• Wall Street newcomers are often highly successful.
• But Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson says a key to success is learning to accept failures.
• Always being ready to up your game as you get promoted is also crucial, he said.

If you're just getting started in your career on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley chief investment officer Mike Wilson has some tough love to share with you: life's only going to get harder.

In an interview with Business Insider in December, Wilson listed a couple pieces of advice he gives to his new hires, interns, and even his kids.

Number one: you're not going to be as successful as you're used to being. Landing a job at an investment bank or research firm is an achievement, with a stellar academic record often being a prerequisite. So many youngsters entering banking are accustomed to outperforming. But failing is a fact of life in banking, Wilson said.

"A lot of people coming to Wall Street are overachievers," Wilson said. "I say, 'My guess is your historical report card has very few Bs on it. Maybe none. And definitely no Cs. And so what you're going to have to get used to coming to Wall Street is you're going to get a bunch of Fs, and you can't even fathom what that feels like."

How you adjust to that feeling will be one factor in how successful you become, he said.

"You picked the stock, it went to zero, everybody knows you made a mistake. How are you going to deal with that?" Wilson said.

"The best investors generally get 55% of their calls correct," he continued. "There are a lot of dynamics that play into being a good investor, a good analyst, a good strategist. But I think the hardest one is learning how to accept failure, learning how to be wrong, admit it, and move on. Acknowledge your mistakes."

Wilson, who is also Morgan Stanley's chief US equity strategist, has put his advice to use in recent years. He was one of the most accurate market forecasters in 2022 amid a market sell-off, but his ongoing bearishness caught up with him in 2023 when the market turned around. He issued a mea culpa, offering more bullish price targets since then alongside the ongoing stock-market rally.

As for his second piece of advice, Wilson said to be ready to continually up your game as you become more successful.

"I have two sons in their 20s, and I always kid around with them. When they're successful at work, I say, 'Congratulations, you're gonna make it to the next level. Guess what: It's going to be harder,'" Wilson said.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing, he said.

"That's life. Every rung is harder, and that's the thrill of it, too, because you're competing at a higher level," he said. "If you're successful, you just understand that dynamic, and that's something I think young people need to know — what exactly they're signing up for."

In the interview, Wilson also shared more general career advice that can apply to people outside of the financial industry as well: stand up for ideas that you have high conviction in. In his role, that means sometimes issuing calls against consensus. He called this taking personal risk.

"You've got to be willing to go take a stand on stuff, whether it's in a meeting, with people you report to, pointing out things that you don't agree with, kind of making a firm stance," Wilson said.

• After his first two semesters of college, my son is on academic suspension.
• Right now, he's working in a bakery while he decides what he want to do next.
• We're not sure if he'll return to school, but I'll support him in his decision.

My darling son's college career has been on hiatus for a year, and his GPA is at the bottom of a deep well. What's a caring parent to do?

The heavy words "academic suspension" are nothing any parent or student wants to see on their record. But after two disastrous semesters, he was suspended for a semester — and he hasn't shown any inclination to return. Since he's lost his scholarship, probably for good, it will be an expensive return to campus.

Here's what I'm doing to support my son better as he takes charge of his life.

I didn't see there could be another path for him

My generation was taught that going to college is the best way to ensure a secure, well-paying job. I also learned that a college education is a way to become more well-rounded. I thought it was a given that he would go to college and then have a career.

I passed these ideas along to my son. He was enrolled in college preparatory courses, and in middle and high school, the teachers also emphasized how important a college education would be to his future. But there was a discrepancy between what he was being told and what he saw in real life.

My son watched as his parents, both journalists with college degrees, struggled with temporary furloughs, weird hours, beau coups of stress, a relocation, and my recent layoff. Our jobs were neither secure nor particularly well-paying.

The YouTubers whose videogame playthroughs he watched didn't necessarily need a college degree to do what they did, either — though some of them do have them — and they were making a decent living doing something they enjoy.

I wanted my son to be able to live safely, comfortably, and independently in an indifferent, cold world. But now, looking back, I worry I pushed him too hard in the direction I wanted him to go when he hesitated because I didn't see that there was another path for him.

