Lökigt men småtrevligt när "Bad boys"-gubbarna rymmer ut i Floridas träskmarker

”Bad boys: Ride or die” eller som filmen borde kallas: ”Will Smiths stora comeback”. Efter örfilen mot Chris Rock på Oscarsgalan 2022 så har karriären för ”the fresh prince” varit något av ett frågetecken. De två senaste filmerna med stjärnan (inspelade före skandalen) har blivit ekonomiska floppar. Sjutton miljoner Oscarsgalatittare glömmer kanske inte så lätt.

En ny ormart har upptäckts i Amazonas – och det ryktas vara den största i världen. Det skriver CNN. – Dessa magnifika varelsers storlek var otrolig, säger forskaren Bryan Fry enligt tv-kanalen. Upptäckten ska sändas i en tv-serie med Will Smith.

Det krävs en juristexamen eller stor uppmärksamhet, ännu hellre båda delar, för att hålla reda på de många rättsfallen mot Donald Trump. Totalt står han åtalad för 91 brott i två delstatsdomstolar och två olika federala distrikt, som alla kan leda till fängelsestraff. Han har också ett civilrättsligt mål i New York som kan tvinga fram drastiska förändringar i hans affärsimperium. The Atlantic har sammanfattat de viktigaste rättsfallen mot Trump, inklusive viktiga datum, en bedömning av hur allvarliga anklagelserna är och sannolikheten för att Trump döms. Fraud. Hush money. Election subversion. Mar-a-Lago documents. One place to keep track of the presidential candidate’s legal troubles. By David A. Graham 30 October, 2023 Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both. In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a civil suit in New York that could force drastic changes to his business empire, including closing down its operations in his home state. Meanwhile, he is the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president. If the court cases unfold with any reasonable timeliness, he could be in the heat of the campaign trail at the same time that his legal fate is being decided. Here’s a summary of the major legal cases against Trump, including key dates, an assessment of the gravity of the charges, and expectations about how they could turn out. This guide will be updated regularly as the cases proceed. In the fall of 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil suit against Trump, his adult sons, and his former aide Allen Weisselberg, alleging a years-long scheme in which Trump fraudulently reported the value of properties in order to either lower his tax bill or improve the terms of his loans, all with an eye toward inflating his net worth. When? A judge ruled against Trump and his co-defendants in late September, concluding that many of the defendants’ claims were “clearly” fraudulent—so clearly that he didn’t need a trial to hear them. (He also sanctioned Trump’s lawyers for making repeated frivolous arguments.) A trial to determine the amount of damages Trump must pay is ongoing in Manhattan, and could stretch for weeks or even months. Justice Arthur Engoron, the presiding judge, has already fined Trump a combined $15,000 for violating a gag order in the case. How grave is the allegation? Fraud is fraud, and in this case, the sum of the fraud stretched into the millions—but compared with some of the other legal matters in which Trump is embroiled, this is pretty pedestrian. The case is civil rather than criminal, and though it could end with Trump’s famed company barred from business in New York, the loss of several key properties, and millions of dollars in fines, the stakes are lower, both for Trump and for the nation, than in the other cases against him. How plausible is a guilty verdict? Engoron has already ruled that Trump committed fraud. The outstanding questions are what damages he might have to pay and what exactly Engoron’s ruling means for Trump’s business and properties in New York. Although these other cases are all brought by government entities, Trump is also involved in an ongoing defamation case with the writer E. Jean Carroll, who said that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s. When he denied it, she sued him for defamation and later added a battery claim. When? In May 2023, a jury concluded that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, and awarded her $5 million. A second defamation claim remains under consideration. How grave is the allegation? Although this case doesn’t directly connect to the same fundamental issues of rule of law and democratic governance that some of the criminal cases do, it is a serious matter, and a judge’s blunt statement that Trump raped Carroll has been underappreciated. How plausible is a guilty verdict? Trump has already been found liable for defamation and sexual assault, and a further finding of defamation is possible and perhaps likely. In March 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg became the first prosecutor to bring felony charges against Trump, alleging that the former president falsified business records as part of a scheme to pay hush money to women who said they had had sexual relationships with Trump. When? The case is set to go to trial on March 25, 2024. In September, the judge overseeing the case signaled that he is open to changing that date, given the various other court cases that Trump is juggling, but he also said he didn’t think it was worth discussing until February. How grave is the allegation? Falsifying records is a crime, and