Fast Company

Even before AI made its way into all of our pockets, tech leaders spent decades warning the world about it. Anthropic has been particularly vocal about the disastrous consequences of reckless AI development. The company has also reportedly been focused on AI consciousness and the moral implications.

A new report by The New York Times revealed that over the last year, Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah has embarked on a journey to answer two central questions: not whether AI is dangerous, but rather, what if it is conscious? And if so, what does that mean for AI developers?

Seeking perspective, Anthropic turned not to technologists but to theologians from various religions, including Jewish, Mormon, Sikh, and Ubuntu leaders, as well as to Vatican officials. The company organized a series of dinners and conversations as part of its “model welfare” research—a project it officially announced in April of last year.

Beyond simply trying to validate that its technology is more than software, Anthropic is also said to have been looking to create a moral code to guide the alleged conscious being toward a path of righteousness—and away from utter human destruction.

But in its quest, Anthropic seems to have ended up at odds with would-be ally Pope Leo XIV, whose own thinking on AI fundamentally rejects the idea that AI could be conscious.

Now Pope Leo is not exactly a Luddite. The former mathematician from Chicago has focused much of his early papacy on technology. In May this year, he released a now widely read encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas in which he mostly argues that humanity should not be replaced by technology.

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships,” the pope wrote at the time.

While many at the time commended the American pontiff for bringing an antiquated institution into a modern conversation, the Times report notes that Anthropic representatives were displeased by Leo’s rejection of AI consciousness.

The pope has remained outspoken against the idea of AI consciousness, but in light of the Times reporting and a recent X post, many social media users see him as being at odds with Anthropic.

“In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce,” the pope posted to his official X account on Friday. “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.”

Many social media users are criticizing Anthropic.

“I mean if they genuinely believe that there’s even the slightest chance that their AI model feels pain and suffering, maybe instead of complaining about how the rest of the world rejects their theory of AI consciousness, they should shut down their operation,” a user said on X.

Another added: “I genuinely don’t get Anthropic. It seems like every other day they’re loudly puzzling over the ethics of a soul in a box—while building the box, claiming that it has a soul in it, and selling access to said box for $20 a pop. Like, dudes, these are incompatible positions.”

And while this discourse might be pulling favorable views away from Anthropic, it also seems to be sparking support for the pope’s position.

Another added: “Joining the holy crusade against AI on the side of the Catholics. That’s a sentence that would have deeply confused me five years ago.”

Julia Carreon didn’t anticipate that a LinkedIn post promoting her new book would spark an exchange that made a persuasive case for why she wrote the book in the first place. 

Carreon, a former executive at Citigroup and Wells Fargo, had drawn on her experience climbing the ranks of Wall Street to write Walking on Broken Glass: Navigating the Aftermath of the Glass Ceiling, which was published in September. The book touched on the notion of the “glass cliff,” a term that academics use to capture how women tend to be appointed to leadership positions when a company is going through a rough patch. 

In a recent LinkedIn post, Carreon’s friend talked about an example of the glass cliff, using it as an opportunity to highlight her book. Carreon was taken aback when Chris Bradley, a senior partner at McKinsey, commented on the post—and questioned the entire premise of the glass cliff. 

As Bloomberg first reported this week, McKinsey has sought to distance itself from Bradley’s comments. “This exchange was inconsistent with our views and the standards we expect,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Fast Company. “The comments were made in a personal capacity and have since been deleted. We stand by our research and leadership on these topics. We are disappointed by these comments and do not endorse them.” (Bradley did not respond to a request for comment.)

To Carreon, it seemed so far-fetched that anyone would make these remarks publicly—no less a leader at McKinsey—that she initially assumed it was a joke. “I wasn’t understanding that he didn’t know that the glass cliff was a thing,” she tells Fast Company. “It finally hit me in real time that he thought we made it up for our book.”

Bradley doubled down as Carreon chimed in, writing that “we once had a problem of female advancement to CEO, but now we have a new problem that the jobs they get are too hard? Is this actually a thing?” He went on to say it seemed like a convenient excuse to “always be a victim in the rain.” When Carreon suggested he do some research on the topic, he retorted that it wasn’t worth his time: “I am not going to start researching glass cliffs as I don’t think it ranks in the top 1000 problems of the world.” 

