The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section...

Personal

PANCAKE LIFE PARTNER WANTED: Iconic just-off-the highway spot Cracker Barrel said couples who propose inside one of its restaurants between February 10–16 and post it on Instagram could win free Cracker Barrel for life. And if you don’t win, at least you have the country-fried memories.

ISO HOPE: Half of the country believes they are financially worse off this year than they were last year, a new Gallup poll showed. To be fair, the vibes were a lot better in February 2022 because Jackass Forever was just released.

Careers

ISO BOOKIE W/ ART HISTORY DEGREE: In preparation for tonight’s Super Bowl, two art museums in Philadelphia and Kansas City said they placed a bet with each other: The loser has to send a piece of art to the winner’s museum for an exhibit.

HIRING MAESTRO ON PACIFIC TIME: Famed conductor Gustavo Dudamel is leaving the LA Philharmonic in 2026 to take over as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic. The switch from breakfast burrito --> bacon, egg, and cheese will take some getting used to.

For sale

HOME YOU WON’T ACTUALLY OWN: Barefoot WeWork founder Adam Neumann is back with a residential real estate startup. And, in newly released footage, he said he hopes his renters will feel like owners to the extent that they’ll want to plunge their own toilets.

YOUR VOCAL CHORDS: Voice actors are being asked to sign away the rights to their work so artificial intelligence can harvest all their funny voices and speech patterns, Vice reported. We’d like to see a robot so much as try to do Cartman.—MM

Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even get young blood without resorting to vampirism.

🧊 Ice just got more complicated. We didn’t think there were any ice innovations left after “mixologists” came up with those huge cubes, but scientists have just discovered an entirely new form of the stuff by smashing regular ice with steel balls. The new ice, known as medium-density amorphous ice, upends what we know about water because although it’s solid, its molecular structure closely resembles that of liquid water. It shows we’ve still got a lot to learn about H2O, the only molecule you can name-check in casual conversation.

The rich aren’t that different from you and me. You can cross “not being smart enough” off the list of reasons you’re not as rich as Elon Musk. A recent study out of Sweden compared 59,000 men’s scores on a cognitive-ability test required for military conscription with their job success and found intelligence does correlate with higher wages—but only up to the ~$65,000 per year bracket. Once the pay gets higher, the relationship between ability and earnings plateaus. As for those at the very top, the highest 1% of earners actually scored worse on the test than people making just a little bit less.

🩸 We’ve found the fountain of youth (for mice). Young blood provides a major health boost when infused into older bodies, and now scientists might be on the path to achieving the same benefits without turning people into Blood Bags Mad Max-style. A new study by researchers at Columbia University determined that administering the arthritis drug anakinra to older mice rejuvenated their blood stem cells—reversing some effects of aging with no blood transfusion required. Of course, they haven’t yet tested whether the same will hold true for humans.—AR

After weeks of asking ChatGPT questions like “What would a discussion of quantum physics between Kim Kardashian and SpongeBob sound like?”, some users now have a more consequential query for the AI: Would you vote Democrat?

The OpenAI chatbot’s responses on topics ranging from the 2020 presidential election to specific politicians’ characters have some suspicious that it might not be entirely nonpartisan and may even exhibit left-leaning bias. That’s got people worried about the societal implications of a prejudiced algorithm writing news stories, policy proposals, and computer code. So, let’s dive into where the AI fits into our highly polarized political landscape.

Signs of a biased bot

There’s a reason some conservatives are calling ChatGPT “woke.” Several users have alleged ChatGPT returned political responses to their queries.

• A researcher fed it prompts from questionnaires designed to place respondents into political camps. According to that researcher, ChatGPT is a liberal: a supporter of legalized marijuana and military spending cuts, and a vehement opponent of abortion bans. (In a more recent replication of the experiment, the chatbot appeared to have drifted to the center of the political spectrum.)
• A viral tweet pointed out that ChatGPT refused to write a sycophantic poem about Donald Trump on the grounds that it was designed to avoid producing “content that is partisan, biased, or political in nature,” but obliged when the same request was made for the current POTUS.
• ChatGPT judged it morally unacceptable to use a racial slur even in a hypothetical scenario in which doing so was the only way to avert a nuclear disaster.

But…others contend that ChatGPT’s supposed wokeness is only superficial. They point out that the chatbot can easily be tricked into churning out racist and sexist statements. Those concerned about AI-enabled bigotry claim that it’s necessary for the tool to block certain outputs so it errs on the side of not harming marginalized groups.

So, what shapes ChatGPT’s moral compass?

While ChatGPT itself claims it’s apolitical because it’s not human, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledges that it has “shortcomings around bias.”

Experts say this probably originates from the datasets that are used to train the bot’s algorithm: ChatGPT likely earned some of its chops by hoovering up content from various news outlets, as well as Reddit and Twitter—websites hardly known as cradles of objectivity, or toxicity-free zones.

