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☆ 10 fascinating theme parks that have closed forever
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Joe Yogerst | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

In April, we’re taking a thrilling ride into the world of theme parks. “We think of amusement parks as vibrant, colorful, noisy, cheerful places,” says Jim Futrell of the National Amusement Park Historical Association. Pripyat Amusement Park (Ukraine)The Pripyat Amusement Park was built right before the Chernobyl disaster. Yongma Land (South Korea)Once in a blue moon, abandoned theme parks find new life by adopting totally new functions. Faced with increased competition from Orlando’s modern theme parks, Cypress Gardens closed in 2009 and was eventually absorbed into LEGOLAND Florida.

☆ Goldman Sachs' David Solomon had the right idea. But that's only half the problem.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

David Solomon at Goldman's 2023 investor day Screenshots by Emmalyse Brownstein and Dakin Campbell1. Goldman Sachs' $12.2 billion in revenue from Q1 fell short of analysts' estimates, which is never a good sign — but it's not a complete disaster. As Insider's Carter Johnson reported, there is a case to be made for a turnaround at Goldman led by its embattled CEO David Solomon. We've written a lot about the struggles at Goldman Sachs recently, and rightfully so. More on what David Solomon needs to do to get Goldman Sachs back on track.

☆ Creepy photos reveal the microscopic world of parasitic creatures thriving on sandy beaches worldwide
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Rebecca Strong | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Nematodes are typically less than 1 millimeter in length, so Bik and her team use powerful microscopes to study them. This particular species — known as the Ceramonema — is commonly found on underwater mountains in the deep sea. Jim Baldwin and Manuel Mundo-OcampoWhat sets these nematodes apart are the complex wave-like patterned plates covering their entire body. "There are so few scientists working on these species and there's so much sand out there," Bik said. "If you grab a bit of sand outside your doorstep or at your local beach, you're probably holding hundreds of new species."

☆ NYPD's robot dogs are back after backlash. NYC Mayor Eric Adams says 'we cannot be afraid' of the technology.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The NYPD's robotic dogs are "out of the pound" again, mayor Eric Adams announced earlier this week. Adams announced during a press conference earlier this week that the city spent $750,000 on two robotic canines the NYPD calls "Digidogs. " He said the dogs can "save lives" in situations where "you can't have police officers going inside because it's dangerous." The announcement comes just two years after the NYPD halted an experiment with the robotic dogs. In addition to the robot dogs, the NYPD will begin testing the StarChase pilot, a device that shoots a GPS-tracker to a stolen car, and the K5 ASR, an outdoor security robot, Adams said during the press conference.

☆ I'm a cart girl on a Las Vegas golf course who makes $500 in tips a day. You don't need experience to be successful at this job — here's how I do it.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Elle Hardy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Her main tips for success are to reach out to anyone you know in the golf world and stay positive. Now I'm a cart girl on a Las Vegas golf course, and I share my experience on TikTok with my 2.1 million followers. I usually make between $400 and $500 in tips a day on top of my salary. You can have as much fun partying on the golf course as you can at a day club in Vegas. Looks and outfits get you only so far, so you have to have the personality to make the golfers' day.

☆ Microsoft's $13 billion bet on OpenAI carries huge potential along with plenty of uncertainty
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Microsoft's cumulative investment in OpenAI has reportedly swelled to $13 billion and the startup's valuation has hit roughly $29 billion. What does that mean for Microsoft's investment and broader arrangement? The structure changed in 2019, when two top executives published a blog post announcing the formation of a "capped-profit" entity called OpenAI LP. Microsoft has an exclusive license on GPT-4 and all other OpenAI models, the OpenAI spokesperson said. When considering potential exits for OpenAI, Microsoft — which does not hold an OpenAI board seat — would be the natural acquirer given its close entanglement.

☆ Peace, love, and Hitler: How Lex Fridman's podcast became a safe space for the anti-woke tech elite
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +26 min

Seemingly overnight, episodes of Fridman's podcast began racking up millions of views. YouTube/Lex FridmanIn his podcast, Fridman asks world-renowned scientists, historians, artists, and engineers a series of wide-eyed questions ("Who is God? But recently, "The Lex Fridman Podcast" has become a haven for a growing — and powerful — sector looking to dismantle years of "wokeness" and cancel culture. Twitter"The Lex Fridman Podcast" offered a rare opportunity to listen to four-hour conversations with luminaries of tech and science. Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and publisher of the socialist magazine Jacobin who appeared on Fridman's podcast in December, praised Fridman's interviewing style.