crime is bad. But many people have analogized this case to Al Capone’s conviction on tax evasion: It’s not that he didn’t deserve it, but it wasn’t really why he was an infamous villain. That this case alleges behavior that didn’t undermine democracy or put national secrets at risk makes it feel more minor—though those other cases have set a grossly high standard for what constitutes gravity. How plausible is a guilty verdict? Bragg’s case faces hurdles including the statute of limitations, a questionable key witness in the former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, and some untested legal theories. In short, the Manhattan case seems like perhaps both the least significant and the legally weakest criminal case. Some Trump critics were dismayed that Bragg was the first to bring criminal charges against the former president. Jack Smith, a special counsel in the U.S. Justice Department, has charged Trump with 37 felonies in connection with his removal of documents from the White House when he left office. The charges include willful retention of national-security information, obstruction of justice, withholding of documents, and false statements. Trump took boxes of documents to properties where they were stored haphazardly, but the indictment centers on his refusal to give them back to the government despite repeated requests. When? Smith filed charges in June 2023. Judge Aileen Cannon has set a trial date of May 20, 2024. Smith faces a de facto deadline of January 20, 2025, at which point Trump or any Republican president would likely shut down a case. How grave is the allegation? These are, I have written, the stupidest crimes imaginable, but they are nevertheless quite serious. Protecting the nation’s secrets is one of the greatest responsibilities of any public official with classified clearance, and not only did Trump put these documents at risk, but he also (allegedly) refused to comply with a subpoena, tried to hide them, and lied to the government through his attorneys. How plausible is a guilty verdict? This may be the most open-and-shut case, and the facts and legal theory here are pretty straightforward. But Smith is believed to have drawn a short straw when he was randomly assigned Cannon, a Trump appointee who has sometimes ruled favorably for Trump on procedural matters. In Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, District Attorney Fani Willis brought a huge racketeering case against Trump and 18 others, alleging a conspiracy that spread across weeks and states with the aim of stealing the 2020 election. When? Willis obtained the indictment in August. The number of defendants makes the case unwieldy and difficult to track. In late September, one defendant who breached election equipment struck a plea deal. Three more, Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, pleaded guilty in late October. No date has been set for the other defendants’ trial, but it likely won’t come until 2024. How grave is the allegation? More than any other case, this one attempts to reckon with the full breadth of the assault on democracy following the 2020 election. How plausible is a guilty verdict? Expert views differ. This is a huge case for a local prosecutor, even in a county as large as Fulton, to bring. The racketeering law allows Willis to sweep in a great deal of material, and she has some strong evidence—such as a call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” some 11,000 votes. Three major plea deals from co-defendants may also ease Willis’s path. But getting a jury to convict Trump will still be a challenge. Special Counsel Smith has also charged Trump with four federal felonies in connection with his attempt to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. This case is in court in Washington, D.C. When? A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1. A trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024. As with the other DOJ case, Smith will need to move quickly, before Trump or any other Republican president could shut down a case upon taking office in January 2025. But even before the trial begins, heated legal skirmishes are under way: In October, following verbal attacks by Trump on witnesses and Smith’s wife, Judge Tanya Chutkan issued an order limiting what Trump can say about the case. How grave is the allegation? This case rivals the Fulton County one in importance. It is narrower, focusing just on Trump and a few key elements of the paperwork coup, but the symbolic weight of the U.S. Justice Department prosecuting the attempt to subvert the American election system is heavy. How plausible is a guilty verdict? It’s very hard to say. Smith avoided some of the more unconventional potential charges, including aiding insurrection, and everyone watched much of the alleged crime unfold in public in real time, but no precedent exists for a case like this, with a defendant like this. © 2023 The Atlantic Media Co., as first published in The Atlantic. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

▸ UPPGIFTER: ”Förödmjukad och förrådd”

62 års väntan är över. Texas Rangers vann i natt World series i baseboll för första gången någonsin. Rangers-spelaren Will Smith blev historisk efter att ha lyckats med något som ingen tidigare mäktat med i de fyra stora amerikanska proffsligorna.

