ResidentialBusiness

In 2015, I had a stillborn baby girl. I found out during a prenatal appointment that my daughter had no heartbeat. Because I was in my second trimester, I was admitted to the hospital’s labor and delivery ward. The same ward where women deliver live babies. Except I did not get to bring my baby home. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I’ve talked openly about pregnancy loss for many years. I’ve advocated for more openness in the workplace. It’s a way to honor my daughter, to use my voice to make things better for other grieving parents. Bereavement policies should cover pregnancy loss My employer at the time had a very flexible leave policy. I ended up taking nearly three weeks off from work after my daughter’s stillbirth. My entire world felt like it didn’t make sense anymore. My body needed to heal. Unfortunately, pregnancy loss often falls into a gap in companies’ bereavement policies. They don’t allow any time off for a miscarriage or stillbirth. I met a woman through a support group who delivered her stillborn baby via C-section and had to go back to work mere days later. When there’s no living baby, maternity leave does not apply. And the standard three-day bereavement leave that many companies have is wholly inadequate. Only a few states in the U.S. provide any guaranteed bereavement leave, and even fewer specifically include pregnancy loss as a qualifying event. It’s mostly up to individual employers to craft their own policies. Many years later, I was working for a young company that was working to solidify its leave policies for the first time. I asked the HR person to include pregnancy-loss leave specifically. I said, “You don’t want to wait until a situation comes up and then be scrambling to define the leave.” I fear that happens too often. Companies don’t include pregnancy loss in their bereavement leave until an employee asks about it. At that point, the employee is in the throes of grief, which is the worst time to wait for HR to figure out a leave policy. In 2022, theSkimm launched a Show Us Your Leave campaign. Pregnancy-loss leave was included in the data collected. If you can influence HR policies and are unsure what type of bereavement support to offer, theSkimm’s database is a place to start. How to support a coworker who has experienced pregnancy loss Pregnancy loss is incredibly common: 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to WebMD. Some researchers believe that the number is much higher. Yet pregnancy loss is still a taboo topic, especially in the workplace. As a result, parents feel isolated in their grief. Recently a friend came to me because one of her employees had a miscarriage. She asked me, “What can I do to support her?” I believe that caring, compassionate coworkers often don’t know what to do, especially if they’ve never experienced pregnancy loss themselves. Here are my suggestions: Review this list from Miscarriage Association of what to say (and what not to say). Listen to this podcast episode: “How to Support Someone Experiencing Pregnancy and Infant Loss.” Set a reminder on your calendar to check in on a regular basis—even weeks or months later. Offer to listen if the person wants to talk. If you’ve experienced pregnancy loss yourself, I’m so sorry. I know how devastating and isolating it is. I highly recommend resources from Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support. I want to see the narrative around pregnancy loss change, especially in the workplace. I didn’t simply “lose a pregnancy.” My much-loved child died, as did all the dreams I had for her. There’s a hole in every family photo, because she isn’t there. Workplaces can—and should—do better. Pregnancy loss isn’t rare. The workplace shouldn’t be a source of awkwardness or additional pain. Companies and coworkers need to figure out how to support someone, because it will inevitably come up. View the full article