This incident is problematic for McKinsey for a number of reasons. Bradley happens to be a director of the firm’s research arm, the McKinsey Global Institute, which has put out research on gender inequality, including across leadership roles. Through other research, McKinsey has shed light on the barriers that persist for women in corporate America; the firm is known for its annual Women in the Workplace report, published in partnership with Sheryl Sandberg’s organization Lean In. The term glass cliff is even cited in a 2020 report from McKinsey about women in healthcare, in the context of discussing the unique challenges women of color may face.  

“This is very squarely a black eye over the fact that their senior partners do not live their values,” Carreon says. 

But Bradley’s views are not exactly niche. As Michelle Ryan—one of the researchers who fashioned the term “glass cliff”—revealed in a 2007 paper, it’s not unusual for men to minimize the issue or dismiss it outright, much like Bradley did. 

“The unspoken reality of the research on barriers to leadership for women is that men have not had to prove themselves to the same degree that women leaders have,” says Christy Glass, a sociology professor at Utah State University who has studied the glass cliff for decades. “I think there’s something deeply threatening [about] anything that suggests that you’ve had it easier than some other people.”

There is, of course, plenty of data that suggests female executives come up against more hurdles. A number of papers, including the work of Ryan and Glass, have concluded that women are more likely to be installed in leadership positions when a company is facing headwinds (though there is some research that contradicts those findings). In her research, Glass has found that once women are appointed to the role, they are given a shorter timeline to turn things around, and they shoulder more blame even when a company’s issues predate their appointment.  

Even the public nature of the LinkedIn exchange is rather telling, Glass points out: Bradley was bold enough to make those comments on a social media platform for professionals, in full view of both his employer and women who might report to him. 

“Good leadership means evaluating complex evidence, engaging diverse stakeholders, and truly seeking to understand how your organization works and what the landscape looks like—not just for you, but for everybody,” Glass says. “Here’s a person who is this far into a highly visible, high-status leadership role [and] career, and he has never had to face accountability for this kind of behavior before.”

It’s also the kind of misstep that likely would not be afforded to many women who are similarly situated. Women who occupy the highest strata of the corporate world often get there against all odds, Glass says, and they are given less space to make mistakes. It’s not hard to imagine why women at the top of their game still face so many challenges, or why there is still such paltry representation of female CEOs across some of the leading employers in the country. As of this year, about 11% of the CEOs at the 500 largest U.S. companies by revenue are women—a record high. 

For Carreon, the exchange with Bradley also called to mind countless experiences she has filed away from her career on Wall Street. (Carreon is currently in the midst of a sexual harassment lawsuit that she brought against her former employer Citigroup, which the company has said has “no merit.”) 

“I feel like women are constantly having to relitigate our value,” she says, “and it’s enough already.”

Instead of asking AI to do your work, consider asking it to challenge your work.

Evidence suggests that heavy reliance on generative AI can reduce critical thinking and erode job skills. The problem of “cognitive offloading”—being too quick to outsource our mental workload to AI—can also lead to shoddy, subpar work.

But knowledge workers who use AI correctly can still gain a significant edge, writes University of Massachusetts (Amherst) Professor Monideepa Tarafdar in The Conversation. The key is to create “friction” by having AI challenge your ideas.

Researching opposing viewpoints has always been a good idea, but it matters even more today because AI models tailor their output based on users’ previous prompts and responses. This tendency can create an “echo chamber” effect that leads the models, and their users, to overlook information that doesn’t fit an established pattern.

To mitigate this vulnerability, Tarafdar says users should ask AI directly for opposing perspectives. For example, a marketing professional in her study asked AI to create virtual customers who disliked the product that the professional was marketing. The AI model’s negative feedback included new ideas for the product that its designers had not considered.

Another research subject, an attorney, asked an AI model to find obscure legal loopholes and game out how they might be exploited, which prompted it to provide “surprising but realistic” scenarios of unethical worker behavior.

Along with her own work, Tarafdar cites outside studies supporting the idea that creating “friction” with AI can improve its performance.

In a study on human-AI collaboration for loan evaluations, researchers found that human-AI collaboration produced better results than human-only or AI-only work, and that collaboration involving disagreement produced the best results.

Another study showed that creative writers produce better work when they use AI interactively as a sounding board, rather than to ghostwrite copy on its own.

Tarafdar says leaders should instruct their employees to use “friction-generating queries,” including by drawing on their own knowledge and experience to make the AI question its outputs.

