• Senators voted on Tuesday to strike a controversial AI provision from the "Big Beautiful Bill."
• The provision would have discouraged states from regulating AI for 10 years.
• It was supported by many in the tech industry.

Big Tech has one less reason to like President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill."

Early Tuesday morning, senators voted 99-1 to strike a section in the bill aimed at preventing states from regulating AI.

That provision, championed by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, had drawn criticism from Democrats and fellow Republicans.

The proposal had already been tweaked multiple times. Initially, it would've been an all-out ban on state-level AI regulation for 10 years. Then, it was changed so that states could regulate AI, but they'd lose out on federal funding for AI deployment. And then on Sunday, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee had struck an agreement to shorten it to five years and add some carveouts, including for child safety.

That agreement apparently fell apart just a day later.

"While I appreciate Chairman Cruz's efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need these protections the most," Blackburn said in a statement on Monday night. "This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives."

The Tennessee senator later introduced an amendment to strip the language from the bill, and with other Republicans opposed to the provision, it became clear the bill could not pass if it remained.

At about 4:30am on Tuesday, senators voted near-unanimously to remove it.

"Federalism is preserved and humans are safe for now," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a GOP opponent of the original provision, wrote on X on Tuesday morning.

As of publication, the Senate had yet to pass the bill. The House is set to vote on the bill later this week in the hopes of sending it to Trump's desk by July 4.

Tech leaders were pushing for the provision

While Republicans and Democrats alike saw the AI regulation moratorium as a threat to states' rights and a giveaway to the tech industry, the provision did have its proponents.

In general, they argued that it was important not to hamper the AI industry at a time when competition with China is heating up. Many of the biggest proponents were in the tech industry itself.

At a Senate hearing in May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that it would be "quite bad" to have a "patchwork regulatory framework" in which multiple states are passing different AI laws.

"That will slow us down at a time where I don't think it's in anyone's interest for us to slow down," Altman said, saying he'd prefer "one federal framework, that is light touch, that we can understand and that lets us move with the speed that this moment calls for."

Palmer Luckey, a cofounder of Anduril Technologies, had said the provision was "absolutely critical for the economic, educational, military, and cultural future of America."

And Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist who cofounded Palantir Technologies, wrote a blog post in support of the provision.

"It is not that we have total faith in the wisdom of Congress; it is that we see the huge problems of a state-by-state system for new technology, and don't want to see innovation sabotaged," Lonsdale wrote.

• I tried on button-up tops at Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy.
• The shirts from Gap and Banana Republic were the same price, but were made up of different fabrics.
• In my opinion, the Old Navy option was comfortable, breathable, and versatile.

As someone who has worked remotely for the past five years, my collection of business-appropriate attire has dwindled from my closet.

I spend most days at my desk or in a coffee shop wearing athleisure, which leaves me stumped when it comes time to dress for in-person meetings or networking events.

I'm all for colorful style choices and elegant blouses, but a good button-up is the base of any corporate wardrobe. So, I went to my local Gap Inc.-owned stores — Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy — to search for a button-up that was flattering, high-quality, and comfortable. Here's how it went.

My first stop of the day was at Gap.

I've come to rely on Gap for everyday basics and trending pieces.

Since it's officially summer, I reached for a linen button-up shirt that would keep me cool while looking put together.

I especially appreciated that this option was made of 100% linen, making the $80 price tag seem reasonable.

The top was comfortable, but a few details stood out.

Upon trying it on, I loved that the top felt comfortable and lightweight. I was also drawn to the slightly oversize fit and variety of color options, offering lots of summer styling possibilities.

However, I noticed that the collar felt a bit flimsy, and I would have liked more structure around the neckline. Also, the stitching on the buttons was white, which didn't blend subtly with the light blue color of the top. Although it's a small detail, this stood out to me.

Overall, though, I liked the fit and style of the Gap shirt. However, I wanted to compare it to the options available at the other Gap Inc. retailers.

Next, I visited Banana Republic, which is known for its elevated style and attainable luxury.

Almost every time I've browsed at Banana Republic in the past year or so, I've been shocked at the high price of basic items.

I can't always justify the cost of the brand's clothing, but I do generally love the its elevated takes on everyday wear. So, I tried on another linen button-up top there.

This top was also $80 — but the fabric was a linen-blend.

The Banana Republic shirt cost the same as the Gap option, but it was made of a linen-blend consisting of 55% linen and 45% rayon. That was an immediate turn-off for me, considering the price.

In terms of style and quality, the collar and overall material did feel more structured and like it would last through many wears and washes. However, the fabric wasn't as breathable and felt itchy against my skin.

Based on my try-on experience, I wouldn't buy this shirt, especially for the hot summer season.

My last stop of the day was at Old Navy.

I was hopeful I'd find something at Old Navy that was trendy, professional, and affordable.

I tried on one more linen-blend button-up, which was made with 55% linen and 45% viscose rayon.

This top was stylish and half the price of the other two.

This $40 option wasn't as comfortable as the 100% linen shirt from Gap, but it was still lightweight and breathable.

It was also my favorite overall style of the three shirts I tried on. I think its relaxed fit would look nice for work events or casual outings.

I'd be most likely to buy the Old Navy top.

The versatility, fit, and price of the Old Navy button-up made it my top pick.

It reminded me that the most stylish options don't always need to come with the highest price tag.

• Meta's new AI lab is stacked with OpenAI researchers behind some of ChatGPT's biggest breakthroughs.
• Meta also poached top talent from Google and Anthropic.
• Sam Altman claims Meta is luring talent with $100 million bonuses as tech's AI arms race heats up.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just hired his dream team of AI avengers, raising the stakes in the all-out battle between Big Tech companies for talent.

On Monday, Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a group of star researchers that Meta poached from its AI competitors and has tasked with building a "personal superintelligence for everyone."

Interest in the new unit surged after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta is offering recruits $100 million signing bonuses. But the team also offers a glimpse into what Meta is up to on AI, which it has mostly kept under wraps so far.

Meta is clearly interested in using multimodal AI, which means using AI to generate images, video, and speech. It has hired multiple people with expertise in this domain.

The new hires also show Meta is keeping very close tabs on OpenAI, since most of them worked on training OpenAI's latest models. (Meta wouldn't be the only Big Tech firm obsessed with beating ChatGPT.)

Meta has said it will disclose other hires later, so it's still early. Regardless, the hiring blitz has commanded Silicon Valley's attention. Whatever form it takes, Meta's new team stands to shape whoever controls the future of AI.

Meta didn't comment for this article.

Leaders

Alexandr Wang will lead the team as its Chief AI Officer, according to Zuckerberg's memo. At only 28, Wang has already cofounded and led Scale AI, a startup that helps Big Tech train their latest AI models. Meta recently invested $14 billion into Scale as part of a deal to hire Wang. Wang has a strong interest in AI progress: while he was at Scale, for example, the startup helped create an especially difficult test for AI systems called Humanity's Last Exam.

Nat Friedman will co-lead Meta's lab with Wang, Zuck's memo says. Friedman is best-known as the former CEO of Github and as an AI investor who has backed startups like Stripe and Perplexity. Friedman has also served on Meta's AI advisory group since May 2024. He's dabbled in other projects, too, like funding a program to decode an ancient Roman scroll charred by the Pompeii eruption.

Researchers and others

Trapid Bansal is a former research scientist at OpenAI, where he co-created the company's leading o-series of AI models, Meta's announcement says. OpenAI's o3 model is touted by OpenAI as its most powerful "reasoning" model. Reasoning is a trend that's taken over AI this past year, and involves AI chatbots fleshing out their 'thoughts' before answering a question.

Jiahui Yu used to lead OpenAI's perception team, which works on multimodal AI, and co-led Gemini's multimodal efforts when he worked at Google, according to his personal website. He's also helped build some of OpenAI's latest models, Meta says.

Shuchao Bi also worked on multimodal AI at OpenAI, co-creating GPT-4o's voice mode. He also co-created YouTube shorts when he worked at Google, according to a Columbia University profile page.

Huiwen Chang is an expert in multimodal AI who helped launch image generation for OpenAI's GPT-4o model, Meta says. Prior to that, she used to work for Google and Adobe, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Ji Lin is a former OpenAI research scientist who specializes in multimodal and reasoning models, his personal website says. He's also a co-creator of several of OpenAI's latest AI models, Meta says.

Hongyu Ren also worked at OpenAI, where he led a team focused on post-training AI models. "Post-training" means improving an AI model's performance after the model itself has already been created.

Shengjia Zhao is a co-creator of ChatGPT and previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, Meta says. Synthetic data means using AI-generated data to make AI models smarter — another big AI trend as AI labs run out of materials to train on.

Johan Schalkwyk worked as a machine learning lead at Sesame, a startup building software and hardware that can chat naturally with people. Schalkwyk previously worked at Google on speech-related technologies, including leading a 'moonshot' effort to expand Google's support to 1,000 languages, according to his LinkedIn page.

Pei Sun worked for Google creating the most recent generations of AI models for Google's self-driving car subsidiary Waymo. Sun also worked on post-training and reasoning efforts for Gemini, Google's ChatGPT competitor, according to Meta's announcement.

Joel Pobar worked on building inference systems for OpenAI rival Anthropic. That means making sure massively popular AI systems have enough data centers and other tools to run smoothly. Prior to joining Anthropic, Pobar worked at Meta (then Facebook) for about a decade, leading engineering teams, his LinkedIn page shows.

• As AI becomes more ubiquitous, many workers fear the technology will replace them.
• We asked 8 tech executives about the skills they think employees should cultivate.
• They emphasized the importance of creativity and having a broad knowledge base.

