Can we measure what is in our hearts and minds, and could it help us end wars any sooner? These are the questions that consume entrepreneur Shawn Guttman, a Canadian émigré who recently gave up his yearslong teaching position in Israel to accelerate a path to peaceusing an algorithm.
Living some 75 miles north of Tel Aviv, Guttman is no stranger to the uncertainties of conflict. Over the past few months, miscalculated drone strikes and imprecise missile targetssome intended for larger citieshave occasionally landed dangerously close to his town, sending him to bomb shelters more than once.
When something big happens, we can point to it and say, Right, that happened because five years ago we did A, B, and C, and look at its effect, he says over Google Meet from his office, following a recent trip to the shelter. Behind him, souvenirs from the 1979 Egypt-Israel and 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaties are visible. Im tired of that perspective.
The startup he cofounded, Didi, is taking a different approach. Its aim is to analyze data across news outlets, political discourse, and social media to identify opportune moments to broker peace. Inspired by political scientist I. William Zartmans ripeness theory, the algorithmcalled the Ripeness Indexis designed to tell negotiators, organizers, diplomats, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) exactly when conditions are ripe to initiate peace negotiations, build coalitions, or launch grassroots campaigns.
During ongoing U.S.-led negotiations over the war in Gaza, both Israel and Hamas have entrenched themselves in opposing bargaining positions. Meanwhile, Israels traditional allies, including the U.S., have expressed growing frustration over the war and the dire humanitarian conditions in the enclave, where the threat of famine looms.
In Israel, Didis data is already informing grassroots organizations as they strategize which media outlets to target and how to time public actions, such as protests, in coordination with coalition partners. Guttman and his collaborators hope that eventually negotiators will use the models insights to help broker lasting peace.
Guttmans project is part of a rising wave of so-called PeaceTecha movement using technology to make negotiations more inclusive and data-driven. This includes AI from Hala Systems, which uses satellite imagery and data fusion to monitor ceasefires in Yemen and Ukraine. Another AI startup, Remesh, has been active across the Middle East, helping organizations of all sizes canvas key stakeholders. Its algorithm clusters similar opinions, giving policymakers and mediators a clearer view of public sentiment and division.
A range of NGOs and academic researchers have also developed digital tools for peacebuilding. The nonprofit Computational Democracy Project created Pol.is, an open-source platform that enables citizens to crowdsource outcomes to public debates. Meanwhile, the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies built a peace agreement simulator, complete with a chart to track how well each stakeholders needs are met.
Guttman knows its an uphill battle. In addition to the ethical and privacy concerns of using AI to interpret public sentiment, PeaceTech also faces financial hurdles. These companies must find ways to sustain themselves amid shrinking public funding and a transatlantic surge in defense spending, which has pulled resources away from peacebuilding initiatives.
Still, Guttman and his investors remain undeterred. One way to view the opportunity for PeaceTech is by looking at the economic toll of war. In its Global Peace Index 2024, the Institute for Economics and Peaces Vision of Humanity platform estimated that economic disruption due to violence and the fear of violence cost the world $19.1 trillion in 2023, or about 13 percent of global GDP. Guttman sees plenty of commercial potential in times of peace as well.
Can we make billions of dollars, Guttman asks, and save the worldand create peace?
The Ripeness Index
Every evening, Didis bots scrape the websites of 60 Israeli and 30 Palestinian media outlets, digesting keywords into its Ripeness Index model. The index, a colorful radar chart resembling a digital version of the vintage puzzle game Simon, aims to distill the complex dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian social unrest into simple categories. These categories indicate when the time may be right to push for peace through grassroots messaging and diplomatic activity.
If the center of the index is red, it signals that conditions are not yet ripe for negotiations. In such cases, messaging efforts should focus on shifting the surrounding red sections of the model to yellow. Yellow indicates that both sides are beginning to recognize that the costs of continuing the conflict outweigh the benefits.
The Ripeness Index scans news media to indicate when the conditions to start negotiations are met.
In early May, Guttman and his cofounder, Keren Winter-Dinur, a doctoral student in conflict resolution, worked with a team of developers to put the system through its biggest test to date. The occasion was the annual Peoples Peace Summit in Jerusalem. This years summit was organized by the Its Time coalitiona network of dozens of grassroots organizations seeking solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflictand brought together 15,000 attendees from peace-focused groups on both sides of the border.
Many of the summits events are talking about, Hey, Israelis, learn about and understand what Palestinians are going through, Guttman says. See the other. The ripeness theory of negotiation, first introduced by Zartman in 1989, proposes that conflicts become ripe for resolution when two conditions are met. The first is the experience of a mutually hurting stalemate, where both sides are suffering and see no viable, unilateral path to a satisfactory outcome. The second is that both parties perceive a way out of the conflict. At this moment of ripeness, the door to negotiation opens.
Political scientist I. William Zartman (top right), now in his nineties, endorsed the ipeness Index, developed by Didi cofounders Keren Winter-Dinur (top left) and Shawn Guttman.
More recently, as big datasets around conflict resolution have become more easily available, researchers have tried to quantitatively validate Zartmans theory on past diplomatic negotiations. Still, quantitative studies around ripeness theory remain limited.
When they launched Didi in 2022, Guttman and Winter-Dinur began by testing their Ripeness Index model on a different conflict: the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the years leading up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. After scraping a decades worth of speeches from the U.K. Parliament, the team found that support for negotiated peace increased on both sides just before key political partnerships formed, while support for continuing armed struggle diminished.
Then October 7th happened. Guttman and Winter-Dinur knew they needed to pivot to Israel’s war. They began localizing their training database in Hebrew and Arabic and started scraping regional news. Their dataset now extends back to September 26, 2023.
I said, Lets jump into the deep waters and see how we do, Guttman recalls.
As it scans the news media, the bot tracks specific terms associated with each section of the Ripeness Index, such as confident in winning or willingness to compromise. At the bottom of the dashboard, graphs plot the frequency of flagged keywords in Israeli and Arabic news outlets over time, aligned with the models criteria. For the Its Time coalition, the model also tracks mentions of affiliated organizations, such as the pro-peace group Women Wage Peace and a recent Israeli-Palestinian memorial gathering.
Guttman believes grassroots organizations should be using this data every day to spread pro-peace messaging to the public, alongside documentation of wartime atrocities, and to challenge the belief that military victory is necessary. We should be moving as fast as the news cycle moves, he says.
The large timeline view lets users explore Didis full dataset.
One promising signal came in January, at the start of a two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, when Guttman and his team observed a surge in Israeli sentiment toward compromise.
According to the theory, that moment of ripeness was what gave the Israeli political echelon the legitimacy and the support to say, Okay, we’re going to have a ceasefire, we’re going to give humanitarian aid, we’re going to exchange Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages, Guttman says.
But that sentiment declined soon after and dropped sharply in March. That same month, citing stalled ceasefire negotiations, Israel resumed its ground war in Gaza. Guttman interprets the public shift as a response to the perceived failure of political efforts to secure the return of Israeli hostages.
Then, in the week leading up to the Peoples Peace Summit in early May, the model determined that both Israeli and Palestinian publics saw a potential way out of the war. Still, the moment was not yet ripe for negotiations. On the left side of the index, the confident in winning and impossibility of winning sections had yet to shift into the green zone.
Individual graphs show timelines of keyword counts in the news media, grouped by two conditions in Zartmans ripeness theory: mutually hurting stalemate and way out.
Alongside the insights Didi gathers from the news media, the Its Time coalition also has been collecting data from social media platforms, including Facebook and X. Social media sentiment analysis is on Didis road map as well, but Guttman and Winter-Dinur caution against using it as a source of ground truth.
Guttman and his team are still learning the limitations of their own data, too. Manual validation is important because the AI still misclassifies news articles. And Guttman admits that the models capabilities in Arabic are not yet as good as they are in Hebrew, a problem future datasets will address, he says.
What could go wrong?