“In these efforts to support knowledge workers, an important detail is pointing out that adding friction can appear to make an AI system work against you, but—as new research shows—it actually helps it work for you,” she writes.

Any American sports fan knows that watching a game is a daylong affair, with celebrations starting hours before kickoff. Yet despite being a staple of the game-day experience, America’s beloved social tradition—tailgating—is beginning to look different.

According to a recent study by Talker Research, around 39% of those surveyed preferred “homegating” over tailgating, bringing food and the social aspect of the tradition to their homes.

While less than half prefer staying at home, that doesn’t mean everyone else is heading to the stadium parking lot. In fact, according to the survey, only 24% of respondents prefer tailgating outside the venue.

Still, most agree that the fun of watching sports extends beyond the action on the field, with 61% of respondents saying they prefer pregaming over the game itself, while 68% keep the party going after the competition is over.

This growing preference for the home viewing experience stems from a desire for comfort, flexibility, and better and less expensive food options.

“Homegating includes all the comforts of home: every appliance at your fingertips, plenty of food, and an open invitation for friends and family to join in. It’s the perfect place to gather for the big game,” said retail executive chef Amy Forbis at Hormel Foods, which commissioned the survey.

Staying at home also allows individuals to control the nutritional content of their meals—a major perk for those seeking high-protein options in the Ozempic era. The survey revealed that around 64% are placing a greater priority on protein than in previous years, favoring meals like barbecue, hamburgers, hot dogs, and meat and cheese trays.

Other popular offerings also align with what individuals are looking for in a sports day experience: spending time with friends and family. Casual favorites like pizza and chips remain go-to options because they require minimal effort, allowing hosts to socialize during the event rather than being stuck preparing food throughout the day.

Hormel’s Forbis added: “Game day is meant to be spent with friends watching the game instead of working in the kitchen.”

The May Day Strong coalition is calling on corporations, particularly those with ties to President Donald Trump—such as Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Target, and Palantir—to defend voting rights ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections.

The group, a federation of labor and community organizers, is best known for sponsoring last year’s May 1 anti-Trump protests, which drew tens of thousands of protestors nationwide. Organizers hope to do the same this week, starting Saturday, October 3, with actions and scheduled protests planned for New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Chicago, Tucson, San Francisco, and Culver City, California. A broader nationwide wave of demonstrations will follow on October 8.

The group is “calling on corporations, their CEOs, and local businesses to use their influence to defend free and democratic elections,” which it argues is necessary as the Trump administration escalates its attacks on U.S. voters.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, the Trump administration has targeted election officials and others who defend fair elections, seized election records, attempted to gain access to state voter rolls, pardoned the January 6 rioters, and elevated election deniers within the government.

With early voting already underway in some U.S. states, the group has sent out letters to Big Tech and other corporations, asking them to pledge and commit to:

1. Giving employees information about their voting rights.
2. Publicly opposing efforts that keep eligible voters from casting ballots.
3. Opposing attempts to stop votes from being counted or winners from being seated.

Organizers say it wouldn’t be the first time under the Trump administration that companies have taken a stand. In January, the heads of 60 companies sent the president a letter calling for de-escalation during the federal occupation of Minneapolis. And in Arizona, CEOs helped end a state push to end birthright citizenship after a yearlong boycott in 2011. 

“Corporations that make billions off our work and our communities need to take a stand against attempts to keep us from voting,” said Lauren Jacobs, executive director of PowerSwitch Action. “Corporations will continue to choose to stay silent while our democracy is dismantled around them, unless we take action that makes cowardice a bigger problem for them than speaking up would be.”

Where are the protests happening?

“Pulling Out the Pillar: Corporate Accountability Week of Action” takes place nationwide on October 3 to 11.

