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With its many extraterrestrial guest stars, The X-Files was always meant to be a spooky show. One of its earliest episodes, however, is now eerie in a way its creators likely never intended. In Ghost in the Machine, a first-season standout that originally aired in 1993, a sentient, corporate-created AI turns deadly when it perceives a threat to its existence. That description may rightly sound near-identical to any number of previous killer-computer plotlines2001: A Space Odyssey being the most obvious touchstone, along with Terminator 2, which had come out just two years earlier. What sets this X-Files episode apart from other entries in the lethally sentient AI canon is that it pits a safety-minded tech CEO against a belligerent U.S. Department of Defense, which is desperate to use this companys AI in guardrail-free combat operations. Sound familiar? A ghost in the machine Across its nine original seasons, two feature films, and a reboot, The X-Files cultivated an overarching mythology. The shows creators wisely took frequent off-roading adventures, though, with standalone Monster of the Week episodes that helped keep fans on their toes. Ghost in the Machine is one such excursion, only the monster in this case turned out to be AI. The show begins with the CEO of too-cutely named software company Eurisko (you risk-o?) writing a memo about shutting down the Central Operating System AI that runs corporate HQ. Unfortunately, because the AI is surveilling the entire building, it picks up on this plan and chooses instead to shut down with extreme prejudice the CEO himselfvia electrocution. Enter FBI special agents Fox Spooky Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Their investigation quickly leads them to Euriskos founder, Brad Wilczek, who is initially willing to take the fall for his CEOs murder. By digging a bit deeper, though, Mulder discovers that not only is Euriskos AI the true culprit, the Department of Defense has been trying to get its hands on that AI for years, only to be snubbed each time by Wilczek. (It’s a learning machine, one character says. A computer that actually thinks. And it’s become something of a holy grail for our more acquisitive colleagues in the Department of Defense.) Eventually, Mulder and Scully work with Wilczek to fry the AI, much to the chagrin of a Defense Department mole who has been working at Eurisko the whole time. File closed! Back in 1993, Ghost in the Machine fit snugly into the paranoid truth is out there ethos of a sci-fi show about alien conspiracies. Now, its not closer to the realm of documentary. Although the show would return to the subject of AI again 25 years later in one of the reboot episodes2018s Rm9sbG93ZXJz, a more Black Mirror-y spin on fearing ones smartphoneits the older and admittedly cheesier outing that is far more relevant in 2026. Its most glaring point of prescience, of course, is that it appears to have predicted with spooky accuracy the recent battle between the U.S. government and AI heavyweight Anthropicnot to mention the governments use of AI in its current war with Iran. Our more acquisitive colleagues in the Department of Defense Unlike his fictional counterpart in The X-Files, Anthropic cofounder Dario Amodei was very much interested in lending his AI model to Uncle Sam. Last July, Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide its Claude model for use in classified and operational work. It was only when negotiations began over what such work might actually entail that irreconcilable differences emerged. As the back-and-forth dragged on through late 2025 and into this January, the major sticking points involved Anthropics demand of usage restrictions on Claudemainly, that it shouldnt be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or for building fully autonomous weapons without human oversight. The Pentagon insisted otherwise. Heres where the similarities between Amodei and Euriskos Wilczek get really interesting. (The fact that Amodei bears something of a physical resemblance to Wilczek cant be ignored either.) Why did the fictional founder want to protect civilian populations from the U.S. Defense Department using his AI? He explains it himself in the following exchange with Mulder: Wilczek: After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life regretting he’d ever glimpsed an atom. Mulder: Oppenheimer may have regretted his actions but he never denied responsibility for them. Wilczek: He loved the work, Mr. Mulder. His mistake was in sharing it with an immoral government. I won’t make the same mistake. Amodei publicly presents himself in a similar light, if with less on-the-record talk about government immorality. He has frequently recommended Richard Rhodess book The Making of the Atomic Bomb in interviews, reportedly used to give copies of the book to new employees, and keeps one on prominent display in the Anthropic