The one practical career security no one can take from you is control. Ive built my career on five core mindsets that helped me transition to being responsible for my own career success. Its how I run my professional life. Careers are not just built. Theyre owned. That’s how you become indispensable. Your career isnt a ladder. Its a business. And you are in charge. Most people treat it like a job. I treat it like an asset. Every skill, every project, every task matters. If you want leverage, freedom, and a career that works for you, these mindsets can help you take your career to another level. They can determine your choices, growth, and freedom. And change how you see your own value.
1. The ‘company of one’ mindset
You are the CEO of you. A one-person corporation. Your skills are your products. Your personal brand is your marketing department. Every project you take, every email you send, and every skill you learn is either an asset or a liability for your company: you. Think of meetings as pitches, tasks as investments, and mistakes as expensive lessons. When you walk into a meeting, youre not just a participant; youre a service provider. That mindset is how you change from what can my company do for me to what value did I provide today? And how does it strengthen my portfolio?
Every action or decision compounds; every skill stacks in your favour. You cant outsource responsibility. Youre the company. Most people wait for promotions or recognition. Build leverage. Taking responsibility for your career success starts with becoming the boss of you. And treating it seriously, like your life depends on it. Thats how you create leverage.
2. The ‘permanent beta’ mindset
The most dangerous phrase in the modern career is, Ive arrived. The minute you think youre finished, youre obsolete. Your knowledge has a half-life. Thats why Im always in a state of permanent beta: always testing, learning, and upgrading. You dont have to disrupt your career to do this.
Micro-learning can help you adapt a permanent beta mindset. Listen to a podcast on a new industry trend. Take a weekend course on a topic that will still matter a few years down the line. Read books that challenge your present career mindset. Your value is directly tied to your ability to adapt and grow. Stagnation is a choice. A bad one.
3. The ‘philosophy for career’ mindset
Without basic values for life, you are just pursuing the next paycheck and burning out. What does it all mean for you? You need to answer the why. Why do you do what you do? What are you working towards? What unique combination of interests makes you come alive? For me, its curiosity. The desire to learn from great thinkers, pass on that knowledge. And making a career out of it. It guides what projects I take, what I write, and who I work with.
If you dont know your why, someone else will rent your time to serve theirs. When you have that anchor, rejection from one client or a bad day at one job doesnt break you. Youre not defined by your title. Youre defined by your life mission. You can lose a job, but you cant lose your purpose. Philosophy for your career decides the jobs you take, the people you work with, and the projects you walk away from.
4. The ‘investor’ mindset
Your skills are assets. Treat them like a portfolio. You cant dump all your energy into one stock and hope it pays forever. Markets change. Industries collapse. AI eats jobs. The people who survive treat learning as compounding interest. They reinvest. And put time into skills that grow their skill range. They build optionality.
You dont need 10 certificates. You just need to be the person who always has another card to play. Investors put their skills to work. Ship the side project. Take the stretch role. Risk a little. Test the market. Repeat what works. You learned faster than the guy hoarding potential in silence. A diversified career portfolio is built on experiments, not guarantees.
5. The ‘owner’ mindset
This is the one that ties it all together. Owning means you stop hiding behind career excuses like, My boss never gave me the chance. It may be true, but owners play the hand theyve got and still find a way to win a round. Owners take responsibility for both career stagnation and acceleration. Owning your career path means you stop hiding behind safety nets. Owners stop blaming. No boss, no company, no economy gets the last word on your career.
Owners keep evolving even in bad economic conditions. They own their mistakes, their choices, their pivots. When you own something, you protect it, you invest in it, you defend it. You dont just have a career. You run it. Big difference. If your career stalls, you find ways to adapt. No one can do that for us. Your career will always be yours, and yours alone. Own it.
Police are getting a boost from artificial intelligence, with algorithms now able to draft police reports in minutes. The technology promises to make police reports more accurate and comprehensive, as well as save officers time.
The idea is simple: Take the audio transcript from a body camera worn by a police officer and use the predictive text capabilities of large language models to write a formal police report that could become the basis of a criminal prosecution. Mirroring other fields that have allowed ChatGPT-like systems to write on behalf of people, police can now get an AI assist to automate much dreaded paperwork.
The catch is that instead of writing the first draft of your college English paper, this document can determine someones liberty in court. An error, omission, or hallucination can risk the integrity of a prosecution or, worse, justify a false arrest. While police officers must sign off on the final version, the bulk of the text, structure, and formatting is AI-generated.
Whoor whatwrote it
Up until October 2025, only Utah had required that police even admit they were using an AI assistant to draft their reports. On Oct. 10, that changed when California became the second state to require transparent notice that AI was used to draft a police report.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 524 into law, requiring all AI-assisted police reports to be marked as being written with the help of AI. The law also requires law enforcement agencies to maintain an audit trail that identifies the person who used AI to create a report and any video and audio footage used in creating the report. It also requires agencies to retain the first draft created with AI for as long as the official report is retained, and prohibits a draft created with AI from constituting an officers official statement.
The law is a significant milestone in the regulation of AI in policing, but its passage also signifies that AI is going to become a major part of the criminal justice system.
If you are sitting behind bars based on a police report, you might have some questions. The first question that Utah and California now answer is Did AI write this? Basic transparency that an algorithm helped write an arrest report might seem the minimum a state could do before locking someone up. And, even though leading police technology companies like Axon recommend such disclaimers be included in their reports, they are not required.
Police departments in Lafayette, Indiana, and Fort Collins, Colorado, were intentionally turning off the transparency defaults on the AI report generators, according to an investigative news report. Similarly, police chiefs using Axons Draft One products did not even know which reports were drafted by AI and which were not because the officers were just cutting and pasting the AI narrative into reports they indicated they wrote themselves. The practice bypassed all AI disclaimers and audit trails.
The author explains the issues around AI-written police reports in an interview on CNNs Terms of Service podcast.
Many questions
Transparency is only the first step. Understanding the risks of relying on AI for police reports is the second.
Technological questions arise about how the AI models were trained and the possible biases baked into a reliance on past police reports. Transcription questions arise about errors, omissions, and mistranslations because police stops take place in chaotic, loud, and frequently emotional contexts amid a host of languages.
