Author: NY TIMES

After ChatGPT came out in 2022, the marketing team at Reckitt Benckiser, which makes Lysol and Mucinex, was convinced that new artificial intelligence technology could help its business. But the team was uncertain about how, so it turned to Boston Consulting Group for help.Reckitt’s request was one of hundreds that Boston Consulting Group received last year. It now earns a fifth of its revenue — from zero just two years ago — through work related to artificial intelligence.“There’s a genuine thirst to figure out what are the implications for their businesses,” said Vladimir Lukic, Boston Consulting Group’s managing director for…

At the climax of Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Riley, a freshly pubescent teen with a gaggle of new personified emotions, becomes so overwhelmed with anxiety that she has a panic attack.In the theater, I whispered to my friend that I’d forgotten to bring my panic attack medication. I’d said it as a joke — but at the sight of this anxious animated teenager, my whole body’s choreography changed. My muscles tensed. I pressed my right palm down hard to my chest and took a few deep yoga breaths, trying to cut off the familiar beginnings of an attack.This depiction of…

NATO will offer Ukraine a new headquarters to manage its military assistance at its upcoming 75th anniversary summit in Washington, officials said, an assurance of the alliance’s long-term commitment to the country’s security that has been heralded as a “bridge” to Kyiv’s eventual membership.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — along with some Central European nations — had fervently hoped his country would be offered membership negotiations by NATO at the summit, which runs from July 9 to 11.Instead, the alliance will announce that it has agreed to set up a mission in Germany to coordinate aid of all kinds to…

The Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, who counts Beyoncé, Björk and Tilda Swinton among her regular clients, is known for dazzling haute couture pieces that resemble sculpture.Now she’s aiming to show that the equation also works the other way around: She’s not a fashion designer but an artist who happens to make pieces for the body.Van Herpen is planning an art exhibition, called “Hybrid,” that took a year to plan but will run for just 45 minutes on June 24, as part of Paris Haute Couture Week.Why just 45 minutes? That’s shorter than a yoga class, some Netflix episodes…

President Biden’s new student loan repayment plan was hobbled on Monday after two federal judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that temporarily blocked some of the plan’s benefits, leaving questions about its fate.The preliminary injunctions, which suspend parts of the program known as SAVE, leave millions of borrowers in limbo until lawsuits filed by two groups of Republican-led states challenging the legality of the plan are decided.That means the Biden administration cannot reduce borrowers’ monthly bills by as much as half starting July 1, as had been scheduled, and it must pause debt forgiveness to SAVE enrollees. The…

The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a challenge to its contacts with social media platforms to combat what administration officials said was misinformation.The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged the contacts had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.The decision, by a 6 to 3 vote, left fundamental legal questions for another day.“The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different…

Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chair of the Senate health committee, called on a government watchdog to investigate why insurance companies are still charging women for birth control — a move that thrust access to contraceptives back into the spotlight.In a letter to the Government Accountability Office, the senator noted that insurance companies were charging Americans for contraceptives that, under federal law, should be free — and that they were also denying appeals from consumers who were seeking to have their contraceptives covered. Some experts estimate that those practices could affect access to birth control for millions of…

Even those who swear by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and their ilk must admit that the platforms leave something to be desired when it comes to art house titles.Netflix is perpetually chasing nostalgia or algorithmic trends. Prime is going for crowd-pleasers and classics. And Hulu can devote only so much energy to its film selection when most people still think of it as a TV service. So streaming consumers seeking independent films, foreign cinema and documentaries (other than true crime) may have to look elsewhere. We previously highlighted Mubi as one option; the new Kino Film Collection service is…

In a sudden reversal, President William Ruto of Kenya said on Wednesday that he would not sign the finance bill that he had long said was necessary to stabilize the country’s economy, a response to the devastating protests that gripped the nation on Tuesday.“Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this finance bill, I concede, and therefore, I will not sign the 2024 finance bill, and it shall subsequently be withdrawn,” Mr. Ruto said in an address to the country.Nearly two dozen people were killed and over 300 others…

There’s a reason why, the moment Gareth Southgate and his players were verbally abused and plastic cups hurled at them in Cologne on Tuesday, the UK’s major bookmakers were slashing England’s chances of winning 2024 Odds for the 2020 European Cup.It’s not about a sudden burst of optimism or a flurry of betting activity. After all, who would spend money on an England victory after that?It’s because of the way the tournament has started to take shape: England’s odds have been slashed along with Italy, Austria and Switzerland. The odds of France, Spain, Germany or Portugal winning the title also…