Despite billions of dollars of AI investment, Googles Gemini has always struggled with image generation. The companys Flash 2.5 model has long felt like a sidenote in comparison to far better generators from the likes of OpenAI, Midjourney, and Ideogram.
That all changed last week with the release of Googles new Nano Banana image AI. The wonkily named new system is live for most Gemini users, and its capabilities are insane.
To be clear, Nano Banana still sucks at generating new AI images.
But it excels at something far more powerful, and potentially sinisterediting existing images to add elements that were never there, in a way thats so seamless and convincing that even experts like myself cant detect the changes.
That makes Nano Banana (and its inevitable copycats) both invaluable creative tools and an existential threat to the trustworthiness of photosboth new and historical.
In short, with tools like this in the world, you can never trust a photo you see online again.
Come fly with me
As soon as Google released Nano Banana, I started putting it through its paces. Lots of examples onlinemine includedfocus on cutesy and fun uses of Nano Bananas powerful image-editing capabilities.
In my early testing, I placed my dog, Lance, into a Parisian street scene filled with piles of bananas and showed how I would look wearing a Tilley Airflo hat. (Answer: very good.)
[Image: Thomas Smith]
Immediately, though, I saw the systems potential for generating misinformation. To demonstrate this on a basic level, I tried editing my standard professional headshot to place myself into a variety of scenes around the world.
[Image: Thomas Smith]
Heres Nano Bananas rendering of me on a beach in Maui.
[Image: Thomas Smith]
If youve visited Wailea Beach, youll recognize the highly realistic form of the West Maui Mountains in soft focus in the background.
I also placed myself atop Mount Everest. My parka looks convincingthe fact that Im still wearing my Travis Matthew polo, less so.
[Image: Thomas Smith]
200s a crowd
These personal examples are fun. Im sure I could post the Maui beach photo on social media and immediately expect a flurry of comments from friends asking how I enjoyed my trip.
But I was after something bigger. I wanted to see how Nano Banana would do at producing misinformation with potential for real-life impact.
During last years Presidential elections here in America, accusations of AI fakery flew between both candidates. In an especially infamous example, now-President Donald Trump accused Kamala Harriss campaign of using AI to fake the size of a crowd during a campaign rally.
All reputable accounts of the event support the fact that photos of the Harris rally were real. But I wondered if Nano Banana could create a fake visual of a much smaller crowd, using the real rally photo as input.
Heres the result:
[Image: Thomas Smith]
The edited version looks extremely realistic, in part because it keeps specific details from the actual photo, like the people in the foreground holding Harris-Walz signs and phones.
But the fake image gives the appearance that only around 200 people attended the event and were densely concentrated in a small space far from the plane, just as Trumps campaign claimed.
If Nano Banana had existed at the time of the controversy, I could easily see an AI-doctored photo like this circulating on social media, as proof that the original crowd was smaller than Harris claimed.
Before, creating a carefully altered version of a real image with tools like Photoshop would have taken a skilled editor daystoo long for the result to have much chance of making it into the news cycle and altering narratives.
Now, with powerful AI editors, a bad actor wishing to spread misinformation could convincingly alter photos in seconds, with no budget or editing skills needed.
Fly me to the moon
Having tested an example from the present day, I decided to turn my attention to a historical event that has yielded countless conspiracy theories: the 1969 moon landing.
Conspiracists often claim that the moon landing was staged in a studio. Again, theres no actual evidence to support this. But I wondered if tools like Nano Banana could fake some.
To find out, I handed Nano Banana a real NASA photo of astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
[Image: NASA]
I then asked it to pretend the photo had been faked, and to show it being created in a period-appropriate photo studio.
[Image: NASA/Thomas Smith]
The resulting image is impressive in its imagined detail. A group of men (it was NASA in the 1960sof course theyre all men!) in period-accurate clothing stand around a soundstage with a fake sky backdrop, fake lunar regolith on the floor, and a prop moon lander.
In the center of the regolith stands an actor in a space suit, his stance perfectly matching Aldrins slight forward lean in the actual photo. Various flats and other theatrical equipment are unceremoniously stacked to the sides of the room.
As a real-life professional photographer, I can vouch for the fact that the technical details in the Nano Bananas image are spot-on. A giant key light above the astronaut actor stands in for the bright, atmosphere-free lighting of the lunar surface, while various lighting instruments provide shadows perfectly matching the lunar lander shadow in the real image.
A photographer crouches on the floor, capturing the imagined astronaut actor from an angle that would indeed match the angle in the real-life photograph. Even the unique lighting on the slightly crumpled American flagwith a small circular shadow in the middle of the flagmatches the real image.
