Jon Stewart, who hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2015 and has returned for once-a-week hosting stints since 2024, lashed out at his show’s parent company for choosing to unceremoniously end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and discontinue the franchise.
In a segment on Monday, Stewart noted his well-documented allegiance to Colbert, even showing a photo of the duo when they were both on The Daily Show from 1999 to 2005.
While statements about the events surrounding the cancellation of The Late Show have been made by many celebrities on social mediaand even by hosts of other late-night programsStewart added to the conversation by boldly calling out CBS for appearing to overlook the value that compelling late-night programs bring to the media giants that own them.
I understand the fear that you and your advertisers have with $8 billion at stake, but understand this: Truly, the shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and controla not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those fucking showsthats what made you that money, Stewart said directly into the camera.
The $8 billion that Stewart is referring to is the proposed merger between Paramount Global, which owns CBS, and Skydance, a production company founded and helmed by David Ellison, son of tech billionaire and Trump supporter Larry Ellison.
The deal has faced regulatory hurdles, first under the Biden administration and then under the Trump administration. All of this also comes as CBS News announced in July that it will settle a lawsuit filed against 60 Minutes by Trump, who claims that the show unfairly edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look more favorable.
The fact that CBS didnt try to save their No. 1-rated network late-night franchise thats been on the air for over three decades is part of whats making everyone wonder, was this purely financial or maybe the path of least-resistance for your $8 billion merger? Stewart asked on his show.
Fast Company reached out to CBS, Paramount Global, and Skydance Media. None immediately responded to a request for comment. CBS has referred to the decision to cancel The Late Show as a financial one and unrelated to the show’s content, citing a “challenging backdrop” for late-night television.
Although The Late Show has reportedly been losing roughly $40 million a year, according to a source cited by the Wall Street Journal, Stewarts larger point is buoyed by the fact that Paramount earns more than half of its revenue from its television businesses.
Indeed, Paramount has played up its TV assets, including The Late Show and much of its news content, in its pitch to investors about the proposed merger. Colbert’s image appears multiple times on the New Paramount PowerPoint presentation, with the company touting CBS as a leader in late-night TV.
Ratings from Nielsen likewise show The Late Show as the top-rated show in its block, with about 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes.
If you believe, as corporations or as networks, you can make yourself so innocuous, that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy kings radar? A) why would anyone watch you? And B) you are fucking wrong, Stewart said.
Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has dominated business conversations. What once felt like a futuristic concept is now a tangible, widely accessible tool, one that is now seen as table stakes for businesses.
AIs greatest promise is efficiency. For small-business owners who wear multiple hats, this promise sounds like a dream, and for some larger companies, that dream has become reality. Yet for many small and midsize businesses (SMBs) that have invested precious time and money into AI-enabled solutions, that promise remains unfulfilled.
As a CEO of a company that provides fintech solutions for SMBs, and as a small-business owner myself, I understand the desire to do more with less. I understand how AI can seem like a magical solution. But the reality is, AI tools are not currently made with small businesses in mind.
Whether you have already invested in AI tools, are in the consideration phase, or still testing tools, I urge you to pause everything, take a step back, and reevaluate AIs role in your business.
AIs Promise Is Not for the Masses
AI is pitched as a game changer for businesses, promising improved productivity, faster workflows, cost savings, and business growth. Major companies like Duolingo and Shopify have even suggested AI can replace human-led roles. And this may be true, for enterprises.
This level of efficiency is possible only through custom, complex, and expensive AI models that are programed by dedicated AI teams and trained on an immense amount of dataresources, and results, that are unattainable by SMBs.
The reality is, many SMBs are still digitizing their practices, their data sets are small, budgets are tight, and IT resources are minimal. This is why, instead of trying to mirror the AI adoption strategies of large enterprises, SMBs should take a different approach, one that is slow, simple, and focused on business fundamentals. By focusing on core operations like admin, customer service, and reporting, small businesses can lay the groundwork to ensure AI enhances, rather an complicates, their workflows.
A False Start: SMBs and AI Adoption
Its no surprise that SMB adoption of AI dropped to 28% this year, a 33% year-over-year decline. Some have learned from experience that trying to mimic enterprise adoption of AI has had the opposite effect: draining time, money, and productivity.
Many SMBs still have a poor understanding of AI and its learning curves. Without proper in-house resources to implement and train on the technology, SMBs are paying for expensive tools that are not optimized to their business needs. For SMB owners who feel theyve overcommitted, I encourage you to pause and reassess. Ask yourself: Is this tool achieving what I need it to?
Back to Basics
Broad adoption of AI is a costly mistake for SMBs. Business leaders must slow down and thoughtfully assess where AI can truly make an impact. Start small: Choose one area, such as marketing or administrative tasks, and measure results before expanding further.
Rather than investing in new tools, explore the AI features already built into your existing tech stack. Tools like Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, and Box now offer AI integrations allowing small businesses to easily explore AI applications without significant investment or complexity.
By starting with the tools you already use, you not only lower the barrier to entry, you also concentrate your learning and adoption in a familiar environment.
AI Applications That Work
AI can be highly effective with repetitive tasks such as answering common customer questions and managing inventory. One small business, Something Sweet Cookie Dough, used AI to scale recipes and reduce ingredient waste, while also automating responses to frequently asked customer questions.
