James Austin Johnson portrayed Kevin O’Leary on “Saturday Night Live.”
Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images
“Saturday Night Live” took on Kevin O’Leary and his data center.
“These things shouldn’t be anywhere. That’s why I’m building one in Utah,” Johnson’s O’Leary said.
The real O’Leary is backing a giant data center project spanning over 20,000 acres.
AI data centers got the “Weekend Update” treatment on “Saturday Night Live” this week.
Comedian James Austin Johnson portrayed “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary on the sketch comedy show, during which he addressed the dispute over the real O’Leary’s proposed data center in Utah, known as the Stratos Project.
“It’s very simple. All I want is to buy up 40,000 acres of God’s untouched splendor and replace it with a very loud computer that steals your job,” Johnson’s O’Leary said. “Is it going to take up precious water? Absolutely. Is it going to provide a necessary service? Who’s to say? But on the flip side, it’s going to make me a tremendous amount of money, and I think that’s great.”
The “SNL” version of O’Leary said he understood that some Americans were concerned about data centers near their homes. (An actual May Gallup poll found that over half of American surveyors opposed constructing AI data centers in their local area.)
“These things are terrible and shouldn’t be anywhere. That’s why I’m building one in Utah,” he said.
Data centers are a contentious issue in the United States.
Leading tech companies rely on AI data centers to power their systems and products. Supporters say they’ll create new jobs, bolster the economy, and help the US defeat China in the race to control the global AI market.
Residents in the places where they are being built, however, are often much less excited about them.
The Utah project, backed by O’Leary Digital, has drawn criticism from many local residents over concerns that the data center could strain local resources and worsen the environment. Some residents are also upset over what they consider a lack of transparency from O’Leary and local leaders. Critics of the Stratos Project have staged protests, created petitions, and taken legal action to stop its construction.
O’Leary scaled back the data center’s size from about 40,000 to just over 20,000 acres after public pushback. He has said he remains undeterred, though.
“There are bumps in the road. There’s litigation. There’s misinformation. There’s propaganda. You name it. But if you know what you’re doing is right, you make it, you get there,” O’Leary told Business Insider in June. “Persevere.”
During a May interview on Fox News, O’Leary said said some critics of the project have ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a claim he later walked back. A Utah advocacy group that has publicly opposed the project filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News and O’Leary in July.
On “Saturday Night Live,” Johnson’s O’Leary acknowledged the incident.
“I made the mildly inflammatory claim that every single person in Utah who opposes me is a paid communist super agent from China. Was I wrong? Perhaps. But just because they’re not, doesn’t mean they aren’t,” he said.
He added, “I’m going to make the future go away. And we’re doing just that in Utah.”
Alexandr Wang’s wild X feed seemed to lack any rhyme or reason, but the 29-year-old said it helped serve a broader purpose.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Alexandr Wang said his prolific X posting is part of a broader effort to make Meta cool again.
The 29-year-old has filled his feed with memes about Muse, the company’s AI agent.
Wang said his posts “made an impact” on the growth of Muse.
Alexandr Wang said he had trouble focusing during recent Meta meetings.
On his mind: New memes to post about the company’s popular new AI assistant.
“I would just like think of a meme and I’d be like ‘Oh God, I have to get this out,'” Wang said in a recent interview with podcaster David Senra, adding that his coworkers were “somewhat surprised” at the buzz his posts were generating.
“It actually made an impact on growth,” he said of the posts, “which is kind of hilarious.”
Much has been said about Meta’s chief AI officer and his chaotic X feed, which the 29-year-old has crammed with occasionally off-color yet invariablyeccentricreferences to Muse, Meta’s personal AI assistant that sent the company’s stock soaring and redefined the market for AI tools.
In his interview with Senra, though, Wang said that his often spur-of-the-moment posts served a broader goal — to make Meta “cool again.”
“Despite having like these incredible pieces of cultural software like Instagram and Facebook, historically, Meta was not cool,” he said. “I remembered that the internet rewards risk.”
