Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

How are the world’s most creative people using AI to drive their work forward? This was the question at the heart of an in-depth survey Fast Company recently conducted in partnership with Whalar, a leading social agency focused on content creators. We found that, for most, AI has become a routine part of the creative process—and a return to an AI-free working life has become almost unfathomable. Yet the survey also found the world’s creative elite are grappling with a technology that gets more powerful and useful every day but remains unwieldy, error-prone, and not entirely trustworthy. “I want people to understand how well it can augment and enhance the thinking…

A bold new building at Spelman College in Atlanta is all about breaking down barriers. Designed by the architecture firm Studio Gang, the Center for Innovation and the Arts is the new home for collaboration between students of science, technology, art, and performance at the historically Black women’s liberal arts college. It will provide a new space where Spelman’s programs in dance, documentary filmmaking, photography, theater and performance, and music can tap into emerging technologies from the worlds of science and computer science. Studio Gang founder, Jeanne Gang, says the primary goals of the project were to help the college better connect its programs and eve…

WeWard, an app that offers real-world rewards for walking, announced Wednesday it’s signed tennis champ Venus Williams as an investor and ambassador for the app. The app, which offers users points called Wards for steps taken, lets users track their movements or import pedometer data from tools like iPhone’s Apple Health, Android’s Google Fit, or Fitbit. When they’ve racked up enough Wards, they can be redeemed for gift cards, charitable donations, or even cash deposits to user bank accounts. “We’ve decided to do something very simple,” says cofounder and CEO Yves Benchimol. “We just give cash to people to walk.” In addition to tangible rewards, users can also…

Spring is just around the corner, ushering in new growth, brighter days, and the heady anticipation of summer. For those of us with sizable screen time, spring’s arrival also means that the dreary weather is no longer an excuse for spending hours doomscrolling TikTok and Instagram Reels until our eyes glaze over. And now there’s an app that can help you feel like it’s spring year-round. Rhys Kentish is a senior software engineer at the London-based app design firm Brightec. He’s spent the past four months building an app that makes users literally touch grass before they can open social media. “I was sick and tired of my reflex in the morning being to reach for my…

A bartender makes a Brandy Alexander, pouring equal parts of a Courvoisier V.S.O.P brandy, Marie Brizard crème de cacao, and fresh cream. He shakes it with ice, strains through a fine mesh strainer, and finishes it off with a neat pile of freshly-grated nutmeg. This imagery may seem to be out of a bartending documentary, but it’s actually a scene from an anime series, Bartender: Glass of God. It’s this unavoidable, radical attention to detail in the animation itself that tells the story of a Japanese way of life–putting extreme care into one’s craft. During scenes inside the bar, the liquor wall features an elaborate selection of spirits, the labels of which are …

For the first time in more than 40 years, a new hormone-free intrauterine device (IUD) is coming to market in the U.S.—and it’s designed with patients’ comfort in mind, both during the insertion process and once it’s in place. The new IUD, called Miudella, comes from the pharmaceutical company Sebela Women’s Health Inc. It was approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in late February, and is the second hormone-free IUD to be approved since 1984, when the copper-based option Paragard first became available. With the addition of Miudella, there will now be six IUD options available in the U.S. Not only does this advancement provide patients seeking a horm…

More than three million developers are using OpenAI’s APIs as shorthand code to infuse apps and websites with an engine of advanced AI. And today, the company’s most popular API, called Chat Completions, is getting a significant sequel called Responses. Eight months in development, it will vastly expand upon and simplify the experience of plugging into OpenAI. For developers, Responses will mean using less code to stack more complex questions to the AI. A hundred lines of code will turn into just three, as the company is courting a wider set of developers who don’t consider themselves LLM experts. For consumers, it will mean you’ll soon be interacting with AI that’s f…

In business and sports, team dynamics impact outcomes. Whether you’re pursuing profits or championships, knowing what triggers your teammates can help you avoid conflict and stay on task. The problem is that taking time to better understand each other isn’t always our default setting, say John Eliot and Jim Guinn, authors of How To Get Along with Anyone: The Playbook for Predicting and Preventing Conflict at Work and at Home. “Blowups appear to be substance-driven, but they’re actually people-driven,” says Eliot. “The first step toward preventing and resolving conflict is to focus on figuring out the people participating in it not the underlying ‘problem.’” To wor…

Drew Barrymore just got her own Pantone color—and as you might expect for a woman who famously once responded to a rainstorm by dancing in the downpour and encouraging others to do the same, it’s a shade of yellow, the cheeriest primary color. To mark the talk-show host’s 50th birthday, Pantone surprised her last week with the unveiling of “Drew Barrymore Yellow,” a soft, buttery shade Pantone says was chosen “to embody her infectious optimism, creative spirit, and uplifting presence—a hue as warm and vibrant as the woman herself.” [Image: Pantone]Pantone has released colors in partnership with other celebrities before, like “Team Coco Orange” for comedian Conan O’Brien i…

On Saturday evening, a group of Yosemite National Park employees hung an upside-down American flag 3,000 feet in the air, at the top of El Capitan summit. The display was absolutely not missed. It happened in the midst of this year’s Firefall at Horsetail Fall, a popular event at the Mariposa County, California, national park, when between mid- to late February, the waterfall begins to light up 5 to 15 minutes before sunset, looking almost like molten lava. Hundreds of photographers and observers were in the park when the upside-down flag, known as a “distress flag,” according to American flag code—a sign that something is desperately wrong—hung from the mountain top.…

