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The fortunes of major quantum computing firms turned negative this week as share prices sankin some cases by double digits. The so-called Quantum Four publicly traded companiesRigetti Computing, IonQ, Quantum Computing Inc, and D-Wave Quantumsaw their stock prices tumble on Thursday. And as of this writing, all four companies are down even lower in premarket trading on Friday. Berkeley, California-based Rigetti (NASDAQ: RGTI) has seen the biggest drop, with its stock price falling almost 15% on Thursday, October 16. As of this writing, the stock was down another 7.65% during the premarket session. Shares of IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) were down by a similar amount on Thursday, although their 2.23% drop on Friday has not been quite as steep. Quantum Computing Inc (NASDAQ: QUBT) fell by 11.73% on Thursday, while D-Wave (NYSE: QBTS) was down 9.65%. Why are quantum computing stocks down? There doesn’t seem to have been any market-moving negative news specific to the quantum computing space. In fact, D-Wave had just announced on Wednesday a $12 million deal to bring its much-hyped Advantage2 computer to Italy. However, the broader stock market experienced shocks on Thursday after regional bank Zions Bancorporation accused some of its borrowers of fraud and warned that it would take a large loss, as the Wall Street Journal reported. This disclosure has sparked fears about the credit health of regional banks more broadly, and those fears appear to be spilling into the markets. Stock futures were all in retreat on Friday morning as investors continue to digest the news. In the meantime, some may be gravitating toward safe-haven assets like gold, which just set yet another record this week when it topped $4,300 per ounce. Quantum computing investors may be profit-taking All four of the major quantum computing firms have had enormous runs over the last 12 months, with shares of Rigetti soaring almost 5,000% over that period. With markets turning negative and troubling signals emerging from the banking sector, it’s natural that investors in quantum computing might be inclined to sell off some of their shares while profits are high. Although quantum computers are seen by many experts as a transformative technology that could reshape the industry, the space is still highly speculative, and some have argued that the stocks are currently overvalued. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
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Hello again from Fast Company and thanks for reading Plugged In. Before I go any further, a bit of quick self-serving promotion: This week, we published our fifth annual Next Big Things in Tech list. Featuring 137 projects and people in 31 categories, its our guide to technologies that are already reshaping business and life in general, with plenty of headroom to go further in the years to come. None of them are the usual suspectsand many have largely flown under the radar. Take a look, and youll come away with some discoveries. Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about Sora, OpenAIs new social network devoted wholly to generating and remixing 10-second synthetic videos. At the time of launch, the company said its guardrails prohibited the inclusion of living celebrities, but also declared that it didnt plan to police copyright violations unless owners explicitly opted out of granting permission. Consequently, the clips people shared were rife with familiar faces such as Pikachu and SpongeBob. Not surprisingly, that policy gave Hollywood fits. Quickly changing course, OpenAI tweaked its algorithm to reject prompts that clearly reference copyrighted IP. A handful of high-profile Sora members have used its Cameo feature to create shareable AI versions of themselves, including iJustine, Logan Paul, Mark Cuban, and OpenAIs own Sam Altman. Theyre everywhere on the service. But with other current celebs off the table, the Sora-obsessed turned to one of the few remaining available sources of cultural touchstones: dead people. That too has proven controversial. Most notably, the daughters of George Carlin, Martin Luther King Jr., Robin Williams, and Malcolm X have all decried the use of Sora to create synthetic videos of their fathers. Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad, wrote Zelda Williams on Instagram. If youve got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. I am sympathetic to their angst. In 2021, a genealogy site called MyHeritage presaged the Sora era by launching a feature called Deep Nostalgia that let you turn old family photographs into brief videos. Out of curiosity, I uploaded a photo of a deceased relative. The moment I saw the results, I regretted having done so. Being constantly exposed to AI simulacrums of your parent created by random strangers must be agonizing. In response to concerns about bad-taste AI resurrections, OpenAI told The Washington Posts Tatum Hunter and Drew Harwell that it would allow representatives of the recently deceased to block Sora depictions. But the company didnt specify what it considered to be recent. Whatever its definition, its not going to make everyone happy. The aforementioned famous fathers died anywhere from 1965 (Malcolm X) to 2014 (Williams). They surely wont fall under a recency exception. Yet the old bit of wisdom tragedy plus time equals comedywhich apparently originated with another dead person, comedian Steve Allendoesnt always hold true. It depends on the context. Even more than a decade later, Robin Williamss death by suicide still feels like an incalculable tragedy. I have not run across any videos of him on Sora, and would prefer I never do. But I dont feel the same way about Queen Elizabeth II, who made it to 96 and was spry until her 2022 passing. Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed a jag of Sora remixes that began with a clip of her praising the cheese puffs at Costco (delightfully orange) and went on to show her relishing other delicacies in various venues around the world. Some of these clips made me LOL, not figuratively but literally. In fact, the only reason I peruse Sora at all is because an overwhelming percentage of the items in my feed are fanciful and at least aspirationally funny. AI slop of the sort that striveshowever clumsilyfor realism is scarce on the service. The same is hardly true on other social networks such as Facebook and TikTok, which are infested with machine-generated kindhearted celebrities and cute animals. Im not saying that Sora is consistently riotous. Ive scrolled through a lot of videos of MLKand Mister Rogers, Bob Ross, and othersin which the only point is that theyre mouthing some anodyne term they wouldnt have used, or talking about Sora itself. That gets tiresome fast, and makes me at least slightly queasy. It might even be slop. Its just not the sum total of Sora. I have not been above making my own Sora videos depicting the departed. Inspired by the fact that Orson Welles once recorded a radio commercial for frozen peas, I prompted for a video depicting him filming such an ad. It came out entertaining, in part because Soras version of Welles reminded me of the late John Candys wonderful impression of him. Other users remixed the clip into ones showing Welles endorsing everything from twine to camp chairs, starring less and less convincing approximations of the legendary actor-director. Maybe you had to be there. But I found it to be a rewarding if minor act of collaborative creativity, not a regrettable coarsening of the internet. All in all, encouraging people to channel their AI-video-generating energy into clips that are playful, genuinely social, and cordoned off from reality, as Sora does, seems like a positive development to me. Still, I try to show grace toward the feelings of others and would accept more restrictive policies on the use of deceased celebrities. Maybe the service could permit them only if nobody alive ever met the person in question. Cleopatra and Abraham Lincln would pass that test; Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein would not. (Thats before you get to the fact that the estates of some celebrities have deals with licensing companies that probably arent thrilled with Soras unauthorized use, such as CMG Worldwide, which represents the Monroe and Einstein estates.) If nothing else, building new guardrails around specific categories of famed individuals no longer with us would be an interesting challenge for some engineer at OpenAI. I cant see the company investing much effort in it. But in a strange way, its done the world a favor by forcing us to confront questions like this while the stakes remain relatively low. AI is only going to get better at deepfaking people, famous and otherwise. Better to figure out how we feel about that now, before the synthetic dead folks are truly indistinguishable from the real thing. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Inside Microsoft’s quest to make Windows 11’s AI irresistibleExecutives with a combined 130+ years of tenure on the company’s decades of work to get people to talk to their PCsand why the time might finally be right. Read More Billionaire investor Frank McCourt is not giving up on his dream of acquiring TikTokThe financier says he wants a closer look at the Trump deal for the wildly popular social-media platform. Read More Goodbye, SEO. Hello, GEOHow AI search is rewriting digital strategy. Read More How kids are getting around classroom phone bans‘Kids will always find a way, but honestly, the creativity involved is a skill worth developing,’ one teacher commented. Read More This addictive game is like ‘SimCity’ but for transit nerdsThe goal of ‘Subway Builder’ is to move people from A to B. Some believe it might just start a transit revolution in the process. Read More 5 time-saving Google Calendar tricks you should be usingMake your calendar work for you, not the other way around. Read More
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We are in an era of strategic silenceno longer in the age of the activist CEO. Instead, business leaders are being told to lie low and stay in their lane to avoid unwanted attention, including from the White House. In the wake of Jimmy Kimmels removal from ABC, CEOs are reportedly turning down press and speaking opportunities. Today, leaders are faced with the question of when to speak up . . . and when to stay strategically silent in order to protect their constituents. Reverend Mariann Budde is an expert on speaking up. She was thrust into the national spotlight during President Trumps inauguration when she preached a sermon urging him to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. In the weeks that followed, Budde was publicly criticized by President Trump, and received both hate mailas well as an overwhelming amount of gratitude for speaking up. Budde believes bravery can be learned. She is the author of How We Learn to Be Brave, a book about what courage looks like in our lives, and how we can cultivate it. Shell be releasing an adaptation for younger readers, We Can Be Brave, in late October. Reverend Budde sat down with Fast Company to discuss how leaders should think about speaking up in an environment where doing so has very real consequences. In this paid Premium story, youll: Hear how Reverend Buddes decision to speak out against President Trump affected herboth negatively and positively Understand the time and place leaders should speak out Get advice for dealing with the aftermath of speaking up [The following conversation has been edited for clarity.] How can leaders distinguish between when its necessary to speak up, versus when its actually not worth the risk and, in fact, foolhardy? It’s a very important question. And if there were a formula then it would be easy, right? We would all know. And part of the uncertainty and the risk is that we don’t