Mega billionaire Elon Musk, in a friendly interview with his aide and conservative influencer Katie Miller, said his efforts leading the Department of Government Efficiency were only somewhat successful and he would not do it over again.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns the social media platform X, still broadly defended President Donald Trump‘s controversial pop-up agency that Musk left in the spring before it shuttered officially last month. Yet Musk bemoaned how difficult it is to remake the federal government quickly, and he acknowledged how much his businesses suffered because of his DOGE work and its lack of popularity.
We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful, he told Miller, who once worked as a DOGE spokeswoman charged with selling the agency’s work to the public.
When Miller pressed Musk on whether he would do it all over again, he said: I don’t think so. … Instead of doing DOGE, I would have, basically, built … worked on my companies.
Almost wistfully, Musk added, They wouldn’t have been burning the cars” a reference to consumer protests against Tesla.
Still, things certainly have turned up for Musk since his departure from Trump’s administration. Tesla shareholders approved a pay package that could make Musk the worlds first trillionaire.
Musk was speaking as a guest on the Katie Miller Podcast, which Miller, who is married to top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, launched after leaving government employment to work for Musk in the private sector. The two sat in chairs facing each other for a conversation that lasted more than 50 minutes and spanned topics from DOGE to Musk’s thoughts on AI, social media, conspiracy theories and fashion.
Miller did not press Musk on the inner workings of DOGE and the controversial manner in which it took over federal agencies and data systems.
Musk credited the agency with saving as much as $200 billion annually in zombie payments that he said can be avoided with better automated systems and coding for federal payouts. But that number is dwarfed by Musk’s ambitious promises at one time that an efficiency commission could measure savings in the trillions. Miller has not responded to an Associated Press request for comment.
Bill Barrow, Associated Press
As the year winds down to a close, with just three weeks left on the calendar, Nextdoor may be the next, last, big meme stock of 2025. Here’s why.
What happened?
On Wednesday, Nextdoor Holdings Inc. (NXDR) shares rose 49% in early trading, the most in over four years, according to Bloomberg.
The gains come on the heels of a series of posts on X on Wednesday morning by investor Eric Jackson, founder of EMJ Capital hedge fund, who described the neighborhood-focused site as one of the most misunderstood platforms in the market” and touted its AI potential: “Nextdoor isnt a social network. Its a neighborhood operating system with AI-native revenue,” as well as its large membership (100 million households in 10 countries).
At the time of this writing, Nextdoor was holding steady, up over 17% in midday trading.
What is a meme stock?
A meme stock is when a company’s stock gains popularity in online forums, often on social media. This can happen when a discussion thread on, say, Reddit, X, or Facebook kicks off a conversation about a company, often leading to the buying, selling, or shorting of shares.
A meme stock starts when investors gather on discussion boards and chat rooms, such as Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets, to swap tips and ideas of unconventional stocks they are going to “bet” on. And the efforts of those individuals, collectively, often end up influencing the stock’s share price, either up or down: “Meme stocks can become overvalued relative to fundamental technical analysis,” according to Investopedia, often causing large price swings in either direction.
Is Nextdoor the next GameStop?
GameStop (GME) is generally considered the first real meme stock. However, it remains unclear whether Nextdoor will be able to sustain today’s double-digit rise.
Paired with high-deductible healthcare plans, health savings accounts help ease healthcare costs. HSAs are a triple tax-advantaged vehicle in the tax code, allowing for pretax contributions, tax-free compounding, and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. However, few owners fund their HSAs to the maximum, and even fewer invest their HSA dollars outside a savings account.
Most consumers likely dont fill their HSAs because they lack the financial means; critics note that the HDHP/HSA combination can be less beneficial for lower-income workers. But even wealthy consumers may decline to fully fund their HSAs. Many HSAs charge account-maintenance fees and extra costs for investing in long-term assets.
Unlike 401(k)s, where participants are typically captive in employer plans, HSA savers can move money from one HSA to another via transfer or rollover. Below, how to know if your HSA is subpar, and what to do if it is.
