The difference between OpenAI and Anthropic has never been clearer. OpenAI is constantly in the news with a new consumer app or feature, and is being billed as the next great consumer tech platform. Most recently it made news by offering a social network around its Sora image generator, and even says it plans to allow NSFW content on ChatGPT. Anthropic, meanwhile, has chosen a different path. The company stresses that because it gets most of its revenues from businesses and developers, its not trying to capture the mass market, and its not terribly concerned about how long users spend on its platform every day.
We are interested in our consumer users to the degree they are doing work, solving problems in their life, says Anthropic design chief Joel Lewenstein during an interview with Fast Company this week. Because we’re not interested in passive consumption and image generation and video generationwe just sort of have ruled those out from a mission perspective . . .
Anthropic was famously founded by a group of OpenAI execs who defected in 2021 to found a more safety-focused AI lab. That focus hasnt changed. Our interests are in making things that are beneficial while minimizing the risks of those same products because everything has a double-edged sword, Lewenstein says. We see . . . helping people grow and expand and create and solve problems as being the right risk-reward tradeoff.
The San Francisco-based startup believes that work-first focus will ultimately win out as AI eventually shows its profoundest effects in the lives of businesses, not consumers. At a conference Wednesday, Anthropics cofounder and policy director Jack Clark says Anthropic will eventually overtake OpenAI because of its enterprise focus, its strong technological roadmap, and because its research is accelerating faster than its rivals.
All of this is reflected in the look and feel of its Claude chatbotthe main entry to access Anthropics powerful modelsbut also in its attitude.
Not warm and fuzzy
When it comes to work, Claude is pleasant, even empathetic, but seriousand it comes with a free BS detector. Sycophancy in AI models, after all, has become a serious problem. OpenAI recently admitted having to push an update to its GPT-4o model to fix its sycophantic behavior. And its CEO Sam Altman stated in a post on Oct. 14 that users will be able to reintroduce that personality if they liked it. The model reportedly had a habit of praising or validating user statements even when they were delusional or concerning (one user claimed a divine identity). Some analysts believe that such behavior in a model is more than a bug, but a choice made by the model maker in the interest of getting people to use the platform more.
A sycophantic chatbot in a work setting can act something like a yes-man, embracing and offering to further develop even the worst business ideas. This can lead to a range of reputational and financial harms, not to mention seriously damaging trust in the AI.
Sychophantic AI could be especially dangerous to Anthropic, which wants its user to use Claude not just for quick content generation, but as a collaborator or thinking partner to do serious work. In order to do that, the user needs to build confidence and trust in the reasonableness of the AI. So Anthropic trained the models behind Claude to push back on logically suspect thoughts from the user. Lewenstein says his company worked especially hard to train this into its newest model, Claude Haiku 4.5, which it says is the most sycophancy-resistant model available in its size.
The artifacts shift
The idea of Claude as collaborator has directly impacted the chatbots user interface. With the introduction of Artifacts last year, Anthropic added a highly functional workspace around the chatbot. The idea of the Artifacts UX is to show a working draft of the project the user and the AI are working on in real time, within a panel at the right side of the interface. This might be a document draft, a chart, or a code preview, which the user can inspect, click, highlight, and suggest changes. The user can tell Claude to write something in a new way, or integrate a new idea from an uploaded PDF or text file.
I cannot overstate how big of a shift that is, and [it] anchors a lot of the way that we think, Lewenstein says. By this he means that Artifacts encourages the user to think of Claude as a smart work companion, rather than just a content generator. It creates this sense of you’re making something alongside Claude, Lewenstein says. We’re not just giving you the answer. We’re not having you just download it and we’re done . . . Rather, the human and chatbot enter a dialog where they gradually shape the output into what the user wants.
Lewenstein acknowledges that while AI tools have a growing number of power users, a significant percentage of users have yet to scratch the surface of whats possible. He says a major challenge of the user interface design is to invite people to Claudes features more fully. Artifacts can show users their options so that they can proceed in an experimental way, learning as they go. And, as of last month, Claude now can automatically remember past chats, so it might proactively ask if the user wants to include some theme or piece of data (perhaps a relevant piece of proprietary product research or a business plan) its encountered before.
I think the more things that Claude is able to doClaude can now make PowerPoints and make Excel documentsthe more things that it makes, the more important it is that there is some space that you can actually see and engage with that content, Lewenstein says.
The reason Claude can make presentations and spreadsheets is because of skills, or packets of knowledge that Claude can call up when the user needs them. On Thursday, a day after announcing its new Claude Haiku 4.5 model, the company announced that Claude users can now make their own agent skills.” If a user worked with Claude to create a presentation, for example, and called in a number of style sheets and marketing guidelines to do it, they can package all that work up in a skill and use it again the next time they need to do a presentation.
In essence, Claude is enabling a user to create a kind of agent that has expertise and experience working with the user on a specific task.
Agents
AI agents can reason and act autonomously to do things like fetch data, perform actions, create plans. OpenAI recently announced a new tool called Agent Builder that provides a simple, graphical interface to create agents, define their workflows, and pull in tools the agent can use (a safety guardrail tool, for example). OpenAI says this could speed up the process for developers, and reduce the need to build agents from scratch.
Anthropic believes that the right UX for building and managing agents depends on the type of user and their level of expertise. When developers within businesses build agents, Lewenstein explains, they write them as code, and Anthropic provides them a number of governance and security ools to help manage them. Theres no abstraction layer that represents the parts as objects that can be dragged around on a screen (at least not yet).
