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Mark Cuban’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is well known. He has called the technology the “ultimate time-saving hack” and bluntly stated that if you’re not learning AI, “you’re f—ed.” But with his latest investment, the billionaire bypassed the plethora of AI startups and focused instead on something more human-centered. Cuban has invested an undisclosed amount in live events company Burwoodland, which produces nightlife experiences throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The investment will make him a minority owner in the company. Founded in 2015 by Alex Badanes and Ethan Maccoby, the New York City-based company says it has sold more than 1.5 million…

The distance between a world-changing innovation and its funding often comes down to four minutes—the average time a human reviewer tends to spend on an initial grant application. In those four minutes, reviewers must assess alignment, eligibility, innovation potential, and team capacity, all while maintaining consistency across thousands of applications. It’s an impossible ask that leads to an impossible choice: either slow down and review fewer ideas or speed up and risk missing transformative ones. At MIT Solve, we’ve spent a year exploring a third option: teaching AI to handle the repetitive parts of review so humans can invest real time where judgment matters mos…

At the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, the iconic cauldron of the Games is putting on a daily show just like its athletes. This year, for the first time ever, there are two cauldrons lit simultaneously at different locations. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s geometric drawings, both cauldrons expand and contract, respond to music, and emit their own light—and one will put on hourly performances for viewers throughout the Games. The tradition of the Olympic flame and cauldron dates back 100 years or more. Historically, the Games are opened with a relay ceremony wherein torch bearers bring the flame to the cauldron, which remains lit until the closing ceremony.…

Working at the office all day was a struggle for Nicola Sura. She’d seen the toll that working a corporate job had taken on her mom’s physical and mental health, and she never wanted the same thing to happen to her. Around six months into Sura’s first full-time role in 2019, she started questioning her life choices, as well as those of everyone around her. “I was, like, how are people doing this? Everyone seems completely fine. Everyone’s just going about their day,” Sura, who works in corporate retail, tells Fast Company. “It was killing me to just be there for eight hours at my desk.” The move to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic was when Sura …

Americans’ hope for their future has fallen to a new low, according to new polling. In 2025, only about 59% of Americans gave high ratings when asked to evaluate how good their life will be in about five years, the lowest annual measure since Gallup began asking this question almost 20 years ago. It’s a warning about the depth of the gloom that has fallen over the country over the past few years. In the data, Gallup’s “current” and “future” lines have tended to move together over time — when Americans are feeling good about the present, they tend to feel optimistic about the future. But the most recent measures show that while current life satisfaction has declined over …

As Big Tech races to weave AI into nearly every product, Mozilla is betting some users want the opposite: the ability to turn it off. Last week, the company announced new controls to allow users of its Firefox browser to decide when to use AI. When Firefox 148 debuts later this month, users will be able to manage or disable individual AI features like translations, tab grouping and a sidebar for chatbot like Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Le Chat Mistral. Much of Mozilla’s vision around AI was outlined in its annual State of Mozilla report, which was released last month and calls for a new Star Wars-style “rebel alliance” composed of developers, cybersecurit…

In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone. Other fiction magazines have also reported a high number of AI-generated submissions. This is only one example of a ubiquitous trend. A legacy system relied on the difficulty of writing and cognition to limit volume. Generative AI overwhelms the system because the humans on the receiving end can’t keep up. This is happening everywhere. Newspapers are being inun…

Below, co-authors Jared Lindzon and Joe O’Connor share five key insights from their new book, Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek. Jared is a freelance journalist who has been reporting on the future of work for publications like Fast Company, Time magazine, and the Globe and Mail for over a decade. Joe is the CEO and cofounder of Work Time Reduction, a global consulting and research organization that helps organizations find innovative ways to reduce working hours. Over the last eight years, it has helped hundreds of companies and thousands of employees pilot a four-day workweek in North America, Europe, the U.K., and Australia. What’s the b…

It looks like ordinary paint, but a new coating called Lilypad Paint has a hidden ability to pull moisture out of the air. It works like a dehumidifier, without the energy use. If it’s on the wall in your bathroom, it can suck water vapor out of the air after you’ve taken a shower. The paint holds the humidity in nano-size pores, and then slowly releases it as humidity levels fall in the room. Under the paint, a layer of custom primer “acts like a smart gatekeeper ensuring that vapor doesn’t end up accumulating in the wall,” says Derek Stein, founder and CEO of Adept Materials, the startup behind the product. A passive fix for moisture in modern buildings The t…

