• I had rectal bleeding, the most common symptom of colon cancer in people under 45.
• I also had a family history of colon cancer, which pushed me to get a colonoscopy at 33.
• My out-of-pocket colonoscopy cost is over $1,000 so far, but I'm still glad I did it.

I paused, then clicked "cancel appointment."

The blood in my stool, the most common sign of colon cancer in young people, was going away. I chalked up my concerns to my job: I was interviewing colon cancer patients. Naturally, the symptoms were on my mind a lot.

But a year later, the bleeding kept coming back, and more prominently than before. Sometimes, I also had other colon cancer symptoms, like inconsistent bowel movements. From writing more about colon cancer, I heard more stories of healthy young patients having barely any warning signs, only to be diagnosed at stage 4. And then, my grandfather was diagnosed with stage 1 colon cancer in late 2024.

I still had reservations about getting a colonoscopy. It seemed expensive and intense for just one symptom. At the same time, that symptom seemed to be getting worse after a year, and I now had a family history of colon cancer.

In the end, I got a colonoscopy and am so glad I did — even if I'm still navigating the financial side of it.

Colonoscopy or stool test?

I booked a GI appointment after reading about stool tests, which can detect cancer via stool samples. It seemed minimally invasive while still taking some sort of action.

At my appointment, I'd hoped my age, lifestyle, and lack of more severe symptoms like abdominal pain would sway her to recommend the stool test over the colonoscopy.

However, stool tests aren't considered the gold standard of colon cancer screenings because they can only detect cancer. It was possible that I had precancerous polyps, for example, which wouldn't show up in a stool test but could be safely removed and biopsied in a colonoscopy. Plus, colonoscopies can identify other colon-cancer-like issues, such as hemorrhoids or IBD.

My GI performed a quick rectal exam and didn't find anything. She said that given my age, the bleeding was likely caused by internal hemorrhoids or polyps, not cancer. She recommended I get a colonoscopy and some blood work to test my iron levels, which could also point to colon cancer. I booked a colonoscopy for three weeks later.

I was worried about the cost and intensity of the procedure

When my blood work came back normal, I wondered if I was overreacting. Did I really need a colonoscopy?

For one, it was expensive. The procedure would cost $2,000 total without insurance. My GI explained that because my test was diagnostic and being done to examine colon cancer symptoms (as opposed to a standard colon cancer screening), it applied to my deductible. She also said that the cost can vary based on my insurance plan, how far into the deductible I am, and where the colonoscopy is being done. Because I did mine at a free-standing endoscopy center instead of a hospital, it cut down on costs.

The estimate I got from my insurance company was around $813. That didn't include other potential fees like biopsies. This is still lower than the national average cost for a colonoscopy, which starts at $1,250, and some of my coworkers under 45 were quoted closer to $2,000.

The idea of the procedure itself felt intense, too. I'd need to fast and take about $40 of laxatives and Gatorade the night before, undergo anesthesia, and have my husband pick me up. There were also very rare risks, like tears to my colon.

A few times a week, I'd approach my husband forlornly, asking him if he thought I was overreacting and should skip the procedure. Sadly, I learned the hard truth: no one could make this decision but me.

Postponing would be complicated, given our future plans to have kids: I can't get a colonoscopy once I'm pregnant because of risks to the fetus.

I realized that I was fortunate: I had time to pre-plan and budget my colonoscopy, I could easily take a sick day from work, and my husband could take a few hours off from his job to pick me up. If I was going to do it, now was absolutely the best time.

I'm glad I did it, but insurance is a pain

Let's start with the bad news: months after the procedure, I'm still dealing with insurance costs.

I made sure that my FSA funds, the pre-tax money I elected to set aside for medical costs, would cover at least most of the procedure and any extra fees. But because my receipt was missing information, the reimbursement for $813 was denied.

When I asked for a complete receipt, I was told I'd need to wait 30-60 days for my insurance to process my itemized statement. While I was waiting, I was mailed two more bills; $124.08 for a physician's processing fee and $125.40 for the anesthesia.

I'm holding on to them until I get reimbursed for the $813. Otherwise, I'd be paying over $1,000 out of pocket, with no clarity on when I'll actually get the money back, if at all.

I finally had answers for my symptoms

The good news: the colonoscopy itself went smoothly. Sure, induced bowel cleansing wasn't my idea of a riveting Wednesday night. But from speaking to multiple people who've had colonoscopies, it sounds like it wasn't as unpleasant as chugging Golytely, a common colonoscopy prep medication.

The actual procedure took about 20 minutes, all of which I was out for.

Shortly after, my GI popped in to explain my results. It was a huge relief to have answers. Like she suspected, internal hemorrhoids, swollen veins in the anus and lower rectum, were causing the bleeding. Hemorrhoids are fairly common in young people, and activities like lifting heavy weights could cause them. Looking back, the bleeding began around when I started strength training, and my GI confirmed that it could exacerbate the hemorrhoids. I can manage them by drinking more water, eating more fiber, and using hydrocortisone cream.

She also found and removed two polyps, one of which could be precancerous because of its size. A few weeks later, a biopsy confirmed that the polyp was benign, and I don't have to get another colonoscopy until I'm 45 — the recommended starting age for colon cancer screenings.

As the rate of colorectal cancer rises among young people, there is a push for people to get their colon cancer symptoms checked out. But I can understand why anyone under the recommended screening age would skip a colonoscopy. Beyond the financial obstacle, it's not a quick procedure and requires a support system. It's easy to feel like the potential downside — spending time and money for a benign result — isn't worth the peace of mind.

Still, so many early signs of colon cancer are mild. Stories from colon cancer patients — the ones who only got diagnosed in late stages and had to navigate much more invasive treatments with lower odds of success — ultimately taught me that it's never worth taking a chance. It's a steep price to pay, but I'm glad I did.

• Business Insider reporters asked ChatGPT to act as their virtual personal stylist.
• The bot made some helpful outfit suggestions but struggled as a personal shopper.
• Human stylists were split about whether it was useful, with one calling it a "StitchFix" box.

Artificial intelligence may be coming for some jobs, but personal stylists can rest easy — for now.

Users of OpenAI's ChatGPT and others from competitors like Anthropic and Google are perpetually trying to find unique use cases to leverage its expansive knowledge in every aspect of their lives, from professional development to improving their dating game.

However, for two reporters, there is still one subject they'd rather leave to humans: Fashion advice.

Two Business Insider reporters uploaded their photos to ChatGPT and asked the bot to act as their virtual stylist, suggesting color palettes and a series of outfits to appear polished even in casual settings.

One reporter asked ChatGPT to suggest outfits to take her from walking the dogs and running errands to going out and reporting in the field. The other requested outfit suggestions for a journalist living in Los Angeles that could take her from work events to dinner at a trendy restaurant.

Three human stylists then reviewed the results.

Man versus machine, fashion edition

Human stylists were split about whether the bot was useful, with one calling it akin to a "StitchFix" box. That's not to say there was anything technically wrong with the outfits ChatGPT recommended; they were just, well, a bit boring for the reporters' tastes.

"Let me start by saying I was pretty impressed by the overall results," Charline Zeroual, a sustainable wardrobe stylist, told Business Insider, adding that "the color palette seems to be right."

Zeroual said the suggestions were missing "soul." No patterns or prints, no standout accessories, and the outfit suggestions didn't take the weather or typical professional norms into account — a lawyer is expected to dress differently than a writer, for example. ChatGPT didn't seem to make the distinction.

"Your style is 80% basics and good foundation, but 20% you need some essence," Zeroual said. "You need the signature. You need something specific to you that is going to make your style personal."

Amanda Massi, a luxury personal stylist based in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and St. Louis-based stylist Dacy Gillespie, both agreed.

"It's too generic," Massi told Business Insider. "Even when you upload a photo, like you did yourself, you're going to get pretty Pinterest-y, cookie-cutter results that aren't really speaking to your true lifestyle or your authentic message."

"I'm not worried for my job," Gillespie said.

ChatGPT was able to create custom style lookbooks and recommend color palettes based on photos we uploaded of ourselves, both of which could be useful if someone has no idea where to start when it comes to building a wardrobe or developing personal style.

However, despite our attempts to describe our style in detail, the lookbook was nowhere close to matching it. When given feedback and asked to try again, ChatGPT's lookbook did improve, but it was still way too basic to inspire any new looks.

ChatGPT as a personal shopper

We also tried using ChatGPT as a personal shopper by telling it a specific item we were looking for, and it fared decently, but not great. With one prompt, we described a specific style of brown moto boots we were looking for, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that its very first recommendation was pretty decent.