AI can be a great resource for creative ideation and research as well. However, its important for a human to review all materials produced by AI as the technology is prone to misinformation and to misinterpretation of the task at hand. I suggest treating AI like a new employee: regularly checking its work, conducting performance reviews, and slowly introducing new tasks. Do not overrely on AI or assume it can operate unsupervised.
AI Is Not Automatically Secure
Another major oversight is the assumption that AI is inherently secure. Most AI toolsincluding popular free versions like ChatGPTlearn from the data you share with them. That means sensitive business information could become part of a models training data. If youre in a regulated industry or working with proprietary or confidential information, this is a major risk to your business and customers.
Before you input sensitive data into any AI tool, understand how that data will be stored and used. Once youve done some trial and error with free versions, consider upgrading to enterprise-grade AI tools that offer security, data privacy, and compliance features tailored to you industry.
AI Will Have a Place in SMBs
AI can support small businesses, but only if the tools are chosen, applied, and monitored with care. Until AI companies build solutions tailored to the unique needs of SMBs, emphasizing simplicity, affordability, and support, its up to business owners to be diligent in the tools evaluation. With a measured approach, SMBs can capture the benefits of AI without overinvestment, complicating workflows, or overwhelming you and your team.
Americas demand for new infrastructure is surging, driven by the AI data center boom, clean energy projects, and a growing national housing crunch. Yet just as the country needs to build faster than ever, its facing a mounting challenge: a severe construction labor shortage. The U.S. construction industry is already short more than half a million workers, and nearly 41% of its workforce is expected to retire by 2031. For a sector still heavily dependent on manual labor and analog tools, there soon may not be enough people left to do the building.
To confront this growing labor crisis, Boris Sofmana Carnegie Mellon robotics Ph.D. and early Waymo executivecofounded Bedrock Robotics in 2024. Instead of building autonomous machines from scratch, Bedrock retrofits existing construction equipment like excavators, bulldozers, and loaders with AI-powered operating systems, sensors, and lidar to make them fully autonomous.
Sofman has brought together fellow engineers from Waymo, Google, and Caterpillar (CAT), many of whom were instrumental in scaling autonomous technologies in some of the worlds most complex machines. The team shares a fundamental belief: the future of construction lies in autonomy, not more manpower.
I saw the powerful potential of applying modern ML approaches we developed at Waymo to construction. This is a problem you could not solve without the modern approaches we saw to be so effective, and helped deploy, in transportation, so it felt like a huge opportunity to address this critical need, Sofman tells Fast Company. We can get to a deployed product for a fraction of the cost it took Waymo, and continue to build toward the full potential while growing revenues and serving real customers.
Based in San Francisco, the startup recently emerged from stealth mode with $80 million in seed and Series A funding from top-tier investors including Eclipse, 8VC, NVIDIAs NVentures, Valor Equity Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, and Samsara. John Krafcik, former CEO of Waymo, also joined as an early investor and adviser.
Construction is a sector that represents over 10% of global GDP, and it’s under extraordinary pressure. Were entering a new phase where industrial AI becomes the most important, and perhaps most underestimated frontier, Krafcik says. With Bedrock, I saw a chance to take the best of what we built at Waymo and apply it to one of the most vital yet overstressed sectors in the global economy.
At the heart of Bedrocks approach is the Bedrock Operatoran AI-powered software and hardware platform that installs in under four hours and can run 24/7, even in remote or high-heat environments where human crews are difficult to retain.
Bedrock uses large-scale machine learning to translate real-world inputs into precise actions for construction equipment, starting with excavators focused on heavy earthwork. This is designed to start with an excavator . . . but be efficiently scalable to new capabilities and new machines, says Sofman.
From Robo-Taxis to Job Sites
Bedrocks founding team includes Kevin Peterson (CTO), former head of perception for Waymos commercial trucking division; Tom Eliaz (VP of engineering), who built Segments New York engineering office and worked on IBMs DB2 query optimizer; and Ajay Gummalla (also a VP of engineering), a former director of engineering at Waymo who also helped launch Google Wifi.
The broader team includes engineers from Uber Freight, Google, and Adept (now OMRON), marketers from Deloitte Consulting, and operators from companies like Sonos. While many startups chase the dream of artificial general intelligence (AGI), Bedrock is laser-focused on industrial autonomyturning legacy machines into intelligent systems without upending workflows.
Coupling AI with a modern safety framework based on data analysis and statistics unlocks true autonomy and collaborative machine capabilities in a sector that desperately needs it and is interconnected with our entire economy, says Matthieu Guilbert, Bedrock’s robotics lead. This allows robots to work safely and effectively in human-centric environments.
Boris Sofman [Photo: Bedrock Robotics]
The upgraded machines feature 360-degree cameras with LiDAR for full-field visibility and detailed work area understanding. Survey-grade inertial measurement units (IMUs) and GPS provide centimeter-precision localization, while LTE antennas keep worksites connected for real-time monitoring, explained Sofman. Rugged casings protect components from harsh conditions, while the computing system sits inside the cab, integrating sensor data and executing decisions from a large-scale machine learning model.
With restrictions on foreign labor tightening and infrastructure investment risingfueled by federal stimulus and AI-driven demandautonomous construction is becoming not just feasible but necessary.
With rising costs and economic uncertainty, contractors are seeking more predictability on job sites. Bedrocks autonomous machines offer consistent performance and accurate forecasting. As Sofman puts it, These machines deliver consistent, predictable output . . . helping accurately forecast project timelines.