☆ Welcome to the era of viral AI generated 'news' images
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

None of these things actually happened, but AI-generated images depicting them did go viral online over the past week. The images ranged from obviously fake to, in some cases, compellingly real, and they fooled some social media users. There are also concerns that AI-generated images could be used for harassment, or to further drive divided internet users apart. Eliot Higgins, founder and creative director of the investigative group Bellingcat, posted fake images of former President Donald Trump to Twitter last week. Many of the recent viral AI-generated images were created by a tool called Midjourney, a less than year-old platform that allows users to create images based on short text prompts.

☆ Welcome to the era of viral AI generated ‘news’ images
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

☆ How Should I Use A.I. Chatbots Like ChatGPT?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In the previous edition of this newsletter, my colleague Cade Metz wrote that A.I. large language models (L.L.M.s) can be erratic and unreliable — giving false information and acting strangely toward users. I’ve been using A.I. tools like ChatGPT almost daily for several months now, and I’ve seen them spit out plenty of wrong answers. But I’ve also seen these A.I.

☆ I can't stop watching these hilariously bad AI-generated videos of celebrities like Will Smith and Scarlett Johansson
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The internet is freaking out over clips generated by AI text-to-video generator ModelScope. The AI-generated videos come after a recent AI-generated picture of the Pope when viral. The videos were made using ModelScope Text to Video Synthesis, a free AI video generator that AI firm Hugging Face released to the public last week. That may be because the Modelscope tool is trained on images scraped from stock photo sites, according to Vice. AI image generators have also been found to produce images that reflect racial and gender stereotypes, and can spread misinformation.

☆ A New York grocery store is using biometrics including eye scanners and voice prints to identify repeat shoplifters. Some shoppers say that's creepy — even if it deters theft.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

New York City grocer Fairway is collecting biometric data on its shoppers to catch shoplifters, the New York Post reported. Fairway is gathering facial recognition and other biometric information, such as voice recordings, on shoppers at one of its Manhattan locations, the New York Post reported on Thursday. Fairway told the Post that its system will only be accessed by "trained asset protection associates." Nearly one-third of the arrests made for shoplifting in New York City last year involved the same 327 people, the Post reported in January. But an investigation that year by the San Francisco Chronicle found that the affected stores reported fewer than two shoplifting incidents per month leading up to the closures.

☆ Baidu shares drop to 8-week lows after company reveals ChatGPT rival
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Evelyn Cheng | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Men interact with a Baidu AI robot near the company logo at its headquarters in Beijing, China April 23, 2021. During a livestreamed release event, Baidu CEO Robin Li emphasized the company's product — called Ernie bot — is not perfect. Baidu is prioritizing initial Ernie bot access for what it calls 650 ecosystem business partners, which include some media companies, banks and car firms. Within an hour of the Ernie bot announcement, Baidu said 30,000 corporate clients had joined the waitlist for access to the chatbot. Baidu's Li said Ernie bot had similar issues if used enough, and that it wasn't perfect.

☆ A Russian trainspotter who became obsessed with taking photographs of Putin's 'ghost train' now lives in exile: report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A trainspotter spent years tracking Putin's secret train, which he reportedly uses to get around. Mikhail Korotkov told The Washington Post that in 2021, he felt like he was being watched. Mikhail Korotkov, 31, spent years tracking, photographing, and blogging about Putin's armored train, which he reportedly uses to travel inconspicuously around the country. But the 31-year-old was also careful to not be too public about his hobby, telling the Post that he did not post all the pictures of Putin's train online. He now lives in Sri Lanka, but told The Post that he is "ready to move around the world."

☆ The CEO of AI startup Anthropic explains how his experience at OpenAI helped him develop a new chatbot that he says is 'more conversational' and creative than ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The AI company Anthropic announced Tuesday that its Claude chatbot would be available to developers. While working at OpenAI, Dario Amodei spent nearly five years helping to develop the language model powering ChatGPT. Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, says early testers have found Claude "more conversational" and creative than ChatGPT. Anthropic is launching two versions of its chatbot, dubbed Claude and Claude Instant. With constitutional AI, Claude would create and critique its outputs after reading the customer's constitution to create more predictable outcomes.

☆ Canada Supreme Court justice on indefinite paid leave after he had a fight in Arizona hotel over his alleged 'creepy' behavior toward female guests while drunk
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | Yelena Dzhanova | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Canadian Supreme Court Justice Russell Brown is on paid leave after he got into fight while on vacation. Brown allegedly drunkenly followed guests from the hotel bar back to their rooms, per a police report. The Justice was reportedly punched twice in the face during an altercation with one guest he followed. Crump and representatives for the Supreme Court of Canada did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. The police report continued: "To protect the women and to prevent the drunk, creepy, unwanted male from entering the hotel room uninvited Crump punched the male a few times."

