What's on Your Mind?

You couldn’t have missed the news: Jony Ive and Sam Altman have teamed up, after OpenAI acquired Ive’s company io for $6.5 billion. The plan? For Ive, and a sizable team of ex-employees from Apple, it’s to create a series of hardware products for OpenAI. The news alone dropped shares of Apple by 1.8% as two of the most celebrated software and hardware development teams in the modern era have combined to realize the potential of artificial intelligence and change the way we live. Hopefully for the better. The first io product, according to The Wall Street Journal, arrives in 2026. It will be a small object “capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and…

Throughout Kim Kardashian’s two-decade career in the public eye, the reality TV star’s entrepreneurial endeavors have included shapewear clothing brand Skims, makeup brand KKW Beauty, cofounding a private equity firm, and a super popular mobile game. But with her latest venture, Kardashian is stretching her mogul credentials into beverages, which has been familiar terrain for celebrities. She has become a “cofounder” of the energy drink company called Update. Though the startup has existed for four years—meaning Kardashian wasn’t a day-one founder—Update’s CEO and cofounder Daniel Solomons tells Fast Company that she has been a steady customer since 2023 and two years…

America’s fast casual restaurants are almost universally struggling. But a few chains are betting on one universally beloved fried finger food to draw customers back into booths: the humble mozzarella stick. Over the past year or so, the fast casual sector has faced a chilling effect as inflation and rising menu prices continue to drive consumers away. Last year, chains including Red Lobster, Tijuana Flats, Buca di Beppo, and BurgerFi all sought bankruptcy protection. Others, like Dine Brands (the owner of Applebee’s and IHOP) and Darden (the owner of Olive Garden) have recently reported lackluster financial results. Amidst this dreary environment, Chili’s, the f…

Hello! Next Thursday, April 24, I’ll be moderating two fireside chats—with Runway cofounder Alejandro Matamala Ortiz and F-35 pilot Justin “Hasard” Lee—at Artist and the Machine’s AI & Creativity Summit in Brooklyn. The event promises to be an invigorating exploration of the intersection of technology and art from multiple perspectives, and I hope to see some of you there. Sam Altman wants to build a social network. Given the OpenAI CEO’s unbridled ambition—and the potential to turn 400 million ChatGPT users into some semblance of a community—it would be weird if he didn’t. And the timing makes sense: On Tuesday, The Verge’s Kylie Robison and Alex Heath report…

Not content with having hundreds of millions of users peppering ChatGPT with queries and conversations every day, OpenAI wants to further embed itself in our digital lives. This week the company released Atlas, an AI-laden web browser it hopes will challenge incumbents and be adopted at scale. Atlas is one of a raft of AI-powered browsers that have been unleashed on the market in recent months. Perplexity, the AI answer engine, has Comet. Opera, a smaller European competitor to the likes of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, released Neon, which has its own AI functionalities. OpenAI stands a better chance than most of dislodging Google Chrome, whi…

We don’t fully understand human biology. Not proteins, or cells or tissues—and certainly not how they all interact in the dynamic systems that make up our body. I believe AI is the answer to that problem. It offers the promise of a step-change in data analysis and eventually will understand our bodies’ processes at a fundamental level. It will “solve” biology. But it can’t be done by generalist large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. We’re going to need domain-specific agentic software that plans, acts, and adapts. The sort of AI that can support us across messy, multimodal workflows inherent to biological research. This is how we unlock the medicines and treat…

Until recently, David Friedman and his friends braved New York City parks and playgrounds to get their pickleball fix. They brought their own nets and line tape, avoided the broken glass, and adjusted to the weird bounces the ball took on cracked concrete. “We were competing with kids on scooters,” he says. Pickleheads in other cities think nothing of setting up on tennis courts, but Friedman knew better than to try that in Brooklyn. “Tennis players here will murder you,” he says. For a time, his group got their dinks in at some newly constructed handball courts, until those got too crowded. This October, Friedman did what a handful of New York City entrepreneurs have…

Women in all parts of my life are encountering similar obstacles in their health journeys. The common thread is that when we don’t advocate for ourselves and ask the right questions, we don’t get the care we need. While volunteering as a women’s heart health advocate and immersing my public relations agency in the health innovation ecosystem, I’m constantly thinking about how to bring to light the issues—and solutions—that are all around us. “Women are dying because we aren’t marketing life-saving therapies to them,” said Rachel Rubin, MD, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist, and assistant clinical professor in urology at Georgetown University Hospital. She…

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping countless industries; education is no exception. As AI tools rapidly enter classrooms, there are concerns about fair access, effective implementation, and the risk of widening the still persistent digital divide. Who are the players best positioned to guide this transition in a way that truly benefits every student? I recently spoke with Alix Guerrier, CEO of DonorsChoose, an education nonprofit where teachers submit funding requests based on classroom needs. Ninety percent of public schools in America have teachers using DonorsChoose, which tackles funding gaps by focusing on the most granular level: individual teach…

