Narrativa is among a crop of startups seizing on the artificial intelligence boom to enthusiastically automate writing tasks that would once have fallen to humans. From penning regulatory documentation for Pfizer to zhuzhing up marketing copy for insurance and e-commerce firms and helping generate breaking news articles for The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles-based Narrativa boasts roughly 50 clients in various industries. But one of its core focus areas, comprising a quarter of its business, is a little more polarizing than the rest: gambling.

Working with major industry players like 888 and Betway, Narrativa uses large language models to pump out everything from automated summaries of sports games to SEO-friendly reviews of online casino games and promotional social media posts. With no humans required, the 20-person company's AI tools produce 10 million words a month for gambling clients — the effective output of 170-odd full-time writers producing a grueling 3,000 words a day. It's all in service of enticing gamblers to place more bets.

"You want to create a community, you want people coming back for more," Matthew Rector, Narrativa's vice president of content, says. "You want to foster that environment, and our content helps facilitate that."

Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, and the tech industry's other top impresarios talk a big game about how AI may one day attain sentience, solve the climate crisis, and lead society to a post-scarcity economy. Today, though, the technology is being embraced by traditional industries for more prosaic — and mercenary — aims. Key among them is the gambling industry, which is rapidly adopting AI for everything from writing alluring online marketing copy to identifying and helping problem gamblers to tracking people and perfecting the physical layout of casinos.

The ultimate goal: to harvest ever more money from gamblers, by profiling them, feeding them content and games personalized to their whims, and cajoling them to stay longer and make bigger bets.

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The gambling industry, much like AI, is in the middle of an unprecedented gold rush. In 2018, a US Supreme Court ruling allowed states to legalize sports betting; nearly 40 states since did exactly that. Major investments have since flooded in, with some gambling stocks hitting record highs and private-equity firms jumping into multibillion-dollar deals with gambling and casino companies.

No longer bottlenecked by the limits of human sportsbook odds calculators, every moment of a sports game can be turned into a wager.

Meanwhile, consumers' wallets have been emptying: Americans bet a record $120 billion in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association. A study by California researchers released in 2024 estimated that legalized gambling across America may result in as many as 30,000 bankruptcies and an additional $8 billion in debt collections each year. Another paper out of Kansas found that average household investments in the stock market dropped in states where gambling was legalized by roughly $50 per quarter. (In Brazil, which legalized online gambling in 2018, as much as one-fifth of welfare money is now spent directly on gambling, the AP reported in November.)

Under the hood, artificial intelligence is helping power this surge.

Several online betting platforms, for example, offer "micro bets," which allow gamblers to bet in real time throughout the game — who gets the next touchdown or makes the next tackle, whether the next play will be a run or a pass. AI companies like SimpleBet (recently acquired by DraftKings for $195 million) have automated processes that allow the maximum number of possible micro bets to increase by an order of magnitude. No longer bottlenecked by the capabilities of human sportsbook odds calculators, every moment of a sports game can be turned into a wager. Won your bet that Lamar Jackson would throw on 2nd and 10? Why not bet again that he'll scramble for the first down on 3rd and 3?

Physical casinos are also looking to harness AI for efficiency gains. nQube, a Canadian startup run by a physics professor, uses machine learning to optimize the placement of slot machines on casino floors, profiling players and the performance of one-armed bandits individually and collectively — replacing an older generation of floor-manager intuition and basic analysis. Some of nQube's findings have been counterintuitive: It turns out that removing the total number of slot machines can often increase the casino's "win," if the machines are arranged in a way that redirects players to games where they'll make larger bets.

Jason Feige, a cofounder of nQube, had been working on computational astrophysics when his partner, Stasi Baran, found a scientific paper about the problem of optimal casino floor planning. Though neither had any gaming experience, they both realized their work could be a fit. "I like math and I like hard problems, and she brought me just a monster of a problem and I just fell in love with it," Feige says. "I have never seen data as clean and as comprehensive as what you see in this industry, largely because it is so heavily regulated. But that combined with the kind of powerful AI systems that I've been building, it was just such a natural fit. I just absolutely fell in love with the industry."

The prospect of deeper AI integration is definitely in the air. At one of the gambling industry's biggest events, G2E, a glitzy conference held in Las Vegas in September, there were packed panels on AI in sports betting, women in AI, AI-powered behavioral analytics and "responsible gambling," and AI for customer relationships.

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One of the most enticing, and controversial, uses of AI in gambling is customizing casinos — virtual and on the floor — to each gambler.

Just as Netflix uses machine learning and data science to tailor each user's feed to what they're most likely to binge, the startup Future Anthem uses similar tools to keep users hooked on casino websites. The UK-based software provider builds a personalized, dynamic homepage, presenting the exact right game — bingo, slots, poker — to cater to a player's desires at the exact right moment, offering bonuses if the player is getting dejected and keeping them betting for longer.

"We have machine-learning models that are understanding and humanizing that player, that player data," says Ian Tibot, Future Anthem's chief commercial officer. "We see every single spin of a slot, we see every single bet, and we actually understand the experience that the player is having by creating the concept of a session out of that data, and that allows us to understand changes in patterns of behavior."

