‘Jeopardy' host Ken Jennings ‘deeply skeptical' of AI, years after losing to supercomputer
"Jeopardy!" host Ken Jennings once played against a super-intelligent computer, but he says current artificial intelligence is already years ahead.
"I'm deeply skeptical of AI," Jennings told Fox News Digital at the TCM Classic Film Festival.
"Obviously, these current iterations of LLMs [Large Language Models] would clean Watson's clock at 'Jeopardy!' The technology has moved on. I've played with chatbots and 'Jeopardy!' clues, and they're very hard to stump," he said.
Jennings, along with fellow "Jeopardy!" all-star Brad Rutter, competed against the IBM Watson computer in 2011.
Watson specialized in analyzing natural human language and answering complex questions, demonstrating its skills in a two-game exhibition match against Jennings and Rutter.
Over the course of three days, the computer got many, but not all of the answers correct. For example, during the first game, it missed the "Final Jeopardy!" clue about U.S. cities.
WATCH: 'JEOPARDY!' HOST KEN JENNINGS DEEPLY SKEPTICAL OF AI 'SLOP'
"Its largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle," the prompt read. The correct answer was "What is Chicago?" but Watson answered, "What is Toronto?????" with five question marks,
As IBM's website explained, the multiple question marks indicated Watson wasn't completely confident in its answer after running its algorithms hundreds of times in approximately three seconds.
Despite the occasional incorrect answer, Watson ended up winning the $1 million prize, donating its proceeds to charity.
Since then, according to IBM's website, "The underlying technology has gone on to help organizations predict, optimize and automate business processes across numerous industries. Roughly 70% of global finance institutions and 13 of the top 14 systems integrators use Watson."
After his defeat, Jennings wrote an essay for Slate at the time, saying, "IBM has bragged to the media that Watson's question-answering skills are good for more than annoying Alex Trebek. The company sees a future in which fields like medical diagnosis, business analytics, and tech support are automated by question-answering software like Watson."
He continued, "Just as factory jobs were eliminated in the 20th century by new assembly-line robots, Brad and I were the first knowledge-industry workers put out of work by the new generation of 'thinking' machines. 'Quiz show contestant' may be the first job made redundant by Watson, but I'm sure it won't be the last."
Jennings, who is now host of "Jeopardy!" as well as an author, isn't ready to give over his entire career to AI just yet.
"I work in a creative field and when I watch something or I listen to something, I want to feel like it's coming from a mind. I want that sense of someone talking to me and I never get that with AI slop," he said during the festival.
The fear of AI replacing creatives in Hollywood has been a persistent one in the past few years, taking hold during the writers' and actors' strikes of 2023.
Earlier this year, Fox News Digital spoke with musician will.i.am, who said true artists don't need to worry about AI replacing them.
"The only thing to be worried about is if you're making music to chase an algorithm," he told Fox News Digital. "If you're making music to trend on TikTok. And to do that, you have to really unlock the codes to that matrix. If that's your whole [hustle], then AI is going to do a better job than that."
The Black Eyed Peas singer does think people not involved in the creative process in the music industry are the ones who should worry about AI taking away their jobs.
"The people that are at risk of AI in the music [industry] are managers, label execs, finance auditors, attorneys. If you look at the money that's being put [in]to make these systems more advanced, Microsoft is giving you a copilot [the company's AI assistant]. And there's nothing slowing down how freaking awesome that's going to be in 2025 version eight. And that's going to be used for all types of industries," he said.
"There's not an army or a fleet of AI music do[ing] everything to the level of copilots or sales force agents. So musicians and hyper-creatives are OK. We're going to use AI and reinvent and create a whole new industry because of it."
He added, "Right now, AI does a good job of everything that we've created and can mimic it. But AI is not making things that don't exist exist. We do that. We created AI. So AI is a mirror. It shows you exactly what's in front of it."
