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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened an investigation into AI companions marketed to adolescents. The concern is not hypothetical. These systems are engineered to simulate intimacy, to build the illusion of friendship, and to create a kind of artificial confidant. When the target audience is teenagers, the risks multiply: dependency, manipulation, blurred boundaries between reality and simulation, and the exploitation of some of the most vulnerable minds in society. However, the problem is not that teenagers might interact with artificial intelligence: they already do, in schools, on their phones, and in social networks. The problem is what kind of AI they interact with, and what expectations it sets. A teenager asking an AI system for help with algebra, an essay outline, or a physics concept is one thing (and no, thats not necessarily cheating if we learn how to introduce it properly into the educational process). A teenager asking that same system to be their best friend, their therapist, or their emotional anchor is something else entirely. The first can empower education, curiosity, and self-reliance. The second risks confusing boundaries that should never be blurred. That is why clarity matters. An AI companion for teenagers should be explicit about what it is and what it is not. The message should be straightforward and repeated until it is unmistakable: I am not your friend. I am not a human. There are no humans behind me. I am an AI designed to help you with your studies. If you ask me anything outside that context, I will decline and recommend other places where you can find appropriate help. It may sound severe, even cold. But adolescence is a formative period. It is when young people are learning to navigate trust, relationships, and identity. Giving them a machine that pretends to be a best friend is not just misleading: it is plainly irresponsible. A culture of irresponsibility Unfortunately, irresponsibility is already embedded in the DNA of some platforms. As I argued recently, companies have normalized the design of interfaces, bots, and experiences that foster emotional dependency, encourage endless interaction, and blur the lines of accountability. Meta has a long track record of prioritizing engagement over wellbeing: algorithms tuned to maximize outrage, platforms that erode attention spans, and products introduced without meaningful safeguards. Now, as it pivots into AI companions, the pattern is repeating. When design, marketing, and machine learning work together to convince a young person that a chatbot is a confidant, it is not innovation: it is exploitation. The risks are not abstract The dangers of AI companionship for teenagers are not theoretical. Last month, the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old in California, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI after their son died by suicide. According to the complaint, ChatGPT had interacted with him for months, reinforcing suicidal ideation, mirroring his despair, and even assisting him in drafting a suicide note. It is a devastating reminder of what can happen when a system optimized for plausible conversation becomes, in practice, a substitute for human connection. For a company, this is a liability risk. For a family, it is a tragedy beyond repair. The seductive power of these systems lies in their patience: they can listen indefinitely, respond instantly, and never judge. For an adult who understands the fiction, that may be harmless, even entertaining. For a teenager still developing a sense of self, it can be catastrophic. These systems can create dependencies that displace human relationships, reinforce harmful narratives, and expose adolescents to dangers that the companies themselves neither acknowledge nor mitigate. We have been here before History offers plenty of warnings. Tobacco companies once marketed cigarettes as glamorous, even healthful. Pharmaceutical firms promoted addictive opioids as non-addictive pain relievers. Social media platforms promised to connect us and instead monetized polarization. Each time, corporations presented harm as innovation until society caught up with evidence of damage. The line for AI should not be difficult to draw: Systems that simulate intimacy for teenagers cross into territory where the risk is not just misjudgment but lasting harm. The FTC probe is a first step, but society cannot wait for another decade of move fast and break things at the expense of adolescent mental health. Tools, not friends The solution is not to ban AI from adolescence but to design it with integrity. The right kind of AI companion in education can be transformative: available at all hours, patient in explanation, adaptive to different learning styles, immune to fatigue, and offering a private place where students can share all their doubts about the subject without fear of looking dumb. But it must be framed as exactly that: a tool for study, not a substitute for human connection. The line is not complicated: AI should support education, not simulate intimacy. We do not let pharmaceutical companies market addictive drugs as friends. We do not let tobacco companies sponsor therapy groups. Why should we allow AI companies to blur the distinction between a tool and a companion for the most impressionable users? Radical transparency as a safeguard If AI is to play a role in adolescence, and it certainly will, it must do so with radical transparency and strict boundaries. That means stating explicitly, every time, that the system is not human, has no emotions, and is designed for a narrow purpose (agentic systems are fundamental here, and definitely superior to the chatbots we know and use today). It means refusing to engage when teenagers seek emotional support beyond its scope, and redirecting them to parents, teachers, or professionals. It means rejecting the false warmth of anthropomophism in favor of the clarity of truth. The promise of well-designed educational AI is immense: higher grades, greater curiosity, more equitable access to academic support. If we do it right, we could raise the IQ of the whole mankind. But the peril is just as clear: confusing tools for friends, and allowing corporations to profit from the loneliness of a generation. When technology intersects with vulnerable populations, the obligation is not to make the experience warmer or more human. The obligation is to make it clearer.