library. Though Amodeis peer, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, has also spoken often of Oppenheimer as a cautionary example, Amodei has now proven more willing to stick to his guns on the issue. In recent weeks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic an ultimatum to drop its demand for safety guardrails or face consequences. Anthropic refused. As a result, Hegseth made good on his threat, formally designating Anthropic a supply chain riskthe first time the Pentagon has applied that label to a U.S. AI firm. Anthropic has since sued the Pentagon over this measure. As a bonus, the White House labeled Anthropic a radical left, woke company, and President Trump directed all federal agencies to stop using Claude. Meanwhile, former Oppenheimer-recaller Altman has agreed to let OpenAI fill the military void, albeit with guardrails, according to the company. AI at war The X-Files episode Ghost in the Machine ends with the Department of Defense thwarted and its desired AI, which has ostensibly been destroyed, telegraphing to viewers it is still alive, so to speakthe epilogic hand flying out of a grave in a horror movie. In real life, though, the government got a hold of its AI without the need for any innuendo. Despite the formal ban on federal use of Anthropics tools, parts of the U.S. military continue to rely on Claude in combat operations, since they were already deeply embedded. (Removing them completely could take months.) In the meantime, according to the Wall Street Journal, the current war with Iran is demonstrating Claudes usefulness. AI tools are helping gather intelligence, pick targets, plan bombing missions and assess battle damage at speeds not previously possible, the report reveals. AI helps commanders manage supplies of everything from ammunition to spare parts and lets them choose the best weapon for each objective. On February 28, at the start of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, a Tomahawk missile struck an Iranian elementary school, claiming the lives of at least 175 peoplemost of them children. Recent reporting strongly suggests that not only was the U.S. at fault for the missile strike, but that the school was on a U.S. target list and may have been mistaken for a military site. As of this writing, nobody in the U.S. government has claimed responsibility for the mistake. The X-Files episode and movies like Terminator 2 stoked the fear that a sentient AI might decide to wipe out all of humanity. They couldnt foresee the more immediate threat in 2026: that an immoral government would decide to wipe out a portion of humanity and let AI take the blame.
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Nothing says springtime like a canvas tote drop from Trader Joe’s. That’s right. The highly anticipated shopping bags are back and ready to fly off the shelves (and, probably, the resale sites) once again. Trader Joe’s totes are historically massively popular. The brand’s mini totes, which are just 13-by-11-by-6 inches, first dropped in 2024 and became an instant sensation after going mega-viral on TikTok. Once they sold out, they quickly began popping up on resale sites. While the totes only cost $2.99 in stores, resellers majorly marked them up, with some listing the bags for hundreds or even thousands. Since 2024, Trader Joe’s has released a few other versions of the totes as well, like Halloween-themed bags, which were also massively popular. Now, the bags are coming back, and this time, you can get one in a larger (more practical?) size. Nakia Rohde, a Trader Joes spokesperson, told Fast Company that the “next new bag will be a large canvas bag with lavender handles and a pink logo.” That means you’ll be able to hold way more TJ’s goods. But if your heart is set on the mini bag, don’t fret. They are heading back to stores this spring, and they’ll be popping up in the same springtime colors as last year: delicate pink, baby blue, mint green, and lovely lavender. Still, you’ll have to stay nearby Trader Joe’s if you want to snag one. Rohde did not give an exact date that any of the totes will be available nationwide, but said they should be in stores by mid-March, with dates varying based on location. It may also be a good idea to refer to your local TikTok influencer. TJ’s tote bags are certainly not the first item to experience viral fame that leads to an instant surge in purchases. Stanley tumblers, mini waffle makers, beauty products, and tons of other everyday items have, too. However, the Trader Joe’s totes have not seemed to lose their luster since they first arrived on the scene. And, remarkably, it all happened without the brand even having to advertise the bags at all. Our Mini Canvas Tote Bags certainly sold more quickly than we anticipated, Rohde told AP News in 2024. Before we had the opportunity to promote them in any way, customers across the country found them at their neighborhood Trader Joes.