Valuable tax advantages may come at a price
HSAs appear preferable to other tax-advantaged savings vehicles, especially for investors expecting out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. Even in a worst-case scenariousing HSA funds for non-healthcare expensesthe HSA is at least as good as a traditional tax-deferred 401(k) or IRA.
Yet HSA expenses and/or investment shortcomings can erode their tax benefits, particularly for smaller HSA investors. Flat dollar-based account-maintenance fees (say, $45/year) hit smaller HSA investors harder, and interest rates for smaller HSAs may be lower. Its worthwhile to conduct due diligence on your HSA, assessing the following:
1. Setup Fees: A one-time fee imposed at account opening, sometimes covered by employers.
2. Account-Maintenance Fees: Monthly or annual fees for maintaining your account, also sometimes covered by employers.
3. Transaction Fees: Dollar-based fees that may be levied when paying for services using the HSA.
4. Interest Rate on Savings Accounts: For people using the HSA to fund out-of-pocket healthcare costs (or taking a hybrid approach), its particularly important to monitor your savings rate of return. Many HSAs offer higher interest rates on larger balances; that argues for building and maintaining critical mass in your HSA.
5. Investment-Related Expenses: Investors may face mutual fund or ETF expense ratios, sales charges, and dollar-based fees for maintaining investment accounts.
6. Investment Choices: Assess the investment lineup on offer to make sure it aligns with your investment philosophy.
How to switch out of a poor HSA
If your employer-provided HSA is lacking, you have three choices.
Option 1: Contribute to an HSA on Your Own
If youre enrolled in a HDHP, you can choose a different HSA provider and deduct your HSA contributions on your tax return. Thats more cumbersome and requires more discipline than payroll deductions, so forgoing payroll deductions is usually not the best option.
Option 2: Transfer the Money from Your Employer-Provided HSA Into Another HSA
Your HSA contribution comes directly from your paycheck and goes to your employer-provided HSA; you can then periodically transfer some or all of that balance into your preferred HSA provider. There are no tax consequences on HSA transfers, and you can conduct multiple transfers per year. You can have more than one HSA, so this approach can work well for employees whose captive HSAs feature decent savings but less-compelling investment options.
Option 3: Roll Over the Money From Your Employer-Provided HSA Into Another HSA
This is similar to option 2. You contribute to your employer-provided HSA via payroll deduction, then roll over the money to your preferred HSA provider.
There are two key differences between a rollover and a transfer. In a transfer, two trustees handle the funds. In a rollover, you get a check that you must deposit into another HSA within 60 days, or it counts as an early withdrawal, and a 20% penalty will apply if youre not yet 65. Multiple transfers are permitted between HSAs, but only one HSA rollover is allowed every 12 months.
____
This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance.
Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar.
OpenAI said Tuesday it has picked Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its first chief of revenue, a message to wary investors that the ChatGPT maker is serious about making a profit from its artificial intelligence technology.
OpenAI said Dresser will oversee global revenue strategy and help more businesses put AI to work in their day-to-day operations.
Dresser had already spent more than a decade at Salesforce when the software pioneer announced in 2020 it was buying work-chatting service Slack for $27.7 billion. She helped integrate Slack into the software company before Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff picked her as CEO in 2023.
Salesforce said in a statement that it was grateful for Denises leadership during her 14 years at Salesforce. Rob Seaman, Slack’s chief product officer, will take over her responsibilities on an interim basis.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this month set off a code red alert in an internal email to employees to improve its flagship product, ChatGPT, and delay other product developments.
OpenAI first released ChatGPT just over three years ago, sparking global fascination and a commercial boom in generative AI technology and giving the San Francisco-based startup an early lead. But the company faces increased competition with rivals, including Google, which last month unleashed Gemini 3, the latest version of its own AI assistant.
Altman has said ChatGPT now has more than 800 million weekly users. But the company, valued at $500 billion, doesnt make a profit and has committed more than $1 trillion in financial obligations to the cloud computing providers and chipmakers it relies on to power its AI systems.
The risk that OpenAI wont make enough money to fulfill the expectations of backers like Oracle and Nvidia has amplified investor concerns about an AI bubble.
