• Verizon is seemingly looking to capitalize on rival AT&T's full-time RTO mandate.
• In a recruiting email, Verizon mentions remote and hybrid openings amid "changing RTO policies across the industry."
• AT&T told BI that its workers "always have a choice" about what company to work for.

The rivalry between two of telecom's biggest players has taken a decidedly modern twist.

Verizon is seemingly looking to capitalize on rival AT&T's full-time RTO mandate by reaching out to AT&T employees who may not be keen on working five days a week in the office.

In an email sent to multiple AT&T employees obtained by Business Insider, Verizon's talent team encouraged recipients to explore the company's hybrid and remote job opportunities.

"Following the news of changing RTO policies across the industry, we're reaching out to share helpful resources and potential hybrid/remote job opportunities across Verizon," the email said.

"If you have been personally affected by organizational policy changes or know anyone who has, we're looking to add top talent to the V Team," the email continued. Verizon declined to comment.

While it's common for companies to recruit from their competitors, Verizon's outreach highlights how 5-day office mandates have become a sticking point for some workers in recent months.

AT&T told BI that its workers "always have a choice to pick the type of company and work environment they wish to be part of."

"We desire individuals who wish to work in a dynamic and challenging team environment with strong relationships and collaboration fostered by in-office constructs," AT&T added.

The recruiting message comes as AT&T has had to navigate a rocky return to office this year, with some employees describing to BI a lack of desk space, parking shortages, and shifting guidance about the policy.

As of Monday afternoon, Verizon's job listings website showed openings for more than 1,200 roles across the US, of which 10 were remote. Listings for several full-time positions require eight days in the office per month, as determined by a manager.

The Verizon email also references the company's support of DEI at a time when other large employers are backing away from the phrase.

"If you're looking for a culture of learning that fosters diversity, equity, and inclusion with room to grow, our V Team may be the place for you," the email said.

Verizon job perks include up to $8,000 of annual tuition assistance, up to 5 weeks of paid time off, paid parental leave, as well as medical, dental, and vision coverage, the email said.

While AT&T traces its origins to 1885, Verizon was formed in 2000 when one of the so-called Baby Bells — spun off from AT&T in the 1980s — merged with GTE.

More recently, the two have been in a race to build out the nation's fiber optic network and extend 5G and satellite coverage.

And although AT&T is now based in Dallas, its former New Jersey headquarters is now a major corporate campus for Verizon — not to be confused with Bell Labs in Holmdel, which features in Apple TV's "Severance."

If you are an AT&T worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out

• For my first overnight Amtrak ride in 2021, I booked a roomette on a Viewliner train.
• Then, in 2025, I booked a roomette on a newly upgraded Superliner train.
• The rooms had similar layouts, but modern upgrades made the second ride much cozier.

I'll never forget my first overnight train trip in October 2021.

I took an Amtrak Viewliner train from my home in New York City to Miami and spent the 30-hour ride in a roomette — a 20-square-foot private cabin — for $500.

After spending the next three years sampling sleeper trains in Europe, I took another long-haul Amtrak journey from Denver to Salt Lake City in January. This ride was on a Superliner train, and it was only 15 hours.

I booked the same accommodation — a roomette for $400 — which had the same basic layout with a couple of differences.

Overall, the second roomette had modern updates, making my train ride more comfortable.

Amtrak sleeper trains from east to west

Amtrak's Viewliner fleet takes overnight riders through the eastern and southern US, and the train line's Superliner fleet carries passengers west of Chicago and New Orleans.

The main difference between the two fleets is size. The Viewliner is a one-story train, while the Superliner is two stories and includes an additional communal car on the top floor for sightseeing.

Amtrak is updating the roughly 30-to-50-year-old Superliner cars, and about 76% of the fleet has already been refreshed, including the train I took, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told Business Insider.

The Viewliners are a bit newer than the Superliner cars — the first Viewliner train was delivered in the late '90s, according to Magliari. Still, he said many of the one-story trains would also get an interior update in 2026.

Viewliner vs. Superliner roomettes

Before we get into the upgrades, there is a notable difference between the roomettes on these two trains.

Both roomettes sleep up to two people, with two chairs forming a lower bunk and another pulling down from the ceiling. They both also have mirrors, small closets, and pullout tables.

Some Viewliner roomettes also squeeze in a toilet, and they all include a sink, so travelers don't have to use the shared bathrooms in the car.

The Superliner roomettes don't have plumbing, so guests must use the shared bathrooms.

Fresh seat cushions

The most important upgrade to me was the seats.

When I stepped inside the Superliner roomette, I immediately noticed the seats looked like they'd never been used.

I'm sure that's not true, but I didn't find one sign of wear or crust of dirt on either seat. Sitting in one for the first time felt like sampling a recliner at a furniture store.

Magliari told BI that the old blue cloth seats had been replaced with soft vinyl.

"The seats have the same frame, but the cushions are new. And there's more lumbar support in this current seat cushion design than the old seat cushion design," he said. "If you see gray, vinyl seating, then you know that you are in a fresh room."

A comfy seat makes a cozy bed

My upper bunk on the Viewliner felt like a cot, and my lower bunk on the Superliner felt more like a mattress.

I selected the upper bunk in the Viewliner roomette because I'd never been on an overnight train before, and sleeping up top felt more adventurous.

It kind of was — but not in a good way. The suspended bunk shook throughout the night from the turbulence of the train. I couldn't find a comfortable position on the stiff mattress and tossed and turned through the night.

I haven't slept on a train's top bunk since, but being on the ground wasn't the only thing that made the Superliner bunk feel more like a bed. The reclined seat cushions had a bit more give to them, and the soft vinyl felt smoother on my skin.

Seeing the difference in comfort after four years got me stoked about the future of overnight Amtrak travel.

In the future, you'll catch me on an upgraded Viewliner.

• Ukraine has become the largest producer of tactical and strategic drones, its defense minister said.
• Ukraine has ramped up its drone production since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
• In total, Ukraine delivered over 1.3 million drones to soldiers in 2024, its commander in chief said.

Ukraine has become the world's largest producer of key military-use drones, the country's defense minister said.

"We've become the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, drones of tactical and strategic level," Rustem Umerov said during a Sunday press conference at Ukraine's "Year 2025" forum.

Tactical drones support smaller-scale battlefield actions, often at close ranges, by gathering intelligence and supporting strikes, either as the munition or by providing targeting data.

Strategic drones, meanwhile, are often higher-end, high-altitude systems with the endurance to advance operations against higher-priority targets.

Speaking at the same press conference, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's commander in chief, said the country delivered over 1.3 million drones to front-line soldiers in 2024. The general added that its long-range drones can strike targets up to 1,700 kilometers inside Russia.

At a separate press conference on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country produced 2.2 million drones in total in 2024 and planned to ramp up production further in 2025.

Ukraine's defense ministry didn't respond to a Business Insider request for comment.

Up-to-date and comprehensive data on various countries' respective drone production is scarce, making direct comparisons difficult.

June 2024 data from Statista Market Insights, a data analysis service on market trends, said China was set to be the world's largest overall drone manufacturer in 2024 and was on track to produce 2.9 million drones. However, the data does not include drones for military purposes, though off-the-shelf drones for civilian use have been heavily repurposed for military use in Ukraine and further afield.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ramping up its own drone production to nearly 1.4 million in 2024, a tenfold increase from the previous year.

Drones are increasingly being used in conflicts around the world for intelligence and reconnaissance, bombing missions, precision strikes, and other military purposes by both state-level and non-state actors.

This has led to an increased demand for counter-drone capabilities.

In December, the Pentagon released a new counter-drone strategy aimed at coordinating how different branches of the US military are responding to the threat of drones and making "countering unmanned systems a key element of our thinking."

Drones have been a hallmark of the war in Ukraine, with both sides using the evolving technology to devastating effect.

Even so, Ukrainian tactical drones face significant challenges, according to a February report by the UK's Royal United Services Institute, with a 60-80% failure rate in hitting targets "depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators."

Despite this, it said that they still account for 60 to 70% of damaged and destroyed Russian military systems.

In an October speech to executives from dozens of foreign arms manufacturers, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was capable of producing 4 million drones a year, up from the one million he predicted in December 2023.

Kyiv has tried to smooth the process of drone acquisitions for its troops.

Last week, Umerov said Ukraine's defense ministry was launching a new drone supply model to facilitate a "fast and uninterrupted supply of the best UAVs for our soldiers," and to provide its armed forces with an additional $60 million a month to purchase drones.

Ukraine's growing defense industry has led some to believe that drones, among other military capabilities, could play an important role in Ukraine's postwar economic recovery.

• Shawn Robertson's parents lived with him, his wife, and their kids for many years.
• He says there were plenty of benefits to living together, though there were challenges, too.
• There wasn't much privacy, but his parents got to spend time with their grandkids.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shawn Robertson, a 55-year-old from Tsawwassen, British Columbia. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When my folks were still alive, they lived with us for many years. Multigenerational living had many perks, but it also had challenges.

