jump on Election Day and the day after to 1.2 million and 1.3 million, respectively, up from around 800,000 in the days before. On Bluesky, daily users more than doubled from-mid October to the post-election week. In the run-up to the election, Musk spread false and misleading claims about Trump’s competitor, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Persons: Bluesky rocketed, Elon, Musk, Donald Trump, Charlie Warzel, New York Times ’ Mara Gay, Don Lemon, X, White supremacists, Linda Yaccarino, “, Similarweb, Bluesky, ” David Carr, we’ve, Ed Zitron, EZPR, Zitron, Mike Isaac, ”, Trump, MAGA, Kamala Harris, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vladimir Zelensky, Musk’s Starlink, That’s, – CNN’s Liam Reilly, Matt Egan Organizations: New, New York CNN, Apple, New York Times, CNN, Guardian, ” New York Times, Trump, Twitter, “ Department, Government Locations: New York, anecdotally, Bluesky, ”, Russia

☆ Tech's Divorced Dad Energy: Silicon Valley Is Letting Down Customers
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-06 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Big Tech companies became less known for one particular product. Instead, Big Tech became obsessed with a series of half-baked boondoggles that seemed revolutionary, yet in practice, were either not reliable enough to be trusted or simply not that useful. Big Tech has become sullen, entitled, and lazy, believing that nobody else could snatch away its precious customers. Related storiesEven when tech companies aren't trying to shove AI down our throats, they fall into a similar trap. AdvertisementWhen the public eventually walks out, I don't believe Big Tech is even capable of making the adjustments necessary to win them back.

Persons: Smart, surly, Apple, Meta, Tesla, Elon Musk, Musk, —, Goldman Sachs, Jim Covello, Sundar Pichai, it's, Tech's, Satya Nadella Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Big Tech, Siri, Amazon, Meta, Tech, Facebook, cryptocurrency, Porsche, Microsoft Windows Locations: America

☆ OpenAI's CTO treats creativity like a problem to be solved — and that itself is the problem
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-25 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

You can opt-out at any time by visiting our Preferences page or by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email. download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Advertisement"These people treat creativity like a problem to be solved," he continued. "All these things shouldn't be there in the first place, but all these things are work that some people have to do. "I think we need to have an honest public debate about the advantages, but also the pitfalls and dangers of AI technology," Astray said.

Persons: —, Mira Murati, Jeffrey Blackburn, ChatGPT, Murati, Ed Zitron, Zitron, Boris Eldagsen, OpenAI's DALL, Eldagsen, FABRIZIO BENSCH, Miles, doesn't, OpenAI, Sam Altman Organizations: Service, Business, Dartmouth, OpenAI, Sony, Reuters Locations: OpenAI

☆ How to Save Tech Industry: Fire Managers, Put Tech People in Charge
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

This disastrous mindset has hollowed out Silicon Valley's ability to innovate and caused regular people to grow increasingly frustrated with everyday tech. The large platforms have generally ignored this feedback for one big reason: The tech industry has been taken over by career managers. Now Google Search is more profitable and worse, elevating spammy content and outright scams, a problem exacerbated by artificial intelligence. AdvertisementBut today's tech products feel built to sell a dream of the future rather than solve a customer's existing pains. As long as the tech industry is controlled by people who don't build things, it will continue to build products that help raise growth metrics rather than help consumers with tangible problems.

Persons: scammers hawking, Meta's, Hewlett Packard, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Adam Mosseri, Systrom, Krieger, Mosseri, Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Sundar Pichai, Prabhakar Raghavan, Raghavan, Ben Gomes, Gomes, it's, Sam Altman, Helen Toner, Ilya Sutskever, Larry Summers, Fidji Simo, Meta —, —, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak Organizations: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Adobe, Meta, Builders, Apple, Xerox, HP, Department, Reuters Institute, Oxford University, Silicon Valley Locations: Silicon, Silicon Valley

☆ Tesla's reign as EV king is fizzling, so Elon Musk has his sights set on a new goal — turning X back into Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-09 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tesla's stock is down over 10% in the last year, and Elon Musk's net worth has also fallen. Lately, social media platform X has begun to look more like regular old Twitter. With his social media venture, X, that seems to mean returning to the app to the pre-Musk days of plain old Twitter. Musk and representatives for Tesla and X did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. "Honestly, the best thing that Twitter can do to regain its position is to sideline Musk.