OpenAI makes revenue from premium subscriptions to ChatGPT, but most users get the free version. OpenAI introduced its own web browser, Atlas, in October, an attempt to compete with Googles Chrome as more internet users rely on AI to answer their questions. But OpenAI hasnt yet tried to sell ads on ChatGPT, which is how Google makes money from its dominant search business.
Even in an age when it is rather common to invite people, including leaders, to bring their whole self to work, what is actually rewarded at work is being our best self, in the sense of trying to be at the best of our behaviors, and fulfill as much of our potential as we can, as often as possible.
Importantly, many if not most people still compartmentalize their personal self as something separate from their work persona or professional self, even if both can co-exist as salient, albeit different, dimensions of their self-concept. Indeed, this aligns with the science of self-complexity, which basically shows that we inhabit multiple selves, in the sense that our identity is composed of different roles, habits, and adaptations which are activated as the situation demands, in response of each pertinent or particular environmental requirements.
So for instance, even if you adore your boss, it would be unwise to mistake them for your spouse: just because they give you feedback doesnt mean they want to hear about your weekend argument over who forgot to buy toilet paper, nor should you expect them to give you a gold star for behaving like a functioning adult for eight consecutive hours. Likewise, no matter how warm, empathetic, or inclusive your team may be, your colleagues are unlikely to respond well if you treat a project review like bedtime routine: for example, nobody wants to be tucked in after a PowerPoint or be asked whether they brushed their teeth before updating the CRM.
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The science of transilience
And yet, there are actually some pretty clear benefits in applying certain skills or dispositions from one of your identity dimensions to others, and that includes the surprising potential for transferring parent skills to both management and leadership skills. In fact, there is a powerful but largely unknown science of transilience, the process of extrapolating aspects of one of your roles or self-concept dimensions to others.
Recent empirical research validates this intuition with hard data. A study found that leaders who are supportive parents produce measurably better outcomes in their teams: higher employee performance, more voice behavior (employees voluntarily sharing ideas), and greater willingness to cooperate. The mechanism? Experiences of care and emotional support inherently developed in parenting roles transfer directly to leadership effectiveness.
Parenting skills, translated
Here are five ways in which parenting skills may come in handy to boost your leadership effectiveness:
1. Patience as a performance multiplier: Parenting teaches you very quickly that progress rarely unfolds on your preferred timeline. Toddlers dont walk when you want them to, teenagers dont reply to messages when you need them to, and nobody in between ever hurries because you said please. Good leaders internalize the same logic. Teams learn at different speeds, projects require repetition, and people need space to make mistakes before they improve. In both domains, impatience is the illusion that reality will adjust to your mood; patience is the skill of adjusting your expectations to reality.
Developmental psychology introduces the concept of “scaffolding”: building temporary support structures that help someone achieve just beyond their current level[1]. Good parents instinctively identify their child’s “zone of proximal development” and provide calibrated support. Transformational leaders do the same: they identify where each person is ready to grow, provide coaching without doing the work for them, and gradually step back as competence develops. This requires the same calibrated attunement that parenting demands.
2. Clear boundaries create psychological safety: Parents know that children thrive with consistent expectations and predictable guardrails; ambiguity breeds anxiety and chaos. The same is true at work. Teams feel safer when the rules of engagement are clear, when no really means no, and when leaders enforce boundaries reliably rather than arbitrarily. A boundary at home might be a bedtime; a boundary at work might be a deadline. In both settings, structure reduces stress, and consistency builds trust.
Our own research in attachment theory predicts that both parents and transformational leaders fulfill two critical functions: they provide a “secure base” from which people can explore confidently, and a “safe haven” to return to when difficulties arise. This isn’t about creating dependency. Studies show that when people feel psychologically secure – knowing support is available if needed – they actually become more autonomous, creative, and willing to take risks. The leader’s availability enables independence, not dependence.