Whether you're just entering the workforce or decades into your career, chances are your job is evolving — or will be soon.

A recent Salesforce study suggested that with agentic AI adoption expected to grow 327% by 2027, chief human resource officers expect to re-deploy 23% of their workforce in the next two years. While 61% of the workforce is expected to stay in their roles, those jobs are also expected to change, the report said.

Some tech CEOs still believe that foundational knowledge in areas like coding remains important. However, other skills are rising in importance and reshaping what it takes to thrive in the workplace.

In January's World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report, 86% of employers said they believe that technological advancements will transform their businesses over the next five years. This shift is projected to result in a decline in some roles and growth in others, while also increasing demand for skills in AI and big data, cybersecurity, and technological literacy.

Business Insider asked eight tech executives about the top skills job seekers — and all employees — should have in the age of AI.

Here are three tips they shared:

Be a generalist

The age of the Renaissance person may be returning.

Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar told Business Insider in an interview that the world is shifting toward an era where "deep expertise will be less valued." He said those who merge specific knowledge in one domain with technological capabilities will be more relevant than those with narrow expertise in one area.

Kumar said that a history major who can leverage AI tools to apply historical insights to future scenarios, for instance, will be a stronger historian in today's market than someone who can solely speak to a historical period.

Similarly, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told BI that as cybersecurity is increasingly embedded into other platforms, the company is focused on recruiting talent with a diverse skillset.

"We're trying to find people who have a broad set of skills and can be general," Prince told BI.

Other cybersecurity executives have also previously told BI that while foundational skills in data and IT are important, soft skills and adaptability are key to the job.

Focus on fresh ideas

When many executives talk about AI tools, they emphasize the expectation that employees will have more time for "deep work." Dropbox VP of product and growth Morgan Brown defines this as uninterrupted time dedicated to "expansive thinking" about new ideas.

"The quality of ideas that we're going to be able to get people to think about because they will have time — rather than just tactically going out and fixing bugs — might actually enhance not just the output capacity, but also the satisfaction that someone gets from a job," Cisco executive Jeetu Patel said in a recent conversation about shifts in engineering.

Brown added that with AI efficiency gains, product rollouts are moving at a much faster pace, which allows employees to turn ideas into reality more quickly, Brown said.

Cisco executive vice president and chief customer experience officer Liz Centoni echoed the sentiment in a March interview with BI. She said that being able to think creatively is vital.

"I want someone in there who's sitting with the subject matter experts who can not just understand the problem, but look at how can we creatively craft a solution," Centoni said.

Get good at using AI tools

Most people know how to ask ChatGPT for answers to basic questions, but prompt engineering is a more complex skill. Google Cloud executive Yasmeen Ahmad told BI that people need to know the kind of questions to ask, what kind of data is available, and how to craft their queries effectively.

Successful workers will be able to "interact with these new-age tools and be able to prompt to engineer and ask the right questions and interact in this flow that hasn't been there before," Ahmad said.

Google Cloud CTO Will Grannis told BI that to stay current, employees need to look "beyond the formal curriculum." That means following your curiosity and using available AI tools to "vibe code," or use AI to generate code. While prompt engineering is important, he said job seekers need to be skilled in context engineering as well, which means knowing the larger systems at play.

AI literacy also requires effectively interacting with agents, said Salesforce talent executive Lori Castillo Martinez in a recent interview with Business Insider. The executive told BI that employees need to know when to use agents and how to communicate with them.

Patel also told BI that orchestrating agent workflows is a crucial skill that will be "super important." That includes assigning work to agents and overseeing their progress.

• Ukraine's soldiers have been fighting Russia with M2 Browning machine guns, an iconic American weapon.
• Now, ground robot makers are adding them to their AI-enabled fighting weapons.
• One maker told BI that the gun's wide employment and reliability make it a weapon of choice.

An iconic, century-old American machine gun is being put to work on the battlefields of Ukraine, including on AI-enabled robots designed to fight Russian forces.

John Browning conceived of the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun in 1918 toward the end of World War I, though it didn't enter service with the US military until closer to World War II. Known as "Ma Deuce," this powerful gun is among the most famous and enduring weapons.

It's received a number of upgrades, and it is still used by US forces and other militaries. In fact, it's one of the most widely used heavy machine guns in the world today.

And now it's part of the robotic age. It's being mounted on Ukraine's advanced autonomous robots that use AI to drive to Russian positions and attack.

Battle bots with M2

Ukrainian forces are using robots equipped with machine guns, grenade launchers, and explosives to fire on the Russians and blow up beside Russian targets. Many of the Ukrainian defense firms working in this space have chosen the M2 machine gun as an armament for these robots.

Ukraine's FRDM group, for instance, is a drone and ground robot manufacture that makes its D-21-12 remotely controlled ground battle vehicle with the .50 caliber gun attached.

The robot, designed for firefights and surveillance, weighs 1,289 pounds with its ammunition included and can travel more than six miles an hour. It was approved for use by the military in April.

Ihor Kulakevych, a product manager at FRDM group, told Business Insider last month that the M2 was chosen because the heavy machine gun is readily available in many arsenals in the West. This weapon and the ammunition are easily obtained.

The same cannot be said for Ukraine's supply of Soviet-made machine guns. The stocks are running low, and they can't exactly get more, aside from capturing them in battle.

Kulakevych said his company also sees the M2 as a particularly reliable weapon.

Vadym Yunyk, the CEO of FRDM Group, told BI that the company developed its robot "in response to the urgent need to reduce risks to personnel while performing logistical tasks on the front lines." He said that it can be used for tasks including evacuating wounded soldiers and serving as "a platform for mounting weapons." He said that it has "proven its effectiveness on the battlefield."

Other robot makers are also using the M2. Ukrainian company DevDroid, for example, has developed a new combat module for its Droid TW 12.7 ground robotic complex that can carry the M2 Browning.

The vehicle was originally developed as a logistics platform, but the addition of the machine gun made it into a combat robot, the company said this month. It is on the battlefield in Ukraine, and the company said that it uses AI, describing it as having "high-precision target recognition using artificial intelligence."

The M2 is also being used in an AI-powered turret called the Sky Sentinel that Ukraine said has been able to shoot down some of Russia's large and devastating Shahed drones and can stop cruise missiles.

The Sky Sentinel system is designed to require almost no human involvement, which is important for Ukraine as it faces big manpower shortages compared to the much larger Russia. The system uses AI to find and track targets and determine firing solutions, which is valuable for the Ukrainians as they face relentless Russian air attacks while grappling with shortages of air defenses.

High- and low-tech solutions

The M2 has seen combat in a range of conflicts, from World War II to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.

In Ukraine, they are being used by real soldiers, not just robots. Ukraine's air defense soldiers are also using the M2s mounted on the back of trucks to shoot down Russian drones. (A BI reporter actually tried out a simulator for this weapon in Kyiv).

The war in Ukraine is one that features both high- and low-tech solutions, like more drones than any other conflict in history, new types of electronic warfare, and other emerging technologies alongside simple combat options, like shotguns for shooting down fiber-optic drones and hastily welded cages on tanks.

There's trench warfare like something straight out of World War I and ground robots with machine guns.

Ground robots are a technology that has been used by Western militaries before, but Ukraine is developing them at a new speed and scale, and it's getting constant feedback about how they work on an intense battlefield so makers can refine them.

• After college, I moved from Nashville to a remote island in Washington.
• There's no grocery store or gas station here, and most residents are at least 30 years my senior.
• Living here full-time requires careful planning, but it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Last summer, I felt stuck. I was a year out of college and living in Nashville, with no idea where to go next.

Most of my friends were headed to New York City, with a few straying from the norm by going to other big cities, like Denver or Dallas. I, however, veered entirely off the norm — practically skidding on two wheels — by moving to a tiny, remote spot in Washington's San Juan Islands where I spent summers as a kid in my family's cabin.

The small island wasn't on my short list of places to move postgrad. In fact, it wasn't on any of my lists. However, the appeal of a slower pace of life, coupled with the quintessential feelings of being lost in my 20s, compelled me to try living there.

Living here is unlike anything I've experienced before

My family's 40-year-old cabin was built in just two weeks and was never meant to be lived in full-time. It has single-pane glass windows that creak with every gust of wind, and the rotting deck grows even more rotted with each rainy season that passes.

It's a far cry from my high-rise existence in Nashville, but it has its benefits.

The beaches, scattered with sun-worn driftwood, stretch on for miles, with scarcely another person in sight. While sitting at my kitchen table, I watch seals bobbing in the waves, shorebirds diving for their dinner, eagles scanning the land down below, and geese flapping their strong wings as they take off.

Almost every morning, I walk the rocky expanse of beach that lies outside my front door.

However, life on the island has its quirks. Gone are the days of my convenient city existence, where everything I needed was within a few-mile radius. In fact, my new home has no grocery store, no gas station, and only one point of public access.

Trips to the mainland can only be made via a small water taxi, which operates a handful of times throughout the week. Thankfully, modernity has started to catch up, with the frequency of the island taxi runs increasing and even enabling local grocery delivery through Instacart.

Living here full-time requires meticulous planning, thorough lists and a sprinkle of resourcefulness.

I've even formed unlikely friendships with my older neighbors

In Nashville, I was surrounded by neighbors on the 15th floor of an apartment building — yet I never met a single one of them. Here, however, it didn't take long for me to form close bonds with the locals.

They're a hearty, salty, rugged bunch, and I quickly learned that I would do best to avoid getting on their bad side. They're the kind of people who can catch, kill, and fix anything, and most of them are at least 30 years my senior.

