What's on Your Mind?

The AI industry has a quiet addiction problem: It is addicted to tokens. Every new generation of agentic AI seems to assume that the answer to complexity is to throw more context at the model, keep longer histories, spawn more calls, loop over more tools, and let the token meter run wild. The rise of agentic systems, and now projects like OpenClaw, makes that temptation even stronger. Once you give models more autonomy, they do not just consume tokens to answer questions. They consume them to plan, reflect, retry, summarize, call tools, inspect outputs, and keep themselves on track. OpenClaw itself describes the product as an “agent-native” gateway with sessions…

I’ll never forget the morning I froze in front of a client. I was a Vice President at Kearney, the global management consulting firm, presenting our proposal to a three-person client subcommittee. Mid-sentence, my mind went completely blank. Not the normal “lost my train of thought” blank. The kind of blank that leaves a scary emptiness where confidence used to live. I’d been putting on a mask each day. I’d tried to be positive and stay on top of everything. But that morning, I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt anxious and exhausted at the same time. My mind was racing, and my body was depleted. The mask had finally cracked in the worst possible place. What I didn’t …

School is out for Rec Room: The social gaming platform announced on Monday it is shutting down this June, despite “reaching over 150 million players and creators along the way” since its founding in 2016. “Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business,” the company said in a statement. “Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in. “We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work.” “But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut thin…

The productivity numbers don’t lie. Or do they? Most companies have now rolled out AI tools enterprise-wide. Licenses have been purchased. Trainings have been scheduled. Slack channels have been flooded with prompts. And yet, when leadership asks about the ROI, the room goes quiet. This is not a new story. In 1987, economist Robert Solow looked at the data after years of massive corporate investment in personal computers and found something baffling: zero statistically significant improvement in productivity. Companies had bought the technology. They just had not changed how they worked. This became known as the productivity paradox, and it is playing out again ri…

When professionals hit their cognitive limit, most people assume the problem is lack of time or energy. But in reality, overwhelmed people are taking more action than ever. When overwhelm hits, they start doing even more: more lists, more reorganizing, more inbox management, more clicking between tabs. They are busy, visibly productive, heads down for hours, yet at the end of the day the most important work still hasn’t moved. The productivity mistake almost everyone makes when they’re overwhelmed comes down to taking the wrong action while feeling certain the whole time that they’re taking the right one. A 2025 managerial study found that digital fatigue and cogn…

American Express is expanding its airport lounge network with a new Centurion Lounge planned for Boston, a second Sidecar concept coming to Charlotte, and a major expansion of its existing space at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The moves highlight how the credit card and financial services company is investing in both larger flagship lounges and smaller spaces designed for travelers with limited time before boarding. “American Express has long been at the forefront of the airport lounge experience, and we continue to build on that legacy and raise the bar as we grow our network,” Audrey Hendley, president of American Express Travel, said in a press rele…

Advocacy groups and experts condemned YouTube for serving up low-quality artificial intelligence-generated videos to its most vulnerable audience: children. In a letter to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of YouTube’s parent company Google, children’s advocacy group Fairplay expresses “serious concern” about the spread of AI-generated videos on both YouTube and YouTube Kids. The letter, which was sent on Wednesday morning, was signed by more than 200 organizations and individual experts such as child psychiatrists and educators. “This ‘AI slop’ harms children’s development by distorting their sense of reality, overwhelming their learning processes and h…

While I was leading a tour of the National Air and Space Museum in January 2026, a visitor posed this insightful question: “Why has it taken so long to return to the moon?” After all, NASA had the know-how and technology to send humans to the lunar surface more than 50 years ago as part of the Apollo program. And, as another tour guest reminded us, computers today can do so much more than they could back then, as evidenced by the smartphones most of us carry in our pockets. Shouldn’t it be easier to get to the moon than ever before? The truth is that sending humans into space safely continues to be difficult, especially as missions increase in complexity. New …

Last year, PepsiCo started printing real potatoes onto every bag of Lay’s. The reason? In a world where people are increasingly concerned about the provenance of their food, 42% of the population didn’t realize that the world’s most popular potato chip was made from potatoes. So they put a potato on the packaging. And now, the company is updating Tostitos bags—the most popular plain tortilla chip in the world—with a similar strategy. While Lay’s got a dose of potatoes, naturally, all Tostitos bags feature corn. “We started by being really honest with ourselves. The research was telling us that the old packaging wasn’t working—it was actually reinforcing a lot of…