Lewenstein says consumers, prosumers, and average knowledge workers usually just want to describe a goal they want the agent to achieve, then let the AI carry out the necessary functions behind the scenes to make it happen. That’s the direction Anthropic is pursuing now. Whether users even want to think about agents as a concept remains an open question, he says.
Still, Anthropic is exploring several different kinds of agent approaches within Claude, some of them tightly integrated with chat, some of them less so. The focus is on what people are trying to accomplish, Lewenstein says. Anthropic will provide whatever is needed in any form factor to achieve that, and the company isn’t wedded to any particular UX paradigm yet. He cites the old marketing adage: Users dont really want a quarter-inch drill bit, they want a quarter-inch hole.
Claude of the future
Right now, users are still trying to understand how AI agents can fit into their overall workflows. In a work setting they may be skeptical that the agent will produce reliable, actionable work. They will naturally want to know a lot about how the agent is doing its work, how it’s getting from a directive to a result. Lewenstein says that Claude now lets users click to see all the steps the agent (powered by the model) took to reach a result. Building that into the UX, he says, wasnt a terribly challenging problem.
But, over time, Claude will become more autonomous and capable of working unsupervised for longer periods of time (already the Claude Sonnet 4.5 model can work by itself for 30 hours). This could create challenges for the UX, which will have to show an audit of every step in the work that was done. We have these components in the UI which we’ve been working on for the last couple of years, which is a short little summary and then if you expand it, it actually shows you, Here’s everything I did for the last X hours, so that you can really build up an understanding but also a trust.
In the first phases of AI agents being used within enterprises, users will have to think through what tasks they can delegate to agents, and what tasks to keep for themselves. Future versions of Claude, Lewenstein says, might help the user understand this. I think this is the future of where a lot of these products need to gounderstanding someone’s workflow enough, [and] its own capabilities enough, to proactively say, I will take this work off your plate and I will leave you with this thing, and that should feel very empowering to people, Lewenstein says.
An AI for work
Even for its consumer users, Anthropic is interested in helping them do work, not pass the time. So the same Claude user interface works pretty well for both personal and business use cases, Lewenstein says. He says consumers use Claude for a lot of personal things that might as well be work thingscomplex problems like planning a vacation or navigating a complicated renovation. We see consumers or people who are not doing it for their employer finding a lot of benefit in basically all the same basic features that we have [in Claude] for work.
Eighty percent of Anthropics revenues come from enterprise customers. After crossing $1 billion a year in annualized revenue run rate (ARR) at the beginning of 2025, the company expects to hit $9 billion in ARR by the end of the year, Reuters reports, and then $26 billion in 2026.
While OpenAI doesnt usually talk about its revenue mix, its CFO Sarah Friar said in 2024 that the company made 75% of its money from consumer subscriptions. As of June 2025, OpenAIs ARR was reportedly $10 billion (excluding licensing revenue from Microsoft and large one-time deals). Analysts expect OpenAI to reach about $12.7 billion in total revenue in 2025.
OpenAI has announced that starting in December, ChatGPT will allow the generation of erotic content for verified adult users. At the same time, Elon Musks xAI has launched Grok Imagine, an image-generation system that already includes an NSFW mode for producing explicit imagery.
None of this should surprise anyone. Desire, fantasy, and pornography have always been powerful engines of technological adoption. Photography, video, the internet, and even online payments all grew, in part, because of it. The interesting question is not about sex: its about what these decisions reveal about the kind of humanity Big Tech companies are shaping.
Desire as a managed service
This is not about prudishness or panic. Sexuality will, of course, find its digital expressions. Whats unsettling is not the presence of eroticism in technology, but its industrialized management.
The difference between eroticism and algorithmic consumption is the same as that between experience and dopamine: one is built through relationship; the other is dosed from the outside. By integrating sexuality into large language models and visual generators, platforms are not liberating desire: they are administering it.
They decide which fantasies are acceptable, which bodies exist and which dont, what limits imagination deserves, and which ones are preemptively censored. The promise is freedom; the result is regulation of pleasure.
From exploration to domestication
When excitement, tenderness, and curiosity are mediated through an interface, our relationship with our bodies and with others changes. This isnt moralism. Its behavioral architecture.
Algorithms learn what attracts us, replicate it, reinforce it, and turn it into dependence. Users stop exploring desire; they repeat it. And repetition, safe, comfortable, and risk-free, becomes a form of domestication.
Theres no need to manipulate people with ideology when you can condition them with pleasure. Constant stimulation is a far more effective form of control than censorship ever was.
A new vector of capture
Its no coincidence that this expansion arrives just as large language models mature and corporations compete to keep users inside their closed ecosystems.
Sex, in this context, becomes just another vector of attention capture, a way to deepen the emotional bond between humans and machines.
The goal is no longer for AI to respond, but to accompany, excite, soothe, and replace. The fantasy isnt companionship: its containment. An artificial partner designed never to challenge, never to refuse, never to feel.
This is not technological liberation. Its the automation of comfort.
From entertainment to managed desire
As I said a couple of weeks ago, weve been here before. From social networks to gaming, digital entertainment has followed the same logic of permanent stimulation. What changes now is the terrain: its no longer about free time: its about desire itself, that core where emotion and biology meet.
Turning desire into a managed service run by algorithms is the final step toward a docile humanity, one in which even intimacy becomes a subscription.
