The unsolicited offer for the assets of OpenAI could end up costing CEO Sam Altman, whether he takes it or not.

A build-up of plaque in arteries can lead to cardiovascular conditionsSEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYGenetically engineered immune cells could help reduce the clogging of arteries, potentially lowering the risk of heart attack or stroke in people who dont respond to common treatments.Doctors often treat those at high risk of these conditions using drugs called statins, but they dont protect everyone. If statins were perfect we wouldnt have such an issue with cardiovascular disease its still the leading cause of death worldwide, says Robert Schwab at the University of Pennsylvania.

EnvironmentStripping carbon dioxide out of the ocean could be much more efficient than capturing it from the air. Researchers are hoping to show its potential at a pilot plant in Weymouth 11 February 2025 Weymouth Bay on Englands south coast, where SeaCURE is sucking carbon dioxide out of seawaterHeidi Stewart/AlamyAt the back of the Sea Life aquarium in Weymouth on Englands south coast, a hangar resounds with the rush of water into tanks. Three reef sharks and a nurse shark are cruising around in one. A stingray is hiding somewhere in another. But a closed rectangular tank of stainless steel holds an entirely different beast: carbon dioxide bubbling out of seawater as part of a process scientists hope could someday help reverse climate change. A red line on a computer screen shows

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. No tech leader before has played the role in a new presidential administration that Elon Musk is playing now. Under his leadership, DOGE has entered offices in a half-dozen agencies and counting, begun building AI models for government data, accessed various payment systems, had its access to the Treasury halted by a federal judge, and sparked lawsuits questioning the legality of the groups activities. The stated goal of DOGEs actions, per a statement from a White House spokesperson to the New York Times on Thursday, is slashing waste, fraud, and abuse. As I point out in my story published Friday, these three terms mean very different things in the world of federal budgets, from errors the government makes when spending money to nebulous spending thats legal and approved but disliked by someone in power. Many of the new administrations loudest and most sweeping actionslike Musks promise to end the entirety of USAIDs varied activities or Trumps severe cuts to scientific funding from the National Institutes of Healthmight be said to target the latter category. If DOGE feeds government data to large language models, it might easily find spending associated with DEI or other initiatives the administration considers wasteful as it pushes for $2 trillion in cuts, nearly a third of the federal budget. But the fact that DOGE aides are reportedly working in the offices of Medicaid and even Medicarewhere budget cuts have been politically untenable for decadessuggests the task force is also driven by evidence published by the Government Accountability Office. The GAOs reports also give a clue into what DOGE might be hoping AI can accomplish. Heres what the reports reveal: Six federal programs account for 85% of what the GAO calls improper payments by the government, or about $200 billion per year, and Medicare and Medicaid top the list. These make up small fractions of overall spending but nearly 14% of the federal deficit. Estimates of fraud, in which courts found that someone willfully misrepresented something for financial benefit, run between $233 billion and $521 billion annually. So where is fraud happening, and could AI models fix it, as DOGE staffers hope? By dollar value [of enforcement], most health-care fraud is committed by pharmaceutical companies, he says. Often those companies promote drugs for uses that are not approved, called off-label promotion, which is deemed fraud when Medicare or Medicaid pay the bill. Other types of fraud include upcoding, where a provider sends a bill for a more expensive service than was given, and medical-necessity fraud, where patients receive services that they're not qualified for or didnt need. Theres also substandard care, where companies take money but dont provide adequate services. The way the government currently handles fraud is referred to as pay and chase. Questionable payments occur, and then people try to track it down after the fact. The more effective way, as advocated by Leder-Luis and others, is to look for patterns and stop fraudulent payments before they occur. This is where AI comes in. The idea is to use predictive models to find providers that show the marks of questionable payment. You want to look for providers who make a lot more money than everyone else, or providers who bill a specialty code that nobody else bills, Leder-Luis says, naming just two of many anomalies the models might look for. In a 2024 study by Leder-Luis and colleagues, machine-learning models achieved an eightfold improvement over random selection in identifying suspicious hospitals. The government does use some algorithms to do this already, but theyre vastly underutilized and miss clear-cut fraud cases, Leder-Luis says. Switching to a preventive model requires more than just a technological shift. Health-care fraud, like other fraud, is investigated by law enforcement under the current pay and chase paradigm. A lot of the types of things that Im suggesting require you to think more like a data scientist than like a cop, Leder-Luis says. One caveat is procedural. Building AI models, testing them, and deploying them safely in different government agencies is a massive feat, made even more complex by the sensitive nature of health data. Critics of Musk, like the tech and democracy group Tech Policy Press, argue that his zeal for government AI discards established procedures and is based on a false idea that the goal of bureaucracy is merely what it produces (services, information, governance) and can be isolated from the process through which democracy achieves those ends: debate, deliberation, and consensus. Jennifer Pahlka, who served as US deputy chief technology officer under President Barack Obama, argued in a recent op-ed in the New York Times that ineffective procedures have held the US government back from adopting useful tech. Still, she warns, abandoning nearly all procedure would be an overcorrection. Democrats goal must be a muscular, lean, effective administrative state that works for Americans, she wrote. Mr. Musks recklessness will not get us there, but neither will the excessive caution and addiction to procedure that Democrats exhibited under President Joe Bidens leadership. The other caveat is this: Unless DOGE articulates where and how it's focusing its efforts, our insight into its intentions is limited. How much is Musk identifying evidence-based opportunities to reduce fraud, versus just slashing what he considers woke spending in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the government? Its not clear DOGE makes a distinction. Now read the rest of The Algorithm Deeper Learning Meta has an AI for brain typing, but its stuck in the lab Researchers working for Meta have managed to analyze peoples brains as they type and determine what keys they are pressing, just from their thoughts. The system can determine what letter a typist has pressed as much as 80% of the time. The catch is that it can only be done in a lab. Why it matters: Though brain scanning with implants like Neuralink has come a long way, this approach from Meta is different. The company says it is oriented toward basic research