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As AI is embraced, what happens to the artists whose work was stolen to build it?

Amid the hype surrounding Apple’s new deal with OpenAI, one issue has been largely papered over: The AI company’s foundational models are, and have always been, built atop the theft of creative professionals’ work.The arrangement with Apple isn’t the only news from OpenAI. Among recent updates and controversies including high-level defections, last month the company quietly announced Media Manager, scheduled for release in 2025.A tool purportedly designed to allow creators and content owners to control how their work is used, Media Manager is really a shameless attempt to evade ...

I’ve learned that it may be best to email like a cat

I’ve discovered that cats, extrusions of our human souls, have much to teach us about how to use email to our advantage.I send lots of emails. Too many emails. I also respond instantly when other people send an email to me. And truth be told, I go on and on, interminably, in my emails.While you might assume this superior level of responsiveness is a good thing — as it implies a loyalty to friends and family and a professional business attitude — in reality, the impact of being a responsive fool turns out to be perversely negative. In personal and work settings, an overly friendly ...

Why Biden-Trump faceoff is so novel

Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be novel for many reasons. It will be the first debate between a current and a former U.S. president. It will be the first featuring a convicted felon. It will be the first conducted before either major party has formally picked a nominee. But perhaps most importantly, it harks to an earlier time in presidential campaign politics when debates were neither typical nor expected, and when they occurred, they did so to serve specific needs of the candidates, rather than as a form of public service.We’ve come to expect ...

Investing in child care supports all of us

We have a child care crisis in the United States. And as a child care education provider, I know how to fix it: Put families first.The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that each month, tens of thousands of Americans miss work due to a lack of child care, resulting in $122 billion annually in lost productivity, earnings and revenue.Meanwhile, early childhood education and child care workers are among the lowest-paid workers in the country, even as we’re entrusted with our nation’s most valued and vulnerable population.I’m also a veteran of the U.S. Armed Services. I grew up ...

Want to save the bees? First you’ll need to relearn all you thought you ‘knew’ about them

When most people hear “save the bees,” they think of fuzzy honeybees buzzing about the garden. But honeybees, who aren’t native to North America, comprise only a tiny fraction of the bees who live among us. There’s a bustling world of native bees, each with their own unique contributions, characteristics and challenges. June 17 to 23 is National Pollinator Week, a time to deepen our understanding of all these buzzing beauties — and take action to protect them.Of the world’s 20,000 bee species, some 4,000 are native to the U.S. These unsung heroes of pollination play a ...

Applying for a job shouldn’t be humiliating

Everyone has a job-search horror story or knows someone who does. After flying my husband to Chicago for a day-long interview, one company told him the position had been filled the day before — but that they’d interview him anyway to be “nice.”Another relative was retrieved an hour late from a 60-minute computer test in an empty conference room — and flunked because the company couldn’t verify that she finished on time.Other bad experiences are far too common: Job applications elicit zero response; companies ghost applicants after multiple rounds of hours-long ...