Digital sex vs. algorithmic sex
The point is not to moralize about pornography: its to understand what it means to hand over control of erotic imagination, one of humanitys most powerful creative forces, to closed systems that do not explain how they learn, what they filter, or whom they serve.
The problem is not digital sex. Its algorithmic sex. Not pleasure, but control.
Once these systems learn to measure, adjust, and stimulate desire, free will becomes just another optimization parameter.
The new anesthesia
Behind this apparent liberalization of content lies a simpler, more effective strategy: keep us busy, satisfied, and distracted.
Not indoctrinated: anesthetized.
A form of emotional livestock, fed by impulses engineered on distant servers. Algorithmic sheep: artificially happy, productive, and unable to tell the difference between genuine desire and manufactured stimulus.
People are fascinated with leadership, and rightly so. After all, most of the big things that happen in the world (both good and bad) can be directly traced to decisions, behaviors, or choices of those who are in charge: presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, executives, and anyone tasked with turning a group of people into a high-performing unit, coordinating human activity, and shaping the impact institutions have on society, all the way down to individuals.
In line, scientific research shows that up to 40% of the variability in team and organizational performance can be accounted for by the leaderin other words, who we put in charge, or who emerges as leaders, drastically influences the fate of others.
This begs the obvious question of how and why some people become leaders in the first place. Furthermore, few psychological questions have intrigued the general public more than the question of whether nature or nurture is responsible for shaping and creating leaders: so, are leaders born or made?
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If you want the quick and short answer, it is YES. Or if you prefer, a bit of both (which is generally the case in psychology).
Lets start with the nurture part, which is the one more likely to resonate with popular or laypeoples views . . .
(1) Environment shapes character and competenceOur early environments (especially during childhood) play a profound role in molding the attitudes, motivations, and habits that underpin leadership. Supportive parents, good schooling, early exposure to responsibility, access to a stimulating wider community, and opportunities to practice decision-making all nurture proto-leadership skills such as conscientiousness, self-control, curiosity, assertiveness, and empathy. On the flip side, adversity can also build resilience, independence, and determination. In other words, leadership potential often germinates in the soil of early experiences, but its impossible to accurately predict the direction of the development, which is what makes life interesting and fun. At the same time, things arent random, and science-based predictions will work more often than not (on average, for most people, we can improve from a 50% guesswork to around 80% hit rate).
(2) Expertise legitimizes leadershipNo one wants to follow a leader who doesnt know what theyre talking about. Thats why domain-specific knowledge is essential for legitimacy. You cant lead a tech team without understanding technology, or a marketing department without grasping customers and branding. Expertise breeds credibility, and credibility breeds followership in turn. This is why great football coaches will probably fail as corporate CEOs, and why even the best military leaders may not be adequate startup founders. While charisma or confidence may get you noticed, sustained leadership requires demonstrable competence. This is learned, not inherited, because its about harnessing the social proof that makes you a credible expert in the eyes of others (and I mean other experts not novices!).
(3) Personality evolves through life experienceTraits like curiosity, openness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness (all strong predictors of leadership effectiveness) are partly malleable. They evolve in response to life experiences, feedback, and learning. The so-called bright side of personality (ambition, sociability, diligence) and the dark side (narcissism, impulsivity, arrogance) both reflect a mix of innate dispositions and environmental reinforcement. The first decade of life is particularly critical, but development continues throughout adulthood. So while personality sets the stage, experience writes the script.
Now for the less popular, but equally important nature side of the debate.
(4) Leadership is partly heritableBehavioral genetics (especially twin studies) show that leadership is not purely learned. Roughly 30 to 60% of the variance in who becomes a leader can be attributed to genetic factors. Rich Arvey and colleagues at the National University of Singapore found that identical twins, even when raised apart, are significantly more likely to occupy leadership roles than fraternal twins. This doesnt mean leadership is predetermined, but it suggests some individuals are born with psychological and biological predispositions, like higher energy, extraversion, or risk tolerance, that increase their odds of taking charge.
(5) Intelligence and personality are strongly geneticTwo of the most powerful predictors of leadership (cognitive ability and personality) are themselves highly heritable. Robert Plomins decades of research suggest that around 50% of the variance in both IQ and personality traits can be traced to genetics. Since these traits strongly predict who emerges as a leader and how effective they are, we can reasonably infer that part of leadership is literally in our DNA. Brains, not just behavior, matter: smarter, more emotionally stable individuals tend to make better decisions, handle stress, and inspire confidence; all qualities that attract followers.
(6) The unfair advantages of birthFinally, theres the uncomfortable truth that social class, privilege, and demographic factors like gender, race, and attractiveness (each partly determined by who you are born to) also shape leadership opportunities. Tall, good-looking, well-spoken individuals from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be perceived as leadership material, regardless of actual competence. These advantages arent earned, yet they strongly affect leadrship trajectories. Nature determines the lottery ticket; society decides how valuable it is, even if this is arbitrary and unfair. To be sure, societies that dislike this fact (including most Western democracies) are seeing big decreases in upward social mobility. For instance, in the U.S., approximately 50% of a fathers income position is inherited by his son (in Norway and Canada, the figure is less than 20%). With wealth and money come advantages and access to leadership positions, so while nature isnt destiny, it certainly inhibits or amplifies opportunities.
In sum, the science of leadership suggests that it is both born and made. Genetics endows us with certain predispositions (intelligence, temperament, even physical appearance) that make leadership more or less likely. And our socioeconomic status and parental resources at birth shape the nature of whats possible, or at least likely. But environment, learning, and experience are the catalysts that turn those predispositions into performance. Leadership, in other words, is a potential meeting opportunity. And while we cant control our genetic hand, we can absolutely learn to play it better.
