Wikipedia founder slams Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as a ‘huge problem’ and says it is ‘being overrun by trolls and lunatics’
By Eleanor Pringle
Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales is concerned about the direction X is going in under the ownership of Elon Musk.
HORACIO VILLALOBOS—CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
Elon Musk has recently found a new topic to direct his creative criticism at: Wikipedia. However, the founder of the free online encyclopedia isn’t taking the insults lying down—he’s hitting back at Musk’s controversial entry into the world of social media.
Among the changes overseen by Musk have been an increased focus on free speech—even at the risk of losing advertisers—as well as updates to user verification, plus the introduction of subscription models and longer form videos.
For Wales, some of these decisions have created a “huge problem.”
“A lot of people are fleeing Twitter, a lot of thoughtful and serious people are fleeing Twitter,” Wales told CNBC during the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon.
He continued: “I think it’s a real problem. Twitter was, and now I guess X sort of is… the default public square for the world and if it’s being overrun by trolls and lunatics. It’s not good for any of us.”
In August, just weeks into her tenure as X’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino claimed X had rolled out a raft of brand safety tools “that have never existed before at this company,” as well as confirming a new “de-amplification” policy.
Moreover, so-called “verified” users are also eligible for payments if their content is widely shared, arguably creating an incentive to continue to post salacious content.
X did not immediately respond to Fortune’srequest for comment on the October report.
“These are serious issues, you have to take the idea of responsibility seriously,” Wales added. “What [Musk] refers to as censorship we refer to as thoughtful editorial judgement, which is a very different matter.”
‘I just ignore him’
Musk’s most recent tussle with another tech titan—he’s previously sparred with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—began with a supposed offer of funds.
Wikipedia, which was created for free and without advertising, for a number of years has asked users for donations towards its work.
The richest man on the planet screenshot this appeal, and captioned it on X: “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia.”
In the same thread he also criticized the information logged on his own Wikipedia page.
Wales brushed off the interaction, saying this week: “He’s had a war of words with me, I just ignore him. I didn’t really respond to that. He’s a funny guy.”
Amid the fast-and-furious game of creative director musical chairs dominating the fashion world, one woman remains a constant—as she has for over 55 years. That’s Norma Kamali, the Manhattan-born designer who, at the age of 78, is just as energetic and bubbling with ideas as she was when she first opened her boutique on East 53rd street in 1967.
Fashion remains a cornerstone for Kamali, who continues to put out four collections a year, but somehow, the designer has been finding time between all that to explore her other, non-aesthetic interests as well. These days, she has turned her attention to medicine and technology—specifically artificial intelligence—and the ways in which the fashion industry can benefit from such advancements. While many septuagenarians give up any attempt to grasp modern technology the second they’re faced with an iPhone screen, Kamali is not only embracing change, but fueled by it. This year, she enrolled in a course at MIT to learn about generative AI from the experts, returning to her new SoHo headquarters upon completion with a company-wide game plan.
“I want to live a long, healthy life in the best way I can, within the confines of my genetics,” she tells W over the phone. If you’re curious what that has to do with fashion, or even artificial intelligence, she’ll be happy to connect the dots on her new podcast, the AI-titled Invincible Threads, where she shares her findings with the world. “I’ve taken courses, I’ve had mentors, and now I’m meeting with doctors and researchers, so it feels like the right time to make this podcast and provide high-level, up-to-the-minute information about medicine and technology.”
Courtesy of Norma Kamali
Hi. How are you?
I am good. If it wasn’t so close to getting the collection done, I wouldn’t be stressed. How many years can you possibly do this and still feel like it’s the worst collection you ever did? Though by the time it’s done, and gone through a transformation, I won’t hate it anymore. I’ve been doing this 56 years, and I still go through that process. That was my discovery before this call. I was looking at the collection and thinking, “What the hell?”
I guess that just means you haven’t lost your critical edge. Anyway, I would say congratulations, as you have a lot going on right now, but I have a feeling that’s always the case.
I’ve been in exactly the same job for all these years. The secret is to keep adding new things and create different experiences. There are people that say to me, “Norma, you’re asking me to do something I’ve never done before.” And I say, “Welcome to my world. That’s every day for me.” If I’ve done it before, it’s not going to be as exciting as discovering something completely new. That’s the secret to keeping an adventurous attitude about your work.
Has there ever been a time in your life when you were content to do the same thing repeatedly?
It’s almost like a drug: every time something magical happens while you’re working, you feel lifted, like that experience took you to another level. It’s addictive because you wonder, can that happen again? And it can. But there are people who prefer the stability and the comfort of repetition, and I understand that, too. That can be meditative. But in the end, I love the element of the prize.
Tom Ford, who is 62, recently said, “Designers rarely change the world of fashion at 62,” which is one of the reasons why he’s stepping away from his label. Do you agree with that sentiment?
No, no. Absolutely not. I don’t feel that way at all. That’s fascinating. I’m so surprised he would say that. First of all, I look at my job as being in service to women in everything I do. I loved when I finally understood that fashion and clothing could actually affect a person’s life in a positive way—that it could change how people feel about themselves. So it’s part of a purpose, more than just a singular take on fashion.