But it was also the exact same top result that we got on Google with a shorter search term than the prompt we had to give ChatGPT — and the other Google results were actually more in line with our description than the others the AI recommended.

Other recommendations made by ChatGPT sent us to broken links, or pages that contained entirely different articles of clothing than the bot was trying to offer up. In one instance, a link provided by ChatGPT that was supposed to take you to a site to purchase a pair of olive green utility trousers instead presented the page of a pink bikini.

Massi took a look at the recommendations ChatGPT gave and said she also wasn't impressed with where it was sourcing its picks, noting that it didn't source any higher-quality or independent labels that a human stylist would find for you.

While, in theory, you could communicate your preferences and refine its results repeatedly with ChatGPT, she said, getting it to really know your style could be a challenge.

"Everyone's creative language is so different, and it's something that sometimes can't be tangible. You can't really grasp it," she said. "To communicate your creative language to a computer program, I think it's very difficult to do accurately."

Massi said in her work, the first thing she does is physically visit a client's closet, so she can get a full and in-depth sense of what they already like to wear and already own. It also allows her to pick up on nonverbal cues that signal who the client is, what they're comfortable, and what they won't be comfortable in.

Though the stylists who spoke to Business Insider do not think AI is there quite yet, they agreed it's a promising start and could be helpful for someone just beginning to think seriously about their personal style.

Massi said she is excited about the future possibilities. One interesting use case could be maintaining a digital closet where all the items of your wardrobe are stored. Then, generative AI can be used to put together new outfits with items you already have.

But she said there's still a ways to go before we get a "Clueless"-level smart closet.

"I found it's helpful for putting something in and then just seeing it spit something back at you to get your own brain started," Gillespie said. "It's not necessarily that you're going to do what ChatGPT does, but it can act as a starting point."

• The US Navy stood up a new task force last year to explore innovation for future wars.
• The task force is closely watching how Ukraine has leveraged asymmetric tactics against Russia.
• It is training warships to survive some of the threats that hit Russia's fleet hard.

Amid rapid changes in naval warfare, a ship today could find itself suddenly facing a swarm of small, fast, uncrewed vessels ready to strike hard right at the waterline — a potentially critical hit. With this growing threat in mind, the US Navy is training warships to defend against attacks by hostile drone boats.

Navy leadership is closely watching how drones are shaping the conflict in Ukraine and studying how it can integrate uncrewed systems into the traditional fleet for future operations.

Drone boats, specifically, are dangerous and innovative weapons that Ukraine used to inflict pain on Russia's fleet in the Black Sea. Top commanders see the offensive potential, as well as the need to be ready to defend against them.

"These asymmetric capabilities can be used against us, too," Rear Adm. Michael Mattis, commander of the Navy's Task Force 66, told Business Insider in a recent interview. Asymmetric warfare refers to employing cheap weapons en masse against expensive enemy targets.

Last month, the Navy participated in multiple training exercises aimed at preparing warship crews for the kind of threats they could face in future conflicts, simulating drone boat attacks on US warships. It exposed crews to an emerging threat with devastating potential.

Mattis serves as the director of strategic effects for US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, which launched Task Force 66 last year to merge robotic and autonomous systems into fleet operations. The initiative underscores the Navy's efforts to operate drones alongside conventional crewed naval combat platforms as it explores innovative and asymmetric warfighting tactics.

In the Black Sea, Ukraine has demonstrated to the US and its NATO allies the dangers of ignoring these capabilities.

At the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainians didn't have much of a navy to project maritime power, so Kyiv leaned into asymmetric warfare and relied on a campaign of missile strikes and attacks with domestically produced naval drones to wreak havoc on Moscow's Black Sea Fleet.

Ukraine's operations damaged or destroyed dozens of Russian warships and forced Moscow to relocate the bulk of its fleet from its long-held headquarters in the occupied Crimean peninsula to the port of Novorossiysk in the eastern part of the Black Sea.

Mattis said that the Ukrainian campaign has seen Kyiv defeat around 40% of the Russian naval force in the Black Sea. But it has also highlighted what he described as an action, reaction, and counteraction cycle of innovation on the battlefield, where one side fields a capability, the other side fields a counter-capability, and then the first side fields a counter to that counter.

Russia, for example, found it difficult to stop Ukraine's naval drone attacks with warship defenses alone, so it responded by increasing its combat patrol aircraft presence to better monitor the Black Sea. Ukraine reacted to this development by outfitting its naval drones with surface-to-air missiles, which have already shot down Russian fighter jets and helicopters.

Despite being able to generate significant combat power in the air, Russia's naval forces have been relatively constrained to Novorossiysk. Its limited operations suggest that Moscow is either unwilling or unable to project power in the Black Sea and can't achieve its objectives to control the waterway, Mattis said.

"Ukraine has been incredibly successful in achieving strategic effects in the Black Sea and essentially leveraging their asymmetry against the Russians," he said.

'No ideal tactic'

The Navy watched this asymmetric warfare cycle unfold in the Black Sea and realized the pressing need to reduce it down to its most basic form in a "red-versus-blue" training scenario.

"We want to put our ships into a defensive area where they have to think and react to this problem set," Mattis said, sharing that most have done training in this, but not a lot.

"We know that this is an evolving capability," he said. "We know that the Russians were slow to adapt defensive measures against it, and as a result, they lost more ships than perhaps they should have, had they been able to adapt faster."

During a recent exercise called Baltic Operations 2025, Task Force 66 used uncrewed surface vessels to simulate attacks on two Navy ships: the command and control vessel USS Mount Whitney and the guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Ignatius.

The task force deployed a naval drone called the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft and other systems for the exercise. This system, made by the US company BlackSea Technologies, resembles a small speedboat and can sprint up to 40 knots, or 46 mph.

Mattis said that the goal was to put the ships in a situation where they had to react on an uncomfortably short timeline. In some of the training scenarios, operators would have a drone tail one of the larger vessels and then suddenly sprint out from behind it, forcing it to react. In other situations, multiple drone boats attacked from different angles.

One of the challenges with naval drones is that they are small, making them more difficult to detect and differentiate from various commercial boats. When operating in a normal routine, like in port, the watch team might not be able to identify the threat before tragedy struck.

Mattis said the exercise took place at the basic level, with the purpose of creating what he described as a dilemma. He said this specific exercise was designed so sailors could understand the operating characteristics of the fast and agile naval drones, which can appear almost undetected out of nowhere and quickly swarm a vessel.

There were no live-fire engagements during the training exercise, meaning the ships didn't shoot at the drone boats. However, the Navy does train for that. At a different European exercise held in May, sailors on the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner practiced using the warship's guns to defend against a naval drone attack.

Task Force 66 is experimenting with some more advanced tactics and aims to eventually build more complex training scenarios, which Mattis said will likely resemble a "free play" mode, where participants learn how to operate and react on the fly rather than via scripted runs designed for safety and repeatability.

"Going back to the fundamentals, because of this iterative nature and innovative nature of this changing character of war with drones, what we're seeing is that there's no ideal tactic, there's no ideal capability," Mattis said, explaining that "there's only a combination of tactics and capabilities that have to change over time to continue to generate dilemmas and surprise for the adversary to be ultimately defeated."

'Innovate to survive'

The naval drone exercises last month are just one way Task Force 66 is taking key lessons learned from the Ukraine war and applying them in training scenarios. It is also trying to see how it can replicate some of the low-cost, high-return effects that it has observed in the Black Sea and apply them in other theaters, like the contested Indo-Pacific region.

Navy leadership is increasingly preparing for the rise of artificial intelligence, drones, autonomous systems, and other emerging technologies in future conflicts, but Mattis acknowledged that one of the challenges of addressing the changing nature of warfare — fast enough to keep up with the speed of adaptation — is figuring out how to do it when you're not facing an existential threat.

He explained that "when someone pushes a gun in your face, as Russia did with Ukraine, and you are forced to innovate to survive — when it is absolutely 'figure it out or die' — the ability to get after problem-solving and the ability to remove barriers and eliminate excuses is incredible."

"We've seen our Ukrainian partners do that in ways that are incredibly inspiring," he said. The US Navy isn't in that kind of fight, but it realizes it needs to be ready for one.

• Eric Roberge and his wife, both financial planners, reversed their decision to be child-free.
• Before doing so, they adapted their financial plan to emphasize flexibility and savings.
• The couple also kept lifestyle inflation to a minimum and ignored traditional FIRE-style goals.