Det var Will Smiths örfil mot Chris Rock som fick frun Jada Pinkett Smith att fatta ett avgörande beslut om deras äktenskap, skriver Daily Mail. – Det var ögonblicket då jag bestämde mig för att stanna kvar vid hans sida, säger Jada Smith Pinkett.

Open AI:s vd Sam Altman räds inte konsekvenserna på arbetsmarknaden som AI-revolutionen leder till. Det sa han på Wall Street Journals årliga konferens Tech Live i veckan: – Varje teknologisk revolution får följder för arbetsmarknaden. Jag är inte det minsta rädd för det. Under mötet samlades världens techledare – från bland annat Meta och Arm – för att diskutera de snabba förändringar som AI medför för näringslivet och politiken. Tidningen listar här några höjdpunkter från samtalen. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Chris Cox and others spoke at WSJ’s annual event. By WSJ Staff

The Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2023 Tech leaders convened on The Wall Street Journal’s annual Tech Live conference this week, where discussions focused on the fast-paced changes wrought by artificial intelligence across business, technology and policy-making. Here are some highlights from interviews. AI has been a central topic this year, as its impact on business and society is hotly debated. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said the two things that will matter the most over the next few decades are abundant and inexpensive intelligence, and abundant and cheap energy. OpenAI is working to make ChatGPT cheaper and faster, so that it can be more broadly accessible. “If we can get these two things done in the world then it’s almost, like, difficult to imagine how much else we could do,” he said. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Inflection AI, said the race to build AI chatbots is reminiscent of the rush to build websites at the dawn of the internet or apps after the advent of smartphones. “This is really just the beginning of a complete transformation in the way we interact with computers,” said Suleyman, whose company makes a ChatGPT rival called Pi, short for personal intelligence. Meta is also optimistic about the impact of AI. “One of the most profoundly impactful applications in the near term for AI is helping businesses be more effective,” said Meta Platforms Chief Product Officer Chis Cox. Meta last month unveiled its own AI chatbots based on celebrities such as Naomi Osaka and Snoop Dogg. Cox said Meta is making it clear these characters aren’t the real people. “Having products that experiment with what is possible is great, but having anything that doesn’t make clear to people what is going on is a problem,” he said. Consumers are going to gravitate to TikTok, ChatGPT and other applications powered by generative artificial intelligence, instead of using traditional search engines, said Michael Wolf, co-founder and CEO of consulting firm Activate. He predicts that domination within the $100 billion search industry is “up for grabs,” adding that the rise of open-source AI models is paving a pathway for smaller entrants to meaningfully compete with large, established companies. Professionals from physicians to writers have been fearing that AI will entirely replace some jobs. “Every technological revolution affects the job market. I’m not afraid of that at all,” said OpenAI’s Altman. “That’s the way of progress. And we’ll find new and better jobs.” Still, it’s not going to be a seamless process. “The thing that I think we do need to confront as a society is the speed at which this is going to happen,” he added. Adam Wenchel, chief executive of AI company Arthur, took a more sanguine view of the job impact from AI than some other panelists at Tech Live. “These systems are going to roll out over time, very gradually, people are going to adapt to them and it’s going to be OK,” he said. Indeed, companies are still determining how to implement new AI technology. “Even at the highest levels, we’re still trying to figure out what does all of this mean to our business model,” said Vince Marin, chief information officer of law firm Sidley Austin. Charles Sims, chief technology officer at United Talent Agency, said AI makes it more important for people to have generalized skill sets that enable them to adapt as technology replaces specific specialties. “If you’re talking to a college student today, it’s about generalization, it’s about trying to learn as many things as you can,” he said. Elise Smith, CEO of Praxis Labs, said it is critical to involve the next generation of workers in discussions about how to use technology: “They want to be brought in and brought along on the journey,” she said. “They want to be doing the innovation day, the hackathon, where they’re getting to give ideas around how AI can transform their business.” Adobe’s president of digital media business, David Wadhwani, said that despite fears, he sees artificial intelligence as a tool that will boost employment rather than put people out of jobs. Tools like Adobe’s Firefly, which can generate images and logos, allow more people