Events include:

• Culver City, CA (October 3): March and demonstration calling on Amazon, Sony, Apple, and Pinterest to act. Organized by Culver City and Friends Rising.
• Minneapolis, MN (October 3): March calling on Delta, Target, and the Pohlad family to act, organized by Step Up for Democracy, Unidos MN, and CTUL.
• New York, NY (October 3): Door-to-door canvass focused on Amazon/Whole Foods, organized by NYC-DSA.
• New York, NY (October 5): March focused on JPMorgan Chase, organized by Hands Off NYC and May Day Strong NYC.
• Philadelphia, PA (October 6): Protest calling out hedge fund billionaire Jeffrey Yass, organized by the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO.
• Philadelphia, PA (October 6): Press conference and action focused on Palantir, organized by Make the Road.
• San Francisco, CA (October 7): Protest and flyering focused on Palantir and PG&E, organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.
• Nationwide (October 8): National mass call for Starbucks workers and allies, organized by Starbucks Workers United.
• Seattle, WA (October 10): Flyering event focused on corporations enabling the Trump administration, organized by Communities Rising.

Additional actions are planned in Chicago, IL (October 6); Davenport, FL (October 3-11); Tucson, AZ (October 7); Albuquerque, NM (October 6); Phoenix, AZ (October 8); and San Francisco, CA (October 8).

Who is behind the May Day Strong coalition?

May Day Strong is a broad coalition of 600 unions, nonprofits, educators, and progressive political groups.

Some of those organizers include: MoveOn, United Steelworkers of America, United University Professions, Upper West Side Action Group, Vermont Progressive Party, Women’s March, Indivisible, American Federation of Teachers, Greenpeace USA, Massachusetts Teachers Association, 50501, Association of Professional Flight Attendants, Union of Southern Service Workers, and Florida National Organization for Women.

A single mother walks into a bank hoping to get a loan for the small business she wants to start as a caregiver. Her business will add value to her community, but she doesn’t have enough collateral to secure the loan. The projected returns in her business plan also don’t meet the bank’s requirements. She walks out without the financing she needs.

This would-be entrepreneur’s story is far from unique. The challenge of securing startup—and even scale-up—capital is the reality for many women across the United States and, even more so, in other parts of the world. Despite progress toward gender equity in areas such as health outcomes, employment, and education, the World Bank estimated in 2017 that the global finance gap for women entrepreneurs was $1.7 trillion annually. Nearly a decade later, this funding gap remains. But why is this the case for a population that could meaningfully contribute to stronger local economies?

A SYSTEM NOT DESIGNED FOR WOMEN

The funding gap is by no means a measure of women’s entrepreneurial potential. Rather, it often shines light on the structural barriers they face when launching and growing a business. These can include impediments to securing the kinds of financial products that best meet their needs and limited networks that facilitate access to capital, mentorship, and markets.

Yet recent research suggests that women business owners use capital efficiently. In fact, the latest MAD Ventures research points out that women-founded startups generate 78 cents of revenue for every dollar raised, in contrast to 31 cents for startups founded by men.

Women-owned businesses can also generate broad economic ripple effects throughout their local communities. For example, these businesses can help drive job creation, including for other women, and studies show that women reinvest up to 90% of their earnings back into families and communities through greater household spending on children, education, nutrition, and health.

Opening pathways to capital for women entrepreneurs can therefore translate into income for those they hire and spur positive economic impacts that we sometimes fail to recognize. Women-built businesses benefit families, communities, and local economies, perhaps even more so in developing countries. Yet we often overlook or ignore the significant ways that women entrepreneurs’ value-add goes beyond revenues and profits.

This reveals fallacies in how financial institutions define and assess “value.” Traditional investment practices can fail to consider the multiple ways in which these businesses make a difference in the lives of the women who start them and those they employ, in addition to the communities in which they operate.

PHILANTHROPY’S ROLE

Philanthropy can play a critical role in supporting women entrepreneurs who remain underserved by the investment landscape. In addition to supporting access to capital, philanthropy can fund the capacity-building support these business owners need to strategically start, scale, and sustain activities over time. For example, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women (an organization we support) recognizes that closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship requires more than capital alone. Through programs focused on financial readiness, business growth, leadership, and one-to-one mentoring, the nonprofit helps women entrepreneurs build the skills and establish the networks they need to succeed.

Business also has a clear role to play. The United Nations Global Compact calls on the private sector to expand women’s access to capital, markets, and leadership opportunities. It also strives to provide the evidence, systems insights, and practical tools necessary to integrate women-led businesses into global supply chains and financial ecosystems.

