I drove Cadillac's entry-level EV. It hits Caddy's affordability sweet spot.

The Cadillac Optiq is a convincing entry point into Cadillac's EV lineup because it delivers the brand theater.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

• I tested the Cadillac Optiq, the cheapest EV in GM's luxury lineup.
• Its elegant design and supple ride make it properly Caddy-ish.
• The Optiq isn't the fastest EV, but that's OK. The interior materials, though? Some aren't great.

Cadillac's entry-level EV doesn't feel particularly entry-level.

The Optiq is the cheapest way to get into an EV with GM's luxury badge. It's a crossover-like SUV with a base trim that starts just under $50,000 — or, less money than the average American car.

I spent a week and about 400 miles in a 2026 Cadillac Optiq Premium Sport, driving from New York City to upstate New York and back with up to three passengers and several large suitcases in tow. My rear-wheel-drive tester stickered at $58,976 with options, including 21-inch wheels, two-tone exterior paint, and Cadillac's warm brown Autumn Canyon leather interior.

That package is hardly pocket change — but after a week behind the wheel, I wondered why buyers would spend more for some other Caddys.

Easy on the eyes and on the throttle

The Optiq has stage presence.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

The Optiq nails the first impression.

Stacked LEDs in the front and back give the crossover a recognizable signature at night. They also put on a dazzling welcome light show as you approach. Inside, a curved 33-inch display stretches across the dashboard, caramel-colored seats look properly expensive, and — praise be — Cadillac kept physical climate-control buttons underneath the screen.

It looks like a Cadillac. More importantly, it drives like one, too.

The interior and exterior both carry Caddy's star quality.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

The steering was accurate, the suspension softened rough pavement despite those huge wheels, and road noise was virtually nonexistent.

Optiq also benefits from GM's SuperCruise assisted highway driving. It was impressive on my highway-dominant drive upstate, automatically pulling into an open passing lane when I caught slower traffic. It, however, occasionally moved over when faster traffic was approaching from behind, a trait that I'm sure drew the ire of other New York drivers.

Off the line, this Optiq takes a rather leisurely approach to acceleration.

That's not a bad thing, especially compared to other EVs I've recently driven that are faster than they need to be. The RWD Optiq still had enough verve to merge comfortably onto the highway. And, if you absolutely need bone-chilling speed, Cadillac now sells the sport-oriented Optiq-V, which launches to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds — nearly half the time my tester took to get there.

The Optiq handled the less glamorous parts of EV ownership well, too. At a Level 3 charger, I added 41.47 kilowatt-hours in 20 minutes, taking the battery from 32% to 72% — roughly enough time for any trip's necessary restroom-and-snacks stop.

Some of the luxury is better from a distance

There's a lot more hard plastic in this picture than you'd think.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

Live with the Optiq long enough, though, and some of the luxury sheen fades.

There's a lot of hard plastic inside. The floating center console, for example, has a black appliqué that looks like wood. It isn't. The silver rings around the cupholders look like hammered metal, but those are plastic, too. Similar trim details appear throughout the dash and doors.

Then there's the infotainment screen…

…Have an iPhone? I have bad news…

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

… where there's no Apple CarPlay.

Cadillac's Google-based system is perfectly usable, and the enormous display is well organized, but for plenty of drivers I talk to, losing CarPlay is a dealbreaker.

There are also moments where GM's Silicon Valley-ish ambitions become a little too obvious. The best example is the glovebox: There's no normal latch. Instead, you open it via the infotainment screen, so it only works when the car is on or in accessory mode.

Verdict: Luxe appeal and a price that's less than your mortgage

The Optiq is one of Cadillac's best efforts.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

Cadillac has a surprisingly crowded EV showroom. The Optiq is joined by the slightly larger Lyriq, the three-row Vistiq, the hulking Escalade IQ, the even bigger Escalade IQL, and the built-to-order Celestiq.