The companys mix of AI and big data will also need to win over skeptics in the world of diplomacy. One concern is that relying on historical data to make predictions and inform decision-making could lead to a repetition of past mistakes.
Most of the time, any kind of prediction work, machine-enabled or human-enabled, is going wrong, says Martin Wählisch, associate professor of transformative technologies, innovation, and global affairs at the University of Birmingham.
The representativeness of data is a major challenge for PeaceTech, says Wählisch, who founded his own startup in the space, Office for Dreams, which combines digital tools with creative strategies to facilitate decision-making. The currency is the data inflow, he says.
Last month, Wählisch joined an interdisciplinary group of technologists, researchers, and peacebuilders at the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development to define a vision for AI use in large-scale deliberation processes. One system, built at Googles DeepMind, uses large language models to assist with the mediation process itself. In experiments with more than 5,000 participants in the U.K., researchers found the system, named after the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas, outperformed untrained human mediators, with 56% of participants preferring AI-generated statements over human ones. The tool also increased group agreement by about 8 percentage points and incorporated minority views. However, the researchers noted, AI-assisted deliberation is not without its risks. . . . Steps must be taken to ensure users are representative of the target population and are prepared to contribute in good faith.
Still, many of these efforts are swimming upstream at a moment when defense startups are seeing increased focus and funding amid surging military budgets. According to Bloomberg, private investors have already spent around $790 million on defense this year. Compare that figure to the investing trend in the past two decades, when private equity spending on defense reached $1 billion in nly five of those years.
Private investment in PeaceTech is still nascent. Peacebuilding startups have traditionally been supported by government grants and donors, but these are harder to find now. The U.S. Agency for International Developments Development Innovation Ventures, for instance, typically funded startups like Didi, until it was shuttered by the Trump administration.
Didis angel investor, B Ventures Group, exclusively funds tech firms with peacebuilding applications. Other PeaceTech investors include Peaceinvest, which focuses on local, pro-peace projects, and Kluz Ventures, which runs the annual Kluz Prize for PeaceTech. Two years ago, Didi won a Kluz Prize, which came with a $20,000 cash award recognizing the companys achievements in machine learning.
Peacebuilding has traditionally been seen as the domain of nonprofits and governments, not a space for venture capital, Brian Abrams, founder and managing partner of B Ventures Group, wrote in a March essay. At the same time, this type of opportunity has been associated with impact investing and lower returns, a trade-off many venture investors are unwilling to make. But PeaceTech challenges those assumptions, offering a model that prioritizes both profit and purpose.
Pursuing profits means presenting PeaceTech as useful outside of conflict zones too, the way defense firms typically diversify their business with the sale of dual-use technologies. Palantir, for instanceknown for the AI-powered data tools it sells to military and immigration authoritiesalso works for Fortune 500 companies and develops tools for humanitarian purposes. After its software was used to facilitate Ukrainian refugee assistance, the company was awarded a special distinction by the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech in 2023, the same year Didi won its award.
We need to expand the current dual-use framing of technologycivilian and militaryto a triple-use paradigm that includes peace as a third pillar, Artur Kluz, founder and CEO of Kluz Ventures, and Stefaan Verhulst, a research professor at New York University, wrote in a recent Fast Company op-ed. This would mean structuring investments in a way that not only supports battlefield advantage and economic competitiveness, but also actively contributes to conflict prevention, mediation, and resolution.
Abrams sees many commercial opportunities in Didis tool: Imagine a private equity firm using the Ripeness Index to time its mergers and acquisitions perfectly, or a public relations firm tuning its crisis management messaging just right. Recent estimates gauge the market size for public opinion and election polling at $8.93 billion in 2025.
In any scenario, developers and entrepreneurs must be mindful about the use of personal data, says Abrams. PeaceTech begins, I think, with Hippocratic guardrails. First, do no harm. Make sure the technology is contributing toward peace and not in any way being used for anything counterproductive, he says.
That concern is heightened by the use of AI for political influence. Governments throughout history have sought to monitor and police public sentiment during times of war and peace. More recently, governments have used artificial intelligence to identify people for deportation and arrest, sometimes wrongfully. The expanding use of AI and data analysis tools to police social media accounts, and the increasing use of large language models (with their tendency to fabricate), exacerbates these risks. Algorithms already purport to track what millions of people are thinking, but there are few ways of knowing if those are correct.
The true test of AI in diplomacy will not be whether it can pass the Turing test, but whether it can contribute to a more cooperative, stable, and just international order, writes Erman Akilli, professor of international relations at Ankaras Hac Bayram Veli University, in a blog post for the SETA Foundation for Political Economic and Social Research. He urges policymakers to regulate the use of AI in diplomacy to prevent the tech from being exploited for strategic manipulation or coercion.
Promising trends
Two days before the Peoples Peace Summit, Guttman noticed anomalies in the trends he had been seeing in the previous few weeks. Willingness to compromise had been on the uptick, but the double-whammy of Israels Memorial Day and Independence Day events had a notable impact on public sentiment.
Everything leading up to Memorial Day and Independence Day, the way that people were talking was very much pro-military: remembering soldiers who died, remembering these tragic stories of heroism and so on, Guttman says. The confident in winning line started to rise, reflecting a perception that a military solution to war is still possible.
In this timeline view, events surrounding Israels Memorial Day and Independence Day are superimposed.
Meanwhile, the hurt measure in the Ripeness Index has remained green, as it has been for most of the war, reflecting the public sentiment that the price of war is too high. Despite that high price, Guttman says, many Israelis appear to believe that there’s nothing to do but pay it and keep fighting because the military can win.
A very big victory would be increasing the sentiment in Israeli society that we can’t win the war militarily, he says.
As the U.S. attempts to broker a new cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamasand as Israel launches a new war against Iranthe Didi team has been tracking a sudden, upward spike in the “Confident in Winning” indicator. More recently, Guttman and his team have offered a new recommendation to the Its Time Coalition and its partners as they push for peace: Link the high cost of war with the fact that military resources are limited and military options will eventually run out.
In general, a missing element in Israeli discourse has been the connection between the feeling that the price of this war [in Gaza] is too high with the sentiment that we have exhausted our military options, says Guttman. Making this connection could create a tipping point in Israel discourse that pushes the Ripeness Index to yellow.
Architects have long complained about the industry’s relatively paltry pay. Given the amount of expensive education architects require (master’s level), and the years they have to put in (many) before qualifying to take a licensure exam (arduous), they have been rightly upset: Architects can barely expect to crack the $100,000 salary mark after more than eight years in the profession.
Now there are some numbers to back that up. Compared to every other design descipline Fast Company has studied in our our ongoing analysis of where the design jobs are, architects are underpaid, particularly as their careers progress. Their compensation increases at the slowest rate, based on years of experience.
Fixing the problem requires a nuanced understanding of the outside factors that limit pay, according to Evelyn Lee, president of the American Institute of Architects. “Architecture is an industry that’s always been known to work within tight margins,” she says. Part of the reason is that the industry long ago set standardized fee structuresbasically a percentage of overall construction costsand those numbers haven’t changed much. “Our ability to get paid more is tied back to that,” Lee says.
Architecture is also tied to economic cycles, and it can be a bellwether of recessions. “When things are good, and people are spending a lot of money on capital costs, we are doing well. But we’re usually the first service to get cut when people start to hold back, and we’re the last to come on board when the economy starts coming back,” Lee says. And because they’re never quite sure when the next project will come around, many architecture firms end up being conservative with their spending and salaries.
Also, the highly competitive nature of the architecture industry means that it is governed by antitrust laws that prohibit price fixing. These laws are meant to encourage competition, but they often end up creating a race to the bottom. Firms underbid each other in order to secure commissions, and then rely on underpaid workers and uncompensated overtime to get the job done. “It’s very internalized in the profession, starting at the university level,” says Jennifer Siqueira, an architect at New York-based Bernheimer Architects who helped organize the first union at an architecture firm in the U.S. “You’re taught to work very hard because it’s like these are passion projects. It’s almost an artistic endeavor to do architecture . . . It’s a very exploitative environment.”