to become creative professionals, he said. “We will have creative professionals being more productive than ever before and more creative professionals in the world,” he said. Arm CEO Rene Haas said the chip company is using artificial intelligence to help in some of the areas where they struggle to hire enough talent, such as with debugging and testing chips. But he said the semiconductor industry faces some challenges in its role powering artificial intelligence. He described a future when energy shortages could constrain AI advancement, and a shortage of talent could limit production of semiconductors. “The kind of people we are looking to hire are hard to find. We are looking for really expert engineers,” Haas said. Investors are weighing whether it’s too late to get into AI. “Most investments in AI today—venture investments—will lose money,” said venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Khosla, who founded Khosla Ventures almost two decades ago, said AI investing had entered a hype cycle, and only highly disciplined investors will reap the benefits of the transformative technology. The buzzy new technology has generated significant concerns, though. “We’ve got a fierce task ahead of us to figure out what are these downsides and discover, understand them, and build the tools to mitigate them,” said OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati. For instance, sometimes chatbots confidently espouse information that doesn’t seem to be justified by its training data. “We’ve made a ton of progress on the hallucination issue with GPT-4, but we’re not where we need to be. We’re sort of on the right track.” Murati said. OpenAI is continuing to use techniques including reinforcement learning with human feedback to reduce the number of times that its model makes up information. It is also working on technology that can help detect the provenance of an image, Murati said. Suleyman, CEO of the company behind Pi, said another problem is that Pi and other AI chatbots aren’t designed to doubt themselves, which makes it hard to know when they’re wrong. He suggested that a possible safeguard for users would be to have responses ranked by their accuracy. “This skill of uncertainty estimation is a critical part of intelligence and actually key to making them reliable,” he said. Suleyman said he and his peers are also discussing the potential risk of AI interfering with next year’s U.S. presidential elections, and he hopes to build parameters that will prevent Pi from recommending political candidates. One of the leading risks to the development of the nation’s AI sector is the imbalance between public and private sector investment in what will soon be a technology as ubiquitous as electricity, said Fei-Fei Li, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a former vice president at Google. U.S. government investment and incentives should at least match the U.S.’s investment in space exploration decades ago with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “This technology is as big or even bigger than the space technology,” Li said. “We cannot just leave it to the private sector.” Li said the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies should urgently take a role in regulating AI. “It is very hard to imagine one ring that rules them all,” Li said. Roblox CEO David Baszucki said the gaming company is treading carefully when it comes to training artificial intelligence models, and isn’t harvesting anyone’s code without permission. “That’s a big societal discussion right now,” he said. The energy costs associated with powering artificial-intelligence programs have also been a concern for climate advocates. But former Meta Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer, whose new firm Gigascale Capital invests in climate-focused companies, said AI will save energy in other ways. “It will be a large consumption of power, but you also have to think of the replacement costs,” he said, referring to efficiencies that AI is expected to provide. Cryptocurrency is another area in tech rife with pitfalls. Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, said he should have been more wary of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who is on trial in New York facing fraud and conspiracy charges. “I took the aura of all of that too seriously, and I probably should’ve been more of a skeptic,” Scaramucci said. “He committed a crime and I believe he has to go to jail for a very long time.” Executives and advocates also highlighted the risks of social media, especially for young people. Larissa May, founder and executive director, of nonprofit #HalfTheStory, said kids are spending an average of eight hours a day on their devices. “We better be looking at the place where they’re spending more time than anywhere else in their life, including sleep,” May said. Social-media companies should think about more than how much time young people are spending on social media app—they should find ways to measure whether apps are supporting or hurting them. “It’s so much bigger than just a dollar sign,” May said. Comedian and creator Elsa Majimbo said social media can be too negative. She called X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, “a soft dark web” that should have a minimum age requirement of 18. Award-winning musician John Legend, who is launching his first-ever tech startup, agreed that AI has its limits. He said computer-generated music won’t replace songwriters, in part because audiences like the artists’ stories behind their music. “There’s just something that’s still so human about music, songwriting and that interaction we have with our audience,” he said. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he is aware of AI use in Hollywood and has heard a fake version of his voice. Whether or not his likeness will be used by AI in the future is a point his children will have to negotiate, the 76-year-old actor said. “I will not be around, even though I want to live forever,” he said. Even venture capitalist Khosla has tried his hand at it. When his daughter got married earlier this year, he asked ChatGPT to turn a speech he wrote into rap lyrics and then turned those lyrics into a song through an AI startup called Splash. He blared the song over speakers. “It extended my capabilities,” he said. “It meant a lot to me.” In addition to the uncertainties of AI, technology leaders are also now dealing with critical questions regarding the impact of geopolitics on the sector. Venture capitalist Khosla said that winning the race to develop advanced AI would give the U.S. an economic and political advantage over China. “I think the world’s political system—what influences Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America—is at stake,” he said. “Western values are at stake in this technology battle, so we should do whatever we can to win this battle and beat China at it.” Khosla also warned against making the code behind advanced AI models available to the public, which some technologists have championed as a way to bolster the technology’s development. “You don’t open-source the Manhattan Project,” he said, referencing America’s clandestine efforts to build an atomic bomb during World War II. The war between Hamas and Israel, which has been a tech hub for years, was also a focal point of TechLive this year. Palmer Luckey, founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries, said U.S. corporate chiefs should be more vocal in their support for Israel. “It reflects very poorly on our billionaire class that you aren’t seeing a whole-of-country effort to become involved and to speak up about these issues. That you are seeing hedging on the condemnation of Hamas for fear of saying the wrong thing either in the court of public opinion or because it hurts their business interests,” Luckey said. Charlie Shrem, general partner of Druid Ventures, was asked about the use of cryptocurrency by Hamas to fund its attacks in Israel. He said it is “a really sad thing to see something that we were all involved in creating early on become used in these negative ways.” When it came to domestic politics, Schwarzenegger said aging leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties should step aside and make room for a new generation. The former California governor alluded to recent instances of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell freezing and falling silent, and said people in that position should “start thinking about stepping aside and letting a newer generation step in and fill the vacuum.” Sarah E. Needleman, Annie Gasparro, Berber Jin, Mengqi Sun, Georgia Wells, Sarah Krouse, Heather Somerville, Tom Dotan and Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.

Skådespelarens relation med Will Smith efter skandalen

Glöm betjänter. För att se till att maximera sin hälsa och prestation knyter dagens miljardärer och techentreprenörer till sig en mindre armé av specialister. Det kan vara alltifrån personliga kemister, dietister och tränare till psykologer, schamaner och doktorer, skriver The Washington Post. Att mikrodosera olika droger eller läkemedel uppges också vara populärt bland eliten. Vissa går så långt som att använda sig av matchmaking-specialister för att hitta partners med högt IQ i förhoppning om kunna att skapa ”superbarn” som ska rädda planeten. – Det här är erfarna businesspersoner, och de styr sina privata liv på samma sätt de skulle styra ett företag eller en verksamhet, säger författaren och entreprenören Richard Kirshenbaum till tidningen. (Svensk översättning av Omni). The wealthy are employing an army of niche specialists — from shamans to hospitality directors — to optimize their lives in the name of self-improvement By Christopher Cameron October 12, 2023 Jag Gill is a New York-based banker turned tech CEO. She has an MBA from MIT. She's a serial start-up founder. In 2021, she launched an artificial intelligence-powered tech company, Vertru Technologies, focused on climate and human rights impacts in supply chains. Her demanding job means that she travels about every month of the