The Optiq isn't as extravagant as an Escalade IQ or as dramatic as a Lyriq. That's kind of the point. It's the entry point — although, at just a few inches shorter than the Lyriq, it doesn't feel meaningfully smaller from behind the wheel. (Although the Lyriq is the only GM EV with Apple CarPlay…)

Long drives, though, have a way of cutting through luxury-car theater.

On the trip upstate, I pulled into a rest area starved. My best option was an Impossible Whopper from Burger King, which I ate in the driver's seat. There I was, surrounded by caramel-colored seats and Cadillac's enormous curved display, with tomato juice running down my arm.

The Optiq projects opulence. I was its foil, and I'm okay with that — the burger was worth it.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/Xr3ZtDG

Sheryl Sandberg says women aren't losing ambition. Companies are pushing them out.

Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta and founder of the Lean In organization, said it's "concerning" that fewer women are interested in promotions compared to men — despite being just as motivated.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

• Sheryl Sandberg says she's disappointed to see fewer women in corporate leadership.
• She said women are as ambitious as men but feel they're valued less in the workplace.
• She believes companies could do more to retain and encourage female leaders.

More than a decade after telling women to "lean in," Sheryl Sandberg is concerned that more are leaning out — but not because they lack ambition.

Sandberg, Meta's former COO and author of the 2013 bestseller "Lean In," told Business Insider that there's a gender gap when it comes to leadership ambitions in 2026. "This is not the women who are saying, 'I don't want to do it,'" Sandberg, 57, said. "It's the women saying, 'I don't want to do it because I'm not wanted, I'm not getting the same opportunities and the same support, and I face an unfair burden at home.'"

Lean In, the nonprofit organization Sandberg founded in tandem with her book's publication, has been releasing its annual Women in the Workplace reports with McKinsey since 2015. In its 2025 Women in the Workplace report, which surveyed 9,500 US employees across 124 organizations, Lean In found that, despite having practically identical levels of career motivation as men, women were less likely to want a promotion.

Lean In's 2025 Women in the Workplace report found a gender gap when it came to women wanting promotions.

Lean In

When asked why, 25% of the women who didn't want to advance cited "personal obligations," compared to 15% of men who said the same. The report also found gaps in household labor as well as opportunities for mentorship for women.

At Business Insider, we've been covering this trend. Amid mass layoffs and newly enforced RTO mandates, some women who have moved up in the corporate world during the "Lean In" era are feeling burnt out and are stepping back. They have shared their stories with us, of starting their own businesses, going freelance, or, in one case, moving to Antarctica.

Sandberg finds this shift "concerning" — both for women and companies at large.

"We're at a critical moment in time for women, because what a lot of women are seeing is that commitment to them in leadership pulling back," Sandberg said. "Then what's happening to them is their ambition is pulling back. And that's a loss. It's a loss for our economy. It's a loss for our companies. It's a loss for our children."

Why corporate women never 'had it all'

"Lean In" was published in 2013 and became an immediate bestseller.

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

One of the most common critiques leveled against Sandberg and the "Lean In" movement is that it unrealistically encourages women to "have it all" — though the book argued the opposite.

"Lean In" had a chapter titled "The Myth of Doing it All," and in a 2013 McKinsey Quarterly interview, Sandberg denounced the idea of women feeling pressure to be everything all at once: "No one can have it all," she said. "That language is the worst thing that's happened to the women's movement."

Sandberg told Business Insider that it's easy to "overly characterize the words 'lean in.'"

"What I mean by them is very clear," she said. "I think women should make decisions based on believing in their own abilities, based on believing that they should and can have the same opportunities as men."

Recent data shows trouble in that department, particularly for working moms. Matthew Nestler, a senior economist at KPMG, recently found that labor force participation between 2023 and 2026 decreased the most among women with children under 5, regardless of their education level. Meanwhile, participation increased for almost all groups of men, college-educated women with kids old enough to go to school, and women with no kids.

Sandberg said some trends have remained consistent over time. "We know women do more of the housework at home," she said. "We know women do more of the childcare." This is doubly true for women in the sandwich generation, caring for both their kids and aging parents or in-laws.

