What's on Your Mind?

Researchers on the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and leaders of many of the major platforms—from Jeffrey Hinton to Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk—have voiced concerns that AI could lead to the destruction of humanity itself. Even the stated odds from some of these AI experts, with an end-days scenario as high as 25%, are still “wildly optimistic,” according to Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and coauthor of the recent best-selling book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. That’s because, as he argues in the book, the track we’re on with AI is headed for disaster—unless…

Even in an age when it is rather common to invite people, including leaders, to “bring their whole self to work”, what is actually rewarded at work is being our best self, in the sense of trying to be at the best of our behaviors, and fulfill as much of our potential as we can, as often as possible. Importantly, many if not most people still compartmentalize their personal self as something separate from their work persona or professional self, even if both can co-exist as salient, albeit different, dimensions of their self-concept. Indeed, this aligns with the science of self-complexity, which basically shows that we “inhabit multiple selves”, in the sense that our i…

Rejoice, New Year’s dieters: Oreos are getting a sugar-free option. Mondelez said Tuesday that Oreo Zero Sugar and Oreo Double Stuf Zero Sugar will go on sale in the U.S. in January. They’re a permanent addition to the company’s Oreo lineup. It’s the first time Mondelez has sold sugar-free Oreos in the U.S. They’re already sold in Europe and China, the company said. Mondelez said consumers are increasingly seeking what it calls “mindful indulgence,” and the new Oreos will fill an existing gap in the market for sugar-free sandwich cookies. Others have also noted the trend toward healthier snacks. In a report earlier this year, the market research company Circana…

Paired with high-deductible healthcare plans, health savings accounts help ease healthcare costs. HSAs are a triple tax-advantaged vehicle in the tax code, allowing for pretax contributions, tax-free compounding, and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. However, few owners fund their HSAs to the maximum, and even fewer invest their HSA dollars outside a savings account. Most consumers likely don’t fill their HSAs because they lack the financial means; critics note that the HDHP/HSA combination can be less beneficial for lower-income workers. But even wealthy consumers may decline to fully fund their HSAs. Many HSAs charge account-maintenance fees and e…

OpenAI said Tuesday it has picked Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its first chief of revenue, a message to wary investors that the ChatGPT maker is serious about making a profit from its artificial intelligence technology. OpenAI said Dresser will oversee global revenue strategy and “help more businesses put AI to work in their day-to-day operations.” Dresser had already spent more than a decade at Salesforce when the software pioneer announced in 2020 it was buying work-chatting service Slack for $27.7 billion. She helped integrate Slack into the software company before Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff picked her as CEO in 2023. Salesforce said in a statement that it …

The automatic door has been reinvented. The home-focused tech startup Doma just announced its first product line: a set of residential doors capable of opening and closing automatically at the sight of an approaching homeowner. Packed with sensors, motors, and facial recognition technology, Doma Intelligent Doors bring automatic functionality and programmable controls to a home’s front door—all without clunky and unsightly equipment. Doma is led by founders Jason Johnson and designer Yves Béhar, who previously founded and later sold the smart door lockcompany August Home. The two joined forces again after sharing a frustration with the state of smart home technolo…

As the year winds down to a close, with just three weeks left on the calendar, Nextdoor may be the next, last, big meme stock of 2025. Here’s why. What happened? On Wednesday, Nextdoor Holdings Inc. (NXDR) shares rose 49% in early trading, the most in over four years, according to Bloomberg. The gains come on the heels of a series of posts on X on Wednesday morning by investor Eric Jackson, founder of EMJ Capital hedge fund, who described the neighborhood-focused site as “one of the most misunderstood platforms in the market” and touted its AI potential: “Nextdoor isn’t a social network. It’s a neighborhood operating system with AI-native revenue,” as well as …

Gen Z’s latest online fixation is the so-called ‘millennial optimism’ era. The TikTok trend sees users posting early-2000s throwback snaps set to The Middle East’s 2009 song “Blood”. Think moustache tattoos, Apple Photo Booth selfies, and owl-print tops paired with galaxy leggings. For those too young to experience it firsthand: the 2010s were a simpler, happier time. As one TikTok creator posted: “Millennial optimism era really had me thinking I could make a living as a part-time barista and live in a six-bedroom house with all my friends.” As one commenter confirmed: “Tbh this was actually possible in 2012.” In another clip, one Gen Zer wrote: “Every day I’m fa…

