What's on Your Mind?

You know the ancient proverb: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. For leaders, first-generation AI tools are like giving employees fish. Agentic AI, on the other hand, teaches them how to fish—truly empowering, and that empowerment lifts the entire organization. According to recent findings from McKinsey, nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI, yet about the same number report no bottom-line impact. Agentic AI can help organizations achieve meaningful results. AI agents are highly capable assistants with the ability to execute tasks independently. Equipped with artificial intelligence that…

“Snow Will Fall Too Fast for Plows,” “ICE STORM APOCALYPSE,” and “Another Big Storm May Be Coming …” were all headlines posted on YouTube this past weekend as the biggest snowstorm in years hit New York City. These videos, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of views, are part of an increasingly popular genre of “weather influencers,” as Americans increasingly turn to social media for news and weather updates. People pay more attention to influencers on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok than to journalists or mainstream media, a study by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford found in 2024. In the U.S., social media is how 20% of adults get their ne…

Generative artificial intelligence technology is rapidly reshaping education in unprecedented ways. With its potential benefits and risks, K-12 schools are actively trying to adapt teaching and learning. But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there’s a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students, and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, “You have policy and what’s actually happening in the classrooms—those are two very differ…

When one of the founders of modern AI walks away from one of the world’s most powerful tech companies to start something new, the industry should pay attention. Yann LeCun’s departure from Meta after more than a decade shaping its AI research is not just another leadership change. It highlights a deep intellectual rift about the future of artificial intelligence: whether we should continue scaling large language models (LLMs) or pursue systems that understand the world, not merely echo it. Who Yann LeCun is, and why it matters LeCun is a French American computer scientist widely acknowledged as one of the “Godfathers of AI.” Alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshu…

The Farmers’ Almanac isn’t going out of business after all, but it is leaving Maine for the bright lights of New York City and a new owner. Beloved by farmers and gardeners, the almanac was first printed in 1818 and — like the arguably more famous Old Farmer’s Almanac — relies on a secret formula of sunspots, planetary positions, and lunar cycles to generate long-range weather forecasts. It’s been acquired by Unofficial Networks, a digital publisher focused on skiing and outdoor recreation. That means the almanac will keep operating despite announcing in November that its 208-year run was coming to an end. A new Farmers’ Almanac website will be “a living, brea…

If you’ve received any text messages from California-based healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, you could be eligible for cash under the terms of a new settlement. The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a class action suit filed in August 2025. That suit alleged that the healthcare company sent marketing texts to people who had already replied “stop” to opt out of receiving them. That practice could run afoul of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a law protecting consumers from aggressive telemarketing and robocalls, and the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act. Jonathan Fried, the plaintiff who brought the suit, lived in …

What many applicants may not realize is that, nowadays, the first hurdle in applying for a job is dealing with AI. Candidates now often must clear an artificial intelligence system that screens their résumés that quietly determines who advances, and whose application is filed away in a drawer or spam folder, never to see the light of day. Now, a new lawsuit filed on Tuesday is the first in the U.S. to accuse an AI hiring company of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Eightfold AI, a venture capital-backed artificial intelligence hiring platform, is being sued by two workers in California for allegedly compiling reports used to screen job applicants without their…

If you enter a query into Quili.AI on January 31, your question won’t be answered by a large language model, but instead by residents from the Chilean community of Quilicura. The project aims to replace artificial intelligence with “analog intelligence,” to both highlight the environmental impact of AI, and to get people thinking consciously about their AI use. “We’re inviting people to have a day without AI,” Lorena Antiman from Corporación NGEN, an environmental organization focused in part on protecting Quilicura’s wetlands, says while speaking through a translator. Corporación NGEN spearheaded the project. Instead of going through a data center, each pr…

In the 1950s, the Air Force designed cockpits for the average pilot by measuring thousands of pilots and calculating the average for 10 key physical dimensions—height, arm length, torso size, etc. They assumed most pilots would be close to average in most dimensions. When researchers actually checked, they found that out of 4,063 pilots, exactly zero were average on all 10 dimensions. Not a single pilot fit the average they’d designed for. Even when they reduced it to just three dimensions, fewer than 5% of pilots were average on all three. By designing for the average, the Air Force created a cockpit that fit virtually no one well, and that had serious consequences f…

Relationships can feel like both a blessing and the bane of your existence, a source of joy and a source of frustration or resentment. At some point, each of us is faced with a clingy child, a dramatic friend, a partner who recoils at the first hint of intimacy, a volatile parent, or a controlling boss — in short, a difficult relationship. As a psychology professor and relationship scientist, I’ve spent countless hours observing human interactions, in the lab and in the real world, trying to understand what makes relationships work – and what makes them feel utterly intractable. Recently, I teamed up with psychologist Rachel Samson, who helps individuals, couples …

It’s shaping up to be a busy year for initial public offerings from some of the most closely watched companies. Rumors have been floating around for a while now that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company, and Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind Claude, could make their market debuts in the summer and by the end of 2026, respectively. And now, a report says that OpenAI—Anthropic’s main competitor, and the owner of ChatGPT—could go public before the end of the year, too. Here’s what you need to know about OpenAI’s rumored IPO plans. OpenAI may go public in 2026 A report from the Wall Street Journal yesterday has investors buzzing: ChatGPT owner…

This Sunday’s full moon, or “big cheese,” as it’s sometimes called, comes with a side of queso and chips. Fast-casual restaurant chain Qdoba is offering stargazers a free 4-ounce serving of its signature 3-Cheese Queso or Queso Diablo and chips all day on February 1, according to a press release. The deal is available for Qdoba Rewards members with the purchase of a full-size entrée in-restaurant, online at Qdoba.com, and through the Qdoba mobile app. No telescope is required. “The moon may not really be made of cheese, but we think a free side of our creamy, cheesy queso and tortilla chips—seasoned with salt and lime—is the next best thing,” Qdoba’s chief marketi…

The last Sundance Film Festival in Utah is drawing to a close this weekend. The Park City gathering was a wistful farewell to the place Robert Redford’s brainchild has called home for over 40 years and launched so many careers. Although the festival isn’t ending — it will start anew in Boulder, Colorado, in 2027 — it did have many, from filmmakers to volunteers, feeling nostalgic about the change whether their Sundance story began in 2022 or 1992. A Wednesday night anniversary screening of “Little Miss Sunshine,” still one of the festival’s biggest hits, was an especially emotional affair as filmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and actors Toni Collette, Greg Ki…

Liftoff Mobile, a California-based mobile app marketing provider, announced on Thursday that it plans to launch . . . into the public markets. The company, backed by Blackstone, is targeting a valuation of nearly $5.2 billion for its IPO, and is looking to raise as much as $762 million in funding by selling more than 25 million shares. Share prices are expected to range between $26 and $30. It will trade under the ticker “LFTO.” The company’s roots go back to 2012, when it was initially founded. A majority stake was later acquired by Blackstone in 2021, and Liftoff was then combined with Vungle to create a single, large, independent mobile adtech platform. That pl…

Snow has returned to the Philadelphia region, and along with it, the white residues on streets and sidewalks that result from the overapplication of deicers such as sodium chloride, or rock salt, as well as more modern salt alternatives. As an environmental scientist who studies water pollution, I know that much of the excess salt flows into storm drains and ultimately into area streams and rivers. For example, a citizen science stream monitoring campaign led by the Stroud Water Research Center in Chester County (about 40 miles west of Philadelphia) found that chloride concentrations in southeastern Pennsylvania streams remained higher than levels recommended by t…