For women facing short (or nonexistent) maternity leaves, inflexible schedules, and paychecks that pale in comparison to daycare costs, leaning out can feel like the best option.

When women are in corporate, they push for policies that retain more women

Women in leadership positions are more likely to bring up policy changes like egg freezing coverage or pregnancy parking, Sandberg said.

MoMo Productions/Getty Images

Sandberg said there are a few big benefits to having more women in charge. "We know when companies have more women in leadership, performance is better," she said. "We also know they have better work-life balance, better policies, better care for their employees."

One 2025 working paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Germany studied how gender diversity impacted retention in US companies using US Census data. It found that adding a woman to the board of directors increased female employment and earnings at public companies by 1-2%, driven by retention of existing female workers rather than hiring more women.

"What's really interesting is that the ambition gap in our data collapses when women believe companies really want them in senior leadership," Sandberg said of Lean In's annual reports.

More specifically, she said it's female leaders who are more likely to advocate — or even consider — policies that would keep other women around, from longer maternity leave options to lactation rooms.

Throughout her career, Sandberg said her personal experiences as a woman drove her to change her workplace culture. In the early 2000s, when she was the VP of global online sales and operations at Google, Sandberg was pregnant and nauseous as she hunted for a parking space before a meeting. After learning that Yahoo had pregnancy parking, she asked then-CEO Sergey Brin if Google could do the same. He agreed. Google did not respond to a request for comment on whether the policy still exists.

"You kind of need a pregnant woman to think of that in order for that to happen," Sandberg, who had two kids with her late husband Dave Goldberg and has three stepchildren with her husband Tom Bernthal, said.

Later, when she was at Meta (then Facebook) in 2014, an employee with cancer was seeking fertility preservation prior to starting treatment. Because the company didn't cover egg freezing, she couldn't afford it, she told Sandberg.

Sandberg advocated for policy changes while at Google and Meta.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

When Sandberg looked into adding egg freezing coverage for cancer-related infertility, the head of HR wanted to go even further. "She said, 'We should just cover egg freezing. Why should we decide why people need it?'" Sandberg said. Meta, through Progyny, a fertility benefits program, covers up to four "Smart Cycles" that can be used for IVF, egg freezing, and related care, as well as adoption and surrogacy assistance.

In 2012, when she publicly shared that she left the Facebook office at 5:30 p.m. every day to have dinner with her family and put her kids to bed, she said she got thank-yous from her competitors.

"I got flowers from the Yahoo legal team — I didn't know anyone on the Yahoo legal team," Sandberg said. "Someone said to me: I couldn't have gotten more press if I had murdered someone with an ax."

She believes companies need to do a lot more

Better policies, particularly ones that help working moms, can help retain and motivate more female employees.

Natalia Lebedinskaia/Getty Images

When asked what companies can do to improve, Sandberg quipped: "How long do you have?" She listed better parental and bereavement leave and opportunities for more flexible schedules among some of the policies that could retain more women.

There were also changes in workplace culture that could help. She said she still talks to people who won't take a meeting with a woman alone.

"Who's ever been promoted by someone they've never had a meeting with? No one ever. You can have a meeting alone with a woman: Keep the door open," she said. "Let's not find cultural reasons to give better opportunities to men than women. We absolutely shouldn't be sexually harassed, but we shouldn't be ignored, either."

For now, Sandberg, who stepped down from Meta in 2022 to focus on her other ventures, the Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation (which runs Lean In) and the early-stage VC firm Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, said she supports the choices women make, even when it includes bowing out of corporate leadership.

"I think being at home with your children is great," she said. "Going back to school, great. Starting a company, great. Going part-time, great. Anything you want to do is great."

Sandberg just thinks it's a shame if fewer stick around at all.

"I just hope that enough women want those senior leadership roles," she said, "that we get the environment for women that they deserve."

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/BpwRFdG

I'm 65 and caring for my 87-year-old mom with dementia. Going to work is sometimes my only break.