James Van Der Beek was one of the biggest stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s. His family still couldn’t afford the cost of cancer. The actor, 48, best known for his portrayal of Dawson Leery in the ’90s hit Dawson’s Creek, died Wednesday. Van Der Beek’s passing comes a little more than a year after he announced on social media that he was battling colorectal cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2023. And while the actor and father’s untimely death is undeniably tragic, there’s another heartbreaking piece of the story to be told. His family was desperately struggling to afford the cost of his cancer treatment. Despite Van Der Beek’s successful career, w…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. Is ‘AI slop’ code here to stay? A few months ago I wrote about the dark side of vibe coding tools: they often generate code that introduces bugs or security vulnerabilities that surface later. They can solve an immediate problem while making a codebase harder to maintain over time. It’s true that more developers are using AI coding assistants, and using them more frequently and for more tasks. But many seem to be weighing the time saved today against the cleanup they may face tomor…

Advertising in generative AI systems has become a fault line. Last month, OpenAI released that it would start running ads in ChatGPT. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, OpenAI’s chief financial officer defended the introduction of ads inside ChatGPT, arguing that it is a way to “democratize access to artificial intelligence,” and that this decision is aligned with its mission: “AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the benefit of humanity who can pay.” Within days, Anthropic fired back in a Super Bowl commercial, ridiculing the idea that ads belong inside systems people trust for advice, therapy, and decision-making. In some way, this is a spat about ho…

When I cofounded Brilliant Earth in 2005, e-commerce was still in its infancy. I believed technology could reshape the jewelry industry entirely—changing how customers find pieces they love, personalizing their own designs, and reimagining the customer experience. We launched as a digital-first venture to do just that. Now, two decades into our pioneering digital journey, I’ve realized something surprising: Our most sophisticated online tools have actually made in-person interactions more valuable. I believe the brands leading the next wave of innovation aren’t choosing between digital and physical. They’re using digital excellence to help create meaningful in-person …

The social media trial brought by a 20-year-old Californian plaintiff known as Kaley or KGM, putting Meta and YouTube in front of a jury, has captured the world’s attention. The bellwether trial is a test case for the liability of social media platforms and how much they could be on the hook financially if found to have caused harm to their users. KGM, for her part, alleges that she faced anxiety, depression and body image issues after using Instagram. The proceedings could establish the first real legal boundaries for what has been up to now largely unregulated algorithmic design, determining whether amplifying harmful content amounts to negligence. A verdict against…

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics may be winding down, but the memories will linger for years to come. The competition began on Wednesday, February 4, with the official opening ceremony on Friday, February 6. A little more than two weeks later, the Games will conclude with an epic closing ceremony on Sunday, February 22. So much action was packed into the event that it was a full-time job keeping up. Since a lot of people have actual full-time jobs, here’s a look back at the highlights, endearing moments, and heartbreaks of the XXV Olympic Winter Games. How can I track 2026 Winter Olympics medals? First things first. You can stay up to date with all of the …

You’re interested in AI but you’re human: You’ve got emails to answer, deadlines to meet, and you don’t have 40 hours a week to sift through academic papers on large language models. You just want to know what’s happening, why it matters, and maybe how to use it to get home a little earlier. In that spirit, here are five AI podcasts to help you get smarter and stay informed without wasting your time. The AI Daily Brief For the busy professional who needs the headlines fast, there’s The AI Daily Brief. It’s usually about 20 minutes, which is perfect for the commute or while you’re brewing that second pot of coffee. Host Nathaniel Whittemore does a great …

AMC, the world’s largest movie theater chain and a one-time darling of meme stock traders, said this week that it expects to continue closing more movie theaters than it opens going forward. While the move is sure to disappoint cinephiles, AMC believes that shuttering certain cinemas will ultimately be better for the company’s bottom line. Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming AMC theater closings. What’s happened? On Monday, AMC Entertainment Holdings reported its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results as well as its full-year 2025 results. It’s fair to say the company did not have a blockbuster quarter or year. For the company’s Q4 2025, which en…

