When Mark Zuckerberg recently announced his grand plans to build enormous data centers in Ohio and Louisiana, two things stood out. First was the scale of the centers set to power Metas AI ambitions. Zuckerberg said that just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan. While both will cost hundreds of billions.
The other was their names: Prometheus will soon pop up in New Albany, Ohio, and will be joined by Hyperion in Louisiana in 2030.
Where do these weird names come from? Typically, the process is generally for most naming projects to go through a companys brand team, though that doesnt always happen, says Dalton Runberg, a naming expert who has previously worked for big tech companies. It could depend on the size of the companyat some smaller places, it might just be a function of other marketing people, but any big company is going to have a dedicated brand team, and may even have a dedicated naming person or team. Or they could work with a naming agency, especially for very high-profile brands.
One of those agencies that big tech companies bring in to advise on this is Lexicon Branding, whose president and founder, David Placek, says: These are relatively nerdy names, or geek names that geeksand I dont mean that in a derogatory wayare very comfortable with. The question is whether they are for non-geeks. Theyre going to be, for the general public, hard to spell, and the awareness of them will be very, very low.
Some nameslike Grok, the AI model developed by Elon Musks xAItap into sci-fi. (The reference is to Robert A. Heinleins 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where its used to describe deeply knowing something). Others, like Prometheus, rely on mythology. (Prometheus is the Greek god of fire, known for stealing the resource from the gods and giving it to humans.) I think Prometheus was a very deliberate decision on their part, says Placek. The metaphor of bringing the fire of AI to the world and to people, I think, was appropriate.
The more inscrutable names are also chosen because they can feel a bit insider-y, says Runberg. Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as separate toand smarter thanthe average person, and so the names technology companies choose often reflect that perspective.
If you know the deeper meaning of the word, or which Greek god was the god of whichever thing your product is related to, or whatever other fun fact might end up in a Jeopardy! clue someday, it can feel like it has an added layer of, If you know, you know exclusivity and inspeak, explains Runberg. They feel familiar yet a bit mysterious. But the danger is that those types of names can feel smart, though theyre not always as clever as they think they are. For instance, data centers wont want to catch on fire, particularly when they cost billions of dollars.
Still, fire and storms are in vogue among tech. Just look at Anduril, Palmer Luckeys defense companyand also the name of the sword wielded by Lord of the Rings character Aragornor Palantir, the Peter Thiel-founded tech firm that takes its name from surveillance orbs popular in the same Tolkien lore. The naming starts to get meta when you look at Palantirs product names, like Gotham, its intelligence product designed for the Department of Defense, U.S. intelligence agencies and other allied military forces, which also happens to be the name of the city Batman inhabits.
But the reason that those mythological figures appear more often is because they offer the products linked to them a credibility that theyd otherwise not get. Classical, mythological, or historical names tend to sound and feel powerfuloften being associated with mighty empires or omnipotent gods, says Runberg.
Also importantly for a young, disruptive industry like tech, theyre old, adds Runberg. They have a feeling of legacy, which can give your brand a sense of authority or reliability, as if it has been around for a long time. Its sort of borrowing the credibility from a word or name that has existed for hundreds or thousands of years.
However, just because theyre old doesnt mean theyre good for tech today. Theyre not great names, admits Placek. Good names help process fluency for the reader, the branding expert says, or has things in it that are familiar to you. One of Placeks best-known non-tech names is Febreze, a new coinage that evokes a little bit of fabric and the breeziness of hanging your laundry out to dry within it.
Yet Placek also dabbles with tech names. One of his most recent jobs was to help come up with a new name for an AI product previously called Codeium. His solution? Windsurf, the firm initially due to be bought by OpenAI, whose CEO was then acquired by Google when that deal fell through, with the rest of the company heading to competitors Cognition.
President Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to keep the news cycle moving, fast. For even avid consumers of news, that can make it hard to keep up. But one public art project is doing its best to slow things down by retelling stories in new ways, the latest shining light on the people behind the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Phil Buehlers Wall of Shame, 2025, is currently on view in Brooklyn. [Photo: courtesy of the artist]
Wall of Shame is artist Phil Buehler’s 50-foot-long, 10-foot-tall mural put up in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn in partnership with Radio Free Brooklyn; it takes a data viz approach to very recent history. Subtitled Visualizing the J6 Insurrection, it’s made up of more than 1,500 color-coded waterproof vinyl panels that display a headshot, name, age, and hometown of rioters who invaded the Capitol on January 6, along with details of their actions on that day, including their charges and sentencingall information that is publicly available.
Phil Buehler, Wall of Shame, 2025 [Photo: courtesy of the artist]
The U.S. flag-inspired colors used for the mural are designed to turn right-wing positioning of rioters as patriots on its head. Red panels indicate violent rioters, while blue panels indicate those who damaged property. The rest are white, according to Radio Free Brooklyn, a local New York station. “A red hat, white skin, and blue jeans dont make you a patriot. But storming the Capitol makes you a traitor,” Buehler told the station.
