What's on Your Mind?

A new mandatory safety feature requires Roblox users in the U.S. to submit to facial age estimation via the app to access its chat feature. The online gaming platform announced it was implementing the system to prevent children younger than 16 from communicating with adults. About 42% of Roblox users are younger than 13. But a cursory scroll on eBay found that various listings of age-verified Roblox accounts are available for purchase, some for as little as $2.99. This allows the purchaser to sign in to the account without having to use any ID or facial scan, voiding the new safety feature Roblox has implemented. The description of one listing (since removed) rea…

The new year is a time for resolutions. This year, governments, platforms, and campaigners all seem to have hit on the same ones: Children should spend less time online, and companies should know exactly how old their users are. From TikTok’s infinite scroll to chatbots like xAI’s Grok that can spin up uncensored answers to almost any question in seconds, addictive and inappropriate online options leave legislators and regulators worried. The result is a new kind of arms race: Lawmakers, often spooked by headlines about mental health, extremism, or sexual exploitation, are turning to age gates, usage caps, and outright bans as solutions to social media’s problems. Jus…

Imagine you’re talking to someone and they suddenly start to add advertising to the exchange. What might that look like? In a 1965 episode of the classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, the protagonist uses her magical powers to create fake parents for herself in order to impress a date. She crafts them to be “just like the people on television commercials,” making them speak using sentences from commercials. Her synthetic “parents” appear friendly and normal—until they start talking, reciting ads verbatim for products like “streak-away” for gray hair, dish soap, “Grippo” denture adhesive, and deodorant. They have so much to say, yet communicate nothing at all. Somethin…

As we head into the new year, I am facing a daunting prospect. After over 34 years in higher education as a professor and administrator, I’m moving to the private sector to support more effective teaching practices. I would classify this change as a significant career pivot. I am changing market sectors (public sector to private) and shifting from serving a single institution to a global base of clients. Decisions like this are not to be made lightly. It is important to ensure that you are making this move to run toward something attractive and not just away from something that frustrates you. Here are three important considerations if you think a significant career m…

An investigation into a sprawling betting scheme to rig NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games ensnared 26 people, including more than a dozen college basketball players who tried to fix games as recently as last season, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The scheme generally revolved around fixers recruiting players with the promise of a big payment in exchange for purposefully underperforming during a game, prosecutors said. The fixers would then place big bets against the players’ teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other bettors, authorities said. Calling it an “international criminal conspiracy,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf told reporters …

If you are Verizon customer, like me, you’ve probably been scrambling to make phone calls, send texts, and get online since Wednesday, due to a massive, nationwide service outage. (I am writing this from my local food co-op outside Boston, where I am using the internet in their cafe.) The mobile giant says the issue has now been resolved, however, some customers are saying they’re still without service. Some 1.5 million users reported the prolonged outage on Downdetector, which still had some 893 reports (as of around 2:30 p.m. ET). That’s over 24 hours after customers first started losing service around noon ET on Wednesday, with iPhone users reporting an “SOS” icon,…

In recent years, there’s been a wave of studies reporting that humans are basically full of microplastics: They’ve been found in our brains, arteries, and even in placentas. But some scientists, quoted and cited in an article published by the Guardian this week, have critiqued some of those findings, saying that microplastics research has been muddied by issues like contamination and false positives. One chemist even told the outlet that these criticisms are “​​forcing us to re-evaluate everything we think we know about microplastics in the body.” However, other scientists who study microplastics and human health say that this framing is overblown. While…

Rejection stings. If you’re on the job hunt right now, it’s likely something you’ve grown accustomed to, if not entirely numb to. Considering more than one in four workers without jobs has been unemployed for at least half a year, chances are that comes with a tidal wave of rejection emails. The entry-level job market is also the toughest it’s been in years, with only 30% of 2025 graduates finding jobs in their fields. One TikTok creator, however, has made it her personal mission to collect rejections like gold stars, documenting her challenge to receive 1,000 instances of being told “no” in one year. Just 71 “nos” into her journey, she’s already seen how embraci…

2025 unleashed the enormous potential of AI. According to Pew Research, 62% of adults say they interact with AI at least several times a week, and 73% of U.S. adults say they are at least a little bit willing to let AI assist with their day-to-day activities. However, while most people today use AI primarily for answering their questions or researching products to buy, the real opportunity isn’t in better search functionality alone. In the consumer tech industry, we are at the threshold of a generational opportunity to leverage AI to make people’s lives better and more meaningful, saving them time on what they need to do so they can focus on doing what they want to do…

A reader asks: A while back, an employee who reported to me (I’m a man) became visibly pregnant soon after she started. But she never brought it up. Not with me, not with HR, not with anyone. I didn’t ask her about it, though nearly everyone else in our office asked me. I cringed when I responded since it was obvious she was pregnant but I felt that I needed to protect her privacy. I felt like I was walking around on pins and needles with this very obvious elephant in the room. Her job description included occasionally lifting objects up to 40 pounds, and the only way I treated her differently was that I went out of my way to pick up anything remotely heavy. E…

An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation. SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station. Their first stop was a hospital for an overnight stay. “Obviously, we took this action (early return) because it was a serious medical condition,” NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman said following splashdown. “The astronaut in question is fine right now, in good spirits and going through the proper medical checks.” It was an…

In 2025, employers cited artificial intelligence as the rationale for nearly 55,000 layoffs at companies like Amazon and Microsoft. And with the new year barely underway, we’re already seeing a new crop of AI-related job cuts. Citigroup is cutting over a thousand jobs, according to Bloomberg, and in a memo this week, CEO Jane Fraser warned of more layoffs later this year. “Over time, we can expect automation, AI and further process simplification to reshape how work gets done,” she added. Meanwhile, Meta is conducting more layoffs in its virtual reality division, cutting about 1,500 jobs as part of a broader strategic shift to invest further in AI. Given these r…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on how and why AI will grow from something that chats to something that works in 2026. I also focus on a new privacy-focused AI platform from the maker of Signal, and on Google’s work on e-commerce agents. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. …

I was born an only child, but now I have a twin. He’s an exact duplicate of me—down to my clothing, my home, my facial expressions, and even my voice. I built him with AI, and I can make him say whatever I want. He’s so convincing that he could fool my own mother. Here’s how I built him—and what AI digital twins mean for the future of people. Deepfake yourself From the moment generative AI was born, criminals started using it to trick people. Deepfakes were one of the first widespread uses of the tech. Today, they’re a scourge to celebrities and even everyday teenagers, and a massive problem for anyone interested in the truth. As criminals were …