For many years, my wife and I opted to be child-free. I could see myself having kids, but also felt at peace with the idea of not having children at all. My wife was more firmly in the "no thanks" camp when she was in her 20s.

Then, we both changed our minds.

It wasn't any one particular event or conversation, but more of the cumulative effect that I think many people experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic: 2020 put things in a different perspective.

It created a pause in our normal day-to-day lives that gave us a chance to reflect and think about what truly mattered to us: close relationships, being part of a community, and doing meaningful work, whether that work was in our business or beyond it, such as caring for others.

That led us to agree that we did want to have children after all. Being financial advisors, we knew that such a left turn in life would require us to review and reconsider the financial planning we had done to date.

We felt good about reversing our stance on our family structure precisely because of the financial planning philosophy we use, for ourselves and in my work for clients as a personal financial advisor: You don't know what will change in life, but you can know with near certainty that something will change. You have to make financial decisions and plans that account for that reality.

We made our financial plan highly adaptable so that it was easy to shift once we realized we wanted to grow our family. These 5 steps were critical to our success.

1. We made a habit of saving more than we "had to" or "should"

We spent a decade saving between 30 to 40 percent of our income because we prioritized future flexibility. We also knew how powerful "frontloading" our savings could be.

To reap the biggest benefits from the power of compounding returns on investments, you need to stay invested for a very long time period. And the earlier you start, the more you can benefit from the compounding effect.

We save less now, partly because we have all kinds of expenses we did not have before adding a child to the family — school tuition, a third airplane seat on trips, endless stuffed animal acquisition, and so on.

But "saving less" does not mean abandoning the savings habit altogether. We now save about 25% of our income annually. While it's less than before, it's still higher than average, though it feels like an easy target to meet after sustaining higher savings rates for so long. It's also sufficient to meet our biggest current financial goal of retiring in our 50s.

2. We avoided major fixed costs or hard-to-reverse decisions

While we were child-free we opted out of the biggest fixed cost most people put into their budgets: buying a house.

Without definitive clarity on what the future might look like, we prioritized the flexibility and ease of renting even when everyone around us was buying homes. We reasoned that we should take advantage of the fact we had no external force tying us to a specific location.

Homebuying is a specific example, but we tried to use this frame of thinking more generally to help us avoid very large fixed costs or decisions that were hard to undo. If a choice in the moment would narrow our options for tomorrow, we tended to view it as a sub-optimal choice and sought other alternatives.

3. We kept lifestyle inflation to a minimum along the way

Even as our income grew, we rarely increased our spending. This allowed us to create a larger and larger gap between what we earned and what we spent — giving us a surplus we could save and invest.

Before adding a new recurring expense, we asked ourselves if it aligned with our values or provided benefits like giving us the ability to buy back our time. If not, we didn't allow that line item to add to our budget.

When we did eventually buy a house, we looked at homes that were significantly less expensive than what a lender would call affordable to ensure we didn't max out our budget.

4. We said no to traditional FIRE-style retirement goals

Instead of trying to get out of the workforce on the slimmest investment portfolio possible, as some FIRE strategies that were extremely popular in the 2010s aimed to do, we worked to:

• create work we loved and didn't want to run away from
• prioritize sustainable income growth over efforts to live as frugally as possible

Doing so allowed us to harness our increasing cash flow power for present-day purchases and more contributions to growth assets in our investment portfolio.

5. We pivoted when the situation called for it

What works today might not work in the future if things change — and that's okay. Being willing to change is a huge asset.

When we had our daughter in 2021, we chose to save a little less so that we could spend a little more on her as well as things as a family. We did this knowing that a higher level of spending introduced a bit more long-term risk into our plan, due to taking our foot off the gas in terms of contributions to long-term investments.

At the end of the day, the only constant is change — whether from external forces you can't control or from the choices you willingly make with full agency.

The more willing you are to adapt to the situation at hand, the more likely you'll be to continue on a track for success.

By being proactive, accounting for unpredictability, and having contingency plans in place, you'll better position yourself (and your money) for whatever life throws at you — without having to give up long-term goals you're working hard to achieve.

• Christy Rutherford left a successful Coast Guard career due to toxic leadership and burnout.
• She faced deeper burnout, financial loss, and depression after resigning from her position.
• Rutherford rebuilt her life and now helps other leaders recover from burnout and achieve success.

I started my career in the US Coast Guard as a college sophomore in 1996. After graduating, I was stationed on a ship in Charleston, South Carolina, chasing drug runners in the Caribbean.

I transitioned into crisis management and moved four times over the next 12 years. I responded to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and worked on Capitol Hill as a congressional fellow for the late Congressman Elijah Cummings in 2007.

I loved my career and learned from some exceptional leaders. I also had the misfortune of surviving a few toxic ones. I was one of 50 Black women officers out of nearly 50,000, and I felt my competence was questioned regularly. I worked 80 hours weekly to prove myself.

I worked from sunup to sundown

I studied for professional certifications at night and obtained several advanced degrees. Work-life balance seemed impossible, and no matter how many awards I received, I was never satisfied.

In 2010, I was promoted to the executive level and relocated to Port Arthur, Texas. The following year, a former toxic boss became my supervisor again, and everything started to unravel. Constantly handling emergencies while ignoring my well-being caught up with me, and my mental and physical health declined rapidly.

During one demeaning meeting with my boss in 2012, I started yelling at him. Feeling that senior leadership had failed to protect me, I resigned from my highly successful, six-figure career with only three and a half years left until retirement, forfeiting a full pension.

I knew that if I didn't make a change, I wouldn't survive another year.

I decided to move

I moved to DC and worked with a network marketing company selling coffee. My family and friends thought I was crazy, and they weren't wrong.

I was burned out and couldn't make rational decisions. Within 18 months, I had spent my six-figure savings.

I moved in with my brother in South Carolina in 2013, agreeing it would only be for a few months. I worked 16-hour days to recover my money, and a few months later, I mentally collapsed. It was catastrophic.

I was deeply depressed

It felt like I had fallen into a hole deeper than the Grand Canyon and then into the ocean's abyss. People often talk about hitting rock bottom, but I've learned that there are even deeper places of despair.

A government official completed my veteran's disability paperwork and noted I was eligible to receive several thousand dollars a month because my mental and physical condition rendered me incapable of working to earn an income.

I chose not to submit the paperwork because I knew I could fully recover if I worked just as hard on myself as I had in my career.

I pursued wholeness, and it took two years to heal physically, four years to recover mentally, and seven years to recover financially.

I did five things to recover mentally

I discovered the true meaning of self-care and made it a habit. I started meditating, working out, and walking at least three times a week. I also started sleeping eight hours a night.

I stopped watching the news. Since the news was primarily negative, it didn't make me feel good about myself or my recovery.

I took off my superhero cape and changed my phone number. I had to stop trying to save everyone else and myself at the same time.

I deleted social media for 18 months. I couldn't process all the information I consumed. I felt like I was lying about my life while watching everyone else lie about theirs.

I forgave my family. Being one of the first people in my family to graduate from college, I was terrified of failure. When my worst nightmare came true, and I failed and lost everything, I realized they didn't need to change; I did.

I also did five things to recover financially

In 2016, I was accepted into Harvard Business School with a solid past and a grand vision of the future, but a messy present moment of nothingness. The Program for Leadership Development helped me translate military language into corporate terminology, enabling me to market my leadership development services effectively. I saw my habits of exhaustive working and self-neglect reflected in my peers.

I published five books in eight months and started coaching my HBS colleagues on their careers and burnout. It was a natural transition.

In January 2017, I graduated from HBS and finally moved out of my brother's house. I invested in a business coach. However, 10 months later, I couldn't afford my rent and the coach, so I gave up my place and spent a year traveling, staying with friends and family while building my business.

In 2019, I started teaching leaders how to recover from burnout by appealing to their desire for career advancement. I had my first 6-figure year in 2019.

Today, with a team of eight, I've helped hundreds of leaders recover from burnout, alleviate stress-related medical conditions, retain their jobs, and reclaim their value in the market.

Looking back, there are three things I wish I had done differently

First, I would've prioritized my self-care sooner.

Second, I would've faced the truth that my relentless drive for achievement was rooted in the fear of failure.

Lastly, I would've slowed down to actually enjoy the life I was working so hard to build.

Do you have a story to share about recovering from burnout? Contact this editor at [email protected].

• The hiring frenzy of the past few weeks for elite AI talent has been on an entirely different level.
• Tech workers not getting offers are jealous and wondering, "What am I doing wrong?" according to one VC.
• The bidding war is trickling down to classrooms, where companies are encouraging interns to drop out of school.