Phil Buehler, Wall of Shame, 2025 [Photo: courtesy of the artist]
Buehler’s approach makes the attack more personal. This isn’t another photo or footage of the faceless mob of flag-waving rioters storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election; it’s a look at individual people from the crowd. The artist fact-checked everything written on the panels with reporting from NPR.
Phil Buehler collaborated with Radio Free Brooklyn on Wall of Lies back in 2020. It showed 20,000 false statements Donald Trump made during his first term as president. [Photo: courtesy of the artist]
The artist has made two previous murals with Radio Free Brooklyn. Wall of Lies in 2020 was made up of 20,000 false statements Trump made during his first term as president. Wall of Liars and Deniers in 2022 showed Republican candidates running for office that year who denied the results of the 2020 election. Wall of Shame was unveiled on Independence Day.
Phil Buehler, Wall of Shame, 2025 [Photo: courtesy of the artist]
A February Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that 83% of Americans opposed Trump offering clemency for violent criminal offenders connected to the attack, and 55% opposed him offering clemency for nonviolent crimes. But in today’s fast-paced political news cycle, January 2021 can feel like ancient history. By turning the backstories of those who attaced the Capitol into public art, Buehler and Radio Free Brooklyn found a new way to visualize the story, and from hundreds of different points of view.
In cities across the world, urban design is increasingly oriented around preventing people from resting. Details like seats with bisecting railings, ledges with embedded spikes, and railings instead of benches are just a few ways that hostile architectureor architecture that makes public spaces less accessible, especially to unhoused peopleshows up in city landscapes.
Now, a design firm in San Francisco wants to flip that narrative on its head by doing the exact opposite: building a four-mile-long bench.
The concept, created by the firm Sitelab Urban Studio, is one of six winners of Market Street Reimagined, an international call for design proposals to rejuvenate San Franciscos downtown Market Street. According to Laura Crescimano, cofounder and principal of Sitelab, the firm previously identified the shocking lack of seating downtown through a project called the Downtown San Francisco Public Realm Action Plan, an effort aimed at bringing urban activity back to the citys financial district post-pandemic. So, when the opportunity to rethink Market Streets design came up, her team realized that there might be a deceptively simple solution.
In recent projects, we have seen the removal of fixed benches and an overall preference for movable seating over fixed seatingits less expensive, can be stored overnight, and moved around, Crescimano says. These trends reflect a broader pattern of designing out rest and permanence, which is why we believe bold interventionslike our 4-Mile Bench proposalare needed to reframe seating as essential civic infrastructure.
[Image: Sitelab Urban Studio]
A 10,000-seat bench
The proposal is essentially what it sounds like: a 4-mile-long, bright yellow bench that would make one big loop around Market Street, offering a whopping 10,000 seats for residents and tourists. Given the scale of the project and the business of the street, Crescimano says, the idea is built with modularity in mind, using an off-the-shelf system offered by the company Landscape Forms that can easily be built and maintained segment-by-segment.
Market Streets existing constraints actually made way for some of the benchs more interesting features. To avoid reworking infrastructure like signs, trees, and lightposts, the bench is imagined as a playfully curving line weaving through and around these obstacles. And, to make the seating as interactive as possible, Sitelab added custom components like swings, tables, and loops that periodically interrupt the benchs flow.
It is a spectacle meant to draw in visitors from locals to touristsa recognizable, Instagrammable moment, Crescimano says. It is also at a scale to be a platform and backdrop for major events, from the Pride parade, to protests, to celebrating the Warriors or Giants wins. In contrast to past approaches that removed seating to discourage certain behaviors, this proposal invites everyone in and encourages more foot traffic.
While the 4-Mile Bench is still at the proposal phase, Crescimano says Sitelab has already received interest on a potential pilot project. To make the bench a reality, she adds, the teams next steps would include meeting with city officials and property owners to refine the design and identifying several blocks along Market Street as a starting point. She sees the 4-Mile Bench as a concept that reimagines Market Street from a place of scarcity to one of abundance, choosing to lean into the positive rather than designing to mitigate risk.
We want this bench to be a place for everyoneits not about restricting how people use it, Crescimano says. The reality of homelessness is complex and ever-present, and instead of designing from a place of exclusion, were hoping to expand the idea of who our streets can serve. We started our practice in San Francisco, and that spirit of openness is what weve always loved about the city.
If you thought gaming was a young persons activity, think again. Older adults now make up nearly one-third of all U.S. gamers, with 57 million Americans who are 50 or older playing regularly.
Half of those in their sixties and seventies play some form of PC, mobile, or console video game every week. Even people in their eighties36%!are gaming, according to recent data from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
While it may be that older gamers simply have more free time, traditional pastimes like knitting and bridge are giving way to Twitch streams and first-person shooter games.
The Guardian spoke to gamers like GrndpaGaming and TacticalGramma, who stream titles such as Call of Duty, the hunting simulator theHunter: Call of the Wild, and the air-combat game Metalstorm to hundreds of thousandsand, in some cases, millionsof followers on Twitch and YouTube.