Finally, trial questions arise about how an attorney is supposed to cross-examine an AI-generated document, or whether the audit logs need to be retained for expert analysis or turned over to the defense.
Risks and consequences
The significance of the California law is not simply that the public needs to be aware of AI risks, but that California is embracing AI risk in policing. I believe its likely that people will lose their liberty based on a document that was largely generated by AI and without the hard questions satisfactorily answered.
Worse, in a criminal justice system that relies on plea bargaining for more than 95% of cases and is overwhelmingly dominated by misdemeanor offenses, there may never be a chance to check whether the AI report accurately captured the scene. In fact, in many of those lower-level cases, the police report will be the basis of charging decisions, pretrial detention, motions, plea bargains, sentencing, and even probation revocations.
I believe that a criminal legal system that relies so heavily on police reports has a responsibility to ensure that police departments are embracing not just transparency but justice. At a minimum, this means more states following Utah and California to pass laws regulating the technology, and police departments following the best practices recommended by the technology companies.
But even that may not be enough without critical assessments by courts, legal experts, and defense lawyers. The future of AI policing is just starting, but the risks are already here.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a professor of law at George Washington University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The job market is rough. So when candidates are landing interviews, theyre often cramming every skill, accomplishment, and experience they can muster into the interview process, hoping to edge out the competition.
Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Hiring managers often tune out in such cases, causing the rapid-fire qualifications to backfire. Its what Marc Cendella, CEO of career platform Ladders, calls answer inflation.
Answer inflation is when experienced professionals respond to interview questions with lengthy résumé recitations and meandering stories that bury their actual value, he explains.
Take the classic: Tell me about yourself. Its the question that most interviews kick off with. And while it may seem straightforward enough, theres actually an art to delivering a strong elevator pitch to hook the hiring managers attention from the off.
Many candidates think that the interviewer is trying to socialize or make small talkbut thats rarely the case, Cendella told Fast Company.
This question can actually tell an interviewer a lot. When asked an open-ended question, do you take the chance to answer thoughtfully? Can you prioritize and organize your thoughts under pressure? Or are you rambling, caught off guard?
Tell me about yourself is also not a chance to detail your entire life story. An answer filled with irrelevant details and outdated roles is more likely to lose the hiring manager’s attention halfway through than impress them with your decades of experience.
While you may think the more information you can cram in the better, Cendella says the opposite is often true.
Hiring managers see it time and time again: experienced professionals tend to assume their longer track record requires longer explanations, he explains. As a result, theyll respond to interview questions with long-winded stories that bury their actual value. Or, they merely list all of their past roles and accomplishmentslike a résumé reading.
Instead, trim the fat and replace vague descriptions with quantifiable achievements.
Think about those key challenges hiring managers are facing, and how your past experience could fill in the gaps, Cendella explains. Every response you have should ladder up to a clear, compelling narrative about why youre the solution to their current problem.
He recommends taking two to three concise examples that demonstrate impact and let the numbers do the talking for you.
Lets imagine you’re in the process for a project manager role. Rather than droning on about your years in project management, use this script as an example: In my last role, I inherited a project that was three months behind schedule and turned it around within six weeks by implementing clearer communication channels and regular team check-ins, he says.
Its clear, concise, and not bogged down by answer inflation.
Remember the golden rule: Show, dont tell.
The workplace AI narrative has been dominated by fears of human replacement. But forward-thinking leaders are discovering AI’s real power: helping employees become more human, not less. Shifting from workplaces of human doings to a collective of activated human beings.
And while AI can absolutely help eliminate busywork, opening employees time for more impactful work and meaningful progress, its impact can go far beyond productivity. In fact, having studied power shifts in modern workplaces for many years, I think the companies that will thrive moving forward will focus more on using these tools to improve employee well-being.
Smart leaders should approach AI implementation through what I call “human-first integration”using technology to restore conditions where people can do their best thinking, creating, and collaborating. Here are a few use cases you might not have thought of for AI that can help your employees feel more supported in work and life.
1. Make it easier to understand benefits
AI can create “invisible support systems” that proactively connect employees with resources without navigating complex HR systems or overcoming the stigma of asking for help.
Most employees leave thousands of dollars in wellness stipends, EAP services, and professional development funds unused simply because they don’t understand what qualifies or how to access them. AI is great at analyzing individual situations (e.g., project stress, family circumstances mentioned in calendar entries, or expressed career goals) and suggesting relevant solutions with eligibility and application guidance.
A custom GPT can be built, either in-house or via an AI consultant, by uploading a companys benefits guides, policies, and FAQs into an organizations private OpenAI workspace, where access can be limited to employees only. By giving the GPT simple instructions like Answer employee questions about benefits in plain language, the tool becomes an easy, secure way for staff to get clear and consistent answers about their benefits.
2. Create safe reporting for workplace harm
Traditional HR reporting makes employees navigate complex hierarchies and risk retaliation. AI-powered anonymous reporting systems can collect detailed incident information, identify patterns across reports, and route concerns to appropriate parties while protecting reporter identity.
For example, AllVoices is an AI-fueled employee relations platform that offers an employee relations copilot, a whistleblower hotline and an anonymous reporting tool to build trust and safety while also encouraging a culture of speaking up when something is wrong. The beauty is the AI is customized to the organizations systems, processes, and needs then it gathers anonymous incident information, can guide employees through the submission process and offer supportive resources, but doesnt make decisions that stays within human control.
3. Establish low-risk feedback loops
Implement micro-feedback through check-ins triggered by specific events like meetings, high-stress phases, or team restructuring. This enables real-time pattern recognition and intervention before problems escalate.
In my work coaching teams, I’ve seen how powerful this intentional ongoing approach can be as it shifts behavior from dreading the heavy annual review grading system to small lift, routine experiences of being heard and valued. I gather insights from individual coaching sessions and share aggregated themes with leadership, protecting individual privacy while surfacing patterns to help address systemic challenges before they become widespread problems.