I, on the other hand — young, bright-eyed, and with little to no hard skills — definitely did not fit the mold of an island resident. Despite this, I was welcomed into the community with open arms.

On the eve of the first bad winter storm, my 75-year-old neighbor came barreling down the dirt road in his mandarin-orange 1970s pick-up. He wanted to ensure I was prepared for the storm and even offered his place up the hill in case of a power outage.

He, along with our 92-year-old neighbor — another gruff but gentle gentleman — would become my most dutiful, watchful caretakers. We exchange chocolate chip cookies for backyard apples, compare foraged beach treasures, and grab groceries for each other in town.

On the island, looking out for others in your community is the most valuable form of currency.

I couldn't be happier with my decision to embrace island life

Here, I've found a sense of community that I never knew before. I've discovered a lifestyle that is filled with adventure, joy, and the kind of self-confidence that only comes from learning resourcefulness.

Every day, I'm lucky to experience a connection with — and reverence for — the natural world that surrounds me.

I know my life looks different than that of my peers. There are no coffee shops to frequent every morning, no going to restaurants with friends on a Friday night, and don't even get me started on the dating scene. It's the last place anyone would expect a 23-year-old to choose to live, let alone love.

Although it took some time to adjust — I'm a sucker for buying an expensive specialty latte at a coffee shop — I eventually found my groove, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.

• AI voice agent testing startup Cekura has raised $2.4 million in seed funding, led by Y Combinator.
• Cekura tests AI agents in highly regulated spaces like health and finance.
• It sees a vast opportunity as call centers increasingly bend to AI.

Eight-month-old Cekura has raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Y Combinator to help fine-tune AI voice agents.

Flex Capital, Hike Ventures, Pioneer Fund, and Decacorn participated in the round, as did angel investors Kulveer Taggar, Chris Smoak, Ooshma Garg, Richard Aberman, and JJ Fliegelman.

Cekura — a riff on the word secure, rebranded from Vocera in March — was founded by a trio of IIT Bombay grads in their twenties: Sidhant Kabra, Tarush Agarwal, and Shashij Gupta. The company has seven employees and expects to onboard three others next month.

Kabra told Business Insider the longtime friends were working on AI agents in the healthcare space and struggling with quality assurance (QA) amid manual fixes that could take hours.

Cekura uses AI to simulate conversations and generate thousands of edge-case scenarios to put AI agents through their paces before going live.

"The customers will interrupt you, the customers will be toxic, the customers will try to jailbreak you, the customers will operate out of bias," Kabra said. "You need to really stress test your agents before you go live."

After that, Cekura works to detect issues and can add new features so agents can assume more responsibilities.

As call centers shift to AI, Cekura sees vast opportunity. The company monetizes via a subscription model for startup clients, beginning at $1,000 per month. It also has custom enterprise offerings. While roughly 90% of its business is focused on voice agents, it also builds chat agents, Kabra said.

Competitors include fellow Y Combinator grads like Coval and Hamming. (Most recently, the famed accelerator's spring 2025 batch featured 70 startups focused on agentic AI — each of which received a $500,000 investment.)

Cekura has roughly 70 customers across industries — including in highly regulated spaces like healthcare and financial services, where "the threshold of reliability is pretty high," Kabra said.

Some of its clients include AI mortgage servicing startup Kastle and Sandra — an AI receptionist for car dealerships.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Cekura used to raise $2.4 million in seed funding. Some slides and details have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly.

• Hank Faber has been a trucker for over 35 years.
• He turned to trucking after a series of bad weather forced him to sell his farms in the '80s.
• He still works part-time because he can't afford to retire and regrets selling the farms.

Hank Faber grips the handle of his 2009 Volvo with the practiced ease of a trucker who's maybe spent more time on the road than off it. He adjusts the seat, checks the mirrors, and starts the engine. For Faber, this truck isn't just transportation — it's the reason he can keep paying the bills.

Faber and his wife live paycheck-to-paycheck on his trucking income, their Social Security, and his wife's IRAs.

"I should be retired at my age," said Faber, who was 77 at the time of his interview with Business Insider in late 2024.

However, being self-employed most of his career, Faber never had a 401(k) and spent all his retirement savings years ago on a vacation spot in Kentucky.

"There were weeks when I drove a little less and my wife said, 'Hey, we're running short,'" Faber said, adding, "I've had to hit the road and go pick up two, three extra loads to finish out the month to raise my income."

At the time of his interview, Faber said his Volvo semi-truck, which he bought in 2009, had 999,740 miles on it. During his more than 35-year trucking career, Faber said he's driven over 4 million miles accident-free, earning him the Landstar Roadstar award for safety and professionalism.

He'll probably keep driving for as long as his health allows. "If my health would not allow me to truck, that would change our income drastically," he said.

Faber's situation is not uncommon. According to a BofA survey last year, an increasing number of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The survey found that 25% of households spend over 95% of their monthly incomes, leaving little left for savings.

Faber's big regret

Faber and his wife have about $6,000 in expenses each month. They haven't taken any big vacations in years, only go out to eat a couple of times a month, and their medical bills are largely covered by insurance, Faber said. Much of their expenses are paying back loans.

"I had to refinance my house when we got in financial trouble back about 15 years ago," Faber said, adding that "in 2020, we managed to refinance at an interest rate under 3%. If we don't miss a payment, the house would be paid off when we're 99 years old."

In addition to home payments, Faber said he has land and car payments. He's also paying back a $18,000 loan on his truck he had to take out when it broke down about three years ago. He said he was nearly finished paying it off at the time of the interview.

"If I could change things, I would have just stayed on the farm," he said.

Faber's farm

Before trucking, Faber said he owned a couple of farms in Indiana with 208 acres. He and his wife grew corn, soybeans, and wheat and raised sheep. In the mid-80s, though, misfortune struck two years in a row.

The first year, drought robbed them of their crops. "We had to take out federal crop insurance to protect us," Faber said. The Farmer's Home Administration gave him a loan with 13.75% interest, he said.

In the second year, a major hailstorm damaged their crops again. Unable to pay down the loan, it kept growing.

"It became $147,000. We could not keep going," Faber said. "So the farm was sold for $50,000. It was such a small amount, it didn't cover the mortgage. We lost money on that and still had to pay off the property tax," he said.

Looking back, Faber said they should have tried harder to stay because the farmland would be worth a lot more today. "If we could have managed to keep it, I would've been probably retired years ago."

After they left the farm, Faber began trucking.

Faber never had a 401(k)

Faber said he used to make well over $100,000 a year gross when he was driving a semi full-time, but after expenses like taxes, permits, and meals, he only had about a third of that left. "It's quite expensive," he said.

Being self-employed, Faber never had a 401(k) with any employee matching to help him grow a nest egg for retirement. However, "I did have a program where I put a small amount away a month for about 10 years," he said.

He cashed in all of that money, though, to buy a vacation spot in Kentucky. "We bought this lot with a trailer house, screened-in porch, and a boat," he said, adding, "Because I spent it all, I don't have any retirement funds put away at all."

So, Faber plans to keep driving for as long as his health allows. Hank has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, CLL, but it hasn't required treatment in the nine years he's had it, he said.

One day, he hopes to be financially stable enough that he can sell the truck and take a river cruise through Europe. "I would like to go to Portugal and the Czech Republic and stuff and take a cruise like the Viking cruise or something for my retirement."

This story was adapted from Hank Faber's interview for Business Insider's series "Life Lessons." Learn more about Swanagan's story and others' in the video below:

• Some of the country's tech leaders have invested in doomsday preparations, like bunkers.
• Executives at some luxury bunker companies said interest spiked during the Israel-Iran conflict.
• Here are some of the wealthiest tech leaders who are said to have invested in apocalypse prep.

In times of geopolitical chaos, the average person might watch a meditation video or stock up on canned goods. The wealthiest among us, however, might turn to a luxury underground bunker instead.

"When a war breaks out, or when America bombs Iran, it does cause a spike in our business," Ron Hubbard, founder and CEO of Atlas Survival Shelters, told BI.

Larry Hall, the owner of luxury bunker company Survival Condo, also said he's seen increased interest during geopolitical conflicts, including the recent one between Israel and Iran.

Hubbard said it's safe to assume that most billionaires have some sort of shelter, though relatively few have extremely extravagant bunkers that cost tens of millions of dollars. Hall said he's built a bunker complex with a swimming pool, and others have included a shooting range or bowling alley. He said he's currently negotiating bunker sales between $1 million and $2 million.

As Hall sees it, bunkers have become a "new status symbol of the elite" in the post-pandemic era, while the topic used to be more taboo.

Some of the country's biggest tech names have hopped on the prepper trend in the last decade, buying underground shelters and collections of guns.

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman told the New Yorker in 2017 that he thinks more than half of his Silicon Valley billionaire peers have bought some sort of end-of-world hideout.

Here are some of the tech millionaires and billionaires who have invested in doomsday planning.

Bunkers — or similar tunnels or shelters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn't confirmed reports that he has a survival bunker, but said on a recent episode of the podcast "This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von" that he has an "underground tunnel" at his ranch in Hawaii.

In 2023, Wired reported that Zuckerberg was building a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter at the ranch. A year later, local news outlet Hawaii News Now reported that county planning documents included a "storm shelter" measuring almost 4,500 square feet.

Zuckerberg also downplayed the bunker reports during an interview with Bloomberg in December, comparing the space to "a basement."

"There's just a bunch of storage space and like, I don't know, whatever you want to call it, a hurricane shelter or whatever," he said. "I think it got blown out of proportion as if the whole ranch was some kind of Doomsday bunker, which is just not true."

