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The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son’s “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her. Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. The lawsuit filed by Adams’ estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’…

Some of the most recognizable artwork depicting the American West is heading to auction at Christie’s, where dozens of pieces from billionaire Bill Koch’s collection are expected to fetch at least $50 million. The in-person “Visions of the West” sale will take place in New York over two sessions beginning Jan. 20, with the final lots offered — appropriately — at high noon the following day. Koch’s holdings include major works by Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell and Albert Bierstadt, artists whose images of cowboys, Native Americans and sweeping landscapes helped define how generations came to picture the American frontier. Tylee Abbott, head of Christie’s Amer…

As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead and severely restrict social media access for young people. The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement by three governing coalition and two opposition parties in parliament to ban access to social media for anyone under the age of 15. Such a measure would be the most sweeping step yet by a European Union nation to limit use of social media among teens and children. The Danish government’s plans could become law as soon as mid-2026. The proposed measure would give some parents the right to let their…

Coca-Cola said Wednesday that its chief operating officer will become its next CEO in the first quarter of 2026. The Atlanta beverage giant said its board elected Henrique Braun as CEO effective March 31. James Quincey, Coke’s current chairman and CEO, will transition to executive chairman of the company. Braun, 57, has worked at Coca-Cola for three decades. Prior to assuming the COO role earlier this year, he led operations in Brazil, Latin America, Greater China and South Korea. He has held positions overseeing Coke’s supply chain, new business development, marketing, innovation, general management and bottling operations. Braun was born in California and raised in B…

Today, investors are waking up to red on their screens as many tech and AI stocks are dropping in premarket trading. But why are shares in these companies falling? Much of it has to do with the cloud infrastructure company Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and its latest quarterly earnings results. Here’s what you need to know. Oracle’s Q2 2026 results send ORCL plunging Yesterday, Oracle reported financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2026. To say investors were disappointed in the results is an understatement, given how poorly ORCL shares are performing in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, ORCL shares are down over 12% as inve…

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are taking Gemini Space Station Inc. into the prediction market space. The cryptocurrency exchange’s CEO and president, respectively, said on Thursday that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has granted a Designated Contract Market (DCM) license to a company affiliate called Gemini Titan, LLC. Gemini Titan will offer event contracts written as yes-or-no questions about future occurrences, essentially letting U.S. users gamble on the outcomes of everyday events. As examples, Gemini in its announcement provided the questions, “Will 1 bitcoin end this year higher than $200k?” and “Will Elon Musk’s X end up paying the f…

The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point Wednesday for the third time since September, bringing its key rate to about 3.6%, the lowest in nearly three years. Before September, it had gone nine months without a cut. The benchmark rate is the rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another, and the Fed has two goals when it sets the rate: one, to manage prices for goods and services, and two, to encourage full employment. The benchmark rate also affects the interest rates consumers pay to borrow money via credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other financial products. Typically, the Fed might increase the rate to try to bring down infla…

Instacart’s artificial intelligence-enabled pricing may be increasing the cost of your groceries by as much as $1,200 a year, according to a new study published on Monday. Instacart is an online grocery delivery and pickup service that allows customers to order groceries from local stores by using its technology platform, via app or its website, and then fulfills those orders through a personal shopper. The investigation from Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, found that some identical products were priced differently from one customer to the next—sometimes by as much as 23%. One company executive reportedly called the tacti…

I spend most days in rooms where four generations argue about the same spreadsheet. Boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z staff the same executive teams, often guided by directors from a fifth—the Silent Generation. Four different eras, four different mental operating systems, one quarterly earnings call. When leaders tell me, “We’ve got a generation problem,” what they usually have is a self-awareness problem. A widely cited review of so-called generational differences at work found that many popular stereotypes don’t hold up very well when you look at actual data on values and attitudes. At the same time, more recent research shows that age-mixed teams can outp…

As data centers strain the power grid, utilities are scrambling to build new power plants. But a startup in California is one of a handful focusing on the problem from a different angle: building a network of batteries and solar panels at homes to relieve pressure on the grid more quickly. In some cases, thanks to state funding, low-income homeowners can get the systems installed at no cost, and then start saving on their electric bills and have access to backup power if the grid goes down. Others pay a subscription that’s lower than their previous electric bill. Then the startup, called Haven, manages the flow of power back to the grid. Why utilities see Haven’s …

Charli XCX is making a trip to the Sundance Film Festival in January. The pop singer-songwriter appears in three films premiering at the 2026 festival, including a mockumentary that she produced and stars in. Programmers on Wednesday unveiled a lineup of 90 feature films set for the festival’s last hurrah in Park City, Utah. The slate includes documentaries on basketball great Brittney Griner, Nelson Mandela, Salman Rushdie, Courtney Love, and Billie Jean King. There are starry features with the likes of Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Seth Rogen, Channing Tatum, Danielle Brooks, Olivia Colman, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Alexander Skarsgård, and Ethan Hawke. Olivia Wilde di…

There are three kinds of annoying colleagues. I have already written about dealing with annoying bosses and colleagues. What happens if the source of your annoyance is one of your direct reports? Once again, dealing with what bothers you depends a lot on what it is causing the problem. Here are four common causes of annoyance. 1. The one who sucks up It is natural for people who are ambitious to want to find ways to get ahead. Obviously, doing great work is important, but a little self-promotion can’t hurt either. After all, if you have lots of direct reports, you may not notice everything that everyone is doing. So, you should expect that the folks who work fo…

AI promises a smarter, faster, more efficient future, but beneath that optimism lies a quiet problem that’s getting worse: the data itself. We talk a lot about algorithms, but not enough about the infrastructure that feeds them. The truth is, innovation can’t outpace the quality of its inputs, and right now those inputs are showing signs of strain. When the foundation starts to crack, even the most advanced systems will falter. A decade ago, scale and accuracy could go hand-in-hand. But today, those goals often pull in opposite directions. Privacy regulations, device opt-ins, and new platform restrictions have made high-quality, first-party data harder than ever to ca…

In today’s workplace, layoffs are no longer rare—they’re a reality many employees have seen up close or have experienced themselves. On LinkedIn, the posts seem endless, each one paired with the now-familiar “Open to Work” banner. Or even more jarring: a coworker’s Slack avatar is green one minute and grayed out the next—before disappearing altogether. When a teammate is suddenly let go, the instinct is often to comfort them, respond thoughtfully—say the right thing, offer support, and help them feel less alone. But in the emotional blur that follows a layoff, even well-intentioned comments can land poorly, and certain reactions can unintentionally make the momen…

Large language models are quietly reshaping the way people write research papers—and scientists are catching colleagues using AI to do their work. View the full article

They look like ordinary basketball courts. But two new courts built next to public housing in New York City double as flood prevention. In a sudden flash flood—when the city’s aging sewer system can easily become overwhelmed and streets can fill with water—the sunken basketball courts act like retention basins. The design can hold as much as 330,000 gallons, with the court’s lowest areas filling like a pool and additional water stored in bioretention cells beneath the surface. The project “becomes like a sponge, which basically holds the water as much as it can,” says Runit Chhaya, principal at Grain Collective, a landscape architecture firm that worked on the…