After launching on September 8, Muse shot to the top of Apple’s app store 10 days later, surpassing ChatGPT. Meta says Muse can help users research, fill out forms, buy items online, book restaurant reservations, find a dog sitter, and connect with services such as email, calendars, Spotify, Instagram, and OpenTable.
The app marked Meta’s first successful breakthrough in AI tech, after its Llama and Spark LLM models failed to find niches already filled by widely used models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
With Muse, Meta found a largely untapped gold mine — though competing AI agents from OpenClaw and Instinct already existed in Silicon Valley circles. Muse, however, had the advantage of coming from a popular company with several billion potential customers already signed up on Instagram and Facebook.
And the internet, weary of staid pronouncements from CEOs who were perhaps once cool but are now entering their 40s (Mark Zuckerberg is 42), welcomed the boundless energy of a young executive newly endowed with power in the AI era.
“It was a lot of fun,” Wang said. “There were like a few tweets where I just didn’t think that much about it and just said, ‘Fuck it, post.'”
Business Insider wants to know, by the way, how you’re using personal AI agents. Take our survey below!
The author (not shown) said she started piano lessons in fourth grade, but didn’t always enjoy them.
Hakase_/Getty Images
I loved being in the marching band in high school.
I didn’t love the practice that was forced on me from a young age, and neither did my husband.
We waited until our three kids asked about music lessons instead of forcing them on them.
Some of my favorite high school memories involve music. I played flute in the marching band, and I still remember traveling with my friends to perform at Disneyland in our senior year. Those trips were fun, and the friends I made in band class are the only high school friends I still keep in touch with.
But getting there involved years of music lessons that I didn’t exactly choose.
I started piano lessons in fourth grade, which meant giving up after-school hours when I’d much rather have been doing almost anything else. Eventually, I switched to flute and continued playing through high school. By then, I was good enough to enjoy being in the marching band, but years of being told to practice left me with mixed feelings about music.
My husband had a similar experience with the viola. He spent countless hours practicing an instrument because his parents wanted him to. Today, decades later, he doesn’t play it.
Neither of us wanted to repeat that experience with our own kids.
The author said she and her husband were forced to play instruments when they were growing up. As parents, they chose a different path for their kids.
Courtesy of Kate Loweth.
We decided not to sign them up
When our kids reached the age when many of their friends were starting piano, violin, or other music lessons, we took a different approach.
We didn’t say no to music. We simply didn’t volunteer them for it.
If they wanted to learn an instrument, we told them we would support them. But we weren’t going to spend hundreds of dollars on lessons and then spend the next several years nagging them to practice something they never asked to do.
It wasn’t always easy to stick to that philosophy. As a parent, it’s tempting to look at all the activities other kids are doing and wonder whether you’re supposed to be signing your kids up, too.
Music seemed particularly important. I knew firsthand how much kids could get out of being part of a band or orchestra. I also knew that learning an instrument can teach discipline and give kids an outlet for creativity. I didn’t think those benefits required us to force it on them.
Eventually, they came to us
Then something interesting happened: They asked about music lessons.
The author said all of her children now enjoy playing musical instruments.
Courtesy of Kate Loweth.
My daughter eventually decided she wanted to take acoustic guitar lessons. Later, my sons got interested in music, too, signing up for electric guitar and drumming.
Because they chose these activities themselves, the dynamic was completely different from what I remembered from childhood.
I’m not hovering over a piano bench telling someone to practice scales. I’m not threatening to take away screen time because someone hasn’t picked up a guitar.
They know they have to practice to get better, and they’re more invested because the decision to play was theirs.
I get to enjoy the show
The biggest surprise has been how much more enjoyable music is for me as a parent.
Instead of being the kid who is being told to practice, I’m the mom sitting in the audience with my phone out, waiting for the performance to start so I can record them.
