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About a year ago, an advertisement caught the attention of Ashleigh Ruane, a PhD student in physics at the University of Cambridge. The ad was simple but unusual: Teach AI about physics. Curious, she clicked. She learned that experts across fields—from physics and finance to healthcare and law—were now being paid to help train AI models to think, reason, and problem-solve like domain specialists. She applied, was accepted, and now logs about 50 hours a week providing data for Mercor, a platform that connects AI labs with domain experts. Ruane is part of a fast-growing cohort of professionals who are shaping how AI models learn. According to Freelancer, thousands o…

Love Warby Parker glasses, but not the high price tags? This one’s for you. Target is partnering with Warby Parker to bring designer-quality, affordable eyewear to customers, opening five “shop-in-shops” in 2025, the retailers announced on Thursday. Warby Parker staff will run the shops within Target locations, which will offer glasses, sunglasses, contacts, eye exams, and vision screenings, consistent with the eyewear brand’s own stores. Prices will start at $95, including prescription lenses. The first five locations will open in the second half of 2025 at the following Target stores: Willowbrook, IL Bloomington, MN Brick, NJ Columbus, OH (Polari…

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN and HBO, announced Tuesday that it is up for sale after receiving unsolicited interest from multiple potential buyers. The news adds a new wrinkle to an already-planned shakeup at the media giant. In June, WBD announced plans to cleave the company into two separate publicly traded companies. The company’s streaming and studio brands—which include HBO, HBO Max, Warner Bros. Pictures, and New Line Cinema—would be part of Warner Bros., while Discovery Global would oversee its cable networks that include CNN, TNT Sports, and Discovery. Though it’s not abandoning plans to split the company, WBD indicated in its announce…

Warner Bros. again rejected Paramount’s latest takeover bid and told shareholders Wednesday to stick with a rival offer from Netflix. Warner’s leadership has repeatedly rebuffed Skydance-owned Paramount’s overtures—and urged shareholders just weeks ago to back its the sale of its streaming and studio business to Netflix for $72 billion. Paramount, meanwhile, has sweetened its $77.9 billion offer for the entire company and gone straight to shareholders with a hostile bid. Warner Bros. Discovery said Wednesday that its board determined Paramount’s offer is not in the best interests of the company or its shareholders. It again recommended shareholders support the Netflix d…

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Saturday that he wants to step down as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year. The revelation came as a surprise because the 94-year-old had previously said he did not plan to retire. Buffett, one of the world’s richest people and most accomplished investors, took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 when it was a textiles manufacturer. He turned the company into a conglomerate by finding other businesses and stocks to buy that were selling for less than they were worth. His success made him a Wall Street icon. It also earned him the nickname “Oracle of Omaha,” a reference to the Nebraska city where Buffett…

Billionaire Warren Buffett warned shareholders Monday that many companies will fare better than his Berkshire Hathaway in the decades ahead because of its massive size, though others might say the company’s prospects will dim because “Father Time” is catching up with the 95-year-old icon who plans to step down as CEO in January. Buffett reflected on life and his health in a new letter to shareholders where he announced $1.3 billion in new charitable gifts to the four family foundations run by his children that—along with the Gates Foundation—have been helping steadily give away his fortune since 2006. Berkshire is known for consistently outperforming the stock mar…

Berkshire Hathaway is buying Occidental Petroleum’s chemical division for $9.7 billion in what may be the last big acquisition involving the consummate dealmaker, Warren Buffett. Buffett wasn’t mentioned anywhere in materials released by Berkshire Hathaway discussing the deal Thursday, potentially signaling a passing of the torch to Vice Chair Greg Abel, to whom Buffet will hand the CEO title in January. Buffett will remain chairman at Berkshire and will still be involved in deciding how to spend the conglomerate’s colossal pile of more than $344 billion in cash. Berkshire’s cash reserves have been growing for years because Buffett has been unable to find any …