All-nighters are common in the field, from university through the working world; Siqueira says that she herself worked through the night multiple times in previous jobs at architecture firms, including some that are very prominent. Part of the unionization effort she led at her current firm was centered around improving working conditions and making the level of pay match the level of effort. She and fellow union organizers even negotiated with the firm’s management to set salary floors based on years of experience. “It’s very rare, especially because in a lot of contracts you’ll see a clause saying you can’t even talk about what you make to another coworker,” Siqueira says. “This is a level of transparency that’s really lacking within the profession.”
Lee, at the AIA, says that the association conducts its own compensation surveys in order to fill that void, but she explains that the upwind forces that limit architects’ fees and salaries are largely beyond the industry’s control. Still, that doesn’t mean architects should sit back and wallow in low fees forever. She says that the AIA has increased the number of training programs it provides that are geared toward the business side of running architecture firms, and it encourages architects to be more proactive in offering clients more than just the limited scope of a one-off building design. “I do think there’s an opportunity to get more savvy though about how we package and deliver our services in a way that better reflects the value that we bring to the table,” she says.
Changing an industry takes time, especially one that is predominantly made up of small businesses. About 75% of the 19,000 architecture firms operating in the U.S. have 10 employees or fewer, and 28% are run by sole practitioners. Architects are “wearing many hats, as the marketer and the operations person,” Lee says. Other types of designers work within “a much bigger ecosystem, where they have business experts that are brought on to support non-project needs. We architects feel like we have to do that all on our own.”
Lee, who has worked as a fractional chief operating officer for multiple small and medium-size architecture firms, says that the AIA is “trying to support our architects and tell them that it’s just as important to design their business as it is to deliver design as a practice.”
But that may take longer than some architects are willing to wait. In the meantime, Siqueira says there’s a clear path toward improving pay and working conditions for architects: “The only way is to unionize,” she says.
This article is part of Fast Company‘s continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this year’s comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings.
Four decades after the human immunodeficiency virus was first identified, the end of the epidemic could be in sight. Thanks to treatments and preventive medications, new infections worldwide have fallen dramatically, from 3.3 million at their peak in 1995 to 1.3 million in 2023. Now, with the arrival of a groundbreaking drug from Gilead Sciences, theres serious talk about bringing new cases down to zero.
Foster City, Californiabased Gilead is already the leader in HIV prevention. Its daily oral pill Descovy accounts for about 40% of the U.S. market for pre-exposure drugs, known as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). Sales of the companys portfolio of drugs for HIV prevention and treatment reached $19.6 billion in 2024. Some 75% of the nearly 40 million people worldwide who live with HIV receive a Gilead-branded drug or a generic version, according to the company.
But the twice-a-year injectable lenacapavir, which is on track for a June 19 approval as PrEP by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has the potential to be a game changer. The first study of lenacapavir to prevent HIV infections, which included more than 5,000 women, showed it to be 100% effectivethe first Phase 3 HIV-prevention trial ever with zero infections. In a subsequent study of more than 3,000 men, transgender people, and nonbinary individuals who had sex with male partners, lenacapavir reduced new HIV infections by 96% compared to background incidence.
A twice-yearly injection to prevent the infection could change everything, says Gilead CEO Daniel ODay, putting an end to the epidemic and all the health and economic challenges that come with it. According to one estimate, lenacapavir could avert up to a third of HIV infections in eastern and southern Africa over 10 years, if priced affordably enough. Gilead has trumpeted plans for the rollout of lenacapavir in low- and middle-income countries.
But these noble promises sit uncomfortably with some patients in the U.S., where the company makes more than 80% of its HIV revenuesand where Gilead is accused of putting profits over patients interests. Even as the FDA weighs approval for lenacapavir, the California Supreme Court has been considering a liability lawsuit brought by more than 24,000 plaintiffs, who say they suffered bone and kidney damage because Gilead delayed the launch of an HIV treatment two decades ago to maximize profits on an older, more toxic drug.
Whats more, Gileads halo-burnishing work in the developing world is increasingly threatened by the Trump administration, as it decimates the funding and infrastructure that would support lenacapavirs rollout. HIV drugs have long been among the most politically charged molecules on the market. At this moment, they are explosive.
Since the U.S. approved AZTmarketed as Retrovir by drugmaker GlaxoSmithKlineas the first AIDS treatment in 1987, theres been a drive to develop new drugs that better suppress the HIV virus and are safer, more tolerable, and more convenient to take. The history of HIV [medicines] has been one of innovation and then continued innovation, says Jared Baeten, Gileads senior vice president of clinical development in virology. And Gilead controls many of the most lucrative innovations.
In the early 2000s, HIV patients took handfuls of pills daily. Gilead and its partner Bristol-Myers Squibb were the first to combine those medicines into a single tablet: Atripla, which launched in 2006. As drugmakers developed new treatments, they also pursued preventive strategies, based on the understanding that the virus has difficulty establishing itself in people who have antiretroviral drugs in their bodies. The first FDA approval for PrEP medication was in 2012, for Gileads Truvada.
PrEP has been transformative. New HIV infections have dropped 39% globally since 2010, and annual new infections are down at least 66% in the 11 African countries that are a focus for the Global HIV Prevention Coalition. Gilead saw an opportunity to increase this progress by developing a treatment that requires less frequent dosing.
First approved as an HIV treatment in the U.S. in 2022, under the brand name Sunlenca, lenacapavir emerged from a dozen years of preclinical work. Instead of attacking the viral enzymes that help HIV to replicate, as most antiretroviral medicines do, it targets the HIV capsid protein, which holds the viral genetic information. That offers a different opportunity to address the disease, because you hit the virus at different steps in the life cycle, says Gilead chief medical officer Dietmar Berger. Gilead researchers synthesized more than 4,000 molecules to find one with the potency and duration to allow for dosing twice a year, and potentially even less frequently.
If approved for HIV prevention, lenacapavir wont be the first long-lasting injectable on the market. In 2021, the FDA approved Apretude, an injectable form of PrEP that must be taken every two months. Made by ViiV (which is majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline), it had sales of about $350 million in 2024. But Gilead is betting that fewer shots per year will lead to better adherenceand justify a list price that some experts speculate could surpass $40,000, about twice the annual cost of Apretude.
A $40,000-a-year drug hardly seems to be a scalable solution for the most vulnerable populations impacted by HIV. But drug pricing in the U.S. is exceptionally complicated. When it comes to accessing PrEP, an individuals options come down to where they live and what insurance they have.
Under the Affordable Care Act, nearly all private insurance plans and state Medicaid plans have been mandated to fully cover PrEP. But if youre uninsured, you may have to piece together support from multiple sources, explains Jeremiah Johnson, executive director of the nonprofit PrEP4All. While someone might get medicines through a patient assistance program, they might not have coverage for related lab tests or provider visits.
These coverage disparities are reflected in HIV infection rates, which are rising the fastest in Southern states, many of which didnt expand their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, Black Americans, who make up about 14.4% of the U.S. population, accounted for 37% of estimated new HIV infections in 2022. Hispanic/Latino Americans, at 18% of the U.S. population, had 33% of new infections. And because the rollout of PrEP has primarily targeted gay men, women have often been neglected, says Lealah Pollock, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in HIV care for women, transgender people, and nonbinary individuals.
In its efforts to engage marginalized populations, Gilead has become one of the largest funders of HIV-related programs globally and in the U.S. It distributed more than 900 HIV-related grants totaling nearly $214 million in 2023 (the most recent numbers the company has disclosed). Its given more than $129 million since 2017 to nearly 490 community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in the U.S. South, and has provided free medicines for more than 550,000 individuals without insurance over the past 25 years.