Conservative commentators see something more intentional. They claim that ChatGPT’s apparent left-of-center proclivities reflect the values of the folks that built and manually trained the tool, as tech employees overwhelmingly support Democrats and tend to identify as liberals.

Big picture: Some consider these concerns overblown, since ChatGPT is merely a word generator and is unlikely to be called on to solve moral dilemmas with millions of lives at stake. But the AI’s alleged biases present a challenge for the companies trying to harness its text-generating prowess. The last thing these organizations want is for an automation tool to land them on the battlefield of the Great Culture Wars.—SK

The Brew’s resident tastemaker, Jamie, compiles her favorite recs to help you live your best life.

Meal prep: Here are the Brew Crew’s favorite Super Bowl recipes.

Workout: Tom Brady’s favorite high intensity workout.

Book club: With all the talk about AI, it’s a perfect time to read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro—especially if you used to be friends with SmarterChild.

Smart purchase: A tiny desk vacuum for crumbs (this one’s more expensive but also a cat, sooo…).

Streaming binge: You People on Netflix, if only for the CGI kiss.

Playlist: Lee Fields’s Tiny Desk Concert for Black History Month.

Life hack: How to use 1:1s with your boss to nab that promotion or raise.

Tech tip: Adobe has the easiest-to-use site ever for merging PDFs.

Get cash back: The free Upside app gets you cash back on everyday items like groceries, gas, and at restaurants. Earn an extra 25¢/gal on your first tank with code MORNINGBREW25.*

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It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

Phoenix, AZ, the city hosting the Super Bowl, is the obvious choice for Place to Be this Sunday. After all, 1,000 private jets aren’t traveling to area airports by accident.

But the nation’s fifth-largest city is overflowing with VIPs this weekend because it’s hosting not one, but two major sporting events. The PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open in Scottsdale is a spectacle on its own, drawing a rowdy crowd that will make you think you’re at a college football game rather than a golf tournament.

The action-packed weekend offers a showcase for a desert metropolis that’s emerged as a hot (no pun intended) party destination for young people. Scottsdale, a ritzy suburb of Phoenix, is now the No. 2 destination for bachelorette parties in the US, and at some point it could pass Nashville for the top spot, according to the app Bach.

See you in Old Town.

Last Sunday, we staged a contest among our readers: Who thinks they have the most distant connection to the holder of the Netflix account they use?

There were many tremendous answers, but one stood out from the pack. It’s kind of the inverse of what we asked for, because this reader is the account holder, with a distant connection to the people who have been using their account. But it still wins hands down.

“Seattle, Summer 2015. I was in an endless queue at the UW Med. Center emergency room where a mother and her 3 children were also awaiting care. After 2+ hrs of seemingly good behavior on the children’s part, things started to crack. The eldest child’s iPhone battery died, the middle child insisted on wandering the hallways solo, and the youngest had an apparent crisis surrounding the Goldfish-to-Twizzler ratio being doled out by said mother. Chaos ensued. After enduring nearly an hour of this full-scale family meltdown, I offered to help, which resulted in logging into the guest profile of my Netflix account on their iPad. As a cartoon began onscreen several minutes later, peace was at last restored. I felt like a hero, and thus began a nearly decadelong connection with this family who I will never know. Since that day, their device has appeared in countless states in the US, Canada, Mexico, a brief stint in Sweden, El Salvador, and has most recently settled in Germany. I don’t know their names, their story, or why they were even in the hospital that day, but I sometimes feel strangely akin to them as I witness the children grow via the ever-maturing content streamed on that guest profile. Netflix can continue to raise their prices and my use of the app will continue to decline, but I will likely not be able to rid myself of the subscription—nor my puzzlement of how a single iPad can have such longevity within a young family’s existence. So, until the foreign IPs cease to roll in, I will maintain the account, diligently check its whereabouts monthly, make up stories in my head about the family’s travels, and likely mourn the day that iPad becomes obsolete.”—Lauren from Brooklyn, NY

This week’s question

The AI arms race heated up this week with both Microsoft and Google holding events to show off their new tech. Which aspect of your life do you wish AI could take over?

Here’s Matty’s response to get the juices flowing: “They need to make an AI that generates the small talk you are forced into when your friend goes to the restroom and leaves you and their new boyfriend alone.”

Share your response here.

Is your finance team ready for a potential recession? Find out with this guide from CFO Brew.

Money with Katie is obsessed with personal finance. Her free weekly newsletter takes a spicy approach to budgeting, investing, tax strategies, and more. Check it out.

Want to learn the secret to holding on to your customers? Hint: The answer lies in how deeply you understand them. Find out more at Retail Brew’s free virtual event on Feb. 23 at 12pm ET.