Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

“AI;DR” is new internet speak for AI-generated slop posts have just dropped. It is a riff on the initialism “TL;DR” (“too long; didn’t read”), which is often wielded as a criticism of a piece of writing simply too long or confusing to be worth the time it takes to read. The AI slopification of LinkedIn, X, and other social media platforms has been much discussed. A 2024 study found that more than 50% of long-form LinkedIn posts are likely AI-assisted—a surprise to exactly no one who has spent more than a few minutes scrolling the feed. That number has likely only increased in recent years, as AI becomes more embedded in our daily processes. We’re now entering the era …

Generational conflict has become one of the most overused explanations for workplace tension, with plenty of stereotypical blame to go around: Baby Boomers resist change. Millennials lack loyalty. Gen Z is lazy. But after more than three decades working inside founder-led and multi-generational companies—from first-generation startups to fourth-generation enterprises—I’ve learned something counterintuitive: Generational conflict usually isn’t about age. It’s about clarity. Family-owned businesses offer a powerful lens on this issue. In the U.S., approximately 87% of businesses are family-owned, collectively employing millions of people and contributing signifi…

Everyone who has tried to code with Anthropic’s Claude Code AI agents runs into the same usability problem: If you run two or three concurrent artificial intelligence sessions—say, one rewriting your server code, another generating tests, a third doing background research—you are forced to manually hunt through separate terminal tabs, each one generating a relentless stream of machine-readable log entries, just to figure out what each program is actually doing at any given moment. Not only is it hard to follow what’s really going on, but not checking constantly can also lead to problems, as agents might stop to ask you something and you won’t notice it for minutes or hou…

If the 1990 classic movie Ghost is any indication, the dead love a good tune. We all remember when the recently deceased Sam (Patrick Swayze) had his infamous pottery session with his very alive partner Molly (Demi Moore). Now, Liquid Death and Spotify are aiming to use music in a similar way, by giving a few hundred of the recently deceased the opportunity to hear their favorite music for all of eternity. The two brands have collaborated on what they claim to be the first-ever Bluetooth-enabled speaker urn. The tasteful white urn has a top outfitted with a Bluetooth speaker. Spotify is also introducing the “Eternal Playlist Generator” in the U.S., where you can…

A public showdown between the The President administration and Anthropic is hitting an impasse as military officials demand the artificial intelligence company bend its ethical policies by Friday or risk damaging its business. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei drew a sharp red line 24 hours before the deadline, declaring his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s final demand to allow unrestricted use of its technology. Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, can afford to lose a defense contract. But the ultimatum this week from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer scie…

Target will stop selling cereals containing synthetic colors by the end of May. The Minneapolis-based discounter said Friday it had been phasing out synthetic colors in cereals for several years. Right now, 85% of its cereal sales already come from products made without synthetic dyes. Target said it has worked with national brands and its private brands to reformulate products as needed. Some cereals — including Trix and Lucky Charms, which are made by General Mills — will have updated formulations, Target said. Target said it will no longer carry brands that don’t reformulate, but it didn’t name the brands. General Mills announced last year that it planned t…

“We are cooked.” That’s the sentence I see with every AI-generated Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube short made with Seedance 2.0. And yes, we are. The walls of reality have finally vanished, sucked in by a black hole of Nvidia chips. So I’m going to Nancy Reagan the hell out of everyone and demand a global public service announcement like that old “Just Say No” to drugs campaign, which was everywhere when I was growing up. We need Mr. T back to make young and old fools listen up, because the companies printing money with their generative video tech are doing zilch to fix the planetary problem they have created. The message? Everyone should stop believing everyt…

Gee whiz, Gboard: You’re really falling behind. For all the many ways Google’s Gboard keyboard makes tapping out text a breeze on Android, its ability to transcribe your speech and turn it into words isn’t exactly awe-inspiring. Android’s voice-to-text setup has always been pretty good, relatively speaking—but now, newer and more effective options are popping up, and it’s suddenly seeming like a system from the past. Last month, I introduced readers of my Android Intelligence newsletter to a new Android voice typing tool called Typeless that blows Gboard out of the water with its ability to actually understand what you’re saying and transform it into accurate,…