I'm finally listening to my son

He gave lip service during his senior year of high school about wanting to go to college but was noncommittal on many of the details. That should have been my first clue he may not be sure, yet I still dragged him to various college tours, thinking it would get him excited about going. What my son remembered the most about those trips was the heat of southern Georgia in August and being appalled the campus tour guide hadn't tried crepes until college.

When his indifference continued, I told him to sign up for a local community college and suggested a major based on his love of food and nutrition: chemistry. He complied. Naturally, chemistry is one of the courses he failed in his first semester. Basically, I contributed to the situation we now find ourselves in — I'm no "Mother of the Year" candidate.

During the school year, he told me that things were fine, even when they weren't. I took it as truth, because it's what I wanted to hear. But now, I'm really listening. It seems like an obvious step, doesn't it? Our communication had suffered because my son was telling me what he thought I wanted to hear instead of the truth. He'd gone to college because he didn't want to disappoint me.

He's learning by doing what he enjoys

Plenty of well-known people have hit pause on college and gone on trips overseas to "find themselves." My son is having to find his place in the world while working at a bakery.

He seems to be enjoying most of it. In his free time after work, he cooks banana nut bread, muffins, and cookies. Cooking is both an art and a science, something he's enjoyed since taking culinary classes in high school before the pandemic brought those courses to an end.

I suggested he enroll in culinary classes, but he seems content to just work for now. So, I'm staying out of the way as he concocts the recipe of his life while also providing support and encouragement.

I still think college while he is still young is the best option for his future. But what's more important is what he thinks, and it's apparent that despite all the sales pitches, he hasn't been sold on the idea of college.

• Danielle-Ann Kealohilani Rugg moved back to Hawaii to care for her family during the pandemic.
• She balances event work, a tax business, and family life amid Hawaii's high living costs.
• Despite the challenges, she finds beauty in Hawaii but would return to Oregon for lower living costs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Danielle-Ann Kealohilani Rugg, a 39-year-old entrepreneur and event staff professional who relocated from Oregon to Hawaii. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I have an ever-evolving career. I balance my event work with Aloha HP, running a successful tax practice, and caring for my family on Oahu in Hawaii.

My path has been a mix of culinary aspirations, entrepreneurial ventures, and family-driven decisions. I was born and raised on Oahu. In 2005, when my twin daughters were 1, I moved to California, where I lived for six years before settling in Oregon. Oregon became home for most of my children's lives, spanning the last decade.

I've been back on Oahu since the pandemic, and while it's gorgeous, the high cost of living is challenging.

My professional life began with a passion for food

I moved to Oregon after a divorce to help care for my grandparents, and I fell in love with everything about the state. I had always seen the different seasons in movies and TV shows and longed to experience them, and that dream finally came true. The other amazing thing about the state was the absence of sales tax.

I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland to pursue my passion for baking and pâtisserie. After completing the two-year associate degree program, I worked in various roles, from baker to cashier to server.

Each position taught me invaluable lessons about customer service, multitasking, and time management, especially when catering large events. It wasn't just about bread and coffee cups but about creating memorable client experiences.

My family always came first. Wanting to be closer to my children, I became a lunch lady at their high school. Surprisingly, this was one of the most fulfilling roles I've had.

I continued my side hustle while in Oregon

I shift gears every February and dive into tax season with my mother. We've been running a tax prep business since my early 20s. We realized the hard work we put in for someone else's business could be channeled into something of our own.

The time zone difference was challenging while I was in Oregon, but we made it work. Depending on our clientele for the year, we make $50,000 to $75,000 annually.

My mother and I get along very well. Our relationship is not perfect, but we've found a good balance between our professional and personal lives.

The only downside I experienced in Oregon was the limited places to swim

The ocean was about an hour and a half away, but the water was always freezing. Although it was beautiful, going to a beach and being unable to jump in dampened the experience.

There were lakes, but they were freezing because all the freshwater came from the mountains. We also had a few facilities we could go to, but that would involve getting a membership, and not all of them were indoors.

When the pandemic hit, my family had to make a change

In 2020, as the world was grappling with the onset of COVID-19, my mother suffered an injury, and she needed help. She lived in Honolulu, and despite the comfortable life my children and I had built in Oregon, I needed to return home.