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Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
DOGE will go on: Hill pork hawk says rooting out government waste will continue after Elon
FIRST ON FOX: While Tesla CEO Elon Musk has departed the Department of Government Efficiency amid a blazing public tiff with the president, congressional DOGE leaders are primed to carry on the legacy well beyond his tenure. "It's never easy to see two friends at odds, but DOGE is bigger than any one person," House DOGE Caucus chairman Aaron Bean, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital on Friday – expressing endearment towards both Musk and President Donald Trump. "Our caucus, with 110 members, is laser-focused on delivering real solutions for the American people, reining in wasteful spending, demanding oversight, and ensuring every taxpayer dollar is spent wisely." Bean said his panel's work rooting out government waste and streamlining the bureaucracy will continue on-track, with a major effort planned next week to change the Treasury's payment system to curb improper disbursements. Drain The Swamp Act Seeks To Move Dc Bureaucracy 'Out Of Crazytown': House Doge Leader The Jacksonville lawmaker said that longstanding issue has led to about $162 billion in wrongful payments every year. During his tenure, Musk also worked with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to fix systemic problems there. Read On The Fox News App The House DOGE Caucus will continue to advocate to "enact the cuts found by DOGE," Bean went on. The panel looks forward to working with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to pass $9.4 billion in rescissions identified by DOGE and presented to Congress for action by OMB Director Russ Vought. Republicans faced criticism for moving too slowly on DOGE's proposed cuts, but GOP leadership sources said they needed either a formal request from Vought or separate bills outside the Big Beautiful Bill Act to avoid jeopardizing its eligibility for Senate reconciliation. Doge Meets Congress: Fl Rep Launches Caucus To Help Musk "Taking on Crazytown is no easy task," Bean quipped to Fox News Digital last November when he launched the House DOGE Caucus. On the Senate side, DOGE caucus chairwoman Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, scrutinized a recent government report on COVID aid fraud and has already launched an effort to head off what she called easily-determinable signals that an application for government emergency aid is likely falsified or ineligible. Ernst this week flagged an analysis from the Pandemic Resources Accountability Committee – led by federal inspectors general – that randomly sampled nearly 700,000 identity records from 67.5 million applications for PPP, EIDL and other COVID-19 relief programs and found nearly $80 billion in potentially fraudulent payouts. Ernst said much of the likely fraud could have been prevented if officials had simply verified Social Security numbers, matched them with SSA records, and confirmed whether applicants were still alive. In turn, she informed Fox News Digital exclusively that she would be launching a bill Friday to prevent this kind of easily-avoided oversight issues in the future. The DOGE in Spending Act would prevent "con artists," she said, who, during COVID-19, "raided America's piggy bank." The bill's name also signaled that the Senate, too, would continue its Musk-inspired work long after the mogul has left. "There is nothing more frustrating than losing billions of dollars to preventable fraud," Ernst said, calling the illicit payouts during the pandemic "unprecedented."Original article source: DOGE will go on: Hill pork hawk says rooting out government waste will continue after Elon
Buzz Feed
8 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
22 Wild Facts About Old Hollywood Celebrities
Shirley Temple was so popular and talented that there was a conspiracy theory she was not a child at all, but an adult with dwarfism. In fact, she was investigated by the Vatican, who sent a priest to confirm she was in fact a child — which they were, apparently, able to do. Many celebrities from the '40s were actually spies during World War II, including Josephine Baker. She lived in Nazi-occupied France and would flirt with Nazi officials and get them tispy until they divulged military secrets, then write the secrets down on invisible ink and stash them in her underwear. MLB Baseball player Moe Berg worked for the predecessor to the CIA (the Office of Strategic Services), and once traveled to Switzerland with orders to assasinate German scientiest Werner Heisenberg if he discovered the Germans might soon be able to develop an atomic bomb. Famous chef Julia Child worked for the same organization before becoming famous, with her most notable job being to create "cakes" that were used as shark repellant. And Cary Grant reportedly spied on people in Hollywood to find Nazi sympathizers, including the German-born Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, who had married heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton. Grant actually ended up marrying the heiress after she separated from her husband. Also during WWII, Audrey Hepburn (as a child) used to perform at secret concerts in the Netherlands to raise money for the Dutch resistance, risking discovery and punishment from Germans. Oh, and BTW, guess who was allegedly a Nazi informant? Coco Chanel. During World War II, Coco Chanel was named as a Nazi informant