A Murder In Silicon Valley

PRESENTED BY 1440 MEDIA

Happy Tuesday, Future Party. For those who appreciate a good metric, the New York Knicks’ NBA Finals victory wasn’t just their first championship in 53 years — it also delivered the highest average Finals viewership since 1998. An impressive 19.6 million people tuned in across the five-game series, a 116% increase over last year. Everyone loves a comeback.

Peter Thiel’s VC firm, Founders Fund, is gathering some of the biggest names in tech to kill each other… in a filmed version of the game Mafia.

Why It Hits: Silicon Valley has caught the media bug over the past year, acquiring talk shows, launching news outlets, and investing in original content. By rolling out its own version of a reality-TV hit (Peacock’s popular series The Traitors is a high-gloss take on Mafia), the tech industry is clearly on a mission not just to put its biggest names front and center, but to make them seem more human.

Behind The Games: Mafia the Game is only two episodes in, but it has somehow managed to pack as many C-suite execs into one room as the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference.

Final Guess: Solana says the game could give viewers more insight into these people than a traditional interview because “even the smartest people in the world have a very difficult time with this game.” That tracks when, during one round, Altman was killed by former OpenAI exec Ryan Beiermeister after a back-and-forth. Altman had previously fired Beiermeister after she criticized an erotic version of ChatGPT that was reportedly in the works. There’s nothing quite like a little revenge in front of the camera.

Next Game: Solana wants to expand Mafia the Game to include leaders from other industries, so we may be witnessing the first real expansion of the business-entertainment genre — Shark Tank was just the beginning.

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A new report from consulting giant PwC found that employers — especially in fields exposed to AI — are increasingly requiring senior-level skills for entry-level jobs.

Why It Hurts: It’s common knowledge that landing a white-collar job today is exceedingly difficult, but PwC’s new report shows exactly why: the expectations for entry-level applicants are anything but entry-level. With layoffs mounting and the pool of associate roles shrinking, positions once earmarked for new graduates may increasingly be going to workers much further along in their careers — and who now have little choice but to accept a pay cut.

Between The Resumés: PwC’s new report analyzed 2.4 million entry-level roles in the US… and found that AI is changing who gets hired.

Final Decision: PwC determined that a skill is considered “traditionally senior” if it “appeared more than 50 times in experienced, non-entry-level, high AI exposure job postings in 2019, but fewer than five times in entry-level, high AI exposure postings in 2019.” In other words, the bar for landing jobs where AI has transformed the work is now much, much higher. That’s because entry-level white-collar roles have historically involved many repetitive tasks, such as data management and research, which have increasingly been automated by chatbots.

The best way to stand out, then, is to excel at what chatbots still struggle with: being a critical-thinking human.

The Future: Considering the real-world, team-oriented experience now required for many entry-level jobs, a strong internship may be more valuable than a traditional college education.

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54.5% of you voted Yes in yesterday’s poll: Do you use a Roku device to stream content?

“I have a Roku TV, with an Apple TV connected for Apple Fitness+ workouts and a Fire TV Stick for playing Luna. I think Roku TV has the best UI of the three.”

“I needed a soundbar for my living room TV and found a Roku device that fit the bill. Can’t resist a multitasker! No regrets.”

“Best decision we made to get away from huge cable bills!!”

“Used to, but it’s become obsolete in my world. No need for it anymore.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join Poll Of The Day, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

📺 Fox has acquired Roku for $22 billion, with plans to keep the streaming platform operating independently.

⚽ Last Friday’s World Cup match between the US and Paraguay became the most-watched USMNT telecast ever, scoring nearly 16 million viewers.

🎮 Microsoft recently considered spinning off Xbox.

🤖 The US government has effectively shut down public access to Anthropic’s new models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5.

👓 Meta removed facial-recognition software from its smart-glasses app after it was uncovered by WIRED.

🛟 Startup Panthalassa wants to put floating data centers in the ocean.

🏀 Kith debuted a made-to-order capsule of Knicks championship-winning NBA Finals apparel.

👕 NIGO’s Human Made is acquiring Jun Takahashi’s Undercover, which would become a subsidiary of Human Made.

⌚ A Heuer Monaco watch worn by Steve McQueen during the filming of Le Mans is heading to auction at Sotheby’s… and could fetch up to $1 million.