On the first Saturday of May, millions of Americans tune in to the Kentucky Derby to watch horses and their jockeys compete on the Churchill Downs racetrack in America’s longest-running sporting event. The Derby has been held annually on the same racetrack since 1875; it’s an event largely built on tradition. Horse racing viewers tend to skew older, but this year, Churchill Downs is looking to modernize the event for new viewers by embracing old traditions while also introducing brand partnerships that appeal to Generation Z. Casey Ramage, Churchill Downs’ vice president of marketing, brand, and partnerships, says the Kentucky Derby is a “cultural moment” for eve…

At 10:24 p.m., while brushing his teeth, my husband’s phone pings. It’s not an emergency. No one is bleeding. No building is on fire. It’s an email that begins with the words, “Just circling back.” In France, this would be illegal. Or at least deeply frowned upon. Since 2017, French workers at companies with more than 50 employees have had a legally protected right to disconnect. That means, employers can’t expect workers to answer emails or messages after hours. Similar policies exist across Europe, including Spain, Belgium, and Greece. Meanwhile, in America, we’re circling back at bedtime. The Country That Turned “Always On” Into a Personality Trait …

On Main Street in the village of Freeville, New York, on a 2.8-acre lot where a dilapidated single-family house once stood, there are now a dozen tiny storybook-like cottages surrounded by the property’s pine trees. The development, completed last year, is helping bring new life to the village. It’s one example of what’s possible when towns don’t have overly restrictive zoning. It’s charming. The design encourages neighbors to know one other. And it offers housing for far more people on the same amount of land. The project is the third tiny house village in the region from a local developer, Bruno Schickel. His career started as a typical general contractor—he bui…

Are you ready to hand over control of your portfolio to artificial intelligence? Fahad Hassan, cofounder and CEO of AI-powered wealth management platform Range, thinks you should seriously consider it. Hassan’s five-year-old company is introducing “Rai,” a new proprietary AI wealth advisor that, he believes, will give a huge swath of American households access to the sophisticated advice and planning that was traditionally only accessible to those with sky-high net worths. “Rai is the first product, the first AI agent, that we believe can do the work of human advisors just as well, if not better,” Hassan says. And while plenty of other fintech companies have r…

Want to enjoy your job a little more? Maybe you need a BFF at work. According to Gallup, having a best friend at work increases job satisfaction, innovation, engagement, and productivity, and it decreases your chances of leaving the company. But can that friend ever be your boss? “You may think, If I’m going to have a friend at work, shouldn’t it be the CEO? Why not go for the top and get the most benefits from the friendship?” says Steve McClatchy, author of Leading Relationships: Build Meaningful Connections, Eliminate Conflict, and Radically Improve Engagement. “Gallup is telling us that we should have a best friend at work, but it doesn’t say that best friend shou…

Nearly 500 buildings designed by Wright were built during his lifetime, but almost 15% of those have been demolished or lost through neglect, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, an organization that works to preserve the famed architect’s work Now, a new logo for the organization serves as a reminder of how important it is to protect architectural history. Designed by the studio Order, the Conservancy’s new logo features a missing square that’s meant to represent the void when one of Wright’s buildings is lost or neglected. The Conservancy’s previous logo was a representation of the Lark Administration Building in Buffalo, New York, which…

In the race to deploy large language models and generative AI across global markets, many companies assume that “English model → translate it” is sufficient. But if you’re an American executive preparing for expansion into Asia, Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, that assumption could be your biggest blind spot. In those regions, language isn’t just a packaging detail: it’s culture, norms, values, and business logic all wrapped into one. If your AI doesn’t code-switch, it won’t just underperform; it may misinterpret, misalign, or mis-serve your new market. The multilingual and cultural gap in LLMs Most of the major models are still trained predominantly on Engli…

Zohran Mamdani has promised to transform New York City government when he becomes mayor. Can he do it? Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, already faces intense scrutiny, even before taking office in one of the country’s most scrutinized political jobs. Republicans have cast him as a liberal boogeyman. Some of his fellow Democrats have deemed him too far left. Progressives are closely watching for any signs of him shifting toward the center. On Jan. 1, he will assume control of America’s biggest city under that harsh spotlight, with the country watching to see if he can pull off the big promises that vaulted him to office and handle the everyday duties of the j…

When looking for an apartment in San Francisco today, artificial intelligence can seem inescapable; and that’s not just because every rental building seems to have an AI bot answering calls. In San Francisco, the technology’s ascendency—and the subsequent skyrocketing job growth— has helped make the apartment market one of the tightest in the nation, with the fastest growing rent in the U.S. Lisa McCarrel, Managing Partner of Move Bay Area, a relocation and rental housing service, has seen the rental market become frenzied in recent months due in part to the increase in AI and AI-adjacent jobs. With units harder to come by, she’s seen some potential tenants offer…

Have you found that you now struggle to get through a book? If so, I have good and bad news for you. The bad news is that losing your ability to read books may be common at the moment, but neuroscience says it is a very bad sign for how our brains are doing. The better news is that science also offers a simple plan to recover your ability to read deeply again. Can’t read books anymore? You’re not alone “Several people have told me lately that they’ve stopped being able to read, echoing my own experience,” author Katherine May confessed in her newsletter recently. Statistics suggest May and her reading-challenged correspondents are far from alone. These days,…