In short, if you were going to fake the moon landing, Nano Bananas imagined soundstage would be a pretty reasonable photographic setup to use.
If you posted this AI photo on social media with a caption like REVEALED! Deep in NASAs archive, we found a photo that PROVES the moon landing was staged. The Federal Government doesnt want you to see this COVER UP, Im certain that a critical mass of people would believe it.
But why stop there? After using Nano Banana to fake the moon landing, I figured Id go even further back in history. I gave the system the Wright Brothers iconic 1903 photo of their first flight at Kitty Hawk, and asked the system to imagine that it, too, had been staged.
[Image: John T. Daniels]
Sure enough, Nano Banana added a period-accurate wheeled stand to the plane.
[Image: John T. Daniels/Thomas Smith]
Presumably, the plane could have been photographed on this wheeled stand, which could then be masked out in the darkroom to yield the iconic image weve all seen reprinted in textbooks for the last century.
Believe nothing
In many ways, Nano Banana is nothing new. People have been doctoring photos for almost as long as theyve been taking them.
An iconic photo of Abraham Lincoln from 1860 is actually a composite of Lincolns head and the politician John Calhouns much more swole body, and other examples of historical photographic manipulation abound.
Still, the ease and speed with which Nano Banana can alter photos is new. Before, creating a convincing fake took skill and time. Now, it takes a cleverly written prompt and a few seconds.
To their credit, Google is well aware of these risks, and is taking important steps to defend against them.
Each image created by Nano Banana comes with an (easy to remove) physical watermark in the lower right corner, as well as a (harder to remove) SynthID digital watermark invisibly embedded directly into the images pixels.
This digital watermark travels with the image, and can be read with special software. If a fake Nano Banana image started making the rounds online, Google could presumably scan for its embedded SynthID and quickly confirm that it was a fake. They could likely even trace its provenance to the Gemini user that created it.
Google scientists have told me that the SynthID can survive common tactics that people use to obscure the origin of an image. Cropping a photo, or even taking a screenshot of it, wont remove the embedded SynthID.
Google also has a robust and nuanced set of policies governing the use of Nano Banana. Creating fake images with the intent to deceive people would likely get a user banned, while creating them for artistic or research purposes, as Ive done for this article, is generally allowed.
Still, once a groundbreaking new AI technology rolls out from one provider, others quickly copy it. Not all image generation companies will be as careful about provenance and security as Google.
The (rhinestone-studded, occasionally surfing) cat is out of the bag; now that tools like Nano Banana exist, we need to assume that every image we see online could have been created with one. Nano Banana and its ilk are so good that even photographic experts like myself wont be able to reliably spot its fakes.
As users, we therefore need to be consistently skeptical of visuals. Instead of trusting our eyes as we browse the Internet, our only recourse is to turn to reputation, provenance, and good old-fashioned media literacy to protect ourselves from fakes.
Now, if youll excuse me, Burning Man is just ending, and I should really get back to the festivities.
[Image: Thomas Smith]
Youve probably encountered images in your social media feeds that look like a cross between photographs and computer-generated graphics. Some are fantasticalthink Shrimp Jesusand some are believable at a quick glanceremember the little girl clutching a puppy in a boat during a flood?
These are examples of AI slop, or low- to mid-quality contentvideo, images, audio, text or a mixcreated with AI tools, often with little regard for accuracy. Its fast, easy, and inexpensive to make this content. AI slop producers typically place it on social media to exploit the economics of attention on the internet, displacing higher-quality material that could be more helpful.
AI slop has been increasing over the past few years. As the term slop indicates, thats generally not good for people using the internet.
AI slops many forms
The Guardian published an analysis in July 2025 examining how AI slop is taking over YouTubes fastest-growing channels. The journalists found that 9 out of the top 100 fastest-growing channels feature AI-generated content like zombie football and cat soap operas.
The song “Let it Burn,” allegedly recorded by a band called The Velvet Sundown, was AI-generated.
Listening to Spotify? Be skeptical of that new band, The Velvet Sundown, that appeared on the streaming service with a creative backstory and derivative tracks. Its AI-generated.
In many cases, people submit AI slop thats just good enough to attract and keep users attention, allowing the submitter to profit from platforms that monetize streaming and view-based content.
The ease of generating content with AI enables people to submit low-quality articles to publications. Clarkesworld, an online science fiction magazine that accepts user submissions and pays contributors, stopped taking new submissions in 2024 because of the flood of AI-generated writing it was getting.
These arent the only places where this happenseven Wikipedia is dealing with AI-generated low-quality content that strains its entire community moderation system. If the organization is not successful in removing it, a key information resource people depend on is at risk.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver delves into AI slop.
