Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

AI isn’t all about automating core business functions at Fortune 500 companies. Small and medium-sized businesses can also use AI to optimize, economize, and in some cases compete more effectively against much larger rivals. An Austin, Texas–based vegan cheese-maker called Rebel Cheese used it to level the playing field against a larger supplier. Specifically, the company developed a small system of AI tools to help it claw back overcharges from a major shipping carrier. The company is perhaps best known for winning a $750,000 investment from Mark Cuban, money it used to grow Rebel Cheese into what it says is now a $20 million business. Cuban recently spoke about the co…

If you enter a query into Quili.AI on January 31, your question won’t be answered by a large language model, but instead by residents from the Chilean community of Quilicura. The project aims to replace artificial intelligence with “analog intelligence,” to both highlight the environmental impact of AI, and to get people thinking consciously about their AI use. “We’re inviting people to have a day without AI,” Lorena Antiman from Corporación NGEN, an environmental organization focused in part on protecting Quilicura’s wetlands, says while speaking through a translator. Corporación NGEN spearheaded the project. Instead of going through a data center, each pr…

It’s the sort of thing you might not notice until it really matters, but the U.S. Postal Service recently changed how it defines the “postmark” on a piece of mail—warning that the postmark date is not a reliable indicator of when you actually mailed something. If you’re the sort of person who waits until the last minute to send time-sensitive mail, that means you’ll need to stand in line at your local post office and request a manual postmark when dropping off your mail. While the way mail is postmarked hasn’t undergone some major shift recently, the postal service set out earlier this year to clarify earlier what a postmark means and how the process works. B…

Living in Los Angeles and paying $1,000 a month for rent seems like a fantasy for many cash-strapped tenants, or a rental figure from decades ago. But a new proposal from architecture and design firm Gensler and the Pew Charitable Trust underscores the idea that more affordable urban living can be found in old, vacant office buildings. The analysis, which was initiated and funded by Pew and nonprofit Arnold Ventures, looks at the potential of a new kind of building conversion in Houston and Los Angeles, two U.S cities where this type of conversion would currently be legal. The aim is to build a better version of single-room occupancy units, or SROs, that have private …

When Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe crossed the finish line at the London Marathon on April 26, an Adidas attendant was waiting on the sidelines to collect his shoes. The attendant wrote Sawe’s record-breaking time, 1:59.30, on the side of the shoes, waited for him to take some photos with them, and then whisked them off to Adidas’s archives in Herzogenaurach, Germany. In that moment, the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 became the fastest shoe in the world. Sabastian Sawe Sawe was the first person to ever run a sub-two-hour marathon in an official race, followed closely by Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha, who finished with a time of 1:59.41. Fellow Ethiopian Tigist Assefa set…

For global companies, Africa’s promise has long been tempered by a persistent operational myth: that the continent is not ready for complex business. The reality is different, however. The barrier isn’t a lack of demand, but the inability of traditional global systems to handle Africa’s unique financial landscape. Nearly 400 million African adults remain on the fringes of the formal financial system, yet digital adoption is exploding. The conversation has decisively shifted from basic financial access to a more critical question: How can multinationals efficiently manage their core operations like paying suppliers, collecting revenue, and moving money across borders, …

As a home business owner, staying ahead of technology trends can significantly impact your content monetization efforts. Have you considered how emerging AI tools like Agentic AI could enhance your blogging or YouTube strategies? Understanding Agentic AI Agentic AI is a groundbreaking technology that automates decision-making processes, allowing creators to optimize their content in real-time. This means you can focus more on creativity while the AI handles analytics and engagement metrics. Real-World Applications Imagine using AI to analyze viewer engagement on your YouTube videos or blog posts. With Agentic AI, you can identify what content resonates best with your au…

