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Camps are finally emerging in the big fight over whether and how to regulate AI. President Donald The President earlier this week declared that he would block local officials who try to regulate the technology; according to a draft executive order leaked on Wednesday, the administration will punish states that try. State lawmakers and members of Congress—including Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—are now pushing back. This has been a long time coming. Members of Congress have put out myriad proposals for regulating artificial intelligence, but no significant legislative package has come through. The Biden administration issued a major executive order on…

You’ve heard the gospel: AI is going to change everything. Good, great, grand. But when you’re staring down a deadline and 80 unread emails, you don’t need philosophy, you need a cheat sheet. The fastest way to master AI isn’t by watching lectures, it’s by finding a way to replace an hour of your grind with a 10-second prompt. Here are five specific, repeatable ways to automate your most time-consuming professional tasks. Grab your chatbot of choice (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot—whatever floats your boat) and let’s get to work. Writing Staring at a blank page. Tedious, formulaic first drafts. Enough. You are a professional. You shouldn’t be spen…

As I uploaded a 1940s photo of my grandpa Max and hit a few buttons in Google’s Veo 3 video generator, I saw a familiar family photo transform from black and white to color. Then, my grandpa stepped out of the photo and walked confidently toward the camera, his army uniform perfectly pressed as his arms swung at the sides of his lanky frame. This is the kind of thing AI lets you do now—virtually bring back the dead. As a hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch this weekend highlighted, though, just because we can reanimate our departed loved ones, that doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Grilling the dog The sketch, which The Atlantic has alrea…

The Thanksgiving holiday is nearly upon us, which means tens of millions of Americans will be traveling nationwide this week to visit their loved ones and celebrate around the dinner table with them on Thursday. The majority of that travel both to and from Turkey Day destinations is expected to kick off tomorrow, Tuesday, November 25, and run through Monday, December 1, which are the dates the American Automobile Association (AAA) defines as the 2025 Thanksgiving holiday period. It’s the busiest travel period for Americans, even beating out holidays like the Fourth of July and Christmas. While several million Americans are expected to make their Thanksgiving…

Old Brick Farm, where Larry Doll raises chickens, turkeys and ducks, was fortunate this Thanksgiving season. Doll’s small farm west of Detroit had no cases of bird flu, despite an ongoing outbreak that killed more than 2 million U.S. turkeys in the last three months alone. He also avoided another disease, avian metapneumovirus, which causes turkeys to lay fewer eggs. “I try to keep the operation as clean as possible, and not bringing other animals in from other farms helps mitigate that risk as well,” said Doll, whose farm has been in his family for five generations. But Doll still saw the impact as those diseases shrank the U.S. turkey flock to a 40-year low this year…

Christmas went on the auction block this week in Pennsylvania farm country, and there was no shortage of bidders. About 50,000 Christmas trees and enough wreaths, crafts and other seasonal items to fill an airplane hangar were bought and sold by lots and on consignment at the annual two-day event put on at the Buffalo Valley Produce Auction in Mifflinburg. Buyers from across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic were there to supply garden stores, corner lots and other retail outlets for the coming rush of customers eager to bring home a tree — most commonly a Fraser fir — or to deck the halls with miles of greenery. Bundled-up buyers were out in chilly temperatures to hear a…

Anthropic launched its newest model, Claude Opus 4.5, putting the company back atop the benchmark rankings for AI software coding. Opus 4.5 scores over 80% on the widely-used SWE-bench, which tests models for software engineering skill. Google’s impressive Gemini 3 Pro, launched last week, briefly held the top score with 76.2%. Anthropic’s Claude product lead Scott White tells Fast Company that the model has also scored higher than any human on the engineering take-home assignment the company gives to engineering job candidates. Of course Opus 4.5 does a lot more than coding. Anthropic says Opus 4.5 is also the “best model in the world” for powering AI agents and…

President Donald The President said he has accepted an invitation from Chinese leader Xi Jinping to visit Beijing in April and that he reciprocated by inviting Xi for a state visit to the U.S. later next year. The President made the announcement a few hours after he spoke with Xi on the phone on Monday morning, in which he said the two men discussed issues including Ukraine, fentanyl, and soybeans. The phone call came nearly one month after the two men met in person in the South Korean city of Busan. “Our relationship with China is extremely strong!” The President said. Beijing, which announced the phone call first, said nothing about the state visits but said…