There are bigger, better-known tech brands than Logitech, but few have ever rivaled its quiet but pervasive impact on how people engage with the digital world. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, but with equally deep roots in Silicon Valley, the 44-year-old company helped to popularize once-unfamiliar devices such as computer mice and webcams. Those are still two of its marquee product lines. But Logitech also makes a dizzying array of other accoutrements for personal and business computing, including keyboards, headphones, speakers, microphones, videoconferencing equipment, tablet accessories, gaming controllers, and more. Despite playing in a variety of categories that are prone to commoditization, it has a genuinely impressive record of standing out by prioritizing design. Hanneke Faber joined Logitech as CEO in December 2023 after a long career at global giants such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble, where she oversaw familiar consumer brands in categories from soup (Knorr) to shampoo (Pantene). As she nears her second anniversary in charge, she’s been busy sharpening Logitech’s focus while giving it room to explore new territory. On October 28, the company reported its quarterly results and said that AI-infused products had helped it beat expectations. As the CEO of a company ultimately in the business of making physical goods around the world—Logitech manufactures a product every five seconds—Faber has also been managing the impact of the The President administration’s tariffs at international scale. I spoke with Faber at Logitech’s U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Logitech has a pretty broad set of products and has been around for a long time. What is it these days, and is that evolving? It’s a combination of who we have been and where we’re going. One of the reasons I loved joining Logitech is that you get into a taxi anywhere, and [the driver] is like, “Who do you work for?” With Logitech, in a taxi in Shanghai, a taxi in Berlin, or a taxi in New York, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m a gamer.” Or “That’s my mouse.” It’s a product that’s in everyone’s hand, and it’s a brand most people know, which is great. Going forward, our mission is to extend human potential in work and play. And those words are very carefully chosen. Yes, we’re a tech company, but it’s about making people better and extending their potential. Extend is a riff on the mouse, because it’s an extension of your arm, and the mouse built this house. But we hope that we can make people a little more productive, help them connect more easily, and do all of that in ways that are healthier for people and the planet. That’s extending human potential, and we’ve decided that we’ll do that in work and in play. Today we have close to a $5 billion business, but if you look at the addressable market for work and play products, it’s about $25 billion. So there’s still a ton of room to grow by extending human potential in work and play. We do that with superior products, and we describe the products we’re in as design-led software-enabled hardware. “Design-led” is so important to us. I was quite shocked when I got here that we have almost 300 in-house designers, which is more than a company like P&G or Unilever has in-house. Of course we make stuff, but increasingly it’s deeply software- and AI-enabled, and that’s how we make our products superior. And we employ more software engineers and hardware engineers these days. So that’s who we are. There aren’t all that many brands that are both work and play. How do you deal with that, given that in some cases, what’s good for work is radically different from what’s good for a gamer? The brand has really broad shoulders, so we can attract the 17-year-old gamer but also the CIO of a company who’s buying a lot of work products from us. And you wouldn’t think that the same brand can do that, but that CIO is often a gamer, too. And obviously, from a product point of view, there are a lot of synergies. Gamers need mice and keyboards, and people who work need mice and keyboards, but audio and video also goes across work and play. So while we have teams that are really dedicated to gaming and dedicated to work, there’s also a large, scalable engineering and design organization across both. Some people do care about design and will gravitate toward you. Others are focused on price or technology. Are you trying to increase the pool of people who care about design? I like to spend a lot of time with users and, well, some have more money than others. But I would say most people actually care about design. They might not talk about it as design, but they’ll talk about it as, “When I walk into this room, I should be able to press a button or, ideally, not even press a button, and the videoconferencing should just work.” In an age where technology is changing so fast with AI, we risk making things that are too complicated for most people to use on a daily basis. Designing them in a way that’s intuitive, that’s really easy to use, is really important. And that, to me, is a real foundation of design. It’s not just colors and aesthetics. Talk a little bit about the process of developing software, especially now that AI is a thing. The way we look at AI, internally, is that of course it’s absolutely extending human potential, if I may use those words. Across the company, it’s making our people faster, more accurate, and just able to get more work done in less time. Certainly in coding, but also in places where I would’ve expected it less, like marketing and design, where you can just get more ideas more quickly. This is not about cutting people, but we’ve got to do more with the people we’ve got. And this is helping us do that. And then, maybe more excitingly, there’s AI in products. The Logitech Sight [tabletop videoconferencing camera] is like an AI producer in the middle of the room. It’s like Steven Spielberg is on the table, but he’s AI, and he makes sure everything is framed correctly and you’re having a really, really engaging meeting. I’m the person who’s always on my headset in an airport, and you’ll hate speaking to me, because you hear every announcement that’s out there. But with two-way noise cancellation, it actually knows when it’s me speaking, and it blocks out everything else. Again, without machine learning on our audio data, that’s not possible. And there’s a lot more to come. There were stories a little while ago about Logitech talking about a mouse that gets better over time. And at least some of the instinctive response I saw was like, “I don’t want my mouse to get better over time, and I definitely don’t want to subscribe to a mouse.” I never used the word subscription. And it’s not an actual plan. But again, I like my designers to think big, and that can be in all kinds of spaces. In the age of AI, we’re thinking bigger than ever before, but I should probably keep my mouth shut when talking about these ideas. In theory, at least, might people look forward to software upgrades that make this product they already own more capable? Certainly, that’s very true on the B2B side. On the videoconferencing side, we’re constantly updating the software to be smarter, to be able to do more, and to make it easier for the people operating it. There’s nothing I love more than visiting one of our B2B customers and to hear from their CIO or IT managers—that tends to be a he, so I’ll use the word—that he can manage 10,000 meeting rooms around the world with a click of a button. A lot of Logitech’s products, like mice and webcams, are just part of the air people breathe. Headsets have been around forever. Does Logitech also need to enter completely new categories on a regular basis? Absolutely. Only the paranoid survive. So while we have a great core and we’ll continue to innovate on our core, we also need to do what I call “more.” There’s the core, and there’s more. The majority of our resources do go to the core, because we always want better mice and better keyboards and better cameras and better headsets. And there’s cool innovation there. The Combo Touch keyboard for the new iPads is a beautiful new product. A50 X, a new headset that lets you switch between different platforms—gorgeous product. Pro X Superlight gaming mouse—amazing mouse. You pick it up and you don’t even know that it’s there, it’s so light. But that’s core. Those are things we know, and we just make them better to stay ahead of the competition. And then we spend a smaller part of our resources on more. Last year, we [introduced] the MX Ink, which is a pencil for the Meta headset. And we launched [the Logitech Muse for Apple Vision Pro] at Apple’s developer conference. Logitech often gets a lot of attention at Apple events. You don’t see Apple playing up other people’s products all that much. That was exciting for us as well. And we’re grateful for having a chance to work with both Meta and Apple on AR and VR. Is there a chance that someday that might be a big business, which I assume it isn’t yet? It’s not big yet, but it could be big in the future. And to do that together with big partners makes it more likely. And then there are other things that we’re doing in terms of more. We launched the Spot sensor, which is more for B2B. It’s a sensor to put in meeting rooms, and it measures temperature, but also CO2 in the air. We haven’t done sensors before. The world will be full of sensors pretty soon. This is a space where we need to learn, because in an age of AI, our hardware is already in many places. We launch about 40 new products a year, and about between 30 and 35 are in the core. And then there’s another 5 or 10 that are more, because we do have to really learn on new categories as well. How much of success is about the unglamorous world of designing the products quickly and knowing which price points to hit and knowing how to manufacture them and having good distribution, knowing which products to continue with and which ones to kill? It’s the foundation of it all. So if I look at strategy, how we win is with superior products and innovation with an iconic brand, and by doubling down on B2B. Those are the sexy things. What’s less sexy—but I actually find them quite sexy—are the go-to-market and the operations, and that’s where Logitech shines. We are an operational powerhouse. We make a product every five seconds. We manufacture in six countries. Last year we had record cost savings on how we manufacture. We do it with great quality, great service, and great costs, both at the top end and the lower end of our portfolio. That is critical in hardware. It’s very different from software-only companies, which most here in the Valley are. And then go-to-market, we’re selling in 150 countries. We don’t just sell to Best Buy and Walmart. We sell to [Europe’s] MediaMarkt and thousands and thousands of other customers around the world as well. Doing that requires a really strong organization on the ground in all of those countries. There was this period during the pandemic when all of a sudden people started to pay attention to a lot of the tech that Logitech plays in—their camera setup and their audio and so forth. How do you convince people who in a lot of cases probably already own something that there might be a newer one that’s worth investing in? Well, there are many layers to that question. First of all, we’re about a 50% bigger company than before the pandemic because of that dynamic, and we’re growing again. We are convincing people to trade in, to trade up, to trade across. Those are all great dynamics for Logitech. The other thing going on there is that it may feel like we sell a need, but in many cases it is a want as well, especially in gaming. Do you need the new Pro X Superlight mouse? No, you will survive without it. But it is such an incredibly appealing product that it will make you just that little bit faster and cooler as you play the game. I should ask about tariffs, and whether you have any clarity about their long-term impact. No, I don’t think anyone has any clarity. But what I do know is that we have a very advantageous starting point, because only 30% of our business is in the U.S. Also, we manufacture in six countries, not just one. So we’ve actively been moving things around to take advantage of the lowest tariffs. And when you have a strong brand, that’s loyalty, but it’s also pricing power. With that, plus a strong balance sheet, we have a much better starting point than most people. Are you able to pull the levers you’ll need to in order to deal with as best you can? Have you raised prices? I’ve been quite open about that. I don’t like raising prices, but in this context it was a responsible thing to do here in the United States. So we have done that back in April. What’s it like working for this company that has this heritage in two countries over this long period, which is fairly unusual? I think it’s super special, and it’s another advantage of this company. The Valley obviously has the innovation and dynamism. And for us, a company that launches 40 new products every year, this is a great place to be. But Switzerland is a country of watches. It’s a country that’s been around since 1300. It has the long-term view, it has the accuracy, the precision, the quality, which is also very important for a company like ours. I feel very fortunate to lead a company with a foot in both places. View the full article