I grew up in Tsawwassen, British Columbia, and lived in the same house my entire life. Around the time my wife Cori and I got engaged, both of my parents started experiencing health issues.

They told us they would have to sell the house and move into a graduated care facility for older people, but Cori and I agreed they should stay in the house for as long as possible. We believed it would be better for them health-wise. We also knew that if we didn't stay close to them when we started having kids, they wouldn't see their grandkids very often, as we'd likely end up settling in another part of Canada.

So right after we got married, Cori moved in, too, and we started taking care of Mom and Dad. Our house is a double-story building with five bedrooms and a den, so there was plenty of room for all of us.

There were plenty of benefits to living with my mom and dad

Mom and Dad shifted from the upstairs to the downstairs. It was easier for them not to have to walk up and down the stairs to get to their bedroom. Over the years, multigenerational living has had many positive aspects. When we welcomed our three sons and daughter, it meant that they spent plenty of quality time with our kids.

My folks were homebodies, so they didn't mind watching our kids or our pets. If we were running down to our trailer at Mt Baker and we asked them to watch the dogs for the weekend, it was never a problem. If we wanted to go out for dinner and leave the four kids with them, they never once said no.

I know some grandparents feel like they're taken advantage of in that regard, but my parents never felt that way. Their philosophy was the more time they had with the grandkids, the better. The kids kept them feeling young for as long as possible. Another benefit was that my parents never felt lonely.

My dad died in 2004 when the kids were still quite young, but my mom was a big part of their childhood. She was always present, and being right downstairs, my kids could spend time with her whenever they wanted. I think some of their fondest memories were of watching dog shows together and having tea with her, or playing outside while she watched on.

Some aspects of our situation were challenging, too

There were some challenges to multigenerational living, too. My parents never meddled in our affairs, but they did know all of our business as the house is very open. On occasion, they would let their opinions be known, even when they weren't asked for.

As the kids grew older and became teenagers, the lack of boundaries became more challenging. Sometimes, they'd be rushing in the morning to get to school, and Mom would ask them for help with something. They wouldn't want to tell her no, and it usually wasn't anything too big, but when you're on a time crunch and you're a teenager, everything seems like a hassle.

There were also budgetary impacts associated with multi-generational living. We bought food for my parents and never asked to be reimbursed. I also did renovations on the house. I figure we probably incurred about $75,000 in personal debt over the years.

In 2012, Mom slid off the side of the bed and was taken to hospital. She was diagnosed with double pneumonia and wasn't supposed to last the night, but ended up living for another three years.

That was the beginning of the end, though, and her health continued to decline. When we could no longer care for her, we decided it would be best for her to live in a care facility, where she lived for three years before she died in 2015.

Cori and I have always said given our time again, we'd make the same choice to live with my mom and dad. The kids had a better relationship with my folks as a result, and the benefits definitely outweighed the negatives in my mind.

But my advice to others who want to try multigenerational living is to have separate accommodation on-site, like a granny flat, with its own entrance. The lack of privacy can strain even the best of families. I'd also recommend both parties set some ground rooms from the outset.

• Norway's melting glaciers are revealing objects from the Stone Age, Iron Age, Medieval, and Viking eras.
• Some ancient artifacts are mysteries, but they still indicate trade routes through the mountains.
• Here's what Norway's glacial archaeologists found in the meltiest part of last summer.

Mysterious and fascinating artifacts are surfacing on melting glaciers across the planet.

From ancient human remains to strange wooden tools and statues, these objects are drawing archaeologists into the high, frozen mountains each year.

Norway is at the forefront of this emerging field of research, called glacial archaeology. With about 4,500 artifacts discovered, the country claims more than half of the planet's glacial archaeology findings, according to Espen Finstad, who co-leads the Norwegian program, called Secrets of the Ice.

Archaeologists there are piecing together clues about ancient industries and trade routes across the glaciers.

They just had one of their best field seasons yet. Here's what they found.

People have trekked over Norway's glaciers for thousands of years to sell and buy goods.

Ancient hunting, travel, and trade routes crossed the mountains between the Norwegian coast and inland areas since the Stone Age.

"We are lucky that some of these trade routes have gone over ice," Finstad told Business Insider.

Objects that ancient travelers left behind were frozen into the ice for centuries — until recent decades.

As humans have burned fossil fuels for energy, releasing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, global temperatures have been rising for decades. Glaciers everywhere are melting, releasing the ancient artifacts preserved inside them.

Some of these objects look familiar, like this mitten.

Others, like this whisk, are quite different from what we know today.

The Lendbreen ice patch is the most fruitful site the archaeologists visit.

"There are so many treasures in the ice there," Finstad said.

Lendbreen was a common travel route during the Viking and Medieval eras. The archaeologists go there almost every year.

In the summer of 2024, heavy melting meant lots of new discoveries.

"The melting really came rapidly at the end of the season," Finstad said.

Finstad's team of about seven archaeologists visited nearly a dozen sites across the mountains to search for artifacts.

At Lendbreen, they used pack horses to bring gear up to the site and set up their camp.

They stayed there about nine days, Finstad said.

Their findings included "two of the best-preserved arrows we ever found," Finstad said.

One of them was just lying on top of the ice, waiting to be found. Usually there's a little excavation involved, but the archaeologists simply picked this arrow up.

"It's very seldom to find them that well preserved on the ice. So it was kind of a gift. It was very beautiful," Finstad said.

Arrows are abundant in the glaciers because reindeer hunting was "almost like an industry" in the Iron and Medieval Ages, Finstad said.

People hunted for their own food, of course, but also to sell in a market.

Arrows can hold clues about past societies.

For example, some arrowheads found on the glaciers have tips made from river mussels that must have come from far away, cluing researchers in to just how far people were traveling and trading over the ages.

Some of the prehistoric arrows Finstad's team found last season were so well-preserved they still had fletching.

Fletching is delicate and doesn't usually last thousands of years. These were rare findings.

Some items they find are just "strange," Finstad said.

Small bits of wood, leather, and textile are often impossible to identify.

Finstad estimated they had found about 50 such mysterious, small objects at Lendbreen in 2024.

"It's all kind of small things, daily life things from the Viking Age or older, which you don't find in other archaeology contexts at least in Norway, because it's gone. It degrades," Finstad said.

Heavy snow cut off the archaeologists' efforts — but now they know where to look this summer.

"We are excited to go back," Finstad said.

• Steve Jobs tasked Jony Ive with designing a new computer to save Apple.
• Apple was struggling financially in 1997 and needed a hit product to regain profitability.
• The colorful iMac's design helped Apple sell 800,000 units in 1999.

After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he looked to designer Jony Ive to help save it from going under.

The first time they met, the late cofounder asked Ive to create a network computer with internet connectivity "literally days" before the company was set to go bankrupt, Ive said on BBC's "Desert Island Discs" podcast.

At the time, Apple was struggling — it took a $150 million investment from rival Microsoft to help the company become profitable again. Apple needed a hit product, and Jobs enlisted a young Ive for the "impossible task." It was the world's first glimpse into Ive's vision for tech design.

"We started work from the first day that we met on what became the iMac," Ive said.

Personal computers didn't yet have a role in most people's lives back then, and many were intimidated by them, he said. Their mission, to focus on making a product "for people," became the philosophy that gave Apple an edge over competitors.

Ive put thought into each detail of the colorful lineup of PCs to make it more approachable for consumers. The handle, for example, was an intentional design choice to give the iMac a recognizable characteristic for those unfamiliar with the power of computing.

"It references immediately and unambiguously your hand, and you understand, therefore, something about this object," Ive said.

The iMac's appearance, like the handle and translucent colors, were better talking points than gigahertz and hard drive capacity, Ive said. The candy-colored PCs were the home run Apple needed. It sold 800,000 iMacs in the five months of its launch in 1999.

"It felt alive; it didn't static; it didn't feel stuck," Ive said.

It debuted with the tagline, "Collect all five."

The iMac has had some major revamps in the decades since it first debuted. Apple moved away from the colorful design in the mid-2000s in favor of minimalist grays and whites, but in 2021, it brought color back to its desktops.

After the success of the iMac, Ive went on to design more of Apple's most iconic products as his friendship with Jobs grew. He led design on the iPhone, iPad, and other products and eventually became the chief design officer. Ive announced his departure from Apple in 2019 after 27 years at the company.

• Shopify increased its acquihiring amid a hot market for AI talent.
• The company completed six small acquisitions last year to bolster its technical AI leadership.
• It also brought on an AI and machine learning veteran as its new chief technology officer.

Shopify has stepped up its acquihiring as the race for AI talent heats up.

CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month that Shopify had done six "tuck-in" acquisitions in the previous year.

He said that while the deals were small from a financial perspective, they've been an important source of talent and a tactic the company plans to continue.

"These have been very tactical, thoughtful AI hires and we want to continually be thoughtful, proactive, and judicious on thinking about the cash," he said.

Many of the founders that Shopify has hired now hold leadership positions in the company's product org. That includes Nicolas Grasset, the former CEO of AI-driven analytics startup Peel Insights. Shopify brought on the Peel team in May, and Grasset is now a director of product. Relay Commerce acquired the business itself.

