What's on Your Mind?

Companies are currently grappling with how to use AI, and results vary. At times it can feel like the blind are leading the blind. As you watch leadership in your organization chart a path to engage with AI, what can you do to ensure that your company doesn’t get it completely wrong? 1. Educate yourself To contribute to any discussions around the use of AI in your organization, you have to be educated. That education requires a few components. You should certainly be aware of the ongoing conversations that are happening broadly in the business press. But, most of the people with a platform to speak to mainstream and social media have a viewpoint and/or product…

The advancement of artificial intelligence has shifted rapidly from abstract curiosity to an immediate personal threat for millions of workers. People aren’t just wondering if jobs will change—they’re asking whose jobs, how fast, and whether their own will be next. Making matters worse, several tech companies have already executed a staggering number of layoffs—almost always citing AI as the cause. On its own, this unpredictable unfolding of an entirely new and disruptive technology would be enough to unsettle us—yet we all know it’s just one of several forces compounding an already profound—and growing—sense of uncertainty in our lives. Add to this the volatile t…

“What brand am I wearing?” Sydney Sweeney says, looking into the camera as the shutter snaps, revealing a rotation of summery denim looks. The mood suddenly calms, her eyes close, she takes a deep breath, seagulls call in the background. “Yeah, that one,” she says with a giggle. The ad marks the return of one of the most notorious brand partnerships in recent memory, as American Eagle launches a new campaign to hype its denim shorts called “Syd for Short.” It’s a perfectly pleasant, perfectly innocuous piece of brand work meant to conjure the free-spiritedness of summertime (and, you know, maybe make you forget about—or at least move on from—the last time Sweeney ha…

You’ve likely heard of vibe coding and very well may have conducted an experiment or two yourself, enlisting Claude or some other AI tool to create a simple website or an interactive game. OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy coined the phrase with a tweet in February 2025. In its simplest terms, vibe coding involves telling an AI program what you want to accomplish and having the AI create the code. It uses natural language provided by the user to generate the software. Vibe coding is a truly revolutionary democratizer of software development. It allows anyone with a computer and a little imagination to come up with software that appears, at least on the surface, to …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just +0.8% year-over-year between March 2025 and March 2026. That marks a deceleration from the +1.2% growth rate a year earlier—though national year-over-year home price growth has recently stabilized, ticking a tad higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since stopped ticking up. 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10%…

Spring is in the air! The tulips are blooming, college acceptance letters are zooming into email inboxes, and the majority of parents with college-bound students are panicking about paying for their kid’s schooling. Ain’t this time of year grand? There’s a lot that families can do to tame the cost of higher education, starting with filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) which determines a student’s eligibility for federal aid, applying for scholarships and grants which don’t need to be repaid, and considering the cost of attendance when comparing college acceptance offers. But for some college students, there is a funding gap between their…

Like many, I’ve never met a chatbot I trust completely. Not only do they have a propensity to hallucinate by making up facts, but you can never be sure what their parent companies do with the information you provide. Most AI companies say they use your data to further train their models, but anonymize it first. However, you just have to take them at their word on this. Still, chatbots can be useful for summarizing and explaining complicated information, such as the kind contained in many bank statements, medical reports, and mortgage contracts. So if you do choose to upload sensitive documents like this, you should take steps to redact as much personal information…

Just because a startup fails doesn’t mean it can’t cash out big. According to a report by Forbes, defunct companies are selling their digital footprints to AI companies as training data—and making real money from it. Shanna Johnson, the CEO of now-defunct software company cielo24, told the publication that she was able to sell every Slack message, internal email and Jira ticket as training data for “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” This isn’t a one-off scenario. SimpleClosure, a startup that helps companies like cielo24 shut down, told Forbes that there’s been major interest from AI companies trying to get their hands on workplace data. Because of this, SimpleC…

If you’ve been curious about #vanlife but can’t justify dropping $100,000 on a kitted-out camper, a new patent from a Chinese automaker offers a compromise – but you might not like it. Seres, a prominent EV maker out of China, just secured a patent for an in-car toilet that slides out and tucks away beneath the seat. The patent, first reported outside of China by Autoblog, was filed in April of last year, approved last week, and is currently active. The patented design looks practical enough, with a rail system that allows a compact toilet to slide out from under the seat like a drawer and remain hidden from view when not in use. The design is intended to “satisfy…

Most business leaders are laser-focused on the existential threat that AI poses, with many of them citing it as a reason for major layoffs. At an event this week, however, Indeed CEO Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba suggested there was another force that would wreak havoc on the labor market—one that he argued was more pressing. “Actually, what is happening in all developed countries, including European countries and the U.S., what is happening is a big demographic change: an aging labor market,” Idekoba said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday, as Business Insider reported this week. He said the sheer number of workers aging out of the workforce and retiring would…

When Maria looked at herself in the mirror for the first time after her mastectomy, she stood very still. One hand rested on the bathroom counter. The other hovered near the flat space where her breast had been. The scar was raw and angry. The loss was quiet but enormous. Her body felt foreign. In moments like these, people are often urged to be resilient – which can feel like being told to show no weakness, to push through no matter what. Or they imagine resilience as bouncing back: returning somehow unscathed to be the person you were before. But standing in that bathroom, Maria knew there was no going back. And toughness wouldn’t change what had happened. T…

AI companies love to make bold claims about healthcare. Alphabet’s Isomorphic tells us that “frontier AI can unlock deeper scientific insights, faster breakthroughs, and life-changing medicines.” Lila confidently markets its AI as a tool for “faster discovery for every field where breakthrough science matters.” And they’re spending as though they believe the hype. Anthropic recently acquired stealth startup Coefficient Bio for $400 million. But there’s only one true test of any healthcare AI: Did it work in humans? Did it create a medicine that saved someone’s life? And bluntly, most companies have not achieved that. Let’s look at the number of treatments brought …

