What's on Your Mind?

If you live near an AI data center, you may already be seeing higher electricity bills. But if that data center is for Anthropic, the AI company now says it will cover the price hikes consumers face. The data center boom unfolding across the country is driving up electricity costs and adding more stress to the power grid. That added demand means the grid needs serious upgrades, or even new sources of power. In many places, those rising costs are being passed directly onto community members. But more and more legislators and even tech executives are raising the idea that the companies behind the data centers should foot the bill. Anthropic, which created the …

Sign of the times: An AI agent autonomously wrote and published a personalized attack article against an open-source software maintainer after he rejected its code contribution. It might be the first documented case of an AI publicly shaming a person as retribution. Matplotlib, a popular Python plotting library with roughly 130 million monthly downloads, doesn’t allow AI agents to submit code. So Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer (like a curator for a repository of computer code) for Matplotlib, rejected and closed a routine code submission from the AI agent, called MJ Rathbun. Here’s where it gets weird(er). MJ Rathbun, an agent built using the buzzy agent…

For decades, tuning into a sporting event at home involved watching a traditional broadcast on your TV. These days, however, many viewers aren’t just watching on their TV—they’ve got the game streaming right to their phones. After more than two decades, NBC and the NBA have revived their partnership just in time to face this new challenge. In a media landscape where fans consume sports across traditional broadcasts, streaming platforms, and mobile devices, the question is no longer about how to televise the game, but how to design an experience that cultivates the league’s next generation of stars, its culture, and fandom while honoring the nostalgia that once defined th…

If the thought of AI smart glasses annoys you, you’re not alone. This week, the judge presiding over a historic social media addiction trial took a harsh stance on the AI-powered gadgets, which many bystanders find invasive of their privacy: Stop recording or face contempt of court. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Yesterday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in a trial that many industry watchers say could have severe ramifications for social media giants, depending on how it turns out. At the heart of the trial is the question of whether social media companies like Meta, via its Facebook and Instagram platforms, purposely designed sa…

We’re told from a young age to follow our dreams. But for Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, chasing your dreams is overrated. Instead, she recommends a different approach, especially for young people: “Chase your talents, not your dreams.” The 49-year-old, who has a $400 million-plus net worth, shared the advice in an Instagram reel this week: “I just got off the phone with a young woman who is looking for career advice,” she says in the clip, which has since racked up over 482,000 likes and thousands of comments. “She wants to switch from one job to another,” Witherspoon says, adding that the woman is currently unhappy at work. This is a predicament many …

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers. 1. A new employee missed the fourth day of work, saying “something came up” I had a new employee start on a Tuesday. That Friday, I woke up to a text from my new hire from the night before, saying that she would not be in on Friday, that something had come up and she would see me on Monday. This is an in-person job in a corporate environment. I fully respect a person’s right to take a sick day and I fee…

Author and alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra is the latest celebrity to come under scrutiny after the Department of Justice (DOJ) released more than three million pages of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. A slew of famous names pop up in the DOJ’s files, released on January 30, including business leaders like Casey Wasserman and powerful politicians like former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Chopra was among them, and a new investigation from CNN reveals the extent of his ties with Epstein. On February 4, Chopra posted on X defending his appearance in the files and distancing himself from Epstein’s crimes, which include operating a sex-tr…

Through the end of the 2010s, people were a company’s infrastructure. Large workforces provided the scaffold upon which a business could build capacity for complexity: hire more people, take on more work. Artificial intelligence has upended this relationship, decoupling a company’s potential productivity from its headcount and redefining which businesses will fare best. As a result, America’s mid-sized companies are disappearing: the number of businesses with between 250 and 499 employees has fallen by 22.5% since 2020. Meanwhile, the independent professional economy is quickly growing to take their place: 30.4 million U.S. solopreneurs (businesses with a single e…

Being a middle manager often feels like living in two worlds at once. On one side, executives cascade big goals and sweeping strategies. On the other, teams look to you for clarity, advocacy, and daily guidance. You’re constantly reconciling top-down demands with bottom-up realities, often with too little time and too few resources to satisfy either side. The paradox of the role is stark: Middle managers carry enormous responsibility for execution but don’t always have the authority to make critical decisions. You’re expected to deliver results on budgets you don’t control, within structures you didn’t design, and through policies you didn’t write. This tension is one…