In Silicon Valley, it is the summer of compensation FOMO.

Startup employees and venture investors have been swapping stories about eye-popping salary and equity packages as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has rushed to pay top dollar to poach elite AI and machine-learning talent. While some people are getting offers in the tens of millions of dollars, others who aren't getting such rich packages thrown their way are feeling left out.

"There's a ton of ripple effects I'm hearing in the Valley," said Deedy Das, an AI investor at Anthropic backer Menlo Ventures. "There is a sense of jealousy, envy, and helplessness, and everybody being like, 'I thought I was doing pretty well. What am I doing wrong? I would love to get those offers."'

Das heard from three friends who are machine-learning engineers or researchers at OpenAI or Anthropic who are being offered between $8 and $20 million in total compensation a year to join Meta, which declined to comment for this story.

"I would describe them as in a state of shock," Das said of one of his friends, whom he declined to name, who decided to turn Meta down because they did not think it was a good fit. "You plan out your career with certain assumptions, and then when something like this happens, it's like you are getting paid more in a year than you had predicted you would ever make in your career. It's honestly hard to digest."

Tech companies have long shelled out top dollar for the most elite talent, but the eight people BI spoke to for this story agreed that the hiring frenzy of the past few weeks has been on an entirely different level.

It started when Meta recruited Scale CEO Alexandr Wang last month as part of a $14.3 billion deal to take a 49% stake in his company. Then Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said Meta had tried to poach his best employees with $100 million signing bonuses. Meta executives recently pushed back, saying that the signing bonuses were not that generous.

This week, Zuckerberg announced Wang would co-lead a new unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs, with six star researchers poached from OpenAI.

Some on X have compared the bidding war for top AI talent to sports franchises competing for star athletes like Cristiano Ronaldo and suggested researchers hire agents to represent them.

"In my 20 years in tech, I have never seen as clearly defined a market for extraordinary talent in a single category as for people who are capable of doing work on the frontier in AI right now," said Roy Bahat, the longtime head of VC firm Bloomberg Beta.

A shortage of talent and an excess of money

Driving the frenzy is the confluence of two factors, according to Bahat and others. On the one hand, there are a limited number of researchers and engineers capable of building foundational models — something in the neighborhood of 2,000 people. At the same time, companies led by Meta, which is approaching a market capitalization of $2 trillion, have the resources to spend almost anything to avoid falling behind.

"These companies are just all so much bigger than they used to be," Bahat said.

The bidding war is trickling down to classrooms, where companies are going after top machine-learning Ph.D. interns as early as possible.

"They're pressuring them to drop out of school," according to Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship at MIT. "It's dizzying."

Explicit in the pitch for students is that advances in AI are happening so fast that a once-in-a-lifetime moment could be over by graduation, according to Bahat.

"A lot of people are figuring out they spend these few precious years when this technology is at an inflection point," said Bahat. "It's a really high-stakes choice."

The calculus has also changed for would-be founders thinking about starting foundational model startups who are daunted by how much they have to raise, according to Navin Chaddha, managing partner of Mayfield Fund.

"For PhDs in the past, you could start a company for $5 million, but now you may need to raise $30 to $50 million to pay starting salaries," he said. He added that some would-be? founders stay at big tech companies because the salaries have gotten so high. "A lot of people don't want to take the risk because they have guaranteed money in the pocket."

Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI, has paid some talent around half a million dollars in salary for her new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, before even announcing a first funding round or a product, BI reported this week. The figure does not include equity or signing bonuses, which is where startup employees hope to make most of their money.

Eye-popping new salaries side, some in the industry hope that startups can maintain their ethos that money isn't the only draw.

In contrast to Wall Street, tech has long espoused a view of doing something good for the world.

"At the very elite levels for AI research, there are a lot of people who are extremely values-driven, so not being mission-driven is a dead end," Das said. "Usually when you're not mission-driven, attrition is bad and productivity is poor."

Do you have a tip to share about the AI recruiting wars? Contact reporter Ben Bergman securely on Signal at BenBergman.11

• Luckin Coffee just opened its first US store and I sampled drinks, including a pineapple cold brew.
• Customers were stunned by the hugely discounted prices and generally pleased with the experience.
• As a coffee purist, I wasn't thrilled, but think Luckin Coffee could hurt Starbucks with its prices.

Nothing says Tuesday morning like a mysteriously chunky, not entirely disappointing $2 pineapple cold brew.

At least not if you're close to a Luckin Coffee, the Chinese chain that has overtaken Starbucks in China and opened its first two US locations this week in Manhattan. The brand aims to lure customers in with low prices and consistent promos.

I visited the Greenwich Village location on Tuesday morning. All ordering happens on the app, which I quickly downloaded before hopping on the subway. I was a bit overwhelmed at first, my phone screen suddenly filled with brightly colored "summer essentials" and a surprising recommended drink: pineapple cold brew.

The prices were maybe more surprising than the flavors — because of an opening promo, every drink cost just $1.99. I went with the pineapple cold brew and a "solar breeze," which is a mix of blood orange and grapefruit flavors.

My drinks were waiting for me when I arrived at the small store, and an employee helped me scan the QR code attached to my order to pick them up. I wasn't alone in my confusion; employees politely helped most customers figure out the QR code situation.

Slight confusion about the pick-up aside, the ordering process was pretty fast and seamless, but it lacked a human connection. In fact, the whole place seemed impersonal, with nondescript wall photographs and everyone staring at their phones by design.

One thing to know before I give my reviews: I'm something of a coffee purist. I generally drink black drip or an iced coffee with a splash of milk. Maybe I'll get a dirty chai or a cappuccino if I'm feeling crazy. Needless to say, I'm not the ideal customer for fruit-infused cold brew or "iced coconut velvet latte," whatever that entails.

My first sip of the pineapple cold brew just tasted like chunky pineapple juice — not bad, but not coffee. After some aggressive cup shaking, I took another sip. This time, it also tasted like chunky pineapple juice, just more watered down. Weirdly, I wasn't mad about it.

The solar breeze was pleasantly sour and also unexpectedly filled with orange chunks. I probably would've preferred it in the afternoon rather than at 10 am, but I can see why juice aficionados would be pleased.

Bruce Leon, 53, told me he actually liked the chunkiness of the pineapple cold brew, because it suggested the drink wasn't made from syrup. He said he'd never heard of Luckin before, but plans to come back with a friend. Chelsea, 33, also didn't know about the brand but walked in because it's across from her subway stop. Her plain cold brew was, she said, "really good."

Courtney Kraft, 30, however, knew all about Luckin's presence in China and was visiting for a second time. She was doing work at one of the few tables and sipping a coconut water matcha, which she said was "delicious."

Jeremy, 28, learned about Luckin from the news and ordered an iced coconut latte. I witnessed Jeremy's first Luckin sip, which was met with a content head nod. "It's good!" he said. He said he thought the quality matched Starbucks, but he preferred Starbucks' app.

Of everyone I spoke with, Evan, 30, was by far the biggest Luckin expert — he'd been to locations in Shanghai, where he's from. His go-to is the iced coconut latte, and he said he remembers constant promos at the locations in Shanghai.

At this point, I had to try the iced coconut latte, which was unavailable when I first ordered because the location was entirely out of milk. I added a "chocolate frappe" and banana yogurt bread, one of the few food offerings, to my order, too.

The latte didn't taste much like coconut, but also didn't taste too strongly of coffee. I hadn't had a frappe since middle school, when I would order a double-chocolately chip frappuccino from Starbucks and convince myself I was caffeinated. It tasted like a moderately icy milkshake, though, so I wasn't complaining.

By now, I was weighed down with four cups, and I assume everyone in Luckin thought I was completely insane. An employee kindly handed me two bags for my many purchases, the retail version of the Oscars walk-off music.

Everyone I talked to raved about the prices, especially in New York City, where Courtney said she can pay up to $15 for a specialty drink. At Luckin's NYC store, a regular-price iced latte costs $5.75, compared to $5.95 at Starbucks, but the company is known for frequent discounts. Jeremy said that with the promo, the prices are unbeatable. Even though Starbucks is his preferred coffee, he said cost is more important than other factors.

Analysts previously told BI that Luckin's model of offering heavily discounted prices may not be sustainable in the US, though Starbucks' increasingly high costs might offer an opening. Representatives declined to comment for this article.

While standing outside, I saw a young woman pass the sign advertising coffee for $1.99, double back, and download the app.

I can't say I'll necessarily be back at Luckin, but again, I'm a coffee purist, and this brand doesn't seem to cater to those of us who think less is more. Generally, the New Yorkers I talked to seemed pleased and eager to return, especially if the discounts keep rolling in.