When Greg Giczi retired in February, his company threw him a party. Giczi had spent 12 years as president and general manager of WNIT-TV, a public television station based in South Bend, Indiana. Public broadcasting isn’t known for lavish budgets, so the party took place at the studio—a “big, open space with dramatic lighting,” Giczi describes. There were appetizers, wine, and beer, as well as heartfelt speeches. A huge snowstorm hit that night. But that didn’t stop a roomful family, coworkers, and others from coming out to celebrate Giczi; one person traveled over two-and-a-half hours. The board knew Giczi had been eyeing some electronics, so they gave him a “nice” gift card to Best Buy. “I was very humbled,” says Giczi, heartened by colleagues’ attendance and kind words, “especially on such a miserable weather night.” “That was significant and especially meaningful to me,” he says. But these days, such a send-off capping a career lifetime feels increasingly . . . uncommon. A couple decades ago, a successful career went like this: Join company. Work there. For decades. Announce retirement from the same company. Company throws you a big party. Live happily ever after. A gold watch may even be involved in a tradition that reportedly dates back to the ‘40s. But when you think about how many similar events have dotted your calendar in recent memory, that story feels more like a fairy tale. (Especially that gold watch part.) Today, the workplace experience is instead marked by job-hopping, mass layoffs, dragging staff back into offices kicking and screaming, and the employee-employer contract feels more fraught than ever. Not to mention more folks aren’t even retiring in the first place. Shifting expectations While there’s no entity that tracks workplace parties and their attendance, other data indicate that the changes in workplace recognition (like retirement parties) are real and complex. With remote and hybrid work more common, the days of employees toiling together under one roof are largely gone, even with return-to-office mandates. Plus, data from a 2023 HubSpot survey found that a whopping two-thirds of the 5,000 workers surveyed said they feel disconnected from their coworkers. In the hybrid work world, it’s more likely that people may not even know who some of their coworkers even are—let alone who’s retiring, and when. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior found that people who worked on-site rather than hybrid felt more of a sense of belonging with the people at work. In addition, attitudes about company gatherings seem to have changed, too. A 2023 survey by HR software platform Visier found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents have either cut back on company events or stopped going altogether. Additionally, a tolerance for forced fun, especially among Gen Z workers, feels at an all-time low, too: Nearly seven in 10 (69%) would prefer a larger annual bonus to attending a holiday party at all. On top of that, more seniors are choosing to continue work via side gigs, and are retiring later—if at all. In many ways, the fading grandeur of the retirement party is a strange encapsulation of several threads in the workplace, each one having profoundly changed people’s professional lives in recent years. Taking an individualized approach As a result, some companies are more intentional about tailoring that recognition to the employee and the team, rather than some ideal of a company night out at a posh restaurant or country club, a practice which had already been on the decline for decades. For example, Atlanta-based accounting and advisory firm Smith + Howard is planning to honor a longtime employee with an in-office retirement celebration this quarter. But CEO Sean Taylor says that, while this particular employee loves that kind of gathering, not everyone might. For more introverted folks, getting a cavity filled might sound more fun. “Not to paint with a general broad brush stroke, but many accountants tend to be a little more reserved,” he says. So over the years, Taylor says other retirees have opted for less grandiose celebrations in favor of lunch with a few close coworkers, a donation made in their name to a favorite charity, or even just an email recognition that went out to the team. “We want to honor what they want to, because it’s as much about them and their individual careers,” Taylor says. Knowing your employees and what they prefer is an important part of being a good leader, he adds. That’s good advice, especially considering how a few years ago, NBC News reported that a Kentucky man with an anxiety disorder won a $450,000 award after fallout from an unwanted birthday celebration his former employer threw for him. Party on (but watch the cost) But despite the transformations at work, event planner Lisa Ivler says that retirement parties are very much still “a thing.” She helps companies plan them regularly. Recently, Ivler planned a send-off for the founder of an architecture firm who spent nearly five decades in his business. The event was held at a luxe, New York City venue, and had a catered dinner, with live entertainment to boot. Images of his life’s work were projected on the walls. “The entire company, former employees, and family members were invited; it was a wonderful evening that truly captured his legacy,” she says. She says that retirement celebrations still happen—but some organizations’ budgets might not allow for fancy restaurants and expensive gifts, or be as splashy as the NYC event. Research backs up that notion: A May 2025 PwC survey found that economic volatility has 62% of companies cutting costs, adjusting financial forecasts, and shifting suppliers. Still, she thinks that the intent is the point. “We really can’t lose these traditions. People spend so much of their lives working,” she says. “Retirement parties are just one way to really honor that individual and the impact that they’ve made.” Some are still celebrating Currently, the job market is tight: the present trend is “job hugging,” in which nearly half of U.S. workers are hanging onto their roles for dear life. But generally speaking, job-hopping has become significantly more common in recent years across many industries (though Gallup data from 2024 shows that job tenure hasn’t actually changed that much over the decades). Either way, there are some sectors that will always love honoring its retirees—like academia, says business etiquette expert Carla Bevins, who teaches business management communication at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. “Faculty often spend decades at the same institution,” she says. “Retirement celebrations mark that sustained contribution and create a bridge between the past and future of the institution.” Wake Forest University uses its annual celebration of each year’s retirees as a sort of “induction” into the university’s retiree group, says Mary Lucal, the school’s vice president and chief human resources officer. She says the university gets access to “the institutional knowledge [the retirees] carry.” Many even return to the university to work part-time. That’s a common refrain among retirees these days, regardless of industry. A 2022 AARP survey found that 57% of older adults who haven’t yet retired plan to delay retirement for financial reasons. Twenty-nine percent of retirees 50 and older already are employed or plan to continue working. More recent data from this year found that 6% of retired people returned to work in the last six months alone. So, more people are working longer, and some might plan to continue working even after they announce their retirement. And that’s not as easy as it sounds. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas says job cuts this year are at their highest level since the pandemic, and up 55% over last year. A small survey from Resume.org estimates that six in 10 companies may lay off employees next year. Throwing a fancy party when you’re also cutting staff—even in the name of honoring someone’s years of service—may not be a good look. Companies aren’t the only ones seeing the impact of cost-cutting pressures. In the 2025 Meetings Today Trends survey, meeting and event planners reported their top three challenges as: increasing cost (90%), lower budgets (45%), and declining attendance (31%). Some folks on social media don’t even want to go to their own retirement parties, let alone one for someone else. It’s all about the message So, retirement parties aren’t really dead. But they look different than the fancy “roast and toast” soirees that often come to mind at their mention. Giczi says these events have never been one-size-fits-all. Organizations have always done things according to their own cultures. How they treat retirement is just one facet of that culture. The point is that doing something to recognize people when they’re leaving sends a message to the entire organization. “It says, ‘We value you, and we want to acknowledge what you contribute to your organization,’ rather than, ‘Well, thanks. Here’s your final check,’” he says. And that sends a message to the folks who are still at the company—and how the organization values them. View the full article

Earlier this year, things looked dire for Google. AI search was rapidly eroding the company’s market share, as people turned to ChatGPT and dedicated generative apps like Perplexity to search for information. In January, reports showed that the company’s search market share had dropped below 90% for the first time in almost a decade. And as the year continued, it seemed like it would keep plummeting. Now new data from search analytics company BrightEdge shows that the bleeding appears to be over. Google’s market share has stabilized, and has even begun to tick up. Why? Google is fighting back against the onslaught of AI search. And it’s winning. Stemming the tide BrightEdge is a massive SEO firm that works with giant clients—including a majority of the Fortune 500—to rank their websites in search. That gives the company a unique perspective on what’s working in SEO at any given moment. And for most of this year, it saw Google floundering. In data that BrightEdge shared with me in advance of publishing the new findings, Google had lost 1.5% of the search market share in 2025. That might not seem like much, but given that people perform around 5 trillion Google searches per year, a loss of 1.5% amounts to billions of queries. As of this month, though, BrightEdge told me that Google’s market share increased from 90.54% to 90.71%. I spoke with BrightEdge’s CEO, Jim Yu, to put that in perspective. Yu acknowledged that while an increase of 0.17% might seem small, given the scale involved, it’s actually a big deal. “We conservatively estimate each percent of search market share equates to between $1.5 billion and $2 billion” in ad revenue, Yu told me. That means Google’s little uptick is worth a cool $340 million. Winners and losers Google is probably celebrating its market share gain and hundred-million-dollar windfall. But executives will be even happier to know where that market share came from. Yu told me that as Google gained share, newcomers like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Grok lost share for the first time since BrightEdge started tracking such things. “Google’s market share has been slowly and consistently eroding since December 2024, a pattern that we never saw previously over several years of analysis. In parallel we saw the AI search (ChatGPT/Perplexity/Claude) consistently gaining market share over the same period. That pattern was broken recently with Google’s market share increasing and at the exact same time decreasing for multiple AI search engines,” Yu told me in our interview. “The fact that these two happened at the same time points to some people switching back to Google for queries handled by AI,” he said. Part of this might be AI fatigue. People may have tried ChatGPT or Perplexity when the tools were cool and new, but ultimately switched back to Google, the old stalwart. And OpenAI’s rollout of GPT-5 was a disaster. That flop might have driven people back to Google. But BrightEdge has a different theory. In a statement, the company said, “Data suggests the release of Google’s AI Mode contributed to this recovery, with specific increases in long-tail querying in Google indicating widespread use of the search engine’s new AI feature helping boost Google’s gains.” Yu confirmed this to me in our interview. When I asked him if Google’s AI Mode helped drive the rebound, he told me: “This is a hypothesis strongly supported by the data.” Google, in other words, did not take the world’s pivot to AI search lying down but rather aggressively rolled out features like AI Overviews and AI Mode. And based on the data, those AI-powered features are slowly clawing back the users it lost to its AI-powered rivals. What to do So, based on the churn in the AI search space, what are marketers and business owners to do? “Don’t get distracted,” Yu told me. “As much as everybody is talking about AI search, it is still a very small fraction of the searches at less than 0.3% by our estimate. Google is still the main channel for driving purchases, leads, viewers, or conversions important to a business.” As Google rolls in even more AI features, the distinction between AI-powered and traditional search will likely continue to fade. The contest will gradually become one of Google versus the Groks and Perplexities of the world—not one of AI search versus “traditional” methods. That’s a contest Google is likely to win. It’s no wonder that in emails with Elon Musk in OpenAI’s early days, the company indicated that it feared only one thing—not regulation, the need to raise trillions of dollars in funding, or the specter of runaway AGI—but Google. Yu also told me that marketers should remember the basics. “Google has publicly stated that the way to get into AI results is with good SEO,” he said. “In addition, each major AI engine relies on a traditional search index [ChatGPT uses Bing, Claude uses Brave, Google uses its own index]. For these reasons, CMOs don’t want separate teams optimizing for SEO and AI search as this will yield mediocre outcomes for both.” Instead, companies should optimize their content for traditional search and AI-driven search at the same time, Yu said. That’s an approach that I advocate in my GEO work as well. The way to rank well in chatbots is to have a strong brand, good technical basics, and amazing content. Those are the same things you need to rank well in traditional search (and to convince actual people to buy your products, by the way!). Overall, BrightEdge’s data is a reminder not to put too much stock in shiny new things. Yes, it’s hard to turn a ship as big as Google’s. But once that ship has turned, if it happens to encounter a minnow, don’t be surprised who gets smushed. View the full article