As long as you keep your brain active and functioning, youre not going to sit there and just deteriorate away, Will, 72, who games as GrndpaGaming, told The Guardian.
Boomers and members of the so-called silent generation (the youngest of whom turn 80 in 2025) say their top reasons for gaming are to unwind, keep their minds sharp, and simply have fun. Some research suggests video games can offer cognitive benefits for older adults, though the effects often depend on the type of game.
There are social perks, too, especially on multiplayer platforms where boomer gamers are getting a crash course in Gen Z slang. Ive learned some things I dont want to learn, Michelle Statham, who streams as TacticalGramma, told The Guardian.
Gaming is becoming more popular across all age groups. According to ESAs research, nearly two-thirds of Americans, from kids as young as 5 to adults who are 90 and older, regularly play video gamestotaling around 205.1 million players.
The gender split among players is fairly even, with 47% identifying as women and 52% as men. But among older generations, women are more avid gamers: 52% of boomer women reportedly play video games, compared to 46% of boomer men.
When it comes to the gaming community, age really is just a number.
Were taught to think of raises as the holy grail of career and financial success. Annual performance reviews. Awkward remuneration conversations. Hoping (and sometimes praying) that your hard work gets noticed. If this is your earning strategy, you’re already behind.
Forget the raise. In todays workplace, shaped by AI and economic flux, the smart earners are rewriting the rules. We cant say that raises dont matter, but theyre no longer the most effective path to earning more. Here are the five savvy steps to get you closer to making more.
1. Ditch the illusion of linearity
Stay longer, get promoted, earn more. In todays landscape, it doesnt always work that way. Pay progression isnt neatly tied to tenure, and loyalty alone no longer guarantees growth. So too, for following a traditional career path, the well-trodden graduate to partner/executive/C-suite path.
In the modern job economy, status has become more performative than financial. Earning more doesnt follow a straight line, nor is it built on hierarchy. Its built on leverage.
A linear mindset ignores lateral moves and misses cross-industry opportunities, often with a significant financial upside. With global skills shortage, never have employees with in-demand skills held such a financial strategic advantage. But be smart: this is not an endorsement for job-hopping. Tenure is still important when in conjunction with in-demand skills. This combination can make you exponentially more valuable, opening doors to equity options and lucrative bonus structures.
2. Flip your view of a raise
A raise isnt the only way to take home more pay: consider additional retirement contributions, performance bonuses, opportunities for upskilling, flexible work arrangements, or additional leave entitlements. These benefits have lower immediate costs to your employer, but compound your long-term opportunity for financial gain.
When no direct salary increases are on the table, employers are often relieved to meet you halfway. A collaborative, rather than adversarial, approach demonstrates strategic thinking, further reinforcing your position as a high–value employee.
3. Revalue your contribution
Too many people expect that increases happen regularly and every year. They dont. And when they do ask for more, its based on the increasing cost of living. Overall, these tactics yield crumbs.
Move beyond base-level expectations: you want the cake. Salary growth and negotiations follow transformation. Revisit what you have contributed in the last 12 months and quantify it into a measurable business impact. Is it cost savings, revenue generation, value creation, new efficiencies, or some kind of innovation? If you can, put a dollar amount on it. And from now on, commit to a monthly log of contribution and value creationand take it with you for next years salary discussions. Make a compelling business case based on data and the market, not opinion, helping you pitch confidently rather than passively.
4. Look for multiple income streams
This is not a second job or building on your portfolio. This is a long game, being entrepreneurial with your skills within your existing professional framework.
Develop expertise and relationships that generate opportunities beyond your existing role. This could be consulting or advisory work, keynote speaking engagements, expert commentary contributions, board positions, or industry committee roles. The key is leveraging your existing job to create premium–paying opportunities that further enhance rather than compete.
This could work perfectly if you have negotiated upskilling, professional development and additional leave entitlements. These activities dont just create income; they build on your professional reputation, expand your network, placing you as an industry leader. Here is where it gets interesting: a higher profile strengthens your position in future salary negotiations, a virtuous cycle.
5. Position yourself as a product (because you are one)
AI has automated many tasks, but it cant replace strategic visibility. Just as successful product marketing showcases attributes and unique selling points, so too must you ensure your professional contributions are recognized by the right stakeholders. Position yourself in high-profile projects and meetings. Ensure your ideas are heard and your work is clearly attributed to you, not lost in the we, us, or team. Collaborative input has its place; so do individual contributions, and not at the expense of the other. Just as products need care, attention, and servicing to keep them in top form, so do you. Ensure you are recharging, caring for your mind and body, and pursuing growth opportunities to enhance your professional worth.
Rethinking your earning strategy means recognizing the more profound shifts in how we work and whats valued. Understanding these shifts allows you to approach your career and earning potential not as an ordered system, but as a platform: adaptable, strategic, and ready for whats next.
Ive been using Comet, Perplexitys AI-powered browser, for the past week. Using it to navigate the internet is very similar to any other browser experience, with one major enhancement: the Comet Assistant. Its a feature that can accomplish web-based tasks independent of you, and Im quickly becoming convinced its the future.