A representative for Zuckerberg directed BI to his comments to Bloomberg.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also denied having a bunker, saying instead that he has "structures." He didn't share details of the structures at a WSJ Tech Live event in 2023, but did note that none of them would be helpful if artificial intelligence "goes wrong." He also told the New Yorker in 2016 that he has a plot of land in Big Sur, California, that he could fly to if necessary.

PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel attempted to build a 10-bedroom compound in New Zealand, but the local government rejected his plans after environmentalists complained. Some suspected that parts of the estate were meant to be a doomsday bunker.

Hall told BI that he's been "flabbergasted" by some of the reported shelter locations, since California and New Zealand are near active tectonic plate boundaries.

"They're the two places you don't want to be building bunkers, and yet allegedly these billionaires are building in those two places," he said.

Representatives for Altman and Thiel did not respond to BI's request for comment.

Other preparations include guns and surgery

Some opt for different doomsday preparations. Altman also previously told the New Yorker that he has "guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force."

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told the New Yorker he's bought guns, ammo, and motorcycles. And he's taken it one step further — he said that in 2015, he got laser eye surgery to hopefully better his chances of survival.

Interest in doomsday-esque materials doesn't just extend to those who are preparing for the end of the world.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus and Anduril, hasn't referred to himself as a prepper but he owns a sizable collection of older military-grade vehicles. He said on an episode of Bloomberg's "The Circuit" that he also owns decommissioned missile silos, some of which extend underground, where he stores what he says is the world's largest video game collection.

"I put that in one of my missile bases, 200 feet underground," Luckey told Bloomberg's Emily Chang. Representatives for Luckey and Huffman did not respond to BI's request for comment.

Hall said that he thinks the association with prominent tech leaders has helped his business.

"A lot of people like to live vicariously through what other people do," he said.

• I wasn't prepared for how my husband's deployment would impact my daughters.
• When her dad isn't around, giving my eldest a sense of control and predictability helps.
• Other things that have helped her cope are a new daddy doll, Toniebox, and video recordings of him.

At first, my husband cringed at the idea of a "daddy doll."

"A pillow with my face on it? That's pretty weird," he said. "Do you really think she needs that?"

After one of his pre-deployment training trips, however, it became clear that we needed some tools to help my eldest daughter, who is almost 3, cope with the challenges of military life.

My husband is an integral part of our family's daily routines.

When he's home, he typically wakes the kids up in the morning, feeds them breakfast, and takes them to day care. In the evening, we have dinner together and then often "divide and conquer" for bedtime, with my husband taking on the toddler duties while I take care of the infant.

This dynamic has served our family well and has allowed my daughters and husband to form a special bond. Unfortunately, though, it creates a void when he leaves, and my attention is split in two.

We've found coping strategies in his absence

Enter the daddy doll, or the "dada pillow" as my toddler calls it — the newest staple in our household.

When my husband is gone for months at a time with limited communication, the dada pillow serves as a huggable reminder of his role in our home. It joins us for meals, playtime, and nightly snuggles.

It doesn't solve all of our problems, but the daddy doll has definitely taken some of the sting out of my husband's absence. It's a way for my kids to include him in our day-to-day activities, making him feel closer to us.

We also purchased a customizable Tonie for our Toniebox and loaded recordings of my husband singing songs and reading books onto it. My daughter loves listening while she colors and does crafts. I have a few videos of him on my phone and iPad, too, that we all love watching when we miss him the most.

Deployments have always been hard, but I couldn't have anticipated how much more difficult it would be to navigate these transitions with my kids.

In addition to the physical tools (we also read deployment picture books and use a visual calendar that counts down the days to his return), the following realizations have allowed me to better handle the uncertainties of deployment:

Prepare for increased tantrums and choose your battles wisely

Recently, my eldest threw a fit because I wouldn't let her hold the big bag of Cheetos.

I've learned that often, these explosive emotions arise due to a desire for control in a very unpredictable situation.

My daughter is too young to understand why her dad left and how long he will be gone. All she knows is that he was present every day, and suddenly, he isn't.

So, understandably, she wants to control as much as she can in this highly sensitive state, which means more meltdowns.

I tend to loosen the reins and give in to smaller arguments just to keep the peace in our home until we settle into a new rhythm without Dad.

Expect setbacks

We attempted to potty train my daughter before my husband deployed, but with him being in and out of the house so much, that proved impossible.

The inconsistency in our home environment made it difficult to integrate new skills. Again, my daughter sought control and stability, leading to my next tip.

Keep routines as consistent as possible

When Dad is gone, we still do all of the things that he and my toddler did together—even the most insignificant things, like letting her "help" feed the dog in the morning.

These tiny rituals give her a sense of predictability and groundedness. I've also found that keeping the weekly schedule consistent and avoiding trips in the first weeks of deployment helps.

Give extra cuddles and one-on-one time when you can

As a mom of two little ones and a third on the way, I know how difficult it can be to carve out one-on-one time.

However, since my eldest daughter is accustomed to more individual attention from her dad, I've found that even just a few extra minutes of cuddling together at night helps regulate her nervous system and keeps the big emotions at bay.

Overall, I try to have more patience and compassion for myself and my kids when my husband is gone. We're all going through this thing together, which is easy to forget during those intense moments when everyone is screaming and needing something.

On days when I'm feeling extra discouraged and depleted, I sneak a hug from the dada pillow and remind myself that we're all doing our best.

• Recent college grads face a long wait to be able to afford buying a home, according to an analysis by Mortgage Research Network.
• High home prices, student loan payments, and low starting salaries make it an uphill battle.
• Sacrifices like living with parents and cutting expenses are almost necessary to become a homeowner.

Recent college graduate Amrita Bhasin wants to own property badly.

She was inspired by her parents, immigrants from England and India who bought a property in the late '90s in Menlo Park, California, which is part of Silicon Valley.

Bhasin declined to share what her parents paid for their San Francisco area property, but according to SiliconValleyMLS.com, the median price for a home in Menlo Park in 1998 was $595,000. Today, the median price of a home in that neighborhood is $3.35 million.

"I think that made me realize that having property is the biggest asset you can have," Bhasin told Business Insider.

Bhasin, 24, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2023 and has since been looking to buy a home without much luck. During the fall of 2024, she moved in with her parents to save money, at the expense of her social life.

Bhasin, who has experience working for Big Tech, now runs her own software startup, which sometimes requires commuting to San Francisco, a city she'd like to spend more time in.

"I can't stay out late," she said. "My friends who live in San Francisco can just casually hang out with each other without much of a heads-up. For me, it's like an hour to get up to the city — you need to give a heads-up."

Bhasin is taking matters into her own hands to try to save for a home, but data shows that for recently graduated Gen Zers, aggressive saving still might not help.

The class of 2025 won't be able to comfortably buy until 2034

Due to the many factors working against them, first-time homebuyers are typically older than they used to be. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median age of a first-time buyer was 38 in 2024. In the 1980s, buyers were often in their late 20s.

And now the average college graduate from the class of 2025 won't be able to afford a home until 2034. That's according to an analysis from Mortgage Research Network, released in May.

The analysis estimated how long it would take to save for a 10% down payment in each state, factoring in home prices, average student loan balances and payments, and starting salaries for recent graduates in each state, using data from Zillow, EducationData.org, and the US Census Bureau.

The timeline to buy varies significantly by state, the study found. Hawaii had the longest average timeline at 17.8 years, while West Virginia had the shortest at 4.9 years.

Tim Lucas, lead analyst and editor at Mortgage Research, highlighted Florida as an interesting case because it's normally thought of as an affordable place to live. The average home price is just over $400,000; however, average starting salaries — $58,009 — are below the national average of $64,598, according to Mortgage Research.

"Yes, the home prices are reasonably affordable, like $400,000 per our data, but you have lower starting salaries and higher student debt, so that offsets any kind of affordability," Lucas told BI.

Gen Z mostly wants to live where the jobs are, but that's expensive

Bhasin has friends in San Francisco who pay up to $3,500 a month in rent, she said, but that's the price of living in the city.

Christopher Tyson, president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, said the city is a popular place for recent graduates.

"If you're in DC, or San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or New York, this is where the entry-level jobs are — but they're also extremely inflated, hyperinflated markets," Tyson told BI.

"You could be making a good salary, but still not be able to afford rent," he continued. "And if you want to put yourself on a path to purchase, you may have to live with a parent or whatnot."

Tyson noted that it's not easy for a lot of people to afford buying a home right now, but it's especially hard for younger generations just starting careers with no equity and little savings. To build up that buying power, sacrifices might have to be made.

Bhasin lives at home, rarely eats out, and quit drinking all to help save for a home, sacrifices she believes are necessary to get what she wants: a home in California.

About 40% of 18- to 30-year-olds lived with at least one parent in 2023, and according to an April Pew Research Center analysis, Vallejo, California, in the Bay Area, had the highest percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds living with their parents at 33%.

"I just got into that mode of, 'I want to be an adult,' and I want to make sacrifices and I want to be the healthiest version of myself and set myself up on the path of my dreams," Bhasin said.

"I do want to buy something in my 20s before I hit 30 because if I've saved appropriately, I should be able to," she added. "I don't want to be 35 and be still saving up for a home."

• Kristin Lewis designs products at Aura, a digital security company.
• She was surprised when her 7-year-old managed to make an unauthorized purchase.
• That led to a more open dialogue and weekly tech check-ins with her kids.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kristin Lewis, senior vice president of product at Aura, a company with a suite of products intended to help people stay safe online. It has been edited for length and clarity.

A lot of my work is about simplifying online safety, so I used to be pretty confident in my ability to keep my kids safe online. Then, my son made a purchase online that showed me keeping kids safe isn't so simple, even for an expert.

