Fortune

When employees are forced to burn the candle at both ends, they simply get burnt (out). https://lnkd.in/eu-2Taen Workers across the globe are in constant pursuit of work-life balance, looking to grab some me time to maintain a social life or simply watch the latest trashy reality-TV show. It turns out that depending on where you live, you might have a better chance of catching a break. Sadly, Americans are fresh out of luck. Surveying over 4,200 adults with full-time jobs from 22 different countries, Remity found that people living in the United States are subjected to some of the weakest work-life balances, alongside Australia, Ireland, and Norway. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eu-2Taen

Elon Musk’s pre-kindergarten Montessori school in Texas can now open its doors. The school, which has been in the works since last year, received its initial permit from the Texas childcare regulator on Thursday, according to the agency, paving the way for Elon Musk to start building out ambitious, STEM-focused education plans that could eventually entail multiple independent K-12 schools and even a college within the state. The Montessori school—dubbed “Ad Astra” (Latin for “to the stars”) in a nod to Musk’s plans for interplanetary travel—is located about 40 minutes from Austin, in Bastrop county, where several Musk companies have operations. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gr7eHwsH

When employees are forced to burn the candle at both ends, they simply get burnt (out). Workers across the globe are in constant pursuit of work-life balance, looking to grab some me time to maintain a social life or simply watch the latest trashy reality-TV show. It turns out that depending on where you live, you might have a better chance of catching a break. Sadly, Americans are fresh out of luck. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eu-2Taen

Surveys have consistently shown that CIOs will spend more on generative AI next year. But now two years into the generative AI journey, they are also thinking more about getting a return on those investments, while also expressing increased skepticism about how AI is priced. The per-user cost for AI copilots, often $30 for each employee, is a frequent pain point. There is also wariness about “AI washing,” which is the notion that vendors are adding fees for flimsy new AI features with little to no business value. “A lot of people are scratching their heads,” says the chief digital and information officer at cloud-based cybersecurity company Netskope Mike Anderson. “I don’t really know if I can afford $30 per user.” Read more:

Americans are losing sight of what their national dream is actually about, according to Grammy award-winning artist and philanthropist Pharrell Williams. https://lnkd.in/eJ-E5bvt Speaking on stage at Web Summit in Lisbon this month, the “Happy“ singer said society should focus less on monetary success and more on career fulfillment. “In my country we are raised to think about how to make the most money because our parents thought that way,” Williams, a Virginia Beach native said. “They had this false sense of what the American dream is or should be." Read more: https://lnkd.in/eJ-E5bvt

They have “the most spoiled dogs in the world.” They go on 10 vacations a year. They spend hours a day on their favorite hobbies. They’re DINKs, “dual-income, no kids,” and they’re the 5% of Americans who are living like the new one percent, according to a new The Harris Poll survey. “The data reveals DINKs aren’t just spending more—they’re spending differently, with an emphasis on experiences that enhance their partnerships and personal growth,” Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at the Harris Poll, said in a statement alongside the new survey. “It’s a segment that’s redefined discretionary spending as an investment in life experience.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/eXQMB--w

Meta wants to get the U.S. government using its AI—even the military. The company said it had assembled a smorgasbord of partners for this effort, including consultancies like Accenture and Deloitte, cloud providers like Microsoft and Oracle, and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Palantir. Policy chief Nick Clegg wrote in a blog post that Oracle was tweaking Meta’s Llama AI model to “synthesize aircraft maintenance documents so technicians can more quickly and accurately diagnose problems,” while Lockheed Martin is using it for code generation and data analysis. Scale AI, a defense contractor that happens to count Meta among its investors, is “fine-tuning Llama to support specific national security team missions, such as planning operations and identifying adversaries’ vulnerabilities.” Read more:

The next time you go under the knife, there’s a good chance a robot will hold the scalpel. Fortune's Sage Lazzaro attended a Johns Hopkins University panel where researchers specialized in AI-powered robotic surgery predicted that in large part thanks to LLMs, autonomy is poised to become “a ubiquitous part of surgery” in the near or at least mid-term future. Similar to how vehicle autonomy began with automating some capabilities, they said autonomous robots will initially take on select tasks that support human surgeons. They also had no doubt we’ll see surgeries routinely performed fully autonomously by robots in our lifetime. Read more:

The U.S. housing market is one of extremes: Prices have never been higher, down payments are bigger than ever, and buyers are the oldest on record. https://lnkd.in/enuG6Fb8 Another striking statistic: A record high share of first-time homebuyers are using an inheritance to finance their down payment. That’s according to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) latest report, which finds 7% of first-time buyers used an inheritance for their down payment last year. That’s more than double the share of repeat buyers who are doing the same. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/enuG6Fb8

Rabbit, maker of the handheld orange AI-in-box device known as the R1, released a new capability called Teach mode. The mode allows users to “teach” their devices how to perform specific actions by describing the process step-by-step on a computer using natural language and then syncing the lessons to their R1. Read more: