Category: Tech

• A coalition of more than 100 mid-sized banks is calling for deposits to be insured for two years.
• The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America asked regulators to extend protection, Bloomberg reported.
• It said action was needed to “restore confidence among depositors before another bank fails.” 

Federal regulators have been urged to protect all deposits for the next two years to prevent a wider run on banks following recent collapses, Bloomberg reported. 

The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, which represents more than 100 lenders, called on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to put backstops in place and broaden its protection for smaller banks. 

“It is imperative we restore confidence among depositors before another bank fails, avoiding panic and a further crisis,” the MBCA wrote in a letter to regulators, per Bloomberg. 

The group said the FDIC should extend its cover to “reduce chances of more bank failures,” according to the outlet, which obtained a copy of the letter that was also sent to the Comptroller of the Currency, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve.

Only the first $250,000 in accounts are protected by the FDIC under existing rules.

The MBCA said the increased protection would stop the “exodus” of deposits from smaller banks and help “stabilize” the financial sector. 

If the FDIC did extend its insurance to all deposits for two years, banks could pay for it themselves by expanding the deposit-insurance risk assessment on lenders that chose to opt in, the MBCA suggested. 

The coalition also said that confidence has “eroded” in smaller banks and that more cash could be taken out of regional lenders if more banks failed, per the report.

Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed this month following a run by depositors, while First Republic Bank was bolstered by deposits to the tune of $30 billion from a number of bigger lenders. 

After taking control of SVB, regulators said they would “fully protect” all of its deposits in the bank.

The FDIC, OCC, Treasury and Federal Reserve all declined to comment to Bloomberg. 

• New research has found that working from home has created a boom in weekday golfing.
• While remote workers are hitting the green on weekday afternoons, productivity isn’t dropping.
• That’s good news for leisure businesses and shows remote work has changed people’s work structures.

“Don’t people have jobs? Why is it so busy out today?” one TikToker lip-syncs in a video while holding an iced coffee. The caption that reads, “Me, a 9-5 corporate working woman, at Sephora at 2:24 PM on a Thursday.” 

That TikToker is not alone, as anyone who’s had a friend or loved one working remotely can attest to. When work can be contained to a pocket-sized phone or a few jiggles of a mouse to prove you’re active, it can theoretically be done anywhere.

It’s turned the many American workers who are still in remote or hybrid roles into the professional version of college students: The days and afternoons are fair game for leisure or errands (or naps), and work can be done, much like a library all-nighter, during off-hours.

“The simple story is on work-from-home days, it’s a great opportunity to do things like go to the dentist, play golf, go shopping when it’s quiet,” Nick Bloom, a Stanford University economist whose research on remote work spans nearly 20 years, told Insider.

New research from Bloom and his colleague Alex Finan found that working from home created what they called “a huge boom in golfing.” Using car GPS data from Inrix and a map of 3,400 golf courses across the US, they were able to track when and how many people visited the greens from April 2019 to November 2022.

The results: More people were golfing overall, and the number of them doing it on weekday afternoons increased by 83% from August 2019 to August 2022. Wednesdays at 4 p.m. — right when workers are finally facing the back end of the workweek — was the peak time for weekday golfing. While the study focused solely on golf, the researchers said they believed people were likely using that time for other “leisure activities,” like going to the gym, playing sports, or shopping. 

While some companies have called employees back to the office, Bloom doesn’t think remote work is going anywhere. The share of work being conducted from home has fallen from its peak of roughly 60% in 2020 to roughly 27% today, Bloom’s research found. He said he expected it to stabilize around 25%.

All those remote workers hitting the green doesn’t necessarily mean people are working less. The “adult-student” economy could be a boon for services spending and for productivity.

“If employees remain productive, this indeed could be good,” Bloom and Finan wrote. “Golf courses are getting higher usage by spreading playing across the day and week, avoiding weekend and pre-, post-work peak loading. This will raise ‘Golf productivity’ — the number of golf courses played (and revenue raised) per course.”

Workers aren’t less productive than they were before the pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ indicator. While labor productivity cooled off a bit in the first quarter of 2022 as the economy settled into its pandemic recovery, it grew in the last two quarters of 2022. Workers are working — just maybe not regular 9-to-5 hours.

Afternoons of leisure could end up being good for companies and a double-edged sword for workers

While not every afternoon golfer or shopper is working extra hours later to make up for it, Bloom’s research suggests many people are doing just that.

“We see work-from-home employees shift hours away from the working day when they work from home and into evenings and weekends,” he said, adding: “Much like students choose to spread work out — rather than just work 9 to 5 on Monday to Friday — employees are also choosing to spread work out.” 

Microsoft’s researchers dubbed it the “triple-peak day” after spotting an uptick in Microsoft Teams chats between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. when the pandemic began. That’s in addition to the two traditional “productivity peaks” — before and after lunchtime.

This blurring of one’s work and personal lives might not leave all workers better off, though. Some have had a difficult time establishing work-life boundaries and are working more than they did when they were in an office. Of course, some workers have never had the luxury of working from home or are increasingly getting called back, meaning that they won’t get to experience weekday leisure.

US remote workers saved an average of 55 minutes by avoiding their daily commutes, a research paper Bloom coauthored found, but put some of this time saving toward work.

So that time on the golf course could be a double-edged sword, as any college student who’s partied on a weeknight can confirm: That hole in one might mean another hour working late.

“I think my colleague was taking his Zoom call from the golf course,” a tech executive in Palo Alto, California, told the researchers. “He was on mute and video off, but once when he was talking, I heard somebody talking about the fairway and strokes.”

Have you golfed, shopped, or done another leisure activity during work? We want to hear from you. Reach these reporters at jkaplan@insider.com and jzinkula@insider.com.

• Bill Ackman is sounding the alarm on Wall Street’s $30 billion show of faith in First Republic.
• The billionaire investor fears the move has put other banks at risk and could endanger the economy.
• Here’s why he’s worried and wants a temporary blanket guarantee on bank deposits.

Bill Ackman has warned that Wall Street’s rescue of First Republic threatens other banks, the financial system, and the US economy. Here’s a closer look at why he’s worried, and what he wants.

What’s going on?

JPMorgan, Bank of America, and nine other banks said on Thursday that they would make uninsured deposits totaling $30 billion in First Republic Bank (FRB) for at least 120 days.

Ackman cautioned that if FRB suffers a tidal wave of withdrawals and defaults on its debts, the Wall Street banks would be exposed and suffer losses as well.

The billionaire investor and Pershing Square chief argued the big banks’ show of faith hasn’t addressed the root problem — a lack of trust in the banking system.

Simply put, banks make money by taking their customers’ deposits and using them in two ways. They can lend the money out and collecting interest on the loans, or invest it in relatively safe assets such as US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities.

As a result, they don’t keep the cash on hand — which makes it tricky if they have to satisfy a sudden surge of withdrawals.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week because its money was tied up in long-dated bonds that had slumped in value due to rising interest rates, and a large number of its customers tried to pull out their money at the same time. 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took control of ailing SVB on Friday. Under a systemic risk exception, it agreed to insure deposits at both that lender and another, Signature Bank, on Sunday.

What could happen next?

FRB stock has tanked 70% since last Wednesday, as investors fear it could collapse as well. The San Francisco-based lender’s customer base has a similar profile and concentration to SVB’s, a high percentage of uninsured deposits, and substantial unrealized losses on its bond portfolio.

The bank has tried to assuage fears by securing access to $70 billion of liquidity from the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan, and agreeing to receive another $30 billion in deposits from its peers.

However, S&P Global and Fitch have both cut the lender’s credit rating to junk status, citing the risk of a wave of withdrawals.

Ackman described the Wall Street rescue as a “fictional vote of confidence,” and investors seem to agree as FRB shares were trading lower in premarket trading on Friday. He praised FRB as a healthy, well-run lender that shouldn’t be blamed for its current challenges.

“It is caught up in a bank run due to no fault of its own,” he said. “It does not deserve to fail.”

Ackman’s fear appears to be that bank runs will take down one lender after another, threatening the stability of the entire US banking system.

That could discourage banks from lending money, causing a credit crunch that could hurt consumers and businesses and hammer the entire economy.

“I am simply extremely concerned about financial contagion risk spiraling out of control and causing severe economic damage and hardship,” Ackman said.

“We need to stop this now,” he continued. “Tick-tock.”

“Three dominoes have fallen and another is on its way,” Ackman said in an earlier tweet, referring to Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate. “Time is running short before the fire becomes a conflagration.”

What does Ackman want?

Ackman is urgently calling for a temporary, systemwide guarantee on all US deposits, as he believes that would shore up faith in lenders and discourage bank runs.

His longer-term solution is to raise the cap on deposit insurance from its current level of $250,000, and charge higher fees to less creditworthy banks to encourage them to act responsibly.

• A Meta worker found out she lost her “dream job” in an email sent at 5:55 a.m.
• Jenny Saxton said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday that she hasn’t “fully processed” the news yet.
• The recruiter said it was a “tough morning” and she’d been experiencing a “wave of emotions”. 

A Meta worker discovered she was laid off in an email sent at 5:55 a.m. and said she hadn’t “fully processed” that she lost her “dream job” hours later.

Jenny Saxton revealed in a LinkedIn post that she’d lost her job in the second mass layoffs at Meta this week. 

Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that another 10,000 staff were being laid off in a second wave of job cuts after 11,000 were axed in November. 

“At 5:55AM, I got the email that I was impacted by the next round of #meta#layoffs #opentowork it’s 9:00AM and I still don’t know if I have fully processed what happened,” Saxton wrote.

 

She was a senior technical recruiter, according to her LinkedIn profile, and joined in August 2021. Saxton said it’d been a “tough morning” and she was experiencing a “wave of emotions.” 

“Meta was my dream company and dream job. I was recently promoted in July and I couldn’t have been happier. I was working on great projects, so this is hitting me hard. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this,” she added.

The latest round of layoffs comes after Zuckerberg said Meta was embarking on a “year of efficiency,” closing about 5,000 roles and reducing the pace of hiring.

He also said the company would be restructured and “lower priority projects” scrapped. Zuckerberg mentioned its metaverse project only twice in the post, but referenced AI four times and said it’s now Meta’s “single largest investment”.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

Are you a Meta employee who’s lost their job in the latest layoffs? Contact Jyoti Mann at jmann@insider.com or by direct message on Twitter for Signal contact details

• Credit Suisse shares fell 21% Wednesday after its Saudi backers ruled out more investment.
• The embattled Swiss bank revealed ‘material weaknesses’ in its reporting on Tuesday.
• Shares in the pan-European Stoxx 600 index also tumbled in Europe, leading to trading halts.

Credit Suisse shares tumbled more than 20% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after its biggest backer ruled out investing any more into the troubled Swiss bank. 

“The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory,” Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said in a Bloomberg interview, responding to whether the Gulf lender would dole out more money. 

Shares in Credit Suisse slid 21.91% to $1.96 in pre-market trading in US-listed shares. Meanwhile, in Zurich, it’s stock fell 19% to $1.79, marking a new record low on Switzerland’s stock exchange. The bank’s stock is down about 24% since the start of the year.

The Saudi lender became the largest shareholder in Credit Suisse after it replaced Harris Associates earlier in March. But acquiring any additional stake in the company is not an option for them, Al Khudairy said. 

“If we go above 10%, all new rules kick in whether it be by our regulator or the Swiss regulator or the European regulator,” he said. “We’re not inclined to get into a new regulatory regime. I can cite five or six other reasons, but one reason is there is a glass ceiling and we’re not going to entertain going beyond it.”

On the news, shares in the pan-European Stoxx 600 index also tumbled in Europe, leading to trading halts, according to CNBC. 

• Citadel boss Ken Griffin has said US capitalism is “breaking down before our eyes.” 
• “It would have been a great lesson in moral hazard” if US regulators didn’t bail SVB clients out, according to him. 
• “There’s been a loss of financial discipline with the government bailing out depositors in full,” he said. 

Citadel boss Ken Griffin said America’s capitalist economy is “breaking down before our eyes,” citing the government move to bail out depositors who lost money in Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse. 

“The US is supposed to be a capitalist economy, and that’s breaking down before our eyes,” he told the Financial Times on Monday. “There’s been a loss of financial discipline with the government bailing out depositors in full.” 

Griffin, who leads Miami-based hedge fund Citadel and capital-markets company Citadel Securities, said US regulators shouldn’t have stepped in to rescue all depositors at SVB and Signature Bank — even those with uninsured deposits — from financial losses. 

“It would have been a great lesson in moral hazard” if regulators didn’t decide to relieve the banks’ clients, according to him. “Losses to depositors would have been immaterial, and it would have driven home the point that risk management is essential,” he said. 

He thinks that bailing out depositors of these banks sets the wrong precedent, and the move was unwarranted in the current circumstances given the US economy was strong enough to withstand any fallout.