While AI wont be able to reach the same level of depth and nuance as live coaching with a human would, the ability to automate checkpoints that are incorporated in larger team strategy will build trust and reduce fear of experience sharing. Try leveraging engagement platforms like CultureAmp that use AI to facilitate a continuous feedback loop by automating the delivery of pulse surveys (short, focused check-ins that can be triggered by specific events), providing real-time sentiment and theme analysis of the results, and recommending next steps.
4. Act on early warning signs for interpersonal conflict
AI can analyze communication patterns and misunderstandings before tension becomes destructive. It can suggest resolution approaches, connect people with mediation resources, and track effectiveness. Most importantly, AIs ability to identify and interrupt microaggressions can help recipients validate perceptions and educate those causing unintentional harm.
Opre is an AI-driven platform that uses meeting notes and other ongoing communications to provide professional development recommendations and recognize friction points. WorkHuman offers an Inclusive Advisor feature that identifies and mitigates unconscious bias in real-time.
5. Support self-discovery and team understanding
I often guide clients through what I call mesearch, a process of identifying a personalized leadership profile through assessments and reflection that equips them with language to describe their authentic leadership style. Now, imagine an AI platform extending this process across an entire team, enabling people not only to articulate their strengths but also to understand and align with those of their colleagues, while intelligently matching roles in complex situations so energy and efforts are optimized to meet challenges successfully.
For instance, if your team has taken assessments like the Clifton Strengths, DISC, Myers-Briggs, Predictive Index or HBDI, you can prompt your AI platform to take the assessment findings of each team member and identify where your team is likely to collectively shine. Think: Who will work best together in various scenarios, where strengths overlap and potential gaps may be, and where their diverse perspectives will benefit an initiative. This is great for staffing projects, assigning mentors, and for intentional hiring decisions to build a robust, resilient team.
Machines Supporting Humans
Organizations thriving in the coming decade won’t use AI most extensively, but most intentionally. This requires leaders who understand technology is only as powerful as the human systems it supports.
As a mixed-race, millennial woman who has navigated predominantly white, male-dominated industries, I’ve seen how traditional power structures prioritize performance over people. AI gives us a chance to build workplaces that amplify human potential rather tha exploit it.
According to McKinsey & Co, over the next three years, 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments. Gen AI is already here, its up to leaders to embrace this paradigm shifting opportunity effectively.
The future isn’t humans versus machinesit’s humans plus machines, creating conditions where people can think, create, and connect in ways that drive both individual fulfillment and organizational success.
For decades now, Google has been the unquestioned champion of searchour digital oracle, the first and last stop for every question, from “What’s the best pizza place near me?” to “How many protons are in a carbon atom?”
But heres the key difference now: while Google has started to incorporate AI with features like AI Overviews and the new AI Mode, a traditional keyword search is great for finding facts, but not so great at understanding context.
It’s like asking a librarian for a book on “dogs” and expecting them to know you really want to know how to train a puppy. You might get a whole library, but you still have to find the right book yourself.
That’s where dedicated AI-powered search, whether a self-contained tool like Perplexity or Google’s own conversational AI interface, truly shines. It doesn’t just look for keywords; it understands your intent.
It can be a genuine time-saver, and in some cases, it’s just plain better than scrolling through a list of blue links. Here are five times when using an AI to search will give you a better answer than Google.
Answers to subjective questions
A traditional search engine is fantastic for finding facts, but it falls short when you’re looking for an answer that isn’t black and white.
For example, if you Google “best workout routine for a beginner,” you’ll get a list of articles, but you’ll have to read through them to find the one that fits your specific needs. It’s a lot of scrolling and sorting through different opinions.
With an AI, you can ask a much more nuanced question, such as: “What’s the best workout routine for a beginner who wants to build strength but has joint pain and a limited amount of time?”
The AI can then synthesize information from multiple sources and provide a tailored response that takes all your constraints into account, giving you a comprehensive plan rather than a list of articles to sift through.
Explaining complex topics
We’ve all been there: you need to explain a complex topic, but the standard online explanations are full of jargon you don’t understand. Or maybe you’re trying to explain a technical concept to a colleague who isn’t as familiar with the subject.
Ask an AI to “explain [the concept] in plain English for someone with no background in [the field].”
It can take dense, confusing information and distill it into something simple and digestible. You can even ask it to “use a relatable analogy” to make the concept stick. It’s like having a personal tutor who’s always on call.
Preparing for meetings and interviews
You have an important call with a potential client or a new partner, and you want to go in prepared but digging through their company’s website, recent press releases, and social media feeds for relevant background info is a serious time sink.
A simple Google search will give you a bunch of links, but you’ll have to do all the reading yourself.
Prompt an AI with something like: “Help me prepare for a call with [Customer Name]. Summarize the top three news stories from the past six months and highlight anything relevant to their business goals.”
This gives you a quick, digestible cheat sheet so you can sound informed and confident without spending hours on a deep dive.
Kick-starting creative projects
Starting from scratch is one of the hardest parts of any creative endeavor. You have to write an outline for a presentation, a script for a video, or even just the agenda for a team meeting, and the blank page feels intimidating.
A Google search might give you “presentation outline templates,” but you’ll still have to fill in all the details yourself.
Instead, ask an AI to give you a head start. Use a prompt like: “Create a 10-slide outline for a presentation about [topic] for a [target audience], and include a proposed title for each slide.”
The AI can give you a solid scaffolding structure to build on, saving you the initial struggle and giving you a foundation to refine and customize.
Learning new skills quickly
Let’s say you’ve got a new software tool you need to learn for a project, or you’re trying to figure out how to do something you’ve never done before, such as setting up a home server.
A traditional search will give you a mix of official documentation, video tutorials, and forum postsall of which you have to piece together yourself.
An AI can act kind of like a personal coach. You can ask: “Give me a step-by-step tutorial for setting up a home server, assuming I have no prior experience with networking.”
The AI can lay out the process in a clear, linear fashion, and if you get stuck, you can ask follow-up questions for clarification, like “What does ‘port forwarding’ mean in simple terms?” Its a truly interactive and personalized learning experience.
You need to think more strategically; you need to be more strategic!
Its one of the most common, but least helpful, pieces of feedback professionals receive.
It sounds smart, it sounds wise, it also sounds important. But ask people what it actually means, including those who are proffering this advice, and youll likely get many different answers.