Small-business owners are up against a lot. It can be difficult to come up with the funding required to take an idea and turn it into something profitable, especially in an economy that can often feel less stable than many of us might prefer. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad idea to start your own small business. In fact, the opposite is often true. If you have an idea and a plan you believe in, the future of your small business can be wide open. Of course, there are a few considerations to keep in mind along the way, Chedva Ludmir tells Fast Company. Ludmir, who founded the consulting and coaching firm Consider Labs, regularly works with entrepreneurs…

Smartphones have been the greatest drivers of creative democratization over the past 15 years, giving people a powerful voice and platform. Recent advancements in the “brains” behind these devices are almost limitless, from their software and processing power to their AI capabilities. But what about their bodies? For years, the smartphone’s physical form has remained a familiar slab of glass and ceramic. This form factor, once revolutionary, is now becoming a physical constraint on creativity. Over time, smartphone design has created a paradox. The very tool meant to capture our memories can prevent us from truly living in the moment. While the intention was to connec…

The rise of full-body MRI scans has been framed as a victory for consumer empowerment. Skip the referrals. Skip the waiting. Pay out of pocket and finally see what is happening inside your body, before it’s too late. For many, especially women, these scans are compelling. They offer agency in a healthcare system that often feels slow, dismissive, and reactive, rather than preventive. What many women would be surprised to learn, however, is despite the name, many full-body MRI scans do not reliably screen for breast cancer, the most common cancer in women. Women make roughly 80% of healthcare purchasing decisions in the United States. They spend more out of pocket …

In graduate school, my experimental archaeology professor told a student to create a door socket—the hole in a door frame that a bolt slides into—in a slab of sandstone by pecking at it with a rounded stone. After a couple of weeks, the student presented his results to the class. “I pecked the sandstone about 10,000 times,” he said, “and then it broke.” This kind of experience is known as individual learning. It works through trial and error, with lots of each. Also known as reinforcement learning, it is how children, chimpanzees, crows, and AI often learn to do something on their own, such as making a simple tool or solving a puzzle. But individual learning has l…

Sales has historically been a true proving ground for new technological breakthroughs. CRM systems, predictive analytics, tools that promise better targeting, faster follow-up, and higher close rates have to be proven, or shown to be false in the realm of sales. The next technology to be proven is agentic AI. Agentic AI will create the most profound transformation sales will undergo in this century. Agentic AI systems can act independently, pursue goals, adapt to context, and collaborate with humans through the duration of a sales cycle, no matter how short or elongated. AI alone already saves sales team members over two hours a day in admin tasks, and agentics will …

Zig-zagging around the glass-and-steel perimeter of the UC Berkeley Grimes Engineering Center, 36 thin metal rods could be what it takes to prevent the building’s total destruction. The rods are the central element of a novel seismic-responsive structural system that is designed to help the building snap back to its original shape in the event of a major earthquake. Their trick is an embedded cluster of taut cables made from a highly flexible compound called a shape-memory alloy that’s capable of bending under tension—like the lateral shaking in a California earthquake—and then straightening out. Developed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill …

One of the great tales from basketball lore is how coach Phil Jackson led teams like the Bulls and the Lakers to dynasty status. Working with legends like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, he might have let the all-stars run the show. Instead, his success hinged on transparency. Jackson gave players clear, constructive feedback. For example, he urged Jordan to cut back on scoring and involve his teammates more, recognizing that team success required more than a scoring leader. It’s a valuable lesson for business leaders today. Feedback can be tough to give. It can be uncomfortable. But withholding honest feedback is a disservice—to employees and to the company. As C…

The conference room door opened, and the team filed back to their desks. Sam had missed the meeting. A client call had run long; it happens. He leaned over the cubicle wall as Elaine sat down. “What did I miss?” he asked. She paused. “Nothing big. Just the usual.” That answer should concern every leader. Because something did happen in that room. Slides were shown. Words were spoken. Time was invested. But nothing stuck. No idea traveled, and no action accelerated. A meeting happened, but communication did not. George Bernard Shaw once wrote that the biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. Leaders fall into that illusion more …

