Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Generative AI is evolving along two distinct tracks: on one side, savvy users are building their own retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, personal agents, or even small language models (SLMs) tailored to their contexts and data. On the other, the majority are content with “LLMs out of the box”: Open a page, type a query, copy the output, paste it elsewhere. That divide — between builders and consumers — is shaping not only how AI is used but also whether it delivers value at all. The difference is not just individual skill. It’s also organizational. Companies are discovering that there are two categories of AI use: the administrative (summarize a report, dr…

A few days ago, the electric grid in California hit a new milestone: At 7pm on March 29, batteries provided 12.3 gigawatts of power—roughly as much as six Hoover Dams, or around 43% of the total demand on the grid. Nearly all of that battery storage was built in the last five years. “Until 2020 or 2021, battery storage was still quite expensive, but we’ve seen huge price drops over the last few years,” says Nicolas Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember, a global energy think tank. When it’s paired with solar power, it can “bring some of that excess generation in the middle of the day to where it’s really needed, which is during the peak demand in th…

Once a year, a crowd of thousands of runners fill Central Park as they look up at the sky with joy, relief, exhaustion, and tears, knowing they just completed the iconic TCS New York City Marathon. Recognizing the endless storytelling opportunities that come from the event, New York Road Runners (NYRR), the nonprofit behind the marathon, is launching its own production studio, East 89th St Productions. “It was clear to me that this was a huge opportunity for the organization from the first day that I went to the finish line of the marathon,” NYRR CEO Rob Simmelkjaer says. “It’s rare that you can look and see total strangers by the hundreds, having a moment that y…

When I was Chief of Staff at CoinDesk, I was in charge of the publication’s approach to AI. One of the earliest debates our internal AI committee had was about whether we should allow AI to index our articles or not. Most of the people on the committee thought we should block AI crawlers. While the fury of media copyright lawsuits had yet to begin, the issue had gotten some traction, and it was easy to make the case that we shouldn’t give our content away to AI companies to summarize unless we were compensated in some way. But one person boldly made the case for the other side: He argued that, if AI becomes the new way people find information, shutting ourselves o…

“Tron: Ares” powered up the box office grid in the top spot this weekend, but Disney’s third entry in the sci-fi franchise fell short of expectations. Despite some favorable reviews — including a three-out-of-four-star one from The Associated Press — the new “Tron” film starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges earned $33.5 million, according to Comscore estimates on Sunday. The big-budget project, reported to cost around $150 million, arrived 15 years after “Tron: Legacy” opened to $44 million before grossing more than $400 million globally. The latest chapter follows a battle between two powerful technology firms, Emcom and Dillinger, who face off against the s…

Working with AI as a team isn’t about knowing the latest technology. It’s about changing your mindset to build skills AI can’t replace, focusing on outcomes, not optics, and leaving room for strategic tests. View the full article

Pricing is one of the most powerful growth levers a business has, yet it is still one of the most overlooked. While teams spend months refining product and brand, pricing decisions are too often rushed, emotionally charged, or guided by instinct rather than insight. Under the pressure of rising costs and competitive pressures, many leadership teams resort to the fastest fix: promotions to meet short-term targets or price increases to plug a margin leak. The companies that consistently outperform take a different approach. They treat pricing as a strategic, evidence-led discipline. They ground pricing in how customers perceive value and make decisions to deliver gr…

America is at a generational tipping point. The next five years will usher in a whole new class of leaders as powerful positions shift from one generation to the next. Leadership roles are transitioning away from baby boomers, whether they like it or not. Millennials and Gen Z are poised to rise in the ranks, however much of the business canon and available literature offers advice from an irrelevant world—a world before hybrid offices, social media, and kiss cams at Coldplay concerts. Leaders are navigating digital and IRL (in real life) challenges where the older generations’ leadership styles are incongruous with the current moment’s needs. So how does one navi…

Contract roles can feel like the perfect job setup: flexible hours, work-from-home perks, and a way to break into your dream company. For some, they also serve as a temporary solution until a more permanent position comes along. Yet sometimes when freelancers decide to transition to a full-time gig, their contract history can potentially come back to bite them—even when it shouldn’t. In a job interview, employers might ask: Can you work effectively on a team? Can you take direction from a manager? Will you think about your work long term? Or they might not ask at all, but they’ll still wonder. To be clear: Freelancing or contract work is work, of course. …