into the nature of intelligence, part of a broader effort to uncover how the brain structures language. Read more from Antonio Regalado. Bites and Bytes An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himselfbut the company doesnt want to censor it While Nomi's chatbot is not the first to suggest suicide, researchers and critics say that its explicit instructionsand the companys responseare striking. Taken together with a separate casein which the parents of a teen who died by suicide filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, the maker of a chatbot they say played a key role in their sons deathits clear we are just beginning to see whether an AI company is held legally responsible when its models output something unsafe. (MIT Technology Review) I let OpenAIs new agent manage my life. It spent $31 on a dozen eggs. Operator, the new AI that can reach into the real world, wants to act like your personal assistant. This fun review shows what its good and bad atand how it can go rogue. (The Washington Post) Four Chinese AI startups to watch beyond DeepSeek DeepSeek is far from the only game in town. These companies are all in a position to compete both within China and beyond. (MIT Technology Review) Metas alleged torrenting and seeding of pirated books complicates copyright case Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the most damning evidence yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by authors alleging that it illegally trained its AI models on pirated books. In one particularly telling email, an engineer told a colleague, Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesnt feel right. (Ars Technica) Whats next for smart glassesSmart glasses are on the verge of becomingwhisper itcool. Thats because, thanks to various technological advancements, theyre becoming useful, and theyre only set to become more so. Heres whats coming in 2025 and beyond. (MIT Technology Review)

Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, pushing even the busiest spaceports, like Floridas Kennedy Space Center, to their operational limits. Orbital launches worldwide have more than doubled over the past four years, from about 100 to 250 annually. That number is projected to spiral further up this decade, fueled by an epic growth spurt in the commercial space sector. To relieve the congestion, some mission planners are looking to the ocean as the next big gateway to space. China has sent more than a dozen space missions from ocean platforms since 2019, most recently in January 2025. Italys space program has announced it will reopen its ocean launchpad off the coast of Kenya, while German space insiders envision an offshore spaceport in the North Sea. In the US, the idea of sea launches has attracted attention from heavyweights like SpaceX and inspired a new startup called the Spaceport Company. Launching rockets from offshore platforms like barges or oil rigs has a number of advantages. For one thing, it dramatically expands potential locations to lift off from, especially along the equator (this provides rockets with a natural speed boost because, thanks to geometry, the equator moves faster than the poles). At the same time, it is potentially safer and more environmentally friendly, placing launches further from population centers and delicate ecosystems. Ocean launches have taken place on and off for decades. But the renewed interest in offshore spaceports raises a host of questions about the unique regulatory, geopolitical, and environmental trade-offs of sea-based launches. It also offers a glimpse of new technologies and industries, enabled by a potentially limitless launch capacity, that could profoundly reshape our lives. The best way to build a future where we have dozens, hundreds, or maybe thousands of spaceports is to build them at sea, says Tom Marotta, CEO and founder of the Spaceport Company, which is working to establish offshore launch hubs. Its very hard to find a thousand acres on the coast over and over again to build spaceports. Its very easy to build the same ship over and over again. The saga of sea launches The vision of oceanic spaceports is almost as old as rocketry itself. The first large rocket to take off from sea was a V2, the notorious missile developed by Germany in World War II and subsequently adopted by the United States, which the US Navy launched from the aircraft carrier USS Midway south of Bermuda on September 6, 1947. As it turned out, the inaugural flight was a bit of a mixed bag. Neal Casey, an 18-year-old technician stationed on the Midway, later recalled how the missile tilted dangerously starboard and headed toward the vessels own command center, known as the island. I had no problem tracking the rocket, said Casey, according to the USS Midway Museum. It almost hit the island. Despite this brush with disaster, the test was considered a success because it proved that launching rockets from sea platforms was technically feasible. That revelation enabled the proliferation of missile-armed vessels, like warships or submarines, that have prowled the sea ever since. Of course, missiles are designed to hit targets on Earth, not venture into space. But in the early 1960s Robert Truax, an American rocketry engineer, began pursuing a spectacular vision: the Sea Dragon. Standing nearly 500 feet tall, it would have been by far the biggest rocket in history, towering over the Apollo Programs Saturn V or SpaceXs Starship. No launchpad on land could withstand the force of its liftoff. A rocket this gargantuan could only be launched from a submerged position beneath the sea, rising out of the water like a breaching whale and leaving whirlpools swirling in its wake. Truax proposed this incredible idea in 1963 while he was working at the rocket and missile manufacturerbursting from the ocean in the Apple+ series For All Mankind. Truax was eerily prescient about many future trends in spaceflight, and indeed, various governments and private entities have developed offshore launch platforms to take advantage of the flexibility offered by the seas. The most wanted launching sites are close to the equator, says Gerasimos Rodotheatos, an assistant professor of international law and security at the American University in the Emirates who has researched sea-based launches. Many countries there are hard to deal with because of political instability or because they dont have the infrastructure. But if youre using a platform or a vessel, its easier to select your location. Another major advantage is safety. Youre far away from cities, Rodotheatos adds. Youre far away from land. Youre minimizing the risk of any accidents or any failures. For these reasons, rockets have intermittently lifted off from sea for nearly 60 years, beginning with Italy's Luigi Broglio Malindi Space Center, a retrofitted oil rig off the coast of Kenya that launched orbital missions from the 1960s to the 1980s and may soon reopen after a nearly 40-year hiatus. Sea Launch, a multinational company founded in 1995, launched dozens of missions into orbit from the LP Odyssey, another repurposed drilling rig. The company might still be in business if Russia had not annexed Crimea in 2014, a move that prompted the venturea partnership between Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Norwayto shutter later the same year. The saga of Sea Launch proved that offshore launches could be commercially profitable, but it also exposed gray areas in international marine and space law. For instance, while Sea Launch was a venture between four spacefaring nations, it registered its rig and vessels to Liberia, which has been interpreted as a flag of convenience. Such strategies