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Leo Robitschek says he loves gin-based martinis and negronis. Unfortunately, they dont always love him back. After two, that decision to have a third is usually a tricky one, says Robitschek, who has worked in the liquor industry for more than two decades, including serving as a bar director for Manhattan hot spots Eleven Madison Park and the NoMad Hotel. To lessen the pain after a boozy night out, Robitschek joined forces with another bartender, Nick Strangeway, and the founder of the sparkling beverage brand Dry Soda, Sharelle Klaus, to launch Second Sip Gin. The London dry gin is 20% alcohol by volume (ABV), roughly half the level of most gins, and was formulated over the course of six months as somewhere between Beefeater and Tanqueray gins. Second Sip has a juniper forward flavor, along with angelica root, coriander, bitter orange, and licorice, so it can retain an array of botanicals that gin is known for. [Photo: Second Sip Gin] Two martinis are better than one, says Robitschek. But hopefully, theres no regrets in the morning. The rise of mindful drinking Lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in alcohol consumption as Americans were stuck at home with little to do. After life returned to normal, many consumers sought to reset their relationship by participating in Dry Januaryavoiding booze for the full monthand giving nonalcoholic beverages a try. All this coincided with the rise of Gen Z into legal drinking age, a generation thats drinking less than other young people before them. But industry data shows that a vast majority of adults that consume nonalcoholic drinks arent exactly sober. More than 90% drink alcohol, too. And often, they will alternate between alcohol and N/A brands within the same evening, a social concept called zebra striping. That idea of zebra striping and the consumer having two options results in this low alcohol space in the middle, says Kaleigh Theriault, associate director of beverage alcohol thought leadership at research firm NIQ. They can trust that the product is going to be moderate for them and they dont have to be as conscious about making a decision between a non-alc and a regular ABV [alcohol by volume]. Lower alcohol sales total nearly $3.6 billion annually in U.S. grocery, liquor, convenience, and other retailers tracked by NIQ, but the category is also evolving differently across beer, wine, and spirits. Within beer, there has been less appetite for low-strength alternatives because major brands like Miller Lite and Coors Light are already naturally low in alcoholic content and the N/A brands that have emerged, led by Heineken 0.0 and Athletic Brewing, taste similar to their full-strength cousins. Redefining the buzz Fabian Clark says he enjoys N/A beers, but when he worked in hospitality and ran a restaurant in London, he consistently declined to stock Seedlip and other N/A spirits he was pitched. For me, I felt they didnt deliver on the flavor that I was looking for, says Clark. [Photo: Quarter Proof] After his restaurant shut down due to COVID, Clark cofounded Quarter Proof in 2022, launching with a gin and later a tequila and vodka that all contain 15% ABV, a level he says allows the startup to deliver spirits that retain a similar flavor profile to the higher proof competitors. Theyre not looking to abstain, theyre looking to moderate, Clark says of the shifting consumer mindset. And we feel that we offer seamless moderation. As we like to say, All of the buzz, none of the blur. Stateside, Quarter Proof is only sold in bars and restaurants in New York and Miami, but Clark is in talks with a national distributor to bring the brand to additional markets. Clark also intends to move to the U.S. before the end of the year to have a more active in-person role building up Quarter Proof. Brandon Joldersma, the CEO of N/A wine brand Surely, says that the dealcoholization techniques changed the flavor profile too much for some consumers. You really want to taste as similar as possible, says Joldersma. Its just much more difficult to do with wine than it is for beer. [Photo: Arlow] With that in mind, he launched the low-alcohol wine brand Arlow last year, with varietals including sauvignon blanc, rosé, and cabernet sauvignon, all with a 6.5% ABV and fewer calories and sugar than the full-strength wines. The brand is sold online in nearly all states and has scored wholesale distribution in New York as a test market. A category without clear rules NIQs Theriault says theres no set guidelines for lower roof alcohols and thus the ranges for each category arent yet settled. Generally, NIQs unofficial definitions settle on beers under 4% ABV, and most wines under 10% and spirits below 30%. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for upstarts like Arlow and Quarter Proof. ABV math is something that consumers dont necessarily do when at the shelf making a purchase, says Theriault. And probably not while ordering a drink while at a bar. Beyond explaining the claims about ABV and better-for-you proposition for Arlow, Joldersma says hes fielded questions like if Arlow adds water to dilute it (they dont). This is a brand new category that we are introducing and theres some education that comes with that, says Joldersma. Some say Americans are finally playing catch-up by embracing mid-strength cocktails like the aperol and hugo spritzes. That lighter daytime drinking moment has always been part of European culture, says Emma Fox, global VP for St-Germain elderflower liqueur and Martini vermouth. [Photo: St-Germain] Fox estimates that globally, the aperitif and N/A-low alcohol segment is worth $11 billion and projected to grow 