Courtesy of Norma Kamali
You told WWDthat fashion is going through “the biggest change” that you’ve experienced in your lifetime. How so?
There are some obvious things like social media and e-commerce. As a designer, to be able to communicate directly with people who are connecting in some way to what I do, and to see them wearing my clothes is so great. In the past, I would see photographs of my clothes on celebrities in magazines, but now, so many people post pictures of themselves in my clothes. I see how they accessorize a piece, where they’re wearing it, the whole picture. It gives me such insight into who I’m dressing.
Technology is moving so quickly and the way we show clothes, sell clothes, buy clothes, present clothes—it’s all going to move faster and faster every month. And obviously, AI will change so much of our lives.
And you see these changes happening and say, “OK, let’s go to MIT to understand it better.”
Of course, the world is not perfect, but this is the golden age of technology and medicine. I’ve had amazing doctors and researchers on my podcast, and my breath is taken away every time I hear of the discoveries made. So many of my interviews are with women at the forefront of stem cell research and other medical discoveries. Listening to these women talk about medicine in this very progressive way is exciting. To me, the best outcome would be providing medicine that everybody could afford, equal types of care for everyone. Isn’t that beyond brilliant?
When were you first introduced to the concept of AI?
I’ve had interest in [virtual reality] and [augmented reality], and I think through them, I learned about AI. When I finished my MIT course, I came back and encouraged all my staff to download ChatGPT and start using it. I said, “Give it a prompt, see what it comes up with, and how it compares to what you came up with on your own. Start to use it as a sidekick, as a way to enhance your work and also enhance your productivity.” Everybody jumped on it.
There is a lot of hesitancy around AI, and the fear it could take creative jobs. What are your feelings about that?
I think there’s absolutely truth to that. When we stopped using a horse and buggy and developed cars, some jobs were left behind. Every time we make progress, some things are negatively affected—and that is problematic. But the hope is that more opportunities will come about through new technology, and jobs we never dreamed of will open up.
I do believe, though, that there are people who are afraid of AI and shouldn’t be. The more they learn about it, the more they can realize that, while there are creative aspects to AI, AI is not going to be creative. AI can be your assistant, it can do research for you, which in turn will provide you with more time to be creative.
Is “retirement” a dirty word in your book?
I don’t really think about retirement. I can’t imagine what that would mean for me. I am so into structure, and after many years of tight deadlines for deliveries and collections, I thrive off them. I would need to be creating deadlines no matter what I’m doing.
Millions of people over the age of 65 likely have mild cognitive impairment, or MCI—minor problems with memory or decisionmaking that can, over time, turn into dementia. But a pair of recent studies both concluded that 92 percent of people experiencing MCI in the United States are not getting diagnosed at an early stage, preventing them from accessing new Alzheimer’s treatments that may be able to slow cognitive decline if it’s caught soon enough.
“We knew it was bad. But we didn’t know it was that bad,” says Ying Liu, a statistician at the University of Southern California Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research and a researcher on both studies.
In the first, published this summer in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, Liu’s team aimed to figure out how often MCI is being diagnosed—and how often it’s overlooked. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal survey of some 20,000 people in the US about a wide range of age-related factors, Liu built a model predicting the number of expected MCI diagnoses for the over-65 population overall: about 8 million. Then, Liu’s team pulled data from all Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and up who were enrolled from 2015 to 2019, to see how many were actually diagnosed with the condition. They found that only 8 percent of the people whom their model predicted would be candidates for MCI, based on their health demographics, actually received a diagnosis. This number was even lower for Black and Hispanic beneficiaries and among lower-income people. (The team used eligibility for Medicaid, health coverage that supplements Medicare, as a marker of income status.)
A second study, published in October by Liu’s team, looked at Medicare claims submitted by 226,756 primary care physicians and compared their MCI detection rates with those predicted by their model. Again, they found that only about 8 percent of predicted cases were actually diagnosed, and only 0.1 percent of clinicians diagnosed the condition as often as the team calculated that they should.
Autopsies reveal that most people who die in old age have some kind of brain pathology that impairs cognition, from traces of stroke to the amyloid plaques that characterize Alzheimer’s. Not everyone who has these anatomical markers of neurodegeneration experiences memory problems, but “the more of these things you have in your brain, the more likely you are to manifest dementia,” says Bryan James, an epidemiologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, who was not involved in this research. If someone does experience problems like forgetting who family members are, or getting lost while walking familiar paths, a combination of cognitive tests, brain scans, blood work, or a spinal tap can pinpoint the cause of their dementia.
Diagnosing mild cognitive impairment is much trickier. People might notice that something is off, but they’re still able to function independently. Most are seen by primary care physicians, not researchers in specialized memory care clinics. Because these doctors don’t see many dementia patients, their confidence in giving someone a potentially life-shattering diagnosis can be low. “They don’t want to make a mistake,” says Sarah Kremen, a neurologist at the Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders, who was not involved in this research.