But Gilead has drawn fire for the prices of its drugs. Mark Harrington, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy Treatment Action Group, points to Gileads launch of Truvada for PrEP in 2012. Since the drug had already been on the market as an HIV treatment, many patient advocates hoped Gilead would lower the price of Truvada for PrEPthe companys new R&D cost was minimal, after all. Instead, Gilead set the same price as it had for treatment. Then it started raising the priceby 45% within ive years. The list price for a months worth of Truvada hit $1,800 in 2021the year $30-a-month generics came to market. Gilead was one step ahead, however: It was already rolling out its next PrEP medication, Descovy.
The decade after Truvadas launch was a missed opportunity for the U.S. and other countries to roll out oral prep, says Harrington, in part because of the excessively high price charged by Gilead. He and other patient advocates dont hold out much hope that the companys rollout of lenacapavir will be any different. Lenacapavir is a fantastic achievement and broadens options for treatment and prevention, Harrington says. But [Gileads] pricing policies have been outrageous and continue to be outrageous.
The lawsuit now before the California Supreme Court has put Gileads pricing strategies in the spotlight and revealed the inherent issues when one company effectively controls an entire category of drugs. The case involves more than 24,000 patients on HIV treatment regimens that contained a molecule known as tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF). First approved in October 2001 and branded as Viread, TDF became a key component in combination therapies like Truvada and Atripla. In 2015, sales of Truvada and Atripla each totaled more than $3 billion, while sales of Viread alone surpassed $1 billion.
The plaintiffs allege that as early as 2001, Gilead had developed tenofovir alafenamide fumarate (TAF), a similar but chemically distinct drug that the company knew might have fewer side effects than TDF, which has been linked to bone mineral density loss and kidney damage. Rather than bring this newer drug to market, though, the company intentionally delayed its development to maximize profits on TDF.
Internal documents from the time, uncovered by plaintiffs attorneys, outline Gileads strategy of waiting until TDFs patent was close to its 2017 expiration before filing patents for TAF, which was approved by the FDA in 2016, and marketed as Descovy. Gilead then worked aggressively to switch patients to the new, patent-protected drug before a generic version of TDF became available. Called product hopping or evergreening, this practice is common in the pharma industry and is used by companies to maintain extended monopolies in a treatment area.
Robert Jenner, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, says the lawsuit boils down to a simple question: Does a pharmaceutical company have a duty to release a safer drug when it has one, or can it delay its release just to make more money? He is confident in the case: Courts across the country, including in California, have recognized that a company doesnt need to sell a defective product to be liable. It just needs to have made a negligent choice that caused harm.
Gilead has argued that it had no legal duty to release TAF any earlier than it did, and its motion for summary judgment is now being weighed by the California Supreme Court. In the meantime, industry groups, the chambers of commerce of the United States and of California, the National Retail Federation, and more than 40 manufacturers across the drug, medical device, automobile, and consumer goods industries have filed amicus briefs in support of Gilead. They say that finding in favor of the plaintiffs would create a duty to innovate that would effectively force drugmakers and others to bring new products to market. (Gilead declined an interview about the case.)
If the California Supreme Court lets the case proceed, lawyers for the plaintiffs have several bellwether cases prepared for trial and hope that a favorable outcome in one of these will convince Gilead to make a broader settlement. (In June 2024, Gilead agreed to pay up to $40 million to settle a separate, federal lawsuit over TDF, involving more than 2,600 plaintiffs.)
We want an outcome that is cognizant of the kind of innovation that we want from companies, says Johnson of PrEP4All. Do we truly want to reward companies for making decisions to withhold treatments that may be safer?
Gileads reputation abroad is somewhat less complicated. Of the more than 3.5 million people who received PrEP at least once in 2023, more than 75% were in the African region, where Gilead works to make its drugs accessible and affordable. Lenacapavir is meant to be a cornerstone of this public mission.Gilead already has agreements with generic drugmakers to supply low-cost versions of the drug in 120 countriesand to provide whats known as access pricing until these manufacturers get up to speed. The company is also partnering with several foundations to make lenacapavir available to at least two million people within three years. But the effort has lost a key partner in the U.S. government, which has traditionally provided two-thirds of the financing for HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries.
Since taking office, President Trump has paused funding to the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative launched in 2003 thats saved 26 million lives, and cut funding to the UNAIDS program. Hes also dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supports the distribution of HIV drugs worldwide. A Center for Global Development/New York Times analysis estimates as many as 1.65 million people could die within a year without U.S. foreign aid for HIV prevention and treatment.
The Global Fund, one of Gileads foundation partners in rolling out lenacapavir, has said it intends to fund the drugs distribution, with or without the help of PEPFAR. But even if Gilead provides huge discounts on medicines, the infrastructure that supports their delivery has been demolished. Lowering the price by itself is not going to open a clinic or restore a data system or restore staff that has been let go, says Harrington.
Gilead did not make an executive available to discuss the Trump administrations impact on its global HIV efforts. A spokesperson didnt offer specifics on the companys plans but cited its nearly 20 years of experience of ensuring access to our lifesaving medicines in low-to-lower-middle-income countries. They added, We do not expect these changes to have a commercial impact on lenacapavir.
In other words, theres still an opportunity to make money from lenacapavir. But the opportunity to end AIDS around the worldthat may have to wait.
The average consumer subscribes to 4.5 streaming services, many of which offer content that feels largely indistinguishable from one another.
When Netflix disrupted film and television in the late 2010s, it introduced a new model of viewership: an endless blend of originals and archives, delivered through a finely tuned personalization algorithm. Today, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, and many others follow the same playbook.
Not the Criterion Channel. The streamer rejects the infinite-content model, instead curating rotating collections of select films that appear for just a few months. Their offerings range from mass-market to niche indie: A recent example, “Surveillance Cinema,” matched the $350 million-earning Minority Report with the tiny French neo-noir Demonlover.
It also turns away from algorithmic recommendationsevery title is handpicked by a programmer. Aliza Ma, the Criterion Channel’s head of programming, says that she’s “offended” by the Netflix model of curation. “Its absurd in the face of art and curiosity that you would think somebodys past behavior could indicate future taste,” she tells Fast Company.
This approach has earned the Criterion Channel a loyal following among artistically curious cinephiles, creating a stable, low-churn subscriber base. For just $10.99 a month, viewers from the U.S. and Canada can escape the clutches of streamer sludge. The mega-viral Criterion Closet doesnt hurt either.
I would have expected that broader is better, Ma says. Its a brilliant surprise to us that the more specific we get, the more we pull focus on a subject or theme, the better it seems to reach people.
[Image: Courtesy of Criterion]
A streamer without an algorithm
For over 30 years, Criterion was known as a seller and refurbisher of physical media. Their DVD and Blu-ray archives sustained the business, while the company licensed their films to several video-on-demand (VOD) services. First they were available on Mubi, then Hulu, and finally FilmStruck, the streamer from Turner Classic Movies. But when FilmStruck shut down in 2018, Criterion president Peter Becker and his team decided to create their own point of access.
The Criterion Channel was running by 2019 and has since eclipsed the company’s physical media business. In 2024, Criterion and its sister company, Janus Films, were sold to billionaire Steven Rales, founder of the film studio Indian Paintbrush and a minority owner of the Indiana Pacers.
[Image: Courtesy of Criterion]
The channel’s focus on curation naturally narrows its appeal. In the ongoing streaming wars, Criterion isnt trying to compete on scale. Instead, it leans into its niche. You have to think you care about movies enough to want a streaming service really devoted to movies, Becker says.
But specificity also creates a highly loyal customer base, he adds. Asked whether one specific collection surged traffic at the site, Becker notes that there are different points of entry for everybody. Some are more popular within the streamers walls than othersboth Ma and Becker reference the 2023 High School Horror set featuring movies like Donnie Darko and I Know What You Did Last Summer. But subscribers come more for the curation than for any individual film, meaning theyre likely to stay longer.