German carmaker maintains full-year guidance despite further hit from weak Chinese demandView the full article

Below, Eric Becker shares five key insights from his new book, The Long Game: A Playbook of the World’s Most Enduring Companies. Eric is the founder and chairman at Cresset, an award-winning multi-family office with billions in assets under management. He also co-founded Sterling Partners, a value-added, growth private equity firm. With his long history of starting, backing, and nurturing companies, Eric advises founders, entrepreneurs, private equity partners, and ultra-high worth families. What’s the big idea? Companies that last not one generation, not two, but for a hundred years and beyond share certain things in common. It is no accident when a company ends up lasting, rather than being sold. What it takes is setting your business up intentionally for the long game. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Eric himself—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Recognize a moment of truth Businesses don’t fail for a lack of vision. They usually fail because of a lack of great execution. It’s knowing what to do and when to do it that makes all the difference. That’s a moment of truth. I’m fascinated with moments of truth. In a lifetime, how many moments of truth might there be? It’s probably less than 20, or maybe less than a dozen. There’s just not that many of them. Learning to identify a moment of truth is an incredibly important skill—whether it’s deciding where to live, who to marry, choosing a career, or what kind of company to start. Every leader faces critical moments of truth, but recognizing when you are faced with that decision is essential. The ability to not only see and accept that you must act but also recognize when you shouldn’t. A moment of truth is what follows. A Centurion has this special talent of recognizing moments of truth and making the necessary pivots. They learn who they can trust in these moments and make critical, tough decisions. If you make the right decision in a moment of truth, it can change everything. 2. Adopt a myth-busting mindset Centuries-old businesses are often seen as dusty, bureaucratic, or slow and resistant to change. But I’ve found it’s the complete opposite. Centurions are some of the most agile, adaptive, and forward-thinking organizations in the world. They’ve mastered the art of adaptation because their very existence depends on it. Companies today that will likely outlive the next century share the same qualities. This is the idea of embracing resiliency, adaptability, and vision. Legacy organizations have a great sense of urgency. They don’t tolerate poor performance, and they don’t sit on their laurels. They have a sense of priority, importance, and timing. “Centurions are some of the most agile, adaptive, and forward-thinking organizations in the world.” Take a business like Ferragamo, or families like the Vanderbilts who have operated the historic 130-year-old Biltmore Estate since 1895, and even the famous Smuckers Family. On the surface, they might seem like echoes of the past, rooted in history and resistant to change. But dig a little deeper and you’ll see they’ve survived through war, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, the Pandemic, natural disasters, competition, technology—you name it, they’ve seen it all. A myth-busting mindset helped them survive. Think about what stereotype you are working against. How can you break the myth? How can you hone that survival instinct to do whatever it takes to change perception and move your company forward? 3. Be a super steward Embracing stewardship supersedes any other mission-critical priority. Very few leaders or families truly understand what this means when we say it. Stewardship is recognizing that the enterprise is greater than any one individual in the organization, including you. Every decision you make is made with the understanding that this move will protect and preserve the company for generations to come. That’s not how most entrepreneurs and even many family businesses operate. As a result, there is a crisis happening in America right now involving succession. But when you consistently demonstrate that stewardship supersedes everything else within your organization, that ethos ripples into every facet of your organization and becomes ingrained within your business or family and onto the next generation. It’s a big mindset shift, but stewardship has the power to become the protective shield for everything you love most. That’s how you start to build your legacy. I’ve seen it time and again: when employees understand and are included in their company’s mission and principles, and believe in it themselves, they’re proven to be more committed. You’re essentially building a dedicated army of stewards, passionately carrying out the founders’ vision. 4. Have a succession plan The best CEOs and leaders realize it’s not about them. It’s about everyone else. They look at the organization or the family and realize that they are responsible for bringing this business into the future. “Only one-third of family-owned businesses make it to the second generation, and just 12 percent survive to the third.” I had grown up in a family business. My father started a company that lasted for 53 years, which was amazing. But he didn’t have a succession plan. Ultimately, the company had to be sold. What had been missing? What had my dad needed to pass his business on? Ethical succession is seen in these 100-year-plus businesses. Having a viable, thoughtful, and ethical long-term succession plan is a critical part of being a steward. Only one-third of family-owned businesses make it to the second generation, and just 12 percent survive to the third. There is nothing that matters more to me than my own family and business knowing and trusting that the value I’ve placed on the plan ahead will carry them forward for generations. The family office has to evolve in order to survive. 5. Build centurion culture from day one To break through and to get ahead, culture is critical. Centurions were the commanders that led 100 soldiers in the Roman army, and they didn’t lead from behind. They led from up front. They were the strong leaders who set the culture for that group and took them forward into victory. When Avy Stein and I started Cresset, we put culture first and told people to act like owners. Now, 65 percent of Cresset is actually employee-owned. Our 100-year horizon shapes every decision, from technology to talent. From day one, we focused on questions like: What kind of company will we become? How will we treat each other? How will we treat customers and clients? We also told the first 10 team members that we were on a 100-year journey together, which is what The Long Game is all about. When you build a company with that kind of long-term focus, you don’t need an exit. Ironically, that’s what makes it even more attractive, because it’s built to last, not to sell. We developed what we now call the culture card. We took all the principles and practices around great culture and put them all together on one card. Having a culture card is something that almost no business seems to do. And yet, it is the most important tool that we’ve used in building an organization in less than eight years to over $70 billion in assets under management. Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

On October 27, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that President Donald The President has narrowed down his search to replace Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, whose term does not end until May 2026. Powell, who has butted heads with The President over lowering interest rates amid the risk of increasing inflation, has said he will serve out the remainder of his term. After his term ends as chairman, his board term still extends until 2028. The President is expected to announce a Federal Reserve chair replacement as early as December, according to reports. “We’re down to five,” Bessent told reporters as he was traveling with The President on Air Force One, according to Yahoo Finance. “We’re going to do a second round and we hope to present a good slate to the president right after Thanksgiving. . . . It will ultimately be his choice.” Bessent said those five picks are: Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, both members of the Federal Reserve’s board of governers; Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council; Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor; and Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, according to several media outlets per CNBC. The President’s choice must be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Like Powell, the new Fed chair will be charged with navigating inflation, the country’s weakening labor market, and stagnating growth. Fed members remain divided on whether the The President administration’s economic policies, including high tariffs and a push for even lower interest rates, are helping or hurting the U.S. economy, CNN noted. Powell first became Fed chair in February 2018 and was reappointed for a second four-year term in May 2022. His term as a member of the Fed’s board of governors ends on January 31, 2028. Last month, he explained the Fed’s dilemma when it comes to cutting or raising interest rates: whether to use it to fight inflation or instead to help offset a struggling job market (while controlling prices and unemployment). “We only have one tool, which is monetary policy—really, interest rates—and [the situation] is calling for different answers,” Powell said. “It’s a very difficult policy environment when your two goals are telling you two different things, you’ve got to make a compromise.” View the full article

Market hit by disruption to production and Donald The President’s tariffs View the full article