Ray Reddy, cofounder and CEO of mobile ordering app Ritual, became a VP of product for retail at Shopify this January as part of an acquihire deal that also included his cofounder, Larry Stinson, and some engineering staff.

"I'm inspired by the opportunity to help local businesses adapt and thrive as generative AI reshapes customer expectations—a moment that reminds me of launching Ritual over a decade ago during the rise of mobile internet," Reddy wrote in a LinkedIn post about his joining Shopify. "I'm excited to join a team poised to help businesses of all sizes succeed as technology rapidly evolves."

Keeping up in a 'white-hot' market

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said Shopify's increased acquihire activity is likely a product of the "white-hot" market for engineers with AI credibility.

"Hiring individuals is sometimes too slow or too expensive," Luria said. "Sometimes it's easier to just buy a small company that has AI engineers just for the talent."

Rousseau Kazi, former CEO of workplace communications platform Threads, joined Shopify's product org when Shopify acquihired the startup's team in June. Michael Averto, cofounder and former CEO of inventory operations platform ChannelApe, began working on inventory management as a product leader at Shopify as part of a deal in July.

Shopify also hired the team behind Stellate, a startup that made developer tools. Cofounder and former CEO Max Stoiber is now a director of engineering leading teams working on Liquid, Shopify's template language for storefronts. In September open-source developer group The Guild acquired Stellate's product and customer base.

Shopify also acquired Checkout Blocks, a checkout customization app, in June and hired Gil Greenberg as a product lead working on checkout extensibility. The Checkout Blocks app is still available for download in the Shopify App Store.

Luria said that Shopify's growth over the years has largely been organic and not from acquisitions. Shopify did invest billions into building its fulfillment network, acquiring Deliverr for more than $2 billion before selling it and the rest of its logistics business to Flexport. Shopify has since described its fulfillment work as a "side quest."

The past year is not the first time Shopify has used acquihires to bring on valuable talent. In 2018 it acquired the team behind Swedish shopping startup Tictail, and many of those leaders were key to the growth of its Shop app. It also acquired the B2B commerce marketplace Handshake in 2019, and those founders have gone on to hold product leadership roles at Shopify.

Shopify is also doubling down on AI talent in other ways. In August, the company hired Mikhail Parakhin as its new CTO. Parakhin led AI advancements like Copilot at Microsoft and also developed search engines and cloud services for more than four years as Yandex's CTO.

Hoffmeister also said during the earnings call that Shopify would continue to make strategic investments in startups building tech that its merchants would find valuable. Its 2024 investments included participation in a pre-seed round for Convergence, which is building an AI agent called Proxy.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter at [email protected], [email protected], or on the secure messaging app Signal at @mlstone.04.

• OpenAI, which is owned by a non-profit, wants to adopt a more traditional corporate structure.
• Elon Musk, Meta, charities, academics, and AI entrepreneurs have raised concerns about the plan.
• They question OpenAI's legal process, and whether its non-profit will be compensated fairly.

Sam Altman is attempting a thorny maneuver, transforming OpenAI from a subsidiary of a convoluted non-profit into a more conventional business.

Jungwon Byun knows what that's like.

In 2023, the organization that Byun cofounded, an AI lab named Ought, went through a similar transition. Launched in 2018, Ought built AI research tools, and was structured as a non-profit because its cofounders didn't expect AI to be commercially viable any time soon, Byun said in an interview. Then ChatGPT launched, AI mania took hold, and the leadership team realized their structure might be a hindrance to raising capital and pursuing their mission.

The decision was made to spin out Ought's core product, Elicit, as a for-profit company, along with most of its staff. Byun and several other executives slated to lead the independent Elicit recused themselves from discussions, and a firm specializing in asset valuations was hired to independently appraise the value of Elicit, so the remaining non-profit, Ought, could be paid appropriately. (Byun declined to share the exact price, though she said Elicit chose to pay a premium on top of the recommended price.)

OpenAI's planned transformation is on a far grander scale, but faces similar questions and potentially more gnarly challenges.

Altman wants to extricate OpenAI's revenue-generating business from its non-profit parent, creating a more traditional company that can take in investments and give stock to shareholders who expect big returns.

The process is complicated by OpenAI's complex corporate structure, the billions of dollars it has already raised from investors, and rival Elon Musk's attempts to block the deal.

It's not just Elon though. There's a growing chorus of critics, including entrepreneurs, other companies and charities, investors, academics, and activists, who say OpenAI may be about to make a grave mistake.

Byun is one of them.

"Artificial general intelligence is the most transformative technology of our lifetime and OpenAI is absolutely at the frontier and one of the most important players in that," she told BI. "So I think giving up governance rights to controlling the most important technology of our lifetime is an insanely huge decision and will affect all of humanity at a very great scale for a long time."

Her advice to OpenAI's charitable parent organization: Do not sell to anyone.

"I don't know, obviously, the details of what pressures they're under and what the details are of the options they're considering, and how it affects the mission," Byun said. "But from what I can see, I absolutely would not sell those governance rights or give them up." OpenAI didn't respond to requests for comment over the past week.

A convoluted structure

OpenAI was established as a non-profit in 2015. Over time, its need for capital to pay for AI development prompted it to establish a for-profit subsidiary to raise venture funding and pursue business partnerships and revenue-generating products. This (and various other subsidiaries) are controlled by the nonprofit, which is controlled by a board of directors chaired by Bret Taylor, alongside Altman, Fidji Simo, Larry Summers, and other business luminaries.

The board's main legal obligation is to further the non-profit's charitable mission, which is to build "safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity," rather than delivering returns to shareholders.

OpenAI now seeks to transition to a more conventional corporate structure, turning the for-profit subsidiary into an independent public benefit company that controls "OpenAI's operations and business."

PBCs are relatively common. This approach takes into account the interests of shareholders, other stakeholders, and the public. With investors taken care of, OpenAI has said this will help the startup raise "necessary capital with conventional terms like others in this space."

Finding fair value

The remaining non-profit will receive shares in the public benefit company "at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors."

That may be the ultimate challenge — and one made more complex by potential conflicts of interest.

OpenAI investors and others focused on the startup's business-focused future may prefer to pay the non-profit less for its assets and control, leaving the new for-profit entity with more financial firepower. However, some of these people could be in positions to influence the valuation and decision-making process.

Elon Musk, an OpenAI cofounder who acrimoniously split from Altman, has sued the startup over its plans. Musk and a group of other investors also made a bid in February to acquire the nonprofit parent OpenAI Inc. for $97.4 billion. That was more than half of the total value of the entire startup, based on its most-recent funding round.

"It is in the public's interest to ensure that OpenAI, Inc. is compensated at fair market value," the Musk consortium said in a statement. "That value cannot be determined by insiders negotiating on both sides of the same table."

OpenAI's board has an obligation to make sure the nonprofit is getting a fair value for giving up its assets and control, according to Ellen Aprill, an expert on charities at the UCLA School of Law.

"One of the very big issues is what is fair market value?" she told BI. "In particular, how much should the nonprofit get for giving up control?

"Part of what Musk and his group were trying to do with this offer is to set at least some floor, some sense of what the fair market value would be," she added. "Putting it out for auction — let's see what people would pay."

Should Altman recuse himself?

Taylor, the OpenAI board chairman, officially rebuffed Musk. "OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition," Taylor wrote in a statement. "Any potential reorganization of OpenAI will strengthen our nonprofit and its mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity."

But days before that, Altman publicly shot the bid down with a post on X that mocked the struggles of the Musk-owned social network: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

Altman's post prompted some discussion of whether he was, or should be, recused from this process.

"When it comes to looking at a conflicted transaction like this one, it's much easier to satisfy the court's review if you take people who are on both sides of their transaction out of the negotiations," said Peter Molk, a law professor at the University of Florida.

However, he noted that under Delaware law, Altman isn't legally required to remove himself. Molk also cautioned against recusing too early.

"There's value in his being there. Along the way, he can provide useful insight and information that's actually useful for OpenAI, for the nonprofit, if they're going to go ahead with that process," Molk explained. "You want to try and strike a balance that allows them to do their job, that helps a transaction occur in a way that's actually beneficial to all parties, but then have them take themselves out of the picture once you're beyond that point."

Meta and others pile on

The existing for-profit parts of OpenAI have already raised billions of dollars in pursuit of "Artificial General Intelligence," or AGI, which the startup defines as systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work. This has raised hackles among some consumer advocates.

Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog, has repeatedly assailed the AI startup, accusing it of betraying its nonprofit mission. "The nonprofit board has behaved as a subordinate to the for-profit, and has done nothing that evidences any commitment to the nonprofit mission," said Robert Weissman, the co-president of Public Citizen.

The solution is to forcibly dissolve the nonprofit and auction off its assets for the benefit of a new independent charity not linked to the current OpenAI board, he added.

Facebook parent company Meta raised similar concerns, writing to the California Attorney General Rob Bonta in December to ask him to step in.

