The next frontier in drone delivery? The airspace above your community. Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said recently that the company intends to continue developing its Prime Air drone delivery program, with the goal of expanding drone delivery to 500 million packages a year worldwide over the next decade. To achieve this, Amazon has started operating Prime Air drone delivery and conducting pilot tests in eight U.S. cities, with four more to be added soon. One of these cities is Chicago, whose south suburbs are next on the list for a trial expected later this spring or early summer. For people…
Author: Staff Writer
At last, the Jetsons are happening. Everyone’s long-held dream of having a humanoid robot at home to do all the household chores is almost here. Chinese tech firm GigaAI has announced the (allegedly) first commercial robotic butler ever. The company claims the first 100 pilot units will be deployed at the end of this month in employees’ homes. Then they will start deployment in Wuhan, for free!, in the first half 2027. Called SeeLight S1, the robot is one of the many answers to China’s ongoing demographic crisis, which has been met by a Beijing directive that wants to put…
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Why are zippers on different sides of male and female jackets? — Agrima, age 13, Delhi, India Imagine you’re at a clothing store that stocks items for the whole family. You pick up a white buttoned shirt to try on. The style is pretty plain. Was it designed to be worn by a woman or man? There may be a clue: Many women’s shirts have buttons on the left side, while men’s shirts usually button…
Being penalized for using flexible working policies—remote work, hybrid work, parental leave, and more—can be subtle, or screamingly obvious. Nicole Yelland, a communications strategist from Detroit, has experienced both. In one remote role, she was managed by a hostile boss whose explosive “Hulk-out” rages made work miserable. The breaking point came when her 5-year-old daughter was laid out sick in Yelland’s office during a call, and her manager erupted, asking what her “kid is doing in the office” in an expletive-packed rant: “You’re not paying attention! You’re not committed!” He then dismissed remote work as “BS”—as he himself was working…
There is a growing body of evidence that AI is redefining white-collar work. It’s not just the endless rounds of layoffs at tech companies that herald this transformation. Entry-level jobs are disappearing in sectors like software engineering, leaving new college graduates scrambling to figure out their next move. Recent entrants to the workforce are faced with a uniquely challenging job market, one they say they are unprepared to navigate. Plenty of others are also vulnerable as AI rapidly changes the nature of white-collar work. Secretaries and assistants are high on the list of jobs that are prone to being disrupted…
The AI conversation today focuses on systems. Which jobs will survive? How does education need to adapt? What happens to the economy when machines produce what humans used to? Governments are commissioning reports. Executives are restructuring. Educators are rewriting curricula. These are urgent questions. But there is one that matters just as much, and it’s the one we can actually do something about: What happens to us? Not our roles. Not our output. Our relationships, our sense of purpose, and our ability to connect with each other as human beings. I don’t pretend to have the answers to the economic…
At 3 a.m., in the midst of labor, a doula we’ll call Renee stepped into the hallway to steady herself. She had been supporting a laboring client for nearly 12 hours. The room was warm, the lights low, the energy focused. But outside, her body told a different story. A sudden wave of heat rose through her chest, her heart began to race, her shirt damp and sticky with sweat. She hadn’t slept well in weeks. The brain fog had been hijacking her daily functions. Still, she took a breath, wiped her face, and walked back in to continue holding…
2015 was a different time. One of the most polarizing discussions online was about whether the color of a striped dress was blue and black or white and gold. The class of 2015 was graduating into an election year. And Stephen Colbert was just gearing up to become the host of The Late Show. Now, polarization online looks a bit different, the class of 2026 is stepping into a country led by the same president who won in 2016, and global conflict and AI have transformed the economy and job market. And last night, the final episode of The Late…
I was in a pub in London, catching up with my oldest friends. One friend turned to another: “What is that phone you are holding?” The phone in question: a $799 Nothing Phone 3. In a world of interchangeable black mirrors, this is a phone that stands out, hence the puzzled look and question. From 2007 to today, the smartphone has gone from designer marvel to almost invisible ubiquity. Apple has led the way with 17 generations of its god-like device. Google, Huawei, Samsung, Motorola, and others follow, delivering great cameras, big screens, and strong Android experiences. Devices have come…
In the world of I Love Boosters, color reigns supreme. The new film from writer-director Boots Riley follows a group of boosters—shoplifters who resell their stolen clothes—led by aspiring fashion designer Corvette (Keke Palmer). They run amok in a surrealist, color-blocked version of San Francisco, wreaking havoc on a chain of department stores where each location is entirely monochrome. “Color is so key, because it helps create worlds,” Shirley Kurata, I Love Boosters‘ costume designer, tells Fast Company. The Oscar-nominated costume designer keeps finding herself depicting the multiverse: For the Best Picture-winning 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, she…