Latest news with #Dorr
Business Insider
10-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
An AI researcher says most jobs will be wiped out by 2045 — but sex workers, politicians, and sports coaches will survive
In a Wednesday interview with The Guardian, Dorr warned that machines are advancing so rapidly that within a generation, they'll be able to perform virtually every job humans do, at a lower cost and with equal or superior quality. Drawing from historical patterns of disruption, he compared today's workforce to horses in the age of cars, or traditional cameras in the age of digital photography. "We're the horses, we're the film cameras," he said. Dorr and his research team have documented more than 1,500 major technological transformations. In most cases, he said, once a technology gains even a few percentage points of market share, it quickly dominates — typically within 15 to 20 years. "Machines that can think are here, and their capabilities are expanding day by day with no end in sight," he said. "We don't have that long to get ready for this." Still, he said, not every job is destined for extinction. Dorr believes a narrow set of roles may survive the AI takeover, especially those grounded in human connection, trust, and ethical complexity. He pointed to sex workers, sports coaches, politicians, and ethicists as examples of jobs that could remain relevant. "There will remain a niche for human labour in some domains," he said. "The problem is that there are nowhere near enough of those occupations to employ 4 billion people." Dorr argued that the looming upheaval could lead either to mass inequality or to what he called "super-abundance" — a society where human needs are met without traditional labor. But achieving the latter, he said, will require bold experiments in how we define work, value, and ownership. "This could be one of the most amazing things to ever happen to humanity," he said — but only if we're ready. The AI takeover debate is heating up Several top AI researchers and tech leaders have shared Dorr's concerns, though views on which jobs will endure vary. Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "Godfather of AI," warned that "mundane intellectual labor" is most at risk. On the Diary of a CEO podcast in June, he said he'd be "terrified" to work in a call center or as a paralegal. Hinton believes hands-on roles like plumbing are safer, at least for now, saying it will be a long time before AI is "as good at physical manipulation" as people. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios that he believes that half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, including roles in tech, finance, law, and consulting, could disappear within five years. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta's Yann LeCun have pushed back, saying AI will transform jobs, not eliminate them entirely. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said AI will displace many roles, but believes new ones will emerge, even if they look "sillier and sillier" over time. "We have always been really good at figuring out new things to do," he said.
Business Insider
10-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
An AI researcher says most jobs will be wiped out by 2045 — but sex workers, politicians, and sports coaches will survive
By 2045, robots and artificial intelligence could render most human jobs obsolete — and there's little time to prepare for the fallout, according to Adam Dorr, director of research at the RethinkX think tank. In a Wednesday interview with The Guardian, Dorr warned that machines are advancing so rapidly that within a generation, they'll be able to perform virtually every job humans do, at a lower cost and with equal or superior quality. Drawing from historical patterns of disruption, he compared today's workforce to horses in the age of cars, or traditional cameras in the age of digital photography. "We're the horses, we're the film cameras," he said. Dorr and his research team have documented more than 1,500 major technological transformations. In most cases, he said, once a technology gains even a few percentage points of market share, it quickly dominates — typically within 15 to 20 years. "Machines that can think are here, and their capabilities are expanding day by day with no end in sight," he said. "We don't have that long to get ready for this." Still, he said, not every job is destined for extinction. Dorr believes a narrow set of roles may survive the AI takeover, especially those grounded in human connection, trust, and ethical complexity. He pointed to sex workers, sports coaches, politicians, and ethicists as examples of jobs that could remain relevant. "There will remain a niche for human labor in some domains," he said. "The problem is that there are nowhere near enough of those occupations to employ 4 billion people." Dorr argued that the looming upheaval could lead either to mass inequality or to what he called "super-abundance" — a society where human needs are met without traditional labor. But achieving the latter, he said, will require bold experiments in how we define work, value, and ownership. "This could be one of the most amazing things to ever happen to humanity," he said — but only if we're ready. The AI takeover debate is heating up views on which jobs will endure vary. Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "Godfather of AI," warned that "mundane intellectual labor" is most at risk. On the Diary of a CEO podcast in June, he said he'd be "terrified" to work in a call center or as a paralegal. Hinton believes hands-on roles like plumbing are safer, at least for now, saying it will be a long time before AI is "as good at physical manipulation" as people. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios that he believes that half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, including roles in tech, finance, law, and consulting, could disappear within five years. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta's Yann LeCun have pushed back, saying AI will transform jobs, not eliminate them entirely. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said AI will displace many roles, but believes new ones will emerge, even if they look "sillier and sillier" over time. "We have always been really good at figuring out new things to do," he said. MIT economist David Autor took a darker view: AI may not wipe out jobs, but it could make people's skills worthless, ushering in a "Mad Max" economy where many fight over a shrinking pool of valuable jobs.