by friend Vera Bate (who herself confessed to being a German agent). The French government arrested Chanel, who had several ties with Nazi intelligence organization Abwehr and its members. Chanel was eventually released due to a lack of evidence and possible help from friend Winston Churchill. Chanel's Nazi ties remained hidden for decades, though her "fear and hatred for Jews" was allegedly "notorious." Lucille Ball once claimed that she picked up Morse code during WWII through her lead teeth fillings. While driving home (and having previously experienced picking up music through her teeth), she began to hear a "de-de-de-de" sound. "As soon as it started fading, I stopped the car and then started backing up until it was coming in full strength. DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE DE-DE-DE-DE! I tell you, I got the hell out of there real quick. The next day I told the MGM Security Office about it, and they called the FBI or something, and sure enough, they found an underground Japanese radio station. It was somebody's gardener, but sure enough, they were spies," Ball recounted. The story sounds completely ridiculous, but it's possible it was true. There is no record of Ball talking to the FBI, or Japanese spies being found in that area at that time, but there is evidence shrapnel in someone's body, at least, can pick up AM radio waves, which suggests lead tooth fillings could work the same way. Cary Grant tried LSD over a hundred times in the 1950s as a form of psychotherapy to deal with his childhood trauma. 'After weeks of treatment came a day when I saw the light,' Grant said. 'When I broke through, I felt an immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts. I lost all the tension that I'd been crippling myself with. First I thought of all those wasted years. Second, I said, 'Oh my God, the humanity. Please come in.'' Eartha Kitt reportedly once had a threesome with James Dean and Paul Newman. She's been quoted as having said, 'Those two beauties transported me to heaven. I never knew that lovemaking could be so beautiful," though this quote is extremely difficult to confirm. In fact, there are quite a lot of scandalous sexual secrets from Old Hollywood that can't be 100% confirmed but are still fun to hear. For instance, there's speculation that Marlon Brando and James Dean had an S&M-based relationship. Ernest Hemingway once inspected F. Scott Fitzgerald's dick in the bathroom because Fitzgerald was worried it was too small after his wife Zelda complained about it. Hemingway assured him he was "perfectly fine,' telling Fitzgerald, "You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile." In another example featuring a famous writer, James Joyce wrote some truly scandalous love letters to his wife Nora Barnacle, many of which extolled her farts. 'You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.' Agatha Christie, possibly the most famous writer in the mystery genre, once created her own mystery when she disappeared in 1926 for 11 days — and the reason is still contested. After putting her daughter to bed, Christie (who was aware her husband was having an affair), drove off and her car was later found abandoned, hanging over the edge of a pit. She had left three letters behind, one to her brother-in-law claiming she had gone to a spa, another to her secretary with "scheduling details," and a third to her husband, who never revealed what the letter said. To find her, the police dredged a lake, brought in dogs, enlisted the help of over 10,000 people, and even looked to her novels for clues. She was eventually found at a spa, like she had told her brother-in-law — except according to her husband, she no longer remembered who she was or recognized him. She had checked in under his mistress' name. In the only time Christie ever spoke of it, she admitted to considering driving into the pit her car was found by, and hitting her head — this, accompanied by the trauma of her husband cheating and her mother dying, led to memory loss. Still, people have continued to speculate it was all a publicity stunt. Steve McQueen came very close to being killed by the Manson family along with Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Steven Parent. He had been invited to Tate's house that night, and the only reason he didn't go, according to his then-wife Neile Adams, was that he 'ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead." According to a biography of McQueen, he had been having an affair with a blonde woman at the time, and even invited her to come to Tate's with him. However, she said "she had a better idea for just the two of them." McQueen, unlike Tate,* was on a list of targets for the Manson family. His death was planned to look like a suicide. Tate and her friends weren't specifically targeted, according to prosecutors — she just happened to live in the house once owned by music producer Terry Melcher, who had rejected proposals to make a record with Manson. Speaking of serial killer Charles Manson — he was friendly with a number of big players in Hollywood, including Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, the co-founders of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manson and his friends actually moved into Wilson's house. Wilson later allegedly told Love that he'd seen Manson murder a Black man (though this is contested), causing Wilson to break off the friendship. Marilyn Monroe's last known words were to actor Peter Lawford, who was a brother-in-law to Robert and John F. Kennedy, as he had married their sister, Pat Kennedy. He stated she ended the call with, "Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack, and say goodbye to yourself, because you're a nice guy." The Jack in reference was then-President JFK. This is noteworthy because there were longstanding rumors of an affair between JFK and Monroe, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe. There are also rumors that Robert F. Kennedy visited her that night, though this was denied by the Kennedys. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who was there all day and night and was the one to find her dead, later claimed Robert had visited and they'd fought. When Murray found Marilyn dead around 3:30 a.m., she was reportedly holding her phone, and then-LA chief of detectives Thad Brown reportedly claimed she was found with a crumpled-up piece of paper with the number for the White House on it. Besides her connections to the Kennedys, there were other suspicious details around Monroe's death. Murray initially called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, who called the doctor who had prescribed the pills, Dr. Engelberg, before calling the police. The police did not arrive for close to an hour after Murray first saw Monroe's body. Lawford later claimed that he'd heard about her death at 1:30 a.m. The wife of Monroe's press relations manager Arthur Jacobs also later claimed that her husband had received the call that Marilyn was dead at 10:30. Natalie Wood, who starred in a number of films including West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Gypsy, also died under extremely mysterious circumstances. The 43-year-old was with her husband Robert Wagner on his boat on a weekend vacation from filming Brainstorm when she drowned. According to Wagner himself (though he initially denied this), he and Wood argued, and then he went to bed without her. The next morning, her body was found a mile away. Wood had been drinking, and it's possible her death was an accident, but she was found with bruises that could mean she was attacked. Nearby witnesses had heard a woman scream. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, allegedly drunkenly confessed to Wood's sister years later that he'd seen Wagner push Wood, who then fell overboard, and that Wagner refused to rescue this is unconfirmed. Wagner has denied he had anything to do with Wood's death. But I mention this one specifically for a wild Hollywood fact that not many people seem to know — Christopher Walken, Wood's Brainstorm costar, had also been on the boat that night. He had reportedly also argued with Wagner, and Wagner was (according to Davern) angry Natalie had invited him. Walken has not said much about the night beyond affirming it was an accident and that he had nothing to do with it. "I don't know what happened. She slipped and fell in the water. I was in bed then. It was a terrible thing." He also said, "The people who are convinced that there was something more to it than what came out in the investigation will never be satisfied with the truth. Because the truth is, there is nothing more to it." One of the wildest Hollywood secrets involves Loretta Young and Clark Gable. For years, there were rumors Young's adopted daughter Judy was actually her biological daughter, conceived with Clake Gable. The rumors wouldn't be proven true until Young admitted to them in her posthumous memoirs. It turned out Young had conducted an elaborate cover-up to make it seem like she had adopted the child. Loretta even reportedly had Judy's ears pinned back in an operation because they so resembled Gable's. Gable never had any role in her daughter Judy's life. Young refused to tell Judy the truth, and according to Judy's memoir, when Judy confronted her about the rumors, Young ran into the house and Young never spoke publicly about the circumstances of Judy's conception, according to her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, in the '90s, Young had asked her what date rape meant after hearing the term on Larry King Live. After Lewis explained, Young replied, "That's what happened between me and Clark.' On the train ride back from shooting Call of the Wild on location, Gable had allegedly snuck into Young's compartment. According to Lewis, Young didn't want Judy to know, so Lewis kept quiet until both Young and Judy were dead. Finally, we'll end with a few last examples featuring Errol Flynn, because the man had a wild life and allegedly did some wild things. First of all, he wrote in his autobiography that he once had a job castrating young sheep with his teeth. Second, Flynn once apparently showed up on the doorstep of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, angry about something she had written about him, and began masturbating. "I began laughing, and continued laughing until he finished with a dramatic flourish all over my doorstep," Hopper reportedly told Paul Newman. "I'll say one thing for Errol. He's the only man I know who can ejaculate in front of a fully dressed woman who's laughing derisively during the entire process." And finally, David Niven claims that Flynn once brought him along to view 'the best-looking girls in L.A.'...which, as it turned out, meant parking by Hollywood High to watch the girls get out of school. He then allegedly told a police officer who questioned why they were there that he was "enjoying the scenery." What shocking old Hollywood facts do you know? Let us know in the comments!