Warren Buffett is likely the best-known, most successful investor in the world today. The philanthropist and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has an estimated net worth of $158 billion and is known as the Oracle of Omaha for his ability to pick long-term investments. He’s also dedicated to sharing his wisdom with everyday investors, including beginners. Here are Buffett’s top three tips: Principle No. 1: Invest Only in What You Understand Buffett has famously advised, “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” In a letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders in 1996, Buffett explained the concept of a “circle of competence”: Basically, these are the field…

The tech industry is moving fast and breaking things again—and this time it is humanity’s shared reality and control of our likeness before and after death—thanks to artificial intelligence image-generation platforms like OpenAI’s Sora 2. The typical Sora video, made on OpenAI’s app and spread onto TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook, is designed to be amusing enough for you to click and share. It could be Queen Elizabeth II rapping or something more ordinary and believable. One popular Sora genre is fake doorbell camera footage capturing something slightly uncanny —say, a boa constrictor on the porch or an alligator approaching an unfazed child—and ends with a mild sh…

For many office workers, the typical “lunch hour” is a sad desk lunch of a sandwich or slop bowl supplemented by a rotating schedule of snacks. According to a poll conducted by Yahoo and YouGov, half of employed Americans regularly eat at their workstations. And now they’re sharing it all on TikTok. Office snack content is hooking viewers online with captions such as “WIEIAD” (what I eat in a day) and “what I ate at my 8-4,” featuring office workers’ time-stamped eating schedules. Employees post montages of their morning coffee and breakfast of choice, followed by a time-lapse video of a variety of snacks and beverages consumed at their desk. Some videos have vo…

Nearly 30 million Americans annually are impacted by water scarcity and don’t have reliable access to clean water. The water crisis stems from a wide range of issues, ranging from extreme weather events like hurricanes and flooding to depleted aquifers and overuse of wells. Our aging water infrastructure alone leaks 6 billion gallons per day, while pipe failures lead to nearly 10,000 “boil water” notices every year. Water is an essential and increasingly limited resource. It shapes where we live (or don’t). Vast lands across America remain undeveloped due to a lack of natural water resources, exacerbating the housing crisis. Water increasingly restrains and defines h…

For two decades, Wayfair has thrived by offering customers an abundance of trendy, inexpensive furniture—around 30 million options, specifically. But as an e-commerce company, Wayfair’s employees didn’t actually touch or feel any of the pieces on the site. “Our goal was to find suppliers of furniture and make them easily available online to our customers,” Michael McCorry, director of curation strategy and operations, tells me. “We only learned about the products later, through customer reviews and feedback. If a product got bad reviews, it would sink lower in the rankings.” For the customer, shopping at Wayfair presented something of a risk. With such an enormous…

Before Waymo was Waymo, it was Google’s self-driving car project. Starting in 2009, the effort spent many years in test mode—with humans in the driver’s seats ready to take over, just in case—that its vision of vehicular autonomy often felt far from practical reality. Since last year, however, Alphabet’s robotaxi service has begun to scale up quickly. It’s now fully open to the public in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. And today the company is announcing that it’s testing fully autonomous trips, sans human driver, in Miami, and plans to do so in Orlando, Florida; Dallas; Houston; and San Antonio in the coming weeks. For now, …

Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle company, plans to expand its ride-hailing service, Waymo One, to Washington, D.C. in 2026, the company announced Tuesday. While the nation’s capital currently prohibits fully autonomous operations, a Waymo spokesperson said the company will work closely with local policymakers over the coming year to help formalize necessary regulations. This marks the first time Waymo is bringing its commercial ride-hailing service to a city that experiences regular snowfall. Waymo vehicles don’t yet operate in winter weather, though the company has conducted cold-weather testing in upstate New York, Michigan, and parts of California. As a res…