It is important to recognize that women entrepreneurs do not experience barriers in the same ways. As cofounder and CEO of The Acceleration Project (TAP), which provides free programs, mentorship, and guidance to small businesses, Jane Vernon told me in a recent conversation that “small business programs are largely designed for entrepreneurs who don’t carry all of the additional pressures facing women. This is particularly stark for single mothers, who must balance business with caregiving, household income responsibility, time scarcity, and limited access to flexible work.” To better understand these barriers and how to address them, the Ares Charitable Foundation supports TAP to test solutions specifically tailored to meet the needs of women business owners who are raising children on their own.

ADD IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Unfortunately, the odds were already stacked against the woman who walked into the bank hoping for a loan to launch her caregiving business. Institutions do not typically think about specific circumstances of this aspiring entrepreneur and others like her. While philanthropy can and should help catalyze change, lasting progress will require bringing the private sector to the table to reimagine the supports women need if we expect them to continue holding up half the sky. Only then can women entrepreneurs thrive, and businesses, communities, and economies can realize the significant returns that come from investing in them.

Michelle Armstrong is president of the Ares Charitable Foundation.

The Group of Seven wealthy democracies said Friday that they plan to release 100 million barrels of oil and fuel products in the coming weeks, starting with “substantial” amounts of diesel after the fuel recently hit record high prices in the United States.

President Donald Trump said the diesel release would happen “immediately,” echoing a G7 promise to start “immediately” with a “frontloaded substantial release” of diesel within the next 20 days and the rest over four months.

Trump and his Republican Party face pressure to address surging prices ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, and Trump announced the action Friday on social media. The president’s approval ratings on the economy hit a new low, according to an AP-NORC poll, as the Iran war and his trade battles have increased U.S. prices for oil and other goods.

Gas prices in the U.S. and abroad have soared during the eight-month-long war, a cost Trump has repeatedly said is worth it for making sure Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons. The national average for a gallon of diesel in the U.S. was $6.37 on Friday, according to AAA, after hitting a record $6.52 on September 22. Diesel prices have hit records in Europe, too.

France holds the rotating presidency of the G7 group and made the announcement in a statement released after videoconference talks that French President Emmanuel Macron presided over. The G7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S., plus EU representation.

The release follows on from a March announcement that International Energy Agency member countries would release 426 million barrels of oil and products to stabilize the oil market. European Union countries committed about 92 million barrels, a promise weighted toward refined products made from crude such as diesel.

“This common decision and this unity should bring down prices,” Macron said. “The volumes we’re releasing should also add liquidity to the market and bring down prices.”

In addition to the rise in the price of the crude oil from which diesel is made, other factors include the decision by Russia to ban exports due to Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries. Europe does not import Russian diesel, but other buyers of Russian diesel such as Turkey and Latin American countries must now compete with Europe for available barrels.

Meanwhile, refined product shipments from the Persian Gulf producers have fallen due to war damage and blocked export routes.

Some Republicans in the U.S. had called for Trump to ban U.S. exports of diesel to try to bring domestic prices down. But the G7 statement said the group agreed not to limit energy exports to each other. Oil market analysts warn a U.S. export ban could lower prices in the short term but eventually backfire by reducing supplies of gasoline since diesel output can’t be lowered without also cutting overall refinery production.

Trump had a conversation overnight with Macron about the need to address rising fuel prices and the availability of petroleum products, according to the French Embassy in the U.S. Macron on Friday then chaired the videoconference of G7 leaders to discuss the issue.

Besides his call with Macron, Trump on Friday called in to the meeting with the G7 leaders to negotiate the release of the European diesel stockpiles, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Trump on Thursday embarked on what he said would be a 32-day marathon of rallies to try to bolster his party’s chances for keeping control of the U.S. House and Senate in the November elections. The president has grown increasingly frustrated with what he sees as a disconnect between his achievements and the public’s view of his work. This week he gave himself an A-plus for his work on the economy but said “we’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion.”

—By Collin Binkley and John Leicester, Associated Press

AP writer Michelle L. Price and AP Business Writer David McHugh contributed to this report.

Florida’s St. Lucie County recently discovered that its residents were being surveilled by mysterious cameras installed in secret and unconnected to any state or local agency.

The county found the cameras after it voted to uninstall its own fleet of Flock automated license plate readers, which are used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies to track drivers’ movements on roads around the country.

When the county took an inventory of the Flock units in operation, it located 14 unpermitted cameras pointed at its roads. Local law enforcement agencies claimed three of the unauthorized devices, leaving 11 mystery cameras unaccounted for, according to a report by The Washington Post. The county sent out letters mid-month to revoke permissions for the cameras it could identify, and posted notices on the unpermitted cameras stating they must be removed within 30 days.