Miami Herald
8 hours ago
- Miami Herald
More federal workers are flooding the job market, with worsening prospects
After Matt Minich was fired from his job with the Food and Drug Administration in February, he did what many scientists have done for years after leaving public service. He looked for a position with a university. Minich, 38, was one of thousands swept up in the mass layoffs of probationary workers at the beginning of President Donald Trump's second administration. The shock of those early moves heralded more upheaval to come as the Department of Government Efficiency, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, raced through agency after agency, slashing staff, freezing spending and ripping up government contracts. In March, about 45 minutes after Minich accepted a job as a scientist in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, the program lost its federal grant funding. Minich, who had worked on reducing the negative health impacts of tobacco use, observed that he had the special honor of 'being DOGE-ed twice.' 'I'm doubly not needed by the federal government,' he said in an interview. He is still hunting for work. And like hundreds of thousands of other former civil servants forced into an increasingly crowded job market, he is finding that drastic cuts to grants and contracts in academia, consulting and direct services mean even fewer opportunities are available. Some states that were hiring, another avenue for former federal government employees, have pulled back. So, too, have the private contractors typically seen as a landing place. The situation is expected to worsen as more layoffs are announced, voluntary departures mount and workers who were placed on administrative leave see the clock run out. With Musk's time in Washington now done, a fuller picture of just how completely he and Trump have upended the role of government is coming into view. Federal tax dollars underpin entire professions, directly and indirectly, and the cuts led by Musk's operation have left some workers with nowhere to go. In Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area, the disruption has the hallmarks of the collapse of an industrial cluster, not unlike the disappearance of manufacturing jobs in the upper Midwest during the 2000s. Except this time, it is moving at lightning speed. In January, just as Trump was taking office, the civilian federal workforce across the country had reached a post-World War II peak of 2.3 million, not including the Postal Service. Few agencies have publicly stated how many people have been fired or voluntarily resigned, but a rough count shows that federal agencies have lost some 135,000 to firings and voluntary resignation, with another 150,000 in planned reductions. Contracted and grant-funded workers -- which the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimated to be as many as 4.6 million people -- are harder to track in official data. The first contractor layoffs began in February with organizations that received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, like Chemonics and FHI360. As more grants and contracts that were under review across government are terminated, job cuts have gained steam. Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm based in Northern Virginia that gets 98% of its revenue from the federal government, announced that it was cutting 7% of its 36,000-person staff. Even providers of Head Start, the low-income preschool program, have issued layoff notices because funding has been in doubt. While the national labor market remains stable, job loss is starting to become notable in the capital region. Unemployment rates in the District of Columbia and most of its surrounding counties have been on the rise since December. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance has been elevated in Virginia and D.C. over the past several months. Job postings in Washington have dropped across the board, according to the hiring platform Indeed, including in administrative assistance, human resources and accounting. Local government agencies around Washington are hosting dozens of hiring events, and most of them are packed. Elaine Chalmers of Woodbridge, Virginia, was among 750 people who attended a recent resource fair in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington. The event offered free consultation for updating resumes, as well as professional headshots and workshops, including one on managing personal finances during a transition in employment. It was the fourth one she attended in the month since she left the Agriculture Department, where she had worked for 20 years, most recently in the division that ensured equal access to grants for rural communities. She resigned to escape the stress and uncertainty created by new mandates, such as erasing words like 'equity' and 'diversity' from department communications. 'It just became almost a character question for myself,' said Chalmers, 53. 'I couldn't honorably stay.' Like many of the federal workers who chose to take a deferred resignation or early retirement, one of the tools the administration has used to shrink the workforce, she is on leave and will be paid through September. It is a relief, she said, because she is the sole caregiver for her mother and 15-year-old son. But the prospects do not look good. Chalmers said she expected to have to take a pay cut. She said she applied for more than 100 jobs in the week before the job fair and received several automated emails informing her that she did not get the position. For many government workers, career transitions can be especially daunting because their jobs are often extremely specific, performing functions that do not exist in the private sector. 