Brick-and-mortar casinos are also digitally profiling their users. Some locations have RFID chips embedded in every gambling chip, tracking how each gambler is playing and building a profile that automatically directs human workers to intervene as needed — an extra free drink here, a bonus spin there. "Before it used to be like a pit boss maybe having their eyes on 40 players across five tables" to monitor bet sizes and manually assign perks and freebies, says Kasra Ghaharian, a researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, International Gaming Institute. "It wasn't very accurate," he says. AI allows casinos to "be much more precise in how you're tracking that activity."

Beyond using AI for efficiency gains and user profiling, the industry's ultimate vision for employing the technology is much more ambitious — and unsettling.

In a research paper published last May, the consultancy giant Deloitte's Global Lottery and Gambling Centre of Excellence predicted a future where every game could be personalized in real time to appeal to individual gamblers. Generative AI, the authors wrote, could "allow the games themselves to generate content based on the explicit or even implicit actions of players, from instantly generated new items and playing levels to in-game characters that can have lifelike discussions."

What if you had a casino that was very similar to the new generation of self-service Amazon stores where you don't need cash and you don't need people? Christina Thakor-Rankin

The technology, they continued, could create "individually themed online slot games that can respond to a player's voice and even generate novel content in response to a player's behavior and game history." Generative AI chatbots the players could talk to, games with themes automatically tailored to their preference — the ultimate filter bubble. Social media's endlessly personalized carousel of content is already notoriously addictive, and the damaging parasocial relationships that can be formed with AI chatbots are currently under a microscope following reports of suicide and self-harm linked to a popular provider. Adding these elements to the famously powerful money-extraction machine that is online gambling is a potent combination.

Gambling is historically a human-centric business — gamblers try their luck against the house, for better or worse. But Christina Thakor-Rankin, a veteran industry consultant based in the United Kingdom, dreams of an automatically managed brick-and-mortar casino in the years and decades ahead, akin to Amazon's automated Go convenience stores, with unnecessary human staff costs eating into the casino's margins.

"Look at the amount of operating expenditure required in terms of serving customers, monitoring customers, keeping them safe, people who work in the cage or the cashier pit bosses. What if you had a casino that was very similar to the new generation of self-service Amazon stores where you don't need cash and you don't need people?" she asked. "How would that kind of technology transform a world of sportsbooks, but also land-based casinos?"

At least one casino workers union, the Culinary Workers Union, has raised concerns about the risk of blue-collar jobs in Las Vegas being automated. In 2019, The Nevada Independent reported that between 38% and 65% of casino jobs (depending on the study cited) in the south of the state could be automated over the next decade and a half, calling the city "one of the most vulnerable to automation in the entire country."

But for many gamblers, a trip to Vegas isn't just a transaction — it's an experience, punctuated by banter with dealers, table service, shows, and the seedy glamour of the strip. It remains to be seen if they will accept a robot substitute.

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Artificial intelligence may be a moneymaker for gambling companies, but the companies say it's also something else: a remedy for problem gambling.

Playtech, a European gambling software provider, is one of several firms using AI to try to suss out when a gambler is demonstrating signs of addiction or problematic play and intervene. Part of this is recognizing a player's patterns — larger-than-usual bets, or declined deposits, or playing at unexpected times — and interjecting with prompts suggesting they take a break. (Future Anthem says its systems can also detect aberrant behavior and automatically check in with target gamblers.)

"Online gambling companies have lots, tons of data about their players because every single bet or every spin on a slot, every single deposit, the time you spend online, there's lots of information," says Francesco Rodano, Playech's chief policy officer. "So we train an AI model to analyze this behavior and recognize possible harmful patterns."

Playtech and other gambling companies are also developing chatbots that gamblers can talk to about addiction — the logic being that because gambling addiction is stigmatized, addicts may actually be more comfortable talking to a nonhuman.

Rodano acknowledges that the same technology that could help problem gamblers could also be used to exacerbate their addictions. "If you use a tool like ours to identify vulnerable players, in theory, you could use that information to target them — which is the opposite of what the tool is intended for, which is totally unethical," he says. "If you operate in a regulated market, it's very unlikely to happen because the regulator would notice that and clamp down."

Amid frothy valuations and wild hype, there's a risk of overstating the technology's near-term promise — particularly the more giddy ideas, such as Thakor-Rankin's predictions of a Caesar's Palace augmented with robotic, voice-activated "Centurions." And some industry insiders say that what's now called AI might be considered statistics or big data, just rebranded.

"I like to say that we've been doing AI since before it was cool and this new age of AI hype — it's been very interesting to navigate because on the one hand, everyone wants to talk about AI, which is great for us," says Stasi Baran, nQube's cofounder.

"On the other hand, there's so much noise to sift through for our customers and for us as well to determine, everyone says that they've got an AI product, but what's actually real and what actually brings real value? I mean, that's difficult to determine. I think there's a lot of overnight AI experts out there, and that concerns us."

This AI frothiness isn't unique to the gambling industry, and the space has long had a nose for innovations that boost its bottom line — from the development of electromechanical slot machines in the 1960s to the creation of loyalty programs for high rollers in the '80s. As ever, the house always wins.