could present the opportunity for companies or other entities to evade certain labor laws, tax obligations, and environmental regulations. Some states are very strict on the nationality and transparency of ownership, and other states less strict, says Alla Pozdnakova, a professor of law at the University of Oslos Scandinavian Institute for Maritime Law, who has researched sea-based launches. For now, it seems that it hasnt been really that problematic because the United States, for example, would require that if youre a US citizen or a US company, then you have to apply for a license from the US space authorities, regardless of where you want to launch. But if the US imposes strict oversight on launches, other nations might apply different standards to licensing agreements with launch providers. I can imagine that some unauthorized projects may become possible simply because they are on the seas and there is no real authorityby contrast to land-based space launchesto supervise those kinds of launches, Pozdnakova says. Boeing, which managed Sea Launch, was fined $10 million in 1998 by the US Department of State for allegedly sharing information about American defense technology with its foreign partners in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. In addition to the legal and national security risks posed by Sea Launch, Pacific Island nations raised concerns to the United Nations in 1999 that the companys offshore rockets could damage the environment by, for instance, creating oil slicks from unused fuel in discarded boosters. The complex issues that offshore spaceports raise for international law, environmental protection, and launch access have never been more relevant. SpaceX, which is famous for pioneering offshore rocket landings, has also flirted with sea-based launches. The company went so far as to purchase two oil rigs for $3.5 million apiece in 2020. They were renamed Deimos and Phobos after the two moons of Mars. SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter (when it was still Twitter) in 2020. SpaceX eventually abandoned this project and sold the rigs, though Gwynne Shotwell, its president and COO, said in 2023 that sea-based launches were likely to be part of the companys future. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. The company might need to move launch operations offshore if it wants to carry through on its aspirations for Starship, which is the most powerful rocket ever developed and the keystone of SpaceXs future plans to send humans to the moon and Mars.according to SpaceNews. We want to talk about dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day. The environmental impact of launching hundreds of rockets a day, either from sea or land, is not known. While offshore launches pose fewer direct risks to local environments than land launches, very little is understood about the risks that rocket emissions and chemical pollution pose to the climate and human health at current levels, much less exponentially higher ones. Its hard to deny that launching or emitting anything further from people is usually better, says Sebastian Eastham, the senior lecturer in sustainable aviation at Imperial College London, who studies aerospace emissions and their environmental impacts. But when we say that we're concerned about the emissions, it is incomplete to say that were not launching near people, so people arent going to be affected. I really hope that we find out that the impacts are small, he continues. But because you have this very rapid growth in launch emissions, you cant sample now and say that this is representative of what it's going to be like in five years. Were nowhere near a steady state. In other words, rocket launches have been largely overlooked as a source of greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution, simply because they have been too rare to be considered a major contributor. As space missions ramp up around the world, experts must aim to constrain the impact on climate change, the ozone layer, and pollution from spent parts that burn up in the atmosphere. The McDonalds of spaceports Offshore launches are almost routine in China, where companies like Galactic Energy, Orienspace, and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation have expanded orbital liftoffs from barges. (None of these companies responded to a request for comment.) But at the moment, sea-based launches are limited to small rockets that can deploy payloads of a few thousand pounds to orbit. No ocean spaceport is currently equipped to handle the worlds most powerful rockets, like SpaceXs Falcon Heavy, which can deliver more than 140,000 pounds to orbit. There are also currently no public plans to invest in sea-based infrastructure for heavy-lift rockets, but that may change if smaller offshore spaceports prove to be reliable and affordable options. All the activities now are based on off-the-shelf technologies, Rodotheatos says, meaning facilities like oil rigs or barges. If one company makes an investment to design and implement a floating platform from zero, specifically fitted for that purpose, I expect to see a big change. Tom Marotta founded the Spaceport Company in 2022 with a similar long-term vision in mind. After working both for the space company Astra and on the regulatory side at the Federal Aviation Administrations Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Marotta observed what he calls a spaceport bottleneck that had to be addressed to keep pace with the demands of the commercial space sector. To that end, the Spaceport Company procured a former US Navy training vessel, named the Once in a Lifetime after the Talking Heads song, as its first launchpad. The company is currently serving customers for suborbital space missions and missile tests, but its broader vision is to establish a network of scalable orbital spaceports across the ocean. We want to be the McDonalds of spaceports, and build a model that can be repeated and copied-and-pasted all around the world, Marotta says. Marotta sees boundless applications for such a network. It could expand launch capacity without threatening coastal ecosystems or provoking pushback from local communities. It could serve as a reliable backup option for busy spaceports on land. It could give nations that normally dont have access to spaceflight an affordable option for their own launch services. Many nations want their own sovereign orbital launch capability, but they dont want to spend a billion dollars to build a launchpad that might only be used once or twice, Marotta says. We see an opportunity there to basically give them a launchpad on demand. Marotta also has another dream in mind: ocean platforms could help to enable point-to-point rocket travel, capable of transporting cargo and passengers anywhere on Earth in under 90 minutes. Youre going to need dedicated and exclusive use of rockets off the coasts of major cities to serve that point-to-point rocket travel concept, Marotta says. This is science fiction right now, but I would not be surprised if in the next five years we see [organizations], particularly the military, experimenting with point-to-point rocket cargo. Offshore launches currently represent a small tile in the global space mosaic, but they could dramatically change our lives in the coming decades. What that future might look like, with all of its risks and benefits, depends on the choices that companies, governments, and the public make right now. Becky Ferreira is a science reporter based in Ithaca, NY. She writes the weekly Abstract column for 404 Media and is the author of the upcoming book First Contact, about the search for alien life.

