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The latest buzzword is “AI literacy.” Much like “social media,” “ESG,” and “CSR” before it, employers are now looking for proof of fluency on résumés, and individuals are desperate to differentiate themselves to show that they are keeping pace. And it’s everywhere, mentions of terms like “agentic AI,” “AI workforce,” “digital labor,” and “AI agents” during earnings calls increased by nearly 800% in the last year, according to AlphaSense data. Over the last five years, workers across industries have become expected to be well-versed in a technology that is ever-evolving and still relatively new for so many, including the leaders implementing it. The trouble with AI is…

For leaders today, the pressure to do more with less feels relentless. Leaner teams, flatter organizations, and the rise of productivity tools such as Slack, Notion.ai, and Monday.com promise efficiency but often deliver the opposite: more reporting, more deliverables, and the demand to be “always on.”​​Organizations are increasingly falling into the “acceleration trap,” taking on too much too quickly and undermining their effectiveness and well-being. Sandra, a senior leader in the tech sector, saw this firsthand. After a reorganization left her team stretched thin, she slipped into a “9-9-6” routine—working nine to nine, six days a week. Gallup’s research shows unma…

One of Paramount’s most powerful creative minds has left the production company: Taylor Sheridan, whose major hits like Yellowstone, Landman, and Lioness made him one of Paramount’s most powerful writers and producers, has ditched the media house. The move comes shortly after a new Chief Executive, David Ellison, came on board in August and a merger between the company and Skydance was approved. Sheridan will remain involved with his Paramount projects until his current deal ends in January. But while Sheridan helped prime Paramount for success, starting early next year, he will be making programs for NBCU’s streaming service, Peacock — a direct competitor. S…

It’s already been an exciting Major League Baseball season. And that excitement is clearly translating into the business and advertising side as well. Earlier this summer, Variety reported that ads for the MLB All-Star Game, which took place in July, sold out over a month in advance. On Monday night during Game 3 of the World Series, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won against the Toronto Blue Jays—which gave L.A. a 2-1 series lead and featured another significant performance from Shohei Ohtani—the game went to 18 innings and lasted six hours and 39 minutes. So what happens to ads when a game has extra innings? When a large tentpole tournament or games lik…

Google-parent Alphabet beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue on Wednesday, as both its core advertising business and cloud computing unit showed steady growth. Shares of the company rose 6% in extended trading. The company reported total revenue of $102.35 billion for the quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $99.89 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. The cloud services and AI giant raised its capital expenditure forecast for the year to between $91 billion and $93 billion, compared with the estimates of $80.67 billion. Google Cloud remained one of Alphabet’s fastest-growing segments, benefiting from surging enterpris…

Paramount is the latest company to join the bloodbath of layoffs this week. The entertainment giant began cutting around 1,000 workers on Wednesday, with twice that many pink slips expected in the days to come. In a memo to staff, new Paramount CEO David Ellison characterized the reductions, which will ultimately shrink the company by 10%, as a necessary step for the company’s long-term growth. “In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” Ellison wrote in a memo obtained by The Guardian and other outlets. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure…

And the layoffs keep coming. General Motors joins Amazon and Paramount this week, announcing on Wednesday it will be laying off 1,750 workers in Michigan and Ohio, in response to the downturn in U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market. The Detroit News first reported the news. Shares in the automotive maker (NYSE: GM) were down less than 1% in midday trading on Wednesday. The company said those cuts include 1,200 workers in Detroit at the company’s electric vehicle plant and another 550 employees at Ohio’s Ultium Cells battery cell plant. The company is also instituting temporary layoffs for some 850 workers at the Ohio plant and another 700 workers in Tennessee,…

At last, the X-59 is airborne. NASA’s quiet supersonic airplane took to the skies in Palmdale, California, successfully landing back a few minutes later. While this initial sortie on October 28 was a subsonic check of basic systems and airworthiness, the flight represents the penultimate step toward reviving supersonic passenger travel over land. It also marks the beginning of a race to see which of three supersonic airplane ideas wins to become the dominant design of the 21st century. There’s Lockheed Martin’s X-59 dart-like shape developed to avoid the sonic boom. Then we have Boom Supersonic’s XB-1, which doesn’t look to avoid the sonic boom but to stop it from re…