Ive spent more than two decades working with leaders, entrepreneurs, and teams around the world to help them become more strategic in how they think, act and make decisions. Along the way, Ive seen the same frustration crop up over and over again: people know strategy matters but dont know how to do it.
The good news?
Strategyand being strategicisnt a mysterious skill reserved for those sitting around the boardroom or graduating from business school. Its a learnable set of practices that anyone can develop and apply to have more impact, both in their work and in their lives more broadly.
Strategy isnt a documentits a mindset
Many picture strategy as a dense presentation or abstract five-year plan. At its core, though, strategy is about making meaningful choices. It requires zooming out to see different perspectives, managing complexity and uncertainty, deciding what matters most, and aligning actions accordingly.
Strategy is both a skill and a mindseta lens and a habit. Its a way of scanning your environment with curiosity, noticing what you seeand dont seeand choosing where to focus limited time, energy, and resources.
Three myths of strategy
Myth 1: Strategy is for senior leaders only
Many scaling the career ladder will put off learning about strategy until theyre at the top. By then, its often too late. You will get passed up on that promotion or job offer, or you will quickly come unstuck when tasked with “developing the strategy for market X and service Y.” The earlier you develop your strategic muscles, the more choices youll have, the better the decisions youll make and greater impact youll have.
Myth 2: Strategy requires a genius IQ
Many of the most strategically effective people Ive worked with arent the most qualified, or necessarily the most academically accomplished. Instead, theyre curious, they listen deeply, and they are genuinely collaborative. They spot opportunities and connect dots others dont see. Rather than IQ points, strategy is about awareness, asking questions to foster more informed responses, connecting intentions to outcomes, making meaningful choicesand practice.
Myth 3: Strategy is about predicting the future
Its tempting to think that great strategy is about making accurate predictions and perfect forecasts. In reality, its about navigating uncertainty. Its learning how to make robust decisions and committing to action even when the path ahead is foggyor worse.
So what does being strategic actually look like?
Heres what Ive learned from thousands of conversations across my career: being strategic is about three intertwined disciplines and their related habits: awareness, curiosity, and intentionality.
Awareness: Understand your context. Who are the stakeholders? Whats changing, and how quickly? Where are the hidden pressures and opportunities?
Curiosity: Dont just accept the first answer or the obvious explanation. Probe. Challenge. Listen carefully. Invite feedback. Connect ideas across boundaries.
Intentionality: Make clear, meaningful choices. Set priorities. Decide not only what to do but also what not to doand commit.
These habits dont just apply to leadership roles. They apply to your own career decisions, your relationships, and even your personal goals.
Why being strategic matters for your well-being
Theres another reason to master strategy: it reduces overwhelm. In a world of endless notifications, shifting priorities, and constant change, its easy to stay in a near constant reactive mode. Being strategic gives you back a sense of agency.
When you think strategically, you stop confusing activity with impact. You say no more often. Youre comfortable with ambiguity, and youre OK not having all the answers. This isnt just good for business, its good for your health and well-being.
How to start being more strategic today
Here are three simple things you can do this week to build your strategic muscle:
Zoom out before you zoom in. Before your next meeting or decision, take five minutes to sketch the bigger picture: Whats really at stake? Who wins and who loses? What are the potential consequences? Whats the longer-term impact?
Ask better questions. Instead of What should we do? try reframing the situation:
What problem are we really trying to solve?
What would success look like in 12 monthsand how would we measure it?
What assumptions are we making, and what if theyre wrong?
What if we do nothing?
Block thinking time. Schedule a recurring appointment with yourself, even just 2030 minutes, to reflect, scan for patterns, and where necessary, reprioritize. Treat it like an immovable meeting with your future self.
These small shifts compound. Over time, youll notice youre less reactive, clearer and more confident, and better able to influence outcomes. People will start to seek your perspective not just on the task at hand but on the more strategic, longer-term issues and opportunities.
Strategy decodedfor everyone
Strategy, decoded, is simply this: the skill of making better choices under uncertaintychoices that align with your goals, your values (and those of your team and organization), and the impact you want to have. Its a set of skills and mindsets anyone can learn and develop, at any stage of their career. And once you start practicing it, youll see the benefits everywhereat work, at home, and in your own sense of clarity, control, and confidence.
My invitation to you is simple: treat “being strategic” as a daily practice, not a distant aspiration or a skill reserved for other people. Start with self-awareness, curiosity, and intentionality.
Because strategy isnt a secret. Its a way of showing up in the worldand its available to you today.
David Temkin was driving south from San Francisco, down Highway 101, as billboard after billboard pitched AI in variations of dense word salad. One ad marketed automated testing compliance done without command shift. Another promised safer schools with instant visitors screening. All of them marketed tech companies, but to whom and for what was obscureeven for tech insiders like Temkin.
It is absolutely absurd, Temkin tells Fast Company. “Some of these are absolutely impenetrable. Like, what are they even talking about? It makes me wonder what the intention is.
The Silicon Valley veteran has lived through plenty of change, watching firsthand as the tech world evolved from a niche for nerds into a cultural force with global influence both online and offline. Since arriving in the 1990s as a young software engineer, hes founded several startups and worked within established tech players like Apple, Google, and AOL.
Temkin is refreshingly self-aware about the industry hes helped build. Hes also the cofounder of In Formation, a satirical print magazine about Silicon Valleys self-importance, which published its first two issues in 1998 and 2000. Now, a quarter-century later, its back with a familiar tone but an updated set of ideas about everything from data privacy and artificial intelligence to biotech. “We were looking at this and realized it just absolutely needed to be mocked, scrutinized, and kind of looked at in a sideways manner, he says. My own thinking was this is both actually hilarious and kind of slightly ominous at the same time.”
The third issue, published in August, has 150 pages of articles, essays, comics, jokes, and even fake ads. The magazine recently expanded distribution via a new deal with Barnes & Noble, selling for around $20 in more than 500 stores across the country.
In Formations tagline still reads like an evergreen epigram on the dark side of innovation: Every day, computers are making people easier to use. In the late 90s, it was a clever twist on Silicon Valleys UX obsession. Now, it feels eerily prescient, anticipating two decades of how digital design has shaped attention, beliefs, and behaviorfrom social media to todays era of AI.