I wouldn't be shocked if Starbucks, already struggling with falling sales, soon starts offering summer promos on some sort of fruity, unlikely coffee concoction.

• Skims' cofounder said he turned to Starbucks for business inspiration.
• He said Starbucks drinks were premium but affordable, and the quality difference was worth the price.
• Skims, which sells bras priced at $50 and above, commands a premium over its competitors.

Skims' cofounder said he wanted the firm to become the Starbucks of underwear.

Jens Grede, who cofounded the loungewear company with his wife Emma Grede and media personality Kim Kardashian, said he looks to the coffee chain a lot for inspiration.

In a podcast episode with Colossus, released Tuesday, Grede said the "first sip feeling" with a Starbucks drink was a "distinct sensory experience."

"Every office building in America has free coffee. My office has free coffee. Pretty good ones, too," he said. "But I still think that Starbucks is worth my $5.50 or $6."

"It's at a premium, but it's still available to me. It's still affordable. And I believe that the quality difference is worth the difference in price," he added.

He said he tried to emulate this with Skims, which sells a range of basic, minimalist underwear, shapewear, and loungewear.

"I saw the opportunity to create that in this category. In the beginning, primarily for women, and now, of course, for everybody," Grede said in the podcast.

Most of Skims' bras cost more than $50, and its underwear costs around $18. Its most popular products, like its long ribbed slip dress and cotton tank top, retail for $80 and $38, respectively.

In comparison, Victoria's Secret's bras start at around $40, while Calvin Klein's start at around $30.

"It might be slightly more expensive, but still affordable," Grede added.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that Skims, which started in 2018, was worth $4 billion.

Grede's comments come as Starbucks is trying to turn its business around while remaining a premium coffee option.

Starbucks has faced various challenges, including long wait times, flaws in the customer experience, and issues with its mobile ordering system.

Starbucks' CEO, Brian Niccol, has since implemented his "Back to Starbucks" plan to improve the café experience.

Representatives for Skims did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Vinod Khosla predicted that humanoid robots will be available in a few years.
• The Khosla Ventures founder said that robots already exist, but they cannot self-learn new tasks.
• Tech leaders like Nvidia and Amazon are investing heavily in robotics.

A new age of human-looking, multi-tasking robots may be here sooner than you think, says Vinod Khosla.

In an episode of the "Uncapped" podcast published on Tuesday, the billionaire venture capitalist predicted that robots that don't need to be programmed would be available in a few years. The 70-year-old VC's notable investments include OpenAI, DoorDash, Block, and Impossible Foods.

"Robotics will take a little longer, but I think we'll have the ChatGPT moment in the next two to three years," he said.

Khosla said that these robots will most likely be humanoid. He said there will be enough demand for them to lower costs.

"Almost everybody in the 2030s will have a humanoid robot at home," he said. "Probably start with something narrow like do your cooking for you. It can chop vegetables, cook food, clean dishes, but stays within the kitchen environment."

He estimated that these robots would cost $300 to $400 a month, which would be affordable for anyone who already gets house help.

Khosla said that some robots already exist and those made by Chinese companies are "pretty damn amazing," but they come with a big drawback.

"They're not learning robots. You change the environment and they don't do as well," he said. "If you walk a human in here and say clean up, they'll know what to do. A robot needs to do that."

In response to a question about why a hardware company like Apple has not already built a robot like this, Khosla said innovation has rarely come from large incumbents. Uber, for example, did not come from Hertz, nor was Netflix a product of major networks.

Several tech leaders have said they are making big bets on robotics and physical AI.

Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has been vocal about a future dominated by physical AI, where robots will play a significant role in both industries and daily life.

"I love the idea that I'll have my own R2-D2, my own C-3PO — my R2 will be following me, and for many people just growing up now, they'll have their own personal R2 with them for their lives," he said in September.

Last week, at the company's annual investor meeting, Huang said that AI and robotics are one of the biggest growth areas for the chipmaker. They represent "a multitrillion-dollar growth opportunity."

He added that autonomous vehicles, which he said will be the first commercial application of robotics, are a big focus for Nvidia.

On Monday, Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said robotics represent a growth area for head count.

"We're going to hire more people in AI and more people in robotics," he said in an interview with CNBC.

• Russia's manufacturing activity contracted sharply in June, a sign that its economy could be slowing.
• The downturn was driven by weak demand and a strong ruble, impacting exports and jobs.
• Russia's economy, fueled by wartime spending, faces sustainability challenges amid global uncertainty.

Russia's wartime economy may finally be losing steam, fresh data shows.

In June, Russia's manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index, or PMI, sank to 47.5 — its sharpest pace of contraction since March 2022, according to S&P Global.

This was a reversal from the PMI of 50.2 in May, when Russia's manufacturing activity expanded.

"The Russian manufacturing sector signalled a renewed deterioration in operating conditions during June," S&P Global wrote.

The downturn was driven by a contraction in new orders due to weak client demand and the strong ruble, which makes Russian exports more expensive.

As a result, factories cut jobs at the fastest pace since April 2022 and slashed purchasing activity at a rate not seen since March 2022.

The downturn has hit sentiment among Russian goods producers amid concerns about global economic uncertainty, sending business confidence down to its lowest level since October 2022, according to S&P Global.

Sharp slowdown after growth on 'budgetary amphetamines'

The results from the latest S&P Global manufacturing PMI survey are a contrast against the resilience that Russia's economy has been projecting over the last few years.

Russia appears to have avoided an economic collapse since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But many analysts have said its resilience isn't sustainable in the long run as it's fueled by wartime spending.

"It was growth on budgetary amphetamines," Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said at a briefing last month.

He said Russia's massive government spending and changes to budgetary rules had helped the country to largely overcome the "most punishing effects of the sanctions."

By the end of 2023, the economy was running so hot that Russia's top central banker warned that it may overheat. Inflation spiked and interest rates surged. Russia's key interest rate now sits at 20%.

But signs of a sharp slowdown are emerging.

Just last month, Russian economy minister Maxim Reshetnikov warned that the country is "on the brink" of a recession.

Russia's GDP grew 1.4% in the first quarter of the year from a year ago, according to Rosstat, the country's official statistics service. This is a sharp slowdown from the 4.5% growth it posted in the fourth quarter of last year. In 2024, Russia's economy grew 4.3% for the full year.

"Whether it's a managed slowdown or a severe drop, we still don't know," Kolyandr said. "Nevertheless, we see the economy slowing down."

Sarah Chiappetta needed some career advice a few months ago, so she turned to a close friend. When she laid out her dilemma over text, her friend's response was suspiciously helpful. Chiappetta says the message was "overly sympathetic," acknowledged her feelings thoroughly, and used something she'd rarely, if ever, seen her friend use before — an em dash. All of it made her pause. The words were comforting, but they sounded a lot like ChatGPT.

"I wasn't mad. I was a little weirded out," Chiappetta, a 30-year-old product marketing manager in San Francisco, tells me. She wondered: "Is my text that hard that you need ChatGPT to help you with it?"

Millions of people are now yapping with chatbots as if they're coworkers, BFFs, boyfriends, girlfriends, and even, in rare cases, spouses. Some see this as dystopian; others see it as a band-aid for the so-called loneliness epidemic; and to others, it's a godsend. But as developing relationships with chatbots becomes more normalized, what remains more stigmatized, perhaps, is when people use generative AI to foster their human relationships, in texts to their IRL friends, partners, and families. Research shows that people think of people more negatively when they receive a text that appears AI-generated, and social media is abound with ChatGPT police. There are telltale signs, like em dashes or the word "delve," which ChatGPT favors and has injected into the speech of its super users, the sleuths say.

Bringing GenAI into our personal conversation could transform how we perceive one another and how we socialize. We've long grown comfortable with autocorrect and predictive text helping us spit out emails and texts. But large language models can entirely outsource the labor of comforting and confronting our friends. New research from MIT suggests that people using ChatGPT to assist with writing essays may get lazier and increasingly dependent on the technology with time, and "consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels" compared to control groups that either used Google or no aid to write their essays. As we start using GenAI to flirt on dating apps, write wedding vows, or confront friends and family in tough conversations, will it similarly deteriorate our social muscles and ability to connect to one another?

Development and adoption of AI is far outpacing the study of its social impacts, says Jess Hohenstein, a former AI researcher at Cornell University. But there is concern that the tech might undermine trust in how we text each other. "We don't know who we're actually talking to, and I want to talk to my friends and have validation that it's actually them that's talking to me and giving me feedback and listening to me," Hohenstein says. "Could we potentially be moving to a place where face-to-face interactions are the only interactions we can truly trust?"