AI has not changed the importance of judgment in product leadership. What it has changed is the cost of getting it wrong. Early in my career, I learned a principle that still guides how I think about building products: The strongest decisions rarely start with perfect data. They start with conviction, a hypothesis shaped by experience, customer insight, and pattern recognition. What ultimately separates high-performing product organizations from average ones is how quickly and confidently instinct is validated. That validation is the true role of product analytics, and increasingly, it is where AI amplifies its value. Analytics tests whether what you believed woul…

Late last month, frozen food manufacturer Ajinomoto Foods North America announced a recall of roughly 3 million pounds of not-ready-to-eat products after customers reported finding glass in rice. In the U.S., many of the recalled products were sold at Trader Joe’s locations. Now that the recall has been dramatically expanded, with new products being pulled from the shelves. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On March 3, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) posted a recall notice announcing that Ajinomoto Foods North America was expanding its earlier recall to include an additional 33 million pounds of various ready-to-eat and not-re…

Don’t bring your mom or dad to an interview with Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary if you were planning on it. On a recent appearance on Fox Business’ Varney & Co., O’Leary argued that doing so—bringing parents to a job interview—sends a “horrific signal” to employers, and calls it a “big red flag.” “First question I’d have to the son or daughter, I’d say, ‘Do you want me to hire your mother or you? What’s she doing here?'” O’Leary said. “That résumé goes right into the garbage.” This isn’t simply a hypothetical situation. The data shows a not insignificant number of young jobseekers are tapping in parents throughout the hiring process to boost their odd…

“Sean,” the CEO of a health technology startup, invited Garry to join what he called a strategy offsite. By mid-morning, it had become something else. Six people, a whiteboard, a Series A closing in ninety days. The question on the table: where do we invest next? More engineers? A bigger sales team? Another content hire? Garry set down his coffee and asked a different question. “What if we stopped asking what we can afford to build, and started asking what we can now imagine building—that we genuinely couldn’t have a year ago?” The room shifted. So did the conversation. And that reframe—from resource allocation to possibility expansion—is the strategic inflection …

When considering AI’s impact in cities, many residents and government officials envision a dark future of unbridled surveillance, hollowed-out city halls and unaccountable bots calling the shots based on biased training data. We, on the other hand, embrace a much more optimistic vision. With ambitious local leadership, AI, and especially the coming wave of agentic AI, can offer a profound opportunity not only to make government services more efficient but also to transform how cities fulfill their end of the social contract. As long-time public servants and champions of government innovation at our respective universities, we understand the challenges local governmen…

If you’re looking for a job or hiring, the question is no longer whether AI is involved—but how aggressively you’re using it. Generative AI has wormed into every stage of recruitment, from drafting applications and filtering candidates to AI-led interviews. It’s the wild west out there. (And it’s getting wilder.) Both employers and prospective employees are exasperated. Examples abound. Last year, Anthropic urged prospective applicants to not use AI systems when applying to jobs at the AI company, even asking them to sign a contract to confirm they read and understood the ask. Goldman Sachs has implemented blocks and employs AI detection software, while McKinsey act…

A layoff doesn’t just remove your role. It disrupts your sense of professional stability. I’ve led workforce reductions at Amazon, Microsoft, and inside private equity-backed companies. I’ve sat in decision meetings where headcount decisions were debated alongside budgets and operating models. I’ve helped leaders understand how layoffs affect company culture. I’ve also supported leaders and executives who lost their jobs. The emotions usually follow a pattern: shock, self-doubt, and then a period of adjustment. But here’s what I’ve learned from those coaching conversations: top performers don’t lose confidence because they lack skills or ability. They lose it beca…

The steady encroachment of email into all moments of life has been quiet but formidable. A quick glance during a first date. Surreptitiously tapping out a reply during a wedding ceremony. Some even admit to refreshing their inbox at a funeral. Often it’s not the infinite scroll on social media that triggers the nervous phone-glancing. It’s the inbox. More than half of professionals check work email outside regular working hours, according to a recent study published by ZeroBounce, surveying 1,157 professionals in the United States and Europe last month. Nearly 3 in 4 professionals feel pressure to respond to emails off the clock, with that pressure intensify…