Ali Hewson, like many women, was unprepared for the intensity of perimenopause. “I initially thought I would just grin and bear it, as my mother did,” she says. But the symptoms piled on: brain fog, hot flashes, mood swings, dryness, exhaustion. “One minute you are happy and content, then suddenly you are anxious and irritable followed by intense heat and sweating,” Hewson says. At their worst, her hot flashes were happening hourly. The symptoms began to take a toll on her rich and varied responsibilities as a humanitarian activist, fashion entrepreneur, mother of four, daughter to aging parents, and wife to world-famous rock star Bono. Even after deciding to se…

Burritos should be celebrated, because they are ingenious inventions that wrap deliciousness in a handy tortilla for extra convenience. National Burrito Day (today, Thursday, April 2, 2026) was created to do just that. Here’s a little history about the origins of the yumminess before we dive into the freebies and deals to observe this glorious unofficial holiday. A brief history of burritos Burritos hail from Northern Mexico and were invented in the early 20th century. The region’s climate was ideal for wheat, so larger tortillas were made out of the crop. This bigger vessel set the scene for a new culinary delight. The first burritos contained meat, bean…

AI isn’t just transforming industries. It’s transforming the way energy is stored and distributed. Scaling at unprecedented speeds across the country, data centers today require a reliable, uninterrupted power supply, often consuming as much electricity as small cities. This puts immense pressure on power grids. Nationwide electric demand is forecast to increase by nearly 16% by 2029. The main drivers of that increase are investments in data centers, manufacturing, and geopolitical and national strategic industries. Two years ago, the amount of global electricity generated to supply data centers was 460 TWh. This is projected to more than double to 1,000 TWh in 2030, …

If you listen to the brightest minds in tech right now, you might think human disease is just a software bug waiting for a patch. ​At the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei—drawing on his background in biophysics—predicted that AI could condense a century of biological progress into a single decade, potentially doubling human lifespans. Demis Hassabis, the Nobel laureate behind Google DeepMind, recently floated a similarly audacious timeline, suggesting that AI could help eliminate all diseases within 10 years. Hassabis aims to shrink the decade-long drug design process down to mere months. ​I’ve spent my career straddling the mathemati…

Chinese spirituality just adopted a new icon: American “momager” Kris Jenner. Jenner, best known for launching the mega-successful careers of her daughters Kourtney, Kim, and Khloé Kardashian, is suddenly the go-to profile pic for Gen Zers on Chinese social media, including apps like RedNote, Weibo, and Douyin. The reverence for Jenner doesn’t stop there. Her photo is also being used for wallpapers on computers, tablets, smart watches, and more, all as part of Chinese Gen Z’s manifestation for good luck. How did Jenner of all people become a Chinese symbol for good fortune? Chinese influencer Marcelo Wang broke down the trend in his own viral TikTok. He explai…

A new GLP-1 pill is about to hit the market. On Wednesday, Eli Lilly announced its new GLP-1 pill, Foundayo, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in adults with obesity or weight-related health problems. The company says that drug trials saw patients taking Foundayo losing an average of 27.3 pounds (12.4%) compared to 2.2 pounds (0.9%) with a placebo. It said the drug will be available via LillyDirect, noting that it will begin accepting prescriptions immediately. It expects shipping to begin on April 6, and said the drug will be made broadly available “through U.S. retail pharmacies and telehealth providers” soon after. The medication w…

Minecraft is, perhaps, the ultimate sandbox game. Infinite space, multiple game modes, and seemingly endless updates: The game’s limitless possibilities have helped it sell more than 350 million copies since it launched in 2011 (only Tetris has sold more games, and it had a 27-year lead). In 2014, Microsoft acquired Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion. That same year, Mojang Studios began trying to figure out how to turn an open-ended game into a narrative film for Warner Bros. By 2022, the adaptation coalesced around Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, featuring Jason Momoa as Garrett Garrison, a human trapped in-game, and Hess’s Nacho Libre star Jack Blac…