In 2024, Amazon introduced its AI-powered HR assistant, which helps managers with performance reviews and workforce planning. Similarly, Tesla deployed AI personas to assist in real-time production monitoring and supply chain optimization. These advancements showcase how AI personas are becoming essential in business operations, streamlining processes, and enhancing decision-making. As artificial intelligence evolves, we’re witnessing two interrelated phenomena shaping our future: AI personas and agentic AI. These developments bring both opportunities and challenges. Understanding AI Personas AI personas are collections of digital elements that combine to form …

I’ve been using Claude Cowork extensively over the past month and a half. And not coincidentally, I’ve been more productive than I ever have in that same period. The shift to working agentically is something so profound, you really can’t understand it until you experience it for yourself. Just one example: As the operator of a business selling AI training courses online, email marketing is an important component of getting the word out about them. But much of the work is rote: segmenting my email list, creating templates, writing largely similar drafts, and scheduling them in my email provider—a piece of software I look forward to using about as much as a visit to the de…

Social media has fundamentally rewritten the rules of beauty. Trends that once took years to trickle from runway to consumer now emerge, peak, and drive real-world consultations within weeks. Consumers scroll past filler trends and noninvasive procedures during their lunch breaks and book appointments before dinner. The trend-to-treatment pipeline has never moved faster, and the stakes have never been higher. There’s a fundamental mismatch at the heart of the system: Aesthetic inspiration is social and collective, but aesthetic results are deeply personal. What works for one face, skin type, or bone structure won’t always work for another. Yet, consumers routinely mak…

More than 78% of companies are using AI at work. Much of its use has centered on hiring and recruiting. But AI’s influence is quickly seeping into other parts of doing business. For HR teams that are strapped for resources and with burgeoning demands on their time, AI is significantly reducing the burden of administrative work: More than 90% are already using AI to screen résumés, using the tech to communicate with or evaluate applicants. But now employers are experimenting with plenty of other use cases for AI tools. Fast Company reached out to a number of tech companies to find out how they are deploying AI beyond hiring and recruiting. As one human resourc…

With a new season of mass layoffs upon us, it seems corporate America has found a new scapegoat. When Amazon recently disclosed that upcoming layoffs would impact 14,000 corporate jobs, the tech giant said the cuts would help make Amazon leaner. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” HR leader Beth Galetti said in a memo. (Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has since clarified that the layoffs are driven by culture, not AI or the bottom line.) Other tech companies like Microsoft have trimmed headcount this year to the tune of over 15,000 layoffs, all the wh…

The current AI boom reminds me of the dot-com era, which I watched unfold from venture capital in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Lots of hype. Eye-watering investments. Genuine transformative potential. Most conversations about AI today focus on the obvious value, productivity, and efficiency gains. That’s real, but it’s the shallow end. The deeper potential is something else entirely: ending the linear take-make-waste economy and with it, our reliance on fossil fuels. For half a century, the global economy has run on a simple, destructive model. Extract finite resources from the Earth. Manufacture mostly disposable products. Throw away. Repeat. Petroleum into pa…

Precision agriculture uses tools and technologies such as GPS and sensors to monitor, measure, and respond to changes within a farm field in real time. This includes using artificial intelligence technologies for tasks such as helping farmers apply pesticides only where and when they are needed. However, precision agriculture has not been widely implemented in many rural areas of the United States. We study smart communities, environmental health sciences, and health policy and community health, and we participated in a research project on AI and pesticide use in a rural Georgia agricultural community. Our team, led by Georgia Southern University and the City …

For home business owners, retaining valuable knowledge within your organization can be a game changer. How are you currently using technology to ensure your expertise doesn’t walk out the door? Knowledge Management: Implementing AI tools can streamline the process of capturing and organizing critical business information, making it accessible to your team.Employee Training: AI can assist in creating personalized training programs that help new hires quickly get up to speed, ensuring continuity in knowledge transfer.Retention Strategies: Using AI analytics, you can identify knowledge gaps and proactively address them before they become a problem.Collaboration Tools: AI-en…