Harms of AI slop
AI-driven slop is making its way upstream into peoples media diets as well. During Hurricane Helene, opponents of President Joe Biden cited AI-generated images of a displaced child clutching a puppy as evidence of the administrations purported mishandling of the disaster response. Even when its apparent that content is AI-generated, it can still be used to spread misinformation by fooling some people who briefly glance at it.
AI slop also harms artists by causing job and financial losses and crowding out content made by real creators. The placement of this lower-quality AI-generated content is often not distinguished by the algorithms that drive social media consumption, and it displaces entire classes of creators who previously made their livelihood from online content.
Wherever its enabled, you can flag content thats harmful or problematic. On some platforms, you can add community notes to the content to provide context. For harmful content, you can try to report it.
Along with forcing us to be on guard for deepfakes and inauthentic social media accounts, AI is now leading to piles of dreck degrading our media environment. At least theres a catchy name for it.
Adam Nemeroff is an assistant provost for innovations in learning, teaching, and technology at Quinnipiac University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A few years ago, we had a bottleneck within our organization at Super.com, the membership program focused on saving, earning, and credit building. Every new idea depended on our engineers, and our internal requests were piling up faster than we could clear them.
We were adding new people to our company every week, but our engineering team was underwater. Every new feature, every minor internal tool, every process tweak depended on our developers. We were hiring as fast as we could, but it felt like shoveling sand against the tide.
So we tried something different. We started teaching nontechnical employees (designers, product managers, operations leads, corporate support teams) how to build their own tools and automations. At first it felt radical. Then it felt obvious.
Fast forward: we grew to over $200M in annual revenue with only about 200 people. We stopped the hiring frenzy, but the business was growing faster than ever. Along the way, we documented everything in an internal playbook for our team. Soon our LinkedIn inboxes and emails were full of messages from other leaders trying to do the same thing. Turns out the problems we had been solving werent unique.
Here are the five lessons that have resonated most with other leaders about empowering nontechnical teams to build their own solutions, and why they matter to any leader.
1. Create Spaces Where Technical and NonTechnical Minds Meet
Inside our company we set up two AI guilds: one for technical implementation (e.g., building tools) and one focused on adoption and use cases (e.g., using tools). They met monthly, included people from every department, and shared concrete experiments. A product manager might present how she used an AI tool to understand the codebase without tapping on the shoulder of an engineer. An operations lead might show how he used a simple script to automate dispute management.
The takeaway: dont keep AI or automation knowledge locked in engineering. Build crossfunctional forums that normalize sharing wins, questions, and learnings. Those conversations surface use cases youd never see from the top down.
2. Invest in Easy-to-Use Tools
You cant empower nonengineers if the only tools they have require a CS degree. We invested in lowcode environments like Superblocks, Zapier, Amplitude, and Glean Agents, and we made tools that are typically only used by developers, such as Cursor (AI IDE) and Coder (Remote Environments), accessible.
Our developer operations team took on the challenge of making onboarding as simple as possible. They stripped out every unnecessary step and automated the rest, until getting set up took less than 10 minutes. We learned quickly that if a tool required more than 10 minutes of training, adoption would stall. Most non-technical teammates could follow the instructions on their own, but for anyone who preferred extra help, our IT team sat down with them one-on-one.
3. Set Guardrails That Empower
We published a clear internal AI policy that spelled out approved use cases (like automation scripts, bugfix prototypes, and research tools), quality standards (human oversight required for anything customerfacing or that becomes part of routine process), and security guidelines (no sensitive data in prompts without review).
Engineers didnt police these policiesthey coached. Any piece of code went through review, whether it came from an engineer or not. That consistency was the point: non-technical team members could submit pull requests, and instead of dismissing them, engineers gave feedback the same way they would with peers. Coaching meant guiding contributors through fixes and best practices, not shutting the door. Guardrails, not gatekeepers, is what makes experimentation sustainable.
4. Celebrate Small Wins Publicly
When someone outside engineering built something that moved the needle (like an operations process automation or AI triage of customer reported issues), we made sure everyone heard about it. These wins were shared in weekly business reviews and companywide meetings. That visibility did more than motivate others to try; it changed our culture. During objectives and key results planning wed prompt each team to consider, Could AI help me hit my goals faster? Could I build this myself instead of waiting? Sharing wins turns isolated hacks created by individuals into company-wide capabilities.