Bedrocks machines are already running at test sites in California, Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas, in collaboration with firms like Sundt Construction and Zachry Construction. Initial customer deployments are planned for August 2025, with full commercial rollout expected in early 2026.
Is Industrial Autonomy the Real AI Gold Rush?
Bedrock isnt aiming to eliminate human workersits aiming to ensure theyre no longer the bottleneck. Skiled crews can focus on complex tasks like pipe-laying, while autonomous systems handle repetitive work such as digging, loading, and overnight shifts.
Automation and robotics are often misunderstood as a zero-sum game. The Bedrock Operator will enhance safety and productivity, fostering growth for team members rather than replacing them, due to its ability to integrate into existing workflows, says Guilbert. Increased productivity is expected to encourage general contractors to undertake more projects, resulting in a net increase in labor.
Given constructions high accident rates, Sofman believes Bedrocks Operator can deliver superhuman safety. On high-risk or remote job sites, that capability could be transformative. Additionally, the AI provides real-time insights such as project progress, earth volume metrics, and billing databoosting transparency and speeding up payments.
[Photo: Bedrock Robotics]
That pragmatism appeals to investors like John Krafcik.
While AI headlines often focus on AGI, Bedrocks investors are betting on near-term impact through industrial autonomy. Where can AI deliver real impact today? Industrial autonomy, especially in construction, is one of those places, says Krafcik, who praises Bedrocks unusually deep talent pool from Waymo as a significant advantage.
Despite the pace of digital innovation, much of the world still runs on physical industries like construction, agriculture, and logistics. Bedrock is one of the few companies applying autonomy to this economically essential layer. As it approaches commercial launch, its positioning autonomy as a pragmatic solution to the modern infrastructure crisis.
Sofman envisions a future where construction is fully digitized and managed by intelligent systems. Ultimately, this is about digitizing the entire construction process, he says. The goal? A general contractor can just define the goal and let the system run.
By axing The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last week, CBS not only put an expiration date on TVs No. 1 late-night talk showthe network also put an enormous target on its own back.
In the days since CBS made the announcement that the show would be ending in May 2026, all current late-night talk show hosts have bound together in a show of support for Colbert. That support has taken the form of savage jokes about CBS, which canceled Colberts show just days after he called the $16 million settlement between CBS parent company Paramount and President Donald Trump a big fat bribe.
Though Paramount stressed that the cancellation was ultimately a financial decision, the company’s leadership is clearly unconcerned about how it looks to cancel a show led by one of the presidents critics while its $8 billion merger with Skydance is pending before that same presidents Federal Communications Commission chair. But Colbert and his fellow late-night hosts arent afraid to say exactly what the shows pending cancellation looks likepunishment from a corporate parent for putting its business at risk.
If the first show of his precancellation run is any indicator, Colbert is ready to go out the same way he rose to No. 1, by lobbing scathing jokes at Trump and those who help prop him up. And as his shows demise lays bare the precarious situation late night is in, Colberts peers seem ready to enter their DGAF eras as well.
Colberts anti-Trump jokes made his show more political
Trumps election in 2016, just one year into Colberts tenure, was crucial to helping the host find his footing. Hed had a bit of a rocky transition from his satirical Comedy Central series, The Colbert Report, which hed hosted in character as a Bill OReilly-like blowhard. It took him some timeand some unprecedented timesto figure out the best way to be himself on TV.
Prior to Trumps election, the top late-night talk show was The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, mainly known for its hosts affable banter with celebrities and goofy party games. Trumps election seemed to light a fire under late-night TV, though, offering most of the hosts a sense of purpose and more nightly material than they could possibly handle.
As Fallon remained largely apolitical, Colbert pounced. By February 2017, he snatched the top spot of late night for the first time, and then maintained it throughout the following season. Colberts peers Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel also grew into their new roles as thorns in the presidents side, while Fallon floundered.
Late night is flounderingespecially at CBS
But amid a downturn in ratings, even Colberts viewership has softened as time has gone on. Between the political exhaustion that followed the 2020 election and a steady increase in cord-cutting in U.S. households, late-night TV ratings have fallen steadily for five years. Colbert now receives an average of 2.47 million viewers per show, down more than a million from his 2018-2019 peak. Late-night ad revenue fell by half from 2018 to 2024, from $439 million to just $220 million. Even Trumps return to the White House, with all its attendant chaos, couldnt entice viewers back to late night this year, with ratings down across the board even from last fall.
CBS has had an especially tough time programming late night. After host James Corden left The Late Late Show in 2023, CBS opted to end the series rather than find a new host, taking a swing by airing the talk show-game show amalgam After Midnight in its time slot. That show ended in June after two seasons, when host Taylor Tomlinson bowed out to focus on stand-up.
Amid the tumult, Colbert and his shows pole position among his peers seemed like an asset for the network. But given his critique of Paramounts Trump settlementwhich heads off a legal battle over the presidents appearance on 60 Minutes last fall, which he alleged was edited unfairlyColberts cancellation can easily be perceived as a potential additional condition for the merger. Trump has certainly not done anything to assuage that notion, gloating about it on Truth Social over the weekend.
But Colbert and his late-night compatriots are signaling that theyre ready to call it as they see it now that Colberts days at CBS are numbered.
