đ If you think you feel tired this week, try being a Radio City Rockette. The holiday dancers perform ~200 shows over eight weeks, with each dancer doing up to 650 kicks per day. Throw in costume changes as short as 78 seconds and a perfectly precise stage mapped to the inch â and you have yourself a pretty festive showing of athletic stamina.
đ§ On the pod:Americans feel safe in their jobs â but also underpaid.
NEWS FLASH
đ¸ Are you unsatisfied with your salary? If so, youâre â unfortunately â in good company. The majority (88%) of US workers report feeling extremely, very, or somewhat satisfied with their jobs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey â but 29% said theyâre not too or not at all satisfied with their pay. Plus, more than a third said they are not too satisfied (25%) or not at all satisfied (13%) with their opportunities for a promotion. Despite feeling let down on pay and chances for growth, most Americans plan to stay put â 63% said theyâre unlikely to look for a new job in the coming months.
đŚ Red light, green owl: Duolingo and Netflixâs âSquid Gameâ are partnering to help fans learn Korean ahead of the dramaâs second season, dropping Dec. 26. The app has added 40+ relevant words and sentences, such as âdolganaâ â the dessert featured in one episodeâs challenge â and âYouâve been eliminated,â to its usual Korean lessons. Duolingo previously reported a 40% spike in Korean learners attributed to âSquid Game,â which has racked up 2.8B+ hours viewed since its 2021 release.
đ Hot new hangout: Rivianâs new charging station in Joshua Tree, California, comes with all the bells and whistles an EV driver could want, perThe Verge. It accommodates all EVs (Teslas need an adaptor) and has restrooms, a lounge area, games, books, a play area, free local coffee, and upscale snacks for purchase. Thereâs also an Adventure lab where people can learn about Rivian models and eventually attend classes or seminars.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Google unveiled Willow, a new quantum computing chip capable of completing a computing challenge in less than five minutes â as opposed to the 10 septillion years one of the worldâs fastest supercomputers would take.
Yelp introduced Review Insights, a new AI-powered iOS feature that summarizes customer reviews for restaurant, food, and nightlife businesses and provides aggregated positive, neutral, and critical sentiment scores.
Amazon debuted Amazon Autos, an ecommerce platform for buying new vehicles from dealerships, this week. It currently only offers Hyundai models in 48 US cities, but plans to expand in 2025.
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âIt canât be bargained with. It canât be reasoned with. It doesnât feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.â
That famous quote from The Terminator is actually a pretty compelling ad for hiring a robot, if youâre the kind of person whoâd hire a terminator.
It also reminds us of a startupâs controversial new ad campaign that suggests companies replace human workers with bots.
ArtisanâŚ
⌠is a San Francisco-based software startup that offers AI-powered business development representatives, which it calls âArtisans.â
Many other companies also sell AI chatbots designed to help sales employees with their workflows, but Artisan deployed a marketing campaign across San Francisco with posters of Ava, one of its chatbot avatars, and lines like:
âStop hiring humansâ
âArtisans wonât complain about work-life balanceâ
âArtisanâs Zoom cameras will never ânot be workingâ todayâ
Many have mocked the billboards, joking that we could also replace partners and children with bots, while others have expressed anger.
But is it working?
Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack admitted to SFGate that the ads are âsomewhat dystopian, but so is AIâ and claimed that they have increased brand awareness and sales leads.
That doesnât necessarily imply that more people are âhiringâ Ava or that Artisanâs bots have or even could fully replace humans, despite not needing to do things like eat or sleep.
What we do know is that people are increasingly worried about layoffs amid economic uncertainty and AIâs rise â and itâs not entirely unfounded:
In April, there were ~65k layoffs in the US, 800 of which were attributed to AI.
Experts have said weâll need social safety nets in place for people who lose their jobs due to AI, but we donât have them yet.
So this marketing campaign succeeded in that it sure has people talking, but weâll see if thatâs a good thing for Artisan.
Speaking of weird: How one strange store survived the shopping mall apocalypse.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Estimated gross revenue from Taylor Swiftâs Eras Tour â the highest-earning tour in history â which came to an end Sunday night in Vancouver, British Columbia.
No matter how you feel about Swiftâs music, these numbers from CNN are pretty wild: She played 152 shows in 51 cities. Of those, 62 were in the US across 23 cities.
The average US guest spent $1.3k on travel, housing, food, and merch, akin to what the average Super Bowl attendee spends.
Considering both direct and indirect spending, US fans may have spent $10B+.
Swiftâs six-show run in LA is estimated to have increased local employment by 3.3k and local earning by $160m, and created an economic boon of $320m for Los Angeles County.
AROUND THE WEB
đ¸ On this day: In 1978, robbers stole $5m+ ($21m+ today) in the infamous Lufthansa heist. One of the involved thieves was mobster Henry Hill, on whom the film Goodfellas is based.
đĽ How to:improve your microwaveâs performance.
Intelligent AI could lower our guards by faking slow progress and improvement.SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben "Letâs meet at the fancy Rivian charging station" Berkley.