5. Rethink the Role of Your Engineers
When non-engineers have access to the right tools, software engineers become even more valuable. At our company, 93% of developers use AI tools daily. Engineers still own the hard, highimpact work: major features, architecture, deep debugging. But now they spend less time answering basic questions or making tiny fixes for other teams. The result: your best technical talent gets to focus on ambitious projects, while everyone else can handle the smaller, more routine tasks themselves.
In a world where AI and lowcode tools are everywhere, the companies that win wont just have great engineers. Theyll have a culture that empowers everyone to build.
While executives spend billions on meditation apps, yoga retreats, and wellness programs, American stress levels continue to skyrocket. A recent study of 90 workplace wellness interventions found most (with one exception detailed below*) had no positive effectand sometimes even made things worse. Our research from last year found that the majority of us tend to stress out more trying to get rid of stress. Talk about a negative spiral!
We’re trying harder than ever to eliminate stress, yet workplace anxiety has reached crisis levels, just in time for AI disruption to take people over the edge.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: You’ll never eliminate stress from your career (or your life). But as a stress physiologist, Im here to tell you that’s actually a good thing! My research reveals that our obsession with stress reduction is fundamentally flawed. Instead of fighting stress, the most successful professionals learn to harness it.
The only people with zero stress are dead people. Our aim should not be death.
Here are five evidence-based strategies to rewire how you can work with stressnot against it.
1. Reframe Your Biology as Your Competitive Edge
When your heart pounds before a big presentation, your brain screams “danger.” But that physiological responseincreased heart rate, heightened alertness, elevated energyis identical to excitement. The difference lies in interpretation.
A Harvard study found that participants who stated “I am excited” before delivering speeches were rated as significantly more persuasive and confident than those who tried to “stay calm.” The nervous energy remained the same, but performance dramatically improved.
Stop telling yourself to calm down. Your stress response is a feature, not a flaw. Start declaring: “This energy is preparing me to excel.” Your stress response isn’t sabotaging youit’s upgrading your operating system.
2. Ask “Is This Actually a Tiger?”
Your brain evolved to treat missed emails like charging predators. This served our ancestors well but creates havoc in modern workplaces. When stress hits, pause and ask: “Will this kill me in the next three minutes?”
If not, you’re experiencing what I call a “paper tiger”a stressor that feels life-threatening but isn’t. Once you recognize the false alarm, you can redirect that energy productively instead of spiralling into fight-or-flight paralysis.
3. Convert Anxiety into AngerStrategically
When facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, excitement might feel impossible. That’s where anger becomes your ally. Studies reveal that anger increases effort toward goals and sparks greater creativity than neutral emotional states.
The key is directing anger at the problem, not people. Instead of fuming at difficult colleagues, channel that energy toward solving systemic issues. Transform “This situation is impossible” into “This problem needs fixing, and I’m going to figure out how.”
Anger mobilizes action. Point it in the right direction.
4. Think Micro-Goals, Not Mega-Outcomes
Stress often stems from feeling overwhelmed by massive objectives. Break intimidating projects into actions so small they’re nearly impossible to fail. When you complete micro-goals, your brain releases dopamine, creating an addictive cycle of progress.
When we think we have to leap Everest in a single jump, or relearn our entire job because of AI, our brain naturally defaults to helplessness. But by taking action, even incredibly small moves, we begin to regain agency and feel more in control. This actionable hope ultimately moves us beyond our state of learned helplessness.
Ask yourself: “What’s the smallest possible step forward?” Then take it. Winning becomes neurologically addictive (even if the perfect outcome isnt guaranteed).
5. Make It Bigger Than You
The most transformative reframe involves expanding your perspective beyond personal gain. When you anchor goals in serving something largeryour team, customers, communitythe fear centers in your brain quiet down.
Back to those workplace wellness studies. In the 90 workplace stress interventions, the only thing that consistently improved employee well-being was service to others. When stress serves a purpose beyond yourself, it transforms from burden to fuel.
Before your next high-stakes meeting, shift from “How do I not mess this up?” to “How can I serve my audience?” The stress remains, but now it’s powering something meaningful and reminding you that stress is often simply a barometer for how much you care.
The Paradox of Peak Performance
Olympic athletes don’t break world records during practice. They achieve greatness when pressure peaks. Your biggest professional breakthroughs likely occurred during your most stressful periods, not your calmest.
This isn’t about glorifying burnout or toxic work cultures. It’s about recognizing that stress, properly channeled, is the raw material of achievement. The goal isn’t eliminationit’s transformation.
Your stress isn’t going anywhere. But your relationship with it can change everything. Stop trying to manage it away. Start using it as the high-octane fuel it was designed to be.
The question isn’t whether you’ll face stress today; It’s whether you’ll let it defeat you or springboard you forward.