I wrote an extensive review of Comet for The Media Copilot newsletter, but here Id like to explore the broader implicationsnot just stemming from Comet, but the whole idea of an AI-powered web browser, because soon well be swimming in them. OpenAI is reportedly about to release its own take on the idea, and certainly Chrome wont be far behind given Googles deep push into AI.
Introducing a browsing assistant isn’t just a convenience. It has the potential to fundamentally redefine our relationship with the web. AI browsers like Comet represent the first wave in a sea change, shifting the internet from something we actively navigate to something we delegate tasks to, increasingly trusting AI to act on our behalf. That will present new challenges around privacy and ethics, but also create more opportunities, especially for the media.
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A new browser dawns
Those old enough to remember web browsers when they didnt have cookies (which let websites remember you were logged in) or omniboxes (which hard-wired search into the experience) understand how significant those changes were. After using Comet, I would argue the addition of an AI companion transcends them all. For the first time youre surfing the web with a partner. The Comet Assistant is like having your own personal intern for what youre doing online, ready to take on any menial or low-priority tasks so you dont have to.
For example, I order most of my groceries online every week. Rather than spinning up a list myself, I only need to open a tab, navigate the store site, and tell Comet to do it. I can command it to look at past orders and my standing shopping list as a guide, give it a rough idea of the meals I want to make, and itll fill up the cart on its own. Or I could tell it to find the nearest Apple Store with open Genius Bar appointments on Saturday morning, and book a repair for a broken iPhone screen.
You get the idea. Once you start using Comet like this, it becomes kind of addictive as you search for its limits. Book a flight? Plan a vacation? Clean up my RSS reader (it really needs it)? To be clear, the execution often isnt perfect, so you still need to check its work before taking that final stepin fact, with most use cases, itll require this even if the command is quite clear (e.g. Buy it), which should give most people some relief to their apprehension of outsourcing things theyd previously done by hand.
But I believe this outsourcing is inevitable. In practice, Comet functions as an agent, and while its abilities are still nascent, they’re already useful enough to benefit a large number of people. Browser assistants will likely be most peoples first experience with agents, and most will judge them for how effectively they perform tasks with minimal guidance.
That will depend not just on the quality of the tool and the AI models powering it, but also how much it knows about the user. Privacy concerns are elevated with agents: think about the grocery example and now extrapolate that to medical or financial information. Can I trust my AI provider to safeguard that information from marketers, hackers, and other users of the same AI? Perplexity has the distinction of not training foundation models, so at least the concern about leaks into training data is moot. But the level of access a browser agent hasessentially looking over your shoulder at everything you do onlinecreates a very large target.
Nonetheless, the potential for convenience is so great that I believe many people will use them anyway, and not see the leap to agents as much more than the access they already give major tech platform providers like Apple or Google.
Providing informational fuel for agents
This has big implications for the media. If you think about the things we do onlineshopping, banking, interacting with healthcare providersall of them are informed by context, often in the form of research that we do ourselves. Were already offloading some of that to AI, but the introduction of a personal browser agent means that can happen even closer to the task. So if I ask the AI to fill my shopping cart with low-fat ingredients for chicken enchiladas, its going to need to get that information from somewhere.
This opens up a new landscape to information providers: the contextual searches needed to support agent activity. Whereas humans can only find, read, and process so much data to get the best information for what theyre doing, AI theoretically has no limits. In other words, the surface area of AI searches will expand massively, and so will the competition for it. The field of “AIEO,” the AI version of SEO, is about to get very hot.
The spike in agent activity will also hopefully lead to better standards of how bots identify themselves. As I wrote about recently, AI companies have essentially given themselves permission to ignore bot restrictions on sites when those bots are behaving on behalf of users (as opposed to training or search indexing). Thats a major area of concern for content creators who want to control how AI ingests and adapts their content, and if bot activity suddenly becomes much bigger, so does the issue.
Information workers, and journalists in particular, will be able to unlock a lot of potential with browser agents. Think about how many of the software platforms you use professionally are browser-based. In a typical newsroom, reporters and editors will use information and context across all kinds of systemsfrom a communications platform like Slack to project-management software like Asana to a CMS like WordPress. Automations can ease some of the tedium, but many newsrooms dont have enough resources for the technical upkeep.
With a browser agent, workers can automate their own tasks on the fly. Certainly, the data privacy concerns are even higher in a professional environment, but so are the rewards. An AI informed by not just internet data and the context of your task, but with the goals and knowledge base of your workplaceAND with mastery over your browser-based softwareould effectively give everyone on the team their own assistant.
And this isn’t some distant, hypothetical scenarioyou can do it right now. Comet is here, and though the Assistant sometimes stumbles through tasks like a newborn calf, it has the ability to perform research, operate software, and accomplish tasks on behalf of the user. That rewrites the rules of online interaction. While the amplified privacy concerns demand clearer boundaries and stricter accountability, AI browsers represent a step change in how we use the internet: Were no longer alone out there.
