Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy Back a New A.I. Use Case: Simulating Human Behavior

Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy Back a New A.I. Use Case: Simulating Human Behavior

A.I. pioneer Fei-Fei Li is lending her support to Simile’s effort to simulate human behavior at scale. John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images Every three months, public companies brace for analyst questions during quarterly earnings calls. But what if firms could predict these queries in advance and rehearse their responses? That’s one of the capabilities touted…

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Francesco Bonami’s Case Against Trend-Chasing in the Museum Business

Francesco Bonami’s Case Against Trend-Chasing in the Museum Business

Under Francesco Bonami’s direction, By Art Matters has embraced a curatorial model that favors instinct, experimentation and intellectual risk. Photo: Qingshan Wu, courtesy of By Art Matters Late last year, I had the privilege of visiting Hangzhou, China, as the guest of By Art Matters, a remarkable museum that opened in 2021. The museum is…

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Mia Westerlund Roosen’s Ongoing Material Inquiry

Mia Westerlund Roosen’s Ongoing Material Inquiry

Mia Westerlund Roosen’s Heat (background) and Conical (foreground), both from 1981, on view at Nunu Fine Art. Photo: Martin Seck, courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art Multidisciplinary artist Mia Westerlund Roosen’s early career unfolded against the backdrop of Minimalism’s heyday, but her work diverged sharply from the austere, industrial ethos of contemporaries like Donald…

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From Soil to Still: The Master of Botanicals Rethinking Sustainability in Premium Spirits

From Soil to Still: The Master of Botanicals Rethinking Sustainability in Premium Spirits

From Murcia’s lemon groves to Vietnam’s cassia forests, Garneri details how sustainability begins long before distillation. Jon Enoch This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In the world of premium spirits, few…

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The A.I. Boom Is Stress-Testing America’s Power Grid

The A.I. Boom Is Stress-Testing America’s Power Grid

Explosive A.I. growth is compressing decades of grid planning into years, forcing utilities and investors to rethink infrastructure. Unsplash+ Artificial intelligence has quickly become the focal point of nearly every major technology debate today—the safety of each system’s model, algorithmic bias and its impact on the future of work. The challenge isn’t theoretical. Beneath those…

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Why Bill Ackman Is Making a $2B Bet on Mark Zuckerberg’s A.I. Vision

Why Bill Ackman Is Making a B Bet on Mark Zuckerberg’s A.I. Vision

Bill Ackman’s $2 billion Meta investment signals confidence in Zuckerberg’s long-term A.I. strategy. Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images Meta’s reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s biggest A.I. spenders, but with little to show for it so far, is spooking much of Wall Street. But hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman isn’t fazed. Ackman’s…

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Osaka’s Long-Overdue Luxury Hotel Moment Has Arrived

Osaka’s Long-Overdue Luxury Hotel Moment Has Arrived

Osaka is not Tokyo. It has never tried to be. Whereas the country’s capital exudes a buttoned-up beauty and a cosmopolitan charisma found in only a handful of global megacities, “tenka no daidokoro,” which translates to “Japan’s kitchen”—a nickname dating to the Edo period when the city was a major rice-trading hub—has a far more…

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What to Say When Someone Tells You to Smile More

What to Say When Someone Tells You to Smile More

Four words have echoed across every boardroom, dating app, and city street in the world: You should smile more. Anastasia Ryan has heard it her whole life, but perhaps never more than in a role where the people she was speaking to couldn’t see her at all. “The majority of what I did was over…

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Why You Should Handwrite Someone You Love a Card

Why You Should Handwrite Someone You Love a Card

Dashing off an email or text takes seconds. Handwriting a card takes a little courage—and five minutes with a pen. Putting in the extra time and effort matters more than you might think. “We all have a need to matter—to be considered and to be seen,” says Alison McKleroy, an art therapist in San Francisco.…

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