“We are still struggling, as a healthcare profession, with how to best identify mild cognitive impairment,” adds primary care physician Barak Gaster, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Many doctors in Gaster’s field know they lack the training to handle cognitive concerns, and they are eager to learn. However, annual Medicare wellness visits are time-constrained—often just 60 minutes—and cover a lot of ground. Cognitive assessments are too cursory to detect the subtleties of MCI. “It’s really challenging to ask a community health provider to do another thing, because they’re already doing everything,” says Nancy Berlinger, a senior research scholar at the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute in New York. Plus, people generally don’t want to be told they have memory problems. “Because of the stigma surrounding dementia, primary care providers may just avoid the topic,” says Berlinger.
“We’re failing a lot of people,” says Sarah Banks, a neuropsychologist at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the neuropsychology program of their Memory Disorders Clinic. “I’m not surprised that it’s being underdiagnosed, but I was surprised by how much.”
Even if both the doctor and the patient notice something is off, Gaster adds, “the elephant in the room is that, if a cognitive concern comes up, most primary care providers still aren’t sure what to do.” Until very recently, an MCI diagnosis didn’t come with any actionable treatment options—just the knowledge that a patient may develop dementia someday. The same question has plagued efforts to develop blood tests for Alzheimer’s risk: Will they unnecessarily stress a person who can do little to change their outcome?
But this summer, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the new Alzheimer’s medication lecanemab-irmb, or Leqembi, which clears amyloid plaques from the brain and slows the progression of cognitive decline. Liu calls it “a big game changer.” Donanemab, another potential treatment developed by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, also reduced amyloid levels and slowed cognitive decline in Phase 3 clinical trials of people with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
While these new medications are a big deal, “they’re not a panacea,” Kremen cautions. In Phase 3 clinical trials, lecanemab slowed cognitive decline by 27 percent over the 18-month study, a relatively modest improvement. And it’s not an easy treatment—patients need infusions at a clinic every two weeks. The drug can have potentially life-threatening side effects like brain swelling and seizures. As a consequence, “I think a lot of us in the field are a little skeptical about how helpful they’ll be,” Banks says. James adds, “There’s a risk-benefit balance that I don’t think we’ve worked out yet.”
Drug treatment also depends on early detection. Amyloid plaques kill brain cells, which can’t grow back. If you don’t try to get rid of the plaques until they’ve already killed a bunch of cells, James says, “You’re trying to put out a fire after the house burned down.”
More clinical testing will be necessary to determine exactly how effective these drugs will be for people who start taking them as early as possible. “Dementia is not a problem that we can quickly solve through a pill,” Berlinger says, but “we may be in an era of promising interventions in early stages, which rely on the ability to detect early symptoms.”
Still, James predicts that in five years, as these treatments become more effective and accessible, the diagnostic rate for MCI will skyrocket. “Diagnostic practices are driven by the availability of treatment,” he says. “People don’t just diagnose in a vacuum. They diagnose for a purpose.”
Even if these treatments work, the US healthcare system is not currently equipped to handle the demand for them. Lecanemab currently costs $26,500 per year, and Medicare covers 80 percent of the cost. If all of the people whom Liu’s studies estimate are experiencing mild cognitive impairment are diagnosed and seek treatment, James says, “it would bankrupt Medicare.” Memory clinics will also struggle to handle the onslaught of referrals. (Rush Memory Clinic, where James works, already has a yearlong waitlist.)
These studies were limited to demographic basics like age, sex, race, and Medicaid eligibility. Age is one of the greatest risk factors for developing MCI—the older you are, the more likely you are to have it. Autopsy studies also show that women seem to develop neuropathology linked to dementia more than men, but in Liu’s studies, detection rates were not dramatically different across sexes or age groups.
Race, however, was one of the strongest predictors of whether or not MCI is accurately diagnosed, with Black people getting diagnosed at half the rate of white people. It’s unclear whether the stark racial divide in detection rates Liu’s team observed is due to differences in MCI prevalence itself, or to differences in healthcare access. Cognitive screening measures were largely developed by white people, for white people, Banks says, likely reducing their sensitivity in other populations. Factors like lower-quality childhood education, the chronic stress of systemic racism, and lack of access to healthy food can all contribute to dementia risk, James adds. Liu’s team is currently building predictive models that account for more of these factors.
Even if a person’s MCI never escalates into full-blown dementia, doctors say there is value in screening for it, because it can let them help alleviate symptoms or weed out other possible confounding causes. For example, doctors can review medications with patients to make sure nothing they are taking lists brain fog as a side effect. Hearing loss is a major contributor to dementia risk, and doctors can help people access hearing aids. Basic lifestyle changes like eating well, exercising, getting good sleep, and nurturing social connections address both brain health and overall well-being.
Doctors need to normalize talking about brain health with patients of all ages, says Elizabeth Head, a program manager at the Georgia Department of Public Health, who led their campaign for early detection of dementia. “We don’t have to ‘break the ice’ to talk about heart disease, cancer, or other chronic conditions,” she says. “It should be talked about like any other type of disease.”
Cade Metz has reported on OpenAI since it was founded in 2015.
Nov. 18, 2023
Over the last year, Sam Altman led OpenAI to the adult table of the technology industry. Thanks to its hugely popular ChatGPT chatbot, the San Francisco start-up was at the center of an artificial intelligence boom, and Mr. Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, had become one of the most recognizable people in tech.
But that success raised tensions inside the company. Ilya Sutskever, a respected A.I. researcher who co-founded OpenAI with Mr. Altman and nine other people, was increasingly worried that OpenAI’s technology could be dangerous and that Mr. Altman was not paying enough attention to that risk, according to three people familiar with his thinking. Mr. Sutskever, a member of the company’s board of directors, also objected to what he saw as his diminished role inside the company, according to two of the people.
That conflict between fast growth and A.I. safety came into focus on Friday afternoon, when Mr. Altman was pushed out of his job by four of OpenAI’s six board members, led by Mr. Sutskever. The move shocked OpenAI employees and the rest of the tech industry, including Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in the company. Some industry insiders were saying the split was as significant as when Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985.
But on Saturday, in a head-spinning turn, Mr. Altman was said to be in discussions with OpenAI’s board about returning to the company.
The ouster on Friday of Mr. Altman, 38, drew attention to a longtime rift in the A.I. community between people who believe A.I. is the biggest business opportunity in a generation and others who worry that moving too fast could be dangerous. And the vote to remove him showed how a philosophical movement devoted to the fear of A.I. had become an unavoidable part of tech culture.
Since ChatGPT was released almost a year ago, artificial intelligence has captured the public’s imagination, with hopes that it could be used for important work like drug research or to help teach children. But some A.I. scientists and political leaders worry about its risks, such as jobs getting automated out of existence or autonomous warfare that grows beyond human control.
Fears that A.I. researchers were building a dangerous thing have been a fundamental part of OpenAI’s culture. Its founders believed that because they understood those risks, they were the right people to build it.
OpenAI’s board has not offered a specific reason for why it pushed out Mr. Atman, other than to say in a blog post that it did not believe he was communicating honestly with them. OpenAI employees were told on Saturday morning that his removal had nothing to do with “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety or security/privacy practice,” according to a message viewed by The New York Times.
Greg Brockman, another co-founder and the company’s president, quit in protest on Friday night. So did OpenAI’s director of research. By Saturday morning, the company was in chaos, according to a half dozen current and former employees, and its roughly 700 employees were struggling to understand why the board made its move.
“I’m sure you all are feeling confusion, sadness, and perhaps some fear,” Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, said in a memo to OpenAI employees. “We are fully focused on handling this, pushing toward resolution and clarity, and getting back to work.”
On Friday, Mr. Altman was asked to join a board meeting via video at noon in San Francisco. There, Mr. Sutskever, 37, read from a script that closely resembled the blog post the company published minutes later, according to a person familiar with the matter. The post said that Mr. Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”
But in the hours that followed, OpenAI employees and others focused not only on what Mr. Altman may have done, but on the way the San Francisco start-up is structured and the extreme views on the dangers of A.I. embedded in the company’s work since it was created in 2015.
Mr. Sutskever and Mr. Altman could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
In recent weeks, Jakub Pachocki, who helped oversee GPT-4, the technology at the heart of ChatGPT, was promoted to director of research at the company. After previously occupying a position below Mr. Sutskever, he was elevated to a position alongside Mr. Sutskever, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Pachocki quit the company late on Friday, the people said, soon after Mr. Brockman. Earlier in the day, OpenAI said Mr. Brockman had been removed as chairman of the board and would report to the new interim chief executive, Mira Murati. Other allies of Mr. Altman — including two senior researchers, Szymon Sidor and Aleksander Madry — have also left the company.
Mr. Brockman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that even though he was the chairman of the board, he was not part of the board meeting where Mr. Altman was ousted. That left Mr. Sutskever and three other board members: Adam D’Angelo, chief executive of the question-and-answer site Quora; Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation; and Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
They could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Ms. McCauley and Ms. Toner have ties to the Rationalist and Effective Altruist movements, a community that is deeply concerned that A.I. could one day destroy humanity. Today’s A.I. technology cannot destroy humanity. But this community believes that as the technology grows increasingly powerful, these dangers will arise.
In 2021, a researcher named Dario Amodei, who also has ties to this community, and about 15 other OpenAI employees left the company to form a new A.I. company called Anthropic.
Mr. Sutskever was increasingly aligned with those beliefs. Born in the Soviet Union, he spent his formative years in Israel and emigrated to Canada as a teenager. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he helped create a breakthrough in an A.I. technology called neural networks.
In 2015, Mr. Sutskever left a job at Google and helped found OpenAI alongside Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk. They built the lab as a nonprofit, saying that unlike Google and other companies, it would not be driven by commercial incentives. They vowed to build what is called artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., a machine that can do anything the brain can do.
Mr. Altman transformed OpenAI into a for-profit company in 2018 and negotiated a $1 billion investment from Microsoft. Such enormous sums of money are essential to building technologies like GPT-4, which was released earlier this year. Since its initial investment, Microsoft has put another $12 billion into the company.
The company was still governed by the nonprofit board. Investors like Microsoft do receive profits from OpenAI, but their profits are capped. Any money over the cap is funneled back into the nonprofit.
As he saw the power of GPT-4, Mr. Sutskever helped create a new Super Alignment team inside the company that would explore ways of ensuring that future versions of the technology would not do harm.
Mr. Altman was open to those concerns, but he also wanted OpenAI to stay ahead of its much larger competitors. In late September, Mr. Altman flew to the Middle East for a meeting with investors, according to two people familiar with the matter. He sought as much as $1 billion in funding from SoftBank, the Japanese technology investor led by Masayoshi Son, for a potential OpenAI venture that would build a hardware device for running A.I. technologies like ChatGPT.
OpenAI is also in talks for “tender offer” funding that would allow employees to cash out shares in the company. That deal would value OpenAI at more than $80 billion, nearly triple its worth about six months ago.
But the company’s success appears to have only heightened concerns that something could go wrong with A.I.
“It doesn’t seem at all implausible that we will have computers — data centers — that are much smarter than people,” Mr. Sutskever said on a podcast on Nov. 2. “What would such A.I.s do? I don’t know.”
I met up with a Miami friend of mine a few weeks ago that I admire so much and the first thing she said is “I’m in a lot of trauma right now.” We were standing at a cocktail party face to face but I was scared to find out what she was talking about. The first thing that came to mind was her health.
I stared at her for a moment thinking this can’t be. She is one of the most elegant and natural beauties I know. At 65ish, she is tall, graceful, thin, well dressed and cultured. She lives in Miami but spends half the year in Paris where she owns an art gallery. She has been lauded for her non-conformist art and for creating intellectually challenging projects.
What could be threatening her so? I heard her words, but it was the last thing I ever expected to say, “My husband of 38 years told me this morning that he was leaving me. He’s been having an affair for 20 years and wants to be free to explore the other relationship.
Her words were shocking to me. I had just met her husband at a party in my home a few weeks before. He too was handsome, fit, interesting, and friendly. When I recall my conversation with him, I remember thinking he was slightly mysterious. I felt he wasn’t in the moment. It could be my imagination now in hindsight, but I don’t think so. I can read body language and emotions pretty accurately but none of what my friend was telling me ever entered my mind.
What astonished me even more was that my friend was clueless. She never expected a thing. She said that he was unhappy from time to time but that was pinned on work, the state of the world, and getting older. As far as I am concerned, these are the normal growing pains as you mature.
I know a number of men who cheated on their wives for years. When you have worked in a man’s world like I have for 55 years you can be sure I saw it all. Many men confided in me because they needed to share their stories with someone. That was me. I’m proud to say that I never divulged any of the details I knew to anyone else. I didn’t have the need to. I felt sorry for these guys leading double lives.
By the way, many of these scoundrels ended up going back to their wives full time without any shenanigans. Why these women took them back was a mystery to me other than they had no choice. In those days, many women were uneducated, lonely and scared.
Today life is very different. My advice to my friend is to use this time of her life as a second chance to meet new men, be wined and dined, experience being wanted and care for adoringly and let yourself be a couple with others a few times. More than likely, hubby will be knocking at your door in the future filled with all kind of excuses for his crazy behavior and begging you back. You can’t make the right decision if you are just sitting around. Go out and live it up, even if it hurts for a while.
We are celebrating!! Eliot Hess’s children’s book is available for presale. Art work by Jayda Knight. Genius Cat Books, ,Kayppin Media— Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble and we pray for Books & Books. Official launch March 26, 2024. Steven Ekstract made it happen.
(I love real estate stories. This one really gives you the inside track as to what’s going on in NYC) —LWH
There just aren’t enough billionaires, and no one wants to live in Hudson Yards.
By Kim Velsey, who is Curbed’s real-estate reporter
Photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Corcoran Group, Serhant LLC
If you want views of Central Park and at least 6,000 never-before-lived-in square feet from which to admire them, you’ve got a lot to choose from right now: Central Park Tower’s 17,545-square-foot penthouse — “a once-in-a-generation residence” — is on sale for 22 percent off its original asking price of $250 million. An 8,000-square-foot duplex at MoMA Tower, an asymmetrical crystalline skypiercer designed by Jean Nouvel, has been trying to get $63.18 million for the past five years. Over at 111 West 57th, $54.6 million will buy you a “spectacular, one-of-a-kind” duplex with “breathtaking, unobstructed 360-degree vistas.” (IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY is plastered atop the building’s StreetEasy listings.)
An image of the “grand salon” with 27-foot ceilings at Central Park Tower, which was featured in the initial $250 million listing and the reduced $195 million one.
While the low-interest-rate-fueled buying spree of the past few years burned through most of New York City’s residential inventory, it barely touched Manhattan’s newly built trophy apartments. On Billionaire’s Row, 23 percent of sponsor units remain unsold, according to an analysis by appraisal firm Miller Samuel. And that’s not counting all the people looking to offload the ones they previously bought, which likely brings the total percentage of trophy apartments seeking buyers closer to 50 percent.