year between New York City and places such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Stockholm and India. She sits in on roughly 25 meetings per week. And she has a monk in her life. "There are areas I want to work on," says Gill, who would prefer not to name the monk she met while at Tibet House US in New York, a cultural center established at the behest of the Dalai Lama. "There's professional growth, being a better CEO and a better founder. So he helps me by organizing meditations, where we just sit in noble silence, or we may talk about things." To deal with stress and practice mindfulness, she joined a breathwork community with Angell Deer, a shamanic healer, mystic, medicine man, teacher, permaculturist, beekeeper and international speaker, according to his website. In July, she traveled to Esalen, the storied Big Sur retreat known for its connections to the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s. "I'm there exploring breathwork and these new modalities, but it's all very steeped in Silicon Valley tech culture. There's a guy from Google there," she says. Ben Tauber, a former Google product manager, was CEO at Esalen until 2019. The popularity of metaphysical practices in an industry otherwise founded upon the strict mathematics of algorithms has become a well-known facet of life among the tech elite. Founders are under immense pressure to alchemize start-up ideas into palpable profits for investors. Who better to guide you on that journey than a shaman? But while Gill engages with a well of inspirational figures, she also seeks out experts with a more science-based perspective. To conquer stressful deals, she works with "CEO whisperer" Sharon Melnick, PhD, a business psychologist and executive coach focused on women's success with a decade of research at Harvard Medical School under her belt. "When I have big negotiations, or when I need tactics and strategies, she's on the other end of the phone," Gill says. "We've been doing a program together with some other women on power and pleasure. We are learning how to use dance, movement, flirting and self-talk to just be more alive in the world." Gill and her peers are pursuing the optimization of everyday life, supported by entourages of experts - often managed by a single power assistant - who help the hyper-successful live longer, do more and pursue a fleeting and intangible perfection in every aspect of their existence. Personal chemists now help CEOs hack their psyches with psilocybin chocolates, ayahuasca retreats, microdoses of LSD and IV drips of ketamine. (Elon Musk is one alleged user.) Teams of private doctors, dietitians, scientists, wellness practitioners and trainers help aging executives search for the Fountain of Youth - with occasionally gruesome techniques (such as tech mogul Bryan Johnson's "blood boy"). Shamans guide board room bosses through difficult decisions. Mixed martial artist Khai "The Shadow" Wu trains Mark Zuckerberg. "Pro-natalists" tap matchmakers to secure high-IQ partners to produce elite super children for a world they agree is doomed to societal and environmental collapse. At the $100 million homes of these masters of the universe, vast teams of niche connoisseurs make sure that the right furnishings are in the lounge, the right cars are in the garage, the right toys are on the yacht, the right wines are in the cellar and the right works of art are on the walls - even if the owners of those Veblen goods aren't always sure what it is exactly that they are buying. "Amenity floors" - sprawling underground playpens that have become de rigueur in mansions - create a need for additional specialists. Even a starter estate now comes with a home gym, a movie theater, a wine-tasting room, a cigar room, a treatment room, a styling room, a swimming pool, a game room and, of course, a panic room. Each of those rooms represents an outside expert to hire, whether it's the projectionist or the home security adviser who makes sure that you'll be able to sit out a home invasion in comfort. Real estate agents are traditionally one of the most omnipresent and trusted hired guns to the world's rich. After going through decades of deals, they become like family, discussing markets over dinner at Per Se and showing up at birthday parties. Now, even the family broker is faced with competition from a more optimized expert. "If one of my clients is interested in purchasing a property, I will assist by narrowing down which properties are better suited for them energetically," says Wendi Eckstein, a Los Angeles area-based Reiki master practitioner who harmonizes the energy of individuals and the real estate holdings of wealthy families. "Or if a client feels that there is an uneasiness to the home, I will go in and balance the house." The economy of experts swirling around the super rich has to varying degrees existed for decades, perhaps centuries, but the motivations for hiring them and the roles they play have changed. As the straightforward materialism of the flash 1980s gave way to the holistic self-help