The way AI will affect our convos depends on how the tech is chiming in. For each offended recipient of a text that reads like it was copied and pasted straight from ChatGPT instead of from your bestie's heart, there are people who feel AI helps put your best, most polished self forward. The issue, experts tell me, depends on how authentic to you the sentiment remains. If you're fully presenting "AI in conversation as yourself, then you're not being authentic," says Marisa T. Cohen, who is dating app Hily's "authentic relationship expert." But if you're asking AI to coach you to be wittier or kinder, "that's just maybe giving you a little bit of assistance" akin to asking friends or self-help articles for a hand.

A 2023 study out of The Ohio State University underscores the potential complications of texting friends with AI. Participants were told they had a years-long friendship with a fictional Taylor, and told to text her seeking support, advice, or to tell her their birthday was coming up. They then received replies and were told that they either came directly from Taylor, that Taylor had human help writing the message, or that Taylor used gen AI to craft the response. Both AI and human intervention led people to feel that their relationship with Taylor was not very close, and the AI messages were also rated as less appropriate responses. Similarly, a 2023 study from Cornell University found that conversations become more efficient and people use more positive language when conversing with the help of AI smart replies, but people also had more negative evaluations of others more who used algorithmic responses (or those they think might be using AI).

"We really just see this critical disconnect," says Hohenstein, who worked on the research from Cornell. "Using AI to communicate actually can kind of improve the way that we talk to each other, but there's this perception where it's judged so negatively, and we think this could be due to these societal assumptions about AI kind of lacking authenticity and being less human."

Reddit is flush with posts from people hurt to learn their loved ones are talking to them with AI. One person complained that receiving a clearly AI-generated text made it seem "like our friendship is a chore." Another says: "It's YOUR letter to me, so if I find out an AI (or friend) wrote it for you, that certainly won't make me think highly of you." According to a new survey from Hily, 45% of Gen Zers say using AI in dating makes the process less authentic.

Part of the awkwardness of using AI as a mediator in a conversation may stem from the very nature of how large language models work, which is based on prediction and probability. "Telling you what is the most likely next best word is just so different from telling you what I think," says Quinn White, a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. When AI becomes a mediator in the conversation, "it's fundamentally different from what we're doing when we talk with each other," White says. People come to friends when they want to be heard, and ultimately to receive an opinion from that friend, not from a bot trained on all of the available information on the internet. And a good friend will listen, validate you, and tell you what you need to hear, not just what you statistically may want to hear.

Chiappetta says she called her friend out, nicely, asking if the text was generated by AI. Her friend copped to using ChatGPT for parts of her response, but not all, and Chiappetta dropped the inquisition from there. She says she has since noticed some other longer texts from the friend that also have hints of AI in them. But that doesn't make Chiappetta less likely to turn to the friend for advice or value her less. "She's still a really good friend," Chiappetta says, and is comforted by the thought that she is still getting through to her friend, even if there's an AI mediator creeping in the chat. "Generally, I like ChatGPT's advice. It's still helpful to get," she says.

For some who are neurodivergent, contending with social anxiety, or facing a tough conversation, GenAI tools can make for helpful dress rehearsal for conversations with friends. "Incorporating generative AI is a sign of caring a lot about the other person," David Deal, a marketing consultant, tells me. The 62-year-old has used ChatGPT recently to work through conversations with much younger people; one a mentee, and one a relative. Deal has used ChatGPT to workshop a response to his mentee, telling the bot he didn't want to come off as a "mansplaining jerk," and asking for help crafting an affirming reply to a young woman — the large language models, he says, have evolved to understand context like that, which was top of mind in his response. The chatbot, Deal says, suggested he lead the response with more outright empathy and restate how she was feeling to show he had been actively listening to her concerns. "I don't know that I would have done that in my first reply," he tells me.

There are also times when we may be better off showing up as a muted, less authentic version of ourselves. That's the version of herself Sarah, who asked me not to use her last name because she's still in the process of finalizing a divorce, has been trying to be as she works through a custody agreement and the splitting up of assets with her soon-to-be ex-husband. She's relying on ChatGPT to translate acrimonious texts to him. "Whenever you're in anything that's contentious, or you're worried about anybody reading your texts, you just want to be really polite," she tells me. "There are moments when I, as myself, cannot do that."

Sarah will type up what she wants to say, with all the emotionally-charged snark and frustration over coordinating coparenting, and ask ChatGPT to rephrase the ask as "respectful, but with firm boundaries" to get across the logistical info she needs to say. Sarah gets the satisfaction of still putting her rage into words, but also the feeling of "moral superiority" as she sends texts to her ex that are calm, cool, and collected, and he responds with cheap jabs, sometimes made even angrier by her composure. "It does a good job of separating yourself from a hostile situation," she says.

I'm in a very active group chat, where six of us jump between topics every day. If the chat really takes off and you're the only one on do not disturb, it's common to pick up your phone to hundreds of unread messages. I wondered if ChatGPT could step in and summarize when this happens, so I fed it a few days of group chat content. The chatbot was accurate, but missed the mark on the kind of humor only humans, and sometimes close friends, can get. One friend jokingly wished us all a happy "Hoagie Day," which ChatGPT summarized as a "culturally significant" celebration.

But the bot did a decent job of summarizing a section where we all went back and forth trying to work out details for a camping trip. I asked then what I should say next, ChatGPT suggested something on topic and something "humorous": "I'm only coming camping if someone promises to take a dramatic candid of me staring into the woods like I'm in a folk album cover" — which, if I ever sent this, I'm trusting my friends would call a wellness check on me to make sure I haven't been kidnapped. For a TL;DR on what your friends are saying, chatbots might help in a pinch. But if you want your friends to maintain their respect for you, it's still best to type with your own two thumbs.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Canva's cofounder said creatives should embrace AI, and it'd be foolish not to do so.
• Cliff Obrecht said designers are reacting to AI as they did to Canva in its early days.
• But Canva helped free designers' time for more "high-value work," he said.

Canva's cofounder and chief operating officer says it's foolish for creatives not to embrace AI.

Cliff Obrecht, who cofounded the design software company with his wife Melanie Perkins, said designers are reacting to AI like they did to Canva in its early days.

"So at Canva, when we launched, a lot of designers said, 'Canva, we hate you. You are ruining our industry. You are like letting everyone design,'" Obrecht said on a Tuesday podcast episode of Masters of Scale.

"And so over time, it didn't take long, within four years, designers didn't feel threatened by Canva," he said, adding that Canva's tools helped designers free up time for "high-value work."

He said he sees "AI as just another step in that evolution," and that it's time for creatives to embrace the new technology.

"Not embracing AI as a creative is, you can see where it's going. It seems folly," he said to the podcast's host, Bob Safian.

Canva first launched AI-powered tools in 2023, with its "Magic" branded tools, which assisted in copywriting and designing. In April, it launched its Visual Suite 2.0, which integrated tools for design, writing, coding, and data visualization.

This comes as creatives from various industries have raised concerns over the last few years about AI killing their jobs.

In 2023, Adobe employees slammed the company after it launched Firefly, an extensive suite of generative AI tools. Adobe employees, whose customer base consists of creatives, said the tool would kill the jobs of some of its customers.

There were also concerns that Adobe could use creators' content to train its AI models, something the company denied in a blog post in 2024.

The AI debate has reached Hollywood. In 2023, more than 11,000 Hollywood film and TV screenwriters went on strike to criticize the use of AI in the film industry and demand more regulation in the field.

However, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the cofounder of DreamWorks, said in an AI conference in December that top Hollywood showrunners and creators are embracing AI and seeing it as a useful resource to their creative processes.

In June, former Disney exec Kevin Mayer said in an Opening Bid podcast that AI could make video and storyline creation more efficient for creatives.

Representatives for Canva did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Ukraine's GUR has released a video of a fixed-wing drone being catapulted into action near Crimea.
• It said its special forces used UJ-26 Bober drones to strike at faraway Russian defenses.
• The $110,000 fixed-wing drones appear to be equipped with thermal cameras and FPV controls.

Ukraine's intelligence directorate (GUR) has released footage of Kyiv's UJ-26 "Bober" drone being launched via catapult to attack Russian air defenses.

The video, published on Tuesday, shows the locally manufactured 8-foot-long loitering munition being slung into the air from a fixed ramp. GUR said its special forces launched the drones to attack targets in Russian-occupied Crimea.