Full circle
The new nationwide bookstore rollout also represents something of a full-circle moment. In 1999, In Formations first issue was pulled from CompUSA’s shelves for reportedly failing to fit with the now-defunct retailers corporate image,” according to a Wired magazine article from the dot-com era.Tech has changed a lot since the 1990s. Back then, the industry was still a niche space for a “bunch of geeks making a bunch of products they hoped would succeed. At the time, tech reporting was still relatively scant. The first two issues of In Formation turned out to be alarmingly accurateincluding articles about internet cookies and tracking cellphones and browsers, and a 2000 piece joking about future cashless societies. Now, the question is, how true will this third issue ring in another 25 years. “We’re in a moment where tech is promising to change the deepest aspects of both what it means to be human and what is real,” Temkin says. The magazine itself is split into four themed sections. The Panopticon covers various aspects of data privacy, content moderation, and tech regulations. Peak Valley provides cultural commentarysuch as a piece about the evolution of tech bro fashion, Silicon Valley culture like crypto and biohacking, AI copyright debates, and even a lengthy short story comic. “Apocalypse Now-ish” delves into the existential angst of AI, such as hallucinations, consciousness, and AI-enabled healthcare. And “Receding Reality” explores the blurring reality between the digital and physical worldincluding the impact of the iPhone, AI rom-coms, and social media addiction.
(Not) drinking the Kool-Aid
Instead of selling ad space, In Formation filled its pages with parodies. An early page resembles the ubiquitous cookie-consent banner. One ad is for a smart speaker called The Problematic, which looks like an Amazon Echo and corrects problematic language.” Another ad for Voyeur Vehicle Analytic Service appears adjacent to an article by a privacy expert detailing what he learned about all the data Toyota reportedly collects from his car. Another fake ad is for a CVS-branded Self-Censorship Test Kit. The only real ad is for Espoln, a tequila brand, which appears on the back cover.
The ads were designed by Brian Maggi, a user-interface designer who worked on 90s-era Apple products like the original iMac and Newton during the Steve Jobs era. Maggi said humor helps people see whats wrong with parts of tech in a fresh way. It might be good to know, too, that there are some of us on the inside that aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid, says Maggi, who has co-founded several startups, adding that the magazine is also full of Easter eggs for insiders.
The print magazines design was influenced by digital UX pattern principles, patterns, and methods usually applied to organizing content in mobile appssuch as flow, discovery, and dwell time. Josh Kleiner, who led design for the issue, says the team wanted readers to get lost in the print magazine and be able to flip through it easily. They also added other quirks of digital design, like tracking sections based on the numbers of pages and words per page. The joke was that we were doing such clean grids, you could code on them. And then we just messed with them, Kleiner says. We kept things weird, doing things you wouldn’t traditionally do in print, like overlapping text and images in a certain way.
Despite the projects tech-savvy staff, Temkin and others say the project, which started in 2023, didnt use generative AI as much as one might expectother than for some help editing or tweaking some of the images. One of the few instances of AI-generated text includes blurbs about the magazine from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, after Temkin uploaded the magazine and instructed each chatbot to “create a smackdown in the form of a tweet.”
A frictionless world
Over the past 25 years, Temkin argues Silicon Valley’s mission has been overachieved to the point where technology has become so frictionless that it’s now addictive. While he notes that there are plenty of ways tech is helping people, he said today’s landscape presents a different kind of inflection point. He also notes that writing about tech’s harms is far too often either done in an “unsophisticated or reflexive way” or focused on AI’s “corporate horse race.”
One of the new writers for the issue is Jon Callas, a renowned cryptographer and privacy advocate who has led security efforts at Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and elsewhere. Callas, who wrote a piece about data privacy 25 years after the last issue, doesnt think the future of tech will be as good as people claim, but also not as bad as some think.
“It’s difficult to have a real conversation about whether or not something is good or bad based upon either extreme,” he says. “It really is like the old saying about averageswhere if you have one foot in a bucket of boiling water and one foot in a bucket of ice water, on average you’re comfortable.
Except for the skeletons of demolished buildings or the occasional new construction site, the Pacific Palisadesthe wealthy, elevated coastal enclave of Los Angeles that was consumed by wildfires in Januaryremains mostly blank.
Much of the wreckage, rubble, soil, and plant life has been scrapped and removed by the Army Corp of Engineers. Trees are among the few elements of the area that remain as they were, remnants of the communitys long obsession with them, including famous residents like Abbot Kinney and Will Rogers. In a landscape now devoid of landmarks, such survivors (roughly 75% of street trees made it through the fire) tell a story and connect residents to the past.
[Photo: David Swanson/Getty Images]
I would fill up every water bottle I had and drive an hour back to the Palisades and water the jacaranda trees in my yard, said Vicki Warren, board secretary of the Palisades Forestry Committee, of her effort to care for the grand, purple-flowered trees in her yard. People are doing things like that, because its such a healing thing to take care of a living thing near your home.
From top: Pacific Palisades, California, in 2016 and 2025 [Photos: Julia Beverly/Getty Images, Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images]
For many Palisades residents, the landscape has also become a flashpoint around larger questions of rebuilding and resiliency. In community meetings, many residents have pushed back against proposals to mandate more fire-resilient yards. Theyre especially opposed to a concept called Zone Zero, which would mandate creating an ember-resistant, noncombustible barrier around homes that would require clearing out a large number of plants and trees (including, in some cases, those trees that survived the blaze).
Supported by state fire officials and the insurance industry, Zone Zero is a concept being embraced by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, which has sped up the process of drafting a Zone Zero regulation for high-fire-risk areas. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a declaration in February seeking to expedite the process and create rules by the end of the year.
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
Regulatory tension
The battle over rebuilding and replanting to mimic pre-fire designs has become a growing issue in the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and other high-risk areas in Los Angeles County.
Some residents who became accustomed to dense foliage, lush yards, and the privacy that such plantings bestowed, fear efforts to regulate landscaping to the degree the government is proposing. In a statement last month, Traci Park, the L.A. city councilmember whose district includes the Palisades, characterized the one-size-fits-all regulations as overly burdensome and built on incomplete science applied without local input or context.
