🕶️ Burnout crisis: 80% of American workers on the brink

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Six bullets of updates

1. 🔒 UK proposes new law to classify bitcoin and NFTs as personal property, offering greater legal protections.

2. 🔊 Spotify pilots parent-managed accounts for kids under 13 on family plans, enhancing control and safety.

3. 🤖 Offdeal uses AI agents to help small businesses find big exits, aiming for more successful acquisitions.

4. 🚨 Burnout crisis alert: 80% of employees at risk in 2024. prioritizing appreciation could boost productivity and retention.

5. 🚀 Y combinator expanding to four cohorts a year starting in 2025, up from the current two.

6. 🧑🏾‍🚀 Two private astronauts completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk, marking a milestone for SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission aimed at Mars.

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OpenAI’s new o1 model raises the bar (and the costs) for AI reasoning

OpenAI has introduced its latest AI model family, code-named "Strawberry" and officially known as o1, which includes two models: o1-preview and o1-mini. These models are aimed at improving complex reasoning tasks through reinforcement learning, enabling them to fact-check themselves by taking extra time to "think" before responding. This self-checking ability makes o1 particularly suited for tasks like legal analysis and coding, as well as problem-solving in fields such as data analysis and science. While o1 is designed to surpass previous models like GPT-4o in reasoning and multilingual skills, it is currently available to ChatGPT Plus and API users at a higher cost. Access to free users has not yet been announced.

Despite these advancements, OpenAI’s o1 model has some limitations. It can be slower to respond, taking up to 10 seconds for certain queries, and is more expensive than its predecessors, costing three to four times more per token. There have also been reports of occasional hallucinations and errors, with testers noting that the model sometimes confidently provides incorrect information. The competition from rivals like Google DeepMind is fierce, as other AI developers explore similar strategies to enhance model accuracy and reasoning.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. Village Capital | Greentech Europe | Deadline: September 16 | Washington, D.C. 

2. Financial modeling bootcamp for startup founders | September 16-20 | Bootcamp, Live

3. From Pitch Deck to Funding | September 18 | Webinar

4. Dreamforce San Francisco | September 17-19 | San Francisco

5. Founder Institute Core Program  | Deadline: September 22 | USA

6. Antler Canada | Deadline: September 23 | Canada
   

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These companies just raised money

1. 💸 Novatus scores $40M to help financial institutions tackle regtech woes, easing compliance nightmares.

2. 🇨🇴 Colombian fintech Cobre raises $35M in Series B to enhance products, achieve financial breakeven, and process 12 trillion pesos.

3. 👓 XP Health secures $32M to make vision care more affordable for employees, aiming to transform employee benefits.

4. ♻️ This startup turns biogas plant waste into manure and just secured $62M in funding.

5. 📅 Howbout raises $8M from Goodwater to create a social calendar app for friends to share and coordinate plans.

6. 🏡 Brazilian AI startup Plaza raises $1M pre-seed to enhance real estate solutions, achieving a 70% conversion rate.

7. 🩺 Brazilian healthtech PsycoAI raises $440K pre-seed to launch AI virtual assistants for healthcare, led by Dr. Consulta.

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AI takes the wheel: how the White House plans to drive U.S. leadership

The White House recently held a roundtable as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s strategy for responsible AI innovation, bringing together leaders from AI companies, datacenter operators, and utility firms to ensure the U.S. maintains its global leadership in AI infrastructure. The discussions centered on developing clean energy, permitting, and workforce strategies to support the growing need for AI datacenters, while ensuring these efforts align with national security and environmental goals.

As a follow-up to the roundtable, the Administration announced several initiatives, including the launch of a Task Force on AI Datacenter Infrastructure to coordinate policy across government agencies. Additionally, the Department of Energy will provide resources like loans, grants, and technical assistance to AI datacenter developers and explore repurposing closed coal sites for datacenter use. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will expedite construction permits for AI datacenters, while industry leaders committed to net-zero carbon emissions and further collaboration with policymakers. Read more!

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Bitcoin's FATAL trust flaw