6% over the next four years. Google Search volume for the hugo spritz, made with St-Germain, prosecco, and mint, spiked by 130% in 2024 from the prior year and saw content on TikTok more than triple. St-Germain launched a global ad campaign with actress Sophie Turner last year to bolster the hugo spritz during the summer, when the cocktail tends to be more popular. To bolster popularity during the colder months, the French liqueur brand has also developed aprs-ski pop-ups at ski resorts. A new standard for bar menus Proof Creative, which conceptualizes cocktails menus for luxury hotel clients like the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton, anticipates menus will soon be engineered to offer N/A, low ABV, and full strength options across every beverage category. Bobby Carey, creative director for bar consultancy Proof Creative, says the lower-proof brands are also emerging in response to some consumer pushback that the N/A brands were being sold at lofty price points on par with the full strength spirits and wines. Why am I paying so much for a nonalcoholic drink?, asks Carey, explaining a common gripe hes witnessed. If you can turn around and say, This is still alcohol. Its still giving you the same flavor. Thats a more winning proposition.
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E-Commerce
A bold new building at Spelman College in Atlanta is all about breaking down barriers. Designed by the architecture firm Studio Gang, the Center for Innovation and the Arts is the new home for collaboration between students of science, technology, art, and performance at the historically Black women’s liberal arts college. It will provide a new space where Spelman’s programs in dance, documentary filmmaking, photography, theater and performance, and music can tap into emerging technologies from the worlds of science and computer science. Studio Gang founder, Jeanne Gang, says the primary goals of the project were to help the college better connect its programs and events with the broader community, and to help its robust arts and science programs have more opportunity to overlap and intersect. Our job was to make sure that there’s fluid connections between them, Gang says. [Photo: Tom Harris/courtesy Studio Gang] The four-story building is a mashup of labs, studios, and collaboration areas, with a publicly accessible performance hall on the ground floor, and college-only learning spaces above. There are design spaces, a recording studio, galleries, faculty offices, and a tech-filled Innovation Lab for experimentation and prototyping. [Photo: Tom Harris/courtesy Studio Gang] All this is built around a central atrium that’s lit from above by a large skylight and either visibly or physically accessible from nearly every other space in the building. This central space, known as the Forum, is meant to be used for events, gatherings, exhibitions, and, most often, design critiques for students studying a range of creative disciplines. [Photo: courtesy Studio Gang] Even if you’re not walking right through the middle of the crit space, you’re always circulating around it, Gang says. So it’s a way of giving character to this space where these interactions happen. [Photo: courtesy Studio Gang] Giving so much of the building over to a central atrium was a decision informed by Gang’s own design school experience, as a student, as a professor, and as a seasoned designer with several university buildings in her firm’s portfolio. People are comfortable staying in their silos, she says. How can you make it natural for people that are from different disciplines to interact? That thinking extends to Spelman’s expansion beyond its campus gates. Located directly adjacent to the campus, the Center for Innovation and the Arts was intended from the start to be a way for the college to spread its impact past its historical edge. After the project had to pause for a few years during the pandemic, this aspiration felt even more relevant. Gang says that during the early research her firm did for this project, they found a smattering of small art galleries in the surrounding Westside neighborhood. By the time the project picked back up a few years ago, those had grown and more had followed. It has really developed into a more full neighborhood, she says. It made sense to us for this project to be a center. [Photo: courtesy Studio Gang] It also stands out. The 84,000-square-foot building is a large square peeking out through the neighborhood’s tree cover, and bordering n a popular public plaza. Gang says the building was designed to counter Atlanta’s heat, with its upper floors forming a shaded canopy over the ground floor, creating what she calls a porch-like feeling. [Photo: Tom Harris/courtesy Studio Gang] The rest of the building is wrapped with a slitted facade of sun shades that resemble a woven basketa notable departure from the traditional brick buildings that make up much of Spelman’s campus. The baffles are specifically tuned to block sunlight and glare from each part of the building, with a tighter weave on the south and southwest. They’re very functional but also makes it feel more friendly, Gang says. It’s not a hard exterior of solid brick, and this lets it be more in the environment, breathing. All of which helps the building foster connections with the surrounding neighborhood. But the main users will be the students of the college, and Gang says the fluidity of the spaces inside were essential elements of designing a building so focused on collaboration and innovation. The building creates the relationships that you’re going to have with other people, other creators, and your own work, she says, so it’s really important to get it right.