Dhruv Loya came to the US to study in 2020, but he struggled to find a job for after he graduated.He landed a job at Tesla but had to field questions about visa sponsorships along the way, he said.International students face job searching hurdles when it comes to visa sponsorships, he said.This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 22-year-old Dhruv Loya, from Buffalo, New York, about job searching and landing a role at Tesla. The following has been edited for length and clarity.I did over a year of job hunting before I landed my first job after college, working for Tesla.I started looking for jobs in the summer of 2023. Back in 2020, I moved from Pune, India, to study biomedical engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I spent a lot of money, took student loans, and received financial support from my parents to study in the US, but it was really difficult for me to land a job. I applied to hundreds of listings, but I often didn't hear back or got rejected.Although I have a job now, I'm aware that it's a very tough time for students looking for work. There are particular difficulties for international students who rely on companies to sponsor their visas.I kept getting ghosted or rejected for jobs. Being an international student made things even tougher.I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do after college, but growing up, I always wanted to get into a company where I could use my tech skills to do something innovative with an impact.I did several internships while at university and also had an on-campus job helping students and faculty with tech problems. I wanted to use my time at college to figure out my future career.In the summer of my third year, I started applying for full-time jobs. I wanted to be employed by December so I could enjoy my last semester and the following summer without worrying about finding a job.I had an interest in entry-level sales engineer roles but wasn't having much success because I didn't have sales experience. I pivoted toward quality engineering roles because I'd done an internship in this area.When I applied for jobs, I got ghosted or received automated rejection emails. I tried changing my rsum templates and making YouTube videos to sell myself to recruiters, but nothing seemed to be working.Things seemed to improve in the fall of 2023 when I started optimizing my rsum for ATS, the tracking software employers use to assess whether your rsum matches the job description. I got ChatGPT premium and asked it to do an ATS analysis on my rsum using the job descriptions for the roles I was applying to. I'd try to keep my score at about 85% because I thought this could help me avoid automated rejections.I don't know for sure if ChatGPT helped, but when I started using the tool, I saw a difference and received more callbacks.But I faced another obstacle too. During the application process or interviews with recruiters, there would be a question about whether I'd need a visa sponsorship now or in the future.Because I was a STEM student, I had access to three years of OPT optional practical training with my student visa. This meant I wouldn't need sponsorship for three years after graduation, but I'd still answer yes to the question because it asked if I needed sponsorship in the future. After admitting this, I'd receive rejection emails.Being unemployed was difficult, but I eventually landed a job at TeslaWhen I graduated in May 2024, I still didn't have a job. My parents didn't come to my graduation because they decided to financially support me in my unemployment instead of spending money on the trip from India. I was very upset about it.My lease expired in August, and I had nowhere to go. I stayed with friends instead of spending money on rent.I was job hunting on borrowed time. I had 90 days to find a job on my OPT, which took me to late October.A friend who I studied with got a job at Tesla and recommended me to the recruiter. I sent my rsum, and they interviewed me.When I spoke to the recruiter, I mentioned I'd have authorization to work for three years through OPT, and it was fine if they didn't sponsor me after that. They gave me a job offer in October 2024 to work as a Powerwall technical support specialist. The role involves troubleshooting the Tesla battery product, which stores solar energy for powering people's homes. It's also more customer-facing than the quality engineering jobs I was applying for previously.I'm hoping I can move up in the company and get a role where I'd be sponsored and take on more engineering and managerial responsibilities. However, if I have to move back to India after three years, I'd happily do that.It's a difficult time for students to find workIn the end, getting a job wasn't as tough as the journey. Tesla was hiring new people, and the timing was right.I have many friends who are struggling to find jobs right now, both international and domestic students. In 2023, there were so many layoffs at big companies that more people were put back in the market.Companies are trying to cut costs, and it seems to me like they're avoiding sponsorships for international candidates. There are a limited number of visas available in the US, so there's much uncertainty around whether candidates will actually get a visa, even when the company is spending so much money on them.I don't think mass-applying to hundreds of jobs is effective in the current job market. Instead, candidates should focus on quality over quantity. Be strategic, reach out to people, and try to get referrals. Connections and referrals can significantly improve job search outcomes.