3. Listening beats lecturing: Every parent has learned the hard way that lecturing a child rarely produces enlightenment; it mostly produces eye rolls, resistance, or creative reinterpretations of your instructions. Leadership isnt much different. People follow more readily when they feel heard, understood, and included in the problem-solving process. Just as a good parent listens to what a child is trying to say, a good leader listens to the concerns behind employees objections – because you cant influence what you havent first understood.
4. Modeling behavior is more powerful than mandating it: Children copy what you do, not what you say; telling them to share nicely while you shout at traffic sends a very different message. Adults are not immune to this principle. Teams take behavioral cues from leaders: if you stay curious under pressure, they will too; if you treat others with dignity, so will they; if you panic, micromanage, or blame, the contagion spreads instantly. Parenting teaches you that you are always on stage; leadership simply gives you a bigger audience.
5. Encouragement fuels growth more than criticism: Parents quickly discover that reinforcing effort not just outcomes keeps children motivated and resilient. The same dynamic applies to adults: people double down on behaviors that are noticed and valued. A leader who acknowledges small wins, progress, and perseverance cultivates a culture where people want to stretch themselves. Think of encouragement as the organizational equivalent of the proud look what you built! moment with a child – a small gesture that accelerates confidence, capability, and engagement.
The bad parenting connection
Perhaps more obviously, there are some clear parallels between bad leadership and bad parenting. Here are some rather striking similarities:
1. The Because I said so manager: Just as authoritarian parents shut down questions with rigid commands, authoritarian leaders mistake obedience for alignment. They confuse compliance with commitment and then wonder why nobody shows initiative.
2. The inconsistent rule-setter: Parents who punish a behavior one day and ignore it the next produce anxious, confused children. Leaders who do the same create cultures where people waste more energy interpreting the bosss mood than doing their actual job.
3. The distracted, phone-addicted caregiver: A parent who nods absentmindedly while scrolling sends a clear message: Im here, but not really. Leaders who multitask through meetings, check emails while someone speaks, or listen with one AirPod in convey the same emotional absenteeism.
4. The praise-inflation expert: Some parents shower children with empty praise to avoid conflict; the workplace equivalent is the leader who never gives honest feedback, inflating performance reviews until they become meaningless. In both scenarios, reality eventually delivers the correction the adult avoided giving.
5. The helicopter micromanager: Just as hovering parents undermine a childs autonomy and problem-solving skills, micromanaging leaders suffocate initiative. Both end up producing dependency, resentment, and a deep fear of making mistakes, which ironically reinforces the very behavior they complain about.
A rich laboratory
In the end, parenting offers an unusually rich laboratory for understanding human behavior, motivation, and development, precisely the same ingredients that make leadership effective. What parents learn through necessity, leaders can apply with intention: patience, boundaries, attentive listening, behavioral modeling, and encouragement are not soft skills but core mechanisms for eliciting growth in others. And the darker sides of parenting (inconsistency, distraction, micromanagement, avoidance) map almost perfectly onto the classic derailers of bad leadership. The parallels arent coincidental; they reflect universal principles of how humans respond to authority, structure, and care.
Multiple streams of research now converge on this point. Studies demonstrate that parenting and transformational leadership share core psychological processes: both develop through creating secure bases for exploration, both transfer caregiving orientations across domains, and both produce similar developmental outcomes in their “followers”, whether children or employees. The science is clear: this isn’t metaphor, it’s measured mechanism.
This is why transilience matters: the ability to draw on one dimension of the self to enrich another is a feature, not a flaw, of our complex identities. Rather than pretending our roles exist in sealed compartments, we are better off asking what each role teaches us about being more effective, more humane, and more self-aware in the others. Parenting doesnt make you a leader, but it can make you a better one if youre willing to notice the patterns, learn from the mistakes, and apply the lessons where they matter most: not just at home, and not just at work, but across the full constellation of selves that make you who you are.
That doesnt mean, of course, that the next time you interview for a leadership role you should brag about being a parent, or showcase the number of children you have as evidence of managerial brilliance. Most people are still unaware of transilience and the value of transferring skills from one identity domain to another, so the connection will likely be lost on them. Still, the real advantage lies not in announcing your parental status but in internalizing the lessons it quietly teaches: managing emotions under pressure, nurturing growth, setting boundaries, and modeling the behavior you hope to inspire. These are not résumé lines; they are capabilities that, when consciously activated, enhance your effectiveness as a leader far more than any abstract leadership competency model ever could.