My sons are young — they're 5 and 8 now — and they don't have their own devices, only a family iPad. My husband and I download apps that we are comfortable with them using, and are often nearby when the boys are on the iPad.

I thought we were doing everything parents should. Then I learned that kids can unintentionally stumble into trouble online, even with their parents right there.

My son made an unauthorized purchase within an app

My rude awakening happened on a Saturday morning. I was doing Wordle, and my son Warner, who was then 7, was playing on the iPad. He had recently visited his 10-year-old cousin and had since been playing some parent-approved online games with him. I love that they can connect over distance like that.

Then, I received a push notification on my phone, telling me my card had been used to make a gaming transaction on the iPad. I looked at Warner and asked if he had bought something, and he replied, "Why do you ask?"

So many things were going off in my head, but I didn't want Warner to think he was in trouble. I asked him to show me the game, and he told me he was chatting with his cousin. When I looked at the screen, it was a random stranger, not his cousin's screen name. The stranger had sent him a link. Warner clicked it and made a purchase for the game.

I immediately talked with Warner and locked down messaging

The whole interaction was relatively innocuous. The stranger hadn't said anything inappropriate, and it didn't seem to be a scam. But I was struck by everything that could have happened.

I sat down with Warner and explained that he wasn't talking to his cousin. When I said that, he looked scared and asked, "Well, who is it?" I told him it could be anyone, emphasizing that while many people online are nice, others are not, so it's important to avoid talking to strangers. Then, I disabled in-app messaging, which I hadn't realized was allowed.

I'd underestimated my son's tech capabilities

That morning made me realize that I need to talk to my sons about online safety before I think they need it. Kids are naturally curious and trusting, which can be a dangerous combination online.

I hadn't considered that as Warner quickly improved his reading skills, he'd be able to explore more on the iPad. He was a lot more tech savvy than I gave him credit for.

Like most parents, I don't have the time to research every app my kids want to use. That's why the work I do at Aura is so important to me. I want to take some of the burden of safety online off parents. I would love to have more of those decisions made for me—and my team is working toward that at Aura. But for now, there's still a lot of groundwork parents need to put in.

I want to keep a positive outlook on technology with my sons

While this experience was jarring, I don't want the message to be that technology is bad. That's not the approach we use in our house. Instead, we have weekly tech check-ins where we get curious about what the kids are doing online. What games did they win, or which cousins did they catch up with? If they want a new app, we can look into it together.

Most of our family lives far away, so technology has been a great bridge to build connections. Warner's cousin always Facetimes him when he walks the dog, and the two virtually walk together. That type of interaction online is always OK. Other interactions, like gaming, are limited.

It's similar to snacking. The boys can't always have Doritos, but they can have a banana any time they like. They can't always play games, but they can answer FaceTime from family any time. I hope to empower them to make their own healthy decisions as they grow up.

• Investor Tom Liravongsa is renovating a landmarked skyscraper into an apartment building.
• The building, built in 1927, was once a major medical office and is now mostly vacant.
• Liravongsa thinks the classic craftsmanship will make it stand out from other residential buildings.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tom Liravongsa, or Tom the Skyscraper Guy, a real estate investor who purchased the majority of the Pittsfield Building, a 38-story skyscraper in Chicago that has been partially vacant for nearly a decade. Liravongsa is turning the former office building into residences. The building was built in 1927 and landmarked in 2002. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

This building has quite a history.

It's been in disarray for over a decade, and if you dive into the real history of it, it's gone through so much turmoil.

We knew that it was a Marshall Field estate building. It was built by Marshall Fields III, and prior to it becoming a disarray, I think the last lease burned in 2017. Prior to that, it was the largest medical office east of the Mississippi with 775 doctors and dentists in the building.

It's also in Jewelers Row, which is a really prominent area for selling high-end jewelry. In fact, we discovered recently that on the sixth floor, there's a store that sold pearl jewelry.

All of the remnants that we've just been discovering, you wouldn't have found them unless you were in the building. There are safes that were built into the wall and compressors in the basement specifically for compressed air for doctors and dentists to use.

There are grotesques on the corners of the building. I didn't even know they were there until we were literally hanging over the building.

It's really unique.

I bought 80% of the building for about $7 million

Shortly after COVID, I was looking at basically all markets that had office spaces, knowing that there would be a shift in how office space is used.

Not only is the Midwest close to home, but I'm very familiar with Chicago. I've been here long enough to know Chicago is also a developer-friendly city when you're doing the right things, which is residential.

That's what we're doing. We're changing an office building into a residential building, and there are a lot of things that come along with doing something like that.

We acquired the building in May 2023. We had actually purchased it out of a foreclosure, so that's how we were able to do that.

We paid just over $7.5 million for it.

We own 80% of the building now. When I say we, yes, it's investors, and the investors are your partners. Most people would be familiar with something like New York City, where they have vertically bifurcated buildings — that's the same situation that you have here in Chicago. So, we own everything except floors 13 to 21.

All of it was office space. I believe they started doing conversions in 2009. The building currently has 228 apartments, which are about 80% full.

Those are active market-rate apartments that are located on floors 10 to 21. We have three floors of apartments, and the floors we don't own are all apartments.

The rest is now just completely vacant. And that's what we are working through and getting turned into apartments.

It will still have some mixed-use, meaning we'll have retail-floor activation, and we'll have basement activation.

More importantly, for 100 years, people have not been able to see this building for what it is — this craftsmanship specifically. They've not been able to see things such as the copper top.

So we're offering a lot of this viewing to the public, like a museum inside the building.

I want to take advantage of the classic craftsmanship

Most developers come in and they just want to make it their own — and their own is going with what they think the market is, which is like a glass tower. We're building glass towers now, and they're nowhere near the attention and the allure that this building has.

There's been a real shift in the market to what we call themed buildings because these conversions are happening, and a themed building — like this 1920s craftsmanship building — has its own allure outside being a glass tower. Anybody can go and live in a glass tower; there's nothing exciting about that.

But to have this building with all of these features and to be able to reference them, there's something to be said about it.

To modernize different components, you'll have amenity spaces that will be a mixture of modern and also maintain a lot of the craftsmanship.

The hallways and other areas will be very much maintained, but some of the interior units might be a little more modern. But when we talk about modern, we're thinking about the basics: the way your doors and windows work.

We're talking about how HVAC and other systems are going to be modernized. Those are basic modernizations, but you can still incorporate those behind walls so you can keep the allure of these older buildings without having to change them per se.

The state of the commercial real estate market right now is that there is empty office space. We were just introduced to another WeWork-style space, completely empty — six floors of it. We were thinking, "Oh, this is such a sad thing." I remember a time when I thought, I would love to be in an office like this. Now there's no one in those offices. And so the question is, what do we do with those?

We knew that this was a maximized residential building. But more importantly, Chicago has one of the best job markets in the Midwest. It's a hub, but there are also a lot of people who live here. You don't need an office right now; we need housing.

• Cloudflare will block Big Tech AI bot crawlers by default.
• Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl lets creators charge AI giants for content access.
• The moves address concerns about Big Tech exploiting content without consent or payment.

Cloudflare announced a major policy shift that could reshape the dynamics between content creators and AI companies.

Beginning Tuesday, the company will automatically block AI crawlers from scraping the websites it powers, unless site owners explicitly opt in. This makes Cloudflare the first major internet infrastructure provider to enforce a default permission-based model for AI content access.

The move comes amid growing concerns from content creators and publishers that AI giants are exploiting their work without consent or compensation.

Historically, search engines have indexed content in a way that drives traffic and ad revenue back to original sources. But AI bot crawlers, used for training large language models, harvest vast amounts of data and send much less traffic back to the original creators of this content. These bots are used by industry giants including Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Cloudflare, which manages and protects traffic for about 20% of the web, initially rolled out an optional one-click AI crawler blocking system in 2024. More than a million customers enabled it. Now, this becomes the default: AI companies will now be required to obtain explicit permission from websites before scraping, flipping the script on passive data harvesting.

"Original content is what makes the internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and we have to come together to protect it," Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said.

"AI crawlers have been scraping content without limits," he added. "Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of creators, while still helping AI companies innovate. This is about safeguarding the future of a free and vibrant internet with a new model that works for everyone."

Pay Per Crawl

As part of its broader push toward a permission-based internet, Cloudflare also rolled out Pay Per Crawl on Tuesday. This new feature lets select publishers and creators charge AI companies for accessing their content. Participants can set pricing for individual crawlers, granting full control over how and whether their work is used in AI model training.

Cloudflare hopes to create a transparent, consent-driven marketplace that helps creators decide whether to allow all AI crawlers, permit specific ones, or set their own access fees, turning previously unmonetized content usage into new revenue streams.

For AI companies, Pay Per Crawl offers a streamlined interface to browse access terms, view pricing, and choose whether to pay or walk away without the data.

Pay Per Crawl is currently available to a select group of partners, with broader access available through this sign-up page.

Major publishers have signed on or expressed support for Cloudflare's latest move to block AI bot crawlers by default, including Gannett, Time, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, and the Associated Press. Other companies, such as Stack Overflow, have endorsed the initiative.

At its core, Cloudflare's moves are an attempt to reset the internet's economic model for the new age of generative AI. This initiative doesn't halt AI innovation, but encourages it to grow responsibly by paying for intellectual property and rewarding the creators behind the data.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at [email protected].

• Big Tech wins legal battles, allowing AI to use copyrighted content for free.
• Judges rule that AI training with copyrighted material is fair use.
• Here's what this could mean for the future of the internet.

Big Tech notched major victories recently in the debate over copyright and artificial intelligence.