The Star
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
'Just regular people': Vintage fashion no longer caters to a niche market
'The New York eye is the best,' said Tommy Dorr, the owner of Mothfood, a vintage clothing business that this month opened a showroom in Lower Manhattan. 'I mean, people here have the best taste in clothes.' Dorr, 43, is originally from Michigan, where he got his start as a vintage seller working at a bowling alley turned flea market in the late 1990s. He later started a few of his own ventures, including Lost and Found Vintage, a shop he has kept open just outside Detroit since 2003. Mothfood is probably the project for which New Yorkers know him best, largely because of the Instagram account Dorr used to establish the brand more than a decade ago under the same name. 'I don't even remember why I picked it, but it's just a great tongue-in-cheek kind of name,' said Dorr, who considers it a good litmus test for customers. Are you in on the joke, or do you find the notion of moth-eaten clothing kind of, well, gross? He likes garments that are well worn – sun-bleached jackets, paint-splattered denim and holey T-shirts. They're not everyone's thing. Tommy Dorr (right), with Llewellyn Mejia at the new Mothfood showroom they run together on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Photo: The New York Times But over the years, Dorr has found a devoted following that counts celebrities, stylists, designers and everyday vintage hunters among its ranks. They are accustomed to ordering from his e-shop or visiting him in Los Angeles, where he opened the first Mothfood showroom in 2015. Read more: Are certain styles of dressing tied to Donald Trump and his family? 'I've been wanting him to come to New York,' said Emily Adams Bode Aujla, a New York designer and a friend of Dorr's who has been buying vintage pieces from him both for personal use and for her brand, Bode, for longer than either of them can remember. 'I think that I always have thought his business would do so well here, but I'm selfish,' she added with a laugh. Bode Aujla got her wish in April, when Dorr started moving into a 1,000-square-foot space on the second floor of a nondescript building on the corner of Allen and Canal Streets. On a recent afternoon, light poured in through a wall of windows, the door to the fire escape was cracked open and Dorr was sitting in a gray armchair wearing a thrashed baseball cap and canvas shorts, appreciating some quiet moments before he invited customers into the space. The shop, like his Los Angeles location, is appointment only. It's a casual system – anyone who wants to come by can reach Dorr by email through his website or shoot him a direct message on Instagram (though Dorr warns that direct messages risk getting lost in the shuffle). The goal isn't to exclude anyone, Dorr said, but rather to make the shopping experience more intentional. When he experimented last year with a pop-up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – in the former location of Chickee's, a vintage shop run by Kathleen Sorbara – he found that the foot traffic was mostly people biding their time while they waited for tables at nearby restaurants. 'Most of my good customers were ones I already knew,' Dorr said, or people who had set out to check out the brick-and-mortar version of his Instagram account. Lately, more intimate retail experiences are on the rise in New York, with some shopkeepers eschewing traditional storefronts by inviting shoppers into their studios or even their apartments. 'There's a value to these places because I think people want privacy in general,' added Llewellyn Mejia, who opened the Allen Street showroom with Dorr. People like 'just being able to shop on their own', he said, noting that appointment-only spaces were 'already booming'. The new Manhattan space is decorated with antique furniture and folk art Mejia sells from his shop Trinket. It is pleasantly filled – not crammed – with vintage clothing spanning the 20th century. A rack of Japanese hemp and linen suits from the 1930s at the new Mothfood showroom on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Photo: The New York Times Mejia's home furnishings and objets d'art, including a hand-carved statue of a poodle priced at US$450 (approximately RM1,890), were arranged on a gallery-style wall. Read more: Is the era of style critics ending? Fashion makeover show gets a makeover Elsewhere, a 19th-century church pew served as a display for Dorr's stacks of vintage work wear double-knee pants. So far, visitors to Dorr's new showroom have included people from around the neighbourhood, which is home to a vibrant crop of well-curated vintage stores like Leisure Centre and Desert Vintage (not to mention the robust community vintage institutions just across the East River in Brooklyn, such as Front General Store and Crowley Vintage). A few stylists, costume designers and fashion world people he is friendly with have also dropped by. Dorr estimates that about 75% of his business is from these industry types. He has supplied styles for period pieces like the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and has helped dress musicians like Boy Genius and Paramore. Though he sources mainly men's clothing and sizing, his customers are pretty evenly split between men and women. In his showroom, Dorr walked around the racks pointing out some of his favourite pieces, like a simple cotton 1960s white dress shirt, a 1980s western-style Carhartt chore coat, a stack of 1990s Champion reverse-weave sweatshirts and a World War II-era anti-gas pullover with splatters of paint from its second life as a painter's smock. 'When I started, vintage was only for hipster kids and weirdos,' Dorr said. Nowadays, he added, the average vintage shopper is more likely to be 'just regular people'. – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Business Wire