Persons: Tesla, Musk, —, Elon, Gabor Cselle, CNN's Oliver Darcy, David Camp, Metaforce, Camp, X, Cselle, Ed Zitron, Kim Kardashian, Jay, Zitron, Linda Yaccarino, Yaccarino, he's Organizations: Elon, Service, Twitter, NBC News, Variety, Business, Camp Locations: China, Texas

☆ The AI Apocalypse: Computer Algorithms Are Already in Control
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-02 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

But increasingly, the algorithms that undergird our digital lives are making questionable decisions that enrich the powerful and wreck the lives of average people. There's no reason to be scared of AI making decisions for you in the future — computers have already been doing so for quite some time. As human control diminished, the real-world consequences of these algorithms have piled up: Instagram's algorithm has been linked to a mental-health crisis in teenage girls. AdvertisementAcross the public and private sectors, we've handed the keys to a spiderweb of algorithms built with little public insight into how they make their decisions. While generative AI is just the newest extension of the algorithm, it poses a unique threat.

Persons: who's, They've, Matthew Gray, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, It's, Elon Musk, Cambridge Analytica, algorithmically, ProPublica, Quora, OpenAI's ChatGPT, you've, they'll, superintelligence, — simulacrums Organizations: Knight Capital, Companies, Yahoo, Stanford, Google, Spotify, Netflix, Revenue, Facebook, Twitter, Elon, European Union, Associated Press, Black, Microsoft, Eating Disorders Association Locations: Cambridge

☆ Companies Are Luring Investors by Exaggerating What Their AI Can Do
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Emily Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The Securities and Exchange Commission's chair, Gary Gensler, recently warned about "AI washing," or companies giving off a false impression that they're using AI so they can amp up investors. And while some companies are simply exaggerating the tech they do legitimately use, others have taken it a step further. Most companies aren't being accused of breaking the law with their AI chatter, but they're definitely posturing around it. An analysis from Goldman Sachs found that 36% of S&P 500 companies mentioned AI in their fourth-quarter earnings calls, a record high. Even the Big Tech companies that are really moving and shaking in AI are on shifty ground at times.

Persons: Gary Gensler, Delphia, Goldman Sachs, Scott Kessler, Elon Musk, Adolf Hitler, it's, ChatGPT, Daron Acemoglu, Sam Altman, Ed Zitron, he's, It's, overselling, Angelo Zino, Microsoft's, Zino, Acemoglu, Emily Stewart Organizations: Securities, Exchange, SEC, Woodstock, Third, MIT, Prosperity, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, CFRA Research, Big Tech, Tech, Microsoft, Business Locations: San Jose , California

☆ The Age of AI BS: Companies Are Exaggerating What Their Tech Can Do
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Emily Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

☆ The fight over return-to-office is getting dirty
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-07 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Evidence is as evidence doesAs the return-to-office battle has heated up in the past six months, there has been a marked increase in declarations that remote work is less productive. The researchers determined that remote workers were 18% less productive than their in-person counterparts. Just the vibesDespite the limited evidence against it, corporations are increasingly trying to kill remote work. That's what makes the move to kill off remote work so frustrating. It's not clear that the return-to-office move is about making workers more productive or building a better culture.

Persons: it's, Mike Hopkins, they're, India —, Nicholas Bloom, who's, David Baszucki's, Geico, Amazon's Andy Jassy, Geico's Todd Combs, there's, Safra, Larry Ellison, wrongheaded, galvanizing sycophants, Ed Zitron Organizations: Amazon, Amazon Studios, National Bureau of Economic Research, Journalists, Stanford, Meta, —, Writers Guild of America, SAG, United Auto Workers Locations: India

☆ The one job AI should actually replace: CEOs
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

The only job that seems to be safe from the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tech is, oddly enough, the most expensive and easily automated role: CEO. Let's replace our CEOs with AI. Actually, AI is too advanced for that job, all you need is a Fisher Price tape recorder loaded up with a bad bunch of ideas." What better way can we hold a chief executive accountable than making sure they actually execute? Or perhaps the chief executives need to be far more afraid of losing their jobs to equally capable robots.

Persons: Scott Seiss, Fisher, it's, I'm, Proctor, A.G, Lafley, isn't, doesn't, Elon, David Zaslav, Zaslav —, Zaslav, shelve, I'd, Said, Ed Zitron Organizations: Harvard, Gamble, TSR, Warner Bros, Hollywood, Alliance, Television Producers Locations: Let's, California

☆ Insider Today: Automating away CEOs
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Today is always a difficult day, particularly here in New York, as we remember the innocent lives lost 22 years ago. But the group that seems immune to those concerns — CEOs — is primed for being usurped by robots, writes Ed Zitron. Ed's argument is straightforward: CEOs get paid a lot despite not providing much value for their companies. For all the talk of CEOs being transformational leaders full of business ingenuity, many are nothing more than figureheads. The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, senior editor and anchor, in New York City.