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Rob Price is a senior correspondent for Business Insider and writes features and investigations about the technology industry. His Signal number is +1 650-636-6268, and his email is [email protected].

• Hekate Café & Elixir Lounge offers a sober experience in New York City.
• BI visited Hekate following the US Surgeon General's report linking alcohol to cancer.
• Though alcohol use soared amid the pandemic, there is a blossoming sober-curious movement.

Tucked away in Manhattan's East Village, a sober bar offers an alternative to the rest of the boozy scenes in New York City.

On a Saturday night, Eliott Edge, the bar manager at Hekate Café and Elixir Lounge, welcomed patrons, telling newcomers that: "Everything — with a capital E — is alcohol-free."

Business Insider revisited Hekate after US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said alcohol is a leading cause of cancer and should have warning labels like those on cigarette boxes.

Edge, a career bartender, said he was drunk for five years straight before seeking rehab. Now, after being sober for two years and rebranding himself as a mocktail bartender, he wasn't surprised by the surgeon general's announcement.

"The news is not news, yet at the same time, whenever an authority figure shows up and makes a declaration, it enables people to reconsider their behavior," Edge told BI. "People are now going to think about their choices differently."

Alcohol consumption surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and deaths from excessive alcohol use jumped nearly 30% from 2016 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heightened levels of excessive drinking continued into 2022, well after the pandemic first hit, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Even so, Gen Z drinks less than previous generations, fueling a growing interest in sober socializing.

"It does seem that there is a slowing down of alcohol consumption enough for those of us in the industry who make it our job to notice," Edge said. "If there is a silver lining to the pandemic, it is that this whole new world of non-alcoholic options really exploded onto the scene."

Edge predicted that every bar will have to have non-alcoholic options to remain competitive "because they're going to realize that it's like vegetarians or vegans or gluten-free or dairy-free. It's just another type of customer profile to cater to — and the ones that don't cater to that are going to go the way of the dinosaur."

Though Hekate is a totally sober experience, Edge said the bar is a "shining example" of how to do it right.

Drinks at Hekate are about $13 for those paying cash — slightly less than your average cocktail at an NYC bar.

But Edge says people come to bars for fun, and with his bar's music, lighting, and mood, Hekate delivers. The cozy bar, which shares its name with the Greek goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, is decorated accordingly.

"You don't need alcohol," Edge said. "Very little is required to have a good time. Really what we need is permission to have a good time, which is what booze does for us. But how often does that good time end in a shit show?"

Not only is he happier as a sober mocktail bartender, Edge said his customers seem happier too, even if they're only stopping by for a mocktail or two before going out for boozey drinks later on.

"My regulars look fantastic, you know? They don't look like they're slowly sliding down the hill," he said. "I'm not watching fights break out amongst best friends. I'm not watching dates dissolve into, you know, puddles of misery."

Perhaps the best part?

"My bathrooms are much cleaner."

"Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable," a senior White House official said.

Retirement payments will be made to millions of beneficiaries later in the week.

Zendaya turned heads as she arrived at the awards ceremony in dazzling style—with an equally eye-catching accessory.

The nursing student became the fourth winner from Alabama, while Miss Texas Annette Addo-Yobo was named first runner-up.

Jodie Foster won an award against Sofia Vergara, Cate Blanchett, Cristin Milioti, Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet.

• Ukraine's new attack in Kursk is featuring some impressive drone jamming, Russian military bloggers said.
• The bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces were able to break through because of "powerful electronic warfare."
• it's made it difficult for Russian drone operators to work in the area, they wrote.

Ukraine launched a renewed offensive in Russia's Kursk region on Sunday, where Russian pro-war bloggers say Kyiv's drone jammers have been working exceptionally well.

The "Operation Z" channel, a collection of dispatches from Russian war correspondents, wrote that the attack had focused on the Bolshesoldatsky district, to the northeast of the Ukrainian-held pocket in Kursk.

"In order to break through, the Ukrainian Armed Forces covered the area with powerful electronic warfare systems, making it difficult for our UAVs to operate," wrote the Telegram channel, which has over 1.6 million subscribers.

Razvedos Advanced Gear & Equipment, a Russian military news Telegram channel with over 152,000 subscribers, echoed those comments in a post on Sunday.

"It cannot be said that they were not expected in this direction, but they managed to VERY effectively use electronic warfare," it wrote of the fighting in Bolshesoldatsky.

Roman Alekhine, a military blogger with about 218,000 subscribers, wrote on his channel: "The enemy has covered the attack area with electronic warfare, so many drones are useless."

Alekhine later posted that some Russian drone operators were still able to switch to unjammed frequencies.

Sergei Kolyasnikov, another military blogger with about 498,000 subscribers, reported that about 10 Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles had entered the Bolshesoldatsky region.

"The area is covered with some powerful electronic warfare, nothing is flying at all," he wrote.

The specifics of Ukraine's new push this week into Russian territory are still unclear. Kyiv initially launched a surprise counteroffensive into Kursk in August, where it took an estimated 480 square miles of Russian land but has been slowly pushed back since.