I get to cheer when they nail a song and encourage them when they don’t. I get to listen to them practice “Johnny B. Goode” in their bedrooms and watch their confidence grow.
The author said she’s glad she waited until her kids were older and had their own appreciation and interest in music before signing them up for formal lessons.
Courtesy of Kate Loweth.
And because they chose this for themselves, their accomplishments feel like theirs.
Maybe that’s what I was really trying to give my kids by taking music lessons off the parental to-do list: not necessarily a childhood without instruments, but one where they get to decide what they want to become good at.
After spending my childhood being told to practice, I’ve found that one of my favorite parts of parenting is not having to be the practice police.
Taylor Swift performs the “1989” set during the Eras Tour.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” has yielded three No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
It’s the first female album since Swift’s own “1989” to achieve the feat.
The Beatles, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Rihanna also have multiple albums on the list.
Thanks to “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore,” Taylor Swift has added another rare achievement to her resumé.
The deluxe edition of Swift’s 12th album added four new songs to the tracklist, including “Patient Zero,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — becoming the album’s third song to reach the chart’s summit, following “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Opalite.”
Since Billboard launched the Hot 100 in 1958 as the definitive all-genre singles chart in the US, only 33 albums have spawned three or more No. 1 hits (not counting greatest-hits compilations).
Counting songs that were released later on deluxe editions and reissues, Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” holds the all-time record with six No. 1 songs, followed by Michael Jackson’s “Bad” with five.
This elite group of musical blockbusters seems to be getting more exclusive over time: Only 12 of the qualifying albums were released in the 21st century. “The Life of a Showgirl” is the first female album to achieve the feat in over a decade, since Swift’s own “1989” in 2014.
All 33 albums are listed below in chronological order.
1. “Where Did Our Love Go” by The Supremes
“Where Did Our Love Go” was released in 1964.
Motown
No. 1 songs: “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me”
2. “Help!” by The Beatles
“Help!” was released in 1965.
Parlophone
No. 1 songs: “Help!,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Yesterday”*
*Included on the original UK release of “Help!” and later included on the US-exclusive release of “Yesterday and Today”
3. “Magical Mystery Tour” by The Beatles
“Magical Mystery Tour” was released in 1967.
Parlophone/Capitol
No. 1 songs: “Penny Lane,” “All You Need Is Love,” “Hello Goodbye”
3. “Let It Be” by The Beatles
“Let It Be” was released in 1970.
Apple
No. 1 songs: “Let It Be,” “The Long and Winding Road,” “Get Back”
4. The “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack
“Saturday Night Fever” was released in 1977.
RSO
No. 1 songs: “How Deep Is Your Love,” “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” “If I Can’t Have You”
5. “Spirits Having Flown” by the Bee Gees
“Spirits Having Flown” was released in1979.
RSO Records
No. 1 songs: “Tragedy,” “Too Much Heaven,” “Love You Inside Out”
6. “Make It Big” by Wham!
“Make It Big” was released in 1984.
Epic/Columbia
No. 1 songs: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Everything She Wants,” “Careless Whisper”
7. “Whitney Houston” by Whitney Houston
“Whitney Houston” was released on February 14, 1985.
Arista
No. 1 songs: “Saving All My Love For You,” “How Will I Know,” “Greatest Love Of All”
8. “True Blue” by Madonna
“True Blue” was released in 1986.
Sire Records
No. 1 songs: “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Live to Tell,” “Open Your Heart”
9. “Whitney” by Whitney Houston
“Whitney” was released in 1987.
Arista
No. 1 songs: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” “So Emotional,” “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”
10. “Bad” by Michael Jackson
Epic/Legacy
No. 1 songs: “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror,” “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Dirty Diana”
11. “Faith” by George Michael
“Faith” was released on October 30, 1987.
Columbia
No. 1 songs: “Faith,” “Father Figure,” “One More Try,” “Monkey”
Marc Benioff said Salesforce’s AIForce platform will be renamed SIForce.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Trump called those who don’t adopt the term Super Intelligence “the enemy.”