Persons: Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley, Rescorla, — Dan DeFrancesco, Arantza Pena Popo, —, Ed Zitron, Ed, they're, STAN HONDA, Bill Ackman, foresees, Elon Musk's, Sam Altman, Kevin Dietsch, Ryan Petersen, Flexport's, Apple's, Microsoft's, Chris Williams, he's, Joe Biden, Damar Hamlin, Joe's, Wilson, Dan DeFrancesco, Naga Siu, Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan Organizations: Service, Tech, TED, LinkedIn, nab, Bank, America, Wynn Resorts, Broadcom, Sun, Pentagon, & Museum, The New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Bills, Oracle, Bovis Homes Locations: Wall, Silicon, New York, China, Alaska, Savanna, New York City, San Diego, London

☆ The AI boom is screwing over Gen Z
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-17 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Now, with the advent of generative AI, organizations are starting to automate many "junior" tasks — stripping away their dubious last attempt to "teach" young employees. America's young workers are headed toward a career calamity. Nobody wants to teach anymoreEven before the rise of AI, young people were facing an early-career crisis. This lack of care is clearly weighing on the young workers who need career development the most. Humans can be enhanced by AI, helped by AI, but replacing them with AI is a shortsighted decision made by myopic bean counters who can't see the value in a person.

Persons: there's, Gen, Gen Zers, it's, Gen Z, Louis, Zers, millennials, Peter Cappelli, Capelli, Paul Osterman, they'd, Osterman, they'll, ChatGPT, Qualtrics, What's, they're, Ulrich Atz, Tensie Whelan, New York University's, Atz, Whelan, —, There's, Knight, It's, Ed Zitron Organizations: Management, Federal Reserve Bank of St, National Association of Colleges, Employers, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, US Department of Labor, MIT, Pew Research Center, National Bureau of Economic Research, Gallup, Workplace Intelligence, Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, New York, New York University's Stern Center, Sustainable Business Locations: America, New, Fortune

☆ An obituary for the Metaverse, the latest fad to join the tech graveyard
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-14 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

On the agenda today:An obituary for the metaverse, the latest fad to join the tech graveyard. BlackRock is wrestling with who could succeed Larry Fink. Also read:Who will succeed Larry Fink? BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Thos Robinson/Getty Images for The New York TimeWall Street has long been fascinated by succession stories. CEO Larry Fink, now 70-years old, has the rare distinction of leading a Wall Street behemoth he helped found.

☆ The metaverse isn't dead, says the billionaire CEO behind Fortnite— and he's jokingly trying to hold a wake so 600 million gamers can mourn its passing in 'real-time 3D'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tim Sweeney on Tuesday mocked the notion that the metaverse is dead. But Sweeney is a long-term supporter of the Metaverse, putting in some serious money into the platform. Tim Sweeney, the billionaire CEO of Epic Games, doesn't think the metaverse is dead. After all, Epic Games — developer of Fortnite — is putting serious money into the metaverse. Moreover, Meta's still trying to convince users that the metaverse is alive and kicking and could potentially be lucrative.

☆ The Metaverse, Zuckerber's Tech Obession, Is Officially Dead. ChatGPT Killed It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. After a much-heralded debut, the Metaverse became the obsession of the tech world and a quick hack to win over Wall Street investors. Once the tech industry turned to a new, more promising trend — generative AI — the fate of the Metaverse was sealed. But the short life and ignominious death of the Metaverse offers a glaring indictment of the tech industry that birthed it. Roblox, an online game platform that has existed since 2004, rode the Metaverse hype wave to an initial public offering and a $41 billion valuation.

☆ 10 Things in Tech: Best side hustles, Tesla Roadsters, and ChatGPT stylist
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

After just a few short years of hype, the metaverse is already headed for the graveyard of failed tech ideas. The metaverse, according to Zuckerberg, was supposed to be the next evolution of the internet and our tech lives. But the rise and fall of the metaverse can teach us some important lessons about the tech industry as a whole. All the tech companies citing AI in their layoff announcements. Many major tech companies like Google and IBM even mentioned AI in their layoff announcements.

☆ Humanity has decided it can say 'no' to AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-01 | by ( Hallam Bullock | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The latest development in AI: humanity has decided it can say "no." Elon Musk was one of more than 1,000 people to sign an open letter calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI development. The letter cited several potential risks to humanity and society, including the spread of misinformation and automation of jobs. Bosses have forgotten how to say "good job" — and it's driving employees to quit. Big Tech's big downgrade.

