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Daniel Kokotajlo predicted the end of the world would happen in April 2027. In “AI 2027” — a document outlining the impending impacts of AI, published in April 2025 — the former OpenAI employee and several peers announced that by April 2027, unchecked AI development would lead to superintelligence and consequently destroy humanity. The authors, however are going back on their predictions. Now, Kokotajlo forecasts superintelligence will land in 2034, but he doesn’t know if and when AI will destroy humanity. In “AI 2027,” Kokotajlo argued that superintelligence will emerge through “fully autonomous coding,” enabling AI systems to drive their own development. The r…

Advertising in generative AI systems has become a fault line. Last month, OpenAI released that it would start running ads in ChatGPT. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, OpenAI’s chief financial officer defended the introduction of ads inside ChatGPT, arguing that it is a way to “democratize access to artificial intelligence,” and that this decision is aligned with its mission: “AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the benefit of humanity who can pay.” Within days, Anthropic fired back in a Super Bowl commercial, ridiculing the idea that ads belong inside systems people trust for advice, therapy, and decision-making. In some way, this is a spat about ho…

When I spoke at the Arabian Business Awards a few years ago, I showed a slide describing research that shows meetings literally make people dumber: a study published in Transcripts of the Royal Society of London found that meetings cause you to (during the meeting) lose IQ points. A bunch of people in the audience took photos of that slide. The same was true when I presented a slide describing research published in Journal of Business Research showing that not only do 90 percent of employees feel meetings are unproductive, but when the number of meetings is reduced by 40 percent employee productivity increases by 70 percent. A bunch of people took photos of th…

Could a film industry entirely crafted from AI ever exist? Social media is abuzz with movie scenes made with Seedance 2.0, the latest tech in AI video generation, including everything from a fight scene between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise to an alternate ending for The Lord of the Rings. The tech’s proponents predict AI is the future of movies—but an actual brain behind Hollywood hits, Ben Affleck, is trending for his counterargument: AI may be a powerful tool, but it’s nothing without human creativity. Affleck recently shared his take on AI-generated writing in an appearance on a podcast. As an Oscar-winning screenwriter himself for Good Will Hunting (not to mention…

Much of healthcare still operates like a series of snapshots. For most routine care, you go in once a year for a physical. Maybe you get a few labs drawn. If something looks off, you might get a follow-up or a prescription. But within the constraints of a short visit and limited longitudinal data, care often ends with broad guidance like “eat better” or “check back next year.” Meanwhile, your health is changing every day. Metabolic function, inflammation, aging, and chronic disease don’t switch on overnight. They unfold gradually over time, shaped by lifestyle factors including sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, as well as genetics and environment. But unless…

It’s only February, and an outbreak of measles infections is already inching toward nearly 1,000 cases this year in the U.S. Infections are at an all-time high as a result of declining vaccination rates, following a steep rise in cases in 2025 at 2,280 cases, the highest in 33 years. This week saw new outbreaks concentrated in both South Carolina and Florida. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? As of Thursday, February 12, there were 910 confirmed measles cases in 24 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Another six cases were reported among international visitors coming to the U.S.) Those states are: Ari…

Spotify’s most senior engineers don’t type code anymore. In fact, they have not written a single line of code since December, co-CEO Gustav Söderström revealed during a recent earnings call. It’s not that they’ve stopped working. Instead, through a combination of Claude Code and Spotify’s specialized internal system Honk, engineers can now develop new features simply through Slack. “As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app,” Söderström told analysts on the company’s Feb.10 earnings call. “And once Claude finishes that work, the engineer…

This Presidents’ Day, I’ve been thinking about George Washington—not at his finest hour, but possibly at his worst. In 1754, a 22-year-old Washington marched into the wilderness surrounding Pittsburgh with more ambition than sense. He volunteered to travel to the Ohio Valley on a mission to deliver a letter from Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, to the commander of French troops in the Ohio territory. This military mission sparked an international war, cost him his first command and taught him lessons that would shape the American Revolution. As a professor of early American history who has written two books on the American Revolution, I’ve learned that Wash…

AI inspired many employers to take a wait-and-see approach to hiring in 2025, but new data suggest they’ll be returning to the market in search of certain skills in 2026. According to Upwork’s In-Demand Skills 2026 report, demand for AI-specific proficiencies have more than doubled on the freelancer platform over the last year. But at the same time, nearly half of employers also say they’re also putting a premium on human skills, like creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience and innovation. “When we look at the fastest growing skills in terms of demand, AI is all over it. That’s not surprising,” says Dr. Gabby Burlacu, licensed organizational psychologist an…

Variant, a generative design tool that promises endless UI exploration, recently introduced a feature most creative people and designers have used for decades: the eyedropper. In Variant, the tool picks vibes: It lets you click on one AI-generated interface and inject its aesthetic DNA—typography, spatial relationships, and color palettes—into another. After so much hype around “vibecoding” and its text-based imprecision, seeing a familiar, direct manipulation tool applied to generative AI feels great.​​ The new AI modality takes a nice step to close the gap between the impenetrable ways of large language model black boxes and the tools designers actually use with the…

A dispute between AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon over how the military can use the company’s technology has now gone public. Amid tense negotiations, Anthropic has reportedly called for limits on two key applications: mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Defense Department, which The President renamed the Department of War last year, wants the freedom to use the technology without those restrictions. Caught in the middle is Palantir. The defense contractor provides the secure cloud infrastructure that allows the military to use Anthropic’s Claude model, but it has stayed quiet as tensions escalate. That’s even as the Pentagon, per Axios, threatens to d…

