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In recent months in Texas, hempand the state’s $5.5 billion hemp industryhas become a flashpoint in state politics and the wider cultural war. A successful push by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick earlier this year to have the Legislature ban hemp and hemp-derived THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient in hemp and marijuana) was temporarily thwarted by Gov. Greg Abbotts veto of Senate Bill 3 on June 23. But just this week, a special 30-day legislative session was called by the governor, with THC as a top agenda item. A new bill, Senate Bill 5, nearly identical to the vetoed bill, is on the docket for legislators to consider. Texas, by dint of its size and stature among red states, can be seen as a bellwether for how Republican lawmakers are going to handle the hemp and marijuana markets. The state legalized hemp products in 2019, modeling it after the federal Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, which kick-started the contemporary hemp industry and cultivation across the country. But the Texas law concerned itself more with agriculture and regulating the growing of hemp, which led to some oversights in terms of consumer regulation, said Katharine Harris, a drug policy expert at Rice Universitys Baker Institute for Public Policy. Products made with THC derived from hemp became legal, even while THC derived from marijuana plants remained banned. Thats led to rapid growth and a consistent pushincluding from the industry itselffor more regulations. Texas has the potential to be the second-largest cannabis market in the country, said Lukas Gilkey, founder of Hometown Hero CBD, a prominent advocate for the industry who previously launched ongoing legal action against state regulators to prevent them from banning hemp-derived TCH products in 2021. You used to be sent to jail for having a joint, but the numbers for this industry are staggering for an industry that isnt even six years old. A sudden multibillion-dollar industry In the six years the hemp industry has existed in Texas, its been on a speedrun toward becoming a sizable sector of the economy, according to a March 2025 Whitney Economics analysis. The industry now generates $267 million in state tax revenue, employing 53,000 workers who receive $2.1 billion in wages. Hometown Heros revenues expanded five times over during the first six months after the law was passed. Recreational marijuana is not legal to sell in the statealthough Texas does have a small medical marijuana programbut possession of small amounts is starting to be decriminalized in some cities. However, since hemp is legal, the hemp industry in Texas can conduct transactions that pot sellers cannot, such as take credit card payments and engage in interstate commerce. The growth of hemp in the state has garnered quite a constituency of small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and recreational users, as well as a sizable community of military veterans who utilize hemp goods for medicinal purposes. Many farmers have made hemp a main crop and were outraged that the industry was on the verge of closure. Throw the lowlifes in jail if you want to stop the bad actors, Ann Gauger, co-owner of Caprock Family Farms in Lubbock, told The Texas Tribune. But dont take out the American farmers. Dont take out the ag producers. A battle for what Texas means The battle over hemp in Texas can be cast as a battle about the personality of the frontier state itself: a no-nonsense, freedom-loving, self-made sense of pride in building a business with your bare hands versus a well-earned reputation as a right-wing policy incubator with deeply religious leaders. There have been other attempts to regulate and reform hemp laws during other legislative sessions. (Texas has biannual sessions that last six months every other year.) But over the course of the last few years, the industry has grown substantially, to the point where its quite visible, Harris said. That has simply made some of the regulatory issues more obvious. For instance, manufacturing smokable hemp products was outlawed, but the sale of such items wasnt prohibited. The states regulations also lacked more concrete restrictions around potency and age limits, and had few restrictions on where items could be sold: A retail license cost just $155 per location. One of the issues that we have right now is that there are a lot of unsafe products on the market because we don’t have the oversight necessary, Harris said. That’s one of the things that they really need to fix. George Medici, a spokesperson for the Texas Hemp Business Council, said the industry itself has been advocating for new regulationschildproof packaging, age limits, setbacks to keep sales away from schoolsso far, to no avail. Advocates have been busy lobbying in Austin during the special session, and they feel somewhat positive about the future. I think were optimistic; its kind of hard to tell, Medici said. Polling suggests, and