"Taking advantage of this non-profit status, OpenAI raised billions of dollars in capital from investors to further its purported mission," the company wrote. "Now, OpenAI wants to change its status while retaining all of the benefits that enabled it to reach the point it has today. That is wrong. OpenAI should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains."

In late January, a group of 25 charities, including one started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, piled on.

The coalition wrote to the California AG, urging him "to take prompt legal action to ensure that OpenAI's assets are not illegally diverted for private gain."

Dubious legal justifications

Rose Chan-Loui, a law professor at UCLA specializing in non-profit and philanthropy law, is dubious of the legal justifications for OpenAI's plan.

She said the proposed changes would amount to a change in purpose for OpenAI's current non-profit. To do that under Delaware law, requires one of four criteria to be met:

• Is the charity's original purpose now illegal to fulfill?
• Has the mission become impossible to fulfill?
• Is it now impracticable to fulfill?
• Or too wasteful to fulfill.

"We don't think any of those apply here," Chan-Loui said. "We keep going back to — your purpose is not to be first in the race to AGI. Your purpose is to make sure that AGI is to protect, and ensure safe development of AGI."

The lesson of other nonprofits

OpenAI's existing structure — a non-profit that controls a for-profit subsidiary — is unusual, but by no means unheard of.

The Mozilla Foundation, for example, owns a tech company, Mozilla Corporation, that produces the Firefox internet browser. "Non-profit organizations can not only coexist with commercial enterprises but also challenge them to do better," a Mozilla spokesperson said in a statement. "Non-profit commitments provide the kind of public interest compass we don't see enough of in tech."

Another parallel comes from the healthcare sector. In the 1990s, in the face of mounting financial pressure, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association allowed its affiliated nonprofit plan organizations to transition to for-profit businesses. Many subsequently did so, to the chagrin of some.

"The mission of the non-profit in most Blue Cross Blue Shield plans was to provide affordable, accessible health care to people," a Consumers Union attorney told NPR in 2010. "And now the mission is to make money for stockholders."

The most substantial threat to OpenAI's plans though, might not be Elon Musk or other critics. The California and Delaware Attorneys General are both making inquiries into the specifics of the transition.

"The current beneficiaries of OpenAI have an interest in ensuring that charitable assets are not transferred to private interests without due consideration," Delaware AG Kathleen Jennings wrote.

AGs have meaningful legal powers to get involved. In 2002, Pennsylvania's Attorney General intervened in a planned deal by the non-profit foundation that controls the for-profit Hershey chocolate brand to sell its assets to Wrigley for $12 billion, citing the potential harm to the town of Hershey.

The sale was ultimately called off.

• Living in the US has boosted my self-confidence, but I'm ready to move to another country.
• I grew up in the UK and find European's work-life balance is significantly better than the US's.
• I try to keep a healthy work-life balance in the US but it's a constant battle.

I'm from London and moved to the US 20 years ago. While I'm thankful for the doors that opened after moving to the US, I've never fully adjusted to American work life and culture.

The only benefit to working in the US is the salary

The work culture here, especially on the East Coast where I live, is borderline unhealthy compared to Europe and the many other countries I've traveled to for my career in hospitality marketing and travel journalism.

Work doesn't consume people in some European countries the way it does in the US.

Knowing this makes it difficult for me to return to the US every time I'm away. In fact, the only benefit of living in the US, for me, is the salaries.

The median annual salary for employees in the UK is around $30K to $40k, while in the US, I've been making between $50k to $85k in various industries.

With the high cost of living on the East Coast, it's helpful to have a little extra cash to enjoy daily luxuries like dinner with friends and family and travel.

The money comes at a high price, though.

I try to enforce a healthy work-life balance, but it's a constant battle

Sometimes it feels like my work takes precedence over everything else in my life.

For example, I once had to stay behind at work until around 7 p.m. for a back-to-school night and had to cancel my plans in the city.

To keep myself sane, my general rule is no email responses before 8:30 a.m. or after 5:30 p.m. Working hours in the UK are the same, but there's an understanding of never taking work home.

Waking up to several emails sent in the middle of the night is not something I ever anticipated when working here.

I've worked in teaching, marketing, travel, law, and it's all been the same in my experience — dozens of emails being sent out of work hours, which leaves me overwhelmed the next morning.

In the past, colleagues have even texted me while I've been out, because I didn't respond to an email in the evening right away.

I try to take leisurely lunches and often end up eating alone

Oftentimes, I feel like the work-life balance cheerleader in the office.

My co-workers seem in awe when I tell them I'm taking my full lunch hour to go on a walk or sit at a café.

Of course, I always extend an invite or usher them to do the same, but there's always "more that needs doing."

I try to get out as much as possible, but if it's raining I'm often left eating alone, which feels pretty lonely.

I've been in jobs for years and still felt like I never really knew my coworkers.

My parents worked in the UK for more than 30 years and always shared how breaks were around 1.5 to 2 hours and often included a pub trip with coworkers.

When I travel back home, I see what they mean. The busiest times in the city are during work hours when 9-5ers flock to the local watering holes for a chance to get out of the office.

Living in the US has given me confidence, but I hope to move to another country in the future

As a Brit, I love the way Americans make everything feel exciting — their outgoing nature is almost infectious.

Living here boosted my confidence and belief that I could achieve anything.

However, it feels almost impossible at times to find genuine connections.

I live in Boston — my favorite US city with its green spaces, cobblestone streets, history, and ocean views — but people rarely speak to each other on the streets.

In fact, it's so rare that when people eventually do make conversation, I'm almost caught off guard.

I yearn for simplicity and true connections. I'd love to move outside the US in the future. Looking at quality of life, culture, and retirement abroad, I see so many benefits to moving away.

In the meantime, I'll continue to be the cheerleader in my workplace in hopes of showing others there are more important things in life than just work.

When I heard that coffee futures were reaching record highs, I got a bad case of the jitters. What would happen to my morning cup of Joe? How expensive could it get? Could I afford enough coffee to get me through the day?

I set out on a mission to find out.

Caffeine is the world's most popular drug, and coffee is the second-most-traded commodity after oil. On the futures market, traders buy coffee shipments months or years in advance — so price spikes can indicate what the rest of us might be paying down the road. After the pandemic began, prices for coffee futures rose, along with everything else. Accordingly, the consumer price index showed a steep increase in prices for store-bought coffee throughout 2022.

The problems didn't stop there. Thanks to severe droughts in 2023, major harvests in Brazil and Vietnam did badly, and water in the Panama Canal ran low, slowing ship traffic. Coffee futures started to tick up. Then, this past November, the commodity skyrocketed. Brazil, which exports the lion's share of the industry's preferred arabica beans, was beginning its growing season as the country's worst drought on record stretched into a second year. The clouds that usually shade coffee trees went missing. It would be the second bad harvest in a row. When the news hit, traders rushed to lock in arabica contracts, sending prices to all-time highs in December. Now prices are more than double their 2023 peak. Robusta beans, often used in instant coffee, hit their own record high this month.

Is this the end of coffee as we know it?

Climate experts say the underlying supply problems aren't going anywhere. Over the next two decades, bad harvests could become the norm, wild arabica coffee could move from thriving to endangered, and the land available for coffee cultivation is expected to shrink by half or more. While the coffee market has some flexibility to keep prices down, the long-term outlook for America's favorite beverage is bleak.

Coffee prices have already been going up for a few years. This past summer, brands like Folgers and Maxwell House raised their prices to pass on previous commodity increases to customers. Prices at my local café went up $0.35, so I started grinding my coffee at home. But, the addict that I am, I kept caffeinating. We all did.

This "inelastic demand" gives companies plenty of wiggle room to raise prices without worrying that people will stop buying coffee entirely. Both Folgers' parent company, J.M. Smucker, and Maxwell's parent company, Nestlé, reported higher coffee sales in the US last year despite raising consumer prices. But how much higher could prices get?

People who brew their coffee at home "are going to feel it," Jay Zagorsky, a professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, said. Since coffee beans are the only ingredient in a tub of Folgers, commodity price increases have a direct impact on grocery prices. Two decades ago, US Department of Agriculture economists looked at how commodity coffee price swings affected grocery shelves. They found that every $0.10 increase in futures led to an immediate $0.02 increase in prices for canisters of ground coffee. When commodity prices stayed high, the rest of the increase was passed on over the course of a year. According to consumer price index data from January, grocery coffee prices are already more than 3% higher than they were this time last year — instant coffee alone rose 7%. And Illy recently told Bloomberg that a 25% hike in prices in the next few months was not out of the question.

To counteract low supply, coffee retailers can fudge the quality: Robusta beans, which have a harsher flavor than arabica, can be mixed into blends, for example. Smucker recently told investors that for Folgers and its other coffee brands, the company had "the ability to flex formulas and still deliver the exact same consumer experience." In Indonesia, coffee shops are even mixing corn and rice with their coffee beans to stretch supplies. Some people have called this phenomenon of companies swapping in cheaper and lower-quality ingredients "flavorflation."