How late-night hosts responded
Kimmel was the first of the hosts to respond. In a since-lapsed Instagram story on Saturday, July 19, the host wrote: Love you, Stephen. Fu*k you and all your Sheldons, CBS (a nod to the main character from the networks 12-season hit The Big Bang Theory and its 7-season spin-off Young Sheldon).
Next came Jon Stewarts righteously irate, f-bomb-heavy monologue on Monday nights episode of The Daily Show.
Jon Stewart reacts to CBS cancelling "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and tells corporations and advertisers to "sack up" pic.twitter.com/v8MrNpg28w— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 22, 2025
While the host admitted the fiscal realities of late-night TV in 2025, comparing it to “operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside of a Tower Records, he blasted the network for not doing more to save the top show in the format. Stewart concluded that despite those financial challenges, the cancellation was ultimately due to the “fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions.” He then led a choir and the audience i a chant of Go fuck yourselves, aimed at corporations, including Paramount, who have demonstrated fealty to Trump.
Finally, just after The Daily Show came the first episode of The Late Show in what may come to be known as its DGAF era. The gloves are off, the host said early on in the episode, and then spent the rest of the runtime giving a preview of what that will look like. Perhaps taking a cue from Stewart, Colbert responded to Trumps gloating over his cancellation by telling the president, Go fuck yourself.
One particular moment from the episode, though, was notable both for its humor and its sprawling show of solidarity. A parade of famous friends including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Weird Al Yankovic, and Adam Sandler showed up for an elaborate bit based on last weeks Coldplay kiss-cam fiascoand they were joined by Colberts peers: Meyers, Stewart, and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver.
All of these hosts standing united in purpose (Jimmy Fallon separately cracked jokes in support of Colbert on The Tonight Show) is a signal that late night is poised to get its biggest jolt since the early days of Trumps first term. These hosts may be about to crack jokes like theres no tomorrow, because for the first time in late nights storied history, there might not be.
A new concept ad format for Ikea is going viral, and it shows that AI ads can actually be good.
The concept, which appears to have first been created by X user @Salmaaboukarr, starts with a wide shot of a drab, dorm-esque room with a simple Ikea-branded cardboard box in the center. In a matter of seconds, the box explodes open, spewing a full rooms-worth of Ikea furniture throughout the space and immediately transforming it into a cozy haven.
This clever play on Ikeas iconic build-it-yourself model is a glimpse into how far AI models have come in the past several months, and how much of a role theyre poised to play in the future advertising landscape. While its not actually a real ad for the brand, it looks convincing enough to be one.
How the “exploding box” ad exploded online
The creator listed full instructions on how to achieve a similar result using step-by-step prompts on Googles Veo 3 model, and dozens of creators have since made their own. The original video has over one million views and 11,000 likes on X at the time of writing, and another iteration of the Ikea concept has raked in 34,000 likes on Instagram. One creator designed a spot for Amazon, and another made a video concept for a fake pet care company.
The Ikea box ad visuals come with a satisfying mix of cardboard sounds and solid thunks as the digital furniture settles into place. This seems to be a result of using Veo 3 itself, which debuted this March and stands out from AI video generator competitors like OpenAIs Sora for its ability to generate dialogue and audio alongside near-photorealistic video.
So far, netizens have used Veo 3s advanced capabilities for a range of content, from benign ASMR clips to alarmingly realistic deepfakes of riots and election fraudand its only going to get more powerful from here.
These Ikea concepts show the possibility of AI-generated ads
Many viewers of the original video are responding positively to the ad, with one calling it mesmerizing. Predictably, though, the concept is also receiving its fair share of criticism.
On the aforementioned Instagram post, which includes the caption, This is literally a ~$100,000 VFX ad made with one Veo 3 prompt, some commenters criticized the video, noting it was likely trained on real (and expensive) projects by creative people. Another, noting the mismatched end tables and armoires, and the placement of the ceiling lamp, felt it pointed to AI’s shortcomings.
Ethical concerns around AIs use of copyrighted materials and its massive energy consumption are certainly valid. However, critiques of the small flaws in these Ikea concept adslike the placement of an errant lampwork to undersell how astronomically AI tools have improved in the past several months, and how useful they will inevitably be for marketers.
Looking back just a year ago to Toys R Us cursed toy ad, which was billed as the first-ever fully AI-generated commercial, its difficult to emphasize just how much worse that actual ad looks compared to todays fan-made AI content. Not only is the image quality markedly better today, but the prompting savvy of AI creators has also improved.
In the case of these Ikea concepts, for example, the focus is on the product itselfan area where AI currently excels. If you observe the Ikea concept ads without a fine-tooth comb, it would be difficult to argue that theyre not effective.
Granted, we’re likely still in for a lot of AI slop, and probably more of it. But, as with any other tool, the existence of bad AI-generated ads doesnt mean it’s impossible for smart, creative people to make good ones. These Ikea concept ads show that, with the right concept, AI can showcase a product without coming off as cringeworthy.
Finally got round to testing Veo 3 for ads- IKEA (inspo ad)Prompt below pic.twitter.com/fSKhIUXf72— Salma (@Salmaaboukarr) July 19, 2025
What happens when you spend decades seeding salacious stories about evil lurking in the halls of power, demanding evidence to prove basic truths, and questioning the veracity of that evidence once its presented?
Donald Trump is finding out.