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The advent of generative AI has elicited waves of frustration and worry across academia for all the reasons one might expect: Early studies are showing that artificial intelligence tools can dilute critical thinking and undermine problem-solving skills. And there are many reports that students are using chatbots to cheat on assignments.
But how do students feel about AI? And how is it affecting their relationships with peers, instructors and their coursework?
I am part of a group of University of Pittsburgh researchers with a shared interest in AI and undergraduate education. While there is a growing body of research exploring how generative AI is affecting higher education, there is one group that we worry is underrepresented in this literature, yet perhaps uniquely qualified to talk about the issue: our students.
Our team ran a series of focus groups with 95 students across our campuses in the spring of 2025 and found that whether students and faculty are actively using AI or not, it is having significant interpersonal, emotional effects on learning and trust in the classroom. While AI products such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude are, of course, affecting how students learn, their emergence is also changing their relationships with their professors and with one another.
Its not going to judge you
Most of our focus group participants had used AI in the academic settingwhen faced with a time crunch, when they perceive something to be busy work, or when they are stuck and worry that they cant complete a task on their own. We found that most students dont start a project using AI, but many are willing to turn to it at some point.
Many students described positive experiences using AI to help them study or answer questions, or give them feedback on papers. Some even described using AI instead of a professor, tutor or teaching assistant. Others found a chatbot less intimidating than attending office hours where professors might be demeaning. In the words of one interviewee: With ChatGPT you can ask as many questions as you want and its not going to judge you.
But by using it, you may be judged. While some were excited about using AI, many students voiced mild feelings of guilt or shame about their AI use due to environmental or ethical concerns, or just coming across as lazy. Some even expressed a feeling of helplessness, or a sense of inevitability regarding AI in their futures.
Anxiety, distrust and avoidance
While many students expressed a sense that faculty members are, as one participant put it, very anti-ChatGPT, they also lamented the fact that the rules around acceptable AI use were not sufficiently clear. As one urban planning major put it: I feel uncertain of what the expectations are, with her peer chiming in, Were not on the same page with students and teachers or even individually. No one really is.
Students also described feelings of distrust and frustration toward peers they saw as overly reliant on AI. Some talked about asking classmates for help, only to find that they just used ChatGPT and hadnt learned the material. Others pointed to group projects, where AI use was described as a giant red flag that made them think less of their peers.
These experiences feel unfair and uncomfortable for students. They can report their classmates for academic integrity violationsand enter yet another zone in which distrust mountsor they can try to work with them, sometimes with resentment. It ends up being more work for me, a political science major said, because its not only me doing my work by myself, its me double checking yours.
Distrust was a marker that we observed of both student-to-teacher relationships and student-to-student relationships. Learners shared fears of being left behind if other students in their classes used chatbots to get better grades. This resulted in emotional distance and wariness among students. Indeed, our findings reflect other reports that indicate the mere possibility that a student might have used a generative AI tool is now undercutting trust across the classroom. Students are as anxious about baseless accusations of AI use as they are about being caught using it.
Students described feeling anxious, confused and distrustful, and sometimes even avoiding peers or learning interactions. As educators, this worries us. We know that academic engagementa key marker of student successcomes not only from studying the course material, but also from positive engagement with classmates and instructors alike.
AI is affecting relationships
Indeed, research has shown that faculty-student relationships are an important indicator of student success. Peer-to-peer relationships are essential too. If students are sidestepping important mentoring relationships with professors or meaningful learning experiences with peers due to discomfort over ambiguous or shifting norms around the use of AI technology, institutions of higher education could imagine alternative pathways for connection. Residential campuses could double down on in-person courses and connections; faculty could be incentivized to encourage students to visit during office hours. Faculty-led research, mentoring and campus events where faculty and students mix in an informal fashion could also make a difference.
We hope our research can also flip the script and disrupt tropes about students who use AI as cheaters. Instead, it tells a more complex story of students being thrust into a reality they didnt ask for, with few clear guidelines and little control.
As generative AI continues to pervade everyday life, and institutions of higher education continue to search for solutions, our focus groups reflect the importance of listening to students and considering novel ways to help students feel more comfortable connecting with peers and faculty. Understanding these evolving interpersonal dynamics matters because how we relate to technology is increasingly affecting how we relate to one another. Given our experiences in dialogue with them, it is clear that students are more than ready to talk about this issue and its impact on their futures.
Acknowledgment: Thank you to the full team from the University of Pittsburgh Oakland, Greensburg, Bradford and Johnstown campuses, including Annette Vee, Patrick Manning, Jessica FitzPatrick, Jessica Ghilani, Catherine Kula, Patty Wharton-Michael, Jialei Jiang, Sean DiLeonardi, Birney Young, Mark DiMauro, Jeff Aziz, and Gayle Rogers.
Elise Silva is the director of policy research at the Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security at the University of Pittsburgh.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In my writing and rhetoric courses, students have plenty of opinions on whether AI is intelligent: how well it can assess, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information.
When I ask whether artificial intelligence can think, however, I often look upon a sea of blank faces. What is thinking, and how is it the same or different from intelligence?
We might treat the two as more or less synonymous, but philosophers have marked nuances for millennia. Greek philosophers may not have known about 21st-century technology, but their ideas about intellect and thinking can help us understand whats at stake with AI today.
The divided line
Although the English words intellect and thinking do not have direct counterparts in ancient Greek, looking at ancient texts offers useful comparisons.
In Republic, for example, Plato uses the analogy of a divided line separating higher and lower forms of understanding.
Plato, who taught in the fourth century BCE, argued that each person has an intuitive capacity to recognize the truth. He called this the highest form of understanding: noesis. Noesis enables apprehension beyond reason, belief, or sensory perception. Its one form of knowing somethingbut in Platos view, its also a property of the soul.
Lower down, but still above his dividing line, is dianoia, or reason, which relies on argumentation. Below the line, his lower forms of understanding are pistis, or belief, and eikasia, or imagination.
Pistis is belief influenced by experience and sensory perception: input that someone can critically examine and reason about. Plato defines eikasia, meanwhile, as baseless opinion rooted in false perception.
In Platos hierarchy of mental capacities, direct, intuitive understanding is at the top, and moment-to-moment physical input toward the bottom. The top of the hierarchy leads to true and absolute knowledge, while the bottom lends itself to false impressions and beliefs. But intuition, according to Plato, is part of the soul, and embodied in human form. Perceiving reality transcends the bodybut still needs one.
So, while Plato does not differentiate between intelligence and thinking, I would argue that his distinctions can help us think about AI. Without being embodied, AI may not “think or understand the way humans do. Eikasiathe lowest form of comprehension, based on false perceptionsmay be similar to AIs frequent hallucinations,” when it makes up information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate.
Embodied thinking
Aristotle, Platos student, sheds more light on intelligence and thinking.
In On the Soul, Aristotle distinguishes active from passive intellect. Active intellect, which he called nous, is immaterial. It makes meaning from experience, but transcends bodily perception. Passive intellect is bodily, receiving sensory impressions without reasoning.
We could say that these active and passive processes, put together, constitute thinking. Today, the word intelligence holds a logical quality that AIs calculations may conceivably replicate. Aristotle, however, like Plato, suggests that to think requires an embodied form and goes beyond reason alone.
Aristotles views on rhetoric also show that deliberation and judgment require a body, feeling, and experience. We might think of rhetoric as persuasion, but it is actually more about observation: observing and evaluating how evidence, emotion, and character shape peoples thinking and decisions. Facts matter, but emotions and people move usand it seems questionable whether AI utilizes rhetoric in this way.
Finally, Aristotles concept of phronesis sheds further light on AIs capacity to think. In Nicomachean Ethics, he defines phronesis as practical wisdom or prudence. Phronesis involves lived experience that determines not only right thought, but also how to apply those thoughts to good ends, or virtuous actions. AI may analyze large datasets to reach its conclusions, but phronesis goes beyond information to consult wisdom and moral insight.
“Thinking” robots?
Today, AI takes on many physical forms, from autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots to healthcare robots and drones. If intelligence requires embodiment, as Plato and Aristotle believed, it might seem as if AI is coming closer than ever to human thinking.
AI does take on many forms, but theyre still not bodies; they run on code, algorithms, and datasets. Intuitive understanding, emotion, integrity, and practical wisdom seem to require an embodied, perishable form that is moved by experience.
Perhaps we should ask AI itselfso I did. When I prompted ChatGPT with the simple question, Can you think?, it responded: I can process information, analyze patterns, and generate responses based on data. So, in some ways, it might seem like Im thinking. But its not thinking like a human does. I dont have consciousness, emotions, intentions, or awareness. Everything I do is based on patterns learned from huge amounts of text and a set of rules and probabilities. I can simulate certain aspects of thinking, but I dont truly think or understand in the human sense.
That response aligns with Plato and Aristotles views. For now.
Ryan Leack is an assistant professor of writing at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Amina AlTai is an executive coach, leadership trainer, and chronic illness advocate. She has partnered with companies such as Google, Snap, Outdoor Voices, Chief, and Roku, and been featured in goop, Forbes, Well+Good, NBC, CBS, and The New York Times. She is an Entrepreneur Magazine expert-in-residence, Forbes contributor, and was named one of Success Magazine’s Women of Influence.
Whats the big idea?
The Ambition Trap gives you greater permission to reclaim ambition on your own terms. Most of us think ambition means doing everything in our power to get what we want, but this approach comes at the price of health, well-being, and upholds oppressive systems. Ambition itself is not a dirty wordwe can renegotiate unhealthy assumptions about ambition to engage with it in meaningful and restorative ways. To escape the trap of an endless cycle of overwork that is never enough, ambition must be anchored in our purpose rather than our pain.
Below, Amina shares five key insights from her new book, The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living. Listen to the audio versionread by Amina herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. We need to redefine ambition.
Most of us only know ambition in a dysfunctional sense: a relentless desire to succeed, regardless of the cost. For me to win, someone else must lose, we think. But thats not ambition. Ambition itself is natural and neutral. In its purest form, its a desire for more life. Its a wish to unfold, evolve, and flourish.