It's getting closer to the point where anything published online is fair game to be scraped, copied, and funneled into AI models and chatbots that ultimately compete against the creators of the original material.

This is the moment Google, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other giants of the generative AI era have been waiting and hoping for. They are getting much closer to having legal certainty that they will never have to pay for the data that's essential for their blockbuster AI products.

What does this mean for the future of the web and the business of content creation? Read on (or just wait an hour or so for an AI summary from your favorite chatbot).

Here's the big news: A judge recently ruled that Anthropic's use of millions of books to train its AI models qualifies as fair use, a legal doctrine that permits the use of copyrighted content for free without the owner's permission in certain circumstances. Meta also won a similar big legal case.

"Good news for all gen AI developers," wrote Adam Eisgrau, a senior director at the Chamber of Progress, a lobbying group funded by tech giants including Google, Amazon, Apple, and Nvidia. The Anthropic decision will be "likely applicable in many cases," he added.

The plunging value of the written word

A investment banker I spoke to recently summed up the impact of fair use in the age of generative AI: People will pay very little for the written word these days.

He's right. When copyrighted content can be scooped up for free and regurgitated in a slightly different form in milliseconds, the value of text online — even exclusive "frontier content" — plunges.

The US Copyright Office is a lone voice on the other side of this discussion right now. It concluded recently that using copyrighted content for AI violates fair use because generative AI is flooding the web with mountains of additional words, images, and videos. That extra supply undermines the market for the original content. Judges seem to be ignoring this so far.

One of my former editors used to give me this advice when I wanted to write about issues like this: No one cares that much about the media. Some might say they do at dinner parties, but they really don't. These days, this industry is minuscule compared to the rest of the economy. Go write about bigger things, this editor would say.

One example: Meta holds about $80 billion in cash and marketable securities. That's almost 10 times the total value of the New York Times. Meta will spend as much as $72 billion in capex this year, mostly for AI data center infrastructure. Mark Zuckerberg is also offering $100 million compensation packages to try to hire single AI experts.

And yet, Meta won't pay a dime for content for AI model training and won't pay when it uses this copyrighted content in generative AI outputs. Same for Google and most other AI giants.

Why can't machines do the same?

Right after ChatGPT came out in 2022, and I first realized that AI models were trained on mountains of copyrighted material without payment or permission, I happened to be visiting an old friend at a Big Tech company. I brought the issue up, and this person replied with this argument: Humans learn by consuming copyrighted content on the web, in books, and from other sources. They internalize this information, process it, and often produce new ideas and content that is based on the original stuff they've read in the past. Why can't machines do the same?

This was delivered with such speed and calmness. There was no pause to reflect or think. It was as if this Big Tech company had been preparing for this moment for years — the moment when everyone realizes their work is being used for AI models and chatbots that ultimately compete against them.

The Google research paper that launched the generative AI boom has overtones of this, too. Attention Is All You Need introduced the "Transformer" to the world. This is a special type of AI model that ingests mountains of content and data to train powerful generative models.

Why did the Googlers who wrote this paper come up with the name "Transformer"? I don't know, but the word tackles the fair use question head-on. One of the tests for whether you are violating copyright law is whether you "transformed" the original work enough to avoid infringing. Google came up with this Transformer name in 2017, a full five years before ChatGPT brought this new technology — and this copyright question — to the world.

Tech blogger Ben Thompson has a cool-headed and well-informed view of all this. He strongly supports the decision of the judge in the Anthropic case, agreeing that training AI with books for free qualifies as fair use, calling it "critically important." AI learning, like human learning, is transformative and does not infringe on copyright when outputs don't replicate the original material. With copyright law, there's always a trade-off meant to incentivize creation without stifling innovation, he explained, and fair use exists to balance those interests.

A warning from the grave

So, what will flow from the fact that basically any copyrighted content online is now fair game for AI companies to use for free?

Here's one prediction. This comes from the grave, but also from deep within OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Suchir Balaji was part of an OpenAI team that collected data from the internet for AI model training. He joined the startup with high hopes for how AI could help society, but became disillusioned. In November, Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. The city's chief medical examiner determined the death to be suicide.

Before he died, Balaji wrote an essay on his personal website criticizing AI companies for using public data without compensation and questioned their claims of "fair use." He argued that this trend threatens the sustainability of the internet by draining value from original content sources.

Balaji cited a study that found traffic to coding Q&A site Stack Overflow traffic dropped by about 12% after ChatGPT's release. Developers who once visited the site to ask or answer questions are now turning to AI, reducing new sign-ups and community engagement.

This is undermining the web's "Grand Bargain." Google and other tech giants used to crawl websites and collect the data without paying. But in return, they sent traffic and visitors to the creators of these sites so that they could make money via advertising, subscriptions, product sales, and other methods. Nowadays, Big Tech's AI bots crawl for free and send much less traffic to the creators of the original copyrighted content.

Cloudflare, which runs one of the biggest networks on the web, rolled out a potential solution on Tuesday. The company launched a "pay per crawl" service that helps content creators require payment from AI companies for accessing and using their content.

Cloudflare will block AI crawlers by default for new customers, making content access opt-in rather than opt-out. Major publishers, including Ziff Davis, The Atlantic, and Time, have signed on. The hope is that this will force big tech companies to pay to scrape new digital content for AI development. A startup called Tollbit is trying a similar thing.

I don't know if these efforts will succeed. The core point is that humans should be allowed to learn from copyrighted information for free, and machines probably should too. Reversing this might create even more problems. As a journalist, would I be able to read a Ben Thompson newsletter and incorporate one of his ideas into a future article? Maybe not. Would Thompson be banned from reading scoops by Business Insider and analyzing that new information for one of his amazing newsletters? Is that a good idea? Probably not.

Some predictions

One result of all this could be that, in the future, truly valuable information may no longer be put on the web. Here are three examples that suggest this might already be happening:

• Ben Thompson distributes his content via paid newsletters, rather than relying on free web distribution.

• Bloomberg runs probably the Western world's largest newsroom. Why? One reason is that its news arm is buried inside a massively profitable financial data business. Another is that Bloomberg's most valuable news content is published on the Terminal, a trading tool used by wealthy investors. This system has its own network — it doesn't rely much on the web. Bloomberg only publishes its best news content on the web after a long delay — and a lot of its content just stays on the Terminal and never goes on the web at all. Surprise: It has a well-financed newsroom.

• Finally, valuable content may be shared in the future only via personal meetings and relationships, or even through paper publications again. Anything where the data is out of the immediate reach of Big Tech AI crawling bots.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft started a new publication called Signal that explores the future of AI, society, and business.

It's published on paper only.

• The newly patented DevGen.AI tool was developed in-house and released in January.
• The bank says it's saved almost 300,000 hours this year alone, but won't replace developers' jobs.
• DevGen.AI solves a long-standing headache for coders within and beyond Morgan Stanley.

During a Morgan Stanley hackathon at the end of 2023, two teams were trying to solve a problem that has plagued developers for years: how to rewrite legacy code into modern programming languages.

Those nuggets of an idea turned into DevGen.AI, a tool the bank unveiled in January that has so far saved developers more than 280,000 hours as of June, or 11,666 days they would have previously dedicated to deciphering outdated code, according to Trevor Brosnan, the bank's global head of technology strategy, architecture, and modernization. Brosnan led the effort to build the tool, which turns code from old languages into plain-English specs that can then be rewritten.

Legacy code refers to outdated, older software code — think of languages like Cobol, which was developed in 1959 — that can raise security risks and slow down how quickly companies can take advantage of new technology, The Wall Street Journal reported. Banks and financial institutions are especially dependent on older programming languages, per the Journal.

"In early 2024, I pulled some of our top distinguished engineers at the firm out of their line of business teams and into a new applied AI team, because my instincts told me that there was some great opportunity here," Brosnan told BI.

His instincts were right — the tool has exceeded even his high expectations. It was granted a patent in early June with assistance from the bank's Patent Accelerator Program, which Megan Brewer, the head of firmwide market innovation and labs, helped start.

Cutting out 'onerous' work, not jobs

Brewer and Brosnan said that DevGen.AI won't take software engineering or other jobs with the time it saves. The technology, Brewer said, replaces "onerous" rote work.

"That means those people can actually go work on what we need to be working on, which is the future," she said. Brewer said AI presents opportunities throughout the firm, and that Morgan Stanley is currently looking into how it can use agentic AI across teams.

"The reality is we have so much modernization work to do, and we have ongoing demand from all of our businesses to deliver more functionality, more capability for our clients," Brosnan told BI.

Young people are struggling to land quality positions in the tech sector, in particular, and AI is already starting to gobble up jobs across industries. White-collar job postings nationwide are shrinking faster than blue-collar listings, including for software developers.

Still, Brewer and Brosnan were adamant that DevGen.AI won't render developers obsolete. Morgan Stanley had 233 technology jobs in the Americas posted on its website at the time of writing, including dozens of openings for software engineers.

The initial team for DevGen.AI was tiny

Not many of the technologists at the bank worked on DevGen.AI — Brosnan said the initial team was fewer than five people "who are passionate about this." Eventually, the core group expanded to around 20 engineers. Throughout the process, they consulted with subject matter experts across the firm to figure out different use cases for the tool, Brosnan said.

Morgan Stanley could have outsourced the development of the tool, but Brosnan said they decided to develop it internally in part to "implement all the kinds of security controls." Now, he said, employees across divisions, from its institutional to wealth management businesses, are using the tool.

"Even within the world of generative AI, this was a very, very, very clever use of it, but it also was extremely impactful," said Larry Bromberg, the global head of intellectual property legal, who co-leads the Patent Acceleration Program.