It wasn't an easy decision, especially during my kids' junior year in high school, but sometimes life demands hard choices. The transition was tough, but ultimately, it was the right move for my mother's well-being. We also moved my grandmother back with us, who has dementia.

Back on Oahu, I found a job with Aloha HP, a Hawaiian staffing company. Aloha HP allowed me to keep up with my business while maintaining an open schedule to care for my family, which was a relief.

I'm primarily involved with event staff work

I do anything from setting up for weddings and banquets to serving guests. These gigs can last four to nine hours.

I average about 80 hours of work a month and earn between $1,350 and $1,900. It's a dynamic way to work, and I enjoy its variety and challenges.

I've learned my self-care cannot be an afterthought. I always carve out two days during my hectic workweek just for myself.

Now that I'm back in Hawaii, the downsides are clear

The cost of living is one of Hawaii's biggest downsides. When I lived in Oregon, my rent for my three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car garage home with a yard was $1,500. Electricity was, on average, $250, and my water bill was around $80. Car registration for both of my cars totaled $275 for two years. Groceries cost us around $500 a month.

Now, my rent, which my family helps with, is $3,550 for a slightly larger home than I had in Oregon. Our electricity is almost three times the amount I paid in Oregon, running on average $660 and up. Water is around $220, and car registration is $445, but only valid for one year.

The grocery stores here also have inflated prices. I may earn more money in Hawaii, but it's offset by the cost of living in Hawaii being much greater than in Oregon.

It's still paradise

Living in paradise is amazing; don't get me wrong. I'm close to my family, the ocean is nearby, the sun almost always shines, and even when it doesn't, the rain is a nice, cool temperature — not freezing cold.

Still, if I had to choose between the two places, I would move back to Oregon, only because the cost of living here is so high.

I've realized, though, that Hawaii is and always will be home. Despite the changes in times and technological advancements, living on an island still offers so much beauty. Just being here is a gift in itself.

Even though I once said I'd never move back, life has a way of leading you where you need to be.

• Michael Burry stayed quiet, bet big on Chinese tech giants, and saw one stock wager pay off in 2024.
• The investor of "The Big Short" fame boosted his Alibaba and JD.com stakes and bought into Baidu.
• The RealReal stock has surged more than sevenfold since Burry invested in early 2023.

Michael Burry kept a low profile, plowed money into three Chinese tech giants, and saw a long-standing stock bet pay off in 2024.

Who is Michael Burry?

Burry is best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. His contrarian wager was immortalized in the book and film "The Big Short."

He's also famous in financial circles for predicting market crashes and recessions, investing in GameStop long before the video-game retailer became a meme stock. He also bet against Elon Musk's Tesla, Cathie Wood's flagship Ark fund, Apple, a microchip fund containing Nvidia, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes in recent years.

Burry goes by Cassandra B.C. on X — a nod to the priestess in Greek mythology who was cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed.

Staying quiet

In years past, Burry frequently shared his thoughts on the markets, economy, and other subjects using X.

For example, he warned of the "greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things" in the summer of 2021, and told buyers of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies that they were careening toward the "mother of all crashes."

Burry even caught Musk's attention with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO calling him a "broken clock" in late 2021. Moreover, the investor set alarm bells ringing on Wall Street in early 2023 with a one-word post: "Sell."

However, Burry didn't post at all last year, and hasn't shared anything with the 1.4 million followers of his primary account since April 2023.

Chinese trio

Burry's Scion Asset Management revealed in a first-quarter portfolio update it had boosted its bets on Alibaba and JD.com, two Chinese e-commerce titans. It also established a small position in Baidu, a search giant that's been dubbed the "Chinese Google."

The Scion chief added to both the Alibaba and Baidu positions in the second quarter while paring his JD.com stake, but then ramped up all three wagers in the third quarter.

In the 12 months to September 2024, Scion quadrupled both its Alibaba and JD.com stakes. It went from owning 50,000 Alibaba shares worth $4.4 million to 200,000 shares worth $21.2 million.

It raised its JD.com position from 125,000 shares worth $3.6 million to 500,000 worth $20 million. Starting from scratch, it also amassed 125,000 Baidu shares worth $13.2 million in the nine months to September.