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E-Commerce
Pay transparency laws were supposed to address the pay disparities that tend to impact women and people of color in the workplace. Over the last decade, 15 states have introduced laws that require varying degrees of disclosure from employers, from including explicit salary ranges in job postings to verbally sharing those details with prospective employees during the interview process. But new research out of Cornell University indicates that those laws have not been as effective as intendedin part because many employers fail to truly comply with them. These laws often do not clearly articulate how broad a salary range should be, and simply instruct companies to provide a good faith salary range. (The pay transparency law in New York, for example, states that at the time a job is posted, the range must be the minimum and maximum annual salary, or hourly rate the employer believes, in good faith, they are willing to pay.) As Fast Company has previously reported, this means some employers provide broad salary ranges that technically abide by the law, but are of little use to job applicants. Cornells findings show that these wide salary bands can have the exact opposite effect than was intended by advocates of pay transparency: Across four studies, researchers saw significant variation in the breadth of salary rangesand a clear pattern of women preferring jobs with narrower salary bands compared to their male counterparts. So even as pay transparency laws have sought to put all applicants on even footing, women are often discouraged from applying to jobs with wide salary ranges, reinforcing gender-based pay gaps. But it turns out women face obstacles even when they opt for jobs with narrower ranges. In terms of the implications of this work, those that applied to narrower pay ranges then negotiated less assertively, says Alice Lee, the lead author and assistant professor of organizational behavior at Cornells School of Industrial and Labor Relations. If women are sorting into jobs with narrow pay ranges, that is then constraining their likelihood to negotiate assertively for a higher salaryand these policies that are intended to mitigate these gaps might be actually perpetuating these gaps. Lees research team conducted a collection of studies to understand the effects of pay transparency laws. In an analysis of nearly 10 million job postings, they found a broad spectrum of pay ranges. Two following studies looked at how applicants responded to different job postings, along with how they negotiated when they started interviewing. A final study tested out a few interventions that the researchers thought might encourage women to apply to jobs with wider ranges. There were a few things that did seem to make a difference for female applicantsnamely, being more transparent about how compensation was determined in the original job posting. We just included some clarifying information to the job ads in addition to the pay ranges we provided, Lee says. It was just two sentences that informed applicants of the typical starting salary, as well as sort of the qualifications and the system through which pay is determined . . . for those that saw the job ad with this clarifying information, women applied just as frequently as men to jobs with wider pay ranges, and we also saw no gender gap in negotiation behavior. As Fast Company has reported, overly broad salary ranges have been a recurring issue in states that have enacted these laws. The language of these pay transparency laws leaves room for interpretation, and many employers are not particularly incentivized to volunteer more information than necessary. (Pay transparency laws could impose stricter limits on salary bands, as is the case in states like New Jerseythough this might be a tough sell in regions where corporate interests hold more sway.) The state agencies that enforce these laws tend to prioritize the most flagrant violationsemployers who openly flout the law and do not disclose any salary range, for examplewhich means there are fewer repercussions for companies that effectively try to get around the law by posting unhelpful salary ranges. In New York City, for example, the New York City Commission on Human Rights brought 33 complaints against a variety of employers in the year after the citys pay transparency law took effect in late 2022. But the vast majority of those complaints focused on companies that had neglected to include any salary information in their job postings. While the agency did bring a handful of complaints against companies that used very broad ranges, Fast Companys reporting found that there were other major employers who posted jobs with salary bands that spanned about $100,000. Employers have their reasons for posting wide salary ranges. Many of them want to stay competitive to attract the best talentwhich can mean leaving some room for negotiating compensation, even if that might exacerbate pay disparities. Sometimes companies dont have a clear compensation strategy and scramble to come up with an appropriate salary band, which is especially likely for AI roles that are in demand and can command high salaries. But companies can send the wrong message when they use broad salary rangesin turn alienating prospective employees. Lee says there is an element of risk aversion that also plays into why women are more likely to steer clear of broad salary ranges. Job applicants may also make assumptions about how much a company values equitable pay practices or the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion more broadly. If a company cares about [diverse talent]which I think, personally, all companies shouldthen they should absolutely care about what their pay ranges are signaling, Lee says. For employers who purport to care about pay equity, Cornells research suggests that employers only need to take a few steps to embrace the spirit of these pay transparency laws. Providing even minimal context on how compensation is determinedalong with a typical starting salarygoes a long way. The researchers found that women responded positively to relatively basic language, which noted your exact offer will reflect your relevant experience, skill level and the responsibilities of the role, in line with our standardized compensation guidelines. In some cases, Lee says, it might make sense for a company to use a large salary band, but outline specific pay tiers within that range, based on experience and qualifications. Lee points out that these laws do give workers an opening to ask more questions about compensation and advocate for themselves. But ultimately, its companies who hold a lot of power in those negotiations, regardless of legal protectionsand many of them may not even be aware of the message they are sending to prospective employees. I do thinkI hopethat some employers do truly care about attracting [diverse] talent, and you might be constraining and preventing many of those people without even knowing so, Lee says. I think these findings might come as a surprise to some people.
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E-Commerce
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