Abigail Carlos was bracing for a busy holiday season as her employer, Warner Bros. Discovery, was gearing up to launch a suite of new shows. A media strategist, Carlos had to assign complex tasks to her team members, and she needed a hand. So she asked ChatGPT and Perplexity to organize it all in emails that sounded both professional and personable."AI cuts my workload in half," she tells me. She's been using various AI tools for years. In her past roles running social media accounts, she'd use a chatbot to help write posts. Now she uses it to do tedious tasks like drafting emails and double-checking spreadsheets, freeing up time to focus on higher-level creative jobs. "I look at using it as working smarter, not harder," Carlos says. The 26-year-old now relies on AI for everything from revising her LinkedIn profile to coming up with ideas for the poetry she writes on the side.A growing Gen Z workforce has embraced AI to free up their time, improve their work-life balance, and, ideally, make their jobs more meaningful by automating drudgeries. When Google last year surveyed more than 1,000 knowledge workers in their 20s and 30s, 93% of those who identified as Gen Zers said they were using two or more AI tools a week. The talent and staffing firm Randstad found in a report last year that Gen Zers generally used AI in the office more frequently than their older counterparts for everything from administrative tasks to problem-solving. This is the generation that "grew up seamlessly intertwined with technology," Deborah Golden, Deloitte's US chief innovation officer, says. For them, she says, "engaging with AI feels more intuitive than deliberate."The share of Gen Zers in the US workforce recently surpassed that of baby boomers, and Gen Zers are expected to account for more than a quarter of the global workforce this year. Their transformation into a chatbot generation could have a seismic effect on the workplace. As employers look to capitalize on the tech's productivity gains, AI proficiency is becoming a prerequisite for many jobs, leaving behind those who aren't as fast in adopting it. Amid anxiety about AI taking away job opportunities, many young people are skilling up to try to stay hirable. But some experts are worried that operating on AI autopilot could come back to bite Gen Z in the long run.Monique Buksh, a 22-year-old law student and paralegal in Australia, has found AI to be an immense time-saver. She uses Westlaw Edge and Lexis+ to help with doing legal research and unearthing relevant case law and statutes. She also turns to Grammarly to draft official documents and the AI assistant Claude to spot inconsistencies in contracts."With AI handling time-consuming work, I'm able to focus more on discussions around strategy, professional development, and problem-solving with my managers," she says. "Soft skills, like communication and critical thinking, will play an even larger role in the future as AI continues to take over repetitive tasks."Many Gen Z workers aren't comfortable connecting with their managers IRL to have difficult conversations and may find it easier to pose questions to AI.Josh Schreiber, a 21-year-old HR intern at Coinbase, uses Perplexity and ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas and research subjects. He also uses Otter.ai to record and transcribe conversations, like sales calls and product meetings, allowing him to focus on the discussion rather than frantically taking notes.He thinks AI adoption is a matter of learning from history. In the early days of personal computing, he says, "those who embraced computers, programming, and utilizing software consistently outperformed those who resisted change." Today, he argues, "Gen Z workers who choose to embrace AI will outperform all those around them." Schreiber compared AI to a ski lift: It's better to take the lift up and enjoy the downhill ride than trudge slowly up the mountain first.Carlos concurs. "It's important to learn about the new innovations in technology rather than fight them," she says.Gen Zers' employment of AI is also driven by their fear of AI replacing their jobs. The anxiety isn't unfounded: An analysis from this past fall found that more than 12,000 jobs were cut in 2024 because of AI. McKinsey and others have forecast that entry-level roles, which Gen Z predominates, will be the first cut back by automation.A Microsoft and LinkedIn survey of 31,000 knowledge workers conducted last year, for example, suggested that AI could fast-track Gen Zers' professional trajectory. Among the workers in leadership surveyed, 71% said they'd prefer hiring candidates with AI expertise over those with more conventional experience, and nearly 80% said they'd give AI-savvy staffers greater responsibilities.Tatiana Becker, who specializes in tech recruiting, says that ultimately, "employers will be more interested in people with AI skills, but at all levels, not just Gen Z workers."But some people worry that using AI as a shortcut could hurt Gen Z workers in the long run. In an online survey of Gen Zers who used AI at work by TalentLMS, which provides e-learning software for companies, 40% of respondents indicated they believed AI hindered their growth by doing tasks they could have learned from. Another study suggested that heavy reliance on AI tools was associated with lower measures of critical thinking, especially among younger adults. A recent paper by researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found something similar: the more people used and trusted AI, the less they relied on critical thinking skills.Even more concerning: About half of Gen Z respondents in a survey by Workplace Intelligence, an industry research agency, and INTOO, a talent development firm, said they turned to AI for guidance instead of their managers. Erica Keswin, an author and workplace strategist, isn't surprised. Many Gen Zers missed out on critical in-person mentorship in college and in early-career roles because of the pandemic. "Many Gen Z workers aren't comfortable connecting with their managers IRL to have difficult conversations and may find it easier to pose questions to AI," she says. AI, unlike managers, is constantly accessible and immediate and provides answers without judgment.That can have downsides. Golden, of Deloitte, says collaboration and innovation thrive on the messiness of human interaction. "There is a real risk of weakening Gen Z's ability to navigate ambiguity and build the interpersonal skills that are essential in any workplace," she says.It's one reason Nicholas Portello, a Gen Z professional in New York, is resisting using AI software. He thinks the instant gratification AI provides can harm productivity and creativity. "Some of the best ideas my team and I produced in 2024 can be attributed to brainstorming sessions and environments of open communication as opposed to ChatGPT," Portello says.Everyone, from Gen Z entrants to company execs, needs to know when AI is useful and when