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Rejoice, New Year’s dieters: Oreos are getting a sugar-free option.Mondelez said Tuesday that Oreo Zero Sugar and Oreo Double Stuf Zero Sugar will go on sale in the U.S. in January. They’re a permanent addition to the company’s Oreo lineup.It’s the first time Mondelez has sold sugar-free Oreos in the U.S. They’re already sold in Europe and China, the company said.Mondelez said consumers are increasingly seeking what it calls “mindful indulgence,” and the new Oreos will fill an existing gap in the market for sugar-free sandwich cookies.
[Image: Mondelz International]
Others have also noted the trend toward healthier snacks. In a report earlier this year, the market research company Circana found that a majority of Americans are seeking out snacks they consider “good for them.” Conagra Brands, which makes popcorn and Slim Jim meat snacks, said in a recent snacking report that Millennials and Generation Z consumers, in particular, are seeking portion-controlled and wellness-focused snacks.Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, which was introduced in 2017, saw sales jump 9% last year, while original Coke sales grew just 2%. Mondelez is also facing competition from Hershey, which sells zero sugar versions of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and other candies, and Voortman, a sugar-free wafer cookie brand.Mondelez said it spent four years developing no-sugar Oreos so it could ensure the cookies still tasted like the originals. For sweetening, the Oreos contain maltitol, a type of sugar alcohol that’s also found in some fruits and vegetables; polydextrose, a soluble fiber; sucralose, a sweetener derived from sugar; and acesulfame potassium, a synthetic sweetener.Comparing the nutrition data on Zero Sugar and regular Oreos is tricky, since the serving sizes differ.A serving of Oreo Zero Sugar cookies, which is defined as 22.6 grams, has 90 calories, 4.5 grams of fat and 16 grams of carbohydrates. A serving of regular Oreos, which is defined as three cookies or 34 grams, has 160 calories, 7 grams of fat and 25 grams of carbohydrates.The biggest difference: a serving of regular Oreos contains 13 grams of added sugars, or 26% of the recommended daily amount. Zero Sugar Oreos contain none.
Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
Cracker Barrel posted lower-than-expected sales in its fiscal first quarter and trimmed its revenue forecast for the year as it continued to feel the fallout from a botched plan to revamp its logo and restaurants.The Lebanon, Tennessee-based restaurant chain said Tuesday its revenue fell 5.7% to $797.2 million in the three months ending Oct. 31. That was lower than the $800 million Wall Street anticipated, according to analysts polled by FactSet.Cracker Barrel said its same-store restaurant sales dropped 4.7% while sales in its retail shops dropped 8.5%. Those declines were also slightly higher than analysts forecast.Cracker Barrel said it now expects total revenue of $3.2 billion to $3.3 billion in its 2026 fiscal year. That’s down from $3.35 billion to $3.45 billion previously. The company also said it expects adjusted pre-tax earnings of $70 million to $110 million, down from $150 million to $190 million previously.Cracker Barrel shares fell more than 10% in after-hours trading Tuesday.Cracker Barrel announced in August that it was simplifying the chain’s logo as part of a larger plan to modernize the chain’s dark, antique-filled restaurants.But the move had disastrous consequences. Fans didn’t like that the new logo didn’t include Cracker Barrel’s longtime mascot, an overall-clad man leaning on a barrel, or the words “Old Country Store.” They also rebelled against the store redesigns.Cracker Barrel backtracked a week later, saying it would keep the logo. In September, the company also suspended its plans to remodel stores. The chain operates around 650 restaurants nationwide, with many in Texas, Florida and Tennessee.Cracker Barrel shareholders voted late last month to keep company CEO Julie Felss Masino in place despite the logo debacle.But one of the company’s directors, Gilbert Davila, resigned from Cracker Barrel’s board Thursday after preliminary results indicated that shareholders rejected his reelection. Davila, who joined Cracker Barrel’s board in 2020, is the president and CEO of DMI Consulting, a multicultural marketing firm. He reviewed Cracker Barrel’s advertising as part of his role on the board.
Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up.
Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country that shift has varied.
Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has jumped above pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, local housing markets where active inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months.
Where is national active inventory headed?
National active listings are on the rise on a year-over-year basis (+13% between November 2024 and November 2025). This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. Some sellers markets have turned into balanced markets, and more balanced markets have turned into buyers markets.
Nationally, were still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (-6% below November 2019) and some resale markets, in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast, still remain tight-ish.
While national active inventory is still up year-over-year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent monthsmore than typical seasonality would suggestas some sellers have thrown in the towel and delisted in weak/soft markets.
Here are the November inventory/active listings totals, according to Realtor.com:
November 2017 -> 1,228,077
November 2018 -> 1,273,047
November 2019 -> 1,143,332
November 2020 -> 683,822
November 2021 -> 512,241
November 2022 -> 750,200
November 2023 -> 755,489
November 2024 -> 953,452
November 2025 -> 1,072,417
If we maintain the current year-over-year pace of inventory growth (+118,965 homes for sale), we’d have 1,191,382 active inventory come November 2026.
Below is the year-over-year active inventory percentage change by state:
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While active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, some markets still remain tight-ish (although it’s loosening in those places too).
As ResiClub has been documenting, both active resale and new homes for sale remain the most limited across huge swaths of the Midwest and Northeast. Thats where home sellers next spring are likely, relatively speaking, to have more power than their peers in many Southern markets.
In contrast, active housing inventory for sale has neared or surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels in many parts of the Sun Belt and Mountain West, including metro area housing markets such as Punta Gorda and Austin. Many of these areas saw major price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home prices getting stretched compared to local incomes.
As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices. This softening trend was accelerated further by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt.
Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives (if they have the margins to do so) to maintain sales in a shifted market, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market: Some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, are now opting for new homes with more favorable deals. That puts additional upward pressure on resale inventory.
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At the end of November 2025, 18 states were above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington. (The District of Columbiawhich we left out of this analysisis also back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels too. Softness in D.C. propers predates the current admins job cuts.)
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Big picture: Over the past few years, weve observed a softening across many housing markets as strained affordability tempers the fervor of a market that was unsustainably hot during the Pandemic Housing Boom. While home prices are falling some in pockets of the Sun Belt, a big chunk of Northeast and Midwest markets still eked out a little price appreciation this year. Nationally aggregated home prices have been pretty close to flat in 2025.
Below is another version of the table abovebut this one includes every month since January 2017:
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Researchers on the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and leaders of many of the major platformsfrom Jeffrey Hinton to Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Muskhave voiced concerns that AI could lead to the destruction of humanity itself.
Even the stated odds from some of these AI experts, with an end-days scenario as high as 25%, are still wildly optimistic, according to Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and coauthor of the recent best-selling book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.
Thats because, as he argues in the book, the track we’re on with AI is headed for disasterunless something radically changes. The book, cowritten with researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, explores potential threats posed by “superintelligence,” or theoretical AI systems that are smarter than humans.
We’re sort of growing these AIs that act in ways nobody asked for, that have these drives and emergent behaviors nobody intended, Soares said at last months World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
If we get superhumanly intelligent AIs that are pursuing ends nobody wanted, I think the default outcome is that literally everybody on earth dies,” he added.
A reckoning for the world
Likening the work of some AI leaders to building an airplane while flying with no landing gear, Soares said that not enough attention is being paid to the technologys potentially negative outcomes.
The amount of global investment being poured into AI shows that people are betting it wont be a total dud, he said, but there are two other crazy options: AI radically automates all human labor, so the economy is captured by a very small group, or it becomes super intelligent and kills everyone.
The world hasn’t really quite come to understand just how crazy this AI stuff is, Soares said.
But there is some reason for optimism, Soares said, as a lot of people are worried about the future of AI, which makes for a brittle situation if more peopleall of us includedvoice their concerns.