I once attended a slide presentation given by an executive in a telcom company. The presentation was highly technical, but that was not the main problem. It was boring because the speaker was using back-to-back visuals and had zero connection to his audience. When the one-hour session came to an end, the entire audience filed out of the room but the executive kept talking. He was so focused on his visuals that he didn’t even realize the audience had left the room. This story illustrates the dangers of using slides. The speaker can easily lose touch with the audience, and the result is that the power you bring as a speaker gets lost. To retain your power when using visuals, follow these five fundamentals. 1. AVOID SLIDES WHENEVER POSSIBLE. First, consider not using slides at all. Strong leaders have no interest in competing with busy PowerPoints. The purpose of a talk should be to persuade and inspire, not simply to convey information. Often you can do that best without any visual props. So avoid slides unless there is a strong argument for using them. Still, there are times when you will need to use slides. It might be part of the corporate culture. Some visuals illustrate a new product or a new building. At times a chart drives home a point. If you are planning to use a deck, the next four guidelines suggest how to do so most effectively. 2. REALIZE THAT YOU’RE THE BEST VISUAL. Think of yourself as the best visual. You have energy, enthusiasm, vocal reach, and body language that tell your audience you believe what you’re saying and they should too. You can bring forward your points with more impact than inanimate slides can. This should encourage you to keep the presentation focused on you and your convictions. Instead of fading into the visuals and reacting to them, lead with powerful statements using your strong presence to bring the presentation to life. Keep your visuals simple and uncluttered. The less time your audience spends reading the visuals the more time they’ll spend looking at you and following you. Beware especially of cluttered word slides. They’re distracting and often hard to understand. They’ll compete with you. Audience members will be reading all that text and tune you out. 3. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ONE CLEAR, COMPELLING MESSAGE. Your leadership presence depends on a clear, credible, and well-supported message. The danger of using slides or visuals is that the whole presentation can easily become an information dump. And that’s how it’s usually delivered. Fact after fact after fact. To save your presentation from the information junk heap, introduce a central message early on. For example, you might say: “The message of this presentation is . . .” and keep that message front and center throughout. Show that everything in your presentation supports this message. The argument on each slide should relate back to the message. At the end, come back to your message and show how it can be implemented. “Apple reinvents the phone” was the message Steve Jobs wanted his audience to take away when he introduced the iPhone. That’s the reason “Apple reinvents the phone” was the only message on the slide. And he repeated it several times during the presentation to reinforce it. 4. PRESENT WITH GREAT CONVICTION. Having slides doesn’t lessen the need to show your commitment; rather, it doubles that need. Own each visual. Provide a narrative that shows you’re in charge and that the deck is just a supporting character. As you walk through the presentation, state the message of each visual before showing it. Say, “As you’ll see, this next slide argues that convincingly.” To inspire your audience, strengthen your voice and body language. Your voice should be forceful and varied, in keeping with the substance you’re conveying. Emphasize your points by looking at the audience and using pauses, as if to say, “Did you get that?” Your body language is important. Excellent posture conveys conviction, as do appropriate gestures that reinforce your points. 5. END WITH A CALL TO ACTION. Finally, end with a call to action. The call to action should echo the overall message that you began the presentation with. Explain to the audience what you want from them. Approval of the proposal? Buy-in? Or a full understanding of your argument and its implications for moving ahead. Your call to action might begin “I trust you can now see how redoubling our focus on using AI will be the basis for strong growth next year.” Whatever your message, show how it can be implemented. If you do this successfully, you will have led. View the full article

When AI systems started spitting out working code, many teams welcomed them as productivity boosters. Developers turned to AI to speed up routine tasks. Leaders celebrated productivity gains. But weeks later, companies faced security breaches traced back to that code. The question is: Who should be held responsible? This isn’t hypothetical. In a survey of 450 security leaders, engineers, and developers across the U.S. and Europe, 1 in 5 organizations said they had already suffered a serious cybersecurity incident tied to AI-generated code, and more than two-thirds (69%) had uncovered flaws created by AI. Mistakes made by a machine, rather than by a human, are directly linked to breaches that are already causing real financial, reputational, or operational damage. Yet artificial intelligence isn’t going away. Most organizations feel pressure to adopt it quickly, both to stay competitive and because the promise is so powerful. And yet, the responsibility centers on humans. A blame game with no rules When asked who should be held responsible for an AI-related breach, there’s no clear answer. Just over half (53%) said the security team should take the blame for missing the issues or not implementing specific guidelines to follow. Meanwhile, nearly as many (45%) pointed the finger at the individual who prompted the AI to generate the faulty code. This divide highlights a growing accountability void. AI blurs the once-clear boundaries of responsibility. Developers can argue they were just using a tool to improve their output, while security teams can argue they can’t be expected to catch every flaw AI introduces. Without clear rules, trust between teams can erode, and the culture of shared responsibility can begin to crack. Some respondents went further, even blaming the colleagues who approved the code, or the external tools meant to check it. No one knows whom to hold accountable. The human cost In our survey, 92% of organizations said they worry about vulnerabilities from AI-generated code. That anxiety fits into a wider workplace trend: AI is meant to lighten the load, yet it often does the opposite. Fast Company has already explored the rise of “workslop”—low-value output that creates more oversight and cleanup work. Our research shows how this translates into security: Instead of removing pressure, AI can add to it, leaving employees stressed and uncertain about accountability. In cybersecurity, specifically, burnout is already widespread, with nearly two-thirds of professionals reporting it and heavy workloads cited as a major factor. Together, these pressures create a culture of hesitation. Teams spend more time worrying about blame than experimenting, building, or improving. For organizations, the very technology brought in to accelerate progress may actually be slowing it down. Why it’s so hard to assign responsibility AI adds a layer of confusion to the workplace. Traditional coding errors could be traced back to a person, a decision, or a team. With AI, that chain of responsibility breaks. Was it the developer’s fault for relying on insecure code, or the AI’s fault for creating it in the first place? Even if the AI is at fault, its creators won’t be the ones carrying the consequences. That uncertainty isn’t just playing out inside companies. Regulators around the world are wrestling with the same question: If AI causes harm, who should carry the responsibility? The lack of clear answers at both levels leaves employees and leaders navigating the same accountability void. Workplace policies and training are still behind the pace of AI adoption. There is little regulation or precedent to guide how responsibility should be divided. Some companies monitor how AI is used in their systems, but many do not, leaving leaders to piece together what happened after the fact, like a puzzle missing key parts. What leaders can do to close the accountability gap Leaders cannot afford to ignore the accountability question. But setting expectations doesn’t have to slow things down. With the right steps, teams can move fast, innovate, and stay competitive, without losing trust or creating unnecessary risk. Track AI use Make it standard to track AI usage and make this visible across teams. Share accountability Avoid pitting teams against each other. Set up dual sign-off, the way HR and finance might both approve a new hire, so accountability doesn’t fall on a single person. Set expectations clearly Reduce stress by making sure employees know who reviews AI output, who approves it, and who owns the outcome. Build in a short AI checklist before work is signed off. Use systems that provide visibility Leaders should look for practical ways to make AI use transparent and trackable, so teams spend less time arguing over blame and more time solving problems. Use AI as an early safeguard AI isn’t only a source of risk; it can also act as an extra set of eyes, flagging issues early and giving teams more confidence to move quickly. Communication is key Too often, organizations only change their approach after a serious security incident. That can be costly: The average breach is estimated at $4.4 million, not to mention the reputational damage. By communicating expectations clearly and putting the right processes in place, leaders can reduce stress, strengthen trust, and make sure accountability doesn’t vanish when AI is involved. AI can be a powerful enabler. Without clarity and visibility, it risks eroding confidence. But with the right guardrails, it can deliver both speed and safety. The companies that will thrive are those that create the conditions to use AI fearlessly: recognizing its vulnerabilities, building in accountability, and fostering the culture to review and improve at AI speed. View the full article

US president is in South Korea for talks on trade and security ahead of Xi Jinping summitView the full article

Indian refinery received at least four crude shipments this year worth almost $280mn on sanctions-listed vesselsView the full article

With progress in AI, the showhorses may yet eclipse the more technically skilled workhorsesView the full article

Bank stood by Andy Sieg, a potential successor to CEO Jane Fraser, after investigation by law firm Paul WeissView the full article

