Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company‘s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X @thesullivan. AI Super PACs are paying millions for midterms ads, which almost never mention AI Political action committees backed by artificial intelligence developers, Silicon Valley executives, and venture capital…
Author: Staff Writer
Erewhon, the luxury Los Angeles health-food grocer, is changing up its hot bar—but don’t worry, you can still get favorites like the buffalo cauliflower and turmeric chicken tenders. Instead of being fried in avocado oil, though, those dishes will now get their crisp from Zero Acre Farms’ Organic Fera fruit oil, a sustainable cooking oil made by pressing the fruit of the hybrid oleifera x guineensis palm tree. [Photo: Zero Acre Farms/Erewhon] Fera fruit oil is already used in more than 800 food service locations across the country, including the kitchens of Wynn hotels in Las Vegas and Cote Korean…
The retro tech company Tin Can reinvented the landline for kids. Next, it’s introducing Gen Alpha to the Rolodex. The brand’s core product, the $100 Tin Can phone (so named for its chunky, playful form factor) is a Wi Fi-enabled, screen-free landline complete with a chunky cord and a dial tone. Since its debut in June 2025, the phone has sold out seven production batches—equal to hundreds of thousands of units. Now, just over a year later, Tin Can is introducing its first nonphone products: Twirly Cord Charms, which let kids accessorize their own gadget and retail at $20 for…
President Donald Trump’s push to rebrand artificial intelligence as “superintelligence” has a new government URL. The Trump administration launched SI.gov on Tuesday, a narrative microsite that promotes the administration’s AI policies and initiatives. The old AI.gov, which formerly linked to the administration’s AI action plan and executive orders now, redirects to the new site. As a work of marketing, the website is slick and graphically compelling. The overarching message is that the U.S. is a superintelligence leader. But the overall site design is otherwise sugarcoating a major issue Trump isn’t polling well on. [Image: SI.gov] The site welcomes visitors with…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Colleges have automated the easy work (CRM, communication) while the hardest, most labor-intensive work (transcript evaluation, fraud checks) stays manual. Enrollment growth targets are outpacing the processing capacity needed to handle more applications. Admissions leaders want AI to extend staff capacity, not replace human judgment on consequential decisions.u003cbru003e Higher education has invested in digital transformation for years. Colleges have adopted student information systems, customer relationship management platforms, online application portals and increasingly sophisticated communication tools. Yet many admissions teams still face significant operational challenges. EDMO’s The State of Automation in…
The first four years of the generative AI revolution have tended to see power flow in one direction. Big Tech firms unleashed their tools on the planet and expected users to like it or lump it. Unhappy with the amount of data collected about you in the pursuit of convenience from your chatbot? Tough luck. Squeamish about the provenance of all the data AI systems have been trained on, and whether it was legally obtained? Not a lot you can do about it. But as the technology continues to advance, and users become more comfortable with its capabilities, that imbalance…
As artificial intelligence makes it easier to get the answers you want to any question, retaining knowledge is becoming a rare skill. The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve (introduced by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885) proves that we lose most of what we learn over time if we don’t reinforce it or put it into practice. People are not interested in retention. They may be thinking, Who cares if you can use AI to find out what you want? But we are losing more thinking capacity than we realize. “Left to itself every mental content gradually loses its capacity for being revived,…
There’s a new word for those who are apprehensive or outright uninterested in career advancement. Included in a new book of 100 Future Words, “ladderdodging” is defined as “declining or choosing not to seek out a promotion or high-level role in order to avoid the added pressure, risk, and loneliness that often comes with management positions.” And it coincides with a real trend unfolding in the workplace. Declining a promotion was once almost unheard of, but recent studies suggest it’s now become the norm—especially among younger workers. A July survey by emotional insight platform Hint App found that 58% of…
QUESTION: Marty, I was watching the video of your 1996 World Economic Conference, particularly the technical analysis session, and it brought back some remarkable memories. At the time, everyone was calling for a bear market in gold, yet you focused on $368 as the critical number. Gold closed 1996 at approximately $369. You insisted that there was no major bear market developing and identified $250 as the key support level. Gold eventually reached that level in 1999, and I bought at the low. Quite frankly, you paid for my house! You also projected that gold would eventually reach $1,200, which…
Key Takeaways For Nestlé CEO Philipp Navratil, offering candid feedback didn’t come naturally. The CEO changed how he managed direct reports early in his career after realizing that he needed to give them honest feedback so they could improve. Navratil now views feedback as an integral part of a leader’s job. Nestlé has been around for 160 years. The company’s CEO, Philipp Navratil, joined in 2001 and held various positions at the $240 billion food and drink giant before taking the top job last year. Now Navratil is offering a sneak peek into his leadership style. According to a recent…