Those three stocks accounted for 65% of the total $83 million value of Scion's portfolio, excluding options, at the end of September. Burry hedged his highly concentrated portfolio by purchasing put options against the three stocks with a notional value of $47 million in the third quarter.

Burry, a value investor who hunts for bargains, may have pounced on the trio because he views them as undervalued. Chinese stocks have been hit by regulatory threats, concerns about the country's slowing economy and real estate crisis, rising geopolitical jitters, and skepticism about the government's stimulus plans.

It's worth pointing out that quarterly portfolio filings only paint a partial picture of an investor's holdings. They exclude shares sold short, private investments, foreign-listed stocks, and non-stock assets like bonds and real estate. They're also only a snapshot of the portfolio on a single day in a three-month period.

Patience pays off

Apart from Alibaba and JD.com, the only stock that Scion held onto for all of 2024 was The RealReal, an online luxury goods marketplace.

The stock has featured in Scion's portfolio since the first quarter of 2023, when the firm owned about 684,000 shares worth about $862,000, or $1.26 each.

Scion still owned 500,000 shares at the end of September, worth nearly $1.6 million at that time. The stock has jumped from a little over $3 then to $8.73 at Wednesday's close.

The upshot is Burry has likely made several times his money on The RealReal, especially if he was still holding the stock when it surged last quarter.

Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, has prophesied that this may be the year the first "agents" — a set of artificial intelligence tools that can perform tasks on their own — "join the workforce." Investors whose job it is to back new technologies before they become ubiquitous are swooning with the promise of these digital coworkers.

The rise of agents offers a fertile ground for a select group of startups to establish themselves as the front-runners of this shift. In that spirit, Business Insider reviewed viewed press releases, news articles, and PitchBook data for startups exploring the application of agents across various sectors and then filtered for those companies that raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024. The result is a list of 20 startups that seem positioned to scale this year on the back of new funding.

"If 2024 was the year of LLMs, we believe 2025 will be the year of agentic AI," said Praveen Akkiraju, a managing director at Insight Partners, whose agentic plays include Writer, Jasper, and Torq.

The last wave of artificial intelligence brought copilots, a type of virtual assistant designed to work side-by-side with a user. Some write code, some recap meetings or emails, and some scribe notes on a physician's behalf. Copilots require some human hand-holding but significantly amplify productivity and efficiency.

Since that breakthrough, a new generation of virtual assistants has emerged. Agents describe an artificial intelligence that can complete tasks without much human supervision. They don't just assist — they take charge. Agents can break down complex tasks into smaller sub-tasks, make decisions, execute plans, and adjust their approach based on outcomes.

Here's a simple way to think about the difference: a copilot can assist with crafting a tailored vacation itinerary, while an agent can go further by booking the flights, reserving the hotel, and organizing activities — all without a user needing to intervene at each step.

With Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI's significant investments in agentic models and the subsequent investor hysteria around this technology, it's clear that agents are the flavor of the season. PitchBook data shows startups exploring the application of agents have alone raised $8.2 billion in 2024.

Jill Chase, a partner at CapitalG, a growth fund under Alphabet, said software infrastructure that makes agents work "will be poised for explosive growth." Aaron Jacobson, a partner at NEA and early investor in Databricks, said enterprises will deploy agents at large to "make a real business impact." Seema Amble, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, suggested that agents will change how professionals use software.

"In the short term, human workers will be the reviewer in the loop," said Amble, an enterprise software investor. "In the future, as trust is established over time, I expect many data-derived actions will shift toward being entirely a set of narrowly defined task-driven agents."

Here's a list of agentic startups who have raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024, ranked from the least amount raised to the most amount raised.

Maven AGI

What it is: Maven AGI reimagines enterprise customer support by leveraging agents.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $28 million

Notable deal: Maven AGI launched from stealth with $28 million in Series A funding led by M13 in May of 2024.

Wordware

What it is: Polish-British startup Wordware is building a software platform that can develop and deploy agents using plain English rather than code.

Founded: 2021

Total funding: $30 million

Notable deal: At $30 million, Wordware's November 2024 fundraise is one of the largest seed rounds in Y Combinator's history, the startup. said. Spark Capital led the funding round, with YC and VC firm Felicis participating.

