 Former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao has been found guilty of aiding second-degree manslaughter over the 2020 killing of George Floyd. Thao was accused of failing to intervene as former officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, killing him. More: - Thao previously rejected a plea agreement and waived his right to a jury trial, hence allowing Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill to decide the case.
- In his verdict, Cahill wrote that Thao chose to "actively participate in Floyd’s death" when he held back bystanders and prevented an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter from providing help to Floyd.
- Asked in court about his actions, Thao said he believed he was just responsible for crowd control.
- Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in April 2021 while the other two officers at the scene ― J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane ― were convicted alongside Thao of civil rights violations over Floyd's killing.
- Thao is currently serving a three-and-a-half-year federal sentence for failing to help Floyd.
- Thao's sentencing date for the state case is set for August 7.
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 What the numbers say: New York and California lost over $90B to low-income-tax states during the pandemic, according to a new report. The pandemic accelerated the trend of U.S. citizens moving to lower-tax states like Florida and Texas. On the other hand, Florida gained a net of 128,000 households in 2021, which led to $39B in additional tax income. Relevance: High inflation has made already-expensive states such as New York and California even more unaffordable. The U.S. annual inflation rate surged from 1.4% in 2020 to 7.0% in 2021. Inflation slowed down to 6.5% in 2022, but prices continue increasing above the Federal Reserve's target rate of 2%. Why it matters: California and New York had budget surpluses in 2022, but they had project deficits in 2023 and 2024. Democrats in these states want to raise taxes on high-income earners, which could prompt even more people to move to lower-tax states.
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 The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that AI will disrupt almost 25% of all jobs in the next five years. WEF claims that 83 million jobs will be lost while only 69 million new ones will be created, leading to a shortfall of 14 million jobs. More: - The report's sample was gathered from a survey of 803 companies that employ a total of 11.3 million workers in 45 countries.
- Almost 75% of companies surveyed are expected to adopt AI in the near-term future.
- Half of the firms expect jobs to be created as a result, while a quarter expect jobs to be lost.
- Manufacturing, commerce, and administrative roles will be the most affected by job losses, the report says.
- On the other hand, the data analytics, climate change, and environmental management sectors are expected to create new jobs thanks to AI.
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 GOOD NEWS: A 105-year-old WW2 veteran with no relatives received 4,000 letters on his birthday. Ernest Horsfall was married for 57 years, but all his relatives, including his sister and his son, have passed away. More: - Horsfall, who lives in the English city of Preston, was inundated with birthday letters after the Royal British Legion urged the public to get in touch with him to commemorate his birthday.
- Horsfall, who served in North Africa and Italy, said he feels lucky to have survived WW2.
- After the war ended he became a private pilot, a profession he practiced for 50 years.
- “The secret to a long life is to keep living as happy as you can and keep a straight mind,” he said.
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 A message from TRUERA LLM Testing and Monitoring – Join the Hands-On Workshop How can you ensure that your large language model is honest, harmless, and helpful? Join TruEra on May 11th and 18th as their President and Chief Scientist, Anupam Datta, provides a hands-on overview of how to analyze and improve the performance of your LLMs. During the two 60-minute online sessions, he will cover the following: - Quick introduction to LLMs - what are they and their history?
- Risks and challenges of LLMs: is your LLM honest, harmless, and helpful?
- Defining feedback functions to model LLM quality and performance
- How should you test and monitor LLMs?
- Live walk-throughs of how to identify, diagnose, and debug model issues in development and production
- Q&A with Professor Datta
Dates: 2-session series on May 11th and 18th Where: Virtual Event - Join from Anywhere Who should attend: Data scientists, machine learning engineers, MLOps managers, data analysts, statisticians, data and analytics managers Register for Free
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 Pfizer's first-quarter results beat Wall Street expectations. The company's revenue decreased amid lower demand for its COVID-19 vaccine. More: - Pfizer made $18.28B in sales in the first three months of 2023, down 29% over the same period a year ago but higher than the $16.59B expected by analysts.
- $7.1B of that revenue came from COVID-19-related sales, even though vaccine revenue dropped by $10B.
- The company reported $1.23 earnings per share, versus the $0.97 expected by analysts.
- Net income came in at $5.54B, down from $7.86B in the last three months of 2022.
- Pfizer shares closed down 0.05% after the results were released on Tuesday.
- The company's stock price has dropped 23% this year.
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 Sound Ventures, a venture capital firm co-founded by Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher, has closed a $240M fund to invest in AI startups. The company currently manages over $1B worth of assets. More: - Sound Ventures has previously invested in Airbnb, Spotify, Square, Shazam, OpenAI, Flexport, Brex, GitLab, and Airtable.
- The firm is led by Effie Epstein, Ashton Kutcher, and Guy Oseary.
Zoom Out: - Investors are increasingly optimistic about AI.
- The median valuation for generative AI startups has reached $90M, up from $42.5M in 2022.
- Funding in this vertical went from $0.2B in 2020 to $1.4B in 2022.
- According to a report by PwC, the global AI market is expected to be valued at $15.7T by 2030.
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Quick Hits: - The company behind these surgical robots is planning to list on Nasdaq. Last day to fund your investment is on 5/10.*
- Shares of PacWest closed down 20% as concerns over the financial stability of regional banks continue.
- Initial Therapeutics has raised a $75M Series A funding round to develop therapies that aim to stop diseases in their early stages.
- Samsung is banning the use of ChatGPT after several employees reportedly misused the app.
- Former Google executive Geoffrey Hinton said he left the company over fears that AI is becoming dangerous.
- An 18-year-old Texas college baseball player was seriously injured after being struck by a stray bullet. He is currently in stable condition.
- In a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration, environmental activists argue that the agency failed to carry out a thorough environmental impact assessment before giving SpaceX authorization to launch its Starship rocket from Texas last month.
- Demo Divvy, get an Ember heated mug. Hot coffee and quick and easy expense management — get both when you demo Divvy.*
*This is sponsored content.
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 Night Watch by Rembrandt
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Upcoming events at Inside: *This is a sponsored listing.
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 |  | Arbër is an Inside writer who also has experience in entrepreneurship. He has experience covering Consumer Tech, Venture Capital, NFTs, Crypto, etc. Arbër holds a Bachelor's degree in Business from XAMK University in Finland. When he is not reading(and writing) business news, he chooses to watch sports or anime...and then read news about sports or anime. |   | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is the author of "Things You Can Do," an illustrated book about climate action. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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Join us on May 11th and 18th for a hands-on overview of how to analyze and improve the performance of your LLMs. | |
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