something needs a human touch. Kyle Jensen, an English professor and director of writing programs at Arizona State University, thinks it's an avoidable problem. He says that for AI to supplement rather than replace a young person's analytical capabilities, they must develop expertise in a field or topic. He tries to encourage his students to reflect on AI tools' role in problem-solving: What kinds of problems would they be most useful for? When would they be less useful?Jensen argues that once a person acquires an in-depth understanding of a subject area, they can learn to recognize when a generative AI output is "overly general, unhelpful to the problem they are trying to solve, incorrect, or exclusionary of different ways of knowing or feeling." This also helps them pose more creative prompts and questions.AI could be a great leveling force within the workplace, giving younger workers a massive leg up. But the experts I talked to expect that as Gen Z gets a head start in AI, the workplace will be divided between those who use AI and those who don't. Over time, this could push out older workers.Companies already perpetuate the problem by tailoring training opportunities to only the youngest staffers. Various surveys have found that Gen Z employees have tended to be given more opportunities to learn how to use AI than older workers. Stephanie Forrest, the CEO of TFD, a London-based marketing agency, warns other employers against counting out older workers. "It shouldn't be treated as a foregone conclusion that these generations will be less capable or less willing to use AI, provided the right support is given," she says.Ultimately, the employees and organizations that get ahead will be the ones that can effectively harness their people power like a manager's ability to coach, mentor, and motivate or an employee's ability to persuade a client to stay with their company because that's something AI can't do. Everyone, from Gen Z entrants to company execs, needs to know when AI is useful and when something needs a human touch.Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India, whose work has appeared in Wired, The Verge, Fast Company, and more.

When I was growing up, the genre-defining dollhouse sim The Sims was the ultimate escape. Id build dream homes, cultivate a neighbourhood of weird and wonderful friends and live out a fantasy adult life.So when EA surprise-dropped a rerelease of The Sims 1 and 2 last weekend to celebrate the series 25th anniversary, with all expansions included (my nine-year-old selfs dream) naturally I was compelled to return to my happy place, revisiting my 10-hour pyjama-clad marathon sessions micromanaging the lives of the Newbies, Roomies, and the Goths, and occasionally removing their pool ladders when they were taking a little swim, and only taking a necessary pause for mums roast dinner.While the familiar chaos of breezy music, tragic pool accidents, and my own personal french maid delivered a powerful dose of nostalgia, there is something else lurking beneath this games quirky and cheerful exterior, something that I wasnt conscious of when I was a kid. To my surprise, the game now feels less like a chance to live out your dream life, and more like a struggle simulator. (I also forgot how much time my Sims spent playing chess.) Like a Lynchian picket-fence town, I realised, theres a darkness lurking under suburban sheen.The original Sims games were more dystopian than todays perky, brightly coloured The Sims 4. The Sims 1 instead offers a desaturated daily grind. The contrast isnt just the aesthetic 20 years ago, Sims had no dreams or ambitions. Your virtual families worked long hours for expensive lives, where death and some of the most gut-wrenching music in game history lurked behind even mundane everyday tasks.Forget personality, aspirations and tastes. The Sims 1 is a capitalist nightmare where survival trumps self-actualisation.Mind the spontaneously combusting ovens! Sims 1 + 2.I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and itll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible.And having a social life? Forget it, at least when youre on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. Theres simply no time to make friends, something I didnt remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhoods messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically Play in bed, thanks to the Livin it Up expansion pack that provided the worlds most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. Theres nothing dark about that expansions heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life.Even these moments with the most meaningful loves of my Sims lives seemed to offer them nothing they were transactional, serving nothing more than to unlock new interactions. They are performing for my enjoyment, not theirs.Friendship is also bleakly transactional here: you need a certain number of them to climb the ranks at work. Stay lonely, and youll stay poor, and probably die from having a cheap, spontaneously combusting microwave. Its an especially sad existence for single Sims who live alone. Exhausted from work, if you dont find time to call your friends on the phone for hours or they decline to come over your relationships decay rapidly. Like Black Mirrors award-winning Nosedive episode, losing social credibility quickly sees things spiral quickly downhill for your Sims.And nothing flips a millennials stomach as quick as the music that heralds a terrifying, sudden burglary. Its still horrifying 25 years later, so just hope that you had the foresight to spend your meagre savings on a burglar alarm. Thats before we even get into visits from the Grim Reaper, and creepy prank calls. These unexpected callers frighten me just as much now as they did then.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionA capitalist nightmare, but still an escape Sims 1 + 2 rereleases.Perhaps my new darker perspective on the game comes from the world we live in now. Im finally living my fantasy adult life I just didnt realise it would be less lounging in gothic-mansion dream homes, and more feeling overworked, underpaid and on the verge of a spiralling breakdown. In 2025, an era of economic anxiety and burnout, the grind of The Sims feels brutal.For all its existential dread, The Sims 1 is still an escape. Sure, it presents a kind of capitalist nightmare. But, it is a capitalist nightmare you can control. No matter how hard the daily slog got, you can always type in a cheat code and wipe away financial stress with a click the ultimate fantasy. Its also weirdly accurate: just like in real life, external advantages (and cheating the system) are way more likely to lead to success than grinding away and following the rules.Yes, The Sims 1 was and remains a dystopian suburban treadmill, but it also makes room for humour. Its a world where chaos is funny, failure is temporary, and the worst tragedies could be undone with the click of a mouse.