Baltimore, known for being a leader in medicine and technology as well as for its fiercely community-driven residents, is one of many cities trying to determine how to grapple with some of AI’s most pressing issues. And recently, the city has been sounding the alarm. Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live and work. In many ways, the tools are wildly helpful—solving business problems, advancing medicine, and even helping solopreneurs thrive without a team. However, the technology comes with some worrisome drawbacks and, given the lack of federal oversight, the risks are beginning to reshape local politics. That seems especially true in Baltimo…

At SXSW 2026, the creator economy moved firmly into the spotlight as a defining force in modern marketing. Creators are no longer viewed as content producers alone. They are business owners, cultural drivers, and trusted voices with direct relationships to engaged communities. SXSW’s creator-first approach reflects a broader evolution across marketing. Creators aren’t just a marketing channel; they’re becoming the primary way brands build relevance and connection. As the SXSW Creator Economy track made clear, creators now sit at the intersection of culture and commerce, shaping what people buy and how they discover and engage. For brands, this means moving beyond …

If you want to understand where AI-assisted parenting is headed, skip the research lab and look into a messy living room at 2 a.m. Some of the most revealing use cases are happening in the homes of AI engineers who have just become parents. Few environments are more demanding: high stakes, low sleep, a never-ending stream of split-second decisions with imperfect information. No mom or dad (us included) has patience for a tool that adds friction, noise, or guilt to the daily gauntlet of childcare. It is why parents—especially those who build products—are a valuable and overlooked source of AI product intelligence today. Consider Daanish Masood. When his young son w…

In the world of tax law, truly “free” lunches are rare. Usually, a tax break in one area requires a sacrifice in another. However, if you know where to look, the tax code contains several freebies—legal provisions that allow you to increase wealth, generate income, and gift money without the IRS taking a single penny. Here are five of the most powerful financial freebies available to investors today. 1) The 0% capital gains rate Most investors assume that selling a winning stock always triggers a tax bill. However, for those in the lower income brackets (up to $50,400 for individuals or $100,800 for married couples in 2026), the long-term capital gains tax rate is …

The battle for overhead bin space on flights is likely to intensify as United Airlines announced it will increase the checked bag fees starting Friday. It will now cost $10 more to check luggage for passengers traveling on flights in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Latin America. Since the airlines often move in tandem on ancillary fees like checked bags, this could mark the beginning of a trend ahead of the busy summer travel season. Earlier this week, JetBlue Airways raised its prices for checked bags by $4 to $9 per bag, depending on whether passengers are flying during peak or off-peak periods, with the highest fee now coming in at $49. Airlines are grappling w…

AI is moving fast. But are we really keeping humans at the center? AI scientist, founder of Affectiva, investor at Blue Tulip, and host of Pioneers of AI, Rana el Kaliouby makes the case that human-centric AI isn’t just a safety guardrail; it’s the key to thriving socially, economically, and emotionally. She also cuts through the noise on the buzziest AI myths, including whether we’re in an AI bubble. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response recorded live at SXSW, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top busine…

For too long, design has been too focused on how things look. That makes sense when products are competing for attention. Form becomes a way to stand out, a signal of taste, a shortcut to desire. But it’s fleeting. A shopper may feel good at checkout, then realize later that the product doesn’t actually enhance her life. That’s a failure. Most products don’t fail because they look bad. They fail because they don’t hold up in real life. They’re hard to open, awkward to carry, confusing to use, fine in ideal conditions but frustrating everywhere else. As a society, we’ve been designing for the moment of purchase, not the reality of use, and not for the long term. Re…

As OpenAI and Anthropic move closer to their planned initial public offerings, more details about the finances of both artificial intelligence giants are starting to emerge. It was no secret these companies were bleeding cash, but seeing the actual numbers is still striking. Neither company has made its filings official. Both are in the process of recruiting investors and have recently closed funding rounds, which meant opening their books. The Wall Street Journal got a peek. According to internal estimates, OpenAI will not turn a profit until 2030, while Anthropic expects slight positive results this year, followed by another year of losses before staying in the gree…

Fans of In-N-Out Burger have some good, or not-so-good, news to chew. The beloved chain’s closely-watched location tracker shows six new locations are on the way soon. But these locations won’t see the hamburger chain break ground in new states. While the Irvine, California-based company has been steadily expanding east in recent years, the locations marked as “opening soon” will only deepen its presence in six states: Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Tennessee. In-N-Out is opening a regional headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee and plans to relocate across the country from California by 2030. But it has yet to make it to the Atlantic Coast—and does…