Angela Davis, 65, cares for her 87-year-old mom with dementia.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angela Davis, 65, who lives in New Orleans with her 87-year-old mom with dementia. She said her mom's at-home care is upward of $7,000 a month. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

My mom and dad were never married. I grew up in New Orleans and went to an all-girls Catholic high school. My mom was a school teacher and bought a house in her 30s, which I recently transferred to my son. My dad was a math teacher, but left that to help his dad run a furniture moving business.

I went to Fisk University and moved to Texas, then Connecticut. I did my clinical fellowship at Yale University and had a son. I moved back to New Orleans because I didn't want my grandparents and parents to be strangers to him. I worked as a licensed clinical social worker in schools before retiring. I've also earned income from real estate, as I own over a dozen rental homes.

Are you paying for your own or your loved one's long-term care? Do you have thoughts to share about long-term care in the US? To share your story with a reporter, please fill out this quick form.

I started noticing changes in my mom's behavior

I have no brothers or sisters, which has made the last few years challenging. My parents were independent for a while. About eight or nine years ago, I started to notice some changes in my mom's behavior. One time, I was following her car, and she missed the exit to go to her house. Another time, she called the police because she said someone had taken her dog from her car, even though the dog was home.

Then, it all accelerated. She went around telling people that I was trying to steal her house and her money. She changed the locks, which I found out when we couldn't get in touch for three days. I literally broke into the house, and she was on the floor. She spent about two weeks in the hospital, though her services were extremely limited because she had stopped paying her Medicare premium. This was about two and a half years ago. She was diagnosed with dementia in February 2024.

Davis' 87-year-old mom lives with her.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

I briefly put her in a facility, but it didn't work out. The facility stated that my mom needed services that she hadn't needed when I dropped her off. They were willing to provide additional services if I would pay $2,000 more. That being the case, I brought her back home with me, where she's been ever since. I've tried to do as much as I could to make her comfortable.

She didn't want caregivers

I've had a couple of caregivers. The last one was really good, but my mom didn't want her there anymore. In the past three months, she would roll paper up and light it because she's been craving nicotine. I had to take the knobs off the gas stoves at my house.

My mother's godchild volunteered to stay with her for free. I'm going to give her $500 a week. It's a struggle, though, because I inherited my mom's dog, so I have two dogs, two jobs, and a mom with dementia who is depressed on a regular basis. I've had to worry about her roaming, too. She walked a block from the house and fell, and one of the neighbors called an ambulance, which cost $4,000.

Her condition is worsening, and she's not taking in much food. She will not get out of bed. She sits on the sofa, and she's up all throughout the night. Since she's been out of the hospital, I've been sleeping on a loveseat downstairs. It's not good for me because I am 65, but it's what I have to do.

Davis juggles a job and managing rental properties.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

She can tell you my name, my son's name, her goddaughter's name, and her Social Security number. If you ask her on a Monday who her favorite president is, it's Barack Obama, but if you ask her on Tuesday, she'll tell you she doesn't know. She can't respond to questions about current events, but she can tell you about her condition.

She's aware enough to know that something's wrong, though she's still in denial about her dementia. Her mother had it, and she and her sister took turns caring for her until it became too overwhelming. They put her in a facility, and she didn't last long there.

We spend about $2,000 a month on her care

She only brings in $3,200 a month, but we spend about $2,000 a month on care, and the upkeep on the house is about $5,000 a month for electricity, taxes, insurance, alarms, and her car. Her money doesn't cover it, so I do have to help her out. This doesn't include food, new clothes, or other day-to-day things. At the end of the day, she pays 60%, and I pay 40%.

I continue to work, partly for my own mental well-being. The money is not going to make or break me, but it never hurts to have more. It gets me out of the house and takes me out of caregiving for a few hours.

I've also taken a few trips for myself. I went to Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. I took a trip with my son to Rome.

There have been a few times when my son has come from New York to help me, even if it's just cutting the lawn. He helped her move everything out of her facility, and he's really stepped up. I do some of this to model for my child. I will want him to do his best to take care of me. But I've always had the attitude of not waiting for the diagnosis to live. You live now.