Over the last week, the president has been trying to fight his way out of a web of his own creation, as some of his truest followers in MAGA world call for the full release of the governments investigative files concerning convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The outcry from Trump acolytes comes after the Department of Justice published a two-page memo earlier this month, stating that Epsteins supposed client list, which Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said was on her desk, didnt actually exist.
Following a weeklong uproar from both the left and right, Trump finally called on a federal court judge to unseal the grand jury testimony related to Epsteins case. The Justice Department has also subpoenaed Epsteins associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving her own 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. But the moves have done little to quell the outrage from the right, particularly after House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the chamber into summer recess early this week to head off a vote on releasing the files. The move prompted fury from the partys MAGA wing. Crimes have been committed, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told reporters. If theres no justice and no accountability, people are going to get sick of it.
As all this has played out, Trump has cast about for someone to blame, pointing the finger at Democrats and his PAST supporters for stoking the scandal. In truth, its Trump who is uniquely responsible for cultivating the culture of conspiracy in which hes now floundering.
Credit where its due: Trumps long and well-documented history of conspiracy-mongering has been perhaps one of his greatest skills and has almost always worked out in his favor. His constant questioning of President Obamas birthplace was so successful that it transformed Trump, then a reality star and real estate mogul, into a cable news fixture. Later on, his success at convincing nearly three-quarters of Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen played no small role in securing his 2024 election victory.
Even the speculation about which other A-listers were in Epsteins orbit were often fair game for Trump. In 2019, Trump fed rumors that the Clintons were somehow involved in Epsteins death by suicide in prison. Did Bill Clinton go to the island? That’s the question, Trump said at the time. Nevermind that Trump and Epstein were close friends or that he once told New York magazine that Epstein likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. Trump is a devoted student of the Im rubber, youre glue school of politicsand for the most part, its worked.
But now its Trump whos found himself stuck to Epstein, and he has no one to blame but himself. After all, it was Trump who taught his followers not to trust the abridged version of a story (see: Trumps campaign to secure Obamas long-form birth certificate in 2011). Now, it stands to reason those same people want more than a two-page summary of the DOJs Epstein investigation.
And it was Trump who convinced a certain subset of the American electorate to scour video evidence for alleged election night aberrations in 2020. Is it any wonder theyre now spiraling over the missing minute (or minutes, according to Wired) in the video footage the government released of the night Epstein died?
Meanwhile, the stories linking Trump to Epstein just keep growing. On Monday, The New York Times reported that one of Epsteins accusers encouraged the FBI to look into Trump as early as 1996. And The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump once sent Epstein a lewd birthday card, featuring a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman and allusions to their shared secrets. The Journal reported that the card is among the documents DOJ officials reviewed as part of the Epstein investigation. Trump has denied the story, calling the article fake news and has since sued the Journal for defamation.
That controversy prompted some conservatives whod been critical of the Trump administrations approach to Epstein to leap to the presidents defense. But that reprieve may be short-lived. As one Trump ally, Mike Benz, said on Steve Bannons podcast over the weekend, You trained us to go after this issue.
When Microsoft announced that it would start evaluating employees on their AI usage, it sent a clear message: AI fluency is now part of the job.
Business Insider recently reported that Microsoft was asking managers to track employee engagement with internal AI tools like Copilot and consider that usage in performance reviews. This signals that AI skills are becoming as measurable as teamwork or communication.
AI is no longer optional in white-collar jobs. It now ranks alongside email, video calls, and spreadsheets as a workplace essential. However, unlike those tools, AI continues to occupy uncharted territory. Theres no standard for how to use it, no shared definition of what good looks like, and no clear line between acceptable and risky behavior.
The technology is also evolving faster than most companies can keep up with. Many employers are encouraging or requiring the use of AI without offering the training or oversight to match. That mismatch is creating more than confusion. Its leading to misuse, uneven evaluations, and pressure on employees to guess their way through a system that doesnt even exist yet.
Microsofts decision carries weight. When one of the worlds most powerful tech companies sets a precedent, others are likely to follow. But if companies adopt similar policies without fixing the missing guardrails, it can lead to misalignment and dysfunction.
The consequences of throwing employees into the AI deep end
Pushing AI adoption is smart, but leaving employees to figure it out alone isnt. Companies are asking workers to operate fast-changing, complex tools with little support. The results are messy.
Many Gen Z professionals are already improvising in the absence of clear guidance. In a recent Resume Genius survey, 39% of Gen Z workers said theyve automated tasks without their managers approval. Another 28% admitted to submitting AI-generated work without disclosure. Nearly a third used AI in ways that might violate company policy, and 23% reported that using AI at work negatively affected their mental health.
That pattern isnt just limited to Gen Z. A 2025 KPMG study of 48,000 workers across 47 countries found that 57% are hiding their AI use from managers. Most havent received formal training. Two-thirds dont verify AI outputs for accuracy, and more than half have already made AI-related mistakes on the job.
Together, these findings point to workplaces where AI use is rising fast. But employees are making up the rules as they go, often under pressure and without a clear sense of whats safe, ethical, or expected. This kind of uncertainty isnt sustainable, especially as job expectations involve the use of AI. Requiring AI without structure is like handing out calculators in math class without ever teaching equations. Sure, the tools are powerful, but if you want good outcomes out of those tools, you need to teach people how to use them properly.
Productivity is improving, but at what cost?