Contracts worth up to €900mn put Helsing and Stark on track to help buttress Nato’s eastern flank against RussiaView the full article

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has a shortlist of five candidates vying to replace Jay Powell View the full article

The The President administration’s looser rules could breed more ‘cockroaches’ in the lending marketView the full article

Testimonies from former detainees spotlight worsening conditions since October 7 2023 attackView the full article

Up to 75% of the class A2 notes pay a coupon based on the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR). Also, since the assets pay a fixed rate, interest rate spikes could eat away at excess spread. View the full article

The State Department has enlisted Starlink, the satellite internet service run by the Elon Musk company SpaceX, to support its staff in Jamaica in the event that Hurricane Melissa, a category 5 storm that made landfall Tuesday, disrupts communications on the island nation, the agency says. “We have pre-provisioned Starlink in Jamaica and will use it for communications if necessary,” a spokesperson for the agency said Tuesday night. If the damage is as bad as expected, the agency is likely to use the service for live service in Jamaica, another State Department official told Fast Company. On-location agency staff are likely to use Starshield — a version of the Starlink service tailored for national-security applications — at the embassy, the second official says. The consumer service Starlink might be used by smaller teams who may need to travel within the country, the person added. The move shows how critical satellite-based internet has become in natural disasters, particularly when ground-based communications services go offline. And it also demonstrates just how much the U.S. government has come to rely on technology made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s technology, which now includes everything from rocket launch services to consumer satellite internet. The State Department is one of a growing number of US government agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security, now using Starlink for a variety of purposes as varied as videocalling, real-time data support, and research in Antarctica. As SpaceX has ramped up sales of Starlink to the government, it has also built Starshield, a national-security-related service used within the Defense Department. The State Department has bought both services, deploying the SpaceX technology at several embassies. (The relationship between the two services has been murky. A Starlink outage earlier this summer also took Starshield offline.) Relatedly, SpaceX often offers free Starlink services during emergencies. When asked what the company was doing to prepare for Hurricane Melissa, the company’s media team directed Fast Company to an announcement explaining that people in Jamaica and the Bahamas could receive free service until the end of November. Customers who had already set up accounts, even those that were paused or suspended, will automatically receive a free credit, while those hoping to sign up for the first time can create a support ticket, the company says. While Starlink service can be a life-saving tool during an emergency, critics have raised concerns about the U.S. government’s growing dependence on the technology — as well as on Musk’s influence on SpaceX. Earlier this year, for instance, Musk ordered that some Starlink terminals used by Ukrainian forces be taken offline amid their attempt to retake territory from Russia, Reuters reported. View the full article

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is rescinding two rules issued under former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra that required nonbanks to register court orders, plus terms and conditions of contracts. View the full article

NASA wants to reopen competition on its moon lander, a multi-billion-dollar contract for a new space vehicle that will help support one of America’s most ambitious missions yet: going back to the moon — and for good. The space agency’s decision to reopen the contract for the Artemis mission moon lander renews competition between SpaceX, which had previously won the award, and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space startup. But it also sets off a competition between Texas and Washington, the two companies’ respective home states. Politicians long fought over American space spending, as Fast Company explained a while back. But it’s not clear where they stand, at least for now. Several congressional offices that would be impacted by the space agency opening up the contract did not respond to a request for comment, including the office of Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn (the Texas delegation), as well as the Republican and Democratic sides of the Commerce Committee, whose portfolio includes space issues. A spokesperson for Rep. Vincente Gonzalez, the congressman who represents Starbase, Texas— where SpaceX is testing its heavy launch vehicle Starship— didn’t respond to a request for comment. The office of Sen. Maria Cantwell, who represents Washington and frequently touts Blue Origin, also did not respond. Congressional delegations have previously advocated for Artemis contracts to come to their states. Back when SpaceX first won the lunar lander contract, Cantwell pushed for NASA to give a second company a lunar contract, including through legislation. Even amid doubts with SpaceX, Cruz, who represents SpaceX homestate Texas, has said it’s too late for the U.S. to leave Starship behind. The size of a small building, Starship is the platform that Elon Musk thinks will bring humanity to Mars. It’s also the vehicle that, for several years, NASA has been planning to use for an earlier phase of the Artemis program. (The Artemis 3 mission that SpaceX is supposed to work on, currently scheduled for late 2027, will involve a weekslong stay on the lunar surface, though NASA has ambitions for returning to the moon in later years, including to build a lunar base camp). The challenge is that Starship – a key part of this plan – has suffered failures during several recent test flights. And now, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is complaining that SpaceX is behind schedule. A NASA panel said as much in September. Blue Origin still has a lot catching up to do. The company has yet to build a similarly large low Earth orbit satellite network, or to send manned space missions into orbit. (The company has accomplished suborbital flights). But Blue Origin has also won lunar lander work from NASA for the Artemis V mission, a later phase of the new moon program. In the past, NASA has expressed interest in maintaining at least two options in order to ensure “a regular cadence of Moon landings,” a NASA official said when the government announced an award for Blue Origin’s lunar platform, which the company calls Blue Moon. There’s also Lockheed Martin, which might also put its hat in the ring. Of course, it’s unclear what might be going on between policymakers privately, or whether the rift between Elon Musk and the The President administration has settled. Another factor is growing concern that the U.S. is falling behind China on lunar ambitions. Secretary Duffy has also said that The President wants some kind of lunar accomplishment before he leaves office. In the meantime, much of NASA is closed because of the government shutdown. View the full article

