What's on Your Mind?

As companies adopt AI, the conversation is shifting from the promise of productivity to concerns about AI’s impact on wellbeing. Business leaders can’t ignore the warning signs. The mental health crisis isn’t new, but AI is changing how we must address it. More than 1 billion people experience mental health conditions. Burnout is rising. And more people are turning to AI for support without the expertise of trained therapists. What starts as “empathy on demand” could accelerate loneliness. What’s more, Stanford research found that “these tools could introduce biases and failures that could result in dangerous consequences.” With the right leadership, AI can usher …

Most of the software that truly moves the world doesn’t demand our attention: It quietly removes friction and gets out of the way. You only notice it when it’s broken. That’s not a bug in the business model; it’s a feature. In fact, “unnoticed but indispensable” is the highest customer-satisfaction score you can get. Consider these categories that already figured this out. The log-in that isn’t a task anymore Password managers, once you build the habit, fade into the background. They fill the box before you even remember there was a box. Single sign-on (SSO) systems go a step further and make logging in to everything feel like one action instead of 17 small, an…

Maybe your car broke down, your computer was stolen, or you had a surprise visit to urgent care. Emergencies are inevitable, but you can prepare to deal with them by building an emergency fund. “There are so many things that happen in our lives that we don’t expect and most of them require financial means to overcome,” said Miklos Ringbauer, a certified public accountant. The industry standard is to save three to six months of expenses in an emergency fund. However, this can feel daunting if you live paycheck to paycheck or if you have debt. But if you’re in either of these situations, it’s even more crucial to build a financial safety net that can help you in tim…

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 gathering some informed opinions from people trying out Google’s new Gemini 3 Pro AI model. I also look at another “circular” AI investment agreement. 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. What smart people are saying about Google’s Gem…

A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, it’s not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December. The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree that’s delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on Monday. The colorful, richly decorated 13-foot (4-meter) tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world. This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibition, “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs,” which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago res…

For consumers heavy on savings and light on credit history, a new partnership in the world of credit scores could help you lock down a loan. FICO, the company basically synonymous with the credit score, is teaming up with Plaid to bring real-time data showing how much cash you have on hand to lenders. Plaid, a fintech company that links bank accounts with financial apps, has a lot of visibility into how its customers move cash between bank accounts, payments apps, investment platforms, and just about everything else. Plaid’s technology runs under the hood across a huge network of 12,000 financial institutions that partner with the fintech startup, which has grown into…

This week, chips were on the menu in the White House. “When you ask about AI and chips, Saudi Arabia has a huge need for computing power,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said at a press conference on Tuesday with President The President, where he floated a potential $50-billion purchase of American microchips. The President’s Commerce Department signed off on exporting 70,000 such advanced microchips made by Nvidia to state-owned AI firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. Little wonder why Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s high-flying CEO, joined a gaggle of tech moguls – including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Michael Dell – at a dinner honoring the Saudi …

While President Donald The President has struggled to settle on a way to address Americans’ concerns about high costs, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a more direct and empathetic message, saying, “We hear you” and “there’s a lot more work to do.” But the American people need to have “a little bit of patience,” Vance said in remarks at an event hosted by Breitbart News. The vice president’s remarks come as the White House grapples with how to speak to voters about the cost of living, an issue that emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans in this month’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. Vance said the The Presiden…

Executives are no longer measured by the weight of their title but by the scale of what they create, especially in an era reshaped by AI. The most effective leaders now marry vision with execution, using technology as a co-pilot to accelerate outcomes while keeping human judgment at the center. Strategy isn’t declared anymore; it’s built in real time, constantly iterating and leveraging AI to turn ideas into outcomes faster than ever. The builder CEO is a visionary who architects systems, coaches teams, and removes obstacles through hands-on involvement. Here’s how executives with a builder leadership style are involved with the day-to-day work and unite teams around …

Earlier this week, communities around the world observed World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. It’s a day to honor those we’ve lost and recommit ourselves to preventing future tragedies. As someone who’s worked in the transportation industry for more than 25 years, I come at this topic as an insider. You may have heard the term “Vision Zero” in local political campaigns or public safety PSAs. Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all severe crashes. It’s not just a marketing campaign, it’s an approach to road safety that begins with this basic understanding: Severe crashes are preventable. The status quo believes the fantasy that traffic violence is…

If your team can’t function without you in the room, you don’t have a team, you have a dependency. Too many business owners confuse supporting their team with carrying them. Instead of learning how to coach team members, they do the work for them. They jump into every problem, solve every issue, and answer every question themselves. It feels like good leadership, but it’s actually just bottlenecking in disguise. The goal of leadership isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. Instead, it’s to build a room full of people who can think, solve, and act without you. That shift, from problem-solver to coach, is one of the most important moves a business owner can make.…

President Donald The President has called New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job.” Mamdani has called The President’s administration “authoritarian” and described himself as “Donald The President’s worst nightmare.” So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be a curious and combustible affair. Despite months of casting each other as prime adversaries, the Republican president and new Democratic star have also indicated an openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they’ve both called home. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who takes office in Januar…

The U.S. government on Thursday released a new crash test dummy design that advocates believe will help make cars safer for women. The Department of Transportation will consider using the dummy in the government’s vehicle crash test five star-ratings once a final rule is adopted, the agency said in a news release. Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a head-on crash, and they are 17% more likely to be killed in a car crash, than men. The standard crash test dummy used in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration five-star vehicle testing was developed in 1978 and was modeled after a 5-foot-9 (175-centimeter), 171-pound (78-kilogram) man. The fem…