AI can boost performance. That much is clear. A 2025 Harvard Business Review study found that generative AI improves both productivity and creativity. But it also uncovered a troubling side effect: employees felt less motivated and more disengaged when they used AI to complete tasks they once took pride in doing themselves.
And burnout is rising. According to a July 2025 Upwork survey, employees who report the highest productivity gains from AI are also the most burned out. 88% of top AI users say theyre experiencing burnout, and theyre twice as likely to consider quitting compared to less productive peers. Many also feel disconnected from their companys AI strategy, with 62% reporting that they dont understand how their use of AI aligns with broader goals. It seems that the more AI increases productivity, the more it drains the people who use it.
What happens when the rules are missing
Right now, AI use at work is both essential and undefined. This creates three major risks for companies:
Compliance breakdowns: Without clear policies, employees may expose sensitive data, rely on flawed outputs, or use AI in ways that open the door to legal risks.
Subjective reviews: When using AI effectively becomes part of evaluations, but no standards exist, employees may be graded on personal bias instead of actual performance.
Erosion of trust: Workers are left wondering whats okay and what isnt. Managers dont always know either. This results in second-guessing on all sides, which isnt ideal for anyone.
What businesses need to do when it comes to AI
The companies that thrive in this new era wont be the ones that push AI the fastest. Theyll be the ones that do three things well:
Set clear policies: Define what responsible AI use looks like in your workplace. Spell out what your companies encourage, what you restrict, and where to ask for help.
Offer practical, task-based training: Skip the generic webinars. Teach employees how to apply AI to their actual work, whether thats drafting policy language, summarizing customer feedback, or automating reports.
Build real-time feedback loops: Hold regular check-ins to ask: Whats working? Whats unclear? What needs to evolve? AI is moving fast. Policies need to move with it.
If AI is now part of the job, it needs its own set of guidelines. The companies that succeed wont be the ones who adopt it fastest, but the ones who build the right foundation and teach people how to use it well. Microsoft started the conversation. Now the rest of us need to define what responsible AI adoption looks like and put it into practice.
We still use industrial-age language to describe work: running like clockwork, tightening bolts, and burning the midnight oil. Those phrases made sense when productivity meant turning raw material into widgets. But in an era of climate disruption, AI acceleration, and record-high burnout, a purely mechanical model cant keep up. It drives us to measure hours instead of impact and speed instead of sustainability.
Today, with artificial intelligence reshaping knowledge work and climate urgency redefining corporate responsibility, its time for a new vision of productivityone centered on human and planetary flourishing, not just output. The next evolution of work demands a shift from efficiency to emergence, from silos to systems, and from time-tracking to meaning-making.
From Machines to Living Systems
The metaphors we use drive the systems we design. Treat an organization like a machine and youll optimize for speed, control, and predictable outputs. Treat it like a living systemdynamic, interdependent, and regenerativeand a different design logic emerges.
Heres what changes when we swap gears for genes:
Sense-and-respond edges. Like cell membranes, customer-facing teams become sensors that provide real-time insights back to the core, allowing the entire organization to adapt quickly.
Organizational metabolism. Energy (attention, data, and trust) is metabolized into creativity, innovation, and renewal, not just raw output.
Cultural homeostasis. Healthy feedback loops foster psychological safety and inclusion, ensuring the system remains vibrant even as external conditions change.
Seeing companies this way frees leaders from predicting the future; instead, they cultivate conditions in which emergent intelligence can thrive.
Measuring Vitality, Not Just Time
The hours worked show little correlation with the value created. What matters is employee vitality, the degree to which people feel rested, connected, and empowered to take risks and experiment. Global four-day-week pilots demonstrate the benefits: burnout dropped by 71%, stress decreased by 39%, carbon emissions are noticeably lower, and retention is markedly higher.
Microsoft Japans Work-Life Choice Challenge, a four-day workweek pilot, proves this point. By closing offices every Friday (while maintaining pay), sales per employee increased by roughly 40%, energy use decreased by 23%, and printing costs dropped by 60%. The gains werent the result of heroic hustle; they were the fruit of redesigning the system itself.
Letting AI Amplify Humanity
AI can be the scaffolding for a more human-centric enterprise. Routine analysis that once devoured strategic attention now finishes in minutes. In my advisory work, I have seen leadership teams channel the freed-up bandwidth into scenario building, story crafting, and high-trust stakeholder dialogues. McKinsey estimates that generative AI could lift labor productivity growth by up to 3.4 percentage points per year through 2040. Those gains appear only when roles are deliberately reinvented, not merely automated. This isnt AI versus humans; its AI with humans.
From Linear Growth to Regenerative GROWTH
If the industrial era taught us to measure work in widgets and hours, the new era demands a more integrated lens, one that blends systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and regenerative design. To translate organism thinking into everyday practice, we developed the GROWTH frameworka six-step shift from extractive output to regenerative impact:
G Generate New Metaphors: Swap factory for forest, and assembly line for ecosystem. Fresh language surfaces hidden assumptions and fresh design options.
R Reimagine Human Roles: Let AI handle the rote tasks so people can focus on curiosity, synthesis, and relationship-building.
O Optimize for Human Vitality: Prioritize rest, autonomy, and connection; vital people compound long-term value.
W Work in Ecosystems: Replace silos with cross-functional guilds that share data, talent, and learning loops. Complexity is tamed through connection.
T Track Whole Metrics: Pair profit with carbon avoided, bias reduced, and ideas shipped. What gets measured gets improved.