Maybe if enough people are like, Wait, we’re doing what now? What the heck? Soares said. Maybe that will shake the whole world into saying, Holy crap, let’s change course.
The Senate is heading toward dueling partisan votes on health care this week after Republicans said Tuesday that they had united around a plan, for now, that would allow COVID-era health care subsidies to expire.Both the Republican plan, which would replace the subsidies with new savings accounts, and a Democratic bill to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years lack the bipartisan support needed for passage. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday that the Democratic legislation does not include enough reforms to curb fraud or limit high-income recipients. That legislation “will fail,” Thune said.At the same time, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called the Republican plan “phony” and said the bill is “dead on arrival.”The burden is on Republicans “to vote with us,” Schumer said of Democrats, who forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue.With Republicans and Democrats unable to agree or even really negotiate with each other millions of people could see increases in their premium payments when the tax credits expire in January. Both sides blame the other for the increasingly likely failure of Congress to act, bringing the issue into the midterm election year with political talking points but little in the way of compromise on the subsidies that have helped keep costs down for many of the more than 24 million Americans.
Tentative GOP unity after years of disagreement
The Republican unity around a single plan, in the Senate at least, comes as the party has wrangled for more than a decade over how to replace former President Barack Obama’s signature law, also known as Obamacare.The legislation by Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee, and Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, emerged this week from many different proposals from Republican senators, including some that would have extended the tax credits with new limits.Despite those differences, Republicans worked to project unity as they emerged from a lunch meeting Tuesday. Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who had just recently proposed legislation to extend the subsidies with new income caps, said he is now “hyper-focused” on Cassidy and Crapo’s legislation. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who had his own bill to reduce taxes on health care, said the consensus bill “isn’t perfect, but I’m willing to give it a go.”“I just think that Republicans can’t do nothing,” Hawley said after the meeting. “I think we ought to be doing everything we can to try and get down the cost of health care.”Thune said there will now be “something out there that Republicans will be able to talk about and support and vote for, and then we’ll see.”There was less consensus in the House, where moderate Republicans who are up for reelection have been pushing Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to extend the subsidies with new reforms while the right flank of the party has demanded deeper reforms to the ACA. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that GOP leadership will present options to members on Wednesday for potential votes next week.
Proposed health savings accounts
The bill by Cassidy and Crapo would let the current subsidies, first put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, expire. The legislation would then make payments to the new health savings accounts for the next two years, for enrollees making less than 700% of the federal poverty level who pick lower-cost, higher-deductible bronze or catastrophic health insurance plans.Eligible enrollees between the ages of 18 and 49 would get $1,000 per year, while those between 50 and 64 would get $1,500. The money could be spent to defray out-of-pocket expenses like copays and deductibles, or to purchase other qualified health-related items directly from companies, but not to cover monthly premiums.Cassidy and Crapo say their bill provides better support to Americans than the expiring subsidies do because it hands money directly to the people, giving them the power to decide how to spend or save it a message President Donald Trump has echoed in recent weeks. Republicans say the plan could also cut down on fraud in the health care system, pointing to a Government Accountability Office report that found some fake recipients were able to get coverage.The bill also includes new language limiting the use of Affordable Care Act money for abortion a dealbreaker for moderate Democrats who say they would have been willing to negotiate on the issue.
Uncertainty over costs
Health analysts warn that the plan won’t do much to help lower-income Affordable Care Act enrollees who rely on subsidies to afford their monthly insurance fees.The Republicans’ plan also requires enrollees to pick higher-deductible plans to be eligible for the payments meaning heavy users of health insurance may end up saddled with out-of-pocket costs far higher than the new influx of cash in their pockets.Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the GOP proposal “leaves middle-class Americans saddled with sky-high premiums, and Big Insurance makes out like bandits by selling junk plans to families that desperately need health coverage.”“Instead of working with Democrats to stop this health cost crisis, Republicans are selling snake oil,” Wyden said.
Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press reporter Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
Mary Clare Jalonick and Ali Swenson, Associated Press