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When samurai warriors went into battle in 16th century Japan, their swords included a piece of hidden art. Within the tsuba, the hand guard at the bottom of the blade, metal smiths carefully crafted beautiful and complex designs, including flowers, animals, and landscapes.
[Image: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has one of the largest collections of Japanese art in the United States in its permanent collection, including hundreds of tsubas. It has just collaborated with the fine jewelry designer Monica Rich Kosann to create a collection of necklaces inspired by three tsuba designsa crane, a turtle, and a butterflyto introduce these ancient works of art back into the modern world. Kosann’s pieces, which cost between $925 and $3,050, are made from gold and silver, and one piece is encrusted with diamonds. They will be sold at the MFA as well as Kosann’s store.
[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]
Kosann carefully went through every single one of the MFA’s tsubas and settled on these three creatures. She was particularly drawn to their symbolism, which she learned about as she spoke with the museum’s curators. The crane symbolized good luck and the turtle symbolized a long life, both of which a samurai would hope for as they went into the battlefield.
But warriors also realized that they might never make it home alive. “The butterfly symbolized a short life, but a full, glorious one,” says Kosann. “I find that very moving, and something that many people can relate to.”
[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]
Sarah Thompson, curator of Japanese prints at the MFA, says that most of the tsubas that have survived are from the 16th century, when Japan was engaged in a lengthy civil war. Metal smiths would create these tsubas out of precious metals, often iron combined with two alloys that are unique to Japanese metalwork, shibuichi (which is copper blended with silver) and shakuto (which is copper blended with gold).
Over time, these pieces became status symbols, signaling the importance of the warrior and his family. “As far as I know, the design of the tsubas were personally selected by their owners,” says Thompson. “And because they could be put together [on the sword] in different ways, you might have several that you could change.”
[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]
Kosann was drawn to this project because she has built her business on creating jewelry based on storytelling and symbolism. When she launched her eponymous jewelry brand two decades ago, she focused on creating lockets inspired by those she found at vintage markets, since these were a way for a person to tell a story about their life and the loved ones who have shaped them.
[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]
Today, the brand continues to be known for its lockets, but Kosann has expanded to include many other pieces of jewelry designed to tell stories about the wearer’s identity. For instance, she has a collection of pendants inspired by fables and fairy tales. There’s one that features a red apple, which appears everywhere from the biblical story of the Garden of Eden to the story of Snow White.
She reimagines it as a symbol of empowerment. And there’s another one that features the tortoise and the hare, made from green tourmalne and white diamonds. “The moral and meaning in mythology never get old,” says Kosann. “So many people feel like they’re behind in the journey of life, but the tortoise and the hare reminds us that slow and steady often wins the race.”
Her collection for the MFA is an extension of this work. In some ways, the project is a departure for her, because she’s inspired by a form of art that was designed for men who would then carry it into the very masculine space of the battlefield. She believes the symbolism within these tsubas are relevant to the modern woman, who might want to embody the spirit of a fearless warrior. “I think about the butterfly,” says Kosann. “It represents transformation and beauty, and how it’s not the length of your life that matters, but whether you lived it well.”
A new music startup created an instrument that can turn your microwave, electric toothbrush, and baby monitor into hauntingly beautiful music. Its branding converts all of those fascinating outputs into an infinite series of Victorian-inspired patterns.
Eternal Research is a brand founded by musician Alexandra Fierra, and its dedicated to unlocking the existing music hidden in everyday things,” per its website. The companys debut product is called the Demon Box. This fully analog device uses an intricate array of sensors to detect the electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) of almost any electronic device around it, and then turns those EMFs into music. The brand hit its funding goal on Kickstarter in a matter of hours, and the first Demon Boxes (which cost $999 a pop) are set to ship in November.
The Demon Box blends the study of music-making with modern technologyand for its launch it needed a brand to match. The New York-based agency Cotton Design was tasked with creating a visual identity that an infinitely audio-reactive generative model that transforms sound into historically accurate Victorian patterns. Like the instrument itself, the brand eschews convention to create something unique.
[Image: courtesy Cotton Design]
A music brand inspired by vampires, high fashion, and the Victorian era
When Talia Cotton, founder and creative director at Cotton Design, first met with Fierra, she felt as if Fierra was on another frequency than the rest of the world.
Fierras approach to music is all about craft, experimentation, and the intricacy of the sound that exists in the everyday world. Her vision for Eternal Researchs branding combined that attention to detail with a mysterious, almost vampiric visual sensibility.
[Image: courtesy Cotton Design]
She kept on sending us these examples, Cotton says. She sent us an empty unboxing experience for YSL, because she said there was something special about that unboxing experience. There was a box, that held an envelope, that held a scarfall these different layers of the brand that she thought were very thoughtful. She also sent us an old collectors edition VHS tape of [Bram Stokers] Dracula in a coffin-shaped box.
These small pieces of Fierras inner world slowly started to piece together for Cottons team, which included coder Noah Schwadron and project manager Sewon Bae. But there was one source of inspiration that became a kind of north star for the brand.
[Image: courtesy Cotton Design]
[Fierra] is a collector of old books from the Victorian era, Cotton says. She has a very deep appreciation for the craft that is associated with that period in time, which is defined by ornamentation, and by the careful, slow process of making these outputs. Each Victorian pattern was unique.
Eventually, Cotton realized that Fierras fascination with Victorian design sensibilities was the perfect basis for Eternal Researchs brandthe challenge was to figure out how to pull off an identity for a modern music brand company based on inspiration from the 19th century.
[Image: courtesy Cotton Design]
How Eternal Research pulled brand inspiration from A24
Cotton describes Eternal Researchs brand as geared toward two different consumer bases: one who is just discovering the brand, and another who is an avid follower prepared to pay the sizable $999 cost of the Demon Box. To appeal to both of those consumer segments, Cottons team needed to balance a strong element of personalization with a sense of approachability.
This was really tricky for us, because on one hand there was the ornament, the detail, the special-feeling experience, and on the other hand, [Fierra] was very gung ho about making this feel open; like anybody could understand it, Cotton says.
For consumers that are just discovering Eternal Research, Cottons team took inspiration from brands outside the music tech space with cult followings, like the movie studio A24which Cotton says pulls some of its mystique from seeming almost unbranded. Similarly, Eternal Researchs most frequently used assets, including its logo and sans serif wordmark, are kept simple and unornamented to invite new customers to learn more.
[Image: courtesy Cotton Design]
But as fans of the brand dig deeper, the branding storypulls them into a more and more expressive world. That world is anchored by a generative model, coded from the ground up by Schwadron, that turns any sound input into a Victorian-inspired ornamental design. These patterns, which can be made in an infinite array of combinations, appear everywhere from the brands social media content to its website, letterheads, and packagingand the model is available online for anyone to use.
[Image: courtesy Cotton Design]
A brand that turns sounds into Victorian patterns
Cotton Designs audio-reactive design relies on historical sources to create period-accurate Victorian patterns. The team sifted through hundreds of vintage book covers, illustrations, and re-creations to understand how these patterns were constructed and which motifs recurred most commonlydown to the angles of individual curves and the kind of floral patterns that were most popular.
The base of the generative model can be understood as a kind of map. Each map is composed of a grid and a series of circles, which tell the model where the patterns lines should go. Every time the model is reloaded, it creates a random base map. From there, it takes in a sound input and interprets not only the inputs volume, but also its frequency, texture, and timbre.
These sound qualities are digested by the model and correlated to more than 30 different pattern parameters, like line density, length, animation speed, the number of floral accents, and more. With all of these layers stacked on top of each other, the outcome is a model that can literally make an infinite number of sound-based Victorian illustrations.
While audio-reactive designs have become more popular in recent years, this project is perhaps one of the most expressive, detailed applications of the technique to date. Paired with the music generated by the Demon Box, the brand is like an otherworldly symphony for both the ears and eyes.
In 1998, five kids met in a cafe in Belgrade. Still in their 20s, they were, to all outward appearances, nothing special. They werent rich, or powerful; they didnt hold important positions or have access to significant resources. Nevertheless, that day, they conceived a plan to overthrow their countrys brutal Milo¹eviæ regime.
The next day, six friends joined them and they became the 11 founders of the activist group Otpor. A year later, Otpor numbered a few hundred members and it seemed that Milo¹eviæ would be the dictator for life. A year after that, Otpor had grown to 70,000 and the Bulldozer Revolution brought down the once-unshakable dictator.
Thats how change works: in phases. Every transformational idea starts out weak, flawed, and untested. It needs a quiet period to work out the kinks. Through trial and error, you see what works, begin to gain traction, and eventually have the opportunity to create lasting change. If youre serious about change, you need to learn the phases of change and manage them wisely.
The Emergent Phase
Managers launching a new initiative often seek to start with a bang. They work to gain approval for a sizable budget as a sign of institutional commitment. They recruit high-profile executives, arrange a big kick-off meeting, and look to move fast, gain scale, and generate some quick wins. All of this is designed to create a sense of urgency and inevitability.
Yet this approach usually backfires. Every idea starts out weak and untested. You might think that you have a sound concept. You may have even seen it work before and achieve impressive results. But until the idea has gained traction in your current context, you dont really know anything. Youre shooting in the dark.
Thats why in the emergent phase, you want to move deliberately. For example, in his efforts to reform the Pentagon, Colonel John Boyd began every initiative by briefing a group of collaborators he called the Acolytes, who would help hone and sharpen the ideas. Only once the ideas had been subjected to intense scrutiny would he move on to congressional staffers, elected officials, and the media.
The truth is that change is never top-down or bottom-up, but always moves side-to-side. You will find the entire spectrumfrom strong supporters to committed opponentsat every level. Thats why you need to go to where the energy already is, not try to create and maintain it by yourself. Find people who are as enthusiastic and committed as you are.
Thats what was achieved in that cafe in Belgrade. They didnt have a movement, resources, or anything more than the rough contours of a plan. But they had a core team that was committed to shared values and a shared purpose. Thats where every change effort needs to start.
The Engagement Phase
Once you have your core team in place, youll want to start mobilizing others who might be open to joining your effort. The tipping point for change in most contexts is only 10%20% participation, so you dont need to convince everyone at once. You want to attract, not try to overpower, scare, or shame people into bending to your will.
The first thing you want to do is to identify a Keystone Change, which has a clear and tangible goal, involves multiple stakeholders, and paves the way for future change. When we work with organizations, we always encourage the teams we work with to make it smaller, until their Keystone Change is laser focused on one process, one product, one office, or one . . . something.
Another key strategy is to design a Co-Optable Resource that others can use to achieve their own goals, but also further the change you’re trying to build. A good Co-Optable Resource must be both accessibleno mandates or incentivesand impactful, meaning that it needs to deliver practical value and be scalable.
