Responding to angry customers is one of the hardest parts of her job, Natasha said. Finding the right words, conveying the appropriate level of contrition — especially when the hotel isn’t at fault (read: rain complaints) — is a tedious and time-consuming process, said the director of a five-star resort, who asked that CNBC not use her real name to protect the resort’s name. But now she has a secret weapon: generative AI. Natasha pastes a traveler’s complaint into ChatGPT and asks the chatbot to write a response. She said a task that would easily take her an hour is…
Author: insighter
It’s an oft-told anecdote littering social media: Those who invested early in cryptocurrencies have enjoyed life-changing wealth. How much that extra cash gives them confidence to spend more — a phenomenon economists call the wealth effect — is a hot topic whenever crypto prices are surging. A group of researchers tried to quantify it and determined that crypto bonanzas in the US aren’t exactly spent like windfalls from winning the lottery. And so far, the effect has been relatively modest on the $28 trillion American economy. But if the asset class continues to boom, the study provides insight on potential…
Welcome to Work Smarter, Fast Company‘s newsletter on career, leadership, and productivity advice. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Following a steep spike in pandemic-related layoffs, LinkedIn released its now-ubiquitous “Open To Work” badge in 2020. If you’re on the platform regularly, you’ve probably seen your fair share of connections with the green banner on their profile picture, indicating that they’re looking for a new career opportunity. But is there a downside to using this tool? “There’s been debate about the efficacy of the photo frame, with some people calling it ‘desperate‘ and warning it will hurt your…
Combination showing Former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (L) and Zhao Changpeng (R), founder and chief executive officer of Binance. Mike Segar | Reuters | Benjamin Girette | Bloomberg | Getty Images An arch rivalry between one-time crypto titans was brought to a close at a federal courthouse in Seattle on Tuesday when Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was handed a sentence of four months in prison. A month earlier, on the opposite coast in downtown Manhattan, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried received a 25-year prison sentence for his crimes. It seemed an underwhelming and somewhat anti-climactic finish to a protracted battle between Zhao…
Every generation has its iconic movie soundtrack. The curated collections of songs that accompanied films like The Breakfast Club, Reality Bites, and Garden State took on cultural lives of their own, thanks to their ability to distill each movie’s ethos into the best kind of mixed tape. More recently, the Barbie soundtrack turned original songs from Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, and others into Billboard-charting hits. But Barbie was an outlier: It’s rare, these days, to encounter a soundtrack that doesn’t simply function as a promotional tool for a studio, but actually allows for cross-pollination between music and movie fans. “I…
The U.S. housing market is harboring the potential for unprecedented economic stimulus that wouldn’t require any federal spending, according to Meredith Whitney, the one-time “Oracle of Wall Street” who predicted the Great Financial Crisis. While she has recently warned of the dangers that the “crisis of the American male” poses to the economy and the housing market, the CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group highlighted the opportunity that a proposed reform to the mortgage market could represent. In a column for the Financial Times on Friday, she noted that mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac asked its regulator last month to enter the…
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem speaks at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 27, 2022. Shannon Stapleton | Reuters Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem implied that President Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, should meet the same ill fate as her own 14-month-old dog Cricket, who she shot due to its aggressive behavior, as she revealed in her upcoming memoir. “Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog?”…
An international agreement to end plastic pollution is due to be sealed this year in Busan, South Korea. At the penultimate round of negotiations, held in Ottawa, Canada, Rwanda and Peru proposed a target to cut the weight of primary plastics produced worldwide by 40% by 2040, compared with 2025. This is the first time that a limit on the production of plastic has been considered at the U.N. talks aiming to develop an international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution. Of the potential mechanisms for tackling plastic pollution, a cap on plastic production was the most hotly debated,…
Institutional Shareholder Services urged Boeing Co. investors to vote against a $32.8 million pay package for its chief executive officer, citing concerns over a special equity award and a “sizable increase” in his long-term incentive grant. CEO David Calhoun’s 45% pay jump from the prior year should be rejected at the company’s annual meeting on May 17, the shareholder advising firm said in a new report. Calhoun said in March that he would step down at the end of 2024. The company has faced heightened scrutiny since a series of high-profile quality control issues on Boeing aircraft, sparking concern from consumers, investors…
With Paul Rabil, it’s tough to tell which came first, the athlete or the entrepreneur. On one hand, you’ve got the former No. 1 overall pick who was a four-time All-American in college, a two-time MVP and three-time champion as a pro, and a two-time world champion with Team USA. He’s widely considered the greatest lacrosse player in history. On the other, he can easily trace his entrepreneurial spirit back to his childhood and his Lebanese roots. His grandparents came to America via Ellis Island—one started a clothing shop, the other a cafe. As kids in Gaithersburg, Maryland, he and…
When Rubia Daniels heard a town in Italy was selling off abandoned homes for 1 euro each (or roughly $1.05), she had to take a look herself. The Berkeley, Calif., resident booked her first flight to Mussomeli, Sicily, in 2019 and quickly ended up buying not one, not two, but three crumbling properties at a bargain price. Daniels, 50, has a construction background and envisioned three dream projects: a vacation home, a restaurant and a wellness center. So far, she’s spent about $35,000 working with a local crew on her vacation home. Rubia Daniels is from Berkeley, Calif., and bought…
E-commerce giant Shein is spreading its arms to envelope more than just the fashion and apparel for which it’s known—and it’s starting to look like another familiar online market platform in the process. Shein is wooing brands such as household goods conglomerate Colgate-Palmolive, toy maker Hasbro, and skincare brands to sell their products in its marketplace, Reuters reported Tuesday. The company, known for affordable and stylish clothes—albeit made with concerns about labor practices and its environmental impact—is taking steps to create a platform that is everything to everyone. “Everybody associates Shein with fashion, but we are doing all verticals,” Christina…