“We’re at full employment, credit losses have been minimal, and bank balance sheets are at their strongest ever. We can address the issue of moral hazard from a position of strength,” said Griffin, whose flagship company posted a record $16 billion in profits last year, marking the best year for any hedge fund in history. 

Griffin’s also criticized regulators for overlooking red flags along the way. “The regulator was the definition of being asleep at the wheel,” he said.

His comments echo a string of remarks from high-profile names on Wall Street who disagree with the government’s rescue plan. “All deposits guaranteed? Big mistake. Fed and Treasury policy moving to backstop risk,” billionaire ‘bond king’ Bill Gross said on Twitter. 

But others, like billionaire investor Bill Ackman, maintain that SVB wasn’t a bailout because regulators are only protecting depositors, not the management or shareholders of these banks. 

Phew. Hey there. Senior reporter Phil Rosen here. Before we jump into the newsletter, the Silicon Valley Bank saga is continuing to unfold, so let’s quickly break down the latest.

The big story this morning: HSBC has bought the UK arm of collapsed SVB in a last-minute deal for 1 British pound, or $1.21. The UK government and the Bank of England facilitated the private sale, British Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said on Twitter: “Deposits will be protected, with no taxpayer support”.

Also, if you haven’t heard, Signature Bank yesterday became the third bank to fail in the past week, after Silvergate shut down its bank voluntarily.

The Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC made a joint statement Sunday evening, effectively saying that all depositors for SVB and Signature Bank would be made whole, and that a new facility, the Bank Term Funding Program, would be created to provide liquidity for firms under stress. 

“No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer,” policymakers added.

Meanwhile, as the two banks fell under regulatory control, First Republic issued a message to clients aimed at calming nerves, saying it still had strong liquidity. 

In any case, some folks on Wall Street have been telling me that we can chalk up much of the turmoil to our departure from the easy-money era. 

More than a decade of near-zero interest rates allowed companies to borrow money freely, and as far as repercussions go, what we’ve seen so far could mark only the tip of the iceberg.

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AP Images

1. The fall of SVB and Signature bank means the Fed’s aggressive interest-rate hiking regime has now taken sizable casualties. 

The tumult is a byproduct of the central bank’s 1,700% increase in rates that took place in less than a year, and it could mean more once-stable institutions could be turned inside out in the coming months. 

“When you raise interest rates quickly, after 15 years of overstimulating the economy with near-zero rates, to not imagine that there’s not leverage in every pocket of society that will be stressed is a naive imagining,” Lundy Wright of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors told me. 

This new rate cycle delivers a “perfect storm,” according to Deutsche Bank analysts, who told clients last week that SVB epitomizes all the risks worth fretting over in the shifting policy era.

In a Sunday note to clients, Goldman Sachs’ research team pulled back their Fed policy forecast in response to this weekend’s bank failures. 

“In light of recent stress in the banking system,” the analysts wrote, “we no longer expect the FOMC to deliver a rate hike at its March 22 meeting with considerable uncertainty about the path beyond March.”

In any case, the risk of contagion may not be all that high, as my colleague Matthew Fox writes, given that banks have become extremely well-capitalized since the Great Financial Crisis. 

And according to Tut Fuller, chief executive and founder of Capra Bank, if policymakers stick to their word and protect depositors like they said they would, people will have their faith restored. 

“I’m hopeful that the government’s approach of stepping in and protecting depositors, but not bailing out failed executives and boards of directors, actually builds confidence,” Fuller told me close to midnight last night. “We need to protect the consumers and businesses who thought their money was safe and hold poor leadership accountable.”

Here’s Deutsche Bank again: 

“What do you get when you see one of the biggest hiking cycles on record, alongside one of the most inverted yield curves in history, at the same time as seeing one of the biggest tech bubbles bursting in history, coupled with runaway growth in private markets?”

The answer looks something like what transpired this weekend. 

What’s been the most surprising thing to you about the collapse of two banks in three days? Tweet me (@philrosenn) or email me (prosen@insider.com) to let me know. 

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In other news:

Lucky-photographer/Shutterstock

2. Stocks on Wall Street battle for direction as SVB’s failure ignites fears for banks. Shares in First Republic Bank fell as much as 60% premarket after the US lender tapped the backstop for a $70 billion to shore up liquidity. Here are the latest market moves. 