Michael Cunningham, acclaimed author of Day and The Hours (the latter of which was adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman), is a subscriber to the Criterion Channel. “Im a fan because Criterion is keeping alive films that would otherwise fade away and be forgotten,” he writes in an email to Fast Company. “It reminds us that greatness resides in a wide range of movies, from Potemkin to Some Like It Hot.”
Estimating the Criterion Channels size is a difficult task. The company declined to provide Fast Company with revenue or user figures, only saying that it has grown steadily since we launched. When its predecessor FilmStruck shut down in 2018, the subscriber base was estimated at just 100,000. The Criterion Channel has likely surpassed thisit has over 100,000 downloads on the Google Play store alone. But thats still small compared with other specialty streamers like Mubi, which has more than 5 million Google Play downloads.
It’s audience is also shifting. If you had gone back 10 or 15 years and looked at who was collecting DVDs and Blu-rays, you would have seen a heavy disproportion of people who were male and over 30, Becker says. That has been completely shattered.
[Image: Courtesy of Criterion]
DVDs, writers, and that infamous closet
Criterion, the company behind the channel, still operates its specialty DVD business and commissions a stable of writers to pen essays on its archive. But the Criterion Channel is the companys most far-reaching project, Becker says. And then there’s the company’s infamous closet.
It began in 2010, when Guillermo del Toro stepped into Criterion’s DVD archive in New York and picked out his favorites. Choosing among a collection organized only by spine number, del Toro professed his love for François Truffauts The 400 Blows. Criterion has continued to pump out these Closet Picksthe videos are now significantly less grainyand posts them to YouTube.
We record a couple a week, and were always amazed by the conversations we have in there, Becker says. I think its a relief for the people in the Closet, because they dont have to talk about their own movies.
Creatives see the Criterion Closet as more than a stop on their press tour, though. Griffin Dunne, star of films like Martin Scorcese’s After Hours, relished the opportunity to rifle through Criterion’s archives.
“There are a few benchmarks in an actor’s or directors career,” Dunne wrote in an email to Fast Company. “Getting your first job, any job, in the movie business. Seeing your name in a New York Times review for your first film. Getting nominated or winning for any of the EGOTs. Being invited to the Criterion Closet to talk about your favorites films.”
The closet has since gone mobile. Criterion now takes a portable version on the road, drawing fans who line up for hours. Becker even recalls a couple who got engaged inside. Were always amazed and gratified at how young the people who come out are, he says, noting that most attendees are in their 20s and early 30s.
[Image: Courtesy of Criterion]
The traveling closet of films also reveals the diversity of Criterions audience. Few titles are picked more than a handful of times. While some favorites recurRichard Linklaters films, for example, or Anoramost picks are highly personal and eclectic.
Has the Criterion Closet helped funnel audiences back to their streamer or paid offerings? Becker isnt interested in talking shop. The closet wasnt set up as a marketing tool, so they dont track it as one. But it has been a helpful brand extension, he concedes.
When 13 million people see the Ben Affleck video, thats a lot of people, Becker says. Were definitely reaching more people than would have sought us out without it.
Afflecks first pick from the Criterion Closet was Jean Renoirs The Rules of the Game, the 1939 French satire celebrated for its humanist worldview. Its hard to imagine the film finding traction on Netflix. How would they package it? What thumbnail image or search-friendly pitch could make it click? Its age alone might be a barrierback in March, the oldest title on Netflix was 1973s The Sting.
But viewers can find The Rules of the Game on the Criterion Channel. It appears in a French Poetic Realism collection, alongside commentary from Cunningham, the novelist. They can watch the film, explore its historical context, and dip into criticism, too.
Thats what the Criterion Channel offers: not just content, but curation.
In an office overlooking downtown Erie, Pennsylvania, Saeed Taraky pulls a pen from a box beside his desk. He presses the stylus, and a small light illuminates the barrel of the pen. A message reads:
Welcome to America! Welcome to Erie, PA! Create a Great Future For You and Your Family!
The pens will go to new American citizens after they complete their naturalization ceremonies, which Taraky conducts. The small gift is the kind of earnest and optimistic gesture that says a lot about how this Pennsylvania city approaches new arrivals.
Saeed Taraky, the city of Eries immigrant and refugee liaison, stands in front of Afghan and American flags at the Afghan Community Center in Erie, Pennsylvania. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main]
Taraky, once a refugee from Afghanistan, is now Eries refugee and immigrant liaison. He and his family arrived in 2022, after fleeing the Talibans return to power, and found a welcoming community in Erie. Today, trying to provide the kind of welcome he once received, he helps newcomers resettle and coordinates an immigrant and refugee council that offers immigrant perspectives on city policies.
But for city officials in Erie, creating a welcoming atmosphere for immigrants is not just about generosity. Its a path city leaders say they have chosen out of necessity. After decades of industrial decline, Erie has become a case study in how some Rust Belt cities are surviving by welcoming newcomers. Once home to more than 138,000 people, the city now has a population that hovers at 90,000. Eries ailments have continued long into this century. For the past two decades, factories and manufacturing jobs have been leaving Erie for the South and for Mexico. A major blow came in 2018 when General Electric, the citys major employer for more than 100 years, sold its Erie branch.
Pedestrians cross State Street, the main thoroughfare in downtown Erie. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main]
Faced with declining industries and population, city leaders made a bet: What if they made their city a destination for immigrants and refugees?
Immigration can be a kind of panacea for population decline, said Elizabeth Jones of the Welcoming Center, which promotes immigration as a catalyst for economic development in the Philadelphia area. Immigrants are more likely to be working age, start businesses, and file patentskey drivers of economic growth.
The Afghan Community Center offers resources to Eries burgeoning Afghan immigrant community. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main]
Erie embraced that philosophy. Its mayor, Joe Schember, made getting the city designated a welcoming community a priority. That has included promoting English classes, ensuring there are pipelines for immigrants to enter the workforce, and launching a New American Council to gather insight from immigrants and refugees themselves. Research backs their efforts: According to a report by the Economic Research Institute of Erie at The Pennsylvania State University at Erie, The Behrend College, immigrants contribute $253 million to the county economy each year, and thanks to immigration, the population has stabilized after years of decline.
While many local leaders credit newcomers with strengthening the tax base, filling essential jobs, and revitalizing schools, not all politicians representing the area are as welcoming. And the progress the region has made in integrating new arrivals is now threatened by a resurgence of federal anti-immigrant policiesputting Eries fragile revival at risk.
Federal funding cuts have shaken refugee agencies. The three agencies in Erie, which provide resettlement services including housing assistance, English classes, and assistance with the health system, receive a significant portion of their budgets from the federal government. Despite multiple court orders for the Trump administration to unfreeze funding, their grants remain paused.
Given what has happened so far, we almost have to assume the worst-case scenario, said Katie Kretz, the executive director of the Multicultural Community Resource Center.
Kretz and leaders of two other relief agencies appealed to the Erie Foundation in March for emergency funding. Since then, the foundation has set up a rapid response fund. But Eries other agencies, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Erie field office and Catholic Charities, have already laid off employees, and the future is uncertain.
While the U.S.and thus Eriehas not accepted any new refugees since the start of the Trump dministration, service providers are assisting recent arrivals on shoestring budgets.
Hopefully [the anti-immigrant mood] is a short-term blip, and the longer-term trend is that we continue to realize the value of inviting new people into your community, said Chris Groner, director of Eries office of development services.
Erie County is represented by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who has made immigration one of his key issues. President Bidens open border policies have turned every state into a border state, Kelly said on the House floor last year. He has specifically spoken out about crossings at the northern border, given that Lake Erie forms part of the U.S. border with Canada. If [immigrants] were wearing the uniform of a foreign country, we would think we were being invaded and we would say, ‘My God, who is watching the border?’ Kelly said at a hearing on the northern border in 2023.
Erie County, which is made up of a more progressive city surrounded by more rural, conservative areas, is known for being a swing county and a bellwether of national elections. Since 2008, a majority of voters in Erie County have chosen the winner of the presidential race. That includes choosing Trump in 2024.