Charli XCX is making a trip to the Sundance Film Festival in January. The pop singer-songwriter appears in three films premiering at the 2026 festival, including a mockumentary that she produced and stars in. Programmers on Wednesday unveiled a lineup of 90 feature films set for the festival’s last hurrah in Park City, Utah. The slate includes documentaries on basketball great Brittney Griner, Nelson Mandela, Salman Rushdie, Courtney Love, and Billie Jean King. There are starry features with the likes of Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Seth Rogen, Channing Tatum, Danielle Brooks, Olivia Colman, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Alexander Skarsgård, and Ethan Hawke. Olivia Wilde di…

Walt Disney and OpenAI make for very odd bedfellows: The former is one of the most-recognized brands among children under the age of 18. The near-$200 billion company’s value has been derived from more than a century of aggressive safeguarding of its intellectual property and keeping the magic alive among innocent children. OpenAI, which celebrated its first decade of existence this week, is best known for upending creativity, the economy, and society with its flagship product, ChatGPT. And in the last two months, it has said it wants to get to a place where its adult users can use its tech to create erotica. So what the hell should we make of a just-announced dea…

Coca-Cola said Wednesday that its chief operating officer will become its next CEO in the first quarter of 2026. The Atlanta beverage giant said its board elected Henrique Braun as CEO effective March 31. James Quincey, Coke’s current chairman and CEO, will transition to executive chairman of the company. Braun, 57, has worked at Coca-Cola for three decades. Prior to assuming the COO role earlier this year, he led operations in Brazil, Latin America, Greater China and South Korea. He has held positions overseeing Coke’s supply chain, new business development, marketing, innovation, general management and bottling operations. Braun was born in California and raised in B…

As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead and severely restrict social media access for young people. The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement by three governing coalition and two opposition parties in parliament to ban access to social media for anyone under the age of 15. Such a measure would be the most sweeping step yet by a European Union nation to limit use of social media among teens and children. The Danish government’s plans could become law as soon as mid-2026. The proposed measure would give some parents the right to let their…

Some of the most recognizable artwork depicting the American West is heading to auction at Christie’s, where dozens of pieces from billionaire Bill Koch’s collection are expected to fetch at least $50 million. The in-person “Visions of the West” sale will take place in New York over two sessions beginning Jan. 20, with the final lots offered — appropriately — at high noon the following day. Koch’s holdings include major works by Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell and Albert Bierstadt, artists whose images of cowboys, Native Americans and sweeping landscapes helped define how generations came to picture the American frontier. Tylee Abbott, head of Christie’s Amer…

The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son’s “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her. Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. The lawsuit filed by Adams’ estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’…

AI is becoming a big part of online commerce. Referral traffic to retailers on Black Friday from AI chatbots and search engines jumped 800% over the same period last year, according to Adobe, meaning a lot more people are now using AI to help them with buying decisions. But where does that leave review sites who, in years past, would have been the guide for many of those purchases? If there’s a category of media that’s most spooked by AI, it’s publishers who specialize in product recommendations, which have traditionally been reliant on search traffic. The nature of the content means it’s often purely informational, with most articles being designed to answer a questi…

For many people, the first time they thought about Kalshi—a prediction market where you can place bets on the outcomes of sports, politics, culture, weather, and much more—was after a video clip of its cofounder, Tarek Mansour, went viral last week. Speaking on stage at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets Conference, the moderator Molly O’Shea asked, “Tarek, you’ve mentioned multiple times that you think prediction markets will be bigger than the stock market. What is it going to take to become a $1 trillion asset class?” In response, Mansour said, “You know, ‘Kalshi’ is ‘everything’ in Arabic. The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create…

As we enter the 2025 home stretch, Bitcoin is once again down, and dipped below $90,000 on Thursday, following the Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated interest rate cut by 25 basis points on December 10. So why are the markets up, but crypto is taking a hit? Why Bitcoin is faltering One reason for Bitcoin’s drop after the rate cut is that traders had already fully priced in the cut ahead of the Fed’s announcement. “Unlike stocks, bitcoin is already in a bear market, where bad news gets accentuated and good news ignored,” Michael Terpin, author of Bitcoin Supercycle, told Fast Company. “Since the 25 basis point cut was already built in, bitcoin traders – p…