For example, in a cloud transformation at Experian, the CIO didnt simply mandate the shift, which he had full authority to do, but instead started with internal APIs, which dont carry the same risks and wouldnt encounter much resistance. That was the Keystone Change. Then he set up an API Center of Resistance to help product managers who wanted to build cloud-based products.
Whats key during the engagement phase is that you are working to empower rather than to persuade. By helping others to achieve things that they want to, you can build traction and set the conditions for genuine transformation.
The Victory Phase
Once you have shown that change can work with a successful keystone project and begun to attract a following, you will begin to gain traction. This is when you need to start planning for the victory phase, which is often the most dangerous phase, because thats when you are most likely to encounter vicious opposition.
Once the opponents of change see that genuine is actually possible, thats when the knives come out. They will see that genuine transformation is possible and will seek to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. Thats what you need to be prepared for, because it almost always happens.
The good news is that these efforts are usually desperate and clumsy. They often backfire. Whats key is to not take the bait and get sucked into a conflict, although that will be tempting. When someone viciously attacks something we believe passionately in and have worked hard for, it offends our dignity and we want to lash out.
Whats important to remember is that lasting change is always built on common ground. So you want to focus on shared values in how you communicate and how you design dilemmas. You will never convince everybody, nor do you need to, but you do need to create a sense of safety around change and show that you want to make it work for all who are affected by it.
Protect Your Ugly Baby
Pixar founder Ed Catmull once wrote that early on, all of our movies suck. The trick, he explained, is to go beyond the initial germ of an idea and ut in the hard work it takes to get something to go from suck to not-suck. He called early ideas ugly babies, because they start out, awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete.
Theres something romantic about the early stages of an idea, but its important to remember that, much like Catmulls ugly babies, your idea is never going to be as weak and vulnerable as those early days before you get a chance to work out the inevitable kinks. You need to be careful not to overexpose it or it may die an early death. You need to protect your ugly baby, not shove it out into the world and hope it can fend for itself.
You need to resist the urge to jump right in with a big launch. Change follows a predictable, nonlinear pattern often described as an S curve. It starts out slowly, because it’s unproven and flawed. Few will be able to see its potential and even fewer will be willing to devote their energy and resources to it.
Early on, you need to focus on a relatively small circle who can help your ugly baby grow. These should be people you know and trust, or at least have indicated some enthusiasm for the concept. If you feel the urge to persuade, you have the wrong people. As you gain traction, identify flaws, and make adjustments, your idea will grow stronger and you can accelerate.
Large-scale change cannot be rushed. It is not a communication problem and wordsmithing snappier slogans wont get you very far. It is a collective action problem. People will only adopt it when they see others around them adopt it. Thats why you need to approach it carefully. Give it the respect it deserves, and it can work wonders for you.
I just got back from a week on the beach. The water was crystal clear, the sky blue, and my butt was in a lounge chair all day. I certainly enjoyed myself and caught up on a ton of sleep. But did I return to work today bursting with ideas and fresh energy?
If Im honest, not really.
It feels more like I left my brain sunning itself on the seaside. Meanwhile, I need to dig myself out from under a mountain of work and complete my massive back-to-school to-do list.
Where did I go wrong in my vacation planning? If I was looking to maximize floating time and the amount of tasty fish I ate, nowhere. But according to psychology, as much as I enjoyed my break, I also fell prey to one of the most common vacation myths. Like many people, I assumed that sloth is the most effective way to unwind and refresh.
I would have been better off if I had swapped my swimsuit for a skillcation instead.
Whats a skillcation?
First, whats a skillcation? Exactly what it sounds likea vacation dedicated to either learning a new skill or improving an existing one. This could range from a low-key guided birdwatching getaway or a sweaty boot camp to a week of cooking classes in a bucolic setting.
Consulting agency Future Partners has found that 39% of travelers are drawn to such trips, Thrillist reports. HuffPost claims skillcations are a trend thats gaining popularity.
Ben Martin, of hospitality strategy firm HKS, told HuffPost that learning-focused travel satisfies a desire for personal growth and cultural engagement. And indeed one way to look at the skillcation trend is as yet another way the productivity and personal growth-focused ethos of work life is seeping into our off-hours.
But theres another, more positive way to look at the rising interest in holidays that promise to teach you to learn to knit or sail or identify songbirds. Science suggests this type of travel actually satisfies a deep psychological need. This ultimately leaves us more refreshed than bobbing in the sea for a week.
The psychological benefits of skillcations
With the world and the economy feeling precarious these days, just about all of us are stressed. Recently, best-selling author Adam Grant had fellow psychologist Sabine Sonnentag of the University of Mannheim in Germany on his podcast Worklife to discuss the best way to reset and truly refresh our brains.
When we feel like were low on energy and inspiration, its natural enough to think you need rest, Sonnentag explained.
Relaxation is what many people think when they think of recovery, unwinding, maybe doing nothing. Just relaxing. And so in terms of more physiological processes, it means a low sympathetic activation. So, lower blood pressure, lower heart rate, she said.
There is certainly nothing wrong with a little rest. Some is, of course, essential for health and happiness. But that is not the only avenue to becoming recovered, Sonnentag stresses.
What often works better than rest to leave us feeling psychologically refreshed? Something called mastery experiences. These are activities that are challenging. So for instance, learning a new language or having a hobby that really asks to step outside ones comfort zone, Sonnentag says.
Things exactly like what you experience on a skillcation, in other words.