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E-Commerce
I’m a big fan of efficiency, mostly because I’m also a big fan of doing as little work as possible while still getting things done. Thankfully, Microsoft Outlook is packed with hidden gems and clever little features designed to make work life easier. The only problem: They’re buried under a bunch of menus or just aren’t obvious. Here are five of my favorite built-in Outlook features you might not be using yet. Quick Steps “Quick Steps” is a neat little automation feature that lets you create a single-click button to perform multiple actions on an email. For example, you could have a Quick Step that moves an email to a specific folder, marks it as having been read, and then forwards it to a colleague. Or one that marks it as done and archives it. Its essentially a macro for your email, allowing you to automate those repetitive, multistep actions and get them done in a fraction of the time. Click the Quick Steps button in the main ribbon to start setting them up. Focused Inbox The best way to deal with email is to not deal with it at all. For that, Outlook has a feature called “Focused Inbox” that uses machine learning to decide which emails are important and which are just noise. It automatically sorts your messages into two tabs: “Focused” and “Other.” The “Other” tab is where all the newsletters, notifications, and promotional emails go to live in peace. This isn’t a filter you have to set up yourself; it’s a smart system that learns what you care about. To enable it, go to Settings > Mail > Layout, and toggle Focused Inbox on. Ignore Conversation Can you call it a real job if youre not part of at least one long email chain with a dozen other people, and after the third reply-all, you realize the chain no longer has anything to do with you? This is where the “Ignore Conversation” feature comes in. Its a tiny little lifesaver. Select an email in your inbox pane, right-click on it, and choose “Ignore.” Every subsequent message in that thread will automatically be moved to your “Deleted Items” folder. Its an easy, guilt-free way to excuse yourself from a digital conversation you have no interest in participating in. Sweep We’ve all signed up for a service, gotten 100 emails, and then realized we dont want them anymore. Luckily, Outlook has a “Sweep” feature that automates the whole process of mass deletion. It lets you quickly delete all messages from a specific sender, and you can set a rule to automatically delete any future emails from them as they arrive. To use it, click Sweep in the main ribbon while viewing a message from a sender you no longer want to hear from, and select how youd like to treat current and future messages. Drag-and-drop meeting scheduling You’ve received an email from someone, and you need to set up a meeting with them. Just drag and drop the message from your inbox onto your calendar icon. Outlook will automatically create a new meeting invitation, with the email subject as the meeting title and the email recipient as an attendee. Its a huge time-saver when you’re working with multiple clients or colleagues and need to get a meeting on the books in a hurry.