know. Is this an important timeeither for our personal integrity, the well-being of others, or the interests of our community or businessto speak out? Is this a time when we have reputational strength and wherewithal to withstand anticipated blowback? You don’t have to rise to every occasion, if it’s not wise. I think in times like this, these are serious questions to ask, because whole constituencies are at risk. However, there are times when we self-censor or when we step back unnecessarily, out of the anticipation of consequences that may or may not be real. There are dangers when we all take the safe route. It leaves a big gap for really unhealthy dynamics in society to have free reign. I think we are at risk of seeing some of that now, to be honest. Whats the cost to society if we all take the safe route? Unfortunately, in the beginning, you don’t see it unless you are near a vulnerable population, which is why proximity to those who are most impacted by the large societal movements is so important. I live in Washington, D.C., and people ask me: What’s it like in Washington now? It really depends on where you’re standing. For some people, life is just fine, and for other people, it is a living terror. How do you decide when to use your voice? Carefully. I don’t speak up every day. I did not and I don’t speak up on everything. I weigh my very limited public impact potential carefully. I try to stay in my lane, which is where spiritual values that I represent are in alignment with the democratic aspirations of our country. When I speak up, I do so from that foundation, and also from a constituency base that I personally represent. Whats a time when you didnt speak up and wish you had? I wake up almost every day thinking of human inflicted starvation in Gaza. I am asked repeatedly to speak out, and I have done so very rarely, in part because I have very deep ties within the Jewish community here in Washington and in this country. I recognize not only the complexity of the situation, but also the impact that things I might say or do. The Archbishop of the Anglican church in Jerusalem asks us sometimes not to say anything because it just makes things worse for them. But I tell you, it doesn’t feel good to be quiet sometimes. Not that I have any illusions in this particular political environment that I would make a difference, which is another calculation I make: If I have absolutely no chance of affecting change by what I say, I have to decide if it’s worth the cost. You have spoken up in a very public way that has thrust you into the national spotlight. What was the impact on you personally? Well, first of all, it was a very unusual opportunity that was given to me to preach at the post inaugural prayer service. In terms of the upside, that was a privilege. The downside, it was obviously hard. It cost me a lot to think that through. I clearly offended the President and his inner circle, and they took the opportunity to make that known and it set in motion an onslaught of reaction for about three weeks. Our entire church was flooded with some pretty mean-spirited and false accusations. So that was the hard part. The other side to it was also a huge outpouring of gratitude, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. Boxes and boxes of mailso much we couldn’t open it. People wrote me letters that began with, I’m not a religious person, but I wanted to tell you how much what you said meant to me. Thank you for reminding people that my child is a human. What advice do you have for people who do want to use their voice in a very public way, such as the way you have? Maybe people such as other leaders? Its very helpful to be grounded. For three or four days, you’re at the height of all this energy and attention, and then the world goes silent. And it’s time to take out the garbage and remember that you forgot 17 things on your to-do list. Its helpful to remember while theres a response to you, your life is rooted somewhere else. We’re not the first generation of Americans to experience significant pulling back from values that we thought had been well-established. It was no picnic in the early 1920s when resegregation was introduced into this country. What did the people do then, and what can we do now? It’s also good to have a sense of humor, and a couple of children around to keep you grounded. We are at a time of deep disconnection and polarization. What does good leadership look like right now, especially if youre leading people who are deeply divided? We don’t realize how influenced we have become by the contempt thats poisoning our society. We can’t have conversations with people who differ from us in ways that don’t dehumanize and belittle one another. If we can’t figure out how to talk to each other across our differences, we will never, ever solve the problems that we’re facing as a society. You do have to speak up in the face of hatred and intolerance, but how you do it matters. You have to meet that knd of intolerance with firm conviction and persuasionand yet not robbing that person of their inherent dignity as well. What does it mean to be brave? From our earliest days as human beings, we have to and are summoned to do things that we have never done before. Stepping into something that is unfamiliar carries some degree of risk, and yet this is the miracle of our existence. Even though we’re afraid, we know exactly what we’re supposed to do. Sometimes we’re really excited because we feel like we’re in our element and we can do this. Other times, we’re terrified. We don’t know if we can do it. And we learn sometimes that we can’t, in fact, do that thing, and we fail. Then the most important learning is what is the brave moment after failure or disappointment or making a mistake? I find that the brave or the courageous call in those times is to step up, learn, wipe off whatever humiliation or wounding that happens, and persevere.
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