14-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
WellSaid Appoints CFO Benjamin Dorr as Chief Executive Officer
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- WellSaid, the industry's most trusted AI voice platform for businesses, today announced the appointment of Benjamin Dorr as Chief Executive Officer. Dorr, previously WellSaid's Chief Financial Officer, is taking on the leadership role to help the company drive further growth in enterprise solutions for WellSaid Studio and expand the potential of AI voice through the official rollout of its highly anticipated ' Caruso ' foundational model. With Caruso, WellSaid will deliver the highest quality-to-cost ratio in the Text-to-Speech industry. 'Ben's proven expertise in leading growth-stage companies will be invaluable as we continue to scale and advance our AI voice capabilities for enterprise customers,' said Matt Hocking, founder and Executive Chairman at WellSaid. 'During his tenure as CFO, he demonstrated his strong operational sense and ability to partner cross-functionally to drive our strategy. As he steps into the role of CEO to help take the company to the next level, we have no doubt that Ben's impressive track record will play an essential role in WellSaid's long-term success, especially as we prepare to deliver our highest quality model yet.' Dorr brings over 20 years of executive leadership experience operating and investing in high-growth companies. Prior to joining WellSaid, Dorr was the Chief Operating Officer of Cordial, an enterprise cross-channel marketing platform and two-time Deloitte Fast 500 selection, where he delivered a 10-fold increase in annual recurring revenue and orchestrated more than $80 million in equity and debt financing to drive expansion. He also held executive roles at Rhythm NewMedia, Rustic Pathways, Counsyl, and Valassis, where he helped quadruple digital revenue through acquisition. Dorr started his career at Citi, Morgan Stanley, and The Carlyle Group, and received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in computer science and public policy. 'I've spent my time at WellSaid learning the ins and outs of our business,' said Dorr. 'WellSaid is not only driving unprecedented innovation in AI voiceover technology, with AI voices that achieve human parity and commercial quality, but we're also setting a new industry standard for responsible and ethical AI practices. My career and education have been shaped by looking at the cross-section of technology and ethics, and as CEO, I look forward to leading the company through this next chapter of growth.' WellSaid's enterprise AI voice platform enables users to create natural sounding voiceovers in seconds for corporate training, advertising and marketing, product and customer education, and more. Unlike competitors, WellSaid's closed-source platform uses exclusive voice data from professional voice actors who have all consented and are compensated for their work. This approach ensures WellSaid customers have commercial usage rights for any voice content they create on the WellSaid platform. WellSaid is trusted by over 50 percent of the Fortune 500, including LinkedIn, T-Mobile, ServiceNow, Accenture, and more. About WellSaid WellSaid is an advanced AI voice platform. The company's Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology leverages proprietary AI models, which are trained on exclusive and licensed voice data, to generate natural sounding voice overs. WellSaid's TTS system can produce unique dialects, accents, and languages to optimize audio content creation for corporate training, advertising, products, experiences, video production, publishing, audiobooks, and more. Built with ethics at its core, WellSaid's responsible AI platform is trusted by 50 percent of leading Fortune 500 brands including LinkedIn, T-Mobile, ServiceNow, and Accenture. For more information, visit
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mississippi teacher donates part of liver to save student
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WJTV) – Mississippi State University (MSU) alumna and Tupelo Public School District special education teacher Holly Allgood didn't hesitate to help one of her students. Allgood was in her classroom at Tupelo's Early Childhood Education Center when she received a call that she was a match. She donated 30% of her liver to her student, Bowen Dorr, who is battling carbamoyl phosphate synthetase I deficiency (CPS1). Belhaven University recognized for online programs 'MSU alumna Holly Allgood's selfless act of love and concern for one of her students reflects what I believe is a core value of our university, which is service,' said MSU President Mark E. Keenum. 'We try to instill in our College of Education graduates the sense that they are stewards of the future in teaching and impacting the lives of their students. Certainly, Holly has taken that to an entirely new level, and all of us in the Mississippi State family admire and applaud her sacrifice and devotion to her student.' Both Allgood and Bowen are recovering well after the August transplant and have gained national attention for their story. Allgood, Dorr, and Dorr's mother were recently featured on the 'Jennifer Hudson Show' during this week's national Teacher Appreciation Week. They shared Dorr's story, and Allgood received a $10,000 gift from PaperMate. 'He's a completely different kid now,' Jamie Dorr, Bowen's mother, said in the interview. '…To have someone so close to home that was willing to lay down her life for [my child] when I couldn't—it's a gift I can't put words to. We need more Hollys.' Allgood, a Tupelo native and 2005 MSU College of Education graduate, has spent nearly two decades teaching special education. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