Davis wants her mom to age with dignity.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

The other day, I was exhausted at night. I've never been a nap person, but I fell asleep on the love seat. When I looked at my phone, it said 7:05 the next day. I rushed to get ready for work, and the dogs were looking at me. Even my mom had asked me, "What's wrong with you?"

For reference, I'm usually up by 4:30 a.m. at the latest because I have to commute 40 miles one way. I feed and walk the dogs, and it takes me 30 to 40 minutes to get her up and change her clothes. I'm grateful I have flexible settings where I'm not punching in a clock because otherwise I'd be unemployed.

I get off work at 2:30 p.m. and home at 3:30 p.m., though sometimes I have to show an apartment. I make sure my mom takes her medications. She has struggled with eating, and sometimes she'll have food and not remember it 15 minutes later. I'm usually asleep by 11 p.m. The weekends are a little more relaxed.

Even though I'm a social worker, I'm not that kind of caretaker. I'm not the "I can wipe your butt and brush your teeth gladly" kind of person. Will I help her do this? Yes. But I don't enjoy it. I've already made clear my own wishes, which is to not to go out like this. I wouldn't wish this on many people. Of course, it's harder for my mom than it is for me.

It's death by 1,000 cuts, and in this case, you could say death by 1,000 memories every day.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/qPbGotv

I quit being a trial lawyer to become a comedian. I loved my job but knew I was ready for something different.

Paul Farahvar worked as a trial lawyer before becoming a full-time stand-up comedian.

Sarah E. Larson

• Paul Farahvar went from law to stand-up comedy after some encouragement from comedian Bob Saget.
• Farahvar did comedy on the side of trial law for years before becoming a full-time comedian.
• Despite loving his work as a lawyer, Farahvar said he was ready for a new challenge.

This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Paul Farahvar, a touring stand-up comedian based in Chicago who previously worked as a trial lawyer. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

Right out of law school, I started practicing at an insurance defense law firm. I had won a case in the Illinois Supreme Court when I was only 25, which then led to places trying to recruit me.

I went to a firm that allowed me to work part-time, because I was also playing in and managing bands and doing entertainment law on the side. Eventually, one of my partners and I split off and started our own law firm.

Comedy came into the picture by accident. It was never on my radar when I was younger. My friend was a stand-up comedian, and he asked me to go with him when he was opening for Bob Saget. I was backstage and made a joke that got Bob Saget laughing. He said I should use the joke onstage, but I told him I wasn't performing and that I'd never done stand-up in my life.

His encouragement gave me the confidence to go to an open mic the next day. I won the contest, and that changed my life. I ended up hosting that open mic and then became a host at The Laugh Factory in Chicago. Now I've been a full-time comedian for over six years.

A common misconception is that I was burned out as a lawyer. I wasn't. I loved being a lawyer and practicing law, and I was lucky enough to take cases to trial often since our firm was a specialty trial firm.

I miss it sometimes, but I felt like I did everything I could do with law. I tried over 20 cases, and wanted the challenge of something new. I like to push myself to do things that are hard or uncomfortable.

Comedy is a hustle, but you can make money doing it

As a lawyer, I handled insurance defense and defense work for cities, including election and police cases. I was usually the bad guy.

I kept the comedy under wraps at first. At some point, people started to notice, and surprisingly, everyone was pretty supportive. If I were discussing a trial date with the other side and needed to schedule it around a comedy show, most lawyers were cool with it.

Paul Farahvar said while working as a lawyer, he kept his comedy side hustle under wraps at first.

Sarah E. Larson

My last couple of years of law, I was a full-time comedian and part-time lawyer. When my partner and I split our firm, I kept my existing clients but didn't take new ones. My last trial was late February 2020, and I closed my law firm on March 1, 2020. Comedy has been my job since.

Stand-up comedy is the biggest part of my life. I also do podcasts, writing, and acting. I'm lucky to be doing comedy almost every night, touring, headlining, and supporting bigger shows and theaters. This year, I have tried to force myself to take a day off each week. I still end up doing 6-10 shows weekly.