And its not just an issue for areas impacted by the January 2025 wildfires. Roughly 17% of the states buildings and large parts of L.A. would be impacted by pending statewide regulations and a recent update of fire-hazard maps. With the insurance industry supporting the idea and wildfire risk only growing, these regulations could very well spread to other states (Kauai County in Hawaii, and Boulder, Colorado, passed such rules earlier this year.)
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
The Zone Zero idea comes from research about the causes of fires in the state, and efforts to create a more defensible wildland-urban interface, the area where most wildfires start and spread. Since wildfires tend to spread to homes due to flying embers and ignited plants and trees, the Zone Zero approach seeks to remove fire hazards and potential sources of ignitin near a residence. Recent research showed that both hardening homes and enacting Zone Zero would cut the number of impacted structures during a wildfire in half.
The vegetation is also very, very critical, because all vegetation will burn under enough duration and heat, said Kimiko Barrett, lead wildfire researcher for Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group focused on community development. I think where it becomes challenging is when you’re talking about large trees. And you know, some types of trees are going to be more tolerant to fire than others, and that’s where it starts to get a little bit nebulous.
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
More Security or Moonscapes?
Tony Andersen, Executive Officer with the Board of Forestry & Fire Protection, says it’s a select few vocal homeowners are pushing back against these regulations. To him, its clear the status quo isnt working, and these evolving guidelines, arrived at through years of research and community feedback, can be an important tool in the toolbox to prevent fire damage.
There is a lot of science out there that is supporting this, guiding it, directing it, and serving as sort of a framework from what we’re working from, he says.
Research suggests applying Zone Zero to high fire-hazard areas of LA county would require changes around 400,00 structures, and opponents argue these shifts could have significant impacts on shade, wildlife habitat, biodiversity, and urban heat islands (and cooling costs). The citys Community Forestry Advisory Committee released a report saying these Zone Zero recommendations would have a $13,000 impact on every household, on average. A September 18 meeting by the Board of Forestry in Pasadena to obtain feedback over proposed Zone Zero regulations received a fairly negative response from homeowners.
Theyre talking about destroying our urban canopy, hundreds of acres of trees for uncertain benefits, said Cyndi Hubach, a member of L.A.s Community Forest Advisory Committee.
Many residents in the Palisades and other areas in high-fire zones that would be impacted by the rules have pushed back, citing the cost, ecological impact, and the uncertainty some researchers have about Zone Zero recommendations. Theyre angry that rules calling for reduced shrubs, hedges, and bushes; tightly trimmed trees; and empty spaces, especially in tighter urban lots, would turn their once-green backyards into what some have called unrecognizable moonscapes.
Some opponents argue the rules dont make distinctions around types of treessome have more oil and are more flammable. Another argument is around whether or not well-watered vegetation could be a good way to prevent ignition (and of course, how that could be checked or monitored). Warren, of the Palisades Forestry Committee, said theres a number of researchers who argue that well-watered plants and trees can protect homes and block embers, and disputes the idea that the science around this issue is settled.
Palisades resident Tracey Price, who owns the landscaping company American Growers, said that the hedges on her property stopped embers and flames from burning her home, and she believes these proposed regulations would be overkill, as properly maintained trees and plants can save structures.
Enforcing Zone Zero? Lets start with ALL city/county/state/federal buildings first, every library and post office, she wrote in a public comment about the regulations. Report back to us in a year with costs and utility bill increases for more air conditioning due to lack of shade. More blackouts because of our already strained power grid. Zone Zero removes life-saving protection.”
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
A Cultural Shift in Landscaping
California adopted a bill, SB 3074, in 2020 mandating the state create Zone Zero recommendations, but the governors push to get them finalized this year has created more anxiety around the rollout. In addition, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), an insurance-industry backed nonprofit that researches building codes and safety and resilience standards, has enthusiastically supported the idea, which has led some opponents to claim its an effort by the industry to cut its losses.
The renewed focus on these issues comes as homeowners, who have endured months of back-and-forths with insurance firms to get their payments, planning with architects, and soil remediation and clearance, are likely set to start applying en masse for building permits. This may set up a scenario where home owners start building and planning for their new home, only to later learn theres new regulations around landscaping.
This may have significant consequences, says Jennifer Gray Thompson, founder and CEO of advocacy group After the Fire USA. Non-Zone Zero compliant lawns might set homeowners up for higher insurance premiums, or trouble getting insured. But ripping out established landscaping could cost tens of thousands of dollars (she recalled residents rebuilding in Paradise, site of a deadly 2018 Camp Fire, spending up to $100,000 on landscaping that eventually got ripped out).
I get it, like that’s what we’re used to doing, Thompson says of reluctance to rethink landscaping. We were also at one point used to going and using an outhouse and not having a bathroom in the house ever, and that it was totally disgusting to people that you would ever moveyour toilet into the house. And so, due to typhoid and cholera we had to make a cultural and generational shift. Megafires are a public health crisis like anything else, and require a similar shift.
[Photo: David Card/Palisades Forestry Committee]
Growth Patterns
Homeowners have varied visions of how they want to rebuild as they plot their returns to the Palisades, including submitting plans that include a fixed vision for landscaping. Its expected that more and more homeowners will start submitting in upcoming months, and uncertainty around final Zone Zero rules may cause some to plow ahead with their own ideas, or ignore the regulations completely.
Some designers are factoring this in. The organizers behind Case Study Adapt, a design competition to create new more resilient homes for the neighborhood, are deliberately designing homes and lots to provide barriers between plants and buildings, incorporate more water features, and utilize more native landscaping. Organizations like Fire Safe Marin, a Bay Area organization promoting fire safe landscaping, offer tips on reworking yards to be more fire safe.
Thompson believes that in the new era of megafires, its a matter of when, not if, Zone Zero and other such resiliency regulations become more widely adopted. But what happens in the Palisades might be a pivot point; the combination of wealth, celebrity, and clout in the area gives the community plenty of firepower to push back against these rules. Alternatively, adopting themand using creating eye-catching landscapes with these rules in mindcould accelerate what Thompson sees as a vital shift.