You may remember this, if you are old enough: in 2002, search engine optimization (SEO) transformed from a technical curiosity into a full-blown industry. All of a sudden, agencies, consultants, and “black-hat sorcerers” emerged overnight, offering tricks and hacks to get brands onto the first page. Today, we stand at the dawn of the next wave: what some call Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) or simply AI Engine Optimisation (AIO). The logic is similar: get your brand seen, but the stakes are higher, the rules blurrier, and the risks far more structural. Imagine a world where users no longer click search results but instead ask an…

Uber said Wednesday that the San Francisco Bay Area will be the first market for its specially built autonomous taxi, which is expected to launch in late 2026. The San Francisco ride-hailing company said in July it was developing a robotaxi with the electric car company Lucid and the self-driving technology company Nuro Inc. The vehicle is exclusive to Uber but is based on the Lucid Gravity SUV. Uber said Lucid recently delivered test vehicles to Nuro and said it plans to have 100 test vehicles on the road in the coming months. Within six years, Uber plans to deploy 20,000 or more Lucid-based autonomous taxis in multiple locations. The vehicles will be availab…

As Hurricane Melissa battered the Caribbean this week, social media became awash with AI-generated content that blurs the line between reality and fiction. Described by CBS News as “one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic,” Melissa reached Category 5 intensity as it made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday. CNN reports that it has already caused seven deaths in the northern Caribbean, and is the most powerful storm to hit the basin since 2019’s Hurricane Dorian. Amid a crisis, social media is flooded Over the last few days, major social media platforms have been saturated with AI-generated videos—depicting a wide range of content supposedly re…

Elon Musk has launched Grokipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia that the billionaire seeks to position as a rival to Wikipedia. Writing on social media, Musk said that Grokipedia.com is “now live” and its goal is the “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Musk has previously criticized Wikipedia for being filled with “propaganda” and called for people to stop donating to the site, which is run by a nonprofit. In September he announced that his artificial intelligence company xAI was working on Grokipedia. The Grokipedia site has a minimalist appearance with little beyond a search bar where users can type in queries. It states that it has 885,279 arti…

Starbucks’s reign as the world’s leading coffee company is faltering. And the new CEO, Brian Niccol, wants to fix it. Mark Wilson explains. View the full article

Rumor has it that Palantir Technologies is poised for a stock split. An analyst for RBC Capital Markets recently polled investors, who reportedly indicated a desire for the software company to make such a move. “Retail investors are also largely focused on the potential for a stock split, and although this topic decreased quarter over quarter, it remains the most relevant topic,” analyst Rishi Jaluria stated, according to Investor’s Business Daily. He continued: “With Palantir’s $6 billion cash balance, we think retail investors may be starting to become frustrated by the company’s lack of willingness to return capital to shareholders given no apparent intere…

It’s rare for a company to give up more than a decade of brand recognizability for a new name. It’s even rarer for said company to trade their name for the name of a younger, less well-known company. But that’s exactly what Grammarly, the writing and grammar assistant tool with 40 million daily active users, is doing. Starting today, Grammarly is rolling out a massive, all-encompassing rebrand to become “Superhuman.” “Naming a company is like naming a kid,” says Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra. “Renaming your 16-year-old is, like, 10 times harder. Swapping the name of your 16-year-old and your 11-year-old is 100 times harder. That’s probably what we’re doing.” …

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut its short-term rate Wednesday for the second time this year despite an increasingly cloudy view of the economy it is trying to influence. The government shutdown has cut off the flow of data that the Fed relies on to track employment, inflation, and the broader economy. September’s jobs report, scheduled for release three weeks ago, is still postponed. This month’s hiring figures, to be released Nov. 7, will likely be delayed and may be less comprehensive when they are finally released. And the White House said last week that October’s inflation report may never be issued at all. The data drought raises risks for the Fed because it…