When work was drying up for freelance writer Megan Carnegie, she found herself compulsively hopping between apps and social media. “LinkedIn, WhatsApp, emails—and it was just terrible for my focus,” she says. “I was anxious about getting work.” On a whim, Carnegie (who’s also contributed to Fast Company) popped into a store selling secondhand computer equipment and bought an old Nokia burner phone. During the workday, she would use the burner for calls, and in the evening, switch back to her smartphone. With no access to apps and one fewer way to access the internet, her urgency and anxiety dissolved. “I just loved the quiet,” she says. The effects of social media…

Media personalities and online influencers who sow social division for a living, blame the rise of assassination culture on Antifa and MAGA. Meanwhile, tech CEOs gin up fears of an AI apocalypse. But they’re both smokescreens hiding a bigger problem. Algorithms decide what we see, and in trying to win their approval, we’re changing how we behave. Increasingly, that behavior is violent. The radicalization of young men on social networks isn’t new. But modern algorithms are accelerating it. Before Facebook and Twitter (X) switched from displaying the latest post from one of your friends at the top of your feed with crazy, outrageous posts from people you don’t know…

Chris was frustrated. He’d used Artificial Intelligence (AI) extensively in college. Now at his first job, he saw very few of his colleagues ever experimenting with it. At first, Chris tried bringing up AI conversationally. He mentioned creating a meal schedule, as well as planning a cool weekend trip itinerary. But when he suggested to his manager how they might want to incorporate AI into their workflow, he felt rebuffed. Chris isn’t alone. As the first group of highly experienced AI users is starting work, they have experience with AI. However, they lack the credibility and subject matter expertise to transform workflows. Championing change management initiativ…

Apple said on Monday it is cutting jobs across its sales teams to strengthen its customer engagement efforts, noting that only a small number of roles will be impacted by the layoffs. An Apple spokesperson told Reuters that the company is continuing to hire and the affected employees can apply for new roles. The impacted employees include account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies, according to Bloomberg News, which had reported the news earlier in the day. Staff who operate Apple’s briefing centers for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective customers were also affected, Bloomberg said. One of the …

President Donald The President is directing the federal government to combine efforts with tech companies and universities to convert government data into scientific discoveries, acting on his push to make artificial intelligence the engine of the nation’s economic future. The President unveiled the “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order he signed Monday that directs the Department of Energy and national labs to build a digital platform to concentrate the nation’s scientific data in one place. It solicits private sector and university partners to use their AI capability to help the government solve engineering, energy and national security problems, including s…

You might think of Walmart as America’s quintessential big box store—the place you can get everything from Hanes T-shirts to large screen TVs to cleats for your kid’s soccer uniform. But Walmart isn’t defying shaky consumer confidence because of the breadth of its offerings, which impressively stretches to 120,000 products at most stores. Customers aren’t flocking into stores to buy made-in-America T-shirts, as I wrote about in May, thanks to a novel partnership with American Giant. Or because it is adding more high-end products (at lower prices than you’d find anywhere else), as I covered in October in this profile of its chief merchant Latriece Watkins. Nor is …

Just days before Thanksgiving, as Americans shop at supermarkets nationwide for their holiday meals, Ambriola Company, which makes some Boar’s Head products, has issued a recall for select pecorino romano cheese products due to possible contamination from listeria. Supreme Service Solutions LLC, also known as Supreme Deli, is assisting in the Class I recall. There have been no illnesses or consumer complaints reported to date for items purchased from Supreme. What is listeria, and what are the symptoms? Listeria monocytogenes is a type of disease-causing bacteria that is generally transmitted when food is harvested, processed, prepared, packed, transported, or…

If everything feels expensive this year, you’re not alone. The high cost of living is on many Americans’ minds heading into the tail end of the year – a period defined by ceaseless shopping, whether it’s for the Thanksgiving menu or a last minute gift for under the tree. Americans need to buy stuff (perhaps not so much stuff), but they’re also feeling the pinch of persistent inflation, chaotic tariffs and a frozen job market in 2025. How those forces will play out this holiday shopping season remains to be seen. According to a recent survey from consulting firm Deloitte, more people will be shopping this Black Friday through Cyber Monday, but they plan to spend le…