Grass wants to grow; trees like to stretch toward the sun; we all want to thrive. The essence of all living beings is to be motivated for more, and as humans, were the only species that has a choice in how we direct that advancement. So, we must be great stewards of it. Things go sideways when our striving begins to cost us and others health, relationships, peace of mind, and sense of self. This isnt ambition in its neutral, natural form, but in its most painful.
2. There are two types of ambition.
Though ambition in and of itself is neutral and natural, there are two ways we usually see it unfold. It can either be painful ambition or purposeful ambition. Painful ambition is the voracious desire to advance, regardless of the costs.
Painful ambition has a few trademarks:
Unaware of the systems that shape us
A narrow mindset
Driven to win at all costs
Focus on individualism and hoarding power
Instrumentalization of yourself and others
Toxic positivity
Self-imposed urgency
Most of us believe that embodying these characteristics means were being ambitious. But were actually displaying painful ambition. Painful ambition is driven by our core wounds. According to Lise Bourbeau, those wounds are rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. For each wound we have, we wear a corresponding mask. A rejection wound wears the mask of avoidance. A betrayal wound wears the mask of control. Every one of us emerges from our formative years with an injury of the psyche. Its a human right or passage, even if you come from the best family in the world. When ambition is built upon that wound, its a house of cards.
Painful ambition is driven by our core wounds.
When we operate from a place of purposeful ambition, growth is no longer driven by a stinging wound. Instead, weve tapped into our intrinsic purpose and are living in a way that has a positive impact on ourselves and the world around us. Weve stopped trying to make life happen to compensate for our pain and instead are unfolding from a place of wholeness.
Purposeful ambition has a few hallmarks:
Questioning systems that shape us
An expansive mindset
Driven by purpose
Focused on collaboration and using your gifts to help the world
Honoring your needs
Contentment-based
Take aligned action
Stepping into purposeful ambition might feel like meeting yourself for the first time. Many of us unknowingly construct our whole lives around our wounds; in fact, were often celebrated for them. If we didnt take a physical, emotional, or spiritual hit for it, we would likely keep hiding behind them. If I didnt have a health crisis early in my career, I may have kept going the way that I was: overworking from a place of not-enoughness.
This hit is the universe inviting us into a new way of beingits a way of saying Stop. What youre doing isnt working anymore and likely never worked in the first place. This is the moment when we get to put the mask down and peel off the layers of protection. This is when we get to heal that inner child so we can build our lives from the fullness of our true selves versus living and leading from an aching wound. This right here is where circumstances change for the better.
3. Identity and ambition are deeply intertwined.
Ambition doesnt exist in a vacuum. It is shaped and constrained by identity. For those from historically underrepresented communitieswomen, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled folksambition is often a double bind. On the one hand, society expects you to prove yourself. On the other hand, the moment you express visible, unapologetic ambition, youre often punished for it.
This is whats known as the ambition penalty: the social, economic, and reputational cost that underrepresented people often face for simply wanting more. A woman asking for a raise may be seen as aggressive. A person of color expressing a bold vision might be called intense or not a culture fit. A disabled entrepreneur with high aspirations may be met with patronizing doubt. These arent personality flawstheyre systemic dynamics that uphold power imbalances.
This is whats known as the ambition penalty: the social, economic, and reputational cost that underrepresented people often face for simply wanting more.
The Ambition Trap unpacks how these messages are internalized, leading many to either overperform to gain approval or suppress their ambition entirely to stay safe. Ultimately, reclaiming ambition is more than a personal actits a cultural intervention. When those most marginalized are empowered to define and pursue their ambitions on their own terms, the entire system begins to shift.
4. Its not about renouncing ambition, but allowing ambition to come from innate gifts.
Many of us are taught to either chase ambition at all costs or reject it altogether, especially if weve felt its toll on health, relationships, or sense of self. I believe that for ambition to be nourishing, not punishing, it needs to center on our gifts.
To work in a way that feels like a salve for the soul, expresses who weare, and makes the change we want to see in the world, we need to leverage the best of us. We all have a unique form of brilliance, a rare talent or ability that is specific to us and that we came to this planet to share. For some, its power skills like deep listening, empathy, and communication. For others, it might be a more tangible skill, such as playing the trombone or excelling in physics.
I coach some of the most legendary humans, from Olympic gold medalists to game-changing founders and leaders. There comes a moment in almost every session when my client inevitably says, Im not a genius or gifted at anything. A lot of us are taught that genius is for a select few, but I believe thats a patriarchal myth that supports some people and aids in the oppression of others. When we bring our brilliance to the world, we can finally drop the hustle and grind and work with our natural flow.
We all have a unique form of brilliance, a rare talent or ability that is specific to us and that we came to this planet to share.
Another benefit of owning our gifts is that it takes us out of the scarcity mindset. When we believe that genius is reserved for the select few, we fight to compete and be seen. But when we realize we all have unique and exceptional abilities worth sharing, its clear that there is no competition. We are all in service to one another, and no one is above or below anyone else.