The final iteration of these rules will be closely watched by both sides (draft language is already available). Opponents hope that any new rules come with more flexibility for preservation of certain trees, and more municipal control. Lots of L.A.s urban tree canopy exists in the Palisades and hilly areas on the east side of town, both high fire severity zones, and arborists hope to preserve any and all urban trees they can.Theres also live questions about enforcement. Will CalFire and local fire inspectors really be checking how trees are trimmed and watered on a regular basis?
And perhaps more important to insurability and survivability, following Zone Zero requires a full community effort. If a handful of residents on a block do not create these defensible zones, Barrett says, they not only put their homes at risk, they do the same for other homes, and increase the insurance risks of others.
This megafire era requires not just design shifts but more community collaboration to become resilient. As neighborhoods return, and react, to whats becoming a more risky, fire-prone era, solidarity, not just combustibility, will become a watchword.
This is not the moment for the individual American way, Thompson says. This is a group project.
If you visit the Erie Canal today, youll find a tranquil waterway and trail that pass through charming towns and forests, a place where hikers, cyclists, kayakers, bird-watchers, and other visitors seek to enjoy nature and escape the pressures of modern life.
However, relaxation and scenic beauty had nothing to do with the origins of this waterway.
When the Erie Canal opened 200 years ago, on Oct. 26, 1825, the route was dotted with decaying trees left by construction that had cut through more than 360 miles of forests and fields, and life quickly sped up.
Mules on the towpath along the canal could pull a heavy barge at a clip of 4 miles per hourfar faster than the job of dragging wagons over primitive roads. Boats rushed goods and people between the Great Lakes heartland and the port of New York City in days rather than weeks. Freight costs fell by 90%.
As many books have proclaimed, the Erie Canals opening in 1825 solidified New Yorks reputation as the Empire State. It also transformed the surrounding environment and forever changed the ecology of the Hudson River and the lower Great Lakes.
For environmental historians like me, the canals bicentennial provides an opportunity to reflect upon its complex legacies, including the evolution of U.S. efforts to balance economic progress and ecological costs.
Human and natural communities ruptured
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Indigenous nations that the French called the Iroquois, engaged in canoe-based trade throughout the Great Lakes and Hudson River valley for centuries. In the 1700s, that began to change as American colonists took the land through brutal warfare, inequitable treaties, and exploitative policies.
That Haudenosaunee dispossession made the Erie Canal possible.
Haiwhagai’i Jake Edwards of the Onondaga Nation describes the Erie Canals impact on the people of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. WMHT.
After the Revolutionary War, commercial enthusiasm for a direct waterborne route to the West intensified. Canal supporters identified the break in the Appalachian Mountains at the junction of the Mohawk River and the Hudson as a propitious place to dig a channel to Lake Erie.
Yet cutting a 363-mile-long waterway through New Yorks uneven terrain posed formidable challenges. Because the landscape rises 571 feet between Albany and Buffalo, a canal would require multiple locks to raise and lower boats.
Federal officials refused to finance such internal improvements. But New York politician DeWitt Clinton was determined to complete the project, even if it meant using only state funds. Critics mocked the $7 million megaproject, worth around US$170 million today, calling it DeWitts Ditch and Clintons Folly. In 1817, however, thousands of men began digging the 4-foot-deep channel using hand shovels and pickaxes.
The construction work produced engineering breakthroughs, such as hydraulic cement made from local materials and locks that lifted the canals water level about 60 feet at Lockport, yet it obliterated acres of wetlands and forests.
After riding a canal boat between Utica and Syracuse, the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne described the surroundings in 1835 as now decayed and death-struck.
However, most canalgoers viewed the waterway as a beacon of progress. As a trade artery, it made New York City the nations financial center. As a people mover, it fueled religious revivals, social reform movements, and the growth of Great Lakes cities.
The Erie Canals socioeconomic benefits came with more environmental costs: The passageway enabled organisms from faraway places to reach lakes and rivers that had been isolated since the end of the last ice age.
An invasive species expressway
On Oct. 26, 1825, Gov. Clinton led a flotilla aboard the Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City that culminated in a grandiose ceremony.
To symbolize the global connections made possible by the new canal, participants poured water from Lake Erie and rivers round the world into the Atlantic at Sandy Hook, a sand spit off New Jersey at the entrance to New York Harbor. Observers at the time described the ritual of commingling the waters of the Lakes with the Ocean in matrimonial terms.
Clinton was an accomplished naturalist who had researched the canal routes geology, birds, and fish. He even predicted that the waterway would bring the western fishes into the eastern waters.
Biologists today would consider the Wedding of the Waters event a biosecurity risk.
The Erie Canal and its adjacent feeder rivers and reservoirs likely enabled two voracious nonnative species, the Atlantic sea lamprey and alewife, to enter the Great Lakes ecosystem. By preying on lake trout and other highly valued native fish, these invaders devastated the lakes commercial fisheries. The harvest dropped by a stunning 98% from the previous average by the early 1960s.
Tracing their origins is tricky, but historical, ecological and genetic data suggest that sea lampreys and alewives entered Lake Ontario via the Erie Canal during the 1860s. Later improvements to the Welland Canal in Canada enabled them to reach the upper Great Lakes by the 1930s.
Protecting the $5 billion Great Lakes fishery from these invasive organisms requires constant work and consistent funding. In particular, applying pesticides and other techniques to control lamprey populations costs around $20 million per year.
The invasive species that has inflicted the most environmental and economic harm on the Great Lakes is the zebra mussel. Zebra mussels traveled from Eurasia via the ballast water of transoceanic ships using the St. Lawrence Seaway during the 1980s. The Erie Canal then became a mussel expressway to the Hudson River.
The hungry invading mussels caused a nearly tenfold reduction of phytoplankton, the primary food of many species of the Hudson River ecosystem. This competition for food, along with pollution and habitat degradation, led to the disappearance of two common species of the Hudsons native pearly mussels.
Today, the Erie Canal remains vulnerable to invasive plants, such as water chestnut and hydrilla, and invasive animals such as round goby. Boaters, kayakers and anglers can help reduce bioinvasions by cleaning, draining and drying their equipment after each use to avoid carrying invasive species to new locations.