always has, that people want these products on the market, and want them regulated. The momentum is positive. What thatll look like making the sausage, I dont know. There are also efforts to push production of more industrial hemp, according to state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, but thats just getting started. Miller believes that regardless of what happens with the regulation of products with THC, Texas will be a national leader in the hemp industry. The potential for a full ban Its also clear that the clash around hemp will continue. During a press conference about the issue, Lt. Gov. Patrick suggested that hemp producers might be part of a terrorist money-laundering scheme and asked if the state really wanted everybody to get high. Patrick and his allies in the Texas Legislature feel that hemp products have become too common, are too hard to police, and should be banned instead of regulated. Rice Universitys Harris believes the current special session will likely deal with additional regulations around prohibiting access to minors and addressing additional regulations for the industry. She argues that any kind of ban would just push buyers to the illicit market, which would end up being more dangerous. Hometown Hero’s Gilkey believes Senate Bill 5 will pass in the Senate but says that even if it does end up getting signed by the governor in the special session, he has a team of lawyers ready to sue them into oblivion. In the long term, the Texas hemp industry will have to adapt to a changing landscape and likly face a little more regulation, akin to whats already seen in many of the legal marijuana states, Harris said. Shed like to see an effort toward self-regulation and legislation that encourages better behavior within the industry, as far as guaranteeing the safety profiles of their products (as do many in the industry). The problem is that theres an industry and a market for these products that exists, so it becomes a lot harder to make it all go away, she said.
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Creativity has been heralded as our last irreplaceable skill, the one thing machines could never touch. Yet in offices everywhere, teams hit the same walls: blank screens, stale ideas, the exhausting churn of brainstorming sessions that go nowhere. The promise of human ingenuity feels increasingly at odds with the reality of modern work, where the demand for fresh thinking has never been higher, but the conditions for producing it have never been worse. Its awkward to admit, but were not brainstorming the way we used to. Its not that weve lost the ability. Creative thinking remains the lifeblood of everything from product development to marketing campaigns. But the uncomfortable truth is that we no longer have the luxury of time for the classical creative process. The slow simmer of ideas, the meandering discussions, and the trial and error that once defined innovation have been compressed into frantic sprints. We’re still creative, but we’re drowning in the busywork that keeps us from accessing that creativity when we need it most. Were in the decade of the creative bottleneck For years, innovation has unfolded at a breakneck pace, but the evidence suggests things are slowing. The low-hanging fruit of the digital revolution has been picked, and the next wave of breakthroughs requires more than incremental tweaks. Yet the very systems meant to foster creativity have become clogged with bureaucracy and inefficiency. Consider the latest estimates on how knowledge workers spend their time: they waste 3.6 hours each week managing internal workplace communication, another 2.8 hours searching for or requesting information they need to do their jobs, and an additional 2.2 hours trapped in unnecessary or unproductive meetings. Thats nearly a full day every week lost to process rather than progress. White-collar workers, especially in tech, were supposed to be the disruptorsthe ones breaking old models and inventing new ones. Instead, theyve become administrators of their own stagnation. We cant create more time, but we can rethink what creativity actually is At its core, creativity isnt the romanticized lightning strike of inspirationits a grueling, mechanical process. It requires grinding through bad ideas, hitting dead ends, and enduring countless revisions before arriving at something worthwhile. The hardest part? Ideationthe raw generation of new concepts. Humans arent wired to produce fresh ideas on demand. Our brains cling to familiar patterns, get stuck in ruts, and freeze under pressure. But this is precisely where AI excels. Where we see a blank page, an AI sees infinite permutations. Where we fatigue after a dozen iterations, an AI can generate thousands without losing focus. Heres the real opportunity: if improving an idea by 5% used to take two weeks of human deliberation, what happens when AI can deliver that same 5% gain in 30 minutes? Suddenly, those incremental improvements compound exponentially. The bottleneck