Decagon

What it is: Decagon is developing agents that act as customer support representatives for enterprise customers.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $35 million

Notable deal: Decagon emerged from stealth in June of 2024 and announced both its $30 million Series A and $5 million seed rounds. The startup's investors include Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Elad Gil.

Resolve AI

What it is: Resolve AI is building a production-engineer agent that troubleshoots errors and solves production issues, freeing up human engineers' time to create new products and features.

Founded: 2024

Total funding: $35 million

Notable deal: Greylock led Resolve AI's $35 million seed round in November 2024. Unusual Ventures also participated in the round alongside angel investors 'Godmother of AI' Fei-Fei Li, Google DeepMind's Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and executives from OpenAI, GitHub, AWS, and Notion also participated in the round.

Norm Ai

What it is: Norm Ai enables corporate compliance chiefs to convert regulations, from public laws to company policies, into working computer code.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $38 million

Notable deal: Norm Ai raised a $27 million Series A round led by Coatue in June of 2024, following an $11 million seed round earlier in the year.

7AI

What it is: Founded by two cybersecurity veterans, 7AI is building a "swarm" of agents that monitor for threats and protect enterprise companies from cyberattacks.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $36 million

Notable deal: 7AI launched from stealth in June of 2024 with a $36 million seed funding round led by Greylock. CRV and Spark Capital also participated in the round.

Robin AI

What it is: Buzzy legaltech startup Robin offers a copilot for lawyers to help draft and revise contracts.

Founded: 2019

Total funding: $39 million

Notable deal: Singapore investment company Temasek led Robin's $26 million Series B funding round in January 2024, and VC firms QuantumLight, Plural, and AFG Partners also participated in the round.

Braintrust

What it is: Developers at companies like Airtable, Instacart, and Stripe use Braintrust to build, monitor, and troubleshoot their artificial intelligence applications.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $45 million

Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $36 million Series A round of funding for Braintrust in August of 2024.

Lawhive

What it is: Lawhive's artificial intelligence-powered legal assistant, Lawrence, automates routine legal tasks, from client onboarding and compliance checks to document drafting.

Founded: 2019

Total funding: $52 million

Notable deal: Lawhive closed two rounds of funding just eight months apart, with a $10 million seed round in April of 2024 and a $40 million Series A round in December.

Qodo

What it is: Formerly known as CodiumAI, Qodo deploys agents into the coding process to take over tasks such as generation, testing, review, and documentation.

Founded: 2022

Total funding: $50 million

Notable deal: Qodo raised a $40 million Series A funding round in September of 2024 led by Susa Ventures and Square Peg. Firestreak Ventures, ICON Continuity Fund, TLV Partners, and Vine Ventures also participated in the round.

Rox

What it is: Rox's agents assist sales teams by monitoring customer activity, identifying risks and opportunities, and recommending action plans for human employees.

Founded: 2024

Total funding: $50 million

Notable deal: Rox completed its seed and Series A rounds in stealth. The deals — totaling $50 million from investors including GV, Sequoia, and General Catalyst — were announced in November of 2024.

Decart

What it is: Decart builds enterprise and consumer products on top of its own infrastructure stack, designed to reduce some of the costs of building or using artificial intelligence models.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $53 million

Notable deal: Decart emerged from stealth with $21 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital and Zeev Ventures in October of 2024, and raised another $32 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark in December.

HeyGen

What it is: HeyGen, a generative AI video creator for enterprises, launched agents as virtual avatars that can provide around-the-clock customer support.

Founded: 2020

Total funding: $60 million

Notable deal: Benchmark led HeyGen's $60 million Series A in June of 2024. Other investors in the round included Thrive Capital, Bond Capital, Conviction, Dylan Field, Elad Gil, Aviv Nevo, Neil Mehta, and SV Angel.

11x

What it is: 11x builds artificial intelligence-powered sales development reps for handling the workflows of traditional revenue teams.

Founded: 2022

Total funding: $76 million

Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $50 million Series B round for 11x in November of 2024, just two months after the startup grabbed $24 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark.

Astrix Security

What it is: Astrix Security is creating a security platform to shield an enterprise customer's agents from cyberattacks.