The following sentence might cause anxiety. As Thanksgiving looms near, it’s time to begin holiday shopping. The current level of inflation makes that even more stressful. How can you show your love without breaking the bank? It turns out, shoppers are turning to off-price retailers such as Ross, T.J. Maxx, and HomeGoods, according to recent earnings reports and data from location analytics company Placer.ai. Let’s break down the numbers. Ross Stores posts rosy earnings It’s fair to say that Jim Conroy, CEO of Ross Stores, is very pleased with the third-quarter earnings report released on Thursday, November 20. The company earned $1.58 per share…

“POV: You have a type B coworker,” TikTok creator Eric Sedeño posted last week. In the viral skit, the “coworker” rolls into the office past 10 a.m., pulling out a laptop with only 5% charge. “I went to bed at like 4 a.m. last night,” he confesses. “Seriously work is so hard today,” he complains before taking a nap on the couch. When he is working, music is blaring and he is simultaneously on Instagram Live. “When’s that big presentation?” he asks. (It’s today.) If you don’t have a type B coworker like this, it’s probably you. “Type b people EXPECT everything to work out fine for them and it always does,” one commented. “This is literally the person that ac…

It’s a tough time to be looking for a job. Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, sizable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors. Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald The President’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence. Federal em…

This week, politics, memes, and protest movements kept colliding with the economy, turning everything from Black Friday shopping to stock charts into a referendum on power and attention. Investors who spent the last couple of years riding AI and crypto gains are getting a reminder that gravity is still in charge, as once-screaming-up charts now introduce terms like “death cross” and “profit-taking.” Retailers are heading into the holidays knowing that some shoppers are planning not to spend at all, on purpose. And on the cultural front, a single insult from the president is now ricocheting around social networks, while a local New York election is being framed as a na…

Sometimes, a simple summary is all you need. Me? I’m a man of many words. (Understatement of the century, I know.) I appreciate interesting writing, where language matters and a person’s personality shines through in the prose. But let’s be real: 99% of the articles you encounter on this musty ol’ web of ours aren’t exactly awe-inspiring. They’re a means to an end. The same is true for most videos, too. And in any such scenario, you aren’t in it for the pleasure of reading or viewing and being entertained. You just want to get the gist of what’s happening without wasting any time wading your way through unimaginative drivel. The next time you find yourself…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. John Rogers, the chief data and analytics officer of Cotality (formerly known as CoreLogic), returned to ResiDay this year to give a two-part presentation: first, how risk—insurance, climate, construction cost—is reshaping the housing market, and second, how AI is about to turn property professionals into “superheroes.” In 2011, the firm was predominantly a U.S. mortgage-data company. Today, Cotality is a multicountry, multi-industry analytics platform that supports more than 1 million real estate agents, touches more than 8 out of every 10 U.S. mort…

As best I can tell, the über-wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending, that there won’t be enough to go around, and that this means they need to accumulate as much money and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days. The way they do that is with an induced form of “disaster capitalism,” where they intentionally crash the economy in order to have some control over what remains. So the function of tariffs, for example, is to bankrupt businesses or even public services in order to privatize and then control them. Stall imports, put the ports out of business, and then let a sovereign wealth fund purchase the ports. Or as is happening r…

The low point in Palantir’s very first quest for investors came during a pitch meeting in 2004 that CEO Alex Karp and some colleagues had with Sequoia Capital, which was arguably the most influential Silicon Valley VC firm. Sequoia had been an early investor in PayPal; its best-known partner, Michael Moritz, sat on the company’s board and was close to PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who had recently launched Palantir. But Sequoia proved no more receptive to Palantir than any of the other VCs that Karp and his team visited; according to Karp, Moritz spent most of the meeting absentmindedly doodling in his notepad. Karp didn’t say anything at the time, but later wished tha…

Every good salesperson knows the 7-step process in which you identify and qualify a prospect to understand their needs, then present your offer, overcome objections, close the sale and follow up. It’s proven so consistently effective that its concepts have been the standard for training salespeople for decades. Many business leaders come up through sales and marketing, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they try to use similar persuasion techniques for large-scale change. They work to understand the needs of their target market, craft a powerful message, overcome any objections and then follow-through on execution. Unfortunately, that’s a terrible strategy. The tr…

World shares and U.S. futures were mixed on Monday after Wall Street was buoyed by revived hopes for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged. Germany’s DAX gained 0.5% to 23,201.85, while the CAC 40 edged less than 0.1% lower to 7,978.77. Britain’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.1% to 9,547.77. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday. Hong Kong’s benchmark, the Hang Seng, rose 2% to 25,716.50. It got a boost from a 4.7% gain for e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has reported strong demand for its updated Qwen AI app. Alibaba is due to report earnings on Tuesday.…

Today’s job market is more ruthless than ever, leaving many desperately clinging to their roles amid mass layoffs and side-eyeing the competition. In such environments, a rival colleague or workplace nemesis may make themselves known. Watching a smug colleague get called out for a mistake in a meeting or blundering a promotion is often deeply satisfying (even if we may not admit it). Many know the German name for this impulse, schadenfreude: pleasure derived by another’s misfortune. But another, more work-related term that has emerged recently is fail watching: a coping strategy born from today’s challenging job market as a way to make us feel better about our o…

The phrase quiet quitting has been cast as a generational rebellion, a disengagement crisis, and a leadership failure, all rolled into one. The narrative suggests that half of your workforce has decided to coast, collecting a paycheck while doing the bare minimum. According to new global research from Culture Amp, which analyzed the experience of 3.3 million employees worldwide, fewer than 2% fit into the definition of quiet quitting—that is, employees who lack motivation to go above and beyond but still plan to stay with their company. That finding challenges the viral narrative, suggesting that what’s happening inside organizations is more nuanced than a mass wi…