Pleased as he is with the result, Brosnan said his team very briefly celebrated their successes.

"Frankly, they are still very focused on their day job. Our mission is to accelerate modernization at Morgan Stanley, and we've still got lots of work to do," he told BI.

The technology will stay internal for now

One cause for celebration was receiving a patent, which Morgan Stanley employees are encouraged to do through the Patent Accelerator Program. Brewer said the program provides support throughout the invention and legal process.

Patent-holders span the firm — there are around 500 across 14 different divisions, Brewer said. From 2023-2024, the Patent Accelerator Program increased final submissions to patent offices by 53%, and Brewer said that they'll "definitely" surpass that this year. Brewer said that 20% of patent holders are junior staff, and 10% are distinguished engineers.

One of the lead engineers on the DevGen.AI team is something of a serial patent recipient, or a "serial offender" as Brewer put it, with 13 patents to date.

Brosnan said the team doesn't have immediate plans to license the newly patented tool externally; it would likely be in high demand given how many financial and Big Tech companies have to deal with outdated coding languages.

"Right now, our plan is to leverage this definitely for all of our modernization demands internally. We haven't decided anything different from that," he said, adding that Morgan Stanley has shared technology with peers in the past.

In the meantime, the question of how to use AI and modernize the bank isn't going anywhere. As Brosnan put it, his technologists are back to "hands-on keyboards" after every win.

• My husband and I had always planned on having kids in our late 20s or early 30s.
• Then, two years ago, he was in a traffic collision and became paraplegic.
• Though we will face additional challenges as parents, it's not stopping us from having a family.

Two years ago, my husband, Daniel, was in a life-altering traffic collision that severed his spinal cord at his lower back.

He couldn't feel his legs at the scene and was taken away to the ER, where they assessed his condition and immediately sent him to the local hospital for a spinal fusion surgery.

This event almost perfectly coincided with our discussions around family planning and how we finally felt ready to try. We had dated for six years before getting married early in the pandemic and felt we had weathered some of life's hardest challenges together; by this point, we felt as though we were ready for the next step of parenthood.

When Daniel became paraplegic, the kinds of concerns we had radically shifted.

We have added things to consider

Most new parents-to-be worry about things like the ups and downs of pregnancy or how to maintain the division of labor between working parents. Instead, we face a whole different slew of challenges.

Because of his paraplegia, we can't get pregnant the old-fashioned way and will require medical assistance. There are several methods for sperm retrieval that have escalating costs and medical involvement, with only limited insurance coverage leading to additional out-of-pocket expenses.

His doctor has been excellent in walking us through what these steps will look like and how we can ensure that we can still have children. As might be expected, these physical changes have been hard on Daniel and his understanding of his own sexuality, but haven't dulled his desire to have children. However, this isn't even the primary concern for me.

It's not getting pregnant and giving birth that I'm worried about (although there are plenty of medical uncertainties during any pregnancy), but what life will look like once we do bring an infant home.

Daniel already struggles with sleep most nights due to his chronic nerve pain. How will we manage night shifts with a newborn? Will he be doubly sleep-deprived by nerve pain and midnight feedings, or will the constant lack of sleep worsen his symptoms?

And if Daniel is on nighttime baby duty, what kind of crib do we need to ensure that he can actually reach and pick up our child, and rock them back to sleep without a rocking chair?

I've already begun researching wheelchair-accessible strollers and changing tables to understand what kind of specialized equipment we'll need to purchase, and while there are options available, this limits us from receiving gently used gear from family and friends.

We had been hoping to save money by having Daniel take on the majority of childcare while I returned to work, because he is self-employed as the founder of a worker-owned rum distillery and we need my job's provided health insurance. However, with his limited mobility and irregularly scheduled physical therapy sessions, we are reconsidering day care despite its cost, adding to the already-stacking medical bills.

It won't be easy, but we have so much love and support

Though I've not met a single parent who said parenting is easy, our situation provides additional challenges. We're just beginning our parenthood journey and already see the added hurdles we'll have to face. However, we're choosing to have children because it's an important goal in our lives and shows that we have faith in a future together.

Daniel and I have seen children in our future plans. We agreed that our late 20s or early 30s would be the time to start trying; we just didn't expect doing so to require medical intervention or custom childcare equipment to handle the added challenges of disability.

In a twist of fate, we discovered exactly how much incredible support we already have in our community in the aftermath of his injury. Neighbors who would watch our dog while we had long medical appointments, and friends who brought home-cooked meals once a week, while Daniel was inpatient during his recovery.

Even with both our families living out of state, we felt secure having a strong network of local friends who shepherded us through the first year of his recovery, and have already had a few conversations about whether they would be willing to come to our aid once again when we have children.

Our local friends, most of whom are not parents themselves, readily agreed that we can rely on their help. Knowing that we'll have backup in the form of nearby friends makes a difficult situation feel less distressing.

We know having children won't be easy, but we also know that we won't be tackling it alone. We've overcome so many challenges already, and fundamentally, having children is a statement of hope for the future — even if that means needing more complicated baby strollers than most parents have to use.

• As July kicks off, 2025 still lacks a defining summer anthem.
• Alex Warren and Sabrina Carpenter have charting hits, but they lack creativity and staying power.
• Last year's musical highs, combined with this year's political chaos, have produced a pop hangover.

It's official: Pop fans are suffering through a dry spell.

By this time last year, we had already been treated to a veritable feast of summertime smashes and breakout stars.

Remember Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which eventually tied the all-time record for most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso," followed closely by her chart-topping "Please Please Please," and Chappell Roan's "Good Luck, Babe!" — not to mention the entirety of Charli XCX's "Brat," a zeitgiesty album if one ever existed, to the point where brands, politicians, and even world-renowned art centers were trying to capitalize on the fervor?

Even though we're halfway through the year, most of the hits at the very top of the Hot 100 were produced last year. Brand new music is struggling to gain relevance, let alone hold onto it.

Alex Warren's grandiose power ballad, "Ordinary," is apparently the biggest song in the US right now. But much as its title suggests, "Ordinary" lacks friction, creativity, or any hint of a cool factor — crucial ingredients in the special sauce that propels a warm-weather bop to "song of the summer" status.

"Ordinary" has failed to capture the zeitgeist in any meaningful way; rather, it belongs to the same derivative, gospel-adjacent subgenre of pop that has also spawned hits like Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" and Teddy Swims' "Lose Control." This is the kind of music you hear a lot in the grocery store and the dentist's office.

If "Ordinary" were being challenged by a massive hit, radio play probably wouldn't be enough to sustain its No. 1 reign. So, yes, blame Warren's dearth of competition — but there's also something more eerie at work here.

Music executive Kayode Badmus-Wellington, who has over a decade of experience in A&R, calls it the "hangover effect."

This year's biggest hits sound stale

Newer songs in the Hot 100's current top 10 include three tracks from Morgan Wallen's latest album, "I'm the Problem," and Carpenter's June single, "Manchild." You might assume these would be leading "song of the summer" contenders, but even market-tested hitmakers Wallen and Carpenter have yet to recreate their dominance from recent years. Wallen's "What I Want," featuring Tate McRae, debuted atop the chart but immediately fell from the summit in its second week. "Manchild" met the same fate.

A one-week reign at No. 1 usually signals that a song that can spark curiosity — of course, when it comes to A-listers, tons of people will listen to their new releases no matter what — but may not have the power to hold their attention. The issue is that neither "What I Want" nor "Manchild" offers anything fresh or particularly stimulating. Both songs rehash sounds and themes that Wallen and Carpenter have repeatedly explored.

(Carpenter said "Manchild" was actually written around the same time as her last album, 2024's "Short n' Sweet," which explains why it sounds like a B-side. It doesn't have the juice that "Espresso" did to become a lasting hit, or, perhaps more accurately, the caffeine boost.)

Badmus-Wellington described 2024 as "such a high" for pop music, spurred by blockbuster releases like Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department" and Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter," as well as fresh faces like Shaboozey and Roan. Fans were getting spoiled from all sides, so this year's shortfall feels even starker by contrast.

"The big pop names have mostly fired their shots. The new wave hasn't really announced itself with the same confidence or clarity this year," he told Business Insider. "There are fewer group anthems. A lot of the current songs, they're not necessarily made for the room. Last year's hits felt very communal."

Political chaos created an overstimulated audience

Pop music has always been cyclical; one could argue that 2025 is simply the ebb to 2024's flow. However, the dramatic political vibe shift has also played a role.

Last summer, Charli XCX declared that "Kamala IS Brat," a lesbian pop star enjoyed historic concert crowds, and Swift's Eras Tour continued to gush with feminine joy and friendship bracelets. In January, President Donald Trump's inauguration hastened the arrival of an era that looks and feels very different. The cultural consciousness is now dominated by mass deportation and multiple wars across the world.

"Regardless of people's preferences in terms of politics, 2024 just felt so much more optimistic. That's why you saw 'Brat' and the Kamala effect, and it all created an atmosphere that invited feel-good, confident music, and people just wanted relief and celebration," Badmus-Wellington said. "Now, it's just so distracting, because you have people's rights being violated and threatened, and people are just so anxious in many ways. That's leading back into the overstimulation of constant political noise."

Overstimulation, paired with last year's musical overindulgence, has led to a stupendous comedown. Not only are fewer superstars releasing albums, but audience attention is fractured. Badmus-Wellington said he's noticed people retreating back into known comforts and nostalgia, listening to songs they already know and love, rather than exploring new releases or discovering new artists.

"Song of the summer" is a famously subjective term, but the warmest season is inextricably linked to group outings, from parties and beach days to road trips and picnics. As a result, songs that fit the bill are usually sing-along friendly, anthemic; like a rallying cry. This summer, it looks like fans haven't found anything to rally behind — at least, not yet.