Ukraine has stayed mostly silent on the matter. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation run by Ukraine's national security and defense council, alluded to an assault on Sunday by posting that Russian troops in Kursk "were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them."

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukraine's president, also hinted at an attack by writing on his Telegram channel that Russia was "getting what it deserves" in Kursk.

Meanwhile, Russia has outright declared that Ukraine had attacked again.

"On January 5, at about 09:00 Moscow time, in order to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counterattack with an assault group consisting of two tanks, a barrier vehicle, and 12 combat armored vehicles with troops in the direction of the Berdin farm," its defense ministry told state media.

As reports of Ukraine's jamming efforts emerged, the defense ministry published a video of a Russian drone operator coordinating a tank strike on an unknown target in a forested area, saying he was working in Kursk.

The Ukrainian and Russian Defense Ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Electronic warfare has increasingly been key on the battlefield as both Russia and Ukraine turn to cheap drones for reconnaissance, loitering munitions, and close-range bombing runs.

One development has seen both sides deploy wired drones. These use long fiber optic cables unfurled from a spool as the aerial system takes flight, allowing it to bypass jamming systems.

Should they become mainstream, they may pose yet another challenge for militaries that are already spending big on preparing against drone threats. The US, for example, is paying some $250 million to Anduril, Palmer Luckey's defense startup, for 500 drones and an electronic warfare system called Pulsar.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government and a big bank to work with China on AI.
• Russia has been seeking tech alternatives post-Ukraine invasion due to Western sanctions.
• A Russia-China AI partnership could raise concerns over censorship, among other issues.

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues seeking to expand his challenge of the West's order — this time in tech.

The Russian leader has ordered his government and Russian banking giant Sberbank to work with China on artificial intelligence, according to a December 30 post on the Kremlin's website.

Putin instructed his government and Sberbank to "ensure further cooperation with the People's Republic of China in conducting technological research and development in the field of artificial intelligence," according to the Kremlin's post. It was published three weeks after Putin announced a BRICS AI Alliance Network.

Putin delegated Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Sberbank CEO German Gref to lead the AI effort. A progress report is expected by April.

Russia's building parallel systems to the West

Putin's instructions came 34 months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which triggered sweeping Western sanctions against his regime.

The trade restrictions have hit Russia's access to financial payments technologies, prompting the country to seek substitutes in the form of parallel imports and domestic substitutes.

Russia has also been setting up alternative systems to process payments transactions and ship sanctioned oil around the world.

However, finding tech alternatives to Western products has not been easy.

A former top Russian finance official told Reuters in September 2022 that Russia would be using second-grade tech for years and spending "huge resources" to recreate what already exists. Goods heavily impacted by Western sanctions include semiconductor chips, aviation parts, and medical products.

Sberbank CEO Gref said in April 2023 that graphics cards for AI and supercomputers were the hardest to substitute.

The US has restricted sales of advanced computer chips to Russia since 2022 and further tightened restrictions on third-party chip exports to Russia last year.

Alexander Vedyakhin, the first deputy CEO of Sberbank, told Reuters last month that Russia was six to nine months behind the US and China in AI in a range of parameters.

Vedyakhin told the news agency that Russia would focus on developing large language models rather than building massive data centers.

A potential Russia-China partnership in AI could cause concerns beyond sanctions skirting.

China's foray into AI is raising concerns about censorship in the country, where expression is tightly controlled.

Chinese officials have tested Chinese large language models to ensure they embody "core socialist values," according to a Financial Times report in July.

A former NFL quarterback believes the Titans should take Cam Ward with the No. 1 overall pick.

• Sam Altman says his researchers still push back in meetings — a positive for him.
• Altman previously wrote that he is against bureaucracy and supports fostering open communication.
• Experts emphasize the importance of polite disagreement to maintain a team's trust and efficiency.

Sam Altman said that being a well-known CEO has created distance with some of his friends and colleagues — with one key exception.

"I spend most of my time with the researchers, and man, I promise you, come with me to the research meeting right after this, and you will see nothing but disrespect. Which is great," Altman said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published on Sunday.

His comments echo how the startup's CEO has previously talked about his leadership style.

In a 2023 blog post, he wrote: "Fight bullshit and bureaucracy every time you see it and get other people to fight it too." He added,"do not let the org chart get in the way of people working productively together."

In a 2019 post on his blog, months before he became OpenAI's CEO, Altman wrote: "One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you." He said leaders should push employees to "accomplish more than they thought they could" without burning out.

In the far-ranging Bloomberg interview, Altman also talked about government bureaucracy hindering AI development, returning after he was briefly fired by the board in 2023, and his work schedule.

He said his executive team meets for three hours on Mondays. During the week he spoke with Bloomberg, he said he also had six one-on-ones with engineers over two days, a research meeting, and several meetings to discuss "building up compute" and to brainstorm products.

He said he communicated far more internally than with people outside the company.

"I'm not a big inspirational email writer, but lots of one-on-one, small-group meetings and then a lot of stuff over Slack," Altman said.

Power of polite disagreements

Workplace experts say polite disagreement with peers — and even top bosses — is essential to keep teams running smoothly.