Why mastery experiences are so refreshing
Signing up for a skillcation might help you improve your pickleball game or Italian cooking skills. But it will also get you physically moving and push your boundaries. Together that is likely to promote a deeper sense of refreshment for a number of reasons that Grant and Sonnentag explore together.
Getting physically tired and then sleeping soundly after is often more physically restful than fitfully snoozing between reapplications of sunscreen. Its also likely to more thoroughly distract you from whatever is stressing you out in your life. You cant fret about work while youre learning to rock climb. But you can as you go through the pages of a trashy beach read. (My personal experience affirms this is true.)
But perhaps more important, mastery experiences remind us just how resilient and capable we are. You take a suntan back from your average beach vacation. You return from a skillcation armed with a sense of achievement and competence. Which is more likely to give you greater energy and clarity when you get back home?
Learn your way to real relaxation
As time use expert and author Laura Vanderkam wrote in her book What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: Other kinds of workbe it exercise, a creative hobby, hands-on parenting, or volunteeringwill do more to preserve your zest for Mondays challenges than complete vegetation.
Whats true of weekends, its true of vacations, too.
Far be it for me to say you shouldnt visit a tropical paradise for your next vacation if thats what you want to do. Ill always want some beach time in my life, personally. But if supposedly restful vacations somehow havent been leaving you feeling rested, maybe its time to try something different.
A skillcation might be just what your brain needs to feel focused and fired up again.
Jessica Stillman
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. 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.
The one practical career security no one can take from you is control. Ive built my career on five core mindsets that helped me transition to being responsible for my own career success. Its how I run my professional life. Careers are not just built. Theyre owned. That’s how you become indispensable. Your career isnt a ladder. Its a business. And you are in charge. Most people treat it like a job. I treat it like an asset. Every skill, every project, every task matters. If you want leverage, freedom, and a career that works for you, these mindsets can help you take your career to another level. They can determine your choices, growth, and freedom. And change how you see your own value.
1. The ‘company of one’ mindset
You are the CEO of you. A one-person corporation. Your skills are your products. Your personal brand is your marketing department. Every project you take, every email you send, and every skill you learn is either an asset or a liability for your company: you. Think of meetings as pitches, tasks as investments, and mistakes as expensive lessons. When you walk into a meeting, youre not just a participant; youre a service provider. That mindset is how you change from what can my company do for me to what value did I provide today? And how does it strengthen my portfolio?
Every action or decision compounds; every skill stacks in your favour. You cant outsource responsibility. Youre the company. Most people wait for promotions or recognition. Build leverage. Taking responsibility for your career success starts with becoming the boss of you. And treating it seriously, like your life depends on it. Thats how you create leverage.
2. The ‘permanent beta’ mindset
The most dangerous phrase in the modern career is, Ive arrived. The minute you think youre finished, youre obsolete. Your knowledge has a half-life. Thats why Im always in a state of permanent beta: always testing, learning, and upgrading. You dont have to disrupt your career to do this.
Micro-learning can help you adapt a permanent beta mindset. Listen to a podcast on a new industry trend. Take a weekend course on a topic that will still matter a few years down the line. Read books that challenge your present career mindset. Your value is directly tied to your ability to adapt and grow. Stagnation is a choice. A bad one.
3. The ‘philosophy for career’ mindset
Without basic values for life, you are just pursuing the next paycheck and burning out. What does it all mean for you? You need to answer the why. Why do you do what you do? What are you working towards? What unique combination of interests makes you come alive? For me, its curiosity. The desire to learn from great thinkers, pass on that knowledge. And making a career out of it. It guides what projects I take, what I write, and who I work with.
If you dont know your why, someone else will rent your time to serve theirs. When you have that anchor, rejection from one client or a bad day at one job doesnt break you. Youre not defined by your title. Youre defined by your life mission. You can lose a job, but you cant lose your purpose. Philosophy for your career decides the jobs you take, the people you work with, and the projects you walk away from.
4. The ‘investor’ mindset
Your skills are assets. Treat them like a portfolio. You cant dump all your energy into one stock and hope it pays forever. Markets change. Industries collapse. AI eats jobs. The people who survive treat learning as compounding interest. They reinvest. And put time into skills that grow their skill range. They build optionality.
You dont need 10 certificates. You just need to be the person who always has another card to play. Investors put their skills to work. Ship the side project. Take the stretch role. Risk a little. Test the market. Repeat what works. You learned faster than the guy hoarding potential in silence. A diversified career portfolio is built on experiments, not guarantees.
5. The ‘owner’ mindset
This is the one that ties it all together. Owning means you stop hiding behind career excuses like, My boss never gave me the chance. It may be true, but owners play the hand theyve got and still find a way to win a round. Owners take responsibility for both career stagnation and acceleration. Owning your career path means you stop hiding behind safety nets. Owners stop blaming. No boss, no company, no economy gets the last word on your career.
Owners keep evolving even in bad economic conditions. They own their mistakes, their choices, their pivots. When you own something, you protect it, you invest in it, you defend it. You dont just have a career. You run it. Big difference. If your career stalls, you find ways to adapt. No one can do that for us. Your career will always be yours, and yours alone. Own it.
Police are getting a boost from artificial intelligence, with algorithms now able to draft police reports in minutes. The technology promises to make police reports more accurate and comprehensive, as well as save officers time.