Robotaxi pioneer Waymo plans to expand to London next year, marking the company’s latest step in rolling out its driverless ride service internationally. Waymo said Wednesday that it will start testing its self-driving cars on London streets in the coming weeks—with a human “safety driver” behind the wheel—as it seeks to win government approval for its services. In a blog post, Waymo said it will “lay the groundwork” for its London service in the coming months. The company said it will “continue to engage with local and national leaders to secure the necessary permissions for our commercial ride-hailing service.” Waymo’s self-driving taxis have been operating …

Over a long and industrious career, the investor George Soros developed a theory he calls reflexivity. The basic idea is that expectations don’t form in a vacuum. They are shaped, in part, by our perceptions of what other people believe. The more widely an idea is accepted, the more likely we are to accept it ourselves and that, in turn, reinforces the collective wisdom. If many believe that, say, the stock market will go up or that AI will create an economic boom, we’re more likely to believe it too. That belief then drives behavior: investors buy stocks, companies pour money into AI, and the prediction begins to fulfill itself. All of this only adds fuel to the fir…

The sonic backdrop of the Twin Cities in 2026 is a cacophony. As thousands of ICE agents raid residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and businesses, they’re trailed by the ambient noise of piercing sirens, whirring helicopters, and screeching whistles at all hours of the day, along with the occasional boom of flashbang grenades and the odd cry for help. Conspicuously silent in all the commotion, however, are major corporations that are headquartered in Minnesota. It’s a list that includes some of the most well-known consumer-facing brands in the country, including Target, Best Buy, and Land O’Lakes—all of which have an obvious direct stake in the comm…

How are the world’s most creative people using AI to drive their work forward? This was the question at the heart of an in-depth survey Fast Company recently conducted in partnership with Whalar, a leading social agency focused on content creators. We found that, for most, AI has become a routine part of the creative process—and a return to an AI-free working life has become almost unfathomable. Yet the survey also found the world’s creative elite are grappling with a technology that gets more powerful and useful every day but remains unwieldy, error-prone, and not entirely trustworthy. “I want people to understand how well it can augment and enhance the thinking…

There we were: two experienced professionals, each standing on the iconic red dot of our own TEDx stages, ready to deliver what we hoped would be the most impactful talks of our careers. For Jamie, her meticulously rehearsed opening line—the one she practiced 327 times in the shower, in the mirror, and in front of a very patient partner—evaporated the moment the spotlight hit. Hundreds of expectant eyes waited as the silence stretched . . . and stretched. “Oh @*#%,” she whispered—into the mic. What was meant to be a private moment of panic turned into a public announcement. But instead of recoiling, the audience leaned in. Scott was one minute and fifty secon…

I should go to the dentist more often. I really ought to join a gym. I wish I had partied less in college and bought more Apple stock. Had I ditched the pint of Guinness and invested in Apple in the early 2000s, each pint worth of stock would now be valued at $3,500. Over those college years, I would have accumulated enough stock to buy a brownstone on New York’s pricey Upper West Side. All cash. Looking back, I probably still would have enjoyed that cold brew with my friends. A pint of Guinness felt just right in the moment. 2025 was far off. As the world gathered for the United Nations General Assembly to discuss climate change, among other global challenges, here’s…

Every four years, the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) provides a snapshot of how students across the country are performing in math and English. It doesn’t tell us about individual students; instead, it gives us information about how well our public schools are preparing students. The 2024 results showed that 28% of 8th graders were proficient in mathematics (on grade level), and 30% were proficient in reading. In both, the average scores and proficiency rates are still below 2019 rates. One explanation for this dismal reality? Public schools simply aren’t capable of delivering results for students. But look closely at historical trends in NAEP R…

The American economy runs on what are known as heuristics, a diverse array of mental short-cuts that help consumers make a dizzying number of choices to navigate the wild complexity of everyday life. These shortcuts help us select the restaurants we may choose to patronize, the cars we drive, the food we purchase, and the schools we attend and to which we send our children. We rely on scoring systems, certifications, and ranking methodologies to consider what movies to see, what music to listen to, and whether to purchase fair-trade products. These shortcuts come in many forms, from the complex (like the tools used to rate bonds and other financial products) to the straig…