Marc Benioff said Salesforce’s AIForce platform is becoming SIForce.
Elon Musk also pledged to rename SpaceXAI as SpaceXSI.
Donald Trump wants two letters scrubbed from the tech industry’s vocabulary, and some executives are already reaching for replacements.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Friday that his company’s AIForce platform is getting a new name.
“The era of Super Intelligence is here. AIForce is officially SIForce,” Benioff wrote on X.
The announcement follows Elon Musk’s pledge Sunday to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, giving Trump’s campaign to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence” traction beyond Washington. The company’s X account has already been changed.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also made the switch, referring to the tech as “Super Intelligence” in an X post about AI model containment and governance on Saturday. While Nadella has used the term “superintelligence” in the past, this was the first time he used it as two words — and capitalized.
Salesforce’s change concerns its agent platform, rather than the company’s corporate name.
Trump, meanwhile, is turning his terminology preference into a test.
“The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
The warning escalates a push Trump formalized in a September 29 executive order directing federal agencies to substitute “Super Intelligence” and “SI” for “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official communications, websites, reports, and policy documents, to the extent permitted by law.
Private companies aren’t required by the order to follow suit. But Benioff’s announcement and Musk’s proposed rebrand show how the president’s preferred language is making its way into corporate branding.
The administration’s argument is that AI has outgrown its name. The executive order says today’s systems increasingly amplify human creativity and that “Super Intelligence” better captures their potential.
The rebranding push complicates matters for companies whose names include AI, and raises questions over what counts as superintelligence. The term generally describes systems far more capable than humans across a broad range of tasks, and renaming existing products doesn’t establish that they meet that threshold.
OpenAI, Scale AI, Character AI, and Resolve AI did not respond to requests for comment.
Although I have some expensive regrets, I am ultimately glad I moved my family from Australia to New York City many years ago.
Courtesy of Natasha Silva-Jelly
I grew up in Australia and always dreamed of living in New York City, so I moved my family there.
Living here comes with costs, like missing family in Australia and being unable to visit them often.
We’ve spent a ton on rent, and I’ve moved around the city a lot, but there’s no place I’d rather be.
It was my lifelong dream to live in New York City. Wild, given that I was born in a small rural town in Australia, where I grew up riding dirt bikes, not reading fashion magazines.
The Land Down Under was a big, beautiful place offering an idyllic, laid-back beach life, but I always felt a pull toward The Big Apple.
That lust further ignited in the ’90s as I watched the city depicted in shows like “Friends” and “Sex and the City.” So in 2014, on the cusp of turning 40, I dragged my husband, our Bengal cat, and our two sons — then 2 and 9 — to New York.
We told ourselves we’d come for a year, for an adventure. Twelve years later, I’m still here. It’s certainly been one hell of a (ridiculously expensive) ride.
The rent we’ve paid feels astronomical, and we’ve moved so many times
Some parts of New York City, including where we chose to live in Lower Manhattan, can get especially expensive.
Ultima_Gaina/Getty Images
In New York City, rental costs are no joke.
We traded our beautiful 1890s cottage — three-bedroom, two-bath, front porch, huge yard, tree-lined street, 10 minutes from Bondi Beach — for a two-bedroom loft apartment in Tribeca that cost us $8,000 a month. (This is not unusual for a two-bed in this neighborhood.)
By comparison, the monthly mortgage on our cottage in Sydney was, after conversion, less than half of that price.
Still, we knew we were choosing to live in a more expensive neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, and we did so because it felt like a great place to raise our kids. We loved the community, the quiet cobblestone streets, and the access to Hudson River Park.
Our loft was essentially a large box, with windows only at the front. It was also a fifth-floor walk-up, and between the angry downstairs neighbors who complained constantly about the sound of kids moving around and the fact that I had to carry a toddler and a stroller up five brutal flights of stairs, we left in under a year.
