What's on Your Mind?

The more you use artificial intelligence, the less you fear it. At first, it’s easy to be intimidated by what it can do. The deeper you engage with it, the more the tool reveals its limits and, more importantly, the irreplaceable value of human judgment. I’ve worked with AI models and tools for more than a decade. From early machine learning applications in data analytics to the generative systems reshaping workflows today, I’m comfortable with the technology. Yet I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve felt the anxiety. I’ve lost sleep thinking about the pace of change, and what that might mean for the future. Like most parents, I worry about my child’s career pro…

Is Benjamin Netanyahu dead? According to this video posted on March 15 by the Israeli prime minister’s office, he’s alive and thriving. You may have seen it online, along with a rabid debate between the crowd who claims it is fake (it is not) and the people who say it is real (which is correct, as determined by fact checkers and independent intelligence analysts). But we are not here to debate about what is true or not. What matters is the debate itself. It’s another point of proof in our new normal: Since AI can make up believable new realities, people now doubt reality itself, using that claim to support their beliefs and push their agendas. The rumors of Netany…

“The purpose of computers is human freedom.” – Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) The computer is as emblematic of the American dream as the automobile. Perhaps it’s only natural that Apple, HP, Adobe, Google, and Amazon were each launched out of a garage. It was inside the garage that the modern era of personal computers was born, where anyone could own the power to calculate millions, and then billions of processes per second. PCs are a tool designed to move us faster, with a hood you can pop open to soup up. We insist that our computers speed up every year if only because it’s proof of progress. The very term “personal computer” promises libert…

It’s one of the trickiest questions for any leader, especially in times of transformative change: when to follow the herd and when to go it alone. Since taking the reins as CEO of Tubi in September 2023, Anjali Sud has been finding a unique path for the Fox-owned streamer. The biggest streaming services in the world—Disney+, Netflix, Prime—battle for premium content and subscription dollars. Tubi, meanwhile, has gone all in on free, with its on-demand streaming app and library of more than 300,000 movies and shows. Tubi was the first streamer to add a TikTok FYP-style video scroll to its mobile interface to help users discover new shows by replicating the UX of th…

Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have hit the headlines—not least because of their role in making some people filthy rich off the back of the Middle Eastern war. But they’ve also drawn the attention of legislators concerned about their growing prominence. Many officials have privately raised concerns about platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. Arizona’s attorney general has gone further, charging Kalshi with offering what the state alleges are illegal bets on election outcomes. “Kalshi may brand itself as a ‘prediction market,’ but what it’s actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate…

When electricity demand is set to surge—say, from a new power-hungry data center—the default response from a utility is often to build a new (and expensive) power plant and other infrastructure. A new report released by a cross-industry coalition called Utilize argues that we can make better use of existing power on the grid instead. Roughly half of the total capacity goes unused most of the time because the grid was built to meet spikes in demand. But as technology has shifted, it’s become easier to unlock that extra power. Smart thermostats, for example, can pre-cool your house when demand is lower. EVs can charge at optimal hours (and, in some cases, send power…

Microsoft PowerToys feels like something that shouldn’t exist in Windows today. What started in 2019 as a couple of utilities for things like window and shortcut management has gradually expanded to nearly 30 useful tools, including a keyboard shortcut creator, an image-to-text extractor, and a better search bar than the one that’s built into Windows proper. PowerToys has become wildly popular among Windows power users, with more than 70 million downloads to date, but it’s also completely free, with no ads, Office upsells, or ham-fisted Copilot integrations. Instead of directly monetizing PowerToys, Microsoft sees it as a way to build goodwill among software devel…

Trailers of two of Hollywood’s most anticipated upcoming movies came out this week. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Dune: Part Three and Marvel Studios’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiered a day apart. But what’s most interesting is the marketing strategy behind the trailers—in which promos and short clips of the trailers were released ahead of the full trailers. On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery hosted a livestreamed event on the official Dune account on TikTok. It featured director Dennis Villeneuve and some of the cast talking about the upcoming movie to a live audience before airing the trailer, which was simultaneously revealed at the end of the stream befo…

The used-car e-commerce platform Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) is planning to do something it has never done before: split its stock. If completed, the move will significantly reduce the per-share price of CVNA stock, without affecting the company’s total value. But first, it needs to be approved by shareholders. Here’s what you need to know about Carvana’s proposed stock split. What is a stock split? A stock split is a mechanism by which a company can increase or decrease the number of its shares by dividing those shares or combining them. There are two types of stock splits: a forward split and a reverse split. A forward split is the most common, and the …

Global energy prices soared Thursday after Iran attacked two oil refineries in Kuwait and a key natural gas facility in Qatar that can supply one-fifth of the world’s liquified natural gas. The attacks added to fears the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic may be longer and more extensive than feared, with lasting damage to oil and gas production. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose nearly 6% to $113.77 per barrel, up from less than $73 per barrel on the eve of the war. U.S. benchmark crude was less affected by the latest attacks in the Middle East, rising less than 1% to $96.26 per barrel. The European TTF benchm…

“I have no idea if this is what they want me to do. I barely get any feedback.” This is a statement I often hear from leaders in my coaching calls, even those at a senior level. When these leaders were early in their careers, there was more frequent guidance and coaching on what success looked like for them and if their work met expectations. However, research by Amy Edmondson shows that the higher you rise in an organization, the less feedback you tend to receive, which can make it feel like you’re losing reassurance. In coaching calls with my clients, we often discover how reliant they were on their leader’s affirmation, and that this recognition served as motivat…