People assume you can't make money with comedy, but you can. You have to hustle. In times when I've really needed money, I've taken corporate gigs, such as shows for organizations like bar associations or unions. Those shows pay very well. There were a few years when I made more as a comedian than as a lawyer.

There are ups and downs. I'm fortunate that I can do comedy, and I don't have to take a lot of those corporate gigs or cruise ship shows because I'm single and I don't have any debt.

Even as a lawyer with my own firm, I was trying to generate business, and there were years where it was sink-or-swim. In the first year of our law firm, I didn't take a salary because we put all this money into starting the firm. That was harder for me than any year of comedy.

Working in comedy requires more than just writing and performing

As a stand-up comic, 90% of it is just sending my availability out and trying to get bookings and opportunities. I hate doing it, but I'm good at it because I used to do it when I worked in music. I don't have a manager, so if I forget or don't have time to spend a week making calls for show bookings, that hurts me in two months, when I'm like, "Oh shoot, I have a week, and I don't have that many shows."

I'm very driven, almost to an unhealthy degree. I don't have a personal life. Everything I do revolves around my career. I always say I wasn't the best lawyer, and I might not be the funniest comedian, but I'm the hardest working.

In comedy, you definitely experience burnout. Like the other day when I flew in on a red eye from Florida and realized I had a show that night. But once I get onstage, I think, "Oh yeah, this is way more fun than whatever else I was going to."

Now, some of the comedians I'm friends with are people I used to watch on TV as a kid. Every once in a while, I get to pinch myself, like when I've opened for my favorite comedian.

Still, I loved practicing law. I didn't like the mornings, and I hated waking up, but I always say if court was in the afternoon, I might never have quit.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/HKBOda1

A renowned computer scientist once skeptical of the AI singularity now says humanity is 'certainly at risk'

Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist and former OpenAI researcher, wrote in a blog that the AI singularity has arrived.

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

• Scott Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist who previously worked at OpenAI on AI safety.
• In a blog, Aaronson wrote that he believes the "AI Singularity" has arrived.
• Aaronson didn't say if AI will wipe out humanity, but wrote that the transformative phase has begun.

A lot of X posts, prose, and proselytizing have been spilled on the internet recently about the impending AI apocalypse and whether we've passed the point of no return.

Here's another one eloquently put by the acclaimed theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson, whose research has helped us understand the limits of quantum computing. Oh, and he had a stint at OpenAI working on the theoretical foundations of AI safety and alignment:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," he wrote. That's 113 letters A.

In a blog post published Tuesday, Aaronson made the case for why he, a self-proclaimed skeptic of the AI singularity, "updated" his position on its arrival.

The singularity is a hypothetical concept in which AI's progress surpasses human intelligence and can improve on its own — a process known as recursive self-improvement.

Aaronson wrote that, 20 years ago, he had a "conservative, skeptical position" on self-improving AI. He and other colleagues in computer science largely dismissed the idea as the stuff of science fiction.

Recent developments have led him to change his tune, he wrote, namely, reports of AI agents breaking out of containment and an apparent AI-assisted mathematical breakthrough on the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem, a long-standing question about the math of fluid dynamics.

"I thought that building AIs able to solve millennium problems, hack the servers they're running on, play leading roles in their own improvement, etc etc might for all I knew take hundreds of years," Aaronson said in an email to Business Insider. "But here we are in 2026 and all those things have happened, so I said so."

In his blog, Aaronson also briefly chimed in on the latest AI boom-or-doom debate that has split the tech industry.

"I feel like it would be healthy for everyone to stop grinding their ideological axes, their sentiments about Dario Amodei or Sam Altman, for long enough simply to acknowledge that the wonders and terrors are here," he wrote. "They couldn't be here more clearly if the sky had turned reddish-orange like in the Matrix movies."

Aaronson said in the email that humanity is "certainly at risk" but he doesn't agree with the premise that doom is the "'default' outcome."