CEOs across tech, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, have all highlighted the importance of fostering a culture of disagreement from the top.

In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Bezos wrote about how employees should embrace his "disagree and commit" strategy, which is a way to say: "Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?"

"This isn't one way," Bezos added. "If you're the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time."

Joseph Grenny, a corporate trainer and the coauthor of the workplace strategy book "Crucial Conversations," said staying silent can carry its own pitfalls.

In a 2016 interview with the Harvard Business Review, he suggested considering "the risks of not speaking up" — which could be the project falling apart or losing the team's trust — and weighing those against the consequences of saying something.

One way to do it is to ask your manager for permission to disagree, Grenny said, by saying something like, "I know we seem to be moving toward a first-quarter commitment here. I have reasons to think that won't work. I'd like to lay out my reasoning. Would that be OK?"

Sabina Nawaz, a CEO coach who was a senior director of human resources at Microsoft for 15 years, wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post that avoiding disagreement is more damaging to relationships than speaking up. She recommended finding allies for meetings and asking what others think.

"When co-workers realize you let them proceed with a faulty plan, or waited until the last minute to raise objections, they're likely to lose trust in you," Nawaz wrote.

"Flow," Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis' acclaimed movie, beat some heavy-hitters to win Best Motion Picture (Animated) at the 2025 Golden Globes.

The big picture: The 85-minute movie about a cat displaced by a flood won the award over two Disney films, the new "Wallace & Gromit" entry and "The Wild Robot."

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What they're saying: Zilbalodis told Axios on the Golden Globes red carpet Sunday why he chose to capture animals in their natural state for the film.

• "We looked at cat and dog videos. We wanted them to behave like animals, they don't speak, they don't tell jokes... I think animals are so funny and interesting, we don't need to change them," Zilbalodis said.

How to watch: "Flow" is still showing in theaters and will be available to rent or buy digitally this week.

• Sam Altman was ousted as OpenAI's CEO by the company's board in November 2023.
• Altman said he was left with a "complete mess" after he was reinstated as CEO.
• Altman said his ouster was "a crazy thing to have to go through" and that he had "no time to recover."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the ChatGPT maker was like a house on fire following his brief ouster from the company.

Altman told Bloomberg in an interview published Sunday that he was left with a "complete mess on my hands" after being reinstated as CEO.

On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board said in a statement it was removing Altman because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board."

The board, however, didn't give further details about Altman's firing. Altman was later reinstated as CEO just five days later, after OpenAI's employees protested the board's decision.

"And it got worse every day. It was like another government investigation, another old board member leaking fake news to the press," Altman told Bloomberg.

"And all those people that I feel like really fucked me and fucked the company were gone, and now I had to clean up their mess," he added.

Altman did not specify which board member he was referring to.

Back in November, OpenAI's board consisted of six people: Altman, fellow cofounders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, AI researcher Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley, an entrepreneur and researcher at the RAND Corporation. Sutskever, D'Angelo, Toner, and McCauley had voted for Altman's removal.

D'Angelo was the only one of the four to remain on OpenAI's board following Altman's return as CEO. Sutskever left his position as OpenAI's chief scientist in May.

"It was just a crazy thing to have to go through and then have no time to recover, because the house was on fire," Altman told Bloomberg.

When approached for comment, OpenAI told Business Insider that it had nothing further to add to Altman's interview.

OpenAI saw multiple exits in its leadership ranks following Altman's return as CEO.

Sutskever's co-lead for OpenAI's superalignment team, Jan Leike, left his post at the same time Sutskever did, and joined the company's rival, Anthropic.

Then, in August, the company's cofounder and head of its alignment science efforts, John Schulman, left OpenAI to join Anthropic too.

In September, OpenAI's CTO Mira Murati announced her departure from the company as well.

OpenAI is in talks with California's attorney general's office about becoming a for-profit entity, Bloomberg separately reported. The company was launched as a non-profit research organization in 2015.

In October, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round, valuing it at $157 billion.

President Biden said in a Washington Post op-ed on the eve of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack's fourth anniversary there's an "unrelenting effort" under way to "rewrite — even erase — the history of that day."

Why it matters: President-elect Trump has suggested he might pardon the rioters who took part in the assault on the Capitol when he takes office, claiming they're "hostages" who've been "wrongfully imprisoned" for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Driving the news: Biden wrote in the WaPo article that efforts to explain the attack away "as a protest that just got out of hand" and to "dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession" do not reflect what happened on Jan. 6.

• "Violent insurrectionists attacked the Capitol, threatened the lives of elected officials and assaulted brave law enforcement officers," Biden wrote.
• "We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault. And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year," added Biden, who noted that Vice President Harris would on Monday "preside over the certification of her opponent's victory in the November election."
• "But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago."

Zoom in: The president said the U.S. should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year," to remember it "as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed" and to "remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed."

Biden said the truth of what occurred four years ago cannot be lost because in time, "there will be Americans who didn't witness the Jan. 6 riot firsthand but will learn about it from footage and testimony of that day, from what is written in history books and from the truth we pass on to our children."