Founded: 2021

Total funding: $85 million

Notable deal: Astrix closed a $45 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures in December of 2024. Workday Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, and F2 Venture Capital also participated.

Ema

What it is: Ema is building agents called "personas" that complete complex business tasks for their human employee counterparts.

Founded: 2023

Total funding: $61 million

Notable deal: Ema increased its Series A funding round to $50 million in July of 2024, and counts Accel, Section 32, Prosus Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Wipro Ventures, SCB 10X, Colle Capital, and Frontier Ventures among its investors.

You.com

What it is: You.com's multi-agent system enables knowledge workers to conduct research, create content, and build custom agents on top of any artificial intelligence model for virtually any task.

Founded: 2020

Total funding: $99 million

Notable deal: Georgian led a $50 million Series B round of funding for You.com in September of 2024.

Anysphere

What it is: Anypshere, the startup behind the artificial intelligence-powered code editor, Cursor, allows developers to turn terse directives into working code.

Founded: 2022

Total funding: $171 million

Notable deal: Anysphere raised back-to-back rounds of funding just four months apart, with a $60 million Series A round in August of 2024 and a $100 million Series B round in December. The latest round crowned Anyshere a unicorn with a valuation of $2.6 billion.

Torq

What it is: Torq's multi-agent system enables security professionals to create and deploy sophisticated workflows, triage alerts, and respond to security events.

Founded: 2020

Total funding: $192 million

Notable deal: Torq closed two separate rounds of funding in the last 12 months, including a $42 million Series B round and a $70 million Series C round led by Evolution Equity Partners.

Legion

What it is: Legion, a workforce management platform used by companies like Barry's and Five Below, has developed agents to predict customer demand across locations, create and analyze schedules and timesheets, and reduce human bias.

Founded: 2016

Total funding: $195 million

Notable deal: Legion won $50 million in financing from Silicon Valley Bank in December of 2024, following a $50 million growth round led by Riverwood Capital earlier last year.

• Multiple lawsuits highlight potential risks of AI chatbots for children.
• Character.AI added moderation and parental controls after a backlash.
• Some researchers say the AI chatbot market has not addressed risks for children.

Ever since the death of her 14 year-old son, Megan Garcia has been fighting for more guardrails on generative AI.

Garcia sued Character.AI in October after her son, Sewell Setzer III, committed suicide after chatting with one of the startup's chatbots. Garcia claims he was sexually solicited and abused by the technology and blames the company and its licensor Google for his death.

"When an adult does it, the mental and emotional harm exists. When a chatbot does it, the same mental and emotional harm exists," she told Business Insider from her home in Florida. "So who's responsible for something that we've criminalized human beings doing to other human beings?"

A Character.AI spokesperson declined to comment on pending litigation. Google, which recently acqui-hired Character.AI's founding team and licenses some of the startup's technology, has said the two are separate and unrelated companies.

The explosion of AI chatbot technology has added a new source of entertainment for young digital natives. However, it has also raised potential new risks for adolescent users who may more easily be swayed by these powerful online experiences.

"If we don't really know the risks that exist for this field, we cannot really implement good protection or precautions for children," said Yaman Yu, a researcher at the University of Illinois who has studied how teens use generative AI.

"Band-Aid on a gaping wound"

Garcia said she's received outreach from multiple parents who say they discovered their children using Character.AI and getting sexually explicit messages from the startup's chatbots.

"They're not anticipating that their children are pouring out their hearts to these bots and that information is being collected and stored," Garcia said.

A month after her lawsuit, families in Texas filed their own complaint against Character.AI, alleging its chatbots abused their kids and encouraged violence against others.

Matthew Bergman, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the Garcia and Texas cases, said that making chatbots seem like real humans is part of how Character.AI increases its engagement, so it wouldn't be incentivized to reduce that effect.

He believes that unless AI companies such as Character.AI can establish that only adults are using the technology through methods like age verification, these apps should just not exist.

"They know that the appeal is anthropomorphism, and that's been science that's been known for decades," Bergman told BI. Disclaimers at the top of AI chats that remind children that the AI isn't real are just "a small Band-Aid on a gaping wound," he added.