5. Ambition is cyclical.
One of the challenges in the way weve come to be in relationship with ambition is that we believe it has a never-ending upward trajectorythat its more for mores sake, all the time. More money, more power, more achievements. This approach is expensive for ourselves and the planet.
Ambition is about cultivation, pacing, replenishing, nurturing, resting, and growth. Ambition goes in cycles, like a perennial flower. It starts with a seedling of desire: I want to grow. We nurture and water that desire by nurturing ourselves. We pace our growth, and inch by inch we rise. We become as tall as we can in each moment, based on our inner and outer states. Our gifts come into full bloom, and we have a seasonal peak. Its glorious. And then the winds shift, and we feel we can grow no more. So, we pause, slow down, and go back underground to prepare ourselves for another season. The cycle repeats over and over again.
One of the most important aspects of this reframing of ambition is that it isnt a solo sport. A race to the top alone is a race to the bottom. Ambition is not just about maximizing individual potential. We must work for and lean on each other if we want to live in healthier cultures. We must be riding the waves of cyclical ambition together. Encouraging each other to lean into seasons of growth and seasons of rest.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Anyone who claims they havent felt the seductive pull of social plans interrupting their focus at work isnt being completely honest.
Its something we all succumb to, especially in the summer months when nearly half of employees admit to feeling less productive at work. The lure of longer days, vacation plans, and social distractions can send managers into a spin about delivering at reduced capacity and facing a seasonal slowdown in outputs.
But the summer holidaze isnt a threat to workplace performance. Its an opportunity.
Tightening deadlines or demanding more in-office time might seem like solutions to keep teams in shape over summer. But they often backfire, fueling burnout, presenteeism, and resentment that lingers long after summer fades.
Instead, smart managers use this time to rethink how work gets done. Leaders who embrace the summer rhythm, seek opportunities to innovate, and improve processes can unlock new ways to boost team morale and productivity.
By shifting the focus from hours logged to outcomes delivered, leaders can create agile, resilient teamsand drive productivity well beyond August.
Consider the following tool kit for turning the summer holidaze into a season of smart, sustainable success.
What are you working with?
Start with your most valuable resource: people.
To manage effectively during the summer months, keep clear, accessible records of whos in and out of office. This allows you to set realistic expectations and plan accordingly when operating at reduced capacity. Pair this with a smooth handover process to ensure ongoing momentum, even when team members are away.
Encouraging staff to spread their vacation time across the yearrather than clustering it in summercan help avoid bottlenecks. It also supports long-term well-being: research shows that workers who dont evenly space paid time off take an above average number of sick days in a typical year. By contrast, taking regular breaks leads to happier and more productive workers who are at lower risk of burnout.
Understand your power tools
Summer is an ideal time to rethink the tools that drive productivity. If you havent already, consider establishing a clear AI usage policy that guides employees on safe and responsible use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
Large language models are great at streamlining repetitive tasks, freeing up your team to focus on higher-value strategic and creative work, which can be invaluable when operating with a skeleton team. But these tools are most effective when deployed consistently, confidently, and strategically. This is something a clear internal policy and robust AI training can support.
Own the summer
Lets face it: summer can be inherently disruptive. With people in and out on leave and children off school for the holidays, project timelines can slip and energy levels dip. Instead of resisting the seasonal rhythm, smart managers lean into flexibilityand still get great results.
Companies like Pfizer, IBM, and Viacom are among the many companies offering staff summer hours, early-finish Fridays, or added autonomy over working hours during the summer months. These approaches dont just boost morale, theyve been shown to significantly improve overall well-being and employee experience.
Balance increased flexibility with intentionality on work days. If youre running with a leaner team, get ruthless about your priorities. Decide what really needs to happen, communicate it clearly, and give your team the space and support to deliver. Effective planning beats reactive overwork every time and will enable you to do more with less.
Soft-reset September
No matter how old we get, September still carries that new school year energy. For working parents, it often marks the end of summer chaos and the return of routine. For everyone else, its a natural opportunity to reset.
Use the summer as a low-stakes testing ground. Test out new ways of working with AI, pilot bold productivity strategies, trial half-day Fridays, explore streamlined workflows that cut out unnecessary admin. Then, come September, take stock. What worked? What didnt? What should stay? A thoughtful summer sets you up for a sharper, more focused fall.
Turn it off and get outside
At the heart of summer productivity is rest. All too often, employees dont get enough of it.
Initiatives like summer hours are only effective if people truly disconnect. If staff are logging off at 3 p.m. but back online at 9 p.m., the benefits are lost.
Thats why a formal “Right to Disconnect” policy matters. It encourages genuine rest, reinforces boundaries, and shows staff that their time off is respected.
This only works when its modeled from the top. Leaders who visibly unplug over the summer give their teams permission to do the same.
Ultimately, productivity and well-being arent at oddstheyre interdependent. A summer spent optimizing for both builds a team thats energized, resilient, rested, and ready to take on the months ahead.
