You're a sucker if you trust ChatGPT
Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider. Welcome back to Insider Today's Sunday Edition, a roundup of our top stories. Get this briefing directly in your inbox each Sunday — sign up here.
On the agenda today:
- The stock market has turned upside down.
- The "surveillance state" behind the scenes of the $1,700 Snoo bassinet.
- Gen Z has adapted to a new normal at work — by quitting.
- A make-or-break moment for the fast-growing psychedelics industry.
But first: Adam Rogers, a senior tech correspondent at Insider, breaks down why ChatGPT is for suckers.
Chatbots are liars
I, and 10,000 other reporters, have been telling you for weeks what artificial-intelligence researchers have known for years: Chatbots like the ones Google and Microsoft are building into their search engines are liars, Insider's Adam Rogers writes.
They make stuff up. They get stuff wrong. But people still believe them. Why? Well, social scientists don't really know why anyone believes anything, from kooky stuff they read on Twitter to closely held ideals. Add Google and Bing into the mix, and things get weirder.
We're trained to expect the truth from search engines, and chatbots present like authoritative humans. They have what sounds like facts, but they talk about themselves in the first person ("I believe … ").
What they say seems good enough, and according to some research, "Meh, seems fine," is all the distance most folks are willing to go for knowledge. We all tend to avoid hard questions, and the new chatbots are here with easy answers.
Why ChatGPT is a robot con artist.
Read more:
The Great Stock Market Reversal
The stock market has been flipped upside down so far in 2023. Risky assets that struggled last year are now staging a big comeback, even in the face of continued rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.
Some of the biggest losers in 2022, like bitcoin, electric-vehicle stocks, and unprofitable software companies, have soared in the first six weeks of 2023. And investor hype has made a big resurgence as artificial intelligence captures the imagination of consumers.
More on the topsy-turvy stock market.
Read more:
A bassinet and 'Big Brother' allegations
Nina Montée Karp and her husband and cofounder, Harvey Karp, launched the Snoo — a $1,700 high-tech bassinet — in 2016. They've since been hailed as visionaries.
One current and more than a dozen former employees of Happiest Baby, the company behind Snoo, told Insider that it's far stranger — and more poorly run — than all their glowing profiles would suggest. They described a celebrity-obsessed, gossip-fueled "surveillance state" where even the office cleaner was used to collect intel on employees.
Inside Happiest Baby's dysfunctional culture.
Read more:
Welcome to Generation Quit
Gen Z was perhaps hit hardest during the "Great Resignation." The youngest workers were the first on the chopping block in 2020 layoffs. And those who remained saw mentors leave and were forced to plug holes when other team members left.
Faced with those conditions, Gen Z has adapted to a new normal: When in doubt, find a new job.
How Gen Z suffers from a lack of support.
Read more:
- 6 ways to attract Gen Z job seekers — and what they value most in companies
- Big Tech's massive layoffs will come back to haunt it
A controversial psychedelics empire
Dr. Ekaterina Malievskaia and George Goldsmith are on the verge of transforming mental healthcare, using psychedelics. Their company, Compass Pathways, has launched a massive clinical trial — and if it's successful, Compass would be the first company to turn a psychedelic substance into an FDA-approved medicine.
But the company is a controversial figure in the industry. It has rankled some of the academics and advocates whose work helped kick off the psychedelics renaissance in the first place. Insider spoke to more than a dozen industry participants to chart its rise and its role in the psychedelics boom.
How it could make or break the industry.
Read more:
This week's quote:
"I was achieving something that I'd wanted more than anything for 15 years."
- Bryan O'Keeffe, who moved to a remote village, quit his job, and cut off contact with loved ones for seven months — and lost 137 pounds.
More of this week's top reads:
- In a new interview with Insider, ousted Tesla cofounder Martin Eberhard sounds off on Elon Musk and the EV wars.
- Amazon's pledge to become "Earth's best employer" hasn't taken off, employees say.
- Meet the 20 powerhouse bankers who orchestrated the biggest deals of 2022.
- An ex-Amazon manager says he quit after fighting unfair performance reviews.
- A couple who paid off their $234,000 mortgage in five years explains how they invest.
- Go inside Tracy Anderson's cutthroat fitness empire.
- Some doctors say a $0.20 "wonder drug" to slow aging and lose weight is promising.
- A man built a five-bedroom home with his parents — and says more people should do it.
Curated by Matt Turner. Edited by Dave Smith and Lisa Ryan. Sign up for more Insider newsletters here.