Career disruption is accelerating across the economy—and few people have navigated it more boldly than Maryam Banikarim. The former CMO of Univision, Gannett, and Hyatt, and host of The Messy Parts podcast, Banikarim shares hard-won wisdom about C-suite politics, and what it means to ultimately bet on yourself. Growing up in Iran during the time of revolution, Banikarim offers a unique perspective on the current Middle East conflict—and her determined search for hope amid the chaos. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapi…

Alibaba’s net income fell 66% year-over-year (YOY) for 2025’s fourth quarter while it invested heavily in AI. In total, net income dropped from 46.4 billion Chinese yuan ($6.8 billion) to 15.6 billion Chinese yuan ($2.27 billion). The downturn is one of multiple disappointments in the Chinese technology giant’s latest financial results, announced Thursday, March 19. Alibaba also reported a 71% decrease in diluted earnings per share YOY. Higher cloud revenue, but not high enough Even Alibaba’s revenue, which rose 2% YOY, failed to meet expectations. The company reached 284.8 billion Chinese yuan ($41.4 billion) in revenue for quarter four, falling sho…

For decades, in the name of workplace equality we’ve encouraged women to enter male-dominated professions because those jobs are better paid, more prestigious, and more powerful. Women engineers. Women in tech. Women in leadership. That agenda still matters but it is not enough. One of the great blind spots of our time is that we rarely ask the opposite question with equal seriousness: why are we doing so little to bring men into professions dominated by women? We do need many more men in care professions—nursing, teaching, social work, child care, elder care, and support services. The gender gap we should be talking about is not only women missing from AI jobs. I…

Fifteen years after his passing, Steve Jobs’s thoughts on innovation, entrepreneurship, design, and leadership still make a meaningful impact. Since there’s a Jobs quote for many situations, winnowing it down to five isn’t an easy task. Still: Here’s my attempt. Here’s Steve Jobs on starting your own business, perseverance, leadership and responsibility, intelligence, and money. Jobs’s thoughts on starting a business Maybe you don’t want to start your own company, much less build a thriving business. Even so, Jobs felt everyone should dip a toe in the entrepreneurial water, even if it’s just a side hustle. Why? As Jobs said: I think that without owning…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. The cost of AI will surely rise, along with our dependence on it Developing AI models and serving AI apps is a notoriously expensive undertaking. AI labs use massive amounts of computing power, training data, and high-priced talent to create and serve AI models, and the costs are not nearly covered by the chatbot subscription and API fees they bring in. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic, for example, are profitable, and won’t be for some time. The difference, for now, is made up by inve…

It’s a tough time out there for creatives. Whether you’re a writer, director, actor, or artist of any kind, the world is short on opportunities—particuarly the kind that pay. But even Academy Award winners like screenwriter and director Barry Jenkins didn’t have a linear path to success, as he shared in a recent panel about how to sustain a career as a filmmaker. Jenkins, the writer-director behind Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, was a panelist at “Behind the Chair: Representation and the Business of Filmmaking,” a seminar on the film industry hosted by the Directors Guild of America. In a one-on-one discussion with fellow director Anu Valia (We Stranger…

Most organizations genuinely want to support their people. We invest in wellness apps, coaching programs, and leadership development, all with good intentions. Yet burnout rates keep climbing. Aflac’s WorkForces Report from November 2024 referenced that burnout affected nearly 3 in 5 American workers with employees experiencing high levels of stress rising to 38% in 2024, up from 33% in 2023. The issue isn’t effort or resources. It may simply be that we’re solving for the wrong problem. I recently sat down with Natallia Miranchuk, founder of SOULA, an AI-powered emotional support platform that combines neuroscience, health expertise, and artificial intelligence to add…

Happiness may be hard to quantify, but for the data-obsessed, the World Happiness Report is as close as you can get. The annual report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, leverages data from Gallup to rank every country in the world by self-reported life satisfaction. For the second year in a row, not a single English-speaking country has cracked the top 10. The exact reason is tough to pin down, but this year’s lead researchers point out one major factor that could be to blame. As per usual, Nordic countries dominate the top 10 happiest countries, with Finland claiming the number one spot for the ninth consecutive year. Ic…

Your local Macy’s might not be closing its doors as soon as previously expected. On Wednesday, the department store chain confirmed a major change involving a previously announced plan to permanently shutter 150 stores. In an earnings call, CEO Tony Spring revealed that “several major milestones” had been hit last year, citing a return to “positive comparable sales for total Macy’s Inc. and Macy’s Nameplate.” The retail boss said Macy’s success marked “an important inflection point” for the chain, as the brand hit “better-than-expected” results in every quarter, and “delivered adjusted diluted EPS well above” the chain’s own guidance. On that same call, …

This week, Google announced new features for its AI-powered interface tool Stitch—in the process, it signaled that it’s going all-in on “vibe design.” “We are evolving Stitch into an AI-native software design canvas,” Rustin Banks, product manager at Google Labs, wrote on company’s blog, Keynote. “With it, anyone can create, iterate and collaborate to turn natural language into high-fidelity UI designs.” Launched last March during the Google I/O annual developer conference, Stitch sets out to give people an accessible tool for creating front end UI designs for projects like websites or mobile apps. While late to a market already occupied by competitors like Figma …