*By Michael Teich*
Music artist and producer Wyclef Jean is a three-time Grammy winner, cannabis entrepreneur, and a former presidential candidate of Haiti.
Now, he's looking to create the world's first hip-hop guitar.
"It's a whole new instrument," Jean said Wednesday in an interview on Cheddar. "It's software-based with actually real strings."
When Jean isn't piloting his latest projects, he's acting as a mentor for up-and-coming artists. The music mogul recently partnered with Fiverr, a digital marketplace for freelancers, and will offer his advice to users of the company's new platform, Fiverr Pro Music and Audio.
Freelancing is a delicate balance –– one that many Americans are forced to strike in a gig economy. A recent study from the [Department of Labor](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.nr0.htm) found that 10.1 percent of workers earn their keep in "alternative environments," like temp agencies or freelance industries.
And the music business isn't exactly hospitable: In 2017, recording artists only earned [12 percent](https://www.businessinsider.com/musicians-received-12-percent-43-billion-generated-by-music-industry-study-2018-8?utm_source=reddit.com) of the income produced by the industry, a marginal piece of a $43 billion market in the U.S.
His latest partnership with Fiverr allows Jean to help artists and enter a classroom, albeit a virtual one.
“If I wasn’t going to be famous, I was going to be a teacher.”
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/wyclef-jean-2).
Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania. And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology in artificial intelligence. Chambers is trying take some of the lessons he learned while riding a wave that turned Cisco into the world's most valuable company in 2000 before a crash hammered its stock price and apply them as an investor in AI startups. He recently discussed AI's promise and perils during an interview with The Associated Press.
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer breaks down Apple & Amazon's latest product drops—what's hot, what's hype, and what really matters for users.
Police in Northern California pulled over a self-driving Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn. But without a driver behind the wheel, they could not issue a moving violation ticket.
With satellites already in orbit, defense contractor L3Harris is standing by to accelerate Trump's executive order. We take an inside look at the technology
Electronic Arts, the video game maker of “Madden NFL,” “The Sims,” and other popular titles, is being acquired and taken private for about $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms.
YouTube will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect.
