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In my decades of working in cybersecurity, I have never seen a threat quite like the one we face today. Anyone’s image, likeness, and voice can be replicated on a photorealistic level cheaply and quickly. Malicious actors are using this novel technology to weaponize our personhood in attacks against our own organizations, livelihoods, and loved ones. As generative AI technology advances and the line between real and synthetic content blurs even further, so does the potential risk for companies, governments, and everyday people. Businesses are especially vulnerable to the rise of applicant fraud—interviewing or hiring a phony candidate with the intent of breaching an o…

Artificial intelligence: it’s not just for tech experts anymore. Instead, a heaping helping of free online resources has emerged. These classes are specifically designed to welcome beginners into the world of AI, even if they possess little or no prior technical background. I selected these Coursera courses for their beginner-friendly approach, high ratings, and comprehensive coverage of foundational concepts and key AI domains. AI For Everyone If you’re taking your very first steps into AI, “AI For Everyone” on Coursera is a great starting point. The course requires no prior experience in AI or programming, making it truly accessible to everyone, and it’s …

Earlier this week, Time published an explosive story about an American company that reportedly revived a long-extinct species, the dire wolf. To some, it’s a scientific miracle: Some 10,000 years after the species went extinct, the planet is once again home to three living dire wolf pups, brought about by the ingenuity of scientists at Colossal Biosciences. But let’s not mistake spectacle for substance. Yes, it’s cool that biotechnology can now create animals that resemble extinct species. Colossal is already eyeing its next acts—the woolly mammoth and the dodo. But beyond the buzz and the billion-dollar ambition, this project doesn’t offer real solutions to our plane…

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 here. Blade Runner wasn’t so far-fetched after all In Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Gosling’s Officer K has a live-in girlfriend named Joi, played by Ana de Armas. The two interact like a real couple—they share familiar banter and seem to have a history together. But Joi is a hologram, projected from ceiling-mounted emitters in K’s apartment. She’s not human; she’s an advanced form of spatial computing—a future-facing concept we’re already seeing the early stages of today. The “AI girlfriend” (or bo…

Social media is terrible for teens’ mental health—or is it? At the same time that rising rates of poor mental health among youth have been called a national crisis, and as parents and regulators call on social media companies to do more to keep young people safe online, a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that social media—while flawed—can sometimes be a positive influence on teenagers. In a survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, 74% said social media makes them feel more connected to their friends, and 63% said online platforms give them a place to show off their creativity. There’s more good news: About half—52%—said social media makes them feel mor…

Polaroid’s new collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) is designed to make your retro photos look like colorful works of pop art—and it feels like a flashback to 2014. The partnership includes two exclusive items: an $130 Polaroid camera and a separate $22 set of eight custom film frames. The camera itself is an analog instant camera—specifically, Polaroid’s Now Generation 3 model—rendered in a bright blue housing, complete with the “MoMA” wordmark in a lighter blue across the front. Included with the device are three neon, MoMA branded wrist straps to customize the look. Where the collaboration really shines is with its custom Polaroid film …

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: If you’re taking photographs with a Polaroid camera in the 21st century, it’s not because pristine image quality is your overarching priority. In the digital age, the dreamy imperfection of Polaroid pictures is part of their appeal. They’re never that sharp, and no two come out exactly the same. Even Fujifilm’s Instax cameras—instant photography’s current market-share giant—produce more consistent results. Still, even people who love Polaroid’s analog soul and tactile immediacy have their limits. Each shot from an eight-photo film pack costs about $2.25, considerably more than Instax shots. That’s less than it did in insta…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices have risen by 1.2% year-over-year from March 2024 to March 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Index, a decelerated rate from the 4.6% year-over-year rate last spring. However, not every housing market is seeing rising home prices. Among the nation’s 300 largest metro-area housing markets, 60 markets are seeing falling home prices on a year-over-year basis. That’s up from 42 markets in February and 31 markets in January. While home prices continue to rise in regions with tight inventory—such as much of the Northeast and …