'For a lot of them, it's almost like starting from scratch,' said Laura Moreno-Davis, a spokesperson for WorkSource Montgomery, a workforce agency for Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside D.C. 'If they really have a wealth of experience and knowledge, how can we best use that?' A new group formed by two former federal employees is trying to help people do that. 'How do you translate these skills that you've learned in the federal government that are so complex and seem to be so unique into something that can be communicated easily outside of the federal government?' said Julie Cerqueira, co-founder of the group, FedsForward. Cerqueira's partner, Karen Lee, said that people who worked in federal disaster recovery and resilience jobs, for example, had expertise that could easily transfer to private-sector work in contingency planning and supply chains. But it is not so simple for everyone. Chelsea Van Thof, 33, is a public health veterinarian who focused on diseases that spread from animals to humans, and humans to animals -- a niche job even in government. A few weeks after the inauguration, the contract she worked under at the State Department was placed on hold for a 90-day review and ultimately terminated. Van Thof immediately lost her health insurance and took on a housemate to cover her rent. Plans for the future changed, too, as she had been counting on public-sector loan forgiveness to pay off her $250,000 in veterinary school debt, a prospect that now seems increasingly remote. She sometimes feels as if she is sending resumes into a void. 'I was just thankful when I got a rejection because it meant they saw my application,' she said. Like others in the science field, including Minich, she is looking for jobs outside the country. And in the meantime, she helped form a support group of about 80 wildlife protection conservationists who are in similar predicaments. People working on government contracts are hit especially hard because they are not eligible for the deferred resignation plans available to federal employees and cannot look forward to their pensions. Todd Frank, of Westminster, Maryland, was given just a few minutes' notice before he was laid off as a technical writer on a contract with the Department of Homeland Security's science and technology directorate, helping get the appropriate gear out to military personnel in the field. Frank, 54, is now wrestling with whether to uproot his family to find a new job, which would come with steep trade-offs. His wife runs her own business -- a licensed day care out of their home. His teenage sons do not want to leave their high school, he said. Lately, he is looking at the family's budget for where to make cuts. 'Not being able to buy a suit for prom sounds like rich people problems, but you don't want to turn around and tell your kid, 'You can't do this,' or, 'You can't do that,'' Frank said. Several states had advertised their eagerness to hire people laid off by the federal government in the early days of federal cuts. In March, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said the state would give hiring preference to former federal workers. Since then, the state government has received more than 7,300 applications from people who said they had federal experience, his office said, and so far, state agencies have hired 120 of them. But state jobs have gotten a lot more popular in recent months. Since March, former and current federal employees have sent in nearly 700 applications, California's human resources office said. Some states are having their own budget problems, in part brought on by uncertainty around the continuation of federal funding. Alaska, Massachusetts, Indiana, Louisiana and New Hampshire have implemented hiring freezes. Public health agencies in Ohio and Alaska have laid people off as grants were canceled. And a broad swath of universities have also paused new hires, including the University of California system, the University of Pennsylvania, and Emory University in Georgia. With the Trump administration's firings of scientists and grant cancellations from agencies including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, science and consulting have been hit especially hard, according to Indeed. Companies and nonprofits that helped evaluate whether federal programs were working, like American Institutes for Research, have let go up to a quarter of their payroll. Paro Sen, a research scientist in Cincinnati, was laid off in May along with most of the people in her office at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. She worked on industrial hygiene, studying worker exposures that cause chronic health problems, and visited Washington in May with her union to talk to members of Congress about the need to restore these jobs to the federal government. 'This was my dream job that I have been ripped from,' she said in an interview. Sen and her colleagues work in such a specialized field that they are competing for very few available jobs, especially if they want to stay where they are. 'The job market right now is not amazing,' said Sen, 29. 'Cincinnati is not a very big city, and you've got, suddenly, some of the smartest people in this field all applying and competing for the exact same jobs at the same time.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