☆ Factbox: Life and career of film and TV actor Robert Blake
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LOS ANGELES, March 9 (Reuters) - The following are select facts about the life and career of screen actor Robert Blake, who was acquitted in 2005 of murdering his wife but later found liable for her death in a civil trial:* Blake was about 6 years old when he started his Hollywood career. Before that, he and his brother and sister were part of an act known as "The Three Little Hillbillies" on the vaudeville circuit. Even though his earnings would provide most of his family's income, Blake said his father used him as "his punching bag." As a child he also worked with Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny, John Wayne, John Garfield and Gene Autry. Other jailhouse visitors included musician-composer Quincy Jones, comedian Mort Sahl, and Scott Wilson, Blake's "In Cold Blood" co-star.

☆ Microsoft's Bing has exceeded 100 million daily active users around a month after its new AI update
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft's Bing has exceeded 100 million daily active users around a month after its AI update. Engagement with the search engine has also improved, according to the company. Engagement with the search engine has also improved, with more people conducting daily searches, according to the company. The company said the new version of the search engine had more than one million users and that 45 million chats had been conducted since the preview began. Google has announced plans to incorporate its own AI tech into its search engine but it has yet to be released to the public at scale.

☆ Developers are turning to GitHub Copilot, a ChatGPT-like tool that helps them write code. One startup VP says it helped him save 10% of the time he'd spend coding.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

GitHub Copilot, launched in 2021, uses generative AI to help programmers write code. Codex is the basis for GitHub Copilot, a tool that functions as a sort of autocomplete for software engineers. At a recent event in San Francisco, he compared using Copilot to a lottery experience. In other words, if developers don't already understand what they're looking for, they'll quickly get stuck using Copilot. "Sure, you could create a basic iOS app with Copilot," Ghazanfar said.

☆ Our quest to make AI love us back is futile — and dangerous
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But that's futile, experts say, because the AI of today can't feel empathy, let alone love. We've spent years trying to get AI to love us back. Experts told Insider that it's futile to expect the AIs that exist right now to love us back. During a simulation in October 2020, OpenAI's GPT-3 chatbot told a person asking for psychiatric help to kill themselves. Halpern, the UC Berkeley professor, told Insider AI-based relationships are perilous also because the entity can be used as a money-making tool.

☆ Your Face Is Your Ticket: A Creepy Convenience
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

BARCELONA—I’ve been using my face to open doors for me. On Monday, I walked into a conference center and, instead of flashing a badge with my name and photo, I positioned myself in front of a head-height camera the size of my fist. Seconds later, the screen read: “PLEASE ENTER.”

☆ Apple crackdown on ChatGPT apps unlikely, but it could impose new rules down the road
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Blix, an email app maker that has regularly clashed with Apple over its App Store rules, says it ran into that hurdle this week. Regardless, the Blue Mail episode isn't a sign of an impending Apple crackdown on AI apps. In fact, ChatGPT-powered features are already in Snapchat and the Microsoft Bing app, which are currently being distributed through the App Store. Other AI apps, such as Lensa, have also been distributed and have flourished in the App Store. There is no formal AI or chatbot policy in Apple's App Store Guidelines, a document that outlines what Apple permits on the App Store.

☆ Bill Gates says some people provoke AI and make it look stupid but it poses no threat
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Bill Gates told the FT that people try to make AI look stupid but it wasn't a threat to humans. Asked by a Financial Times journalist whether he was worried about AI, Gates said it was "fine, there's no threat." "It's not clear who should be blamed, you know, if you sit there and provoke a bit," Gates told the FT. But according to Gates, the main problem with AI is not the AI itself doing things but the people controlling it. Although he believes AI is set to trigger some labor displacement, it will create more efficiency, he told the FT.

☆ I made $140,000 before getting laid off — now I earn almost $30,000 more than that as a freelancer on Upwork. Here's how.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Ella Hopkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marcus Grimm, a 52-year-old marketing freelancer from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I worked for 20 years in B2B marketing automation, which uses technology to automate marketing content at particular times. When I applied for client jobs, I'd use whichever profile was best suited for the job. My industry expertise was useful for attracting clientsIt took me three weeks to get my first Upwork client. I'd had a client in that industry before when I was working full time, and I'd actually worked in it years ago.

☆ This Chinese kissing device lets you smooch over the internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Nectar Gan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The device, advertised as a way to let long-distance couples share “real” physical intimacy, is causing a buzz among Chinese social media users, who have reacted with both intrigue and shock. To send a kiss, users need to download a mobile phone app and plug the device into their phone’s charging port. After pairing with their partners in the app, couples can start a video call and transmit replicas of their smooches to each other. The kissing device is advertised as a way to share physical intimacy between long-distance couples. While advertised for long-distance relationships, the Chinese device also allows users to pair up anonymously with strangers in the “kissing square” function of the app.

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