Featuring Paul Feig, Founder, FeigCo; and Director and Producer, Another Simple Favor. Moderated by Kc Ifeanyi, Executive Director of Editorial Programming, Fast Company. Producer and director Paul Feig is looking to strike gold twice with the follow-up to his 2018 hit film A Simple Favor starring Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, and Henry Golding. Beyond the plot twists and intrigue, Feig’s sequel further exemplifies his commitment to telling women-led stories including Jackpot!, Ghostbusters, Spy, The Heat, and Bridesmaids. Join Feig for a one-on-one conversation on his unique approach to comedic storytelling with complex female lead characters at the center. View the…

Feeling burned out? It could be costing your company millions of dollars each year in lost productivity and employee turnover. A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimates that employee burnout in the U.S. costs somewhere between $4,000 and $21,000 per worker per year. Do the numbers, and that adds up to about $5 million per year for a company with 1,000 employees. (Another way to look at it: Employee disengagement, or burnout, can cost 0.2 to 2.9 times the average cost of health insurance, and 3.3 to 17.1 times the cost of training per employee.) The research is based on a computational simulation model developed by the Public Health Infor…

In early 2024, Ben Collins was contemplating the future of the media business—and his place in it. He was in the process of resigning after spending six years as a senior reporter at NBC News, exhausted by the disinformation beat that took him to some of the darkest and most disturbing corners of the internet. It hadn’t helped that in December 2022 NBC News had suspended Collins from the Elon Musk beat following his highly critical coverage of the gazillionaire’s acquisition of Twitter. The media landscape looked bleak. Layoffs were decimating storied media titles like Sports Illustrated, and Collins was hearing rumors that G/O Media, the holding company owned by priv…

Starting today, thousands of changemakers and leaders will descend upon Austin for one of the biggest festivals and conferences of the year: South by Southwest (SXSW). It’s the “level playing field” event where startups and Fortune 500 companies share the same stage to discuss the hottest topics and trends in film, tech, sustainability and travel, social good, and health and wellness. It’s where brands unveil new products, relationships are formed, and celebrities premiere their films. However, despite its popularity as a must-attend event, you won’t find SXSW in your Google Calendar app. You also won’t find two other cultural events in March: Women’s History Month o…

Across the U.S., dozens of proposed solar, wind, and battery projects—encompassing thousands of gigawatts of potential power—are backlogged as they wait to be allowed to plug into the power grid. And, even in areas where renewable energy projects are already online, their output is often heavily curtailed. This clean energy bottleneck stems from the fact that, as demand for renewable energy rises, the U.S. isn’t building new transmission lines fast enough to transport large amounts of clean energy from point A to point B. Now, there’s a company looking to address that problem with a simple yet radical solution: Putting renewable energy into giant batteries and trans…

For 40 years, Cisco has been best known for building routers, switches, and other networking technology that connects computers within offices, data centers, and across the internet. Cisco’s also a software business, known for its cybersecurity products and familiar applications like the conferencing and communications platform Webex. And last year, the company announced the $28 billion acquisition of big data company Splunk, part of Cisco’s growing role in powering data-driven AI technology. Cisco also last year named Jeetu Patel as executive vice president and chief product officer, with the goal of breaking down barriers within the company as it bets big on provi…

If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isn’t your imagination. From 2000 to 2020, the number of butterflies fell by 22% across the continental United States. That’s 1 in 5 butterflies lost. The findings are from an analysis just published in the journal Science by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Powell Center Status of Butterflies of the United States Working Group, which I am involved in. The endangered Karner blue butterfly has struggled with habitat loss. [Photo: USFWS/Flickr] We found declines in just about every region of the continental U.S. and across almost all butterfly species. Overall, nearly one-third of the 342 but…

While Valentine’s Day and football get the majority of publicity during February, there’s more to this month than love and sports. You may want to consider changing up your typical happy-hour order this weekend to celebrate an unconventional holiday. Saturday, February 22, is National Margarita Day. This refreshing beverage has a long history of making those who imbibe forget their troubles for a while. Let’s take a look at the invention of the drink and some fun deals to take advantage of. What’s in a classic margarita anyway? While many variations of the beloved drink have popped up over the years, in its purest form, a margarita is comprised of tequila, li…

At the Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA), we enable high level women to mentor each other to enable each leader 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 some of the thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring. Our insights today come from Susan Holliday, board director and adviser, who speaks about her global career in the insurance industry, spotting new risks and turning them into opportunities. Q: Your career has addressed various issues related to the insurance industry. What are some recent challenges? Susan …

An attorney for a Texas pipeline company said Wednesday at trial that he will prove various Greenpeace entities coordinated delays and disruptions of a controversial oil pipeline’s construction in North Dakota, and defamed the company to its lenders. Attorneys for the Greenpeace defendants told a jury there is no evidence to back up the claims by Dallas-based Energy Transfer, which seeks potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Greenpeace. The case is tied to protests in 2016 and 2017 of the Dakota Access Pipeline and its controversial Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The tribe has long opposed the pipel…

Gen Z isn’t “quiet quitting”—they’re rejecting outdated leadership. That’s the conversation my recent Fast Company article sparked, and the response has been overwhelming. Leaders, managers, and employees from across industries have reached out, confirming what many of us have seen firsthand. Workplace culture is changing fast, and leadership needs to evolve with it. But as the dust settles on this conversation, I’ve been thinking about a different question: If leadership needs to evolve, what role does Gen Z play in shaping the change they want? It’s easy to say leadership is broken—and in many cases, it is. But just as bad leadership creates disengaged employees, di…