3. Earnings on deck: Carlsberg, Getty Images Holdings, and more, all reporting. 

4. Morgan Stanley recommended this batch of stocks to profit on an investing strategy that produces positive returns 100% of the time. Here’s the approach the strategists laid out — including the 19 names they like now.

5. A $15 billion venture capital firm had warned its startups of Silicon Valley Bank’s red flags months ago. Greenoaks Capital Partners told clients in an email back in November that SVB, as well as other firms, could see problems in a high-interest-rate environment, Bloomberg reported. Those clients pulled over $1 billion in funds out of the bank ahead of the turmoil. 

6. Investing veteran Jeremy Grantham said the stock market bubble is still deflating. The market won’t bottom until 2024, and investors shouldn’t be fooled by any rallies that materialize, the GMO co-founder said. He blasted the Fed’s monetary policy as a 36-year-long “horror show.”

7. The bank crisis will force the Fed to slash rates by 100 basis points to prevent contagion. That’s according to market guru Larry McDonald. He said it was the Fed that effectively caused the dramatic bank run last week.

8. This real estate investor owns over 1,250 units. He was able to retire at age 36 through leveraging the cash flow from his properties. Here are the five pillars that he says drive wealth — and how investors can combine them to compound their income and reach financial freedom.

9. An investing expert who says “cash is king” doesn’t think it’s time to get into the stock market right now. Lauren Simmons recommends instead putting your money into Treasuries, CDs, and high-yield savings accounts because that’s how you can be best prepared to jump on new opportunities after a recession.

Markets Insider

10. Bitcoin and other risk-assets stumbled amid bank fears. The crypto industry is navigating fresh pain as Silvergate prepares to wind down and other financial firms face snags. Bitcoin dropped below $20,000 last week, but is now back above $22,000. Here’s what caused Friday’s drop. 

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Curated by Phil Rosen in New York. Feedback or tips? Tweet @philrosenn or email prosen@insider.com.

Edited by Max Adams (@maxradams) in New York and Hallam Bullock (@hallam_bullock) in London.

• Nicole Bilderback was the ‘friend’ role staple of ’90s teen dramedy.
• Bilderback appeared in classic ’90s films and TV shows like “Clueless” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
• Being Asian didn’t hold her back; it helped her stand out, she says. But she never could book a lead role.

Nicole Bilderback is the ’90s face audiences certainly recognize but almost just as certainly can’t put a name to.

She’s played the “friend” role in a slew of popular teen films and TV shows, like “Clueless,” and “Bring It On,” or “Dawson’s Creek,” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” She was a familiar face at a time where Asian representation on screen was neither practiced or discussed in the media.

In an interview with HuffPost, Bilderback said it would’ve been great if the emergence of young Asian female actresses — like Lana Condor or “Everything Everywhere All At Once” breakout Stephanie Hsu — was happening when she first started out, but she’s also glad she didn’t think about her race much at the time.

“I think being raised as an all-American girl from Dallas, Texas, I just saw myself as an all-American girl who just happened to look Asian. So in other words, I didn’t pigeonhole myself as, ‘Oh, well, I’m probably only going to read for Asian roles,‘” she said.

That self-perception was reflected in the roles she was cast in, some of which she said were originally written for white actresses.

“The majority of the roles that I’ve portrayed have been roles that were either intended for Caucasian actresses or the ethnicity wasn’t specified. So for me, I got lucky in the sense of I wasn’t really typecast as just an Asian actress. And I think a lot of that had to do with the timing,” she told HuffPo in 2018.

“My story, I think, is slightly different than probably the majority of the other Asian-American actors that have been out here doing this for a long time,” she said.

Bilderback said she saw her ethnicity as a help to her career when she started out as a teen, because she felt she was able to bring something different to the table.

“I was just so free-flowing and young and fresh. I think because of that, because I didn’t limit myself, the industry saw me with very open eyes as well,” she said, adding that the ’90s felt like a “great time” to enter the industry for her even though there were only “maybe, a handful of Asian-American actresses out here in LA.”

Back then, she said being Asian “worked to my benefit because I stood out. I was something new and something different, rather than the standard blond hair, blue eyed that they’d already seen hundreds of.

Bilderback recalled moving to LA to pursue acting in the fall of 1993, and auditioning for her first movie — “Clueless.”