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning restaurants and retailers not to sell or serve recalled shellfish from a Washington State company due to potential norovirus contamination. The recalled shellfish was harvested on March 22 through April 9, according to a safety alert from the FDA. The alert follows an April 10 recall conducted by the Washington State Department of Health, cautioning the FDA about all species of shellstock from the company, Gomez Shellfish, due to norovirus-like illnesses that were associated with the consumption of raw oysters. Norovirus is a contagious virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea and is the leading cause of foodbo…

It’s been a rough several years for restaurant chains. Many have been facing headwinds on two fronts: consumers who are pulling back on discretionary spending as inflationary pressures bite, and rising operating costs. These pressures have resulted in numerous chains filing for bankruptcy in recent years. Now, another chain’s owner has joined those ranks. 801 Restaurant Group, the parent company of the 801 Chophouse chain of steakhouses, has filed for bankruptcy. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Earlier this month, 801 Restaurant Group, owner of several companies that own 801 Chophouse, 801 Fish, and 801 Local, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in t…

About an hour after the men’s college basketball season ended in Indianapolis with a Michigan Wolverines’ championship on April 6, the team’s coaching staff was already working hard at trying to win the next one. The transfer portal—a digital compliance tool and database to systematically manage the transfer process for student-athletes—opened for Division I men’s basketball players on midnight after the title game, and it set off a firestorm of entries with players seeking massive paydays. However, the public doesn’t actually know for certain who is getting how much money. And in today’s disinformation economy, it’s become a haven for fake news to take the mantle…

Reese Witherspoon has established herself as a businesswoman committed to feminism. Her media brand Hello Sunshine’s mission is to “put women at the center of every story,” and her much-memed quote that “women’s stories matter—they just matter!” is nearly as recognizable as her roles in Legally Blonde and Big Little Lies. But Witherspoon’s latest Instagram post has social media questioning that image. The actress encouraged women to get educated on AI, lest they be “left behind” as the technology comes for their careers. In her video, Witherspoon described being at a book club with 10 other women and asking them about their AI usage. Of the 10, she said, only 3 we…

With the Strait of Hormuz in crisis and gas prices surging, few executives are feeling the pressure more acutely than Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley. He gives a candid account of what the turmoil means for the auto industry, and for an iconic American brand navigating one of the most turbulent moments in its history. Plus, Farley gets frank about the China threat reshaping the global auto business, and his frustration with Ford’s own ingenuity. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversa…

Social media has fundamentally rewritten the rules of beauty. Trends that once took years to trickle from runway to consumer now emerge, peak, and drive real-world consultations within weeks. Consumers scroll past filler trends and noninvasive procedures during their lunch breaks and book appointments before dinner. The trend-to-treatment pipeline has never moved faster, and the stakes have never been higher. There’s a fundamental mismatch at the heart of the system: Aesthetic inspiration is social and collective, but aesthetic results are deeply personal. What works for one face, skin type, or bone structure won’t always work for another. Yet, consumers routinely mak…

As the United States was preparing a daring mission to rescue an airman whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, there was money to be made. Users on Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, could place bets on when the airman would be rescued. When Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., shared a screenshot of the activity on social media, an April 3 rescue was trading at 15% compared with 63% who were betting on April 4. After Moulton posted the screenshot and blasted this “dystopian death market,” Polymarket stopped the betting, saying the market “does not meet our integrity standards.” A former Marine who served four tours in Iraq, Moulton said he was “absolutely not…

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) shows that more students are seeking out an associate degree first over a four-year bachelor’s degree. Surpassing those aged 21 to 24 for the first time, students aged 18 to 20 represent the largest share of first time associate degree earners in the 2024-25 academic year. That academic year, of the 2 million students who earned a bachelor’s degree, 532,464 of them had a prior postsecondary credential—either a certificate, associate or bachelor’s/masters degree. And of those, 419,766 students completed the bachelor’s degree pathway from an associate degree, accounting for the largest perc…

Anthropic Labs just announced a new product for its flagship AI model called Claude Design. According to Anthropic, the new tool “lets you collaborate with Claude to create polished visual work like designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers, and more.” The company is billing the tool as a way for non-designers to mock up visuals, and a way for designers to quickly test out a range of initial prototypes. It’s powered by Claude’s most recent new model, Opus 4.7, which is trained to handle difficult coding prompts and complex, long-running tasks. Claude Design is available starting today to Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise Subscribers. Anthropic joins a grow…

Here in San Francisco, we live in a bubble, and we know it. While much of the rest of the country sees the city through the lens of Fox News cameramen searching out homeless encampments, we actually live in a very beautiful, very wealthy, and, currently, very AI-obsessed place. Traditionally, the billboards along 101 through Silicon Valley have offered a glimpse into the collective mind of the tech industry. These days, a big chunk of that industry, including most of the major AI labs, is based here in San Francisco, and the billboards have followed. The San Francisco Chronicle recently did the legwork to catalog literally all of the billboards in the city and found t…

Painted Tree Boutiques, a nationwide retail chain that gave independent small business owners a brick-and-mortar platform to sell gifts, clothing, and home decor products, abruptly announced that it would cease all business operations on Tuesday, April 14. Vendors were given a 10-day window to collect their inventory during limited daytime hours. The Arkansas-based company was founded in 2015 and later expanded to over 60 locations across more than a dozen states. Painted Tree described itself as “An Etsy marketplace and Pinterest catalog come to life.” Many locations were housed in former Bed Bath & Beyond stores. The chain operated as a marketplac…