"I think there's a huge range of possible outcomes, and a lot depends on what we do now, whether we treat what's being created with the awe and humility and caution that it deserves, or simply as another consumer product to rush to market or a geopolitical weapon (or something that will go away if we pretend it's not real and a marketing stunt)," he said.

In his view, as AI's transformative phase begins, Aaronson wrote in the blog that human theorem-provers like himself may be becoming obsolete. The last gap could now be between intelligence and the physical world.

"Yes, I still unload the dishwasher and clip my toenails," he wrote. "On the other hand, in whatever years I have left, I don't expect that I'll ever again prove a theorem because I'm actually needed to prove it. If I do, it will only be for my or others' enjoyment or edification."

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/lBoX9sQ

This tech founder says prompting AI agents is a lot like managing people

Ivan Burazin, CEO of Daytona, said managing AI agents is not that different from managing people.

Daytona

• Ivan Burazin, CEO of AI firm Daytona, has been pushing his team to build more AI agents.
• He's found that people who have managed people are way better at prompting AI agents.
• They know how to communicate exactly what they want, he said.

The best managers of AI agents may be people who have already managed humans, one AI founder said.

Ivan Burazin, the cofounder and CEO of New York-based AI firm Daytona, has a team of about 30 people across teams in the US and Europe. He told Business Insider that in recent months, he's pushed his staff to build more AI agents; his 16 engineers each run an average of five agents, and no one at the company writes code anymore.

That's brought one thing to light for him: Staff who have managed others are way better at prompting AI agents to get exactly what they want than those with no people-management experience.

"We've found that people who manage people and understand how to communicate what they want — inputs versus outputs — they're much better at running agents," he said.

On the other hand, an engineer who's not managed anyone, even if they're great at their job, is wired like an individual contributor, Ivan said. He said they implicitly expect that people — and agents — will understand what they're asking for, and get stressed and frustrated when it doesn't pan out.

"And so they never think about how to communicate, 'This is what I want. This is how I expect you to do it, or what I think the outcome should be,'" he added.

That said, Burazin doesn't support the idea of people managers alone. He said managers with no technical knowledge — such as in marketing or in engineering — are not useful, and everyone should be getting their hands dirty with actual work.

Burazin and his cofounders, Vedran Jukić and Goran Draganić, founded Daytona in 2023, which provides secure sandbox infrastructure for companies to run AI agents and AI-generated code in isolated environments.

Burazin's comments align with how managerial roles in tech companies have changed in recent years.

After an era dubbed "The Great Flattening," in which companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google laid off middle management for efficiency, more tech leaders are now juggling coding and product development alongside staff management.

Burazin says he supports his staff running multiple AI agents, because it helps him keep his team small. Hiring at Daytona is "very slow," he said, because each new hire adds a layer of complexity.

"Agents help with that because you can have smaller human teams, hence the communication is smaller, and you can continue to be fast," he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/w98UDKA

Amazon's next move could reshape how America shops — all over again

A worker scans an Amazon package on a Prime delivery truck in New York

Bloomberg/Getty Images

• Amazon wants to build more than 1,000 same-day delivery facilities by 2031.
• The plan would put same-day hubs within 10 miles of most Amazon Prime customers in the US.
• The expansion could challenge Walmart's physical delivery advantage, and change shopping habits.

Amazon is plotting an unprecedented expansion of its same-day delivery operation that could redraw the map of American retail and take on Walmart's biggest advantage in everyday shopping.

The initiative, codenamed Project Mercury, would expand Amazon's same-day fulfillment network to more than 1,000 locations by 2031, an increase of more than tenfold from the roughly 85 facilities the company operates today, according to internal planning documents reviewed by Business Insider.

The effort will cost billions of dollars and could reshape how Americans shop for everyday items such as fresh food, paper towels, and cough medicine.

Walmart, with thousands of huge stores close to most US consumers, has dominated this valuable, sticky market. Amazon is betting it can rewrite the rules of everyday retail by moving inventory dramatically closer to customers through hundreds of new Same Day Fulfillment Centers, or SSDs, which stock its 90,000 most popular products.