Wikipedia is a treasured online resource that, despite massive changes across the web, has managed to remained truly great to this day. I, alongside millions of other users, visit the site daily to learn something new or double-check existing knowledge. In an age of non-stop AI slop, Wikipedia is something of an antidote. If you look at Wikipedia and think "this is alright, but an AI version would be a lot better," you might just be Elon Musk. Musk's AI company, xAI, just launched Grokipedia—yes, that really is its name—an online encyclopedia that closely resembles Wikipedia in name and surface-level appearance. But under the hood, the two could hardly be any more different. Though it's early days for the new "encyclopedia," I'd say it's not worth using, at least not for anything real. The Grokipedia experienceWhen you load up the Grokipedia website, it looks fairly standard. You see the Grokipedia name, alongside the version number (v0.1, at the time of writing), alongside a search bar and an "Articles Available" counter (885,279). Searching for an article too is basic: You type in a query, and a list of available articles appears for you to select from. Once you pull up an article, it looks like Wikipedia, only extremely basic: There are no images, only text, though you can use the sidebar to jump between sections of the article. You'll also find sources, noted by numbers, which correspond to the References portion at the bottom of each article. The key difference between Grokipedia and a simple version of Wikipedia, however, is that these articles are not written and edited by real people. Instead, each article is generated and "fact-checked" by Grok, xAI's large language model (LLM). LLMs are able to generate large amounts of text in short periods of time, and include sources for where they pull their information, which might make the pitch for Grokipedia sound great to some. However, LLMs also have a tendency to hallucinate, or, in other words, make things up. Sometimes, the sources the AI is pulling from are unreliable or facetious; other times, the AI takes it upon itself to "lie," and generate text that simply isn't true. In both cases, the information cannot be trusted, especially not at face value, which is why it's troubling to see much of the experience is entirely powered by Grok, without human intervention. Grokipedia vs. WikipediaMusk is pitching Grokipedia as a "massive improvement" over Wikipedia, which he has criticized for pushing propaganda, particularly towards left-leaning ideas and politics. It's ironic, then, that some of these Grokipedia entries are themselves pulling from Wikipedia. As The Verge's Jay Peters highlights, articles like MacBook Air note the following at the bottom: "The content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License." What's more, Peters found that some Grokipedia articles, such as PlayStation 5 and the Lincoln Mark VIII, are almost one-to-one copies of the corresponding articles on Wikipedia. If you've followed Musk's politics and political activities in recent years, it won't surprise you to learn he falls on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. That might give pause to anyone who considers using Grokipedia as an unbiased source of information, especially as Musk has continuously retooled Grok to generate responses more favorable to right-wing opinions. Critics like Musk claim Wikipedia is biased towards the left, but Grokipedia is entirely produced by an AI model with an abject bias. You'll see that you have very different experiences when reading certain topics across Wikipedia and Grokipedia. Wikipedia's Tylenol article, for example, reads the following: In 2025, Donald The President made several statements about a controversial and unproven connection between autism and Tylenol. These statements, about the connection between Tylenol during pregnancy and autism, are based on unreliable sources without scientific evidence. Compare that to Grokipedia, which devotes three paragraphs to the subject, the first of which begins: Multiple observational studies and meta-analyses have identified associations between prenatal exposure to acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) and increased risks of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in offspring, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That said, the second paragraph highlights some of the issues with those studies, while the third highlights that certain agencies suggest the "benefits outweigh unproven risks." Similarly, as spotted by WIRED, Grokipedia's article, Transgender, highlights the belief that social media may have acted as a "contagion" to the rise in transgender identification. Not only is that a common right-wing assertion, that particular word could have been plucked from a post from a right-wing X account. Wikipedia's article, as you might expect, does not entertain the claim at all. Grokipedia is also favorable to unproven, controversial, or flat-out absurd claims. As Rolling Stone highlights, it refers to "Pizzagate," a conspiracy theory that lead to a real-life shooting, as “allegations,” a “hypothesis,” and a “narrative.” Grokipedia gives credence to “Great Replacement," a racist theory floated by white supremacists. Should you use Grokipedia?Here's the short answer: no. The issue I have with Grokipedia is two-fold: First, no encyclopedia is going to be reliable when it is almost entirely created by AI models. Sure, some of the information may be accurate, and it's great you can see the sources the bot is using, but when the risk of hallucination is baked into the technology with no way around it, choosing to avoid human intervention en masse all but ensures inaccuracies will plague much of Grokipedia's knowledge base. As if that wasn't enough, this Grokipedia is built on an LLM that Musk is openly tinkering with to generate results that more closely align with his worldview, and the worldview of one particular political ideology. Hallucination and bias—just the ingredients you need for an encyclopedia. The thing about Wikipedia is it's written and edited by humans. Those humans can hold other human writers accountable, adding new information when it becomes available and correcting mistakes when they encounter them. Perhaps it's frustrating to read that your favorite health and human services secretary "promoted vaccine misinformation and public-health conspiracy theories," but that's the objective, scientific reality. Removing these objective descriptions, and reframing the discussion in a way that fits a warped worldview doesn't make Grokipedia better than Wikipedia—it makes it useless. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Google has launched its "Personal Health Agent," an AI coach available in the Fitbit app. Currently it’s in a “preview” mode, and limited to Android users in the U.S. who have a Fitbit Premium subscription. That group includes me, so I tried it, and it gave me some decent workouts. It also told me that the Pixel Watch 4, which Google makes, and which I reviewed, and which am currently wearing, does not exist. So, par for the course when it comes to AI. How to enable the Fitbit app’s personal health coachThe “public preview” of this new coaching bot is available starting today for Fitbit Premium users in the U.S., provided they use Android. (Support for iOS is coming soon, Google says.) I’m a little unclear on what to call this bot—an email I got from Google calls it their "Personal Health Agent" and describes it as "Google Health’s AI coach." A Google blog post calls it Fitbit’s "personal health coach." In any case, it lives in the Fitbit app. When the AI coach became available for me, I received a message at the top of my Today screen asking if I’d like to “try new Fitbit features before they’re available to everyone.” If you missed that prompt, you can go to your profile pic at the top right corner of the app and select Public Preview from the menu that appears. Joining the public preview launches you into an entirely different version—dare I call it a beta?—of the Fitbit app. It doesn’t yet include menstrual health, mindfulness, nutrition, or community features, so to access those, you'll need to switch back to the old version of the app. You can swap between versions at any time from the menu under your profile icon. Setting up my fitness goalsGoogle says the new chatbot can answer general questions about health...but so can a web search, so I wasn't too excited about that. What I did want to see was how well the bot could set up a coherent exercise plan for me—that's the big feature Google is touting. It did pretty well, at first. The coach asked the same kinds of questions I would expect a personal trainer to cover when putting together a plan. It seemed to have a nicely structured approach, and gathered this information: My main goal (I told it I'd like to get back into a consistent habit after time off) My biggest challenge (I said something about motivation and time) How much exercise I was used to doing, including my running mileage and paces (it pulled this from my exercise data but let me make corrections) What activities I like to do When I like to do them (it noticed that my strength sessions tend to fall on Tuesdays and Thursdays) What equipment I have available (it deduced I have space to run outdoors, and strength training equipment) How many days each week I’d like to exercise It responded well to my adjustments during the conversation. I told it I’d like to alternate strength training and running (with Saturdays off), starting today with a strength training session. It suggested a lower body focus to support my running, which I declined. I named some of my favorite lifts and asked if it could build the strength program around those. We were agreed—a six-day plan with strength and running was coming right up. The bot told me it would take up to 10 minutes to generate my plan, but it only took about two. My workouts for the week matched what we’d discussed, with a few discrepancies. For example, I asked for pull-ups and it gave me assisted pull-ups. I also didn’t like the six-rep sets of squat and bench press, since I was hoping for heavier lifts with fewer reps. But there is an “adjust plan” button, and with some more back-and-forth, I was able to get it to tweak the workouts to my liking. It has trouble planning for the long termI was excited to look over my plan—to me, a plan sets out the steps to accomplish a goal. For a training plan, that would involve building toward that goal over a matter of weeks or months. For example, a marathon training plan would increase your mileage over time until you can run a strong 26 miles. In my case, with a goal of consistency, almost anything would fit the bill. This is easy mode for a trainer, AI or otherwise. But what I got in the app was not what I would call a plan. It was four workouts, taking me from today to my rest day on Saturday. There was no way to view next week, or the week after that, or to see how many weeks were even in this alleged plan. I didn’t even have a way to see the last two days of my six-day plan. I asked the bot what was coming up next, and it said it wasn’t able to tell me anything about next week. What about the end of this week? (We agreed on six days, after all.) It told me that the week is Tuesday through Saturday. I began to feel like those bodybuilders arguing over how many days are in a week. After some back-and-forth, it delivered me text descriptions of what Sunday and Monday’s workouts might look like, but they were incomplete, not even naming what lifts I’d be doing on the strength day. When I exited the conversation and looked at the workouts in the app, I only had the original four. I tried asking another way, and the coach was able to give a broad overview of what the next few weeks might contain. Unfortunately the adjustments we’d previously discussed weren’t factored in, so it described how the second week would build on the originally programmed first week, not how it would build on the workouts that were actually on my calendar. If I were comparing this chatbot's plan to something from, say, the Reddit fitness wiki, pretty much anything on the wiki would have been more comprehensive. There’s no good way to follow the workoutsI’ve written before about the Pixel Watch’s barebones fitness tracking. (This applies to Fitbits like the Charge 6 as well.) You can turn on a strength training mode on the watch, but you can’t track rest times or note what exercises you did, though there is some ability to create and follow running workouts. With that in mind, I didn’t expect to be able to follow the strength workouts from my watch, but I figured it was worth asking. The bot told me to just track a basic strength workout from the watch (which records heart rate and total time, nothing else) and follow the exercises from my phone. Fair enough. But wait! The app just shows each exercise with a checkbox next to it. If you’re supposed to do three sets of six reps, you only get one checkbox, not three. And there’s no way to note how much weight you used so you can build on it next time. The bot told me we’d be doing some progressive overload, but how to progress if we’re not tracking how much weight I’m using? OK, maybe strength is hard for a simple bot to track, but running workouts should be straightforward, right? The old version of the Fitbit app (which you can still access if you quit the preview) could recommend personalized running workouts and load them onto your watch, so that the watch coaches you through the different paces and intervals. I tried one out when writing my Pixel Watch 4 review, so I know the device can do it. I was hoping for a similar experience here. But when I asked the bot about how to follow the running workouts, things got weird. It gave me step-by-step instructions to find the workouts on my Pixel watch, but the instructions were wrong. For example, it told me to swipe up to access the app list, but that’s not how you access the app list. And it told me that my workout should appear on a certain screen, but there were no workouts on that screen. I let the bot talk me through a troubleshooting process, which derailed when I mentioned that my device was a Pixel Watch 4. That watch doesn’t exist, it told me. There is only a Pixel Watch 1 and a Pixel Watch 2. What? The Pixel Watch 3 was released more than a year ago. The Pixel Watch 4 is the current model. I am wearing one right now. I asked the bot where it was getting its information about Pixel Watch models, and it responded by admitting to hallucinating the “nonexistent ‘Pixel Watch 4.’” Hmm. The bottom line: Promising tech, if it ever worksAs with many AI products these days, the best conclusion I can offer is that this would be a cool feature if it worked well—but it currently doesn’t. Here are a few things that it does handle competently at the moment: The onboarding conversation is well structured and gathers the right information (or at least it did for my fairly simple situation). The bot understood what I meant when I used lingo like “heavy singles with some back-offs.” It was able to pull data from my workout history, like my running mileage and the types of equipment I’m likely to have access to. But there’s so much it can’t do, including some really basic, fundamental things. It can’t plan for the long term, which is the whole point of a plan. It also can’t give me a way to follow the workouts it comes up with. This brings me back to the question of why somebody would want to use this AI coach in the first place. Sure, it can come up with an idea for a workout, but so can anybody who has ever typed a query into a search engine. Finding simple workout ideas on the internet is like searching for grains of sand on a beach. Adding another to the pile isn’t innovative. But if the AI could convert the workout it generated into a format I could follow with Google's tech (be it their app or watch), that function would be useful, and it wouldn't duplicate something I can find in a million other places. The ability to track your progress over time would also be useful, but that means the app would have to record your weights so it can actually program progressive overload, not just talk about progressive overload. Things like that are what a personal fitness coach really needs to provide, and this chatbot just isn't right now. View the full article