While social media platforms have a habit of copying each other, there’s one area where TikTok is forging its own path. TikTok doesn’t use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for direct messages, the BBC reports. In contrast, the security measure is used by Meta Platforms for services like Facebook and WhatsApp. It’s also integrated into Signal, Apple, and Google’s in-device messages, and Snapchat. End-to-end encryption means only those involved in a conversation can read those messages. These other platforms argue this is critical for users’ privacy as it means the companies and law enforcement are unable to see any of the content that users send. However, in its…

At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we enable high-level women to mentor each other to achieve personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring.  This month, I introduce to you Alma Derricks. With broad experience ranging from strategy partner at Deloitte to global sales and marketing leader at Cirque du Soleil, she is the founder of REV, an award-winning strategy consultancy that crafts and launches distinctive campaigns and new ventures for the world’s most coveted brands. For decades, she has he…

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. Familiar tensions around Sam Altman OpenAI CEO Sam Altman voiced his support for Anthropic in its dispute with the Pentagon over the use of its AI for targeting autonomous weapons and in domestic mass surveillance. He did so in a company meeting and during a CNBC Squawk Box appearance last Friday, the day Anthropic was effectively blacklisted by the The President administration. But two days earlier, on Wednesday, Altman had reportedly already begun talking to the Pentagon abou…

Imagine sitting with friends in front of a charcuterie board and a bottle of Syrah at a French bistro. If you reach for your smartphone, a waiter blows a referee’s whistle, issues you a “penalty card,” and tells you a second infraction will get you eighty-sixed. Such faux-pas enforcement is routine at Le Petit Jardin in Montpellier in southern France, which implemented a strict “no-phone use” policy in 2017. While this approach seems farcically extreme, the idea of restricting phone use in restaurants and bars is gaining traction in the U.S., and not just in the “coastal elite” cities. Sneaky’s Chicken, in Sioux City, Iowa, for example, offers compliance incentives: …

Groceries are a little harder to come by in dozens of neighborhoods this year in the wake of an ongoing retreat from The Kroger Co. The Cincinnati-based supermarket company has been shuttering locations since June of last year, when it announced a footprint optimization plan that would result in the closure of about 60 stores. According to a Fast Company review of local media reports and online review platforms like Yelp, Kroger could be more than halfway through that process. Some 33 stores have already closed, with at least three more confirmed so far this year. Closures in the months since the announcement largely impact stores under the flagship Kroger ba…

Drive an older Buick Regal? You may need to drive it to your nearest dealer. General Motors is recalling certain 2012 and 2013 Buick Regal models because of an issue with the rear suspension toe links that could increase the likelihood of a crash. The recall affects 17,050 Buick passenger cars that were sold or registered in 22 “high corrosion” states and Washington, D.C., according to the recall notice filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall, submitted on Tuesday, expands on two others that the Detroit-based automaker has filed since late February related to the same issue. Only about 1% of the 17,000-plus vehicles identified may…

Just days after settling with the Department of Justice (DOJ), ticketing company Live Nation is again under fire after internal messages between employees revealed bragging about “taking advantage” of ticket buyers. In message exchanges from 2022, two regional directors of ticketing for Live Nation amphitheaters, Ben Baker and Jeff Weinhold, boasted about the prices they were able to get away with charging customers for ancillary fees, including things like parking, lawn chair rentals, and VIP access, with Baker writing, “I gouge them on ancil prices.” In one exchange, Weinhold shared how he was able to charge $250 for VIP parking at a venue. “These people are so …

The U.S. military was able “to strike a blistering 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of its attack on Iran” thanks in part to its use of artificial intelligence, according to The Washington Post. The military has used Claude, the AI tool from Anthropic, combined with Palantir’s Maven system, for real-time targeting and target prioritization in support of combat operations in Iran and Venezuela. While Claude is only a few years old, the U.S. military’s ability to use it, or any other AI, did not emerge overnight. The effective use of automated systems depends on extensive infrastructure and skilled personnel. It is only thanks to many decades of investment and experi…