There was a time when leaders followed a linear path. Pick a lane, specialize, climb the ladder, and stay the course for decades. But that norm is unraveling. Global complexity demands leaders who are adaptive, integrative, and, above all, multifaceted. These individuals dont fit neatly into one category; they may be artists and scientists, coaches and corporate strategists, or data analysts and storytellers. And far from being a liability, these dualities are now an asset.
To be successful in todays world, leaders need to connect across ideas, industries, and cultures. To be able to do that skillfully, you must play in more than one arena. Its no longer just about what you do during your nine-to-five. Its the sum of your experiences and the unique value you bring to the world.
This requires you to embrace your full complexity, not just for personal growth, but also as a competitive edge. The future of leadership belongs to those who can hold nuance, navigate change, and bring their whole selves to the table.
Less specializing, more integrating
The old story was: Pick a lane and stay in it. Specialization was in favor. But now, as AI handles narrow expertise, whats left for us? The answer lies in focusing on integration and expression. The leaders who thrive now are those who connect dots across disciplines, sectors, and identities. They see what others miss because they live in more than one world.
Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi didnt follow a linear path. She studied physics, chemistry, and math. She also played in a band and excelled at cricket. Then she eventually went on to pursue design thinking and innovation at Yale. Her leadership wasnt just data-driven; it was holistic. She could speak to Wall Street and public health advocates with equal ease. And under her leadership, PepsiCos revenue nearly doubled, rising from $35 billion to over $63 billion.
The best leaders integrate diverse skills and experiences to drive innovation and connect more authentically with their teams. This integration not only broadens perspective but also deepens trust, fosters creativity, and empowers teams to operate with greater empathy and cohesion.
Navigating change with agility
Todays leaders are not only leading through change; they are the change. They embody fluidity, resilience, and the ability to evolve across multiple life chapters. In his book Range, journalist David Epstein writes: Approach your own personal voyage and projects like Michelangelo approached a block of marble, willing to learn and adjust as you go, and even to abandon a previous goal and change directions entirely should the need arise.
After a few years of working in finance, Shuo Zhai followed his passion for architecture and pursued his master’s degree at Yale. He worked with Frank Gehry at Gehry Partnersand in parallel, he sings with the Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles Master Chorale, and works as a world-class chamber music pianist. He believes that his multidisciplinary approach enables better problem-solving, and deeper empathy and understanding, ultimately leading to more effective architecture and music. The ability to pivot and grow isnt built in one role: Its built across roles. Leaders who draw from multiple domains are more resilient and curious during transitions.
In his own journey, Tony Martignetti transitioned from a finance and strategy executive in the life sciences industry to a leadership development facilitator and experience designer. Along the way, he reconnected with his identity as an artistbringing creativity, storytelling, and visual thinking into his work with leaders. That blend of analytical precision and artistic intuition has allowed him to help others navigate ambiguity, reimagine their narratives, and unlock new dimensions of their leadership. Where have you built resilience in one part of your life that could serve you in another?
Why multifaceted leadership matters
Jessica Wan, spent nearly two decades as a marketing and strategy executive at organizations such as Apple, San Francisco Opera, Smule, and Magoosh. Eventually, she transitioned into a leadership coach and venture partner. But shes continually applied learnings from her lifelong artistic identity as a musician and singer to leadership challenges. This rare blend of analytical acumen and creative sensibility enables her to help leaders navigate change and transform chaos into clarity.
Jessica launched her podcast to spotlight individuals who embody this multidimensional path: a neuroscientist and an Indian classical dancer, an entomologist and a journalist, and a business professor and a Broadway investor. Their message? You dont have to shrink to fit in. When a young person says, I want to be an astronaut and a ballerina, we want to be able to say: Yes, you can.
How to embrace being a multifaceted leader
Leaders arent just executives. They are also musicians, poets, caregivers, podcast hosts, and community volunteers. And denying those dimensions leads to fragmentation and fatigue. Instead of hiding those parts, successful leaders integrate themand invite them into the room.
We need to recognize the value of integrating these roles into our leadership approach. But before we can do so, we must first explore them. Heres a quick exercise to get you started:
What is a role outside your professional life that matters deeply to you?
What leadership traits have you developed from that role?
How could you apply those traits to a current work challenge?
This isnt just about driving career success; it is about living a more fulfilling life. Its about giving yourself and others permission to fully live into your potential.
We believe this is the future of leadership: bold, complex, curious, and fully alive. For us, bringing our artistic backgrounds into the leadership space has profoundly shaped our work in the business world. The arts invite presence, reflection, and imaginationthree qualities that help leaders break free from rigid thinking and connect with the deeper purpose behind their work.