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E-Commerce
Former employees of OpenAI are asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the company from shifting control of its artificial intelligence technology from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit business.They’re concerned about what happens if the ChatGPT maker fulfills its ambition to build AI that outperforms humans, but is no longer accountable to its public mission to safeguard that technology from causing grievous harms.“Ultimately, I’m worried about who owns and controls this technology once it’s created,” said Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, in an interview with the Associated Press.Backed by three Nobel Prize winners and other advocates and experts, Hedley and nine other ex-OpenAI workers sent a letter this week to the two state attorneys general.The coalition is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, both Democrats, to use their authority to protect OpenAI’s charitable purpose and block its planned restructuring. OpenAI is incorporated in Delaware and operates out of San Francisco.OpenAI said in response that “any changes to our existing structure would be in service of ensuring the broader public can benefit from AI.” It said its for-profit will be a public benefit corporation, similar to other AI labs like Anthropic and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI, except that OpenAI will still preserve a nonprofit arm.“This structure will continue to ensure that as the for-profit succeeds and grows, so too does the nonprofit, enabling us to achieve the mission,” the company said in a statement.The letter is the second petition to state officials this month. The last came from a group of labor leaders and nonprofits focused on protecting OpenAI’s billions of dollars of charitable assets.Jennings said last fall she would “review any such transaction to ensure that the public’s interests are adequately protected.” Bonta’s office sought more information from OpenAI late last year but has said it can’t comment, even to confirm or deny if it is investigating.OpenAI’s cofounders, including current CEO Sam Altman and Musk, originally started it as a nonprofit research laboratory on a mission to safely build what’s known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI, for humanity’s benefit. Nearly a decade later, OpenAI has reported its market value as $300 billion and counts 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT, its flagship product.OpenAI already has a for-profit subsidiary but faces a number of challenges in converting its core governance structure. One is a lawsuit from Musk, who accuses the company and Altman of betraying the founding principles that led the Tesla CEO to invest in the charity.While some of the signatories of this week’s letter support Musk’s lawsuit, Hedley said others are “understandably cynical” because Musk also runs his own rival AI company.The signatories include two Nobel-winning economists, Oliver Hart and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as AI pioneers and computer scientists Geoffrey Hinton, who won last year’s Nobel Prize in physics, and Stuart Russell.“I like OpenAI’s mission to ‘ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,’ and I would like them to execute that mission instead of enriching their investors,” Hinton said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m happy there is an effort to hold OpenAI to its mission that does not involve Elon Musk.”Conflicts over OpenAI’s purpose have long simmered at the San Francisco institute, contributing to Musk quitting in 2018, Altman’s short-lived ouster in 2023 and other high-profile departures.Hedley, a lawyer by training, worked for OpenAI in 2017 and 2018, a time when the nonprofit was still navigating the best ways to steward the technology it wanted to build. As recently as 2023, Altman said advanced AI held promise but also warned of extraordinary risks, from drastic accidents to societal disruptions.In recent years, however, Hedley said he watched with concern as OpenAI, buoyed by the success of ChatGPT, was increasingly cutting corners on safety testing and rushing out new products to get ahead of business competitors.“The costs of those decisions will continue to go up as the technology becomes more powerful,” he said. “I think that in the new structure that OpenAI wants, the incentives to rush to make those decisions will go up and there will no longer be anybody really who can tell them not to, tell them this is not OK.”Software engineer Anish Tondwalkar, a former member of OpenAI’s technical team until last year, said an important assurance in OpenAI’s nonprofit charter is a “stop-and-assist clause” that directs OpenAI to stand down and help if another organization is nearing the achievement of better-than-human AI.“If OpenAI is allowed to become a for-profit, these safeguards, and OpenAI’s duty to the public can vanish overnight,” Tondwalkar said in a statement Wednesday.Another former worker who signed the letter puts it more bluntly.“OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed,” said Nisan Stiennon, an AI engineer who worked at OpenAI from 2018 to 2020. “It is to OpenAI’s credit that it’s controlled by a nonprofit with a duty to humanity. This duty precludes giving up that control.” The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives. Matt O’Brien, AP Technology Writer
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E-Commerce
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