In cafés, Zagorsky said, commodity price swings have a less noticeable impact because most of the cost of a latte is not beans but labor. "If I was Starbucks, I'd worry much more about the unionization drive," he said. Massive companies such as Starbucks can manage the uncertainty around commodity prices by locking in multiyear contracts, playing the market, and hedging their bets. Last year, Starbucks actually came out ahead on coffee futures. The company expects that it has enough beans in storage or contracted to last through at least September. In December, its CEO said it would not raise its North American store menu prices before then — though it is removing some discounts.

Small roasters buy quality beans for more than the commodity price, but unlike Starbucks, they are more sensitive to price swings. Over an Americano (her) and an afternoon decaf (me), Daria Whalen, a coffee buyer for Ritual Coffee in San Francisco, admitted she's worried.

She opened a 12-ounce bag of coffee and poured a handful of beans onto the table. She pointed out slight variations in their size, explaining that these beans came from five different farms in a family co-op that pays coffee pickers Colombia's minimum wage. In an industry rife with shady labor practices, from child labor to human trafficking, buying from farms that pay decent wages is "one of the only things we have left," Whalen said.

This bag retails for $25, more than five times the price of Folgers at Costco. It's not clear how much more consumers would be willing to pay. Thankfully, the more flexible part of that price is the flavor: Coffee beans are rated on a point scale, like wine. To adapt to a temporary price spike, Whalen said, she will choose beans that taste good but fall lower on that scale.

The big question for Whalen is what happens when the climate crisis makes these supply shocks more frequent. "I have anxiety, like probably 85% of the population," Whalen said. "So on some days, you catch me at cup four of coffee and I'm like, 'There's not going to be any coffee anymore.'"

The climate crisis is already changing coffee growing. The past two years have been the hottest on record, bringing more evaporation and making droughts more severe. Coffee harvests have suffered. "In the last year, I saw scorched coffee beans. Coffee beans that were shriveled because of extreme heat," Whalen said. She has also seen warmer temperatures nurture a disease called coffee leaf rust, push back growing seasons, and affect shipping logistics.

A 2022 data synthesis projected double-digit losses over the next few decades in the land that's good for cultivating coffee beans. Some areas will become newly available for coffee, but that won't be nearly enough to balance the losses. Unfortunately for connoisseurs, that new land will likely work best for robusta beans, not arabica beans.

In response to the changes, more growers are drying beans rather than washing them to save on water. That changes flavor profiles, favoring fruity flavors like blueberries, Whalen said: "Sometimes you can get a ferment-y flavor that we would call a defect, but a lot of people really love that."

There's some adapting that farms and supply chains can do, but these efforts may still fall short if countries don't aggressively limit their fossil fuel emissions. One study found that under a business-as-usual scenario, even with best practices in place for coffee growing and logistics, Starbucks could see persistent bean shortages as early as 2029. In its most recent annual report, Starbucks acknowledged that the climate crisis could materially influence its financial performance, particularly if it meant the company couldn't meet demand.

"If you care about your coffee," Regina Rodrigues Rodrigues, a Brazilian climate scientist, said, "you can't support any policies that allow the continued burning of fossil fuels. That's the thing."

Environmental concerns also popped up the last time coffee futures spiked, back in 1977. One environmentalist called the price increase "merely another way of telling us that the 4 billion souls on this planet must compete for a steadily shrinking supply of farm produce." That prediction turned out to be wrong. Since the 1960s, agricultural production has grown every decade. In fact, so much new land has been used for coffee that prices haven't even kept pace with overall inflation — Zagorsky pointed out that, adjusted for inflation, 1 pound of coffee today is still cheaper than 1 pound in 1980.

Looking back, it's tempting to hope that the world is crying wolf, but adaptive measures came with downsides. Agriculture boomed thanks to the clearing of forests and an unprecedented application of fossil fuels, both in fertilizers and as fuel for transporting food along vast global supply chains. One study estimated that most of the growth in agricultural production since the 1970s has not been in line with safe environmental practices. Now, as the world warms, agricultural growth is starting to slow, even as demand for coffee continues to rise. We have not solved our coffee problems; we have merely postponed them.

Is sad, watery 1950s diner coffee our fate? Or will we find new ways to make coffee growing productive and resilient? Zagorsky said that the futures market predicts a price decrease. But beyond that, he doesn't want to make any predictions. "Economists are terrible at guessing the future," he said.

So I took my fears and uncertainty to someone willing to predict the future: Dr. Honeybrew, a coffee fortune teller in Manhattan's East Village. Honeybrew took a look at the coffee dregs in my tiny espresso cup to read the future of coffee itself.

"Everyone is plunging a straw down in the ground and just sucking up all of the richness, all of the life, all of the power from the soil," he said. "This is Mother Nature's way of saying, 'You know what? In return, I'm going to give you guys the shittiest beans.'"

Honeybrew foresaw the sting of change. The chaos of revolution. And a shared love of coffee that, against all odds, could bring Americans back together. Really, he said, coffee's future hinges on the leadership of Melania Trump: "If the Trump family brings to the White House a cocker spaniel," Honeybrew said, "it will be a very good omen."

What Honeybrew didn't speculate on is the future-shaping potential of the Trump administration's recent activity: how new tariffs might increase coffee prices, whether cuts at the National Weather Service could make it harder to predict harvests, and how leaving the Paris agreement could make the underlying problems worse. Without a major course correction, even a cocker spaniel in the Oval Office probably won't save coffee.

Meg Duff is a reporter covering climate change and the environment.

• Shawna Lum, 31, knew the American obsession with climbing the career ladder wasn't for her.
• In 2016, Lum moved to Spain to escape the rat race and carve out her own path.
• In Spain, she's happier, spending less money on housing, and has started her own business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shawna Lum, a 31-year-old from Los Angeles who moved to Spain in 2016. She founded Move Overseas Now, a company that helps people move to Europe and Latin America. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm originally from Los Angeles but went to Washington State University. In 2015, I moved to Spain for a semester to study abroad, and that experience completely changed me.

During my six months in Spain, I fell in love with Europe. The ability to travel so easily — like catching a round-trip flight from Bilbao, the city in northern Spain where I was living, to Amsterdam for just $80 or London for $100 — was incredible.

On top of that, the community and my social life were amazing. Going out for tapas, enjoying a glass of wine, and having a meal was so affordable compared to the US. I also loved the walking culture; there's no need for a car. That's something I never realized I was missing until I lived there.

After my studies in Spain, I returned to the US and worked in corporate jobs for about a year and a half, first in Texas, then in Chicago and Louisiana. Throughout that time, I couldn't shake the memory of my time in Spain.

The typical American dream wasn't resonating with me — the "checklist" of getting a corporate job, saving for a house, and getting married. I asked myself, "Why must I follow this path?"

I moved to Europe and came to terms with some downsides of American life

At the end of 2016, I moved to Spain and have been living here ever since.

When I first moved here, visa options were limited. There are many more now, like digital nomad visas and passive income visas for retirees. Back then, a student visa was my best option.

Although I didn't want to go back to school, I decided to pursue a master's in entrepreneurship and innovation in Barcelona. After completing my degree, I kept renewing my visa.

Along the way, I started doing side hustles and diving into digital marketing. I eventually realized I didn't have to work for others and launched a web design agency.

In 2021, my dad was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, so I returned to Los Angeles to take care of him. He passed away shortly after.

While grieving, I also became frustrated about life in the US. Coming back to the States was a tough adjustment. I started noticing the toxic culture — people seemed unhappy with their lives, and many of my high school friends were on antidepressants. It also felt like everything revolved around money, even healthcare.

I missed the sense of connection and community I had experienced In Spain. Living overseas showed me that life could be different — the stress levels and the divide between work and home were much more balanced.

I felt like many people could resonate with my reasoning. So, when I returned to Spain, I started Move Overseas Now, a business that helps others make their moves.

I help other people move abroad

As a relocation coach, I help people move permanently to Europe and Latin America through online master classes that outline the steps.

Most people who sign up for my courses are 35 and older, with established careers, freelancing, or working on a 1099.

Affordability is a huge reason my clients move abroad, especially retirees on fixed incomes. Many of them find that in countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Panama, they can live comfortably on their Social Security check — something that isn't possible for them in the US.

In Spain, you can rent a nice one-bedroom in a midsize city for about $650 to $980 a month or under $1,300 in the major cities. In Panama, some of my clients live in beautiful condos just steps from the sea with two balconies and air conditioning in an expat-friendly community for around $900 a month. Private healthcare is also a game changer: Many clients pay just $80 to $200 a month for coverage, with no copays or deductibles.

By spending less on housing, healthcare, and daily expenses, they experience more freedom, less stress, and a better quality of life — things they feel are out of reach in the US.

I don't see myself ever living in the US again

I feel like my life has improved living abroad.

I always felt different in the US, like I didn't fit in. Everything has fallen into place in Europe. I married my husband, who has permanent residency in Spain. Through him, I was granted a partnership visa, also known as a family reunification visa.