Monday night’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was missing something—an entire interview. But viewers weren’t left in the dark about why—host Stephen Colbert told his audience that CBS didn’t air his interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico due to concerns it could run afoul of shifting FCC rules. “We were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said on the air Monday. That didn’t stop him from calling out the move in the episode and poking at FCC chair Brendan Carr and CBS—and it didn’t stop him uploading the entire interview to YouTube. But the incide…

What really holds people back from stepping up as allies in support of their marginalized colleagues? For example, why don’t more men say something when they see a colleague or a customer make a sexist remark about a female co-worker? Our research, published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, suggests that people often hesitate to intervene when co-workers are mistreated because they themselves feel disempowered in their organizations and experience distrust and polarization. Our findings run counter to the common assumption that people don’t step up to support marginalized colleagues because they don’t care or are unmotivated. Not seei…

When I cofounded Brilliant Earth in 2005, e-commerce was still in its infancy. I believed technology could reshape the jewelry industry entirely—changing how customers find pieces they love, personalizing their own designs, and reimagining the customer experience. We launched as a digital-first venture to do just that. Now, two decades into our pioneering digital journey, I’ve realized something surprising: Our most sophisticated online tools have actually made in-person interactions more valuable. I believe the brands leading the next wave of innovation aren’t choosing between digital and physical. They’re using digital excellence to help create meaningful in-person …

A new $7.25 billion settlement between Bayer and a group of cancer patients could wrap up a huge wave of lawsuits against the company over allegations that it didn’t warn consumers about cancer risks associated with the weedkiller Roundup. Bayer faces more than 180,000 claims over Roundup, which contains the herbicide glyphosate – the chemical at the center of the controversy. Most of those claims are from people who used the weedkiller, which is sold at any hardware or garden store, at home. The lawsuits have prompted Bayer to pull glyphosate out of many products under the Roundup brand, though glyphosate is still commonly used by farmers and in the agriculture busin…

Baby care brand Frida is facing online backlash after screenshots of sexual innuendos in its marketing materials began circulating on social media. Frida, which describes itself as “the brand that gets parents,” sells a range of baby care, fertility, and postpartum products through major retailers, including Target. Last week, an X user shared images of several products’ packaging, writing: “sexual jokes to market baby products is actually sick and twisted @fridababy this is absolutely appalling and disgusting.” The post has since gained almost five million views on X. Among the examples highlighted is a social media graphic promoting the company’s 3-in-1 Tru…

In December 2025, Andrea Lucas, the chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, invited white men to file more sex- and race-based discrimination complaints against their employers. “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the @USEEOC as soon as possible,” she wrote in a post on X. In February 2026, the EEOC began to investigate Nike on what the agency said was suspicion of discrimination against white workers. Both initiatives followed the EEOC’s March 2025 characterization of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts…

Below, George Newman shares five key insights from his new book, How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success. George is an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and he has spent his career trying to unravel the mysteries of what creativity is and where it comes from. His research has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, BBC, Scientific American, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. What’s the big idea? Most of us think great ideas are conjured from within—some mysterious well of genius possessed by a special few. But if you listen closely to history’s mos…

“I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space,” Elon Musk said last week when he announced his plan to go to the moon. “It’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.” He’s right. I want to see it too, although probably we will both be dead before his vision is realized. The lunar mass driver—essentially a cannon that uses magnetic power to accelerate an object—is a key component to launch the million satellites Musk wants to put in orbit around the Earth. But Musk wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea. Smarter people than him thought about this in the 1970s as the solution to a key problem for human …

The retail platform eBay is set to acquire fashion resale app Depop from Etsy in a $1.2 billion transaction. Ostensibly, the deal will help eBay to cultivate a new audience of Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers. But I think there’s a deeper reason that eBay might want to lock Depop down: it’s simply the best looking resale interface out there right now. The deal was announced on February 18 in a press release from Etsy. It’s expected to close some time in the second quarter of 2026, and, per an email sent to Depop’s customers, after the merger Depop will remain a stand-alone brand within eBay and retain its name, brand, and platform. For eBay, acquiring Depop makes a …

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Wednesday to defend his company’s practices in a landmark trial that could determine whether social media companies can be held liable for alleged harms to children. But if the defendants lose, the implications could extend far beyond social media. The case centers on Meta and Google, with plaintiffs alleging that services like Instagram and YouTube are intentionally designed to keep users, especially kids, engaged—a dynamic they say can lead to harmful mental health effects, including addiction. The trial is widely viewed as a test case for roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. Meta and Google deny th…

Hello again, welcome to Fast Company’s Plugged In, and a quick note: A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a game I was vibe-coding using Claude Code, and said I would share it once I finished it. Here it is, along with more thoughts on the uncanny experience of collaborating with AI on a programming project. Late Show host Stephen Colbert and his network, CBS, are still at odds over why his planned interview with James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for a Texas U.S. Senate seat, didn’t air last Monday. In Colbert’s account, CBS lawyers forbid the broadcast after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said talk show interviews might trigger the FCC’s …

OpenAI, the maker of the most popular AI chatbot, used to say it aimed to build artificial intelligence that “safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” mission statement. But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.” While reviewing its latest IRS disclosure form, which was released in November 2025 and covers 2024, I noticed OpenAI had removed “safely” from its mission statement, among other changes. That change in wording coincided with its transformation from a nonprofit organization into a business increasingly focused on profits. OpenAI currently faces several lawsuits related to i…