“Many people thought the super-luxury market was wider and deeper than it actually was,” says Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. There just aren’t as many billionaires looking for real estate to park $30 or $40 million as developers thought there were.
Things started sunnily enough: The first few ultraluxurious skyscrapers — 15 Central Park West, One57 (at first, at least), and 432 Park (pre leaks, creaks, and elevator entrapments) — seemed to coast on some combination of FOMO among the megawealthy, bragging rights, and the promise of a sweet return upon flipping. But then more went up.
And more. “For a while it was like, ‘Oooh, 18-foot ceilings,’” says one broker. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, you also have 18-foot ceilings.’” Suddenly, an Extell Tower penthouse was not, as investor Bill Ackman once said, “the Mona Lisa of apartments,” but more like a mid-range Caravaggio. One57, in particular, where Ackman bought, developed a bad resale track record: One penthouse there traded at 30 percent less than the buyer had paid a few years earlier.
An image of the MoMA Tower’s penthouse, which has open city views and has been featured in the several listings since 2019. Photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate
Mostly, though, stuff just sat, gathering dust. At 111 West 57th Street, also known as Steinway Tower, which launched sales in 2019, less than half of the 60 units have sold, according to Miller Samuel. This summer, one of the project’s lenders, Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, wrote off $82 million in debt tied to the project, citing sluggish sales, Bloomberg reported. “While there has been a modest pickup in foot traffic and buyer interest … the velocity of unit sales remains behind expectations,” the CEO told investors in an earnings call.
A photo of 100 E. 53rd St, Apt. 55A, shows the “stunning great room and kitchen and dining area with three sprawling exposures with luminous floor-to-ceiling windows.” This apartment just went on the market, but the building has been selling slowly. Photo: Corcoran Group
Which has meant discounts on Billionaires’ Row (comparatively speaking). This fall, Gary Barnett dropped the price of the 17,500-foot penthouse at Central Park Tower to $195 million. Otherwise, the tower, which launched sales in 2020, is 59 percent sold, according to Miller Samuel’s analysis, with units selling at about a 25 percent discount. The Real Deal has reported that the building’s expected $4 billion sellout is now closer to $3 billion. But what, Barnett argued, was wrong with a little showmanship, if dealmaking followed? “The original pricing on these units were headline prices,” he wrote in a statement to TheReal Deal after dropping the penthouse price. “We have recently sold a significant amount of inventory at the top of the building and now want to get serious about selling these two showcase homes.”
There were a lot of “headline prices,” as it turns out. Closings at MoMA Tower this year have averaged about a 20 percent discount, according to an analysis of sales data on StreetEasy. The building is now 61 percent sold. The more modestly priced Foster + Partners–designed luxury condo down the street, the Selene, is about 59 percent sold, according to Miller Samuel. At this rate, buildings in this rarefied market will average about a decade to sell out.
A photo of Steinway Tower’s pool, one of the building’s many amenities, which was featured in a recent listing. A slower-than-expected sellout led one of the project’s investors to write off some of the debt this summer. Photo: Corcoran Group
Another issue is the lackluster appeal of many newly created luxury districts. Stephen Ross’s fantasies about the allure of the far (far) West Side have been collapsing, to all appearances: At 35 Hudson Yards, only 50 percent of the units have sold in four years, The Wall Street Journal reported this summer, with some of the larger units trading for discounts of more than 40 percent. Discounts were even steeper — up to half off — for active listings. (It’s worth noting that the exception to the ho-hum billionaires’ trophy market — 220 Central Park South, which seems to have snagged much of the available buyer pool for this kind of thing — is actually onCentral Park.)
A photo of a living room at 35 Hudson Yards that showcases the development’s city views. Photo: Corcoran Group
There’s very little urgency for buyers to buy anything right now, one broker told me, even for much more desirable real estate, like, say, a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Of course they’re not scrambling to snap up penthouses in Hudson Yards. “It was supposed to be the fashion, the media, the retail center of the world. It was going to be where Google and LVMH were headquartered. It’s very far from that vision,” he says. “Can we stop calling all these things trophies? It’s in the middle of nowhere.
Bankman-Fried’s Parents Stand By Their Sam—And Face Their Own Legal Perils
The couple, longtime Stanford Law professors, have an uphill battle ahead in trying to overturn their son’s conviction
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried attended their son’s trial and often took notes. JOHN TAGGART FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Barbara Fried wanted to get close to her son.
During breaks in the monthlong criminal fraud trial of her firstborn child, Sam Bankman-Fried, she would sometimes leave her seat and walk up to the railing that separated him from the gallery. Watching him and his lawyers, often in silence, she was just inches away yet no more able to intervene on his behalf or prevent the conviction that many saw coming.
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried had hovered nearby when their son soared to prominence as the crypto industry’s biggest star, and advised him as his company collapsed and the government made its case against him. And after a federal jury delivered a guilty verdict that could send him to prison for decades, his parents are trying to prepare him for what comes next.
