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Artificial intelligence: it’s not just for tech experts anymore. Instead, a heaping helping of free online resources has emerged. These classes are specifically designed to welcome beginners into the world of AI, even if they possess little or no prior technical background. I selected these Coursera courses for their beginner-friendly approach, high ratings, and comprehensive coverage of foundational concepts and key AI domains. AI For Everyone If you’re taking your very first steps into AI, “AI For Everyone” on Coursera is a great starting point. The course requires no prior experience in AI or programming, making it truly accessible to everyone, and it’s …

The companies behind AI models are keen to share granular data about their performance on benchmarks that demonstrate how well they operate. What they are less eager to disclose is information about their environmental impact. In the absence of clear data, a number of estimates have circulated. However, a new study published in Cornell University’s preprint server arXiv offers a more accurate estimation of how AI usage affects the planet. The research team—comprised of scientists from the University of Rhode Island, Providence College, and the University of Tunis in Tunisia—developed what they describe as the first infrastructure-aware benchmark for AI inference, …

Behind some of the most recognizable iconography in the world, from American presidential campaign logos to New York City subway signage and Apple keycaps, is one Swiss designer and a textbook he published in 1949. You’ve probably never heard of either. Walter Käch was a calligrapher and educator at the Zürich School of Arts and Crafts in the late ‘30s and ‘40s. During this time, he published a simple manual, called Lettering, which laid out his approach to crafting letterforms, letting students learn about proper technique and trace and copy letters directly inside the book. Experts have credited Lettering for popularizing the idea of type families and directly inspi…

Parental leave is often treated as a checkbox issue—handled quietly by HR, focused on paperwork, and confined to a narrow window of time. But Amy Beacom, founder and CEO of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership and author of The Parental Leave Playbook, is reshaping that view. With over 25 years of experience in executive coaching and organizational development, Beacom, who has an EdD degree in industrial and organizational psychology from Columbia University, partners with leading companies to transform parental leave into a strategic advantage for retention, equity, and leadership growth. In this conversation, Beacom unpacks some of the biggest misconceptions abo…

COVID-19 cases are rising again as a new variant begins to circulate in some parts of the world. The World Health Organization said Wednesday the rise in cases is primarily in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and western Pacific regions. Airport screening in the United States has detected the new variant in travelers arriving from those regions to destinations in California, Washington state, Virginia and New York. The new variant is called NB.1.8.1. It arrives as the United States’ official stance on COVID-19 vaccination is changing. On Tuesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that COVID-19 shots are no longer recommended for healthy chi…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. What do David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal, and Serena Williams have in common—aside from their standout sports careers? They’ve all built thriving businesses. Sure, having capital and global name recognition helps. But reducing their business success to just fame only tells half the story. The other half is that top athletes spend years honing discipline, resilience, and the ability to think s…

In the past week, I had “conversations” with two leaders who talked too much. They were good people with interesting stories to share. But they went on for far too long while I just sat and listened. Characteristically, they asked few questions and, when they did, didn’t seem to be interested in my responses. These two leaders were engaged but seemingly not curious or fully present. These encounters crystallized something I’ve observed repeatedly in my decades of executive coaching: A damaging leadership blind spot is the simple inability to stop talking. I call this a “leadership trap” because it ensnares otherwise effective executives in a paradox: The same verb…

A woman paid a witch on Etsy for a love spell. Instead of following through, the witch found the man online and sent him screenshots of the conversation. Now, people are calling it a WIPPA violation. “Guys the Etsy witch told on me,” @andtheg4gis cried in a TikTok posted on Monday. “I said the guy’s name, his birthday and stuff, and she literally DM’d him on Instagram and exposed me.” The video has since been viewed 2.4 million times and spread across other social media platforms. “Imagine getting a “hey girly” text from a witch,” one person commented. Many in the comments are calling for the TikTok user to drop the name of the Etsy seller, just so they know who …

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: Help! None of my coworkers have kids and don’t understand what it’s like. A: No two people’s lives are the same and people with all kinds of family structures have issues that pull their time and attention away from work. That said, few things in life are as schedule-disrupting as being a parent. In an ideal world, your boss and coworkers wouldn’t need to be parents themselves to understand things like needing to miss work when you have a sick kid or hav…