We moved around the corner to another loft, this one even more expensive, and lasted a little over a year until the building was condemned and we had to move — again.
At one point, my husband and I had considered buying a property in NYC with our nest egg, but we didn’t have a clue how to navigate the competitive real-estate market, and it seemed clear we’d only get a teeny apartment for our budget.
The math didn’t add up, and the risk of owning freaked us out. So we kept rolling the dice on renting.
Between my husband and me separating, the kids outgrowing smaller apartments, and landlords unexpectedly hiking up the rent, I’ve moved about 10 times since coming to the US.
My kids got a solid free education, but college costs felt tough to swallow
I’m grateful my kids have been able to get a great public-school education in New York City.
Courtesy of Natasha Silva-Jelly
A financial reprieve in NYC is that public education is free, though school admissions can be complicated, with factors like zoning and lottery systems shaping where kids end up.
Thankfully, both of my boys got into a highly regarded public school in Manhattan, and I was impressed with their education.
I was also glad we (mostly) dodged expensive private schools — except when my youngest attended a language-immersion school for about $30,000 a year. He came out knowing basic Mandarin, which would have been worth the investment — only he’s since forgotten all of it.
Then comes the killer: college. After graduating from high school, my oldest was accepted into a prestigious university in the Midwest to study engineering.
Sure, he could’ve attended a more affordable or in-state school, but a lot of “New York rats” (that’s what my boys proudly call themselves) want to leave the city they grew up in — and their parents — to go to college somewhere else. Getting into a respected college also felt like a major flex, and we all felt the pressure for him to attend, no matter the cost.
So, his dad and I haggled over merit and financial aid and took out student loans to cover his first year. Add kitting out his dorm room, him blowing up our Seamless account (despite having a paid meal plan), and the costs of us flying out to visit and flying him home … year one probably cost around $70,000.
He didn’t end up staying after his first year, which meant our student loans were due far sooner than we planned. The silver lining of not completing his degree is that, unlike many college graduates in the US, he’s not saddled with four years’ worth of debt.
Going home feels like an expensive, uphill battle — and it’s tough being far from family
Our ideal time to travel to Australia would be in the winter, but it’s expensive and comes with challenges.
DenisTangneyJr/Getty Images
Our rent, as established, doesn’t leave much in the budget for vacations — or for airfare back to Australia to see family and friends.
As Aussies, our ideal time to go home is around Christmas, when it’s summer there, and many people are off work and school. However, that privilege can set us back upward of $4,000 in round-trip airfare alone for the four of us. On top of that, each way, we’d have to take two flights, totaling over 22 hours in the air.
In my opinion, we need three weeks for a proper trip Down Under, especially as I have to visit my loved ones in two cities.
Considering our sons’ public schools only granted about a week off around that time of year, it rarely seemed worth the money or jet lag. This also explains why we typically only make it home every other year.
Some costs are even harder to reconcile with when living on a separate continent and in a different time zone from so many loved ones. From afar, I’m watching my mum age from 10,000 miles away (she just turned 80), and how my sister must carry the load of caring for our father as he faces health issues.
There are so many milestone birthdays, weddings, funerals, and family events I’ve missed and can never get back.
Still, I’d choose moving to New York City every time
I don’t regret making the move to New York City over a decade ago.
Courtesy of Natasha Silva-Jelly
To be clear, a lot of these costs were tied to choices we made as we sought to give our family a certain kind of life in NYC.
Despite the emotional and financial pain, do I regret moving? Not for a New York minute. This city has an incredible, lively vibe. We’ve forged deep friendships, created new traditions, and lapped up the electrifying culture on tap.
I also feel connected to the world in a way I never did in Australia; I can be in the Caribbean in about four hours, Europe in seven — and I’ve met people from all walks of life.
There’s an energy and diversity here you won’t find anywhere else in the world, along with a feeling that you can do anything.
Regardless of any financial regrets and mistakes from the past 12 years, New York City is home.