perfectionism of the new millennium, tennis coaches and feng shui gurus began to look old hat. Faced with ever-less-ignorable wealth inequality and the hyper-visibility brought on by social media, a moral justification for conspicuous consumption was necessary. A holiday to a $20,000-a-night villa in Polynesia - with the nannies and PA in tow - could look out of touch. But add a marine biologist, an Indigenous healer and an environmentalist to talk to you about coral bleaching, and you are a step closer to being a better you. Their expertise gave your experience purpose. Today, that pursuit of ethical, moral and professional optimization is being pushed toward its logical conclusion afresh by the rise of artificial intelligence, the creation of Scrooge McDuck swimming pools of lucre and a boiling over of existential angst. "During the pandemic, a lot of people had a brush with their own mortality," says Melnick, whose 2022 book, "In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control, Raise Others," attempts to explain why CEOs, politicians and tech moguls often feel "out of their power," unheard, reactive and held hostage to others, despite their material advantages. "It motivated many to want to optimize their lives. 'Do I really want to live like this?' 'Is that all there is?' A lot of factors not within our control prompt us to want to maximize what we can control - which is ourselves. Because of this, many embarked on a journey to 'optimize' what they eat, heal their mental health and get fit. We saw a lot of emphasis on this on social media." Although the pandemic caused most of us to confront our own powerlessness, the already rich were better rewarded for their introspection. Between 2020 and 2022, a fresh billionaire was minted every 30 hours. Billionaires as a whole saw their wealth blossom in the first 24 months of the pandemic more than it had in the period from 1987 to 2010, according to an Oxfam report analyzing Forbes estimates. Post-pandemic, those steeped in the capitalistic efficiency of, say, Silicon Valley or Wall Street, and self-improvement culture of curanderismo healers in Mexico and cryotherapy in the Swiss Alps now had the impetus and resources to apply the logics of those ideologies broadly. "These are seasoned business people, and they run their personal lives the way that they would a corporation or business," says Richard Kirshenbaum, the CEO and founder of NSG/SWAT (a boutique branding agency), an author and a frequent commentator on living life among the wealthy. As a consequence, their homes are frequently operated like five-star resorts, according to Aimée Moreault, a Los Angeles-based personal assistant to ultrahigh-net-worth (UHNW) families, which are defined by the accumulation of at least $30 million, according to Knight Frank, a London-based real estate company. If you were lucky enough to be invited to the Malibu home of a person worth several hundred million, she says, you might be greeted by a personal hospitality director. Like at a luxury resort, the director is there to help plan guests' daily activities, advise them on which trails to hike and set up the surfboards. "They make sure there is consistency throughout their homes," she says. "It's about creating a lifestyle experience. It's more of a younger, tech industry thing." The littoral locations often inhabited by the super rich are hubs for sport fishing, kite boarding, surfing and wakeboarding - sports that have boomed in popularity with a class that prefers its excitement to be imbued with an aura of health and fitness. It has led to demand for full-time water-sports specialists, who manage board sports and an array of watercraft, or who take the family tubing, fishing and jet skiing, according to Forrest Barnett, the president of Hire Society, a staffing agency with locations in New York, the Hamptons, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. He adds that exotic pets, exotic cars and exotic trips often get their own single-hat micromanager. And just as a Fortune 500 company might tap a consulting firm, those with unlimited means seek out experts who can sharpen a dull facet. "I placed a full-time, permanent gaming expert," says a person working for an UHNW family who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement. "My client wanted someone who was the best at all of the best games." Astaple of life among the 1 percent - and pop culture moments from "The Devil Wears Prada" to Naomi Campbell's infamous phone-throwing tantrum (not to mention the recent arraignment of Donald Trump's body man Waltine "Walt" Nauta) - the power PA is also evolving. With dozens to hundreds of specialists working for a single family, the title of personal assistant is giving way to chief of staff, an appellation borrowed from politics. Combining business with pleasure, the CoS not only manages home life - the fitness instructor, dietitian, the watch adviser and Savannah cat tamer - but they also attend their "principal's" business meetings, taking minutes, advising and facilitating high-level