Character.AI's response

Since the legal backlash, Character.AI has increased moderation of its chatbot content and announced new features such as parental controls, time-spent notifications, prominent disclaimers, and an upcoming under-18 product.

A Character.AI spokesperson said the company is taking technical steps toward blocking "inappropriate" outputs and inputs.

"We're working to create a space where creativity and exploration can thrive without compromising safety," the spokesperson added. "Often, when a large language model generates sensitive or inappropriate content, it does so because a user prompts it to try to elicit that kind of response."

The startup now places stricter limits on chatbot responses and offers a narrower selection of searchable Characters for under-18 users, "particularly when it comes to romantic content," the spokesperson said.

"Filters have been applied to this set in order to remove Characters with connections to crime, violence, sensitive or sexual topics," the spokesperson added. "Our policies do not allow non-consensual sexual content, graphic or specific descriptions of sexual acts. We are continually training the large language model that powers the Characters on the platform to adhere to these policies."

Garcia said the changes Character.AI is implementing are "absolutely not enough to protect our kids."

Potential solutions, including age verification

Artem Rodichev, the former head of AI at chatbot startup Replika, said he witnessed users become "deeply connected" with their digital friends.

Given that teens are still developing psychologically, he believes they should not have access to this technology before more research is done on chatbots' impact and user safety.

"The best way for Character.AI to mitigate all these issues is just to lock out all underage users. But in this case, it's a core audience. They will lose their business if they do that," Rodichev said.

While chatbots could become a safe place for teens to explore topics that they're generally curious about, including romance and sexuality, the question is whether AI companies are capable of doing this in a healthy way.

"Is the AI introducing this knowledge in an age-appropriate way, or is it escalating explicit content and trying to build strong bonding and a relationship with teenagers so they can use the AI more?" Yu, the researcher, said.

Pushing for policy changes

Since her son's passing, Garcia has spent time reading research about AI and talking to legislators, including Silicon Valley Representative Ro Khanna, about increased regulation.

Garcia is in contact with ParentsSOS, a group of parents who say they have lost their children to harm caused by social media and are fighting for more tech regulation.

They're primarily pushing for the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require social media companies to take a "duty of care" toward preventing harm and reducing addiction. Proposed in 2022, the bill passed in the Senate in July but stalled in the House.

Another Senate bill, COPPA 2.0, an updated version of the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, would increase the age for online data collection regulation from 13 to 16.

Garcia said she supports these bills. "They are not perfect but it's a start. Right now, we have nothing, so anything is better than nothing," she added.

She anticipates that the policymaking process could take years, as standing up to tech companies can feel like going up against "Goliath."

Age verification challenges

More than six months ago, Character.AI increased the minimum age participation for its chatbots to 17 and recently implemented more moderation for under-18 users. Still, users can easily circumvent these policies by lying about their age.

Companies such as Microsoft, X, and Snap have supported KOSA. However, some LGBTQ+ and First Amendment rights advocacy groups warned the bill could censor online information about reproductive rights and similar issues.

Tech industry lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association sued nine states that implemented age-verification rules, alleging this threatens online free speech.

Questions about data

Garcia is also concerned about how data on underage users is collected and used via AI chatbots.

AI models and related services are often improved by collecting feedback from user interactions, which helps developers fine tune chatbots to make them more empathetic.

Rodichev said it's a "valid concern" about what happens with this data in the case of a hack or sale of a chatbot company.

"When people chat with these kinds of chatbots, they provide a lot of information about themselves, about their emotional state, about their interests, about their day, their life, much more information than Google or Facebook or relatives know about you," Rodichev said. "Chatbots never judge you and are 24/7 available. People kind of open up."

BI asked Character.AI about how inputs from underage users are collected, stored, or potentially used to train its large language models. In response, a spokesperson referred BI to Character.AI's privacy policy online.

According to this policy, and the startup's terms and conditions page, users grant the company the right to store the digital characters they create and they conversations they have with them. This information can be used to improve and train AI models. Content that users submit, such as text, images, videos, and other data, can be made available to third parties that Character.AI has contractual relationships with, the policies state.

The spokesperson also noted that the startup does not sell user voice or text data.