The new launch method allows the fixed-wing Bober to enter combat without landing gear, which would likely improve its range or maneuverability. Traditionally, the Bobers take off from airstrips like traditional aircraft.

Given that the ramp would likely have to be set up in Ukrainian-held territory west of the Dnieper River, the drone would have to travel a minimum of roughly 60 miles to reach Russian targets in Crimea.

The drones also seem to be equipped with thermal cameras in several first-person view clips uploaded by the defense intelligence agency.

One montage appears to show a drone evading a missile and then flying into a $15 million Pantsir S-1 point air defense system. A second drone is also shown flying into the ground next to a Pantsir S-1 as the vehicle crew scrambles for cover.

GUR described the attack as the "successful defeat" of the Pantsir, but did not show footage of the results.

The intelligence agency also said it conducted similar successful attacks on three Russian radar systems — The Niobium-SV, the Pechora-3, and the Provotnik GE — as well as a fourth-generation Su-30 fighter.

It uploaded several first-person view clips of drones approaching these systems with thermal cameras, though many of them can only be seen flying close to their target.

Business Insider could not independently verify the damage caused.

Ukrainian media regularly describe the Niobium-SV as a $100 million system. Earlier Russian estimates from before the full-scale invasion indicated that the Kremlin was acquiring the Niobium-SV in 2016 for about $40 million per unit. However, these may have since been fitted with more expensive upgrades.

Meanwhile, one Bober, which translates to "beaver" in Ukrainian, reportedly costs around $110,000 to manufacture. The propeller drone is meant for long-range attacks and is known to carry the KZ-6 charge, a 6.6-pound demolition explosive designed to break through concrete or armor.

It's yet another example of how the war has increasingly featured cheaper systems being used to attack and, at times, destroy expensive high-end equipment, posing difficult questions for the traditional defense procurement model that heavily prioritized advanced technology.

For example, one of Ukraine's biggest community drone funds, run by activist Serhii Sternenko, reported to donors that its crowdfunded drones have damaged at least 11 Buk surface-to-air missile systems in 2025. The fund often publishes footage of such strikes.

Depending on whether they have the latest upgrades, these defenses can cost Russia between $10 and $100 million each. By comparison, Sternenko's fund said it receives roughly $6 million in donations a month for its entire budget.

• China has pledged to curb aggressive price-cutting to stabilize its economy.
• China's marquee industries, like electric vehicles, are threatened by price wars.
• A senior BYD executive said last month that the EV price war is "not sustainable."

It looks like China has finally recognized how a relentless price war is backfiring on its economy.

At a high-level meeting chaired by Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday, China's top leadership pledged to curb "low-price and disorderly competition among enterprises" and create a "unified national market," according to Xinhua state news agency.

China's acknowledgment of unhealthy competition among its local firms comes amid the West's criticisms over the country's industry overcapacity and cheap exports. These products have undercut domestic industries and have led to factory closures and job losses from the US to Europe.

While Beijing has consistently pushed back against those accusations, the price war is likely taking a toll on its own economy, too. The country remains stuck in a prolonged slump marked by persistent deflationary pressure and depressed consumer confidence.

Beijing has rolled out consumer-focused measures like subsidies for small appliances in an effort to stimulate demand, but it's not enough. Businesses are still cutting prices aggressively to boost sales, fueling a deflationary spiral that depresses wages and threatens broader economic stability.

Now, the Chinese government is stepping in to address challenges on the supply side, Zhiwei Zhang, the president and chief economist of Hong Kong-based Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a Tuesday note.

Tuesday's meeting follows a sharply worded editorial in the Communist Party-owned People's Daily on Sunday, which railed against the "involution" of excessive competition that has "distorted" the market and caused "adverse effects on high-quality development."

There were no specific details on how the Chinese government plans to address over-competition. Zhang said he expects measures to be announced in the next few months.

'Not sustainable'

China's moves to stem excessive price wars in its economy came as recent data shows renewed stresses in the world's second-largest economy that has been struggling to recover from an epic property crisis.

An official survey released Monday showed manufacturing activity continued to contract in June, with smaller firms facing "stiff pressure." US tariffs were affecting smaller companies the most, according to a Bank of America analysis on the same day.

"Going forward, with low expectations of further policy support, domestic demand may fail to compensate for the fading external demand," wrote the analysts.

Excessive competition "directly affects employee wage levels, government tax revenue, and future investment confidence, thereby affecting the overall economic development," People's Daily wrote in its editorial.

The editorial pointed to the solar cell industry, highlighting what the paper called a"temporary oversupply." China has been flooding the market with solar cells for years, driving prices so low that some Europeans even started using them as garden fencing.

Tuesday's editorial also singled out the electric vehicle industry, where profit margins declined last year.

Electric vehicle giant BYD has acknowledged the stiff competition that has led to price wars and driven down profits in the industry.

"It's very extreme, tough competition," Stella Li, BYD's executive vice president, told Bloomberg last month. "No, it's not sustainable," she added.

• Idris Elba credits the struggles he faced before Hollywood for shaping his relentless work ethic.
• He says he grew up without much and once worked a "grim" Ford factory job before becoming famous.
• He now considers his career in Hollywood a privilege: "Actually, it's not that hard."

At 52, Idris Elba has made a name for himself as an actor, a producer, and even a DJ who played at Coachella this year. He says he gets his drive from not forgetting what his pre-Hollywood life was like.

During an interview on the "Good Hang with Amy Poehler" podcast published on Tuesday, "The Wire" actor spoke about his career and how the challenges he faced before fame continue to motivate him.

Elba told host Amy Poehler that he didn't find success until he was around 35 and that life before that was often difficult. "There were some very tough times," he said.

Coming from a working-class family, Elba said he grew up without having much "at all," adding that he had spent more of his life being poor than he has been famous or successful.

Part of what drives him is the fear of losing the success he's worked so hard to achieve: "There's part of it which is like, 'I don't want to let this go, so I just keep chucking for it,'" Elba said.

But the main thing that keeps him going is the memory of his pre-Hollywood job, he said. He used to work the "night shift" at the Ford Motor Company in Dagenham, East London.

"That is grim. It's a grim job, all right," Elba said. "Nothing compares to doing that, so when I get an opportunity to come and work with you, to come and work on a set, it doesn't even feel like work."

While it may seem to others that he's working incredibly hard now that he's famous, he doesn't see it that way. "Actually, it's not that hard," he said.

Moreover, his Hollywood career allows him to try his hand at many different things, unlike his factory job.

"You know, in a job like that, I did the same thing every night. Every night for two straight years. My dad did the same job for 25 years, so I consider this a privilege. This ain't work," Elba said.

In a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter promoting his then-partnership with the automobile manufacturer, Elba said he worked at Ford in the '80s because of his dad.

"My dad didn't want me to be a broke actor," Elba told The Hollywood Reporter.

In a 2022 SiriusXM interview, the actor said he also used to work as a security guard at a comedy club in New York City, and even sold weed to some comedians, including Dave Chappelle.

In a 2023 podcast, Elba said that he started going to therapy because he was "an absolute workaholic."

"It's just because I have some unhealthy habits that have really formed. And I work in an industry that I'm rewarded for those unhealthy habits," he said.

Elba isn't the only actor who has spoken about their less-than-glamorous jobs before becoming famous. Christopher Walken used to work in a circus when he was a child, while Nicole Kidman used to be a massage therapist, and Hugh Jackman was a physical education teacher at a high school before getting his big acting break.

Representatives for Elba and Ford did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.

• Corona's parent company said beer sales have dipped because Hispanic customers are cutting back.
• Constellation Brands said its top sales states, with large Hispanic populations, saw subdued spending.
• Customers, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic, had cut back on going out and gathering in groups.

Corona's parent company said its sales have fallen, in part because Hispanic customers aren't buying as much beer.

New York-based Constellation Brands posted its first quarter earnings on Tuesday, reporting $2.23 billion in beer sales in the quarter — a 2% decline from the year before.

The company said its top sales states, particularly "zip codes with larger Hispanic populations," saw subdued spending. Hispanic customers make up about 50% of the company's beer consumer base, Constellation Brands' CEO, Bill Newlands, said in April's earnings call.

Newlands and the company's CFO said in a joint commentary on Tuesday that the company had surveyed a group of its customers, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic. The execs wrote that survey results showed "over 80% of the surveyed Hispanic and non-Hispanic consumers expressed concerns about the socioeconomic environment in the U.S."

The survey results also showed that customers were reducing their group gatherings, both in public and at home, and avoiding shopping at convenience stores and gas stations.