Immigration was one of the top issues for voters during the presidential election, with Trump promising to ramp up immigrant arrests and deportations while in office. A September 2024 Pew Research poll found that 56% of registered voters supported mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Trump has made good on his promises, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting more than 66,000 people in the first 100 days of the new administration.
Yet peoples views are nuanced, as 64% of Americans believed that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. if certain requirements are met, according to a November 2024 Pew poll.
To Jim Wertz, a Democrat who is currently running for Erie County Council, anti-immigrant sentiment hasnt been a noticeable problem in the city of Erie or even the county. Regardless of political [identity], folks recognize the value of these communities, he said, suggesting it may be because of residents real experiences with immigrants. Folks here go to the grocery store and meet people actually affected by anti-immigrant policies, added Wertz, who is a professor of broadcast journalism and digital media at Pennsylvania Western University at Edinboro.
That includes the Trump administrations crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Though officials in the city of Erie have said they do not expect the police department to work with ICE, the Erie County Sheriffs Office has detained immigrants in Erie County Prison on behalf of the federal agency. At the end of February, nine immigrants were detained in the jail, according to Erie News Now, before some were transferred to a central Pennsylvania facility.
Against this backdrop, Taraky said that the city is planning to help remove that gate between immigrants and U.S.-born residents by inviting nonimmigrants to see the culture of immigrants [and] what they bring to the table, which includes the food and fun aspect of cultural integration: new cuisines, cultural performances, and gatherings.
One of the new arrivals putting that approach into practice is Karim Hanif, a doctor in Afghanistan before he and his family fled the Taliban and moved to northwestern Pennsylvania. In February, he opened Ariana Halal Kitchenthe first Afghan restaurant in Erie. His son, Mohammad Abid, translated as Hanif explained that he wanted to work for himself and also give back to the Erie community. Eries Afghans love the familiar food: The restaurant will be growing fast because a lot of Afghans keep coming to Erie, Hanif said. But Hanifs customers are diverse: He serves other Muslims who are seeking halal food, like Somalis and Syrians, as well as U.S.-born Americans who are broadening their palates, eating cuisine theyve possibly never tried before.
Karim Hanif opened Eries first Afghan restaurant in February. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main]
There are at least 6,000 first-generation immigrants in the city of Erie, and more than half are refugees who were forced to flee dangerous conditions in their home countries. In addition to Afghanistan, Eries refugees hail from countries including Bhutan, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Burundi, Ukraine, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Eritrea, Kosovo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Metropolitan areas in the Rust Belt were famously immigrant enclaves in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But today, these cities foreign-born residents tend to represent a relatively small percentage of the overall population compared to the U.S. average. Fewer than 7% of the city of Eries residents are foreign born, compared to about 14% in the U.S.
Even so, those immigrants bring jobs and businesses and inject money into the local economy, researchers across the country say. The city actively supports immigrant- and refugee-owned small businesses with microgrants, which have provided many of them with an initial infusion of capital. Immigrant entrepreneurs operate at least 100 ventures in the city, from day care centers and grocery stories to art galleries and auto repair shops.
For his part, Taraky remains committed to highlighting the benefits of immigratioboth through his words and his wardrobeas he supports newcomers in integrating into the community. On a day in March, he wore a dark three-piece suit, complete with a patterned red pocket square. Dressing well allows people in the community to see an immigrant as a professional, he said.
The hope, Taraky added, is that rather than clash, immigrants and nonimmigrants will come together [and] understand each other.
By Kalena Thomhave
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly being adopted to help prevent abuse and protect vulnerable peopleincluding children in foster care, adults in nursing homes, and students in schools. These tools promise to detect danger in real time and alert authorities before serious harm occurs.
Developers are using natural language processing, for examplea form of AI that interprets written or spoken languageto try to detect patterns of threats, manipulation, and control in text messages. This information could help detect domestic abuse and potentially assist courts or law enforcement in early intervention. Some child welfare agencies use predictive modeling, another common AI technique, to calculate which families or individuals are most at risk for abuse.
When thoughtfully implemented, AI tools have the potential to enhance safety and efficiency. For instance, predictive models have assisted social workers to prioritize high-risk cases and intervene earlier.
But as a social worker with 15 years of experience researching family violenceand five years on the front lines as a foster-care case manager, child abuse investigator, and early childhood coordinatorIve seen how well-intentioned systems often fail the very people they are meant to protect.
Now, I am helping to develop iCare, an AI-powered surveillance camera that analyzes limb movementsnot faces or voicesto detect physical violence. Im grappling with a critical question: Can AI truly help safeguard vulnerable people, or is it just automating the same systems that have long caused them harm?
New tech, old injustice
Many AI tools are trained to “learn by analyzing historical data. But history is full of inequality, bias, and flawed assumptions. So are people, who design, test, and fund AI.
That means AI algorithms can wind up replicating systemic forms of discrimination, like racism or classism. A 2022 study in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, found that a predictive risk model to score families risk levelsscores given to hotline staff to help them screen callswould have flagged Black children for investigation 20% more often than white children, if used without human oversight. When social workers were included in decision-making, that disparity dropped to 9%.
Language-based AI can also reinforce bias. For instance, one study showed that natural language processing systems misclassified African American Vernacular English as aggressive at a significantly higher rate than Standard American Englishup to 62% more often, in certain contexts.
Meanwhile, a 2023 study found that AI models often struggle with context clues, meaning sarcastic or joking messages can be misclassified as serious threats or signs of distress.
These flaws can replicate larger problems in protective systems. People of color have long been over-surveilled in child welfare systemssometimes due to cultural misunderstandings, sometimes due to prejudice. Studies have shown that Black and Indigenous families face disproportionately higher rates of reporting, investigation, and family separation compared with white families, even after accounting for income and other socioeconomic factors.
Many of these disparities stem from structural racism embedded in decades of discriminatory policy decisions, as well as implicit biases and discretionary decision-making by overburdened caseworkers.
Surveillance over support
Even when AI systems do reduce harm toward vulnerable groups, they often do so at a disturbing cost.
In hospitals and eldercare facilities, for example, AI-enabled cameras have been used to detect physical aggression between staff, visitors, and residents. While commercial vendors promote these tools as safety innovations, their use raises serious ethical concerns about the balance between protection and privacy.
In a 2022 pilot program in Australia, AI camera systems deployed in two care homes generated more than 12,000 false alerts over 12 monthsoverwhelming staff and missing at least one real incident. The programs accuracy did not achieve a level that would be considered acceptable to staff and management, according to the independent report.
Children are affected, too. In U.S. schools, AI surveillance like Gaggle, GoGuardian, and Securly are marketed as tools to keep students safe. Such programs can be installed on students devices to monitor online activity and flag anything concerning.
But theyve also been shown to flag harmless behaviorslike writing short stories with mild violence, or researching topics related to mental health. As an Associated Press investigation revealed, these systems have also outed LGBTQ+ students to parents or school administrators by monitoring searches or conversations about gender and sexuality.
Other systems use classroom cameras and microphones to detect aggression. But they frequently misidentify normal behavior like laughing, coughing, or roughhousingsometimes prompting intervention or discipline.
These are not isolated technical glitches; they reflect deep flaws in how AI is trained and deployed. AI systems learn from past data that has been selected and labeled by humansdata that often reflects social inequalities and biases. As sociologist Virginia Eubanks wrote i Automating Inequality, AI systems risk scaling up these long-standing harms.
Care, not punishment
I believe AI can still be a force for good, but only if its developers prioritize the dignity of the people these tools are meant to protect. Ive developed a framework of four key principles for what I call trauma-responsive AI.
Survivor control: People should have a say in how, when, and if theyre monitored. Providing users with greater control over their data can enhance trust in AI systems and increase their engagement with support services, such as creating personalized plans to stay safe or access help.
Human oversight: Studies show that combining social workers expertise with AI support improves fairness and reduces child maltreatmentas in Allegheny County, where caseworkers used algorithmic risk scores as one factor, alongside their professional judgment, to decide which child abuse reports to investigate.
Bias auditing: Governments and developers are increasingly encouraged to test AI systems for racial and economic bias. Open-source tools like IBMs AI Fairness 360, Googles What-If Tool, and Fairlearn assist in detecting and reducing such biases in machine learning models.
Privacy by design: Technology should be built to protect peoples dignity. Open-source tools like Amnesia, Googles differential privacy library, and Microsofts SmartNoise help anonymize sensitive data by removing or obscuring identifiable information. Additionally, AI-powered techniques, such as facial blurring, can anonymize peoples identities in video or photo data.
Honoring these principles means building systems that respond with care, not punishment.
Some promising models are already emerging. The Coalition Against Stalkerware and its partners advocate to include survivors in all stages of tech developmentfrom needs assessments to user testing and ethical oversight.
Legislation is important, too. On May 5, 2025, for example, Montanas governor signed a law restricting state and local government from using AI to make automated decisions about individuals without meaningful human oversight. It requires transparency about how AI is used in government systems and prohibits discriminatory profiling.
As I tell my students, innovative interventions should disrupt cycles of harm, not perpetuate them. AI will never replace the human capacity for context and compassion. But with the right values at the center, it might help us deliver more of it.
Aislinn Conrad is an associate professor of social work at the University of Iowa.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Gen Zers are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to shopping.
Nearly all Gen Z consumers96%say they shop with intention, and 66% believe their purchases should reflect their personal values, according to the newly released Lightspeed Commerce report, which surveyed over 2,000 North American shoppers.
Spending habits have never been more visible, thanks to social media. Todays consumers have more ways than ever to signal their morals and valuesand more platforms to share those choices. Posting shopping hauls and empties videos, or filming a fit check with coffee in hand has become prime social media fodder. In an age where everything is content, more consumers are choosing brands that reflect who they are and what they stand for.
A hallmark of Gen Z is coming to age in a hyper-connected world. In this world, every follow, like, repost, and even purchase is a direct reflection of a persons identity and values, Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva tells Fast Company. Through this connected world, there is a never-ending exposure to global issues, where activism, accountability, and cancel culture move at the speed of light.
Today, the wrong purchase can carry social consequencesnot just from peers, but from the broader judgment of the internet. This pressure is especially strong among Gen Z: Thirty-two percent fear being canceled for supporting the wrong brands, which is more than five times higher than for boomers (6%). In many ways, this fear of being judged or canceled and the understanding of the weight of their buying decisions differentiates Gen Z from older generations, who have traditionally shopped based on things like price or quality, Dasilva says.
This trendwhat Lightspeed calls value spendingis part of a broader consumer shift. Nearly all consumers (92%) identify as at least somewhat intentional in their purchases. While price (78%) and quality (67%) remain top priorities across generations, purchasing decisions that align with personal values or identity are close behind, cited by 62% of respondents.
In the past six months, 27% of consumers made purchases based on national pride; 18% supported brands tied to charitable or social causes; another 18% chose products for their sustainability impact; and 15% factored in a CEOs political alignment. For 32% of these value spenders, this is a new behaviorbut half believe their spending carries more influence than ever before.
Value for money has taken on a new meaning.
When we talk about sustainable housing, we rarely talk about how to prove that.
The construction industry is one of the most polluting sectors on the planet. While both expensive and inefficient, it is responsible for up to 40% of global solid waste. Despite widespread talk of green building, real data is often hard to find. When we at Clearyst° partnered with Azure Printed Homes, which utilizes 3D printing and recycled plastic to redesign the homebuilding process, I was most interested in verifying whether the approach was truly sustainable.
The age-old saying for sustainable planning is you can only manage what you measure. We sought a method to measure impact, make it repeatable, and withstand any scrutiny. We collaborated with Azure to create its first sustainability report, using the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities as our guide.
EU Taxonomy is one of the most widely recognized sustainability frameworks globally. Its framework includes six objectivesranging from climate mitigation to biodiversity protectionand requires companies to demonstrate how their operations contribute to these objectives, do not harm others, and meet minimum social safeguards. Its built for accountability. Therefore, we felt it was a very credible framework for Azure to lay the path for a sustainability roadmap.
The framework and findings
We applied this framework across Azures operations, and the findings offer a blueprint that other organizations can use to assess and improve their own sustainability efforts.
Climate change mitigation
Mitigating climate change involves reducing emissions at every stage of a buildings life cyclefrom materials to operations. Organizations evaluating their carbon footprint should examine both embedded emissions and operational energy use.
Azures process uses 60% recycled plastic in a zero-waste, factory-controlled environment. We evaluated all of their 3D printed homes from floor to ceiling, finding they were fully insulated and reduced operational energy use. The homes can include optional solar panels, which perform well thanks to the tight building envelope. Compared to cement and lumber construction, Azure significantly lowered their embedded carbon footprint.
Climate adaptation
This objective considers how buildings withstand climate-related risks like storms, heatwaves and wildfires. Evaluating physical resilience is increasingly important for long-term planning and insurance.
The process involves evaluating the structures ability to adapt to climate issues. In this case, Azure engineers its units to endure 150-mph winds, wildfires, and earthquakes. Roofs are printed directly with the walls, so they cant detach in hurricanes. The homes feature double-pane windows, fire-resistant coatings, and ventless cooling systems, meeting or exceeding Californias Chapter 7A code, which was designed for fire-prone zones.
Water protection
Sustainable construction should aim to reduce water usage, especially in areas facing drought or water stress. Reviewing factory water use and in-home fixtures is a good place to start.
Traditional construction relies heavily on vast amounts of fresh water for concrete production, cleaning, and dust suppression. Azures process uses none. All homes are built in a dry factory environment, fitted inside with low-flow and energy-efficient fixtures.
Circular economy
A circular approach keeps materials in use and out of landfills. Applying this lens means examining waste streams and end-of-life options for all building components.
We found that Azures entire structures can be recycled at the end of their life. Unlike conventional builds, there are no drywall scraps or framing offcuts. An average 2,000 square foot home build can generate up to 8,000 pounds of waste. Azure sends zero.
Pollution prevention
Construction sites are often major sources of air, noise, and chemical pollution. Evaluating production environments and material choices can highlight opportunities to reduce exposure and environmental harm.
With Azure, factory-controlled production eliminates the air pollution typically associated with construction sites. Theres no diesel equipment, no dust clouds, no VOC off-gassing. The process relies on PETG plastic, which is selected partly because it avoids volatile compounds and shedding microplastics. Air quality in finished homes is higher than in traditional buildings.
Biodiversity protection
Protecting biodiversity includes avoiding practices that degrade natural habitats or deplete ecosystems. This may include material sourcing, site selection, and waste management. Using recycled materials reduces demand for virgin resources.
Azure minimizes lumber use, thereby limiting deforestation risks. Also, every ton of plastic diverted from the landfill is one less threat to ecosystems.
Social impact
While not yet part of the EU Taxonomy, social equity is an emerging area of focus in sustainability reporting. Housing, access, and affordability are all essential components of a just transition.
The Azure team collaborates with nonprofit organizations, such as Dignity Moves, to provide housing for individuals experiencing homelessness. Their units can be produced for under $20,000 in as little as one week, compared to the $600,000 price tag and six-year build time typically associated with Los Angeles or San Francisco. Housing like this doesnt just reduce emissions, but reduces stress and restores dignity.
Next steps
The impact report wasnt just a means to report results; it provided Azure with a strategic roadmap. Were now prepared for full life cycle assessments and deeper emissions tracking across operations and products. Were also exploring how this approach can support future compliance with global regulations and sustainable finance standards.
There is no shortage of innovation in housing right now, from prefabrication to bio-based materials. But innovation doesnt mean much unless we can measure its impact. The construction industry doesnt need more promises; it requires proof.
Thats what we set out to provide. And for companies willing to do the work, the frameworks to do it already exist.