• He added: "We cannot allow the truth to be lost."
• Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment in the evening.

Go deeper: Reagan-appointed judge slams "preposterous" claims about Jan. 6 "hostages"

• A top analyst said Ukraine's decision to create new brigades instead of bolstering existing ones isn't working.
• Many of the new units are now being divided up and sent to existing brigades that need replenishment.
• It's turning out to be "one of the more puzzling force management choices" Kyiv has made, the analyst said.

Ukraine's 2024 strategy for solving a shortage of soldiers — its biggest challenge thus far — by forming new brigades instead of reinforcing old ones is performing poorly, said a top analyst on the war.

Michael Kofman, a senior fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a social media thread on Saturday that Kyiv's decision was "one of the more puzzling force management choices" it has made.

"Expanding the force with new brigades, when men are desperately needed to replace losses among experienced formations deployed on the front lines, had visible tradeoffs," Kofman wrote.

With little experience, the new units have been "generally combat ineffective," he added.

'"As was seen in 2023, new formations perform poorly in offensive and defensive roles. Requiring considerable time to gain experience, cohesion, confidence, etc.," Kofman wrote.

The result is that the strategy has at least partially disintegrated, with battalions from the new brigades eventually sent to shore up losses in units that were already fighting, Kofman wrote.

Ukrainian leadership said in May that it aimed to create 10 new brigades, each of which typically consists of several thousand men. In doing so, its leaders hoped to provide fresh units that could rotate into combat or fill gaps on the front line.

"There is simply no other effective way to counteract the overwhelming enemy," a spokesperson for Ukraine's armed forces said in November. "After all, today we have a 1,300 km-long front with active combat clashes."

Some elements of these brigades were aided by training from Western forces, such as the 155th Mechanized Brigade. About half of its recruits drilled in France.

But the 155th's debut late last year created a crisis for Ukraine as reports emerged that it suffered from high rates of desertion and was being picked apart to siphon resources to other brigades.

Local journalist Yuriy Butusov reported just before the New Year that the new brigade, often finding itself whittled down, had to juggle specialists such as drone jamming operators into infantry roles. The backlash to the news was severe, with Ukrainian figures voicing questions about the new strategy as a whole.

"Perhaps it's sheer idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with new technology while existing ones are undermanned," wrote Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, who serves as chief of staff in the Azov Brigade. The 155th is supplied with dozens of French-made armored vehicles, howitzers, and personnel carriers.

Kofman wrote that the 155th's scandal was "just the most egregious case" of Ukraine's force management problems.

Divvying up new units has led to a "steady fragmentation of the defensive effort and loss of cohesion," he said.

"This patchwork groupings of forces must hold the front," he added.

Ukraine has, over the last year, faced a slow but persistent Russian assault in the eastern regions of the Donbas, where Moscow has been throwing a steady supply of men and equipment at Kyiv's outnumbered and exhausted defensive lines. Russia's gains have been incremental and its reported losses are staggering, but it is advancing nonetheless.

Another pain point has been a lack of Western military aid to go around. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in September that Kyiv had sought to arm 14 of its brigades with Western weapons, but that arms packages in 2024 couldn't even supply four of them.

It's turned to domestic production to fill some of its needs, and Zelenskyy said on New Year's Eve that 30% of the weapons Ukraine used in 2024 were created locally.

Amid the manpower and equipment shortages, Ukrainian units have also been developing new drones at breakneck speed, often cobbled together from commercial parts.

Kofman said these drones have proven to be "force multipliers," letting troops lay mines safely and harassing Russian units before they can reach the front.

"However, tech innovation, tactical adaptation, and better integration are insufficient to compensate for failure to address the fundamentals," Kofman added. "Russian gains may appear unimpressive, but UA needs to address manpower, training, and force management issues to sustain this fight."

Kofman and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The last year has increasingly turned the war into a conflict of attrition, not just in manpower but also in resources. Russia is now entering a third year of sustaining its economy in the face of the West's sweeping sanctions, relying heavily on defense manufacturing and offering large bonuses to new recruits.

Some in Ukraine hope that if it can solve its manpower issues and maintain its defensive lines, it will eventually exhaust Russia's ability to funnel money and men into the war.

• Jane Fonda, 87, says her workout routine hasn't changed much over the years.
• "I essentially do everything I used to do, just slower," Fonda told People, adding that she loves walking.
• Research has shown that walking just 4,000 steps a day can lower a person's risk of dying early.

Jane Fonda may be 87, but she's still as fit as a fiddle.

In fact, her workout routine hasn't changed much over the years, the actor told People in an interview published over the weekend.

"I essentially do everything I used to do, just slower," Fonda said. "I used to be a runner, but now I love walking. I love being outdoors in the woods, especially up and down hills."

Regardless of her schedule, Fonda ensures that she gets a bit of exercise every day.

"I work out every day, so it is important to mix up the way I move. I alternate days doing upper body and lower body work for strength. I also find some way to get cardio in. Walking outside is one of my favorite ways to do so," she said.

The actor has long been passionate about fitness. In the '80s, she released a series of home workout videos, beginning with "Jane Fonda's Workout" in 1982.