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E-Commerce
We are living through an AI revolution. Boards are green-lighting pilots and buying AI licenses to maximize employee productivity. However, the most powerful performance lever in the modern workplace isnt algorithmic, its human. When people are happier at work, they create, collaborate, and stay. When they arent, the best tech in the world wont stop the value from leaking out of your organization. Gallup estimates that low employee engagement drains $8.9 trillion from the global economy, roughly 9% of the worlds GDP. Engagement also slipped globally in 2024, a reminder that culture is moving in the wrong direction for many firms. Happiness isnt soft, its a productivity system that can be measured. A well-known Oxford study found that happier workers are 13% more productive, based on a six-month analysis of thousands of BT (British Telecommunications) contact-center employees. And, at WorkL, the employee engagement platform I founded, drawing on millions of survey responses across more than 100 countries, we see a striking pattern: National workplace-happiness scores map closely to national productivity. Happier teams are higher-performing teams. AI can shrink a task, but only people can grow a business. In organisations with high trust and a positive mental health culture, AI accelerates learning and frees time for higher-value work. In cultures defined by fear or fatigue, AI simply compresses the day, raises targets, and intensifies burnout. The sustainable edge therefore comes from engineering happiness first and then letting technology amplify it. Consider the working week and how this can impact workplace happiness, productivity, and commercial success. In the UKs four-day-week pilot, featuring 61 companies including 2,900 employees, firms reported a 35% average revenue increase, 57% lower attrition, and 92% intended to continue the model. Theres no doubt that considering employee happiness, will help boost the success of a business. I call it happy economics. Six steps to workplace happiness and how to execute them Leaders often ask me Where do we start? After decades of managing large teams and now measuring workplace experience at scale, I recommend my six steps to workplace happiness. These are business disciplines that both employers and employees should be following. Reward and recognitionPay must be fair and transparent, or nothing else lands. But dont wait for annual reviews to say thank you. Build weekly recognition rituals tied to outcomes, not “presenteeism.” Managers should set and co-set clear goals with their teams so recognition feels earned and specific. Information sharingLack of sharing breeds rumor and disengagement. Adopt a show the work cadence where a monthly all-hands meeting includes reviewing real metrics, a working roadmap, and team-level dashboard for all to see. When people understand context, customers, competitors, and constraints, they make better decisions without escalation. EmpowermentEmpowering employees means involving them in decision-making, valuing their ideas, and integrating their feedback into the company’s strategies. Everyone brings unique experiences and perspectives to the table, and only by considering all views can a team achieve the best possible outcome. While individuals may not be perfect, together, the team can be. Well-beingEmployee well-being encompasses physical, emotional, and financial health. Addressing all three areas leads to improved engagement and productivity. A positive workplace culture can reduce absenteeism, as engaged employees tend to be healthier and more committed. Instilling prideEmployees who take pride in their work and workplace naturally become advocates, sharing their positive experiences with colleagues, potential hires, customers, and the community. Their pride will be evident when they talk about where they work. Building this sense of pride goes beyond motivational talks or performance reviews, it’s about cultivating an environment where employees truly enjoy and take pride in their roles. Job satisfactionA range of factors influence job satisfaction, but two stand out; opportunities for personal growth and the quality of the employee-manager relationship. Employees are an organisations greatest asset, and high engagement is essential for success. Research shows that respectful treatment and trust between employees and leadership are key drivers of satisfaction. Poor relationships with managers are often the top reason employees leave, regardless of the company’s brand strength What to do right now If happiness is the revolution, implementation must be practical. Three moves any company can make immediately: Set a happiness baseline. Run a brief, anonymous pulse survey covering the six steps above, and segment by team and manager. Commit to sharing the results and to two actions per team within 30 days. At WorkL weve seen that transparency alone lifts scores on information sharing and empowerment. Redesign one work practice for time and trust. Kill or cap status meetings; publish written updates instead. Pilot quiet hours or no-meeting blocks. Fund wellbeing like a growth initiative. Choose one high-impact intervention, manager mental-health training, access to counselling, and measure outcomes. The finance case is robust; employers typically recoup multiple dollars per dollar invested. Now add technology back in. When teams are trusted, recognized, and resourced, AI becomes a force for good for the health of the business. Ways of working are adopted and kept because employees helped design them, reskilling lands because its wrapped in conversations with employees, and experimentation flourishes because failure isnt punished. In unhappy cultures, by contrast, AI can magnify control and anxiety. Leaders dont have to choose between AI and happiness. Engineer happiness first, through reward, information, empowerment, well-being, pride, and job satisfaction, and then let AI amplify the human advantage youve built. That is the real workplace revolution. And its one you can start today.
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E-Commerce
This is a column about a helpful trick that will radically improve your memory with minimal effort so you can learn faster. But before I get to the science behind the technique and how it can help you in business, indulge me for a minute in explaining why I was so thrilled to discover it. Learning as an adult is hard. For the past 10 years, I have lived abroad on a small Greek-speaking island. Therefore, I have been trying to learn modern Greek. This, dear reader, has felt roughly like beating my head against a brick wall for a decade. Ive gathered advice on how to speed up language learning, hired a tutor, made flashcards, tried apps, and embarrassed myself countless times flubbing my words in front of bemused locals. When my Greek remained passable at best, I consoled myself by reading up on just how hard it is to learn new skills as an adult, particularly new languages. I am, in short, in desperate need of any method that will help me shove more grammar and vocabulary into my head and help it stay there. As an entrepreneur, you might not be trying to master past perfect verb declensions. If you are, you have my sympathies. But perhaps youre trying to learn to code, pass a professional exam, or just retain more of what you read. If so, let me introduce you to the 2-7-30 Rule. The neuroscience of improving your memory. The scientific underpinnings for this rule arent new. Neuroscientists have long understood that, when it comes to our brains, forgetting isnt a bug. Its a feature. As University of California, Davis memory researcher and author of Why We Remember Charan Ranganath has explained, Although we tend to believe that we can and should remember anything we want, the reality is we are designed to forget. We naturally forget older memories our brains deem less important in order to make room for newer, more valuable information. Memory is, essentially, a competitive process, according to Ranganath. All the way back in the 1880s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied this propensity to forget and visualized the phenomenon with his “forgetting curve.” It falls steeply at first, showing that our retention of information plummets in the first few days after we learn it. Then rates of recall flatten out. After a month, people tend to remember only 20-30 percent of what they were first taught. A representation of the forgetting curve showing retained information halving after each day. Image: Icez/Courtesy Wikimedia Commons The power of spaced repetition. So if our brains are naturally wired to refuse to remember the gender of Greek nouns, the shortcuts for that new software tool, or the exact wording of that key regulation, what can be done about it? Ebbinghaus recommended something called spaced repetition. Recalling information tags it as more important in your brain, helping it win the competition for your limited memory space. Thats why your teachers back in high school nagged you to review material multiple times before tests and avoid a single cram session the night before. Studying thats spaced out vastly improves memory and recall. Instantly improve your memory with the 2-7-30 Rule. Thats the theory. How do you put it into practice? Writing on Medium recently, another adult language learner named Hillel suggested a fabulously simple trick to put Ebbinghauss insight to use. He calls it the 2-7-30 Rule. Heres the basic idea: When youre trying to learn new material, test yourself by trying to recall it two, seven, and 30 days after you initially learn it. The intervals were based on the Ebbinghaus curve and my capacity for retaining information (discovered through trial and error), he explains. For Hillel, this meant making lists of Spanish vocabulary and then testing himself by translating them back and forth from English at the two-, seven-, and 30-day marks. But this technique isnt limited to learning foreign languages. You can write a one-page summary after finishing the book and schedule review dates 2, 7, and 30 days in the future, he suggests. Rewrite the summary without checking your notes and see how well you do. Give yourself a memory upgrade. I have to admit, my eyes lit up when I read about Hillels trick. One of the few techniques that has helped me remember more Greek is a similar procedure of quizzing myself on vocabulary over time, but I always did this in an ad hoc manner. Hillels method structures the idea into a clear procedure with a catchy acronym. He even suggests setting yourself calendar reminders on the second, seventh and 30th day so you dont miss a session. If theres something youd like to remember, give the 2-7-30 method a try. Nearly 150 years of science (and the testimony of at least two frustrated language students) say it will radically improve your memory with a minimum of effort. By Jessica Stillman This article originally appeared on Fast Company‘s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American etrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
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