She said, “I was auditioning for Summer, the character I ended up playing, and I also auditioned for the role of Amber. When I went in for the callback, which was with the director, Amy Heckerling, and all the producers, I remember they actually added another role for me, so I read also for the role of Heather, Josh’s girlfriend in the movie. So I was being considered for all three of those roles.”

As great it was to be cast in big projects, Bilderback said she still struggled to get lead roles, which she feels being Asian played a major part in. “I did read for a lot of bigger parts, but there was usually either already a star name attached, or maybe at the time they weren’t necessarily as open to an ethnic actress as the lead. Not as much as they are now.”

“The industry is funny, and the casting process is funny. A lot of it is very political,” she said.

Since then, Bilderback has continued acting, mostly in television, and also has taken to writing. She had a career realization: “There’s more than one way of becoming a successful actress and reaching the success that I’ve always known I was meant to reach, other than just through auditioning.”

• A self-described “puzzler” prompted ChatGPT to generate a unique game tailored to Sudoku fans.
• The popular AI chatbot created ‘Sumplete,’ a game its human creator described as a “reverse Sudoku.”
• Since the game launched last week, it has already attracted thousands of players.

ChatGPT came up with its own game.

Daniel Tait, a 28-year-old software developer from Dundee, Scotland, and self-described “puzzler,” recently prompted ChatGPT to generate a unique game tailored to Sudoku fans. The AI chatbot then created ‘Sumplete,’ which Tait described as a “reverse Sudoku.” We first learned about the game via Gizmodo.

After ChatGPT spit out a list of five games he was already familiar with, Tait prompted ChatGPT to create a puzzle game entirely from scratch. 

“I was surprised every step of the way when I asked if it could make a puzzle,” Tait told Insider. “It instantly came up with an idea.”

Tait, who’s been experimenting with the chatbot since its launch in November, had grown accustomed to the chatbot’s limitations — often encountering messages saying the chatbot was unable to perform certain tasks. But this time, ChatGPT delivered. Within 45 seconds, the chatbot created iterations of the game that, after additional toggling and design prompts, would become Sumplete.

Tait described the game as a “reverse Sudoku”: Instead of adding numbers to a grid, the player crosses out numbers from a filled-in grid to add up columns and rows.

Since he publicly launched the game on March 3, Tait said 50,000 people have played Sumplete. While Tait spoke with Insider, 2,500 people were currently playing the game, he said. 

To Tait’s knowledge, there is no other existing iteration of this “reverse Sudoku” game. According to the chatbot, an existing game that is most similar to Sumplete is Magic Square, a game where the player is given a square grid of numbers and is tasked with arranging them to get to an equal sum for each row, column, and diagonal.

Daniel Tait / Sumplete

Tait, who said he comes from a “puzzler” family, has designed games previously, including a math-equation version of Wordle called Mathler, which he launched in February 2022. After sharing it on Reddit, the game was attracting over 10,000 players a day, Tait said.

Even without his background in software development and toying with game design, Tait said the Sumplete game is an “amazing” example of how anyone can utilize the AI platforms. 

Tait said he plans on keeping the game entirely coded by ChatGPT “to see what it’s capable of,” and has received emails with feedback from some users. He said he plans to paste that feedback into ChatGPT this weekend to see how it improves the game.

Since ChatGPT launched in November, people have been turning to it for practical and creative purposes to test its limits, from writing a new “M*A*S*H” television scene to poems.  Just two months after its launch, the chatbot designed by OpenAI was estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, the fastest-growing consumer application in history, Reuters reported.

Now, you can add creating puzzles to ChatGPT’s list of possibilities.

As for what creating this game could mean for the future of ChatGPT, Tait said his experiment designing Sumplete with ChatGPT has made him wonder about the capacities for creating with AI. “Could a Playstation style-game be developed from ChatGPT in the coming year?” he wondered.

“I’m still trying to get my head around it,” Tait said. “Definitely, AI is going to change a lot of things. The fact it created a puzzle from scratch is another step in a crazy direction.”

Have you used ChatGPT or other AI chatbots in an interesting way? Email the reporter at gmayer@insider.com

• Nidah Barber-Raymond had her first chemical-skin peel in 2009 and was hooked on the process.
• She began making her own peels and left her job in real estate to become a full-time aesthetician.
• After building her brand and creating an at-home peel kit, Barber-Raymond had a six-figure 2020.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 47-year-old Nidah Barber-Raymond, the owner of The Peel Connection. Barber-Raymond’s income has been verified with documentation by Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2009, I was getting a facial and I felt a light sting on my face. I asked the aesthetician what she was using, and she told me it was acid that would boost my skin’s collagen production. 