Leading the Exceptional Women Alliance gives me a front-row seat to how accomplished women lift each other through mentorship and growth. Joanna Dodd Massey is a corporate board director and Fortune 500 executive with expertise in risk, governance, and crisis leadership. She has a PhD in psychology and advises boards and executives navigating high-stakes challenges and organizational change. Q: Why do family conversations turn so tense during the holidays? Massey: Alcohol and forced family fun play a role, but underneath it all is our biology. Human beings are one of those species that can’t survive alone—we’re hardwired for connection because our survival depends …

When it’s parked in your garage, the Polestar 3 can now help you save on your electric bill. The automaker is the latest to roll out bidirectional charging for its electric vehicles, making it possible to charge the SUV’s battery when power is cheap and then use the vehicle to power your house when prices go up. The company partnered with Dcbel, a startup that makes technology that manages the flow of energy between the car and home. “Most of our cars sit in driveways more than 80% of the time,” says Dcbel CEO Marc-André Forget. “Now, for the first time, if we think about it, cars start to be useful even when parked. This is transformational. It’s the second-large…

What do Marriott, Peloton, and Major League Baseball (MLB) have in common? Each has recently navigated a major crisis in the court of public opinion. Marriott’s licensing agreement termination with Sonder left guests stranded and fuming mid-stay. Peloton announced its second product recall in just two years. And the MLB is the latest major sports organization whose players have been swept up in sports betting scandals. Crisis is everywhere. And while big brands may dominate the headlines, smaller companies face equally urgent situations. Regardless of a company’s size, leaders must be prepared when the ever-turning wheel of misfortune lands on their spot—because it wi…

At the start of the Introduction to Innovation class at Robert C. Hatch High School in rural Uniontown, Alabama, the face of a teacher fills a wall-size screen at the front of the room. Beaming in from far away like a Zoom call, the teacher is part of a new approach to providing specialized education in underserved communities. This is the Connected Rural Classroom. It’s a novel rethink of the typical high school classroom, designed specifically to increase access to niche, high-quality education for students in rural schools with limited resources. A remote teacher on a big screen is just one part of the classroom’s unique elements. Designed to emphasize science, tec…

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits declined last week in a sign that overall layoffs remain low, even as several high-profile companies have announced job cuts. U.S. applications for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 22 dropped 6,000 from the previous week to 216,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The figure is below the 230,000 forecast by economists, according to a survey by data provider FactSet. Applications for unemployment aid are seen as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS and Amazon typically …

Black Friday isn’t what it used to be. Less than 15 years ago, it was fairly common for people to wake up at ridiculously early hours to drive to a store, where they would stand in line, waiting for the doors to open in order to grab the best deals. Those people still exist, but not in the numbers they used to, thanks to the convenience of online shopping (and the early start to holiday deals). But as artificial intelligence becomes more entrenched, it could play an outsized role in Black Friday (and Cyber Monday)—and 2025 could be something of a test case for the technology. The average consumer is expected to spend $1,595 on holiday gifts this year, according to…

Just a handful of years ago, the idea of one person creating a company worth over a billion dollars seemed like a pipe dream. Thanks to rapid advancements in AI, the possibility of a “solopreneur unicorn” is less a matter of “if” and more a matter of “when.” Earlier this year, OpenAI founder Sam Altman told Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian that his group chat of tech CEO friends have a betting pool for when the world will see a one-person billion-dollar company. Ten months later, some experts suggest that the company could be founded in 2026, if it hasn’t been already, due to rapid advancements in agentic AI. “The ability of a person to scale themselves, to automat…

AI is rapidly changing the world around us, from the way we engage online to how we work. But while the technology is able to complete an astonishing number of tasks, humans are far from obsolete. A new report from McKinsey is shining light on why humans are still essential. According to the report, roughly 57% of work hours can be automated. Meanwhile, 70% of the skills employers look for can be used for both automated work and nonautomated work. This means over the next five years, humans will have to adjust their work habits to make room for automation. McKinsey designed an index to assess how automation will impact each skill used in the workplace today. Acc…

Social media has become inexorably intertwined with our daily lives, but not all platforms are equally popular. For every cultural phenomenon like TikTok, there’s a Mastodon. It would be easy, based on the news media’s borderline obsession with TikTok and X, to assume that those platforms are, if not the most used social media tools in America today, then very close to the top. They’re not. In fact, they’re squarely in the middle, according to a new study from Pew Research. Instead, it’s YouTube that is the most commonly used social media platform in the U.S.—by a landslide. Pew reports that 84% of U.S. adults use YouTube. (The platform is also the most widely use…