During COVID, we lived in a friend's guest house in France for about five months. We also spent six months as digital nomads in Asia, living in Thailand, Nepal, and mostly India. Overall, it was an incredible journey.

Right now, we're renting a one-bedroom, one-bathroom duplex just outside Barcelona's city center for 300 euros, or about $314, a month. We got a great deal because we know the landlord. We're planning to buy a home eventually, so for now, we're focused on saving up for that.

Living abroad makes me feel freer. The weather, the greenery, and the greater safety as a woman are all amazing. I also feel better spiritually because interactions feel less competitive and transactional. It's really allowed me to slow down and give myself more grace.

I don't see myself returning to the US — at least not willingly unless it's for an event, like a funeral, or to take care of something serious for a couple of weeks.

• It's a tough job market out there, and experienced workers are not exempt.
• Some older Americans just want a few more years of work to boost retirement savings or stay busy.
• The jobs that are available don't pay enough to make them worthwhile, job seekers said.

Gino Marconi is struggling to secure full-time work, and it's messing with his retirement plans.

Marconi, who's 64 and lives in Plantation, Florida, earned $60,000 annually as a sales representative for an outdoor supply company until two years ago, when he resigned due to the stress of working long days on the road. Marconi previously held engineering jobs that paid more.

Since then, he said he's applied to over 600 remote and in-person roles across various industries and skill levels. He suspects many positions have rejected him because he's overqualified, and he's removed the years he's completed some degrees and certifications from some applications.

Marconi said he hopes to retire in a few years and rely on Social Security income, but his plans could change if he's unable to find higher-paying work.

"My home is paid off, my cars are paid off," Marconi said. "But I need to keep going until I get back to work."

Are you an older American who is still working or looking for work? Please fill out this quick Google Form.

As many Americans reach retirement age, they don't find themselves coasting into their golden years as easily as they may have hoped. Instead, as hundreds of older Americans told Business Insider in responses to reader surveys about work and retirement, they find themselves once again on the job market. Maybe they got laid off or quit a career due to health issues. Either way, they need just a few more years to reach a comfortable financial position — and it's tough out there for job seekers.

To be sure, the unemployment rate for Americans age 55 and older was just 3% as of January, compared to 4% for all workers. But for people of all ages who don't have jobs, the hiring landscape has become more challenging in recent years. Excluding a two-month pandemic-related dip in 2020, US businesses are hiring at nearly the lowest rate since 2013, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

In response to his job search struggles, Marconi is working part-time with a transportation company for a hotel chain and said he's taken steps to become a full-time insurance agent. He said he's grown frustrated with the application process — he recalled getting stood up at an interview — but is remaining optimistic while cutting back on unnecessary spending.

"I don't know when I'll retire because Social Security is not going to be enough," Marconi said, adding he's pickier about the roles he applies for. "My wife used to say I should do whatever increases my income, but I'm not going to work as an engineer making no money."

Working later in life for extra security

Some older Americans told BI that even though they could technically retire, they're holding out because they fear their savings and retirement income won't be sufficient if unexpected costs arise.

David F., 67, has been looking for work since last October — when he anticipated he would soon be laid off from his aerospace industry job. The layoff ultimately came in January.

Of the nearly 1,700 submitted applications he's tracked since beginning his job search, only 4% have yielded interviews, and none have amounted to a job offer yet. He said he's frequently encountered ghost jobs or positions with similar job descriptions to previous roles but significantly less pay.

"They're either looking for a unicorn and never finding it, or there's not really a position there, but they want to look like they're hiring," said David, who lives in Washington and asked to withhold his last name due to ongoing late-stage job interviews.

David doesn't have a firm retirement goal, but he hopes to retire within the next 5 to 10 years, assuming he finds a suitable position. After working in project management for nearly three decades, David briefly retired but returned to work to bolster his finances when the pandemic caused economic uncertainty. He said he's looking for work now because earning additional income would help him live more comfortably and stress less about retirement savings.

"My situation is not desperate, and although I've made mistakes in my retirement savings in the past, I'm not making those mistakes," David said.

David said he also wants to keep working to stay busy. He's among the older Americans who desire to keep working for reasons other than finances.

"There are the people that love their job, working or even volunteering," said Deb Whitman, AARP's chief public policy officer, adding, "There's sort of a social connection, a sense of purpose and meaning that people get."

Some older Americans' jobs are more crucial. While they hope to retire in the next few years, it's far from guaranteed.

In December 2022, David Schanen was laid off from his network engineer job. Over the last three years, he's struggled to find high-paying work in his industry.

"There's a lot of work for things that I'm qualified for, but people are paying like $25 an hour," said Schanen, who's 64 and based in Seattle. He said his network engineer job paid about $200,000 annually.

Schanen said he hopes to sell the two side businesses he started over the past decade and retire sometime in the next couple of years. However, he said his real estate photography and virtual concert businesses have only generated roughly $100,000 in combined revenues to date — not nearly enough to make his significant financial investments in them feel worthwhile.

Schanen's uncertain retirement outlook is why he's continued exploring other job opportunities. About six months ago, he began driving for Uber about 40 hours a week. He said he's frustrated with the gig's pay, but that it's given him the flexibility to control his own working hours and dedicate time to his businesses.

"Right now what I'm doing is just kind of keep helping me stay afloat," he said.

In 2023, not long after ChatGPT made generative AI mainstream, a poll on the anonymous workplace forum Blind asked, bluntly, whether young software engineers were "fucked." Some 42% of the more than 13,000 respondents picked the response "Yes? U guys are pretty much fucked."

This past October, Sundar Pichai proudly announced on an earnings call that AI was writing more than 25% of new code at Google. Mark Zuckerberg has said that Meta will build an AI engineer to write code. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a hiring freeze for engineers in 2025, saying AI had increased productivity by 30% — and then news broke that Salesforce planned to lay off 1,000 workers. (It's still hiring salespeople for AI-powered products.) Stripe intends to cut some engineers while also growing its overall head count this year.

All of this raises the question of what junior engineers will take on if some basic tasks become automated. Some product managers have speculated that AI will increasingly take on some technical coding tasks and circumvent their need for engineers. Overall, job postings for software engineers on Indeed are at a five-year low.

Are engineers really coding themselves into obsolescence?

AI is knocking down the career ladder by doing more of the coding work of entry-level engineers, but, at least for now, the increased coding output from AI is also increasing the demand for and value of experienced, creative developers to interpret and put the AI's work to good use.

While many obituaries have been written to mourn the death of coding, engineering is more than writing code: It requires creative thinking to solve problems and expertise to read code. As it is now, AI isn't an original thinker.

"AI can't support what it doesn't know," says James Stanger, the chief technology evangelist at CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the US IT industry. "I still don't think that it is something that can fully replace a good developer." He adds, though, that "if a developer is not creative, then you can replace them very easily."

oftware engineering has been around since the 1960s, but hiring boomed in the '90s with the dot-com era. Coding boot camps became common in the 2010s as the demand for engineers outpaced the supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.9 million people worked as software developers, quality-assurance analysts, and testers in 2023. The bureau projected that the industry would grow by 17% from 2023 to 2033, outpacing the national average of 4% for all jobs.

An analysis from CompTIA found that the rate of job postings for software engineers fell by 50% from January to December 2023, recovering slightly by the end of 2024. While posts for jobs across tech, finance and accounting, and marketing, communications, and creative roles all fell as well, the dip for software engineers was the sharpest. But CompTIA says the reason for the fall wasn't clear. Tech companies — including some that acknowledged overhiring during the pandemic — laid off thousands of workers in 2022 and 2023, with many citing economic uncertainty.

But there's a widening divide within software engineering regarding experience level. CompTIA found that the proportion of open software engineering roles seeking entry-level workers had dropped since January 2023, to just over 20% from nearly 30%, while job postings for those with seven years of experience or more increased to make up nearly 40% of the open roles, up from just over 30%.

The experienced engineers I talked to seemed confident that AI wouldn't come for the jobs anytime soon.

Jeremy Chua, a software engineer for the AI Lab at the venture firm Georgian, turns to chatbots when he hits issues with coding. He may prompt ChatGPT or Claude to cull answers from the depths of Google and Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for programmers, or to help him write in coding languages he's less fluent in. Chua, who has more than a decade of experience, says he was skeptical about whether gen AI could help him at work. He says that now he can sometimes complete projects that would have taken a week in a day or two, and he thinks of the chatbots he uses as coding partners. "It's not like it will replace me — it augments the way that I work," Chua tells me.

Caleb Tonkinson, an engineer at a clinical AI company called SmarterDx, tells me that AI is changing programming through two paths: "I can deliver the same thing faster, or I can deliver something better in the same period of time." He views AI as similar to other tech tools that became available to engineers — except more exciting as it advances rapidly. "There have been tons of tools for 20 years now" to debug software, generate code, or evaluate code, he says. "Your best companies and best software engineers are almost always leveraging those tools."