A recreational treasure
During the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the Erie Canal sparked a utilitarian sense of environmental concern. Timber cutting in the Adirondack Mountains was causing so much erosion that the eastern canals feeder rivers were filling up with silt.
To protect these waterways, New York created Adirondack Park in 1892. Covering 6 million acres, the park balances forest preservation, recreation and commercial use on a unique mix of public and private lands.
Erie Canal shipping declined during the 20th century with the opening of the deeper and wider St. Lawrence Seaway and competition from rail and highways. The canal still supports commerce, but the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor now provides an additional economic engine.
A kayak tour shows how locks operate on the Erie Canal. WMHT Public Media.
In 2024, 3.84 million people used the Erie Canalway Trail for cycling, hiking, kayaking, sightseeing and other adventures. The tourists and day-trippers who enjoy the historic landscape generate over $300 million annually.
Over the past 200 years, the Erie Canal has both shaped and been shaped by ecological forces and changing socioeconomic priorities. As New York reimagines the canal for its third century, the artificial rivers environmental history provides important insights for designing technological systems that respect human communities and work with nature rather than against it.
Christine Keiner is the chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the Rochester Institue of Technology.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Surveillance pricing has dominated headlines recently. Delta Air Lines announcement that it will use artificial intelligence to set individualized ticket prices has led to widespread concerns about companies using personal data to charge different prices for identical products. As The New York Times reported, this practice involves companies tracking everything from your hotel bookings to your browsing history to determine what youre willing to pay.
The reaction has been swift. Democratic lawmakers have responded with outrage, with Texas Representative Greg Casar introducing legislation to ban the practice. Meanwhile, President Donald Trumps new chair of the Federal Trade Commission has shut down public comment on the issue, signaling that the regulatory pendulum may swing away from oversight entirely.
Whats missing in this political back-and-forth is a deeper look at the economics. As a business school professor who researches pricing strategy, I think the debate misses important nuances. Opponents of surveillance pricing overlook some potential benefits that could make markets both more efficient and, counterintuitively, more equitable.
What surveillance pricing actually is
Surveillance pricing differs from traditional dynamic pricing, where prices rise for everyone at times of peak demand. Instead, it uses personal databrowsing history, location, purchase patterns, even device typeto charge a unique price based on what algorithms predict youre willing to pay.
The goal is to discover each customers reservation pricethe most theyll pay before walking away. Until recently, this was extremely difficult to do, but modern data collection has made it increasingly feasible.
An FTC investigation found that companies track highly personal consumer behaviors to set individualized prices. For example, a new parent searching for baby thermometers might find pricier products on the first page of their results than a nonparent would. Its not surprising that many people think this is unfair.
The unintended progressive tax
But consider this: Surveillance pricing also means that wealthy customers pay more for identical goods, while lower-income customers pay less. That means it could achieve redistribution goals typically pursued through government policy. Pharmaceutical companies already do this globally, charging wealthier countries more for identical drugs to make medications accessible in poorer nations. Surveillance pricing could function as a private-sector progressive tax system.
Economists call it price discrimination, but it often helps poorer consumers access goods they might otherwise be unable to afford. And unlike government programs, this type of redistribution requires no taxpayer funding. When Amazons algorithm charges me more than a college student for the same laptop, its effectively running a means-tested subsidy programfunded by consumers.
PBS NewsHour featured a segment on the Delta Air Lines news.
The two-tier economy problem
In my view, the most legitimate concern about surveillance pricing isnt that it exists, but how its implemented. Online retailers can seamlessly adjust prices in real time, while physical stores remain largely stuck with uniform pricing. Imagine the customer fury if Targets checkout prices varied by person based on their smartphone data: There could be chaos in the stores. This digital-physical divide could also create unfair advantages for tech-savvy companies while leaving traditional retailers behind. That would raise fairness considerations for consumers as well as retailers.
This is related to another force that could limit how far surveillance pricing can go: arbitrage, or the practice of buying something where it is cheaper and selling it where it is more expensive.
If a system consistently charges wealthy customers $500 for items that cost poor customers $200, it creates opportunities for entrepreneurial intermediaries to exploit these price gaps. Personal shopping services, buying cooperatives, or even friends and family networks could arbitrage these differences, providing wealthy customers access to the lower prices while splitting the savings. This means surveillance pricing cant discriminate too aggressivelymarket forces will erode excessive price gaps.
Thats why I believe the solution isnt to ban surveillance pricing entirely, but to monitor how its put in practice.
The regulatory sweet spot
The current political moment offers a strange opportunity. With Republicans focused on AI innovation and Democrats fixated on bans, theres space for a more sophisticated position that embraces market-based redistribution while demanding strong consumer protections.
In my view, smart regulation would require companies to disclose when personal data influences pricing, and would prohibit discrimination based on protected characteristics such as race, color, or religionand this list needs to be created extremely carefully. This would preserve the efficiency benefits while preventing abuse.
Surveillance pricing based on desperation or need also raises unique ethical questions. Charging a wealthier customer more for a taxi ride is one thing; charging someone extra solely because their battery is low and they risk being stranded is another.
As I see it, the distinction between ability to pay and urgency of need must become the cornerstone of regulation. While distinguishing the two may seem challenging, its far from impossible. It would help if customers were empowered to report exploitative practices, using mechanisms similar to existing price-gouging protections.
A solid regulatory framework must also clarify the difference between dynamic pricing and surveillance-based exploitation. Dynamic pricing has long been standard practice: Airlines charge all last-minute travelers higher fares, regardless of their circumstances. But consider two passengers buying tickets on the same dayone rushing to a funeral, another planning a spontaneous vacation. Right now, airlines can use technology to identify and exploit the funeral attendees desperate circumstances.
The policy challenge is precise: Can we design regulations that prevent airlines from exploiting the bereaved while still allowing retailers to offer discounts on laptops to lower-income families? The answer will determine whether surveillance pricing becomes a tool for equity or exploitation.
Aradhna Krishna is a Dwight F. Benton professor of marketing at the University of Michigan.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