The public outcry over artificial intelligence has largely focused on what it could mean for the average worker. Entry-level jobs in sectors like tech and finance have already been impacted by the rise of AI. And while economists have said the claims of workforce disruption are overblown at the moment, some companies are, in fact, making major cuts to their workforces in the name of AI. Just this week, Block CEO Jack Dorsey cut 40% of head count at the fintech company, citing efficiency gains from its adoption of AI tools. But it’s not just rank-and-file workers whose jobs may be on the line. As CEOs tout the vast potential of AI—and make cuts to their workforces acc…

AI is now the first stop for many customer journeys, from brainstorms and searches, to recommendations and planning. Recent research from The Knot Worldwide found that 36% of couples are now actively using AI in their wedding planning—nearly doubling year-over-year—as couples turn to AI platforms for wedding inspiration, writing, and organization. A couple might use AI to start their wedding planning journey, but as they move closer to choosing a venue or vendor, they naturally look for signals that help them feel confident—authentic reviews, a consistent online presence, and expert content—so that they gain additional context and trust before taking their next step. …

A client once described to me what happened after they had lived through a traumatic assault. For a long time, life stayed busy enough that they rarely had to think about it. Work, obligations, and everyday distractions filled the hours. Whether intentionally or not, staying occupied kept the past at a distance. Then one day things slowed down. There was a rare stretch of quiet. And in that quiet the memory returned all at once, like a tsunami. We might not have lived through trauma of that magnitude, but the example reveals something about distraction itself. When our attention is constantly absorbed elsewhere, we can avoid more than a painful memory. We can avoid o…

Every so often, a “technical” dispute reveals something much bigger. The recent blowup between the U.S. Department of Defense and Anthropic is one of those moments: not because it’s about a $200 million contract, but because it makes visible a new kind of enterprise risk, one that most CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs are still treating as a procurement detail. In a recent piece, “The Pentagon wants to rewrite the rules of AI,” I focused on the political meaning of a government attempting to force an AI company to relax its own guardrails. For enterprise leaders, the most important takeaway is more practical: If your AI capabilities depend on a single provider’s terms, policies,…

I teach a course on AI and filmmaking at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and lately, rather than planning each session well in advance, I’ve been structuring the class the night before. I’ll browse platforms like X, Substack, and YouTube, selecting the most provocative articles and video clips to present the following morning. It’s a testament to how quickly artificial intelligence’s relationship to filmmaking is evolving: Each week brings new—often startling—developments. The next morning in class, my students and I debate the ethics, the aesthetics, and the storytelling changes taking place in these collaborations with AI. And we’re not alone: Throughout Hol…

We’ve all been there: You need something at this exact moment—maybe toilet paper, staples, or ibuprofen—but you also can’t be bothered to run out to the local store for it. Enter Amazon’s newest solution: 1-hour and 3-hour delivery. It sounds good until you see the final bill. Here’s what you need to know. Amazon announces new 1-hour and 3-hour deliveries Today, Amazon announced that it will offer new 1-hour and 3-hour delivery options for 90,000 products, including everyday essentials such as health and beauty items, cleaning products, over-the-counter medications, and more. The new super-quick delivery windows won’t be available to every Amazon custom…

Students using AI to cheat on homework or tests is a source of much discussion. But some scholars argue the greater risk of students using AI is that they will simply not learn. Approximately 90% of 1,100 U.S. students surveyed at two-year and four-year colleges in 2025 reported using generative AI for everything from drafting assignments to clarifying complex concepts. But when students use AI as a tutor or study partner, not as an immediate answer generator, does it make it easier or harder for them to learn? We are economists who tried to answer this question by designing an AI tool using ChatGPT’s custom GPT feature, with the web access of the chatbot disa…

A year ago, Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans were rejoicing. The beloved ‘90s series was finally getting a follow-up, thanks to the announcement of a sequel series coming to Hulu. But that excitement has turned to outrage as of March 14, when star Sarah Michelle Gellar announced on social media that Buffy wasn’t coming back from the dead after all. The reboot series, titled Buffy: New Sunnydale, would see Gellar reprise her role as the titular teenage vampire hunter, now all grown up and mentoring a new slayer, played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong. Oscar winner Chloé Zhao was set to direct and executive produce after pitching the project to Gellar four years ago. The team had …