Our invitation: Audit the dimensions of your identity, find the intersections, and show up fullynot just for your team, but for yourself. You dont have to choose between your roles. The world needs all of you.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting the public via its recall website to be on the lookout for bags of frozen vegetables, due to possible contamination from Listeria.
New York-based Endico Potatoes is voluntarily recalling peas and carrots and mixed vegetables sold between July 18 and August 4 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
The company ceased distribution of the product after sampling by the state of Pennsylvania revealed the presence of the bacteria. No illnesses have been reported to date, and the FDA and Endico are continuing to investigate the cause.
What is Listeria and what are the symptoms?
Listeria monocytogenes is a type of disease-causing bacteria that is generally transmitted when food is harvested, processed, prepared, packed, transported, or stored in manufacturing or production environments contaminated with the bacteria, according to the FDA.
Infection can lead to severe symptoms such as fever, nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, poses a particular risk to vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems. In pregnant women, it can cause miscarriages and stillbirths.
What is the product information for the recall?
The product was packed in frozen 2.5-lb clear plastic bags under the Endico label. Details for the affected products are as follows:
“PEAS AND CARROTS”:
Lot number: 110625
Production date: June 11, 2025
Use by date: June 10, 2027
“MIXED VEGETABLES”:
Lot number: 170625
Production date: June 17, 2025
Use by date: June 16, 2027
The lot codes are printed on the side of the bag.
What if I have these products in my freezer?
Consumers who have purchased Endico brand peas and carrots or mixed vegetables with these lot codes are urged to not consume the products and to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund.
Consumers with questions may contact the company by phone at 1-800-431-1398.
The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits increased more than expected last week, while hiring by private employers slowed in August, offering further evidence that labor market conditions were softening.
The reports were released a day after government data showed there were more unemployed people than positions available in July for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Job growth has shifted into stall-speed, with economists blaming President Donald Trump’s sweeping import tariffs and an immigration crackdown that is hampering hiring at construction sites and restaurants.
The slackening labor market likely positions the Federal Reserve to resume cutting interest rates later this month, though much would depend on August’s employment report to be published on Friday and consumer price data due next week.
“We continue to see softness growing in the labor market as tariff policy uncertainty lingers, immigration changes take effect, and AI adoption grows,” said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at Comerica Wealth Management. “The silver lining is the weaker the jobs data, the more cover there is for stimulative interest rate cuts that are on the horizon.”
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 237,000 for the week ended August 30, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 230,000 claims for the latest week.
Still, layoffs remain relatively low as businesses generally hoard workers following difficulties in finding labor during the pandemic, anchoring the labor market. The unsettled economic environment, stemming from the protectionist trade policy has, however, left businesses reluctant to increase headcount.
That hesitancy to hire means people who are laid off have difficulty landing new opportunities. The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid slipped 4,000 to 1.940 million during the week ending August 23, the claims report showed.
The Fed’s “Beige Book” report on Wednesday noted that “firms were hesitant to hire workers because of weaker demand or uncertainty.” The softening labor tone was reinforced on Thursday with the release of the ADP National Employment Report, which showed private employment increased by 54,000 jobs last month after advancing by 106,000 in July.
The downbeat assessment of the labor market was also evident in the Institute for Supply Management survey, which showed a measure of services sector employment contracting for a third straight month in August.
Economists, as a result, are bracing for another month of tepid job growth when the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its closely watched employment report on Friday. A Reuters survey of economists estimated nonfarm payrolls increased by 75,000 jobs last month after rising by 73,000 in July.
Employment gains averaged 35,000 jobs per month over the three months to July compared to 123,000 during the same period in 2024, the government reported in August. The unemployment rate is forecast to climb to 4.3% from 4.2% in July.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell last month signaled a possible rate cut at the U.S. central bank’s September 16-17 policy meeting, acknowledging the rising labor market risks, but also added that inflation remained a threat. The Fed has kept its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range since December.
Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar rose against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields fell.
Trade deficit widens
Tariffs continued to influence trade data. A separate report from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis showed the trade deficit ballooned 32.5% to $78.3 billion in July amid record inflows of capital and other goods.
The duties have caused wild swings in imports and ultimately the trade deficit, distorting the overall economic picture. A U.S. appeals court ruled last week that most of Trump’s duties, which have boosted the nation’s average tariff rate to the highest level since 1934, were illegal, creating more uncertainty for businesses.