Cody Stewart, a principal software engineer at the software company CallRail, says he doesn't use gen AI for everything at work but might use it to get answers to "stupid questions" that he could spend a long time looking for on Google or Stack Overflow. He began using chatbots at work in 2022. "I read something that was like, you either learn to adopt new tools and figure out how they can enhance your day-to-day life and you stay with the times, or people are going to outlevel you," he said. "I saw that and thought I should probably give this a shot."

While more-experienced engineers are optimistic about AI, young engineers have more reason to worry.

The startup Cognition AI last year widely released an AI-powered software engineer called Devin, designed to work on bugs and small feature requests. In a December video, it described it as "a junior engineer" who "works best with a great manager." Cognition AI and its CEO, Scott Wu, did not respond to questions about whether it's meant to replace engineers or reduce the number the companies need.

Jayesh Govindarajan, a Salesforce executive vice president focused on AI, told my colleague Ana Altchek that the company was building "a system that can pretty much solve anything for you" but "just doesn't know what to solve," making knowing how to code less important. "I may be in the minority here," Govindarajan said, "but I think something that's far more essential than learning how to code is having agency."

Alexander Petros, a freelance open-source software engineer, is an AI holdout; he tells me he doesn't use generative AI to code. "I do worry that because AI is in many ways doing things that you used to hire junior developers to do, it does remove the ladder upon which junior developers would try to do those things, make those mistakes, and then learn," he says. Petros says he tried ChatGPT but found that the code could be clunky. If something in that code breaks, humans may not know how to fix it. "The process of producing code with LLMs, for the foreseeable future, is almost entirely distinct from the process of producing good software systems that last for a very long time," he says. Plus, using AI to solve problems means he may not learn how to get through those roadblocks on his own.

Chatbots lack creativity — that's where engineers, especially those who have been doing the job for a while, have an in-demand advantage. Stanger says he hopes companies use AI not as justification for cutting back on engineers but as a way to help them "get deeper into this code and get more creative."

Stanger says that treating engineers as a faucet that can be turned on and off as a business needs, or even replaced with AI, is likely to backfire in the long term. "If you've got toxic companies that are interested in that binge-and-purge, on-and-off hiring of developers, I'm not sure they're going to create very good products," he says.

People have long panicked that technology will take their livelihood. But even as automation eliminates some jobs, tech often creates a demand for new roles; most people today are working jobs that didn't exist before 1940.

The wholesale elimination of software engineers likely won't come to fruition in the near future, but the picture for more-experienced engineers is brighter. In the best-case scenario, AI will mean they get more time to flex their muscles and solve deep problems.

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

• Ukraine's military intelligence chief said North Korea is covering 50% of Russia's war ammo needs.
• Kyrylo Budanov said it's another sign of how heavily Pyongyang is contributing to the war.
• His comment also comes as Ukraine has been trying to hit Russia's ammo supply.

North Korea is providing Russia with half of the ammunition used by Moscow against Ukraine, the head of Kyiv's military intelligence agency said on Sunday.

"They heavily rely on — well, we can now say it — their strategic ally, North Korea, that is covering for practically 50% of Russia's need for munitions," Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, told reporters. "Artillery shells, in particular."

Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, Budanov said Pyongyang was also providing Russia with 155mm self-propelled howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems. He has previously said that these were the M1989 "Koksan" howitzer and the M1991 system.

Over the last year, North Korea has increasingly dedicated resources to help Russia sustain its war against Ukraine. It deployed an estimated 11,000 to 12,000 troops in Kursk late last year.

Pyongyang's involvement comes as Moscow and Kyiv focus on outlasting each other along the largely stagnant front lines and as Russia digs deep into its economy to maintain recruitment and weapons production.

North Korea isn't giving its resources away for free. Its leader, Kim Jong Un, is reported by South Korean intelligence to be receiving technological assistance from Russian experts, as well as food and cash from Moscow.

Large-scale ammunition shipments from Pyongyang could especially frustrate Ukraine's effort to exhaust Moscow's supply by targeting factories and depots deep inside Russian territory with drone strikes.

Ukraine's military chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in January that Russia was expending about 40,000 artillery rounds per day, but that the strikes had pushed that count "significantly lower."

Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine's foreign intelligence, Oleh Ivashchenko, also said at the Sunday press conference that Russia plans to locally manufacture 7 million artillery rounds and mines in 2025.

"Russia clearly understands that it produces more of those than the rest of the European countries together," Ivashchenko said.

He added that Russia intends to produce 3,000 long-range precision missiles this year.

In comparison, the US is planning to produce 100,000 shells a month by the summer of 2025, or 1.2 million a year. And that's already a ramped-up production cycle.

The European Union has said that it hopes to produce 2 million shells in 2025.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

• A top nutrition scientist keeps his kitchen stocked with nutritious foods.
• These include frozen spinach, lentil pasta, kimchi, and miso paste.
• Having healthy foods on hand makes it easier to whip up gut-friendly meals.

Tim Spector, a top nutrition scientist, tries to eat 30 different plants a week for his gut health — but they're not all fresh, as you might expect.

In his cookbook, "Food For Life," which is due to be published in the US and Canada on May 27, Spector calls jarred, tinned, and frozen foods the "unsung heroes of eating well," because they are affordable and nutritious.

So Spector not only stocks his fridge with whole foods that make healthy eating easy, but his pantry, freezer, and kitchen counters, too.

Here's what the epidemiologist at Kings College London and the cofounder of the nutrition company ZOE keeps in his kitchen.

Grains, tinned vegetables, and healthy flavorings in his pantry

Spector's cupboards always contain a variety of grains, such as buckwheat, spelt, pearl barley, and quinoa, which are great alternatives to rice and pasta, he wrote in the cookbook. But he keeps wholegrain and lentil pasta on hand because he's a "big pasta fan," he told Business Insider.

As many varieties of beans and pulses as he can find are also on his grocery list, because they are affordable sources of protein, fiber, and nutrients.

Spector's recipes often call for tinned and jarred vegetables, such as tomatoes, sweetcorn, olives, and artichokes, which tend to be cheaper than fresh vegetables and have a longer shelf life. But watch out for additives, Spector said, such as salt or preservatives.

Spector also keeps miso and nutritional yeast to hand as alternatives to bouillon cubes, which tend to be highly processed. He previously told BI that he tries to avoid ultra-processed foods to care for his gut health.

Vegetables, fruits, and fermented foods in his fridge

There are always plenty of vegetables, fruits, and leafy greens in Spector's fridge, as well as a small amount of "traditional cheese," he wrote, which is fermented. More research is needed to confirm the health benefits of fermented foods, but a 2022 review of studies linked them to a lower risk of type two diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Fermentation "experiments," such as homemade kefir and pickles, can also be found in his fridge, as well as miso and gochujang: two flavorful fermented pastes that add flavor to dishes.

Spector recommends stocking the "four Ks" in your fridge — kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and 'kraut (sauerkraut). He previously shared three tips for eating more fermented foods with BI.

Berries, soup, and soffritto in his freezer

There are yet more vegetables in Spector's freezer, including frozen cubes of spinach, peas, and mushrooms.

He also has a bag of soffritto — which is chopped vegetables (usually onions, carrots, and celery) that can be used as a base for many dishes — and frozen herbs to flavor his home-cooked meals.

Spector keeps mixed berries and fruit in the freezer too, which he uses in his go-to healthy breakfast of yogurt with toppings.

"I always try to make sure I have a nice, thick, Italian-style vegetable soup in the freezer that I can simply defrost and reheat when I'm pressed for time," he wrote. For example, the Minestrone soup recipe in his book.

Fruit and nuts on the counter

Spector keeps a fruit bowl where he can see it on his kitchen counter, as well as containers of mixed nuts. That way, if he's tempted to snack, he's more likely to go for the healthy ones that he can see.

He previously told BI about his "diversity jar" that is full of different nuts and seeds, which he keeps on hand to sprinkle on his meals and help him eat 30 plants a week.

• Sam Bankman-Fried, the imprisoned former FTX chief, had an inactive X account for two years.
• But on Monday, 10 posts giving advice on firing employees appeared on that account.
• It comes as Elon Musk's DOGE ramps up efforts to slash head count in the federal workforce.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former FTX chief sentenced to 25 years in prison in March last year, disappeared from X for two years. A series of 10 posts on Monday night from his account broke that spell.

The posts gave his followers leadership advice about firing employees and talked about Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Bankman-Fried's last X post before Monday was on January 20, 2023.

Some of the posts on Bankman-Fried's account give tips about how to fire people.

"I'd tell this to everyone we let go: that it was as much our fault for not having the right role for them, or the right person to manage them, or the right work environment for them," read one post.

Other posts voiced support for DOGE and its rounds of firing. One post read: "There's no point in keeping them around, doing nothing."

It is unclear if Bankman-Fried wrote the posts himself. His lawyer did not respond to a request from Business Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

The posts come nearly a year after he was convicted of taking $8 billion from his customers in his FTX cryptocurrency exchange. he was sentenced to 25 years in prison by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

He has been serving his sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Musk's DOGE is doubling down on its plan to slash the size of the US federal workforce as part of its larger aim to weed out government inefficiencies.