I was sold on my first peel. Now, I’m an aesthetician making six figures in revenue a year peeling people’s skin. 

A chemical peel exfoliates the top layer of skin to shed all the dead cells, revealing smoother skin underneath. 

After my first peel in 2009, I became obsessed with the process. I would order chemicals online, mix them, and then apply them to myself before applying them to friends, family, and neighbors. 

I experimented for about a year and would always test the mixes on myself first. I only burnt myself once in this process. My parents stressed to me to do everything by the book so I didn’t harm myself.

I quit my nine-to-five in property management to go all in on skin peels

At the time, I was a property manager, but it didn’t excite me. I left the industry in 2010 to focus on becoming an aesthetician. Using some residual income from the rentals I was managing, I had the financial flexibility to start training. The six-month course to become a licensed aesthetician cost $4,000. 

The moment I got my license, I became a full-time aesthetician focused on chemical peels for the face and body. I took on family, friends, and neighbors as my first clients, and they gave me a lot of referrals. 

I also posted ads on Yahoo’s local directory to help people with extreme cases of hyperpigmentation or acne in exchange for pictures and honest reviews — free of charge. Specializing in peels gave me a good niche to market myself. 

I would approach people on the street and offer them free chemical peels. 

I got mixed responses. Some people agreed, and it worked really well, but for others, I didn’t get such a great reaction. I would see people with acne or hyperpigmentation that I knew one session would help, but the question was: How do you approach that conversation? I had to start holding myself back.

After my maternity leave, I returned to skin peels with a vengeance 

I ran that business for about a year under the name Nidah Skincare until I got pregnant in 2013.  I took a two-year break from 2014 until the end of 2016. I am lucky that my husband is a fairly established real-estate developer and investor, so I was able to take this time off to stay at home with our kids.

Once I returned to work, I rebranded my company to The Peel Connection in January 2017 — my business took off from there. 

I became number one on Google and Yelp for chemical peels in LA, which helped me get a lot of organic clients. I did some standard SEO optimization, and I was only specializing in chemical peels, so all my clients’ reviews prompted Google and Yelp to rank my business as No. 1. I also went from doing three peels a day to seven, which got the word out more and grew my following. 

In 2020, I had a couple of publications come in and record videos of me doing my peels. Both of them wanted me to show feet peels — apparently, they’re very popular, which surprised me!

I pivoted quickly during COVID-19 to at-home peels and hit six figures in annual income

My business was going great, but then COVID hit, and I had to shut my studio. I pivoted quickly to home peels.

By that point, I’d done over 30,000 peels and collected data on each one. I was in a good place to figure out the correct ingredients for a safe at-home peel kit that the clients could apply themselves. 

It helped me scale my business because I was able to sell to people all over the world — rather than just within a 30-mile radius of my studio. I hit six figures in yearly revenue for the first time during COVID.

As restrictions eased, there were still customers who wanted to come into the studio and get me to peel them. And I haven’t lost many clients due to offering at-home peels.

The average face peel costs $225, and the home peels cost $100 for one, $150 for two, and $200 for three.

In the studio, I can offer more uncommon areas to peel, such as what I call the “baby-bump peel,” which is the bum, full-body peels, and peels on more sensitive areas. 

I have one client that flew all the way from Germany to have a full-body peel — and I mean everywhere. It cost $3,000 because he was fairly large, and obviously, the more area I cover, the more it’s going to cost.

Skin peels can be life-changing for people, and it’s so fulfilling to see

My favorite area to peel is the back. I get clients who have had back acne for half of their life and never believed they could fix it. This can be a guy who doesn’t take his shirt off at the pool, or a bride who feels limited on what wedding dress she can buy. I love these peels because it’s really emotional and, sometimes, life-changing for these people. 

All of my clients love the peeling process. 

It feeds into that same feeling those pimple-popping videos do — that feeling of being out with the old, it’s cathartic. You peel and are left with baby-fresh skin. I love doing it to myself!

The best part of the job, though, is seeing results from clients and how shocked they can be. I know it sounds corny, but it really makes me feel like I’m making a difference. 

That’s what I was missing in my previous career. I just didn’t feel fulfilled, and it didn’t light me up the way chemical peels do.