It’s fair to assume that most of us can relate to the famous saying, “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” This is just the second half of one of Benjamin Franklin’s last great nuggets of wisdom, but more on that to come. As Franklin would likely have reminded you, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, is the last day to file your federal income taxes for 2024. With everything going on at Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including reported layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), it might be tempting to try and fly under the radar this year and not file your taxes, hoping to dodge an audit. However, even with all th…

On Monday, Starbucks rolled out a new dress code as part of its larger corporate overhaul. But union workers say the change is both restrictive and unproductive—and now, baristas are walking out. The dress code comes as new CEO Brian Niccol is on a mission to bring the brand “back to basics,” including by scaling back its menu, returning hand-written notes on cups, and introducing ceramic mugs in stores. Employees are now required to wear a more simplified palette of solid black tops along with khaki, black, or blue denim bottoms under the company’s signature-green apron. However, in an email to supporters, Starbucks Workers United—the union representing Starbuck…

‘Fast Company’ global design editor Mark Wilson goes behind the scenes with the band in Budapest to decode the disciplined chaos of their genre-defying visual experiments. View the full article

Loneliness isn’t just a well-being risk, it is an acute business risk. The effects of loneliness don’t just permeate an individual’s personal life, it can negatively impact their professional life. When employees don’t feel a sense of camaraderie or belonging at work, their performance suffers. According to research from Gartner, employees who are satisfied with camaraderie in their organization show a high enterprise contribution of 23%. But employees who are dissatisfied with the camaraderie in their organization show a high enterprise contribution of only 13%. Organizations have taken early steps to mitigate loneliness by targeting interactions within the workp…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National active housing inventory for sale at the end of March 2025 was up 28.5% compared to March 2024. That’s just 20% below pre-pandemic levels back in March 2019. However, while the national housing market has softened and inventory has surpassed 2019 pre-pandemic levels in some pockets of the Sun Belt, many markets remain far tighter than the national average. Pulling from ResiClub’s monthly inventory tracker, we identified the tightest major housing markets heading into spring 2025 where active inventory is still the furthest below pre-pandemi…

The recent exposé Careless People, by former Facebook (now Meta) executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, has received significant attention for its jaw-dropping revelations about the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. According to the author, company decisions enabled the Chinese Communist Party to suppress dissent, undermined the mental health of teenage girls, and led to genocide in Myanmar and election interference in the U.S. While there has been much attention to details showing the moral bankruptcy of Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, there has been less discussion of how financial pressures shaped executives’ decisions. Are Meta’s leaders just “…

Kendrick Lamar isn’t just a Grammy-winning rapper—he’s also behind pgLang, a groundbreaking creative company shaping the future of media, music, and storytelling. But what exactly is pgLang? And how is it redefining the creative agency model? This is FC Explains, where Fast Company breaks down the most innovative companies of the year. View the full article

One of the world’s most distinctive new buildings is now poking out of the center of a small village in the Swiss Alps. The structure, a cylinder of bone-white columns topped by a dome, wasn’t built in the traditional sense. It was 3D-printed. It’s now the tallest 3D-printed tower in the world, and it could offer a technique for other 3D-printed buildings to rise even higher. Standing on the base of an existing building, the tower rises to a height of 98 feet, with four floors connected by a central staircase. The tower itself is all structure, with 32 tree-inspired concrete columns forming a cage-like shell that’s open to the air. Gradually widening as it rises, the …

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. What’s in a claim? Sometimes a product can’t be defined by its claim, and that has become a huge problem for the consumer packaged goods industry. Take Dr. Bronner’s and Scrumbles, for example, which both recently announced they’re dropping their B Corp certification for what they perceive to be weakening standards that allow greenwashing. The changing claims landscape What B Lab Global…

Design industry leaders trust artificial intelligence less than they did a year ago, and many see the world as an increasingly uncertain place. These are a few of the most striking takeaways from the 2025 State of Design & Make report from the design and engineering software maker Autodesk. This third annual design industry outlook is based on surveys and interviews with 5,594 industry leaders, futurists, and experts across industries including architecture, engineering, construction, and operations, design and manufacturing, and media and entertainment. Leaders from what Autodesk calls the “design and make” industries were asked to report on a wide range of t…