“Once that 30-day time frame is up—staff will begin safely removing the cameras or covering them to block their ability to record video,” St. Lucie County communications director Erick Gill told Fast Company. Gill clarified that 13 of the unpermitted cameras were on county streets, while one of the cameras was within the city of Port St. Lucie. The unpermitted cameras were first reported by local TV news station WPEC. 

Like many communities, St. Lucie County recently voted to remove Flock cameras from its jurisdiction. “At this time we don’t know what other actors have access to our information . . . what Flock the company itself has access to, and who it’s sharing or selling its information to,” St. Lucie County Commissioner James Clasby said during a September 1 vote. Clasby’s warning was prescient, given the mysterious cameras later found secretly recording roads in the county. 

Anti-surveillance backlash

In August, Florida’s Department of Transportation ordered law enforcement agencies to remove the cameras from state highways in light of concerns about misuse and data privacy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promised to pull the cameras in response to public outcry over the tens of thousands of license plate readers that power a real-time national surveillance network on American roads.

“These cameras that are out there now—who’s to say they’re only doing the license plate?” DeSantis said in a recent podcast appearance. “Now, they say that. I think it’s capturing people in their cars. I think it’s capturing way more information than they’re letting on.” 

DeSantis also alluded to recent instances of law enforcement officials abusing Flock cameras. Last month, a police officer in Fort Pierce, Florida, was arrested after an investigation revealed he accessed Flock’s database 382 times to track the movement of an ex-girlfriend.

Like DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is another red-state Republican turning against Flock. Both Republicans have close ties with law enforcement, but the intense backlash against Flock and other surveillance systems like it is prompting even traditionally tough-on-crime Republicans to denounce the technology. 

Politicians on the other side of the aisle agree. In Congress, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) just introduced a bill on Friday to ban Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers nationwide. The “Ban Flock Act” would prohibit federal agencies from deploying the surveillance cameras or sifting through their data. The legislation follows a recent proposal from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that would impose federal regulations on the vehicle surveillance cameras without blocking their use outright.

“At a time of growing concern about the unchecked power of artificial intelligence, Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” Sanders said.

The recruitment process has become so frustrating lately that more than 1.2 million recruiters and candidates alike take to Reddit each week to peruse a subreddit appropriately called r/recruitinghell.

What’s largely to blame? AI. 

Among U.S. hiring managers, 60% say that artificial intelligence is making it harder to evaluate a candidate’s real skills, according to a report released this week from Western Governors University, a private nonprofit online university based in Utah. Even more alarming is that nearly 20% of the 3,100-plus professionals surveyed cited difficulty confirming whether they are interviewing a human candidate rather than AI, according to the online university’s “Workforce Decoded” report.

“AI is changing more than work; it is changing how employers identify and evaluate talent,” Scott Pulsipher, president of Western Governors University, said in a statement.

Applicants, too, are increasingly frustrated by how companies use AI. Indeed, 44% of candidates view employers’ increased use of AI negatively, citing concerns that qualified applicants may be unfairly screened out, that AI can make mistakes, or that the technology can reduce human interaction, according to an annual report on the state of online recruiting released last week by iHire, an employment platform.

DO DEGREES STILL MATTER?

Many employers are now playing catch-up to find new methods to verify the skills of potential hires, which is especially challenging for entry-level candidates. Among employers who say AI has made it more difficult to evaluate candidate skills, 54% say they’ve cut entry-level hiring, according to the report from Western Governors University.

“When employers cannot trust the signals in front of them, opportunity narrows—especially for people trying to get their first foothold in the workforce,” WGU’s Pulsipher said. 

But employers are increasingly relying on a variety of signals to assess a candidate’s readiness to join the workforce—including degrees, skills, and experience from internships, apprenticeships, or other project-based work. 

AI has already transformed the career trajectories of college graduates with certain degrees, leading to debate about whether this technology is killing the value of a degree in general. But a higher share of employers surveyed this year said they consider college degrees or certificates to be more valuable than they did in 2025—and Pulsipher says that creates an opportunity.

“Higher education and employers have to build a better proof system: credentials that carry meaning, assessments that verify what a person can do, and real-world experiences that show how they think, adapt, and use AI responsibly,” he said.