isnt the quality of our thinking; its the speed at which we can cycle through possibilities. AI is actually very good at the creative process Where AI thrives is in the parts of creativity that humans find most draining: the relentless generation of variations, the cold-eyed evaluation of options, the pattern recognition across vast datasets. These are the unglamorous foundations of innovation, the behind-the-scenes work that makes the “aha” moments possible. Think about it. Humans can run at 15 mph tops; cars can go 200 mph. We dont insist on sprinting everywhere just to prove our legs work. We use technology to extend our natural capabilities. Why should thinking be any different? Humans simply arent built to crank out a hundred versions of a logo, or a thousand variations of a marketing message, then dispassionately select the strongest. Our attention falters, our judgment clouds, our patience wears thin. But for AI, this is trivial. It doesnt need coffee breaks or pep talks. It doesnt get attached to pet ideas or succumb to groupthink. It just generates, analyzes, and iteratesexactly the skills needed to break through creative logjams. This isnt about replacing human judgment. Its about augmenting it. The real value of AI lies in its ability to handle the brute-force labor of creativity, leaving us free to focus on what humans do best: refining, contextualizing, and applying ideas with taste and strategic insight. Its the difference between digging a foundation with a shovel and using an excavator. The end goal isnt the tool its the building. We dont have to cede complete creative control To be clear, this isnt about surrendering creativity to machines. AI lacks our intuition, our cultural awareness, our understanding of human nuance; the very qualities that make our best ideas resonate. The breakthroughs of the next decade wont come from AI working alone, but from humans wielding AI as the ultimate creative accelerator. The real paradigm shift is recognizing that AI isnt here to replace human creativity, but to unstick it. For years, weve treated brainstorming as a sacred ritual, as if the magic were in the method rather than the outcome. But what if the magic is actually in removing the friction between thought and execution? We need to let machines do what they do best (generating and sorting possibilities at superhuman scale) so we can focus on what we do best (selecting, shaping, and elevating the best ideas). The next big idea might be waiting in iteration #387and thanks to AI, we might actually have time to find it.
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E-Commerce
Dearest reader, I hope this article finds you in good health. I deeply desire also that if you use generative AI to boost your productivity at work, that you, for all that is good and holy, review everything it produces, lest it hallucinate data or quotes or address your boss by the wrong nameand you fall on your face and embarrass yourself. Sincerely, Your unchecked AI results AI is taking the workforce by storm and stealth, as the rules for how to use it are still being written and employees are left to experiment. Many employees are under pressure to adopt AI: Some companies such as Shopify and Duolingo are requiring employees to use AI while others are ratcheting up productivity expectations so high that some workers may be using it just to meet demands. This creates an environment ripe for making mistakes: weve seen Grok spew hate speech on X, and more recently an AI agent deleted an entire database of executive contacts belonging to investor Jason Lemkin. Funnily enough, no one wants to share their own AI-induced flub but they have a story to tell from someone else. These AI nightmares range from embarrassing to potentially fireable offenses, but together they reveal why there always needs to be a human in the loop. The Email You Obviously Didnt Write Failing to review AI-generated content seems to be the most common mistake workers are making, and its producing errors big and small. On the small side, one worker in tech sales who asked to remain anonymous tells Fast Company her colleague used to ask ChatGPT to write natural-sounding sales emails, then contacted clients with Dickensian messages that began, I hope this email finds you in good health. The Slackbot Gone Awry Similarly, Clemens Rychlik, COO at marketing firm Hello Operator, says a colleague let ChatGPT draft Slack replies largely unchecked, and addressed him as Clarence instead of Clemens. When Clemens replied in good fun, calling his colleague the wrong name too, their reaction was, of course, guilt and shameand the responses after that were definitely human. The Inappropriate Business Recommendation On the larger side, some people are using AI to generate information for clients without checking the results, which compromises the quality of their work. Alex Smereczniak is the CEO of the startup Franzy, a marketplace for buying and selling franchise opportunities. His company uses a specially trained LLM on