The idea is simple: Take the audio transcript from a body camera worn by a police officer and use the predictive text capabilities of large language models to write a formal police report that could become the basis of a criminal prosecution. Mirroring other fields that have allowed ChatGPT-like systems to write on behalf of people, police can now get an AI assist to automate much dreaded paperwork.
The catch is that instead of writing the first draft of your college English paper, this document can determine someones liberty in court. An error, omission, or hallucination can risk the integrity of a prosecution or, worse, justify a false arrest. While police officers must sign off on the final version, the bulk of the text, structure, and formatting is AI-generated.
Whoor whatwrote it
Up until October 2025, only Utah had required that police even admit they were using an AI assistant to draft their reports. On Oct. 10, that changed when California became the second state to require transparent notice that AI was used to draft a police report.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 524 into law, requiring all AI-assisted police reports to be marked as being written with the help of AI. The law also requires law enforcement agencies to maintain an audit trail that identifies the person who used AI to create a report and any video and audio footage used in creating the report. It also requires agencies to retain the first draft created with AI for as long as the official report is retained, and prohibits a draft created with AI from constituting an officers official statement.
The law is a significant milestone in the regulation of AI in policing, but its passage also signifies that AI is going to become a major part of the criminal justice system.
If you are sitting behind bars based on a police report, you might have some questions. The first question that Utah and California now answer is Did AI write this? Basic transparency that an algorithm helped write an arrest report might seem the minimum a state could do before locking someone up. And, even though leading police technology companies like Axon recommend such disclaimers be included in their reports, they are not required.
Police departments in Lafayette, Indiana, and Fort Collins, Colorado, were intentionally turning off the transparency defaults on the AI report generators, according to an investigative news report. Similarly, police chiefs using Axons Draft One products did not even know which reports were drafted by AI and which were not because the officers were just cutting and pasting the AI narrative into reports they indicated they wrote themselves. The practice bypassed all AI disclaimers and audit trails.
The author explains the issues around AI-written police reports in an interview on CNNs Terms of Service podcast.
Many questions
Transparency is only the first step. Understanding the risks of relying on AI for police reports is the second.
Technological questions arise about how the AI models were trained and the possible biases baked into a reliance on past police reports. Transcription questions arise about errors, omissions, and mistranslations because police stops take place in chaotic, loud, and frequently emotional contexts amid a host of languages.
Finally, trial questions arise about how an attorney is supposed to cross-examine an AI-generated document, or whether the audit logs need to be retained for expert analysis or turned over to the defense.
Risks and consequences
The significance of the California law is not simply that the public needs to be aware of AI risks, but that California is embracing AI risk in policing. I believe its likely that people will lose their liberty based on a document that was largely generated by AI and without the hard questions satisfactorily answered.
Worse, in a criminal justice system that relies on plea bargaining for more than 95% of cases and is overwhelmingly dominated by misdemeanor offenses, there may never be a chance to check whether the AI report accurately captured the scene. In fact, in many of those lower-level cases, the police report will be the basis of charging decisions, pretrial detention, motions, plea bargains, sentencing, and even probation revocations.
I believe that a criminal legal system that relies so heavily on police reports has a responsibility to ensure that police departments are embracing not just transparency but justice. At a minimum, this means more states following Utah and California to pass laws regulating the technology, and police departments following the best practices recommended by the technology companies.
But even that may not be enough without critical assessments by courts, legal experts, and defense lawyers. The future of AI policing is just starting, but the risks are already here.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a professor of law at George Washington University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The job market is rough. So when candidates are landing interviews, theyre often cramming every skill, accomplishment, and experience they can muster into the interview process, hoping to edge out the competition.
Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Hiring managers often tune out in such cases, causing the rapid-fire qualifications to backfire. Its what Marc Cendella, CEO of career platform Ladders, calls answer inflation.
Answer inflation is when experienced professionals respond to interview questions with lengthy résumé recitations and meandering stories that bury their actual value, he explains.
Take the classic: Tell me about yourself. Its the question that most interviews kick off with. And while it may seem straightforward enough, theres actually an art to delivering a strong elevator pitch to hook the hiring managers attention from the off.
Many candidates think that the interviewer is trying to socialize or make small talkbut thats rarely the case, Cendella told Fast Company.
This question can actually tell an interviewer a lot. When asked an open-ended question, do you take the chance to answer thoughtfully? Can you prioritize and organize your thoughts under pressure? Or are you rambling, caught off guard?
Tell me about yourself is also not a chance to detail your entire life story. An answer filled with irrelevant details and outdated roles is more likely to lose the hiring manager’s attention halfway through than impress them with your decades of experience.
While you may think the more information you can cram in the better, Cendella says the opposite is often true.
Hiring managers see it time and time again: experienced professionals tend to assume their longer track record requires longer explanations, he explains. As a result, theyll respond to interview questions with long-winded stories that bury their actual value. Or, they merely list all of their past roles and accomplishmentslike a résumé reading.
Instead, trim the fat and replace vague descriptions with quantifiable achievements.
Think about those key challenges hiring managers are facing, and how your past experience could fill in the gaps, Cendella explains. Every response you have should ladder up to a clear, compelling narrative about why youre the solution to their current problem.
He recommends taking two to three concise examples that demonstrate impact and let the numbers do the talking for you.
Lets imagine you’re in the process for a project manager role. Rather than droning on about your years in project management, use this script as an example: In my last role, I inherited a project that was three months behind schedule and turned it around within six weeks by implementing clearer communication channels and regular team check-ins, he says.
Its clear, concise, and not bogged down by answer inflation.
Remember the golden rule: Show, dont tell.