H Harvest Regeneration: Design projects that return energy to the systememployee upskilling, circular supply chains, and community partnerships.
Questions to Spark the Shift
Changing how we think about productivity begins with changing our questions. Use the prompts below in leadership sessions, strategy retreats, or team huddles to surface hidden assumptions and align around a more human-centered, system-aware approach to work.
Which metaphors dominate our language today, and what behaviors do they reinforce?
Where could AI relieve cognitive or emotional load so humans can do higher-order work?
What value are we creating that isnt yet on a scorecardculture, climate, social trust?
If we trimmed hours by 10%, where would vitality and innovation likely rise?
What small regenerative habitrepair, reuse, reflective pausecould we start this quarter?
We stand at a crossroads. We can cling to mechanical models that view people as cogs and growth as linear output, or we can adopt a living-systems mindset where vitality, adaptability, and shared purpose define productivity. Redesigned productivity isnt about working less; its about working more wisely. The future wont be built by those who clock the longest hours. It will be built by those who design the richest conditions for creativity, connection, and contribution. The machine age is ending; the living-system era has begun. Lets grow accordingly.
Teslas new Supercharger station, which opened on July 21, is nothing like your average stop for gas. The station doubles as a Tesla-branded retro-futuristic dinerand it looks like an ’80s sci-fi movie set crashed in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.
The Tesla Diner, which boasts 80 v4 Supercharger stalls alongside a full menu of greasy finger foods, feels like a jarringly fanciful detour for the brand amidst a year thats been anything but upbeat. As Elon Musks prolonged feud with President Donald Trump rages on, Tesla has suffered a constant rollercoaster of stock price slumps, protests, and poor delivery numbers (overall, the number of cars Tesla delivered in April, May, and June this year was down 13% from the year before). Investors are currently waiting with bated breath for Teslas second-quarter earnings report, which is due today.
For Tesla, the new diner has actually been at least seven years in the making (Elon Musk first teased the concept in 2018). And, while it may seem like it came out of the blue, it shows that the branded diner is officially having a moment. Over the past few years, companies across a diverse range of brand categories have turned to the pop-up diner format as a kind of set piece to offer customers an immersive brand experience. Here are a few.
[Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images]
The branded diner phenomenon: part event, part signifier
As companies clamor for visibility in an increasingly crowded advertising environment, the lifestyle brand has become a buzzword that companies aspire toand the branded diner can be understood as a physical embodiment of that trend.
Lifestyle branding expands a consumer’s brand association beyond a specific core product to a way of living, based on a brand’s values. Brands might achieve this through additional elements like merch (see Erewhons $335 monochromatic sweatsuit), events and activations (see Sweetgreens Sweetlife music festival), and celebrity-backed launches (see DJ Mustard’s recent collab with Heinz), and even in-house coffee shops.
Now, several companies have found that the diner pop-up is the perfect venue to act as a brand signifier, because it puts the brand’s values and aesthetics on a public stage. These kinds of activations, which don’t necessarily push a particular product, also build brand affinity, or positive brand association, with consumers. And that’s something Tesla is in dire need of.
Lil Nas X at the Chanel Lucky Chance Diner in 2023 [Photo: Sean Zanni/WireImage/Getty Images]
How Chanel, Jellycat, and Skims put diners on the menu
In August 2023, Chanel debuted a branded diner, bringing the fashion houses distinct flavor of old money luxury to a ’50s-esque pop-up in New York City decked out in pastel greens and pinks. That same fall, a distinctly different brandJellycat, the purveyor of overpriced-yet-unavoidable stuffed animalsalso brought a branded diner to NYC, centered around the whimsical, innocent world of its fake food plushies. The experience has since taken off to such an extent that Jellycat has opened new locations in London, Paris, and Shanghai, as well as launching an updated breakfast menu at the NYC flagship.
[Photo: Ryan Gregory/Motion Bazaar/Kellenova]
Other brands have similarly turned their diners into an exclusive experience, including Mattels Barbie, which served Barbie-inspired food and drinks at two Malibu Barbie Cafe pop-ups in NYC and Chicago; Cheez-It, which served up childhood nostalgia alongside Cheez-It milkshakes at its ’70s-inspired joint; and Skims, which took over West Hollywoods Mels Drive-In with a specially curated menu.
The branded diner formula seems to follow a few simple rules: Creating a space that feels like another dimension, dropping hints at obscure brand lore, and giving visitors access to products they can’t find anywhere else. Each step is in service of driving press and publicity, which, in turn, helps to boost brand reputation and sales.
[Photo: I RYU/VCG/Getty Images]
The Tesla Diner serves up cyborg fare and futuristic vibes
Teslas diner follows that playbook, turning the EV makers recognizably futuristic branding into an experience that customers can literally see, touch, and eat.
Outside, the buildings curved silver facade is accented with a round entryway and elliptical windows, and inside, its decked out with booth seating fit for a spacecraft. Visitors can grab a burger in a box shaped like a Cybertruck, watch movie clips at a giant drive-in, and munch on popcorn served by an Optimus robot.
One subtle interior design detail you might miss is a low-contrast wall decal that describes the Tesla mission as “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” The mission-as-mural is notable, considering Musk’s recent spat with Trump on the termination of EV tax credits as part of the administration’s budget reconciliation bill, which passed in July. The bill repealed tax credits for things like clean energy, solar panels, and heat pumps, and terminated the popular EV credit, which will now end after September 30 of this year.
[Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images]
A Tesla brand activation first
The diner is the first brand activation of its kind for Tesla, which has historically relied on nontraditional advertising like word-of-mouth endorsements and Twitter promotion from Musk himself. Given that Musk has arguably lost a fair chunk of his credibility with buyers and investors this year, it’s probably a smart move for the brand to turn its attention toward more conventional channels for the time being.
The otherworldly Tesla Diner experience certainly isnt the future of EV charging stations, given that the amount of investment and construction time required would make rapid roll out impossible. However, it might be a way to drum up some more positive brand sentiment during a decidedly gloomy year.
The Tesla Diner isn’t going to unscrew the brand (as Fast Company so succinctly put it) eitherbut we have to admit, this might be the best thing its done all year.
Proton is getting into generative AI with an assistant called Lumo, which it pitches as a more private alternative to ChatGPT.
While Lumo will offer a similar chat-based interface with support for web search and file analysis, Proton says it won’t store records of users’ conversations or use them to train AI. Lumo is available for free on the web and mobile devices, with an optional $13-per-month or $120-per-year subscription for unlimited chats, extended chat history, and larger file uploads.
Andy Yen, Proton’s founder and CEO, says Lumo is a way for people to utilize AI assistants without having to worry about how their conversations could be used.
“I think it’s critically important, given the amount of sensitive information that we are dumping into AI, that there be a private alternative,” Yen says.
Why you might want Protons private AI
It’s already possible to maintain some privacy while using major AI tools. ChatGPT, for instance, offers a setting to opt out of training OpenAI’s models. It also provides a “Temporary Chat” feature for conversations that don’t appear in your chat history or affect what ChatGPT remembers about you. Google’s Gemini also lets users opt out of model training through a Gemini Apps Activity setting.
But those settings are not the default, and neglecting them effectively sends your data into a black box. Once your data’s been fed to a model for training, it can be extremely difficult to remove, and some providers, including Google, will even show a subset of conversations to human reviewers without disclosing when that happens. ChatGPT also warns that its “Temporary Chat” mode still stores conversations for up to 30 days for safety reasons.
[Image: Proton]
“Before we created Lumo, I’d use ChatGPT sometimes,” Yen says. “But then I’d feel really dirty after using it, because who the hell knows what Sam [Altman, OpenAI’s CEO] is going to do with all my data?”
Proton isn’t the first company to offer a more private alternative. The privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo launched its own AI tool, Duck.ai, last year, with a similar promise not to keep a record of users’ conversations or use them for AI training. The difference is that DuckDuckGo has arrangements with major AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and it sends queries to their servers through a proxy that removes personal information. Those AI providers have promised not to use Duck.ai conversations for training purposes.
[Image: Proton]
Proton isn’t involving major AI providers at all. Instead, Proton’s Lumo AI uses a mix of open-source models that the company runs on its own servers. While conversations aren’t end-to-end encrypted, Proton says it doesn’t keep logs of users’ chats, and conversations are decrypted only on users’ devices.
“We’re giving people a very clear guarantee of privacy in that your chat history is never going to be saved, logged, or even accessible to us, because it’s encrypted in a way that we cannot actually decrypt it,” Yen says.
And why you might not
Proton’s privacy-centric approach has trade-offs, both with its other products and with Lumo.
With Proton Mail, the company can’t offer server-based email search because it has no way of accessing users’ email contents. Instead, Proton builds a local search index on each device where the Mail app is stored. I recently moved away from Proton Mail in large part because the search function was too unreliable.
In the case of Proton’s Lumo AI, its capabilities are already more limited than other assistants. It can’t connect to other apps and servicesthough Yen says integrations with Proton’s email service and document editor are possibleand it can’t tailor its responses based on past conversations, akin to ChatGPT’s “Memory” feature. Its mobile app offers voice input, but not a free-flowing voice conversation mode. Proton also hasn’t disclosed which open-source models it’s using, and they may not be on par with state-of-the-art models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
[Image: Proton]
Yen says he hasn’t noticed any issues in his own use of Lumo, but acknowledges that some trade-offs are likely.
“If you want to do things in a privacy-first way, there are going to be sometimes compromises that have to be made,” he says. “It’s a new way of doing AI, newground that we have to break.”
What it means for Proton
For Proton as an organization, a foray into generative AI could also make some users uneasy.
Proton has always prided itself on running a sustainable business that doesn’t rely on venture capital or public shareholders, and it now operates as a nonprofit. Generative AI, meanwhile, is famously a money pit, and like other AI providers, Proton will be offering Lumo access for free.
More broadly, AI competes on some level with human creativity and employment, and it uses vast amounts of energy. Proton has already faced a backlash from some of its users after adding AI writing tools to its document editor, then invoked a similar backlash days later with a foray into cryptocurrency wallets.
[Image: Proton]
Yen’s feeling is that AI represents the future of the web and isn’t going away, so Proton should offer a private alternative. While Proton will likely lose money at the outset, that was also the case when it entered the VPN and email businesses. Yen believes the organization can operate AI efficiently and can always adjust what it offers for free if the losses pile up.
“We believe strongly that this is the right thing to do for the world at this moment, and we’re going to pursue it even if it ends up costing us money,” Yen says. “But of course we’re not going to compromise Proton overall financially.”