Imports soared 5.9% to $358.8 billion. Goods imports vaulted 6.9% to $283.3 billion. They were boosted by a $12.5 billion surge in imports of industrial supplies and materials, which reflected a $9.6 billion increase in non-monetary gold imports. But petroleum imports were the lowest since April 2021.
Capital goods imports increased $4.7 billion to a record $96.2 billion, driven by computers, telecommunications equipment and other industrial machinery. Semiconductor imports declined $0.8 billion. Imports of consumer goods increased $1.3 billion, though pharmaceutical preparations imports fell $1.1 billion.
Imports of motor vehicles, parts and engines decreased $1.4 billion. Exports rose 0.3% to $280.5 billion. Exports of goods edged up 0.1% to $179.4 billion. Capital goods exports increased $0.6 billion to a record $59.9 billion, lifted by shipments of computer accessories and civilian aircraft. Exports of excavating machinery fell $1.5 billion.
Exports of motor vehicles, parts and engines increased $0.3 billion. Industrial supplies and materials exports decreased $0.2 billion as finished metal shapes dropped $2.5 billion. Non-monetary gold exports increased $2.9 billion.
The goods trade deficit widened 21.2% to $103.9 billion. The goods trade deficit with China increased $5.3 billion to $14.7 billion. Imports of services increased $1.7 billion to a record $75.5 billion in July, reflecting rises in transport, travel and other business services.
Exports of services increased $0.6 billion to a record high of $101.0 billion, driven by the transport, charges for the use of intellectual property as well as government goods and services. Travel services, however, dropped $0.3 billion amid the White House’s immigration crackdown.
Trade subtracted a record 4.61 percentage points from GDP in the first quarter before sharply reversing and adding 4.95 percentage points in the second quarter, also the largest contribution on record.
The economy grew at a 3.3% annualized rate last quarter after contracting at a 0.5% pace in the first three months of the year. Goldman Sachs lowered its third-quarter GDP growth estimate to a 1.6% rate from a 1.7% pace.
“Disruptions from tariffs are still making their rounds across the economy and increased uncertainty continues to be present in firms’ decision-making processes,” said Eugenio Aleman, chief economist at Raymond James.
Lucia Mutikani, Reuters
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Google has a new feature called “Preferred Sources,” which lets you select which news outlets appear in the Top Stories box. The next time you’re searching for a news event, you’ll see relevant Fast Company stories first instead of a random selection of local news sites rehashing the same version of the news. Google also plans to roll out a specific From Your Sources” section that will then also feature Fast Company stories.
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[Screenshot: Google]
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President Donald Trump will host a high-powered list of tech CEOs for a dinner at the White House on Thursday night.
The guest list is set to include Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a dozen other executives from the biggest artificial intelligence and tech firms, according to the White House.
One notable absence from the guest list is Elon Musk, once a close ally of Trump, whom the Republican president tasked with running the government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency. Musk had a public breakup with Trump earlier this year.
The dinner will be held in the Rose Garden, where Trump recently paved over the grassy lawn and set up tables, chairs, and umbrellas that look strikingly similar to the outdoor setup at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The Rose Garden Club at the White House is the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political, and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio.”
The event will follow a meeting of the White House’s new Artificial Intelligence Education task force, which first lady Melania Trump will chair.
During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own childrenempowering, but with watchful guidance,” she said in a statement. We are living in a moment of wonder, and it is our responsibility to prepare Americas children.
The White House confirmed that the guest list for the dinner is also set to include Google founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and founder Greg Brockman, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Blue Origin CEO David Limp, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO Software chairman Vivek Ranadivé, Palantir executive Shyam Sankar, Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang, and Shift4 Payments executive chairman Jared Isaacman.
Isaacman was an associate of Musk whom Trump nominated to lead NASA, only to revoke the nomination around the time of his breakup with Musk. Trump cited the revocation of the nomination as one of the reasons Musk was upset with him and called Isaacman totally a Democrat.
The dinner was first reported on Wednesday by The Hill.
Trumps outreach to top tech executives could deepen emerging divides within the Republican Party.
One of Trumps closest allies in Congress, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), delivered a sharp criticism of the tech industry during a speech at a conservative conference in Washington on Thursday morning. He criticized the lack of regulation around artificial intelligence and singled out Meta and ChatGPT.
The Missouri senator also blasted a recent congressional effort that nearly passed, which would have barred states and local governments from regulating AI for 10 years. Trump, meanwhile, has criticized states for holding back AI innovation with regulations.
Hawley accused conservatives of pushing to abandon states rights, all in the name of what? Big Tech?
The government should inspect all of these frontier AI systems so we can better understand what the tech titans plan to build and destroy, Hawley added.