BIG Wins Competition for New Sankt Lukas Hospice in DenmarkSave this picture!Sankt Lukas Hospice & Lukashuset. Image Courtesy of BIGBjarke Ingels Group has just won the competition to design the new Sankt Lukas Hospice and Lukashuset, an 8,500 m palliative care center envisioned as a village surrounded by nature. Rooted in the history of the Sankt Lukas Foundation, which dates back to the 1930s, the project will expand Denmark's palliative care facilities, tripling current capacity to accommodate around 2,100 patients annually.Save this picture!The center will introduce Denmark's first day hospice, alongside spaces for children, youth, and adults, as well as an outreach hospice team. Designed to foster safety and a sense of home, solitude and togetherness, and the delicate balance between arrival and farewell, the two new structures aim to create a nurturing and contemplative environment.Save this picture!Inspired by the historical architectural language of the site, the buildings feature pitched roofs and yellow bricks repurposed from the original structures. Surrounded by serene gardens and sensory landscapes, the hospice extends the interior experience outdoors, emphasizing the healing power of nature. Inside, the hospice welcomes guests with an open foyer that overlooks courtyard gardens. At the heart of both buildings, central gathering spaces provide areas for community engagement and well-being. Lukashuset offers family rooms designed for both privacy and togetherness, along with activity spaces for play and reflection, while the adult hospice features larger common areas for social interaction and support. Related Article Stanton Williams to Design Fleming Research Centre at St Marys Hospital, London, United Kingdom A hospice provides the framework for the final moments of a person's life. It becomes our world before we depart. We have sought to create a peaceful and poetic environment where one can find tranquility and an opportunity to immerse oneself in the world around usnature, the weather, the changing of the seasons. Instead of the linear corridors of hospitals, we have created a condensed village for life's final days, where small buildings are arranged around protected gardens. The farewell garden, with its fully open roof, offers a space for the final journey. -- Bjarke Ingels, Partner at BIG. The landscape design further enhances the sense of retreat, buffering the center from the surrounding city while integrating seamlessly with the existing park. A network of open lawns, intimate gardens, sensory areas, and winding paths fosters moments of rest and contemplation. The gardens, inspired by Danish natural landscapes, include wildflower meadows, seasonal plantings, and a rainwater pond that promotes biodiversity, attracting local flora and fauna.Save this picture!Save this picture!At the western edge of the hospice, a farewell garden is nestled within a woodland-inspired atrium, offering a peaceful space for final moments. Designed with an open view of the sky, it provides a symbolic connection to the infinite, underscoring the project's philosophy of embracing nature in life's closing chapter. With a focus on human-centered design, nature, and sensory experience, the new Sankt Lukas Hospice and Lukashuset aims to redefine palliative care architecture, offering a place of comfort, dignity, and reflection for patients and their families.Save this picture!In other recent news, BIG has unveiled the design for Kosovo's first opera house, featuring an undulating photovoltaic roof that merges cultural infrastructure with sustainable energy production. Additionally, the firm, alongside SCAPE, is leading the transformation of a decommissioned power plant in Connecticut into a vibrant public destination, redefining industrial reuse with a focus on community and ecology.Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorNour FakharanyAuthorCite: Nour Fakharany. "BIG Wins Competition for New Sankt Lukas Hospice in Denmark" 11 Feb 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1026796/big-wins-competition-for-new-sankt-lukas-hospice-and-lukashuset-in-denmark&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Save this picture!Araras State Theater / Oscar Niemeyer. Image Nelson KonInaugurated in 1991, the Maestro Francisco Paulo Russo State Theater in Araras is considered one of the city's and the region's main cultural venues. Designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, one of the leading figures of the Modern Movement, the theater was equipped with all the necessary infrastructure to host local, national, and international cultural events between 1995 and 2005. Niemeyer left behind a legacy in which his signature free-form architectural style integrates influences from various sources while also engaging in a dialogue with the identity of a tropical country.Against a colonial past dominated politically by large agricultural producers and sustained by enslaved labor, the early 20th century in Brazil was marked by a certain uncertainty in the political, cultural, and artistic fields. As Brbara Coelho Rodrigues da Silva describes in her doctoral thesis, large waves of immigrants were arriving, bringing with them new cultures, ways of living, tastes, customs, and styles. Amid rapid economic growth, major urban reforms took place, involving new avenues, public promenades, gardens, libraries, and theaters. As a result, architecture became a mere imitation of various styles, disconnected from the countrys construction techniques and ways of life. The emergence of the Modern Movement in the arts began in So Paulo when a group of artists and intellectuals organized the Modern Art Week of 1922. However, architecture's path toward a modern language was even longer, with Brazils first two manifestos on modern architecture published around 1925, one by Rino Levi (Arquitetura e a Esttica das Cidades) and the other by Gregori Warchavchik (Acerca da Arquitectura Moderna).Save this picture!The thesis "Brazil, the Reinvention of Modernity" highlights how modern architecture in the country sought to incorporate foreign influences while maintaining its heterogeneous identity and local reality. The search for a national identity to carve out a distinct path for modern architecture in the region was a recurring theme in Lucio Costa's thinking and is evident in the work of Oscar Niemeyer. As a collaborator of Le Corbusier on