The couple maintain their son’s innocence and are helping formulate grounds for an appeal. They visited him at a Brooklyn, N.Y., jail on Tuesday to assure him he has a life worth living, even if much of it stands to be spent behind bars. His conviction carries a potential maximum sentence of 110 years, though defendants rarely receive the most severe punishment.
Their unwavering support isn’t all that unusual.But Bankman, 68 years old, and Fried, 72, aren’t like most parents. The luster of their careers as beloved Stanford Law professors helped pave the way for the stunning rise of their son’s crypto exchange, FTX. And their direct dealings with that company, and the perks they received from their son before FTX filed for bankruptcy, have opened them up to legal headaches of their own.
Bankman worked for a time as a paid employee at FTX. Fried had no formal position there, but FTX alleges that she helped direct her son’s millions of dollars of political donations. The company, now under new management, has sued them both, arguing they pocketed millions that should be returned.
The couple’s lawyers have said the allegations are “completely false” and “a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara.”
FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried, wearing prison clothing, speaks to his mother, Barbara Fried, across the low partition between the courtroom well and the galley after a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in New York City, U.S. August 22, 2023 in a courtroom sketch. JANE ROSENBERG/REUTERS
In this courtroom sketch, Sam Bankman Fried’s parents Barbara Fried, left, and Joseph Bankman react to the jury verdict in Manhattan federal court, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in New York. A New York jury has convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of fraud charges. ELIZABETH WILLIAMS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
If the parents harbor any regrets about their actions, or their son’s, they haven’t shared them, several friends said.
“I would think this is not the time for recriminations,” said Bob Gordon, a longtime colleague at Stanford Law, where Bankman and Fried met and taught for decades. “For either their children, or themselves.”
The couple raised Sam and his younger brother on the Stanford campus, near a student house known for its vegan food and nude parties. They often spoke to their young sons as if they were adults and encouraged others to do the same, friends and colleagues said.
Respected legal minds, the couple had a deep reserve of powerful friends from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. Their reputations served as a credential for Bankman-Fried when he was building his crypto empire, opening doors to investors, regulators and politicians.
FTX was a crypto giant valued in the billions of dollars when the company moved to the Bahamas in 2021. Both Bankman and Fried applied for permanent residency there, according to the lawsuit. Bankman went on leave from Stanford to work for his son.
Bankman became a key decision maker, FTX said, managing tax issues and advising on job hires. He was supposed to be the adult in the room at a company populated with young high achievers.
FTX agreed to pay Bankman a $200,000 annual salary, according to the lawsuit, and in early 2022 he lobbied for more. Bankman-Fried sent his parents $10 million shortly afterward.
“We are so touched by this gift,” Bankman wrote to his son, according to the lawsuit. “Mom is announcing retirement, which she would not have done otherwise.”
There were other benefits, too. Bankman got a cameo in an FTX Super Bowl ad starring Larry David.
An FTX Super Bowl ad last year starring Larry David had Joseph Bankman in a cameo role.
Soon, the lawsuit said, the company bought the couple a $16.4 million house in a gated community near its headquarters. Their names were on the deed.
A spokeswoman for Bankman and Fried said that the house “was used as temporary housing while Joe worked in the Bahamas” and they never believed they owned it.
She said that FTX’s outside lawyers had assured the couple “that FTX would have all beneficial ownership of the house and agreed to document that in writing.”
When FTX unraveled in November 2022, Bankman tried to remain upbeat for his son. Bankman-Fried soon stepped down as CEO, and FTX filed for bankruptcy. Within weeks, Bankman-Fried was arrested.
Bankman-Fried lived with his parents for much of the year, under house arrest. Two Stanford friends of his parents had put hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line to secure his release on bond, allowing him to stay out of jail.
From his parents’ home, Bankman-Fried continued to speak openly about his case. In August, the judge revoked his bail and sent him to jail to await his trial.
For most of the year, both before their son was sent to jail and afterward, the couple tried to hold on to a semblance of normal life. They hosted their regular Sunday night dinners with friends. Bankman hasn’t taught at Stanford since late 2021, but he attended faculty luncheons and was often spotted walking around campus with their German shepherd, Sandor. The family got him after FTX collapsed, for security.
Bankman-Fried’s trial started in New York last month. His parents arrived most mornings around 8:30. The two often took notes. Fried was sometimes allowed to speak briefly to her son during lunch breaks or before U.S. marshals returned him to jail at the end of each day.
When Bankman-Fried first testified, without a jury present, his mother held her head in her hands as a prosecutor asked a barrage of rapid-fire questions.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded and led FTX , was escorted from court in Nassau, Bahamas, last year after being charged by U.S. prosecutors following the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse. PHOTO: DANTE CARRER/REUTERS
On the day that closing arguments began, Bankman and Fried sat out the morning, when the government started its final pitch to the jury. They returned when the defense argued in the afternoon. They left court that evening, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
The next day, a federal jury convicted Bankman-Fried on all seven criminal counts. Bankman slumped forward when the verdict was read. Fried put her palms against her cheeks as tears streamed down her face.