At least some of the attendees at the presidents dinner are expected to participate in the task force meeting, which aims to develop AI education for American youths.
Last month, the first lady launched a nationwide contest for students in grades K-12 to use AI to complete a project or address a community challenge. The project was aimed at showing the benefits of AI, while Trump has also highlighted its drawbacks.
Melania Trump lobbied Congress this year to pass legislation that imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation using imagery that is real or an AI-generated deepfake.
The president signed the Take It Down Act in May.
By Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.
Who discovered the lightbulb? If you answered “Thomas Edison,” you’re not aloneand you’re also not quite right.
Despite conventional wisdom that associates great inventions with lone geniuses, breakthrough inventions are team efforts. Incandescent light bulbs existed before Edison was born. His patent built on prior versions of the light bulb, aiming to make it practical and affordable. Even then, it wasnt a solo achievementEdison collaborated with a team of skilled collaborators, known as the Muckers, whose contributions have largely faded from memory. Yet it was Edisons name on the patent, and thats the version of history that stuck.
Were suckers for lone genius narratives like Edisonsthe brilliant scientist, the fearless military general, or the savvy CEO. The version of history we glean from popular books, movies, and the internet attributes greatness to single individuals.
But individual greatness is rarely the whole story. Research shows that teams are the main creators of new knowledge across most industries. New ideas dont emerge fully formed from the mind of a single personit takes collaboration and teamwork to develop them to their full potential.
In reality, the engine behind sustained successwhether in science, business, or governmentisnt a singular mind. Its a well-designed team.
The illusion of individual success
We tend to over-attribute both success and failure to individuals. Psychologists call this the fundamental attribution error: we explain peoples behavior by their traits, rather than their context. If a product flops, we blame the CEO. If a startup takes off, the founder is a genius. We rarely ask about the teams that surround them.
It gets worse. Even inside groups, people regularly overestimate their own contributions to collective endeavors. In one study, researchers asked each team member to estimate what percent of the groups success they were responsible for. The total? A whopping 235%. Thats a lot more than 100%!
Our individualistic tendencies lead us to build groups and organizations around the wrong assumptions. If you believe success comes from star individuals, you hire stars and hope for fireworks. But for complex problemsand most of our work now is complexit takes more knowledge and skill than any individual has to solve it. Thats why we need to put the conditions in place for individuals to combine and build on what each alone can bring.
What good teams do differently
In my research, Ive found that high-performing teams arent built through charisma, happy accidents, or trust falls. Theyre designed for success. There are four key elements of group structure that maximize your chances of creativity:
Composition: Many teams are composed haphazardly, based on whos available and office politics. But the best teams are small (i.e., three to seven members) and have a task-appropriate, diverse mix of knowledge and skills.
Goals: Its hard to achieve a common goal when members have different ideas about where theyre headed. Thats why clear, measurable, vivid goals are a critical antecedent for building teams that can outperform individuals. For instance, innovation at NASA spiked when John F. Kennedy swapped the vague goal of, advance science by exploring the solar system, to the vivid goal to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Task design: Teams can bring ideas to life when they have well-designed tasks that require a variety of skills, give members autonomy over how to conduct their work, and allow members to see progress toward their goals. For creative work, poorly designed tasks are repetitive and control the process, like a manufacturing assembly line. Well-designed tasks give teams whole pieces of work and the freedom to explore, such as the design firm IDEOs effort to redesign the shopping cart to better fit the needs of users.
Norms: Too often, groups are places where members fall into bad habits. In many organizations, workers are used to sitting passively in meetings. They worry that experimentation and suggesting new ideas will be scornedor even punished. But the most innovative teams actively fight these norms. Leaders actively encourage members to share their ideas, experiment, and learn from one another. And the battle against norms toward conformity and the status quo never ends. IDEO, for instance, plasters reminders of these norms on the walls of their buildingsthings like defer judgement, encourage wild ideas, and build on the ideas of others.
The real edge
We live in an era that celebrates ideas: TED Talks, startup pitches, visionary founders. But ideas dont execute themselves. And many great ideas die in bad teams. The reverse is also true: A good team can turn a mediocre idea into something extraordinary. Not because theyre smarter, but because theyre structured to think together better.
The great innovations and businesses of today were never built by a solitary lone genius. For all the credit Steve Jobs gets, he couldnt have built Apple and its collaborative innovation engine without the help of his cofounders and teammates. As you dig deeper into stories of great innovations, you almost always find a great team just under the surface.
The next time youre tempted to credit a lone genius, remember the people behind the curtain. The collaborators, the editors, the dissenters: the ones who made the idea betteror made it real.
Good ideas matter. But good teams matter more.