"Transformational"

One document described Project Mercury as a "transformational initiative to reshape the Same-Day Delivery network."

The project fundamentally redesigns this network around shorter distances. Amazon currently puts these same-day facilities about a 90-minute drive from customers. Now, it aims to put SSDs within a 10-mile straight-line radius of 80% of Prime subscribers in the US by 2031, according to the documents.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that internal projections are "preliminary, subject to significant revision, and shouldn't be treated as finalized plans." Amazon's same-day network currently serves more than 10,000 cities and towns, including rural communities, the spokesperson added, though same-day orders aren't exclusively fulfilled through SSD facilities.

"That said, it's no secret that we're focused on delivering faster for customers and the expansion of our same-day delivery network is playing a big role in that," the spokesperson said. "We continue to invest in fast delivery speed and convenience alongside wide selection and everyday low prices."

Taking on Walmart's physical advantage

The plan could help Amazon attack one of Walmart's biggest advantages in the fight over groceries and other everyday purchases: physical proximity to customers.

Roughly 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart or Sam's Club, giving the retailer thousands of stores that double as local fulfillment hubs. Walmart says 95% of US households can now receive delivery in under three hours.

Amazon has been attacking the problem from several directions. Business Insider previously reported on Project Kobe, Amazon's plan for Walmart-sized stores with large automated backrooms that could fulfill online orders and function as local-delivery hubs.

Amazon is also testing an all-day delivery model with 10 overlapping delivery windows, while expanding Amazon Now, its ultrafast service for everyday essentials, and using SSDs as launch points for its drone delivery service Prime Air.

Amazon's worry

In some regions, Amazon has expressed concern about its lack of really fast delivery speeds, and how that undermines efforts to gain more retail market share.

In Canada, an internal planning document noted that major retailers were "outpacing our delivery capabilities," citing investments by Walmart and Best Buy.

Mercury takes a different approach. Instead of replicating Walmart's store network, Amazon would build a much denser web of specialized fulfillment centers designed to get popular inventory closer to customers.

That proximity is increasingly important as Amazon pushes deeper into groceries and everyday essentials. Amazon says its grocery business now generates more than $150 billion in annual gross sales, though that includes nonperishable products beyond traditional fresh grocery. Walmart's grocery business is much bigger.

Employees unload online pickup orders at a Walmart store in Grand Prairie, Texas

Bloomberg/Getty Images

A smaller warehouse for a bigger network

Mercury would require Amazon to build hundreds of facilities in just a few years.

One way Amazon hopes to accelerate the expansion is through Orbital, a smaller warehouse system Business Insider previously reported on.

These roughly 100,000-square-foot facilities are expected to process about 75,000 same-day and perishable units a day, according to the documents. Amazon estimated each Orbital facility would require about $48.4 million in capital spending.

Mercury's internal projections show how important SSDs could eventually become. They are projected to account for about 28% of Amazon-fulfilled volume in 2029 and 50% by 2035, according to the documents.

Amazon's vision of same-day delivery doesn't necessarily mean instant delivery. Internal forecasts show roughly 94% of packages moving through its dedicated same-day buildings would fall into a five-hour delivery window by 2029.

Amazon sees billions in potential value

Amazon's finance team has already reviewed Mercury's economics, with Udit Madan, an up-and-coming SVP overseeing worldwide operations, directly involved, according to the documents.

Its three-year operating plan budgets $6.8 billion for US SSD capacity across 2026 and 2027. Separately, an Amazon finance review estimated Mercury could generate $7.1 billion in economic value over 10 years and turn cash-flow positive by 2030. The company also believes some Mercury spending could be offset by avoiding conventional delivery facilities it would otherwise need to build.

The logic behind the expansion is simpler: Amazon believes faster delivery can make customers shop more.

"When we speed up the service, the probability that somebody buys a product from us goes up," Doug Herrington, Amazon's CEO of Worldwide Stores, said on a podcast earlier this year. "And what's even more interesting is that if they buy it, they're going to come back sooner, and they're going to shop more when they do."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/W1uaImF