Newlands said in the earlier April earnings call that over half of their Hispanic customers were concerned about immigration changes.

Since the start of President Donald Trump's second term in January, he has cracked down on illegal immigration. In his campaign rally last November, he promised to carry out the "largest deportation program" in American history.

Business owners in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations previously told BI that they saw lower footfall because customers feared Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

Constellation Brands, which also owns the beer brand Modelo and the wine brand Kim Crawford, saw an overall 6% decline in sales in the latest quarter compared to the year before, with a total revenue of $2.52 billion.

The company's wines and spirits category performed worse than its beer category, with a 28% decrease in net sales in the quarter.

Representatives for Constellation Brands did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Elon Musk said that wielding a chainsaw at CPAC "lacked empathy."
• "Milei gave me the chainsaw backstage and I ran with it," he wrote on X.
• Musk is now in a deadlock with Trump over the president's big spending bill.

Elon Musk said that brandishing a chainsaw onstage in February probably wasn't such a good idea.

Musk — who's been on a tear criticizing President Donald Trump's spending bill — was posting on X about the debt ceiling on Tuesday. That got a response from an X user who criticized Musk for his actions in February.

"Maybe you shouldn't have taken the chainsaw on stage and acted a fool. Maybe you could have gotten more done if you weren't so worried about looking cool," the X user, Jim Spradlin, wrote, responding to one of Musk's Tuesday tweets on government spending.

"Valid point. Milei gave me the chainsaw backstage and I ran with it, but, in retrospect, it lacked empathy," Musk replied, referring to Javier Milei, Argentina's president.

That moment at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February has become an iconic image of Musk's time helming the Department of Government Efficiency.

"President Milei has a gift for me," Musk said onstage at CPAC.

Milei then walked out from backstage and handed the chainsaw to Musk, who lifted it over his head and brandished it briefly while growling.

"This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy," Musk said, chainsaw aloft.

Now, things are different with Trump and Musk. Musk has become one of the most vocal opponents of Trump's "big, beautiful bill."

Musk started criticizing the bill in June, leading to an ugly, public fallout with Trump that seemed to clear up. But he reignited his criticism on Saturday, posting on X that the president's signature tax bill — which would cut an electric vehicle tax credit that has helped Musk's Tesla — "will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country."

"Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future," he wrote.

He also threatened to form a new political party and fund primary opponents to any lawmakers who help pass the spending bill.

In response, Trump has suggested at press events and in a post on Truth Social that DOGE could look into slashing Musk's government contracts.

"I don't know. We'll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon," Trump said at the White House on Tuesday. "Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies."

Musk then wrote on X: "So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now."

Musk and representatives for Milei did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• TikTok employees are preparing for possible layoffs on Wednesday morning.
• The company told global e-commerce staff it would announce "organizational and personnel changes."
• The TikTok Shop team has had several rounds of layoffs this year.

TikTok and ByteDance employees are bracing for possible layoffs after the company informed staff it would announce "organizational and personnel changes" early Wednesday morning, according to a memo viewed by Business Insider.

The changes would impact workers in the company's global e-commerce business, TikTok Shop, which has had several rounds of layoffs this year.

"Over the past month, we have assessed how we can best support our evolving Global E-commerce business in alignment with our mission and evolving goals in the market," the company wrote in the memo.

These changes come from "careful analysis of how to create more efficient operating models for the team's long-term growth," the company wrote.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

TikTok's US e-commerce team has been under scrutiny from leadership at its parent company, ByteDance, this year. The division's top executive told staff in a February all-hands call that the country failed to meet its performance goals in 2024. The division has faced new obstacles in 2025 after Trump hiked tariffs on China, where many of TikTok's global sellers are based. Weekly US order volume fell in mid-May compared to mid-April after tariffs went into effect, BI previously reported.

The company has trimmed staff this year through a mix of layoffs and performance reviews, during which TikTok has offered some people a choice between performance-improvement plans or exits with severance. As US team members have left the company, leaders from China and Singapore with experience on TikTok's Chinese sister app, Douyin, have taken their place, staffers previously told BI.

The organizational changes come amid broader uncertainty for TikTok's US team members. The company is negotiating with the Trump administration over a 2024 law that required ByteDance to divest from TikTok's US assets or face a potential ban. Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement of the law through executive orders amid discussions.

The uncertainty is taking its toll on one staffer who received the message Tuesday evening that their team would be impacted by the organizational changes. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak about the company, and their identity is known to BI.

"I think for many of us, we just want clarity," the employee said. "These eternal extensions make no sense for anyone who works here. How can we plan our jobs and lives if every 90 days we might get banned or sold?"

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at @danwhateley.94. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

The détente between two of the world's most powerful men did not hold.

After their very public fallout over President Donald Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill in early June, Elon Musk, the former face of DOGE, softened his tone on the president. Musk deleted several posts on X, and Trump also simmered the war of words.

The Tesla CEO restarted his posting spree on X, however, after the Senate narrowly cleared a procedural vote on the spending bill over the weekend. By Tuesday, when the Senate ultimately passed its version of the Big, Beautiful Bill, the feud was back in full swing.

From the president saying that DOGE may need to be unleashed on Musk, to the world's richest man's vow to establish a new political party, here are the key quotes to understand how the past 24 hours (and counting) unfolded.

• Liquor licenses for two of Trump's NJ golf courses remain under review due to his felony conviction.
• On Tuesday, state officials said they have extended the two licenses for another six months.
• Trump can't touch any liquor-sale proceeds for the clubs at Colts Neck and Bedminster — for now.

The Champagne will keep flowing for another six months at two of President Donald Trump's New Jersey golf courses, despite his felony conviction. For now, though, the Trump Organization is barred from touching the proceeds.

Officials with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office said Tuesday that they have issued temporary, half-year extensions for the liquor licenses at the Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster.

The last-minute extensions were necessary to keep the drinks flowing while state officials continue to review Trump's application to renew the licenses for the coming year.

Without the extension, the licenses at the Colts Neck and Bedminster clubs would have expired outright on Monday, June 30.

But the extensions come with heavy strings attached — including that Trump, as a convicted felon, and any other corporate members of the clubs' LLCs must keep their hands out of the bar tills at the two clubs indefinitely.

The attorney general's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control is requiring that proceeds from the two clubs' liquor licenses be held in untouched accounts kept separate from those for the clubs' other income.

It's a constraint that Peter Rhodes — a lawyer who's specialized for 30 years in New Jersey liquor licensing — says he's never seen imposed.

Usually, when a license owner or beneficiary becomes a felon, they are simply given time to walk away from the license, Rhodes said, usually by selling or transferring their interest to a non-felon.

"One might infer that the ABC is struggling with how to handle this issue — with how to deprive a felon of the proceeds of their license," he told BI.

"In short, I find it peculiar," said Rhodes, whose Haddonfield-based firm, Cahill, Wilinski, Rhodes & Joyce, has served for 50 years as counsel to the New Jersey Licensed Beverage Association.

"What they don't say is what happens to that money if, in fact, they find that he is disqualified," Rhodes added. "They can't just confiscate it."

A spokesperson for New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin told Business Insider that the special conditions "are consistent with the division's obligation to ensure that all liquor licensees comply with the law."

"New Jersey statutes state that profiting from a liquor license is a privilege, not a right granted by law," the spokesperson said in a statement.

It was soon after Trump's May 30, 2024, conviction that New Jersey officials first said that the two golf club licenses were under review.

In June of 2024, they announced that they did not intend to renew the licenses due to Trump's new status as a felon.

Both the Bedminster and Colts Neck licenses are in the name of Donald Trump, Jr., the president's son, but the state AG's office ruled at the time that Trump himself is the primary beneficiary of the clubs' liquor sales.

A license-revocation hearing — at which Trump would bear the burden of proving he was qualified to be a license beneficiary — was initially set for July 2024, only to be repeatedly canceled. A new hearing date has yet to be announced.

New Jersey law requires liquor licenses be revoked if their owner or primary beneficiary is sentenced for a crime of moral turpitude, a category which includes felony falsifying business records. That's the state charge Trump was sentenced to in Manhattan in January, nine days before his inauguration.

This week's license extension further requires that by September 30, the Trump Organization provide the alcoholic beverage control officials with details of "the corporate structure, ownership, and beneficiary interests" behind the licenses.

Trump's third New Jersey golf club is the Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia, which is 45 minutes from that city in Pine Hill. The town, not the state, regulates that license, which was also due to expire June 30.

Officials in Pine Hill and a food and beverage manager at the golf club there did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The chief legal officer of the Trump Organization also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the license renewals and the required special conditions.