☆ Tech Companies Are Ruining Their Apps, Websites, Internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech companies have monetized confusion, constantly testing how much they can interfere with and manipulate users. Abandoning the core productIn the 2000s and early 2010s, tech companies actually produced new, interesting products. This fueled Silicon Valley's explosive growth: Companies saw their valuations soar, revenue growth was exponential, and new users were joining by the boatload. There are ways to integrate new technology into a core product that doesn't end in disaster. Netflix was able to iterate on their core product — letting people watch movies — in a way that actually made that experience better.

☆ Blame the CEO for Tech Layoffs at Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Amazon
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

CEOs made mistakes, workers bear the bruntIn their layoff announcements, pretty much every tech company placed the blame for the cuts on the economy. While they may protect the CEO's reputation or placate investors, layoffs are immensely damaging for workers, even well-paid tech employees. With great power comes no responsibilityThe blame-shifting of these tech companies and their CEOs is not unprecedented, or even that uncommon. CEO pay skyrocketed by 1,460% from 1978 to 2021, and the ratio of average-worker pay to CEO pay ballooned from 20-to-1 in 1965 to 399-to-1 in 2021. Instead, tech CEOs have passed the pain off to people who in many cases were performing well in their roles.

☆ Tech CEOs screwed up, and it's time to hold them accountable
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Matt Weinberger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

I'm Matt Weinberger, deputy editor of Insider's tech analysis team, filling in for Diamond Naga Siu. Is it time for CEOs to start losing their jobs? Ed Zitron argues for Insider that the thousands of tech workers who lost their jobs in recent months are actually just taking the fall for the real problem in Silicon Valley — CEOs who aren't up to the task of leadership. He praised the CEOs of Apple and Intel for recently taking pay cuts as their companies hit tougher times. Late Friday afternoon, a federal jury officially ruled that the Tesla CEO's infamous "funding secured" tweet didn't harm shareholders, making him not liable for damages.

☆ Hate Elon Musk all you want, but he's got one management trick that every boss should emulate
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Managers have become alarmingly distanced from the average worker, making calls based on guesses that aren't informed by actual labor. Musk has demanded that managers are able to create "good code" yet does not appear to be much of a coder himself. Jackson Palmer, a cocreator of dogecoin, said Musk was a "grifter" who "had trouble running basic code" in their interactions. He's targeted critical teams at Twitter and pushed others to quit, which have resulted in a huge upswing in hate speech on the platform. In fact, by his own logic of how managers can contribute to the company, Musk should be summarily firing himself any day now.

☆ Delivering bad news to your coworkers is never easy. College classes and executive coaches are trying to teach how to do it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Alexandra York | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

He hoped to learn how to better manage business success, business failure, and his mental health. He added: "Because a lot of those are what contributes to the difficulty in mental health for founders." "As a founder, balancing mental health and the success of the company almost seem opposite," Yan said. "Small triggers may affect your mental health," like when cofounders are angry at one another or when the staff is underperforming, he said. "When you don't deal directly with problematic employees, you're sending the clear message to others that their work doesn't matter," she said.

Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider. On the agenda today:But up first: Each year, Insider surfaces 100 leaders across 10 industries who are driving unprecedented change and innovation. Ashley Davis from our special projects team is here to take us behind the scenes of this year's list. InsiderIn the past 12 months, business leaders have faced inflation, a polarized political climate, persistent supply-chain issues, the Great Resignation, a real-estate boom, and more. Our editors carefully selected the power players, activists, and pioneers who are shaping the future.

☆ Wall Street finally has the leverage it's been wanting over Big Tech
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Matt Weinberger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Take one giant step back, and there's one group benefitting from all the tech carnage: Wall Street investors, who finally have leverage over Big Tech after years of having to swallow spending to excess. Wall Street is ready to slice and dice. The balance of power has shifted: With tech companies struggling on the public markets, Wall Street has more leverage than it's held in a long time. Read more about how Wall Street is taking the driver's seat in tech here. Their mutual interest is complicated by fights over licensing and costs, Insider reports here.

☆ Elon Musk runs 3 companies — and his executive juggling act is the perfect example of how the modern CEO job is broken
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Musk is currently the CEO of three different companies: SpaceX, Tesla, and, of course, Twitter. But like many CEOs, he's accumulated a huge fortune by juggling several companies and directorships at once. While Musk may be an extreme case, he's also the perfect example of the modern CEO: a chaotic blend of unproductive micromanagement and highly-paid absenteeism. In the extreme, some CEOs like Musk have taken on the management of multiple large companies. And Musk isn't the only executive who would be better served focusing on one task.

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