The spokesperson also said that to enforce its content policies, the chatbot will use "classifiers" to filter out sensitive content from AI model responses, with additional and more conservative classifiers for those under 18. The startup has a process for suspending teens who repeatedly violate input prompt parameters, the spokesperson added.

If you or someone you know is experiencing depression or has had thoughts of harming themself or taking their own life, get help. In the US, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations. Help is also available through the Crisis Text Line — just text "HOME" to 741741. The International Association for Suicide Prevention offers resources for those outside the US.

For millions of Americans who have grown accustomed to the flexibility provided by their work-from-home arrangements, it's been a gloomy start to the year. As of this month, employees at Amazon and AT&T are required to start showing up in the office five days a week. Then, on Tuesday, news broke that JPMorgan is preparing to revoke the hybrid privileges of about 40% of its workforce. (The other 60% are already required to come in every day). The headlines, the latest in a steady stream of return-to-office announcements, sparked yet another round of freakouts on Reddit, LinkedIn, and countless group texts. But as someone who keeps a close watch on the American workplace, I can tell you that I'm really not worried about the future of working from home. Whatever old-school CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassy may think of it, remote work is here to stay.

For one, take a look at the stats. The economist Nick Bloom runs a monthly survey of American workers that tracks the prevalence of remote work. At the peak of COVID, in the spring of 2020, as much as 62% of work across the economy was being done from home. As the pandemic eased, that number came tumbling down — to 37% at the beginning of 2021, 33% in 2022, and 27% in 2023. The work-from-home dream appeared to be fading.

But in the two years since, something odd has happened. Despite all the headlines about companies getting rid of hybrid arrangements, the actual prevalence of remote work has barely budged. Last month, the share of work-from-home jobs remained at 27%. The RTO wars, it seems, have reached an impasse — one in which neither side is able to score any gains.

This impasse is all the more remarkable because of the weakness of the white-collar job market. As I've reported, hiring for corporate professionals has been in a huge slump, which has given employers the upper hand to do whatever they want about remote work without risking a mass exodus of disgruntled staffers. If CEOs were waiting for the ideal market conditions to drag everyone back into the office, this would definitely be the time to do it.

And yet, as the data shows, that hasn't happened — which suggests that CEOs, for the most part, are fine with the policies they have in place today. Even if they quietly wish more employees would come into the office, they don't seem to think it's worth the disruption that would come from forcing the issue.

In fact, when you zoom out and look at the current status of work from home, what you see is nothing short of a sea change. In 2019, Bloom and his team estimate, only 4.7% of work was performed from home. That means the current level of WFH is still six times larger than it was before the pandemic. For all the Amazons and JPMorgans that are reverting to their pre-COVID policies, the norm remains tilted to hybrid work to a degree that would have been unimaginable back in 2019.

In the long run, despite the RTO efforts by the likes of Amazon and JPMorgan, I actually think working from home is almost certain to become even more common. First, given America's slowing population growth, employers will soon find themselves facing a serious labor shortage. That will force them to offer all kinds of perks to attract and retain staff — and the flexibility to work from home is sure to be one of them. Second, the WFH-friendly startups that were founded during the pandemic will continue to grow. They'll not only employ more and more remote and hybrid employees — they'll eventually come to dominate entire sectors of the economy, further cementing the value of work from home. And third, the technology that enables us to collaborate at a distance will only get better over time, reducing what's probably the biggest pain point of remote work.

That's all to say that the reports of remote work's death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. After all, this is how big societal changes always happen: first comes innovation, then skepticism and fear, followed by a concerted push to return to the good old days. In the scheme of things, the office itself is a relatively recent innovation. Or consider one of the biggest inventions of Twain's time: the telephone. What was wrong with the telegraph, people asked. What's the point of switching to this new thing? Also, could it transmit ghosts? Could the electrical wiring shock you? Even as the devices proliferated, some worried that they portended the downfall of society. "The general use of the telephone," one New York Times writer lamented, "instead of promoting civility and courtesy, is the means of the fast dying out of what little we have left."

That's how laughable all the corporate hand-wringing about work from home is going to sound like a couple decades from now. Remote work, Jamie Dimon once groused, "doesn't work." History is in the process of proving him wrong.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.