People often take walking for granted. We just move, one step after another, without ever thinking about what it takes to make that happen. Yet every single step is an extraordinary act of coordination, driven by precise timing between spinal cord, brain, nerves, muscles, and joints. Historically, people have used stopwatches, cameras, or trained eyes to assess walking and its deficits. However, recent technological advances such as motion capture, wearable sensors, and data science methods can record and quantify characteristics of step-by-step movement. We are researchers who study biomechanics and human performance. We and other researchers are increasingly app…

Hurricanes are America’s most destructive natural hazards, causing more deaths and property damage than any other type of disaster. Since 1980, these powerful tropical storms have done more than US$1.5 trillion in damage and killed more than 7,000 people. The No. 1 cause of the damages and deaths from hurricanes is storm surge. Storm surge is the rise in the ocean’s water level, caused by a combination of powerful winds pushing water toward the coastline and reduced air pressure within the hurricane compared to the pressure outside of it. In addition to these factors, waves breaking close to the coast cause the sea level to increase near the coastline, a phenomeno…

Imagine starting a new job where your onboarding feels personalized just for you, with an AI assistant guiding you through training, introducing you to teammates, and checking in on how you’re settling in. That level of personalization in the workplace isn’t just a concept for the future – it’s already here and happening more rapidly than many HR departments anticipate. AI is transforming HR in the workplace. In 2026, AI won’t just take over repetitive tasks, but it will fundamentally change how companies hire, onboard, coach, and retain employees. The result is HR teams that are more strategic, data-driven, and more human than ever. After more than a decade worki…

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many executives think that bringing employees back to the office is the secret to restoring productivity. But they’re wrong. That’s not what’s happening in those newly populated offices. Instead, your employees are more likely to be joining video calls from company desks and wearing noise-canceling headphones while doing work they could have done at home. Only now they’re paying $20 to commute and eating sad desk salads to get through the day. The timing couldn’t be more ironic. A new wave of return-to-office (RTO) mandates arrive just as companies pour millions into AI initiatives designed to automate work, eliminate roles, an…

A question I often get when I train editorial teams on the use of AI is, “Is using AI cheating?” Although it’s a yes or no question, it’s obviously not a yes or no answer. The short answer is sometimes, but the key to figuring out the long answer is using the tools with an open mind. If you’re a professional in a field like journalism, you’ll generally be able to tell when it’s speeding up drudgery and when your judgment and expertise are most needed. However, the recent viral story in New York magazine about how colleges and universities are struggling with rampant, unauthorized AI use from students got me thinking about what’s happening much earlier in the pipel…

In the past several years, the trend of “going direct” in public relations has gotten trendy. Broadly, the idea is that certain companies—mainly tech startups—stand a better chance of advancing their own narratives by sidestepping traditional PR and media altogether. Instead, the company founder, fellow executives, and partners would post content to the internet and social media to directly communicate with their customers. There’s naturally been a lot of consternation in the media and PR industries about how effective this kind of approach is, the real value of traditional PR, and whether a company can really chart their own path without some kind of third-party validat…

Over the last five years, artificial intelligence has shifted from a fringe interest to one of the most important drivers of global economic growth. So important has the technology become that the United Nations Security Council held its first open debate on artificial intelligence last month. While little of substance was achieved, a General Assembly resolution authorizing the creation of an independent scientific panel on AI may have a more enduring impact. One of the core questions this panel will seek to answer is how AI can support sustainable economic development without entrenching inequality. The potential dangers here have deep historical parallels. AI runs on …

Below, Tom Griffiths shares five key insights from his new book, The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind. Griffiths is a professor of psychology and computer science at Princeton University and director of the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence. What’s the big idea? How can we study something we can’t see or touch? Mathematics allows us to develop rigorous theories about how minds work. It also lets us use those theories to build artificial intelligence systems. Just as physicists seek to identify Laws of Nature, cognitive scientists hope to discover the Laws of Thought. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Gr…