• Investment processes that once took months are gaining speed thanks to AI.
• This is transforming an in-depth investment approach known as fundamental investing.
• Executives from Alliance Bernstein to JPMorgan take us inside the fundamental investing revolution.

It took an AllianceBernstein healthcare analyst just one afternoon to analyze what would have once taken her months: the potential impact of President Donald Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" on specific drugs and insurance plans across state lines.

Andrew Chin, the firm's chief artificial intelligence officer, said the analyst used one of the $790 billion asset manager's in-house tools to quickly interpret the legislation and identify which companies would be affected, allowing her to make a fast, confident investment call.

"Because she was able to do that, she was able to make money for our client portfolios a lot faster," said Chin, adding that the analyst "locked in some of the alpha" in a way that was not previously possible.

Fundamental investors take a slow and methodical approach to their investment decisions. Whether reviewing financial statements or talking to vendors and company executives, it can take months for a fundamental investor to reach a conclusion about what to invest in and at what price.

Not anymore. Artificial intelligence is changing the slow investing game popularized by investors like Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway and Peter Lynch of Fidelity.

While asset managers have long used machine learning to crunch spreadsheets and detect trading signals—especially in quant and systematic strategies— these tools can also quickly digest and analyze vast reams of unstructured information, like earnings call transcripts, regulatory filings, and even emails. It's allowing large asset managers to make fundamental investing decisions faster than ever before.

Here are three firms that are using AI to transform their investment processes:

JPMorgan Asset Management

Two and a half years ago, JPMorgan Asset Management AI strategist Dillon Edwards sat down with upward of 50 portfolio managers to understand what they needed. He asked them about the screens they use, the questions they ask themselves throughout the day, and the common thread was, "Just get our attention to the right data, at the right time, in the right place."

That request led to the creation of Smart Monitor, which Edwards described as "Spotify for the investor." It scans mountains of data to surface timely, relevant insights for the firm's portfolio managers and analysts.

Smart Monitor is part of JPMorgan's broader AI build-out for its $3.7 trillion asset management arm, which is hosted on a platform called Spectrum. Another tool within this platform is Moneyball, which helps portfolio managers identify and correct potential biases in their investment decisions by analyzing historical data and market behaviors.

Rather than building something new for investors to learn, Edwards and his team focused on AI directly into the process that investors have spent years perfecting.

The bottom-up approach has helped to minimize AI skeptics: A handful of "champion" PMs worked closely with engineers during development and became in-house unofficial salespeople who market it to their own teams.

"No one wants another tool, another thing to do, something that the AI team somehow thinks is going to be helpful for an investor without empathizing with what they're doing today," he said.

Kristian West, JPMorgan Asset Management's head of investment platform, said the firm is also developing similar tools with the goal of seeing if they can continue to scale the quantitative process, or data-driven systematic investing.

"That's an area where we think it is just pretty obvious, whereas technology and data capabilities improve, those two worlds collide a lot more," he said.

Alliance Bernstein

For fundamental investors—portfolio managers and analysts who base long-term decisions on a deep understanding of individual companies—this marks a turning point: a chance to move faster and dig deeper, but also a moment to rethink how they work.

Chin calls this evolution the rise of the "iron person": a human investor enhanced by AI armor. Not a replacement, but an upgrade.

AB has developed an internal chatbot called AB AI, along with several tools to help pull from internal data, prep for company meetings, or conduct research tailored to the manager's investment philosophy.

Chin said that many AB analysts often develop their own AI agents using ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot with specific prompts to, for example, run an analysis on the companies in their sector after an earnings call.

"They're able to then analyze companies the way they want to, so they get a more tailored or customized version of what the tool can provide them," he said.

Chin said about 75% of the firm's over 500 investment professionals are using their tools.

People sharing stories like "it takes me a day rather than a month to do something, or I was able to get this insight that I did not get before," have driven others to try it, said Chin.

For the remaining 25% who haven't picked up AI, he believes they "will just naturally come when they see the performance of their counterparts has gotten better."

BlackRock

A big reveal from BlackRock's investor day last month shows just how fast the field is moving. The $11 trillion investing behemoth has launched Asimov, an agentic AI platform for its fundamental equity business. Agentic AI doesn't just answer questions following prompts — it can take action on its own.

"While everyone else is sleeping at night, we have these virtual AI agents, they're scanning research notes, company filings, emails to generate portfolio insights," the firm's chief operating officer, Robert Goldstein, said.

He hopes Asimov will be deployed across the firm by the next investor day, offering investors at the world's biggest asset manager a powerful teammate.

Raffaele Savi, its global head of systemic investing, underscored how significantly AI is affecting the investing world.

The speed and power of having "real-time, millions of stimulations a day happening in the background, developing situational awareness" that helps ensure the portfolio reflects the manager's intentions are "profound."

"The world has changed tremendously," he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sandy McConnell, 80, who lives in Nevada. McConnell works as a full-time accounts receivable specialist, earning about $50,000 annually. She has $37 in savings and more than $70,000 in debt, not including her house. Business Insider has verified McConnell's current income and financial situation with documentation. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sometimes, I feel it's sad that people like me are still working so late in life, whether it be because we didn't manage money better, were never taught how to do so, or had circumstances that hindered our financial goals.

I have to work because I've been single since 1997 and have a house payment, a car payment, and high credit card debt. I didn't take a 401(k) with my current company because I thought it was stupid to; I need the money now, not 10 years from now.

On the other hand, if I didn't work, what would I do? I can't sit home all day — I would go nuts. Sure, I don't have the freedom to travel, but there are pros like keeping my brain active.

I started working as a teenager

When I was 16, I got my first part-time job as a cashier. I got married in 1962 and had a baby the following year. I tried going back to school, but I went to a Catholic school, and the nuns weren't having any of that. My husband was in the Navy, and I worked as a full-time checker while he was deployed.

When he came back, I became pregnant again. After having that child, I worked in another grocery store as the head cashier and at the customer service desk. Through the 1960s, I held a few other grocery jobs, doing accounts receivable for one and doing collections work for Sears Roebuck.

My last child was born in 1971. My husband left when my kids were little, and he wouldn't pay child support. Financially, I was always strapped, raising five children.

I went through the training to be a nurse's aide but realized quickly it wasn't for me. With my experience in consumer collections, I got a job a few years later at a jewelry store as a credit manager. Then I became a credit manager at a construction company, a role I held for many years. I held various credit management jobs while in Las Vegas, such as for automobile, roofing, and lighting companies. I lost my job at a building supply company right before COVID hit.

I had to file for bankruptcy

I've always been living paycheck to paycheck and never had a lot in savings.

In 2001, I had 13 family members living with me due to unfortunate circumstances. They finally found work and got their own places, but that hurt me financially to the point where I've had to file for bankruptcy once in 2004 and most recently in October 2021.

In 2022, my youngest son was living with me. We had previously had a falling out, but when he said things weren't going well, I told him he always had a place to stay. After being out of work, he got a really good job as a city bus driver and was helping me financially.

One day, he never came home from work. He had collapsed from a massive heart attack.

My oldest son and my grandson came to live with me after that. My oldest son was constantly changing jobs. In December 2023, he had a major stroke and couldn't work, and I had to take out credit cards to support my grandson. That really set me back financially. My son didn't have insurance at the time, and I also had to make sure he had his medications and got to therapy.

He and his son moved back to Oklahoma to be with his dad in June 2024. My daughter moved in with me the following month due to a nasty divorce. She's doing great and has a good job. She helps me financially. I don't have anybody right now to have to take care of, except for myself and my dogs.

I've never thought I could retire

Now I find myself at 80 still needing to work. Part of that is financial, and part of it is because I would be bored; if you don't have any money to do anything with, what are you going to do? Your house can only get so clean.

I work as a full-time accounts receivable specialist. It's a very busy position, and I earn around $50,000 a year. I work from home, which I love. My company appreciates work-life balance, so if I need time off, they give it to me. I also get $1,784 in monthly Social Security.

I had 401(k)s from previous jobs, but I never had enough in them to be able to say, "I can retire." That's not going to happen.

I own my home, and I've been in it for 10 years. It's valued at around $400,000. If I sold it, I could retire, but if I do that, where am I going to go?

Debt, including everything except my house, is probably around $70,000. I'm trying to pay it down each month, but something always happens and I have to end up spending my money on something else. I put money in my bank account every month, but right now I have $37 in my savings account.

My credit is fairly good, and I'm satisfied with what I have. I'm more blessed than a lot of other people I know.

I make do with what I have

I have great-grandkids in town, so I like to visit and spend some time with them. Anything family-oriented is always great, whether it's going to somebody else's house, a dinner, or a barbecue. I like to take my dogs to the dog park when I can. Until last September, I walked a lot until I developed a couple of health problems that have prevented me from doing so.

Once a month, I go to lunch with my former coworkers at a company where I worked for 13 years. We go to an affordable restaurant and talk, cry, laugh, and remember the good times at our job.

Every night, I get online and play in my poker league. I don't play for money; I used to gamble, but I can't really do that anymore. I play for points, but I do pay for a $40 monthly membership. You earn tokens, which you can use to play in cash tournaments. I play in many charity tournaments, especially for autism.

I don't spend a lot. I like to shop at bargain stores, and I only buy reasonably priced things. I don't eat a lot, and I can get by with peanut butter sandwiches. I spend $150 to $200 at the grocery store monthly, and I do a lot of food prep. I spend about $100 on essentials like toilet paper, paper towels, and other items.

I can put $5 in my wallet, and it lasts me forever.