the back end to help customers find franchises, but Smereczniak says their clients often dont know this. So when one client asked to see opportunities for wellness-focused franchises, and the account manager recommended she open a Daves Hot Chicken, she was less than pleased. Smereczniak says the employee came clean and told the customer he had used AI to generate her matches. We took a closer look and realized the model had been weighting certain factors like profitability and brand growth too heavily, without enough context on the prospects personal values, says Smereczniak. We quickly updated the models training data and reweighted a few inputs to better reflect those lifestyle preferences. When the Franzy team fired up the AI again, the model made better recommendations, and the customer was happy with the new recommendations. At a startup, things are moving a million miles a minute, Smereczniak says. I think, in general, its good for us all to remind ourselves when we are doing something client-facing or externally. Its okay to slow down and double checkand triple checkthe AI. The Hallucinated Source Some companies have used AI mistakes to improve their work processes, which was the case at Michelles employer, a PR firm. (Michelle is a pseudonym as shes not technically allowed to embarrass her employer in writing.) Michelle tells Fast Company that a colleague used Claude, Anthropics AI assistant, to generate a ghostwritten report on behalf of a client. Unfortunately, Claude hallucinated and cited imaginary sources and quoted imaginary experts. The quote in this piece was attributed to a made-up employee from one of the top three largest asset management firms in the world, she says. But the report was published anyway. Michelles company found out by way of an angry email from the asset management firm. We were obviously all mortified, Michelle says. This had never happened before. We thought it was a process that would take place super easily and streamline the content creation process. But unfortunately, this snafu took place instead. Ultimately, the company saved face all around by simply owning up to the error and successfully retained the account. The PR firm told the client and the asset management firm exactly how the error occurred and assured them it wouldnt happen again thanks to new protocols. Despite the flub, the firm didnt ban the use of AI for content creationthey want to be on the leading edge of technor did it solely blame the employee (who kept their job), but it did install a series of serious checks in its workflow, and now all AI-generated content must be reviewed by at least four employees. Its a mistake that could have happened to anyone, Michelle says. AI is a powerful accelerator, but without human oversight, it can push you right off a cliff. The AI-Powered Job Application AI use isnt just happening on the job, sometimes its happening during the job interview itself. Reality Defender, a company that makes deepfake detection software, asks its job candidates to complete take-home projects as part of the interview process. Ironically its not uncommon for those take-home tests to be completed with AI assistance. As far as Reality Defender is concerned, everyone assumes, and rightfully so, that AI is being used in either the conception or full on completion for a lot of tasks these days, a rep for the company tells Fast Company. But its one thing to use AI to augment your work by polishing a résumé or punching up a cover letter, and another to have it simply do the work for you. Reality Defender wants candidates to be transparent. Be very upfront about your usage of AI, they said. In fact, we encourage that discretion and disclosure and see that as a positive, not a negative. If you are out there saying, Hey, I did this with artificial intelligence, and its gotten me to here, but I am perfectly capable of doing this without artificial intelligence, albeit in a different way, you are not only an honest person, but it shows your level of proficiency with artificial intelligence. Personally, I dont think its necessarily bad to use [AI] to some extent, but at th very, very least, you want to check whats being written and reviewed before we share it, says Rychlik at Hello Operator. More broadly, I ask everyone to pause regularly on this because if your first instinct is always ask GPT, you risk worsening your critical thinking capabilities. Rychlik is tapping into a common sentiment we noticed. On the whole, companies are trying to use mistakes as a learning opportunity to ask for transparency and improve processes. Were in an age of AI experimentation, and smart companies understand mistakes are the cost of experimentation. In this experimental stage, organizations and employees using AI at work look tech-savvy rather than careless, and were just finding out where the boundaries are. For now, many workers seem to have adopted a policy of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.
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