Adobe, the company behind big creative programs like Photoshop and Premiere, just wrapped up its 2025 Adobe Max keynote, and you know what that means. That's right: more AI. Over the course of the three-hour presentation, the company went big on automating creativity, introducing new generative AI tools for Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, and other Creative Cloud apps. Some of these are expansions of tools that already exist, like better generative fill, while other are all new—like Firefly's new AI audio generation. Adobe Express can design based on vibes Credit: Adobe Before getting into the meatier stuff, let's start with Adobe's entry-level apps. While Adobe is known for professional-level programs like Photoshop, the company also has its own free basic web editor (although there's also a mobile app) to help it compete with alternatives like Canva. Called Adobe Express, the tool's been getting a steady stream of upgrades since its debut in 2015, and with the introduction of generative AI, has been quick to jump onto the trend to try to make itself easier to use. Enter today's "AI Assistant in Adobe Express." When toggled on through a switch in the app's top-left corner, the assistant will replace your tools with a chatbox where you can instruct it to either make a new design from scratch or edit an existing one. Should you need your tools again, you can bring them back by toggling the assistant off, although Adobe's demos for the feature also show the assistant bringing up contextual sliders when needed, like one for resizing. While this is not Adobe Express' first venture into generative AI, the idea is to make getting started or quickly editing a piece less intimidating, by having inexperienced users spend most of their time in a chatbox rather than having to click through a toolbar. Adobe says, like its other AI tools, it pulls from a number of "commercially safe" sources, including the company's font and stock image libraries and its Firefly AI models. The tool will start rolling out in public beta today, so you should be able to try it out shortly. Adobe Premiere is getting built into YouTube Shorts Credit: Adobe Shorts are the next big thing over on YouTube, and to encourage more people to make them, YouTube is teaming up with Adobe. As an update to both the Premiere iPhone app and YouTube itself, Adobe's new Create for YouTube Shorts feature allows you to upload your footage and instantly make it publish-ready with Adobe's font overlays and a number of "exclusive" effects, transitions, and stickers. Or you can directly plug your footage into templates that already have transitions and effects included. The feature is currently listed as "coming soon," so it'll be a bit before you can try it. But once it's live, Adobe and YouTube say you'll be able to access it either through the Premiere iPhone app or directly though YouTube, via an "Edit in Adobe Premiere" icon in YouTube shorts. There is no word yet on an Android or desktop release. Adobe will add sound to your videos for you Credit: Adobe Sound is easy to overlook when making a new video, and I've had to scramble to find a decent soundtrack to add to my videos at the last second more than once. Adobe's new Firefly AI audio features are looking to save you from that fate, by making it easy to add music and even narration to an otherwise silent video. Rolling out in public beta today, Firefly's new "Generate Soundtrack" and "Generate Speech" buttons use AI and a Mad Libs style prompting system to help you quickly score your content from a number of options. For "Generate Soundtrack," you'll upload your video, press the appropriate button, and the app will suggest a prompt for you and give you a palette of adjectives, genre types, and and content types to refine it with. Drag your chosen terms into the prompt box, hit generate, and you'll get four options, each cutting out at a maximum of five minutes. It's a bit odd that you can't just enter your own terms into the prompt box, although Adobe generative AI head Alexandru Costin told The Verge that's because AI audio is "a new muscle we need to develop" and that the current approach is "easier and more accessible." Like other Firefly generations, audio will be generated using Adobe's own licensed content, so users won't have to worry about copyright strikes on videos made using the feature. "Generate Speech," meanwhile, gives users access to 50+ text-to-speech voices, either from Adobe Firefly or licensed via ElevenLabs. There's no Mad Libs prompting here, with Adobe instead allowing for fine-tune control over factors like speed, pitch, tone, and even pronunciation. Currently, over 20 languages are supported. Taken together, the updates seem to me like an attempt to keep up with platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which have licensed music libraries and text-to-speech built in. Whether a purely AI-powered version can keep up remains to be seen, although putting it into the editor rather than the platform does give creators more choice about where to upload. Updates inside Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere Credit: Adobe Finally, for the more hardcore Adobe users, updates are coming to the company's core apps as well. First, Photoshop is also getting its own AI assistant, which will be able to use prompts to edit for you. However, unlike Adobe Express, it's currently in a private beta, so it'll be some time before most users see it. It's also limited to the web version of the app for now. However, not in beta is the ability to choose which AI models the app works with. Previously, Generative Fill, which uses AI to fill in blank spots in backgrounds (or just generate whole canvases from nothing), were limited to Adobe's Firefly models. Now, users will also be able to use them with Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash model, or Black Forest's Flux.1 Kontext model. Given how popular 2.5 Flash has gotten on social media under the name "nano banana," that's a big get for Adobe. Still, Firefly isn't getting left behind. Adobe says it's upgraded the model with the ability to generate in a native four-megapixel resolution, and to better render people. It's also integrating it into a new "Layered Image Editing" tool that can make contextual changes for you across layers, like futzing with shadows after you move an image. Outside of Photoshop, Lightroom has its own private beta feature called "Assisted Culling." I'll admit Lightroom is probably where I have the least experience when it comes to Adobe, but the company says it'll be able to filter through uploaded photos for you and find the most edit-friendly ones. Finally, Premiere Pro has its own beta feature, but one that's graciously public. Called "AI Object Mask," it'll automatically detect and track people and objects in your video's background, so you can more easily add effects like blurs or color grading. It could be useful if, say, you're shooting in a crowded area where you need to blur a lot of faces. A little something for everyoneOverall, it was a fairly balanced Max, with a number of features for both pros and beginners. That said, I can't ignore the focus on AI and automatic generation. On one hand, I get that photoshop's a bit intimidating. On the other, the more Adobe handles your edits for you, the more it runs the risk of competing with existing easy-edit apps and platforms. I'm curious to see how the industry giant will compete as platforms like TikTok and Instagram continue to offer their own built-in editing tools. View the full article