In American culture, importance and attention are often misaligned. This disconnect is one of the greatest challenges we in the STEM world face. Too often, society’s most essential stories are drowned out by the drama of the moment—pushed aside by the next headline or fleeting scroll. Today’s media environment is a relentless battle for attention, which is why, when a cultural moment aligns with science, we must seize it. Elevate it. Share it. Right now, we have just such a moment: the discovery of a new exoplanet reminiscent of Luke Skywalker’s home world, the upcoming launch of Andor Season 2, and the arrival of May 4th—also known as National Star Wars Day (a de…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Regardless of whether your company has a strict in-office policy or supports a flexible schedule, the reality is that office attendance is at its highest levels in five years, according to Bisnow. Nobody would argue the need for a healthy office, especially one with more people in it. And if you ask what makes a healthy office, most would say it is one that supports physical health and safet…

It’s one thing to invent something cool within controlled laboratory environments. It’s entirely another to scale that new baby for sale. The tension between innovation and commercialization is something we regularly wrestle with at Abstrax. Every morning, we don lab coats and ask the same question: “How do you make money from research done in a lab?” Balance innovation with commercial reality Discovery for its own sake isn’t enough. Many R&D-heavy companies discover that brilliant ideas can languish for years if they don’t have a system for bringing them to market. We decided early on to build that bridge proactively. This meant investing heavily no…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Have you ever wanted to break up with your doctor—not because of the practitioner, but because of the difficulty in engaging with their practice? You’re not alone. I’ve left doctors for that reason and McKinsey has found that nearly 25% of consumers have delayed care because they hate everything about the process. System complexity is not doctors’ fault, but making the care experience easier for…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices rose 0.7% year over year between April 2024 and April 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Index—a decelerated rate from the 4.4% year-over-year rate between April 2023 and April 2024. And more metro-area housing markets are seeing declines. For example, 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (10% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the January 2024 to January 2025 window. In the February 2024 to February 2025 window, 42 of them (14% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading. In the March 2024 t…

Target Corp. is pushing back on media reports this week that it has changed its policies around self-checkout technology in response to shoplifting or customer dissatisfaction. A number of news outlets reported over the weekend and yesterday that the retail giant has limited self-checkout registers to 10 items or fewer, but Target made that announcement more than a year ago. “Target is not removing self-checkout,” a spokesperson told Fast Company when reached for comment. “We offer it in the vast majority of our stores and have no plans to change this.” The company declined to share additional details about how theft—or “shrink” in industry parlance—has shaped…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Just because a home listing gets a price cut doesn’t necessarily indicate that the home actually sold for less than its comps. Some real estate agents use pricing strategies that intentionally list too high to test the market or create negotiation room. After all, even during the pandemic housing boom—when home prices were surging—18.7% of U.S. homes for sale in March 2021 still saw a price cut. That said, if the share of inventory receiving a price cut rises beyond typical seasonal patterns, it can suggest a market where homebuyers are gaining lever…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. For anyone following the headlines about African fintechs over the last few years, it must have felt like a wild ride—from buzzing highs to plunging lows, and everything in between. But beneath these surface narratives, a more interesting story is emerging. This will be the year the focus on African fintech shifts from valuations to delivering value, and the process is already underway. Sus…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. This week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published its quarterly Household Debt and Credit Report. It shows that while still low, distress is creeping back into the housing market. Here’s how the U.S. housing foreclosures in Q1 of 2025 compare to previous years: Q1 2014: 144,500 Q1 2015: 111,820 Q1 2016: 96,680 Q1 2017: 90,460 Q1 2018: 76,360 Q1 2019: 71,040 Q1 2020: 74,720 Q1 2021: 11,400 Q1 2022: 24,220 Q1 2023: 35,640 Q1 2024: 44,180 Q1 2025: 61,660 When COVID-19 lockdowns began, the fed…

You’ve probably heard AI is coming for many of our jobs. But how would you feel about getting a medical diagnosis from an AI doctor? Would you trust a verdict delivered by an AI judge? A new study of 10,000 people in 20 countries, including the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China, found when it comes to artificial intelligence replacing human jobs, people are most concerned about AI replacing doctors and judges, and least concerned about AI replacing journalists. The findings, published in American Psychologist by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, focused on the study participants’ attitudes to AI taking over six occupations: doctors…