Looking back at her home workout tapes, Fonda said she had "no idea" they would become so popular.

"When I was starting out, there weren't many rigorous forms of exercise available to women," Fonda said. "I learned the basic workout from a charismatic teacher named Leni Kasden in the '70s."

After the videos were released, she would receive "amazing letters from around the world" from fans about how the workouts impacted their lives, she added.

"One was from a young woman in the Peace Corps in Guatemala who did the exercises in her mud hut," Fonda said. "Another woman said she looked in the mirror as she was brushing her teeth and noticed new muscles in her arms. She wrote that it made her feel empowered, and that day she went to work and stood up to her handsy boss for the first time."

Walking can help you live longer

For those who lead sedentary lifestyles, the best thing they can do for their health is to start somewhere, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a preventative cardiologist, told Business Insider previously.

"Doing something is better than doing nothing," she said. "If walking is the beginning stages of embracing a heart healthy life, then it is the initial stages that will create habits that will be sustainable and last for a lifetime."

A study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology in 2023 found that walking just 4,000 steps a day can lower a person's risk of dying early.

Research shows that walking can help reduce stress and anxiety while improving heart health. Some studies also suggest that brisk walking — at about 2.7 to 3 miles an hour — can make a bigger difference in terms of health benefits.

A representative for Fonda did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.

• Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has a net worth of $160 billion.
• The billionaire and philanthropist plans to give away most of his wealth to his charity foundation.
• For now, he spends his wealth on luxuries, from his car collection to a vast real estate portfolio.

Bill Gates may be one of the 10 richest people on earth, but he doesn't plan to stay that way forever.

The billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft has pledged to give away most of his wealth to charity, which he says will bump him off the world's richest people list.

Gates' net worth is $160 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. He is one of only a handful of moguls to reach centibillionaire status.

He's also made some lavish purchases over the years: Gates owns a mansion in Medina, Washington; a private airplane; and a luxury car collection. These indulgences comprise only a fraction of his massive fortune.

Gates has also given money to charitable causes through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and vowed to give away most of his fortune through the Giving Pledge, which he and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates launched in 2010 along with Warren Buffett.

Here's a look at how Gates spends his billions.

• Jodie Foster, 62, has two sons named Kit and Charles.
• Her younger son, Kit, accompanied her to the 82nd annual Golden Globes.
• Foster married photographer Alexandra Hedison in 2014. 

Jodie Foster shouted out her family, including her two sons, during her Golden Globes acceptance speech on Sunday.

"Kit, my scientist son, and Charlie, my actor son starting his career, hopefully you understand the joy, such joy that comes from doing really hard, meaningful, good work," said Foster, who won best female actor in a limited series, anthology, or motion picture made for television for her role in the HBO series "True Detective: Night Country."

"So, my boys, I love you, and this, of course, is for you and the love of my life, Alex. Thank you forever," she continued. Her son, Kit, was in the audience.

While one of her kids is now following in her footsteps, Foster previously revealed that at one point, they didn't even know she was an actor. In fact, she actually told them she was a construction worker when they were younger.

Foster, 62, opened up about parenting during a January 2024 episode of "The View." Foster shares her two children with her former partner, Cydney Bernard: Charles "Charlie" Bernard Foster, 25, and Christopher "Kit" Bernard Foster, 22.

"I guess I just didn't want them to know me that way," Foster said. "I wanted them to know me as their mom and the person who went away to work and stuff."

She recalled one day when she brought her eldest son to set.

"I brought him to set one day and I bought him a little plastic tool belt and stuff," Foster said. "And I was like, 'Yeah, and this is this set and this set and this set.' And for a really long time, he thought I was a construction worker."

The Oscar-winner emerged as a Hollywood titan after having an illustrious career in the entertainment industry. After scoring her breakout role in the 1976 film "Taxi Driver," Foster appeared in several acclaimed films like "The Silence of the Lambs" and directed films like "Home for the Holidays" in 1995.

Even so, she's managed to remain relatively mum about her family. Here's a look at her wife and two children.

Foster's wife, Alexandra Hedison, is a photographer and former actor who appeared in "The L Word"

According to People, Hedison, 55, married Foster during an intimate ceremony in April 2014. Hedison is a photographer who often shares pictures of her work and artistic endeavors on Instagram. Hedison also directed the documentary "ALOK," which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was executive produced by Foster.

Hedison, like her wife, is a jack of all trades. In addition to photography and directing, Hedison is a former actor who played Dylan Moreland on "The L Word" and appeared in other shows like "Melrose Place." Hedison's father is the late actor David Hedison, who appeared in the 1973 James Bond film "Live and Let Die."

Hedison also worked in home design. People reported that she appeared on a 2006 reality TV series called "Designing Blind." According to the Los Angeles Times, a home Hedison designed hit the market for $2.75 million in 2014.

Not much is known about Hedison's past relationships, but she dated television personality Ellen DeGeneres from 2000 to 2004, according to a 2004 report by The New York Times.