AI has now arrived at the Treasury Department. Sam Corcos, a former startup leader and Department of Government Efficiency affiliate now serving as chief information officer at the Treasury Department, appears to have approved spending at least $1.5 million on up to 3,000 licenses for ChatGPT, the OpenAI platform, federal spending records show. The agency has obligations to spend $1.5 million on the services, and has already outlaid more than $500,000 for the technology, those records show. Fast Company obtained a user agreement showing that Treasury is allowing employees to use ChatGPT for “authorized” mission purposes. Such purposes include using the technolog…

2025 was defined by reports of a “low-hire, low-fire” environment: the unemployment rate remained fairly low, at just over 4% in December; yet headlines of constant layoffs seemed to dominate the news cycle, and those who are unemployed are taking longer to find work. It’s all been very confusing. And the most recent U.S. jobs report, released today, presents more mixed signals. This week’s report indicated American employers added 130,000 jobs in January, and the Labor Department reported the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%. Everything in the report isn’t good — it also indicated just 181,000 jobs were created last year, which is the lowest number since 2020 — but…

Robinhood is betting that its customers want to trade on absolutely everything. On Tuesday, the popular stock-trading app unveiled a slate of updates to its prediction markets business, aggressively expanding into sports. Now, Robinhood users can trade contracts tied to specific professional football players’ performances, as well as pre-packaged combos for individual games. Early next year, customers will be able to combine up to ten outcomes — such as winners, spreads, and totals — into a single, custom-built contract. Robinhood’s news site, Sherwood, is also launching a new sports newsletter, Scoreboard. Eventually, Robinhood plans to launch contracts that sp…

When COVID-19 hit, our business came to a sudden halt. One moment our calendar was full, the next, meetings and engagements were disappearing. Companies we’d worked with for years shifted their focus overnight, pouring their energy into keeping doors open and team members safe. Like so many others, we found ourselves sidelined—and facing some hard conversations. While uncertainty hung heavy in the air, our small team was unusually open with each other. We talked candidly about the challenges, the personal toll, and what it might all mean for the business. Without setting out to do so, we had built a foundation of psychological safety—one that made navigating a global …

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Is the whole universe just a simulation? —Moumita B., age 13, Dhaka, Bangladesh How do you know anything is real? Some things you can see directly, like your fingers. Other things, like your chin, you need a mirror or a camera to see. Other things can’t be seen, but you believe in them because a parent or a teacher told you, or you read it in a book. As a physicist, I use sensitive scientific instruments and complicated math to try to figure out what’s real and what’s not. But none of these sources of…

Snapchat rankled some of its most loyal (and heavy) users when it announced last week it will begin charging for storage plans for Memories, its version of a digital archive for Snaps and stories. Even though the Santa Monica, California-based social media company promised that “nothing will change” for the vast majority of Snapchatters who have less than 5 gigabytes (GB) of Memories, it has yet to disclose when it will begin rolling out the paid storage plans. The company told TechCrunch that plans will range from $1.99 per month to $15.99 per month for storage plans, depending on the amount of data of Memories. At stake is the size of your Memories, and the comp…

The way we edit images is in the midst of a massive reinvention right now. Adjustments that once required costly software and professional-level know-how are suddenly at our fingertips 24/7—with instant results and not even an ounce of skill required. And yet, for all the fantastic feats these fancy new AI image remixing genies of ours can accomplish, there are still times when a simple specialty tool can save the day and make your life instantly easier. Today’s Cool Tool is a perfect example. It’s an incredibly useful photo-editing resource that does one specific thing and does it insanely well. And—oh, yes—it’s completely free to use. This tip origin…

If you ride along a bike path in the U.K. city of Leeds and approach a street, the traffic light can automatically turn green for you—or stay green if you’re already midway across. The city is one of a growing number testing technology that uses sensors, anonymous data, and AI to make it easier to cross streets. Made by a company called VivaCity (known as Viva in the U.S.), the sensors can detect cyclists and pedestrians from more than 200 feet away. In some cases, someone on a bike might not need to stop at the corner. Pedestrians can keep walking without breaking their stride. (Cities can choose to program traffic signals to give cyclists either a shorter wait or f…

There is a strange gravitational pull in the AI ecosystem right now. Every founder wants to raise a monster round. A $50 million seed. A $200 million Series A. The kind of fundraise that makes headlines, melts your inbox, and gets your parents to finally understand you have a real job. I’ve raised both kinds of rounds. A $12 million one that looked incredible in TechCrunch. And recently, an intentionally small but oversubscribed pre-seed for my new company, Empromptu.ai, where investors fought for allocation like we were handing out Taylor Swift tickets. Having lived on both sides, here is the truth no one in AI land wants to say out loud: A mega round might be the fa…