The Office of Personnel Management wrote federal workers an email on Saturday, asking them to turn in a list of their achievements within the last week and giving them a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Musk wrote in a Saturday X post about the new directive, "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

However, at least eight federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, have asked their workers not to respond to the email.

• China has officially praised its rising star, DeepSeek, as a success.
• But instead of framing DeepSeek as a challenger, Beijing said it would "complement" American firms.
• While DeepSeek upended beliefs about AI costs, US firms are focused instead on a race to reach AGI.

China on Monday lauded DeepSeek's much-hyped AI model, but said the Hangzhou-based company isn't competing with America's leading AI firms.

"As AI continues to reshape industries and everyday life of humanity, DeepSeek complements, rather than competes against, existing AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind," Beijing's embassy in Washington said in a statement seen by Business Insider.

DeepSeek has continued to raise its profile in Beijing since its reportedly low-cost AI model stunned the tech world. It's quickly become a star at home, with the startup's founder, Liang Wenfeng, given a front-row seat at a symposium hosted last week by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The symposium has been a rallying point for the tech scene in China, which saw Xi's supportive remarks — and the attendance of once-shunned Alibaba founder Jack Ma — as a positive sign after years of industry crackdowns.

In yet another moment of official recognition for DeepSeek, the Chinese embassy's statement on Monday praised the company as a success, saying it "significantly lowered AI development costs."

DeepSeek has said that it spent less than $6 million on "official training" for its latest model, but the scope of those expenses isn't clearly defined. SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor analytics firm, estimated in late January that the company may possess $500 million worth of GPUs.

American firms at the forefront of AI have also called the Western panic over DeepSeek overblown.

Google DeepMind's CEO, for example, said that the Chinese model is impressive but showed "no real new scientific advance" toward the true goal among AI leaders — reaching artificial general intelligence.

Still, DeepSeek is seriously undercutting pricing models for American AI firms like OpenAI, with Bernstein tech analysts estimating that DeepSeek's prices are 20 to 40 times cheaper.

But Beijing's official line adopted a conciliatory tone, framing China's foray into AI as a chance for collaboration rather than outmuscling US firms.

"AI companies across different regions contribute unique strengths, leading to better, more inclusive solutions for users everywhere," the embassy said in its statement. Emphasizing a desire to collaborate and avoid conflict has long been central to China's public image.

On the other hand, the US has warned that its race with China to develop more sophisticated AI would be a difference-maker in Beijing's push for superiority.

The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for additional comment sent by BI outside regular business hours. DeepSeek and the startup's parent company, HighFlyer, did not respond to similar requests for comment.

• Ayesha Curry says she prioritizes her relationship with Stephen Curry over their four children.
• "And that works for us because then you have two happy people raising the kids in the house," she said.
• Prioritizing each other involves making time for each other, such as going on date nights, she said.

Ayesha Curry believes that partners should put each other first in order to be good parents.

In an interview with People, Curry spoke about prioritizing her relationship with her husband, NBA player Stephen Curry, over their kids.

"I think for us, our relationship always comes first. Then we're parents," Curry told People. "And that works for us because then you have two happy people raising the kids in the house. So the family sector in our lives always comes first."

The couple, who tied the knot in 2011, share four kids: Riley, Ryan, Canon, and Caius — whom they welcomed in May.

This isn't the first time that Curry has spoken about how she and her husband make their marriage work.

In a 2019 interview with HelloGiggles, Curry shared that her parents and her in-laws were the ones who showed the couple the importance of prioritizing each other.

"And then also the biggest thing, both of our parents are still married and have been married for 30-plus years, and the one thing that they both shared with us — some through learning it the hard way, some through just making sure that they do it — is just making sure that we put each other first, even before the kids, as tough as that sounds," Curry told HelloGiggles.

This involves making time for each other, including date nights, she said.

"Because when you become a parent, you want to put your kids first, and we do, but we do it second to our relationship. Because ultimately, when our relationship is good, the kids are happy, and they're thriving, and our family life is good," Curry said.

At the end of the day, their relationship sets the basis for their family life.

"We have to put that into perspective and realize that it's not us being selfish, it's making sure we set a strong foundation," she said.

The Currys aren't the only celebrity couple who've spoken about making time for each other despite their busy schedules.

Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan, shared that they don't go more than two weeks without seeing each other and being together as a family.

Gordon Ramsay's wife, Tana, says that she and her husband often get dressed up to go out on dates without their kids.

"In our relationship, having little kids again, our present to each other on our last anniversary was, we have to go to the theater once a month, and we have to go out three times a month, and we're not allowed to wear trainers," Tana said.

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

• Federal workers were told to send a list of their accomplishments by midnight on Monday or lose their jobs.
• Some federal agencies told their employees not to respond.
• President Donald Trump and Elon Musk appeared intent on moving forward with the request.

The deadline for federal employees to email their lists of what they'd achieved at work — or lose their jobs — has passed.

In the lead-up to the Office of Personnel Management's Monday night deadline, government agencies took different positions, President Donald Trump said people who didn't respond were "semi-fired," and DOGE leader Elon Musk said those who didn't respond would have "another chance."

Here's the latest.

What Trump is saying

At a press conference on Monday, Trump said he thought OPM's email was "great."

"So by asking the question, 'Tell us what you did this week,' what he's doing is saying, 'Are you actually working?'" Trump said.

Trump wasn't clear on what happens if federal workers don't send in their emails.

"And then, if you don't answer, you are sort of semi-fired, or you're fired," Trump said.

When asked about the conflicting guidance agencies have given on the request, Trump said the State Department and FBI were "working on confidential things."

Guidance from the departments had been given "in a friendly manner" and not "in any way combatively with Elon," Trump added.

In a Truth Social post published on Saturday, hours before OPM sent out its email, Trump praised Musk's work with DOGE but said he would like to see Musk "get more aggressive."

Musk's latest comments on the DOGE ask

By Monday, Musk's position on the ultimatum had changed.

Having initially said that failure to respond by the deadline "will be taken as a resignation," he wrote on X that those who have yet to respond to the request "will be given another chance."

"Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," Musk wrote.

In a Monday morning X post responding to Garry Tan, the president and CEO of Y Combinator, Musk said the DOGE request was "basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email."

"This mess will get sorted out this week," Musk wrote. "Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don't get it yet, but they will."

The request echoes one that Musk made to employees at X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Shortly after he bought the social network in October 2022, Musk asked software engineers to print out their latest code for review.

Representatives for the White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Guidance varies across departments

In a memo to heads of departments and agencies on Monday, OPM reiterated its deadline for employee emails and said all emails should be addressed to agency heads with OPM copied.

At least eight agencies, including the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services, have told workers they don't have to respond to DOGE's email.

Some government departments have told workers that responses about productivity will be handled by the agencies, not staff.

Other departments have told employees they can respond to OPM if they wish, but that not responding will not incur penalties.

The Social Security Administration reversed course on its messaging to employees. A day after telling employees the OPM email was a "legitimate assignment," it said on Monday that responding is "voluntary."

"Non-responses are not considered a resignation," the agency's email to employees read.

It's unclear how the White House and DOGE plan to reconcile the conflicting guidance.

The turmoil comes after a chaotic few weeks for government employees as Musk's DOGE cuts head count across government agencies.

Thousands of federal workers have been fired. Some of these workers received termination notices saying the job cuts were based on performance, per documents BI viewed.

• Alex Karp said if he were not running Palantir, he'd move to his "hermit-like location."
• At the Economic Club of New York, Karp said he'd lean into hobbies like Tai Chi, shooting guns, and reading.
• Karp, known for being an eccentric leader, has run Palantir since 2004.

Alex Karp said if he were not running Palantir, he probably wouldn't be running another company — he'd be living like a "hermit" and focusing on his hobbies.

The billionaire CEO of the big-data analytics company made the comments on Monday while speaking at the Economic Club of New York.

When asked what he'd be doing if he wasn't leading Palantir, Karp said that while he is suited to running the defense contractor, he wasn't "built to run another company."

"I am a little bit of a hermit, and the minute they fire me, I'm going to be moving back to my hermit-like location and doing my hermit dance," he said, adding that involved things like reading, shooting guns, Tai Chi, and cross country skiing.

Karp also said he's an "introvert" and is not interested in running for office.

He added that he'd also spend time with some friends and might engage in some "debaucherous behavior," prompting laughter from the crowd.

Karp has gained a reputation as an eccentric leader in Silicon Valley known for being a health and wellness fanatic who keeps Tai Chi swords in his office.

Karp has been CEO of Palantir, which he cofounded, since 2004, building it into a multi-billion-dollar company and major government contractor.

During its earnings call earlier this month, the company reported US revenue growth of 52% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, beating analyst expectations. However, Palantir's stock has taken a hit over the past week due to the possibility of defense spending cuts.

During the talk on Monday, Karp also shared why he left academia. After attending law school at Stanford University, Karp pursued a Ph.D. in philosophy at a university in Germany.

"I left academia because I felt like I was almost always right, and it didn't matter because it was all politics," Karp said. "So I had to go into business because in business there is a deliverable."