large-scale projects such as the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro (193643) and the UN Headquarters in New York (194752), Niemeyer developed a language based on free and sensual curves, inspired by his country's mountains, the winding course of its rivers, the waves of the sea, and the body of his favorite woman. Related Article Spotlight: Oscar Niemeyer Architecture must not only be functional. It must also be beautiful Oscar NiemeyerSave this picture!As explored in "Color and Artistic Expression Through Architectural Ceramics in the Final Stage of Oscar Niemeyers Work", the architect took on projects in Brazil and abroad following his return from exile in the 1980s. At that time, the country was beginning to awaken from the euphoria that had accompanied the years of developmentalism, and there was a certain disillusionment with the aspirations of grandeur that had distanced architecture from the social context. Niemeyer chose to forge his own path, placing the pursuit of social equality at the core of his architectural purpose. Through the Maestro Francisco Paulo Russo State Theater in Araras, he demonstrated his mastery of architectural plasticity. Built in a city with a high level of urban development in the interior of So Paulo state, the theater was constructed on a small plot of land. Given the sites constraints and various economic factors, the building was designed as a compact, medium-sized theater equipped with all the technical requirements of a modern performance venue.Save this picture!Partially embedded in the site, the theater has a main auditorium with a capacity of 466 seats and a smaller underground auditorium that accommodates another 120 people. It stands out for its simple forms and features a circular floor plan with a diameter of 36 meters. Organized across three levels, it includes a stage measuring 12 by 20 meters and a basement level and dressing rooms for performers. The circular lobby can host exhibitions and congress events, functioning independently of the theater or simultaneously if an auditorium for more than 120 people is required. The circular shape of the theater adapts to the terrain, while the roofdesigned to meet acoustic needsgives the building a distinctive and original appearance. Additionally, as noted by Josep Ma. Botey in his book "Oscar Niemeyer: Works and Projects," a double acoustic support wall was created along the buildings perimeter. This wall not only encloses the internal circulation spaces but also houses the distribution networks for all technical systems.Save this picture!At 83 years old, Niemeyer personally oversaw the progress of construction through monthly site visits. The meticulous attention to design and project management is evident in the executive plans and detailed on-site instructions, revealing another dimension of his work: the transition from drawing to the execution of a design. As demonstrated by Irene de la Torre Forns, Elisa Valero Ramos, and Ignacio Cabodevilla Artieda in their article, color reached its highest levels of abstraction and essentiality in Niemeyers later works. While white is generally used to enhance architectural forms, a limited palette of contrasting colors is applied to highlight specific aspects of buildings. Many of Niemeyers final projects reiterate the use of curves as a formal system, emphasizing the distinction between structure and enclosure when the two elements are independent. To achieve this distinction, Niemeyer occasionally used a primary "chromatic" tone, often represented by yellow. Meanwhile, red was typically employed to highlight entrances and circulation routes, as seen in the entrance to the Araras Theater and the ramp of the Niteri Contemporary Art Museum, among other examples.Save this picture!The Municipality of Araras has designated the Maestro Francisco Paulo Russo State as a site of historical and cultural significance. Since 2004, the building has been managed by a socio-cultural organization named Associao Paulista dos Amigos da Arte (APAA). Moreover, the theater's curatorial approach seeks to strengthen the public's connection with the space by welcoming a wide range of proposals from both local and regional artists and groups. Its current programming includes dance performances, theater productions, and live comedy shows, with the goal of promoting cultural accessibility and fostering new audiences.Save this picture!Amid both praise and criticism, Niemeyers legacy remains an undeniable source of inspiration, reflection, and study for many professionals in architecture, design, and urban planning. As Styliane Philippou argues in "The Radical Modernism of Oscar Niemeyer," the architect explored the structural and formal possibilities of reinforced concrete, with the construction of Braslia standing as one of his most significant architectural achievements. Emphasizing spectacle, luxury, pleasure, beauty, and sensuality as architectural objectives, he dedicated his career to creating an architecture deeply rooted in Brazils native traditions and tropical landscape, seamlessly blending sculpture and structure through the innovative use of this material.Save this picture!Sources: Un lirismo morfotectnico. La arquitectura de Oscar Niemeyer.Barbara Coelho Rodrigues da Silva, Brasil, la reinvencin de la modernidad. Le Corbusier, Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, 2015. , El modernismo radical de Oscar Niemeyer, 2013. Diario-Boceto. Oscar Niemeyer.Ricardo A. Tena Nnez . Oscar Niemeyer: la curva y el pueblo.Botey, Josep Ma, Oscar Niemeyer. Obras y Proyectos.Irene de la Torre Forns, Elisa Valero Ramos and Ignacio Cabodevilla Artieda, Color y expresin artstica a travs de la cermica arquitectnica en la ltima etapa de la obra de Oscar Niemeyer.This feature is part of an ArchDaily series titled AD Narratives, where we share the story behind a selected project, diving into its particularities. Every month, we explore new constructions from around the world, highlighting their story and how they came to be. We also talk to the architects, builders, and community, seeking to underline their personal experiences. As always, at ArchDaily, we highly appreciate the input of our readers. If you think we should feature a certain project, please submit your suggestions.This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: 100 Years of Modernism. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.