requests. Yet unlike executive assistants of yore, the chief of staff is less burdened with planner keeping. AI assistants can now handle the more transactional tasks of scheduling. The more general aspects of travel have become a breeze for those who are not price sensitive thanks to online booking. Exclusive WhatsApp groups help execs like Gill quickly crowdsource needs and arrange last-minute meetings. But rather than put the assistant out of work, advances in technology have created more time to focus on the intimate aspects of the job, according to Bethany Burns, first mate to the captain (a title she created in lieu of chief of staff). Her captain is James Watt, the embattled chief executive of Scottish beer giant BrewDog and the subject of a 2022 BBC documentary alleging inappropriate behavior, claims that Watt has denied. "The assistant role has become more specialized and more personal," she says. "You're a force multiplier. You are a key decision-maker. You are a partner in strategy. You are an influence, a project executor, an integrator. You are making sure that everything flows like qi." In a Wodehousian twist, the power assistant has also been saddled with an even more personal role worthy of the wardrobe-conscious Jeeves: tastemaker. "It's changed," says Nahla Bee, a Los Angeles-based personal assistant to UHNW families. "It used to be that people who had a high net worth had a certain provenance and came from a certain type of family. And generally, they understood luxury from birth. Now, many people are becoming wealthy midlife, or early in life, for the first time." Moreault adds that, when young people become hundred-millionaires or billionaires "overnight," they face a steep learning curve. "The East Coast has much more of that traditional, old-school money that gets handed down. They are a little bit more used to having help around," she says. "On the West Coast, they're not always used to having people around. They're not used to how much staff it takes to run the estates that they're buying. So there is a lot of up educating people as to what it takes to live this lifestyle that they've seen on TV. You have to educate them and train them about what it means to collect art and what it means to collect cars." The nation's 100 largest private landowners - billionaires such as telecom baron John Malone - own a slice of the United States roughly the size of New England, and that's not even counting their properties overseas. Anyone who devoured "Downton Abbey" has a rough idea of what it takes to manage just one of those estates. Housekeepers, butlers, chefs, nannies, chauffeurs and gardeners, even those traditional staffing roles, are being optimized beyond the recognition of a stalwart Carson. "Today it's not just being able to find a nanny, but a ski nanny or a nanny that specializes in Montessori, Waldorf or Reggio Emilia philosophies," says Samantha Lloyd-Gordon, founder and CEO of the SLG Group, a staffing agency serving UHNW individuals. "It's not just holding a child and burping them. It's about how you're engaging with a child in a way that makes them a better person. It's not that this stuff wasn't always there, but there's more of it because of social media and because we are all talking about this stuff more than we did in the past." Lloyd-Gordon adds that other now-common domestic jobs with hyper-specifications include drivers with a police background, firearm training and a concealed-carry permit; a housekeeper who is also an illustrious laundress; a chef capable of cooking for a family of four with four different dietary requirements; and, perhaps, an architecture tutor who can travel with a precocious child. Even the butler is getting a remix, trading in his morning coat, white gloves and "G'evening, Sirs" for an iPhone and a business-casual nonchalance. "When I first started my agency, a lot of my clients were sort of old-school with formal service and formal butlers," says Philippa Smith, the founder and managing director of Silver Swan Recruitment. Founded in 2013, her company staffs the ski chalets, mansions, yachts and private jets of the global 1 percent, placing butlers on $170,000 to $200,000 per year salaries with benefits. Housekeepers make about $120,000, while chefs can make as much as $400,000, she says. "Now, there is a younger generation of UHNW [individuals], and they don't want a 60-year-old butler. They want a butler who can pack a suitcase but who can also handle personal assistant duties. They want a cool, good-looking 30-year-old butler." But the pursuit of excellence also has its more suburban side. "People just want the best," Smith says. "Some of that is for show. Some of it is about keeping up with the Joneses. If their mate down the road has a Russian-Mandarin-French-speaking nanny, they think, 'Why the hell don't we have a Russian-Mandarin-French-speaking nanny?' It's very competitive in the elite world, and everyone wants more. We're a greedy species." © 2023 The Washington Post. Sign up for the Today's Worldview newsletter here.