Foster and Hedison don't often make public appearances, but the couple has posed for certain red-carpet events, including the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Charles "Charlie" Bernard Foster is the eldest child of Foster and her former partner, Cydney Bernard

Entertainment Weekly and the Sun Sentinel reported that Foster gave birth to Charlie in July 1998 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. According to HuffPost, she shares Charlie with her former longtime partner, Cydney Bernard, whom she dated for 15 years before the two split in 2008.

Foster said Charlie had a natural affinity for Hollywood life, even at a young age.

"[He'll say] 'I want to be in movies. Why can't you get me a job?' Then I say, 'You have to earn that. If you want to be an actor, you can start by doing a little theater.' Then he says, 'I'm not interested in that. I just want to be famous and see my face.'" she told More Magazine in 2007, per People.

Based on Foster's comments at the 2025 Golden Globes, Charlie appears to have chased his dreams. He attended Yale University, where he participated in several acting projects. In 2019 and 2021, he played Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a local "Rocky Horror Picture Show performance," according to the Yale College Arts website.

Christopher "Kit" Bernard Foster is her youngest child

Foster and Bernard welcomed their second child in September 2001, according to CBS News.

Unlike Charlie, Foster said Kit isn't interested in following in his mother's footsteps.

"I know the perils of having a parent involved in your art form are too great," Foster told The Guardian in July 2018. "My older son is getting more interested in acting now, and I'm glad he discovered it late. My younger son is really shy and I can promise you he will never be an actor."

In other interviews, Foster shared small tidbits about Kit, including Magic Radio in May 2016. During her appearance, Foster called Kit "a little sensitive" and said that she waited "many years" before she let him watch "The Silence of the Lambs."

According to his LinkedIn page, Foster's "scientist son" graduated from Princeton University with a BA in chemistry and now works as a research associate.

• Celebrities walked the 2025 Golden Globes red carpet in Beverly Hills on Sunday night.
• Unfortunately, a few of those stars missed the mark with their overpowering outfits.
• Melissa McCarthy and Andrew Scott wore vibrant colors that didn't work for them.

The Golden Globes brings out some of the best red-carpet fashion each year.

Still, there are usually a few misses — even from the most stylish stars.

This year was no different, with actors including Melissa McCarthy and Andrew Scott wearing outfits that were overpowering and missed the mark.

Here's a look at what they wore and a few other ensembles that could've been better.

• Sam Altman is hoping Donald Trump's second administration will benefit AI developers like OpenAI.
• Altman said in a new interview the most helpful thing Trump can do for AI is invest in new infrastructure.
• He sided with Trump's opposition to bureaucratic blockades, saying it's "difficult" to build in the US.

Sam Altman says he doesn't agree with President-elect Donald Trump on everything, but he does believe that the US has a problem with bureaucracy stifling innovation.

In an interview with Bloomberg, the OpenAI CEO described his hopes for the AI landscape under the next Trump administration, which he said he believes should come with substantial investment in new, US-built infrastructure.

"The thing I really deeply agree with the president on is, it is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the United States," Altman said. "Power plants, data centers, any of that kind of stuff. I understand how bureaucratic cruft builds up, but it's not helpful to the country in general."

He added: "It's particularly not helpful when you think about what needs to happen for the US to lead AI. And the US really needs to lead AI."

Altman suggested that AI isn't the only industry where regulation is hindering infrastructure development. He added that it's a hurdle for the fusion power startup Helion, which he's invested in. In July, Helion received a license from the Washington State Department of Health, allowing the company to use radioactive byproduct materials to operate its fusion generator.

"Soon there will be a demonstration of net-gain fusion. You then have to build a system that doesn't break. You have to scale it up," Altman said. "You have to figure out how to build a factory — build a lot of them — and you have to get regulatory approval. And that will take, you know, years altogether?

Oklo, another Altman-backed nuclear power company, has yet to receive approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after its previous application was denied in 2022, Tech Crunch reported.

In addition to siding with Trump on a looser approach to regulation and infrastructure development, Altman also hedged his prior support of the CHIPS Act, a multibillion-dollar manufacturing incentive for semiconductor production pushed forward by President Joe Biden's administration.

"I think the CHIPS Act was better than doing nothing but not the thing that we should have done," Altman said. "And I think there's a real opportunity to do something much better as a follow-on. I don't think the CHIPS Act has been as effective as any of us hoped."

The OpenAI chief reportedly wants to raise trillions of dollars to address the global chip shortage, and according to the Wall Street Journal, has held talks with international investors to raise the funds, including from the United Arab Emirates.

Representatives for the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. OpenAI declined to comment.

Altman has donated $1 million of his personal funds to Trump's inauguration fund, saying in December that the President-elect "will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead," Business Insider previously reported.

He told Bloomberg he supports "any president," adding that he believes "AGI will probably get developed during this president's term, and getting that right seems really important."

"Supporting the inauguration, I think that's a relatively small thing," Altman said. "I don't view that as a big decision either way. But I do think we all should wish for the president's success."

As the second Trump administration is set to begin later this month, Altman isn't the only executive angling to help shape policy over the next four years with substantial donations to his office. BI previously reported companies including Meta, Amazon, Uber, Ford, and Toyota have donated $1 million each to Trump's inaugural fund.