Gene Eidelman is cofounder of Azure Printed Homes. Jamie Simon is the director of sustainability at Clearyst°.
Healthcare is evolving. Once confined to clinics and in-office appointmentshealthcare is now in our homes, routines, and daily choices. The shift towards accessible healthcare solutions, like over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, is empowering people to manage their health proactively. With 81% of adults using OTC medicines for minor ailments, this societal change saves physicians many hours each year, reducing the strain on healthcare systems.
Despite increasing consumer interest in self-care, critical health categories like pain management, skin cancer, and more remain undertreated, underdiagnosed, and underpenetrated.
The self-care revolution
Consumers are increasingly investing in their health. In the U.S. alone, a staggering 82% of consumers consider health and wellness a leading priority in their lives, contributing to a $480 billion market. This clear sign shows that more people are actively taking charge of their well-being today to build a healthier future.
Yet, accessibility gaps persist. Science and innovation must bridge this gapnot just through new formulations, but through better awareness, education, and application methods. Consumer-focused companies like ours are working to address this.
The power of innovation
Despite skin cancer diagnoses outnumbering all other cancers in the U.S., only 13.5% of adults wear sunscreen daily. Our research found that 99% of healthcare providers believe better application and aesthetics would boost sunscreen use. In response, our R&D teams at Neutrogena developed a new mineral formula that overcame these top consumer barriers with more UVA protection and less whitening compared to competitors, all while providing a lightweight, invisible finish. Our goal is to improve consumers willingness to wear sunscreen regularly, protecting their skin and health.
While new innovations create a solution to the problem, education is what empowers consumers to pick it up in the aisle. For example, research shows a need for wider education about sun care in schools, so Neutrogena teamed up with Walgreens and the Melanoma Research Foundation to teach students and families the importance of sunscreen use. Programs like this help people understand how to practice preventative care, and its benefits as one of the most powerful tools in reducing health inequities.
Where do we go from here?
Consumer health companies can make a differencewhether through smarter skincare solutions, new pain relief technologies, or improved application methods. Here are three ways to do that.
1. Accessibility must be a priority, not an afterthought
Despite advancements in OTC medicine, inaccessibility remains widespread. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 2 billion people lack reliable access to essential medications, such as acetaminophen in the pain care category. Beyond availability, consumers are also facing unique barriers based on their needs or stage of life. Despite many pain relief options being in pill form, people are often averse to swallowing pills for a variety of reasons ranging from general dislike to fear of choking. To make pain care accessible to more people, this unique need must be front and center in product development.
Our Tylenol teams used this information and philosophy to develop products for several life stages, adding powder packs to make it easier for children to swallow, and a topical pain relief formation for those with skin discomfort Accessibility drove the creation to ensure that more people could get the relief they needed in a way that worked for them.
2. Sustainability is front and center
Consumers today want products that not only enhance personal health but also minimize environmental impact. The future of consumer health is one where science works smarter, faster, and more sustainably, ensuring the well-being of people and the planet.
As part of Kenvues approach, we developed an internal assessment tool, the Sustainable Innovation Profiler, which helps our product developers select more sustainable ingredients, packaging, and product formats. Integrating this capability into our innovation process should help us meet the rising expectations of consumers, retailers, and regulators, while building a more resilient and sustainable future and driving brand growth.
3. Collaboration is key to expanding everyday care
No single company can solve the accessibility crisis alone. Partnerships between brands, healthcare providers, retailers, and policymakers are essential for meaningful impact.
We do this by partnering with dermatologists, pediatricians, and public health organizations to identify care gaps and address misinformation. By meeting consumers wherever they areaisles, pharmacies, doctors offices, or onlinewe empower them to take charge of their health.
To build a future with trusted, science-backed solutions for all, consumer health companies should place science in the service of accessibility, today and for generations to come.
Caroline Tillett is chief scientific officer of Kenvue.
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement represents a transformative opportunity to reshape the landscape of public health in the United States. With chronic disease now widely recognized as a pressing public health crisis, there is an urgent need for innovative solutions that go beyond traditional approaches. The MAHA Commission has set the stage for a new era in health policy, and artificial intelligence can serve as a pivotal force in accelerating its impact. By integrating AI and centralized health data, MAHA can drive meaningful progress in nutrition and metabolic health, offering personalized and scientifically-backed solutions to combat chronic disease.
Recent developments surrounding the regulation of synthetic food dyes signal a major milestone in American health policy. We are witnessing the first serious crack in the armor of the U.S. food industry. For decades, tens of millions of Americans have unknowingly consumed potentially harmful chemicals such as Yellow 5 and Red 40, dyes already restricted in Europe. The FDA’s decision to phase out these additives represents a meaningful shift toward a safer, more transparent food system.
This is a critical and positive step forward: Food should nourish, not harm. As someone deeply committed to advancing health outcomes, I view this as a welcome and necessary correction.
Dont politicize health
While MAHA and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK) have drawn both support and criticism, my focus remains clear: How do we improve health? On that front, I support any movement taking tangible steps to make our food supply healthier and more accountable.
Historically, public health recommendations have been one-size-fits-all, often failing to address the individual metabolic and lifestyle factors that shape personal health outcomes. MAHA has the potential to change this paradigm by embracing AI-driven personalized medicine. AI can analyze vast datasets spanning dietary habits, genetic predispositions, and environmental exposures to generate tailored health recommendations that empower individuals to make optimal nutritional choices.
I am opposed to the politicization of American health. It disproportionately harms the most vulnerable, particularly low-income communities, who already face significant barriers to accessing nutritious food. My focus is metabolic health, and our most urgent challenge is whats on our plates. The fact that more than 10,000 chemicals are permitted in the U.S. food supply, while only about 400 are allowed in Europe, is indefensible. This is not just a regulatory gap; it is a public health failure that must be addressed.
No one has successfully challenged the U.S. food industry until now. Some states are proposing or adopting changes aligned with MAHA such as soda bans, dye eliminations, and ultra-processed food limits in schools, and some corporations like PepsiCo are eliminating food dyes from its products. Over half of U.S. states are introducing legislation to address synthetic dyes. With MAHAs clear intentions, any company that wants its food served in Americas largest restaurant chain (i.e. American school cafeterias), is asking themselves how they can realistically get dyes out of their foods.
AI can help
It is now widely acknowledged that diet plays a fundamental role in chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity, which affect 133 million Americans. Despite this awareness, progress in addressing these issues has been slow. In addition to the important steps of improving school lunches and banning potentially harmful chemicals from foods, AI-powered tools can also be incorporated into preventive care in programs like Medicare wellness visits, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), school health education, and veteran services.
AI tools can provide real-time insights into the metabolic effects of foods before consumption, enabling individuals to make healthier choices based on their unique health profiles. They can also create highly personalized plans and virtual coaches to help individuals reach their health goals.
For AI to fulfill its potential, it must be fueled by centralized, comprehensive health data. A unified data repository that aggregates nutritional information, health metrics, and environmental factors across diverse communities is essential. This centralized approach enhances the accuracy and responsiveness of AI algorithms, ensuring that health recommendations evolve in tandem with emerging scientific research.
Realizing this vision will require close collaboration between government agencies, private-sector innovators, and healthcare and technology experts. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, especially under leaders like Michael Kratsios, can partner with Silicon Valleys AI leaders to set new standards for data-driven health policy. Together, we can ensure AI-driven insights are accessible to all Americans.
We are living through a rare window of possibility. As RFK Jr. and MAHA work to improve our food system and as AI becomes a force multiplier for health equity, we have the tools to take real action. The removal of food dyes is only the beginning. The real test for all of us, including MAHA, is whether we can also address the larger crises of ultra-processed food, excess sugar, and nutritional inequality.
The future of public health depends not on ideological battles, but on constructive action. Lets focus on what matters: addressing the root cause, rather than just treating chronic disease, and improving the health span of all Americans.
Noosheen Hashemi is founder of January AI.