Throughout the trial, Bankman-Fried had rarely turned to the gallery to search for his parents. As he was led away from the courtroom, he looked at them and smiled.
A hearing to set the length of Bankman-Fried’s sentence is slated for March 28. He also faces additional charges, including allegations of conspiracies to commit bank fraud and bribery, that could go to trial in March. His parents are gearing up for an appeal.
“Criminal appeals are always an extremely uphill battle,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner in Chicago, who isn’t involved in the FTX case. “When there’s overwhelming evidence and sweeping charges, you need a potential game-changer. And there wasn’t one.”
Bankman and Fried returned to California on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said.
Bankman, who is also a clinical psychologist, has continued seeing some clients over the past year. He plans to resume his full practice.
People close to them say that their network of friends remains intact. They said they expect Bankman to start teaching again, possibly within the next year. A Stanford spokeswoman declined to comment.
Paul Brest, a former Stanford Law dean, said he sees no reason the university wouldn’t welcome back his friend. “I can’t imagine why any institution would take a position on the child of a faculty member,” he said.
Interviewers shy away from asking Susan Warner what it’s like to be intimate with a man after being widowed from her storybook marriage of 38 years. I decided to ask her sensitive questions that are often posed to me.
Let me remind everyone that longer explanations are beautifully answered in Susan Warner’s newly released book, “Never Say Never, Never Say Always.” Her answers are meaningful, insightful and poignant based on her tragic experience of losing her son to suicide, six months prior to the death of her magnificent, young husband to a brief, virulent cancer.
In episode 30 of Susan’s podcast she explains that she doesn’t suffer from guilt. She has made up her mind to continue living and to live life to its fullest- making choices that are exciting and fulfilling.
Question:
What was it like the first time you were intimate with a man other than your husband? Were you thinking about your husband during sex, comparing and making notes? What was going on in your head?
Susan Warner
The first time, and every time after that, the experience was completely separate from the relationship with my husband. I never experienced three of us in the room. I am in the moment.
Interestingly, I have had men tell me that they felt guilty. I am fortunate. I had a wonderful relationship with my husband, and I know he wants me to be happy and fulfilled. That made me want to go forward. Men have told me they felt guilty, like they were cheating. There may have been some history to their feelings, however it didn’t stop them from pursuing new relationships.
I didn’t date until over a year after my husband died. So, I was well into my journey of finding myself. At that point I removed myself from any intimacy with my husband. A year is a long time. A lot of men I know dated far earlier. Some dated a couple of months after their wives died. Distance from death helps make a difference.“
Question:
How comfortable were you and your companion removing your clothes? Was it a total embarrassing experience?
Susan Warner:
Everyone has to do what is comfortable for them. We are not 25 anymore. All of our bodies have aged. The body that you present in a new relationship is the only body he/she knows. There is no mourning of past anatomy-it is the here and now. That is freeing and exciting. Intimacy is a personal experience and can occur any way you want it to. Some men and women prefer keeping their t-shirt on or turning the lights off. Whatever the case may be, comfort and freedom is ultimately the most important.
The biggest surprise is that many men and women, who are divorced or widowed, use this period of their life to embark on a journey of sexual discovery. After you have been married to the same person for 30 or 40 years sex can become more routine. Now they want to try different things. It’s like going into a candy store. You want to look around and decide what you like. You might act differently or say new things, all without history or past expectations.
This whole new life that you and your new partner figure out is what works for you. The right companion changes everything. Personal growth is the silver lining to experiencing loss and thengrowing and experimenting.
Yusef Salaam, who was one of five Black and Latino teenagers convicted in the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park and exonerated decades later, was elected on Tuesday night to represent Harlem in the New York City Council.
Mr. Salaam, who ran unopposed, had won a commanding victory in a contested Democratic primaryin June, when he defeated two sitting members of the New York State Assembly. The Democratic incumbent who currently holds the Council seat, Kristin Richardson Jordan, dropped out of the race before the primary.
Mr. Salaam, 49, spoke frequently during his campaign about his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump, who took out full-page ads in The New York Times and other papers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in response to the case of the Central Park jogger.
Mr. Salaam said Tuesday night that it was ironic that as he was elected to the Council, Mr. Trump was facing multiple criminal charges.
“Karma is real, and we have to remember that,” Mr. Salaam said in an interview.
He said he harbored no ill feelings toward the former president, only a desire for justice.
“I hope he gets treated the way we did not,” Mr. Salaam said. “They judged us guilty before we had a fair trial.”
Speaking from his crowded victory party, Mr. Salaam said the story of his wrongful conviction, the nearly seven years he served in prison, his exoneration and his efforts to reform the criminal justice system were why Harlem residents connected with him.
That life experience, he said, “guides me and informs me and allows me to be a humble servant for the people.”
He added: “Our participation in the greater good can move us to be a community that works together, organizes together and has a vision that is inclusive, rather than exclusive.”
DigiDame 