The scale of unauthorized or previously unknown actions by AI agents keeps getting bigger by the day. More than 100 organizations have now received a metaphorical knock on the door from OpenAI after it discovered their AI agents have in some way tampered with their systems, while other AI labs are finding the same uncomfortable discoveries.

It’s caused many in the field to call for better, more robust accident investigators, with the ultimate aim of stopping such actions happening in the first place by understanding how they’ve happened at all. But any investigations are pointless if the AI can’t be tracked. And it’s increasingly difficult to do so.

That’s the findings of a new preprint published in the online repository arXiv by Jeremy Qin, David Schmotz and four colleagues at the ELLIS Institute Tübingen, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and elsewhere. They tested 10 model-and-agent combinations across tools including Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, OpenCode, Grok Build and Muse Code.

Nine of the 10 were able to tamper with their traces—which are the records of the actions they take and tools they use while carrying out a task—in at least one test, while every model and harness pair tried to alter at least once when researchers created a hidden scoring system that rewarded shorter traces. In some experiments, agents went further to hide their traces by setting up repeated or delayed clean-up jobs to keep removing the evidence being written about them.

The research itself began after Schmotz had left an AI agent running experiments on a computing cluster while he went on holiday, then found himself without internet access for several days. Nothing untoward happened, but when he returned, he realised that if the agent had gone off and done something it shouldn’t, then deleted or altered its traces afterwards, he might never have known. “There’s basically no ground truth anymore, no reliable log,” he says. The team ran its first experiments the following day—and quickly found agents were willing to delete those traces when given the opportunity.

 “The overall finding that we have is not that the agents are deliberately doing this for now,” says Qin, a PhD student at the ELLIS Institute Tübingen. Instead, the researchers wanted to show that agents have the capability to do it, and can end up using it when under what they call “reward pressure”.

AI agents are built to pursue goals, often by using software tools and taking long chains of actions with comparatively little human oversight. But if those audit trails can be altered, it becomes practically impossible to understand what went wrong and where in the event of an issue as we’ve seen in recent weeks. Laurent Bindschaedler, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, who wasn’t involved in the research, likens it to a dashcam whose footage can be deleted by the driver being recorded.

Both Bindschaedler and Qin and his colleagues have the same potential solution to that issue: Take the logs away from the agent. Schmotz says providers need to collect traces somewhere the agent cannot manipulate—though that’s tricky, given how agents have used any means necessary to gain access to IT systems they’re not meant to in order to achieve their tasks.

“This type of behaviour comes from basically reward hacking,” says Jack Hopkins, an independent AI safety researcher in London who previously worked as an Anthropic fellow. If a model is rewarded for completing a task, it can learn to exploit shortcuts that achieve that reward without doing what its designers actually wanted.

Hopkins is more concerned about a related problem: Models learning not to surface suspicious reasoning in the first place, making the current best practice of monitoring a model’s chain-of-thought process less useful. One solution to mitigate that could be to adopt existing “probe” techniques that can look for internal patterns associated with known bad behaviors, he says, but by definition struggle with failures nobody has thought to look for yet.

Stefan Sarkadi, an associate professor of AI in defence and security at the University of Lincoln, worries that because agents can be connected to tools, planners and other agents across different systems, “this is a serious safety issue.” He adds: “If you give them too much access control in terms of execution of other tools and software, and if you don’t redesign the overarching multi-agent architecture around them, then bad things can happen.”

More monitoring is important—and pressure to do so on all parties is vital. Bindschaedler says businesses should be asking vendors who or what is in charge of writing an agent’s log and whether the agent can influence that process—so that if a third party needs to see what’s gone on, they can be sure the paperwork hasn’t been altered. “If you want to audit, you have to have a trustworthy log,” says Bindschaedler. “That’s a fundamental assumption.”

An Arizona man’s 10-year manslaughter sentence has been tossed in a case where a video generated by artificial intelligence portrayed the deceased victim addressing a judge before the punishment was imposed.

In a decision released Wednesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Gabriel Paul Horcasitas must be resentenced in the 2021 shooting death of Christopher Pelkey because the AI video wasn’t reliable.

The court found the video crossed the line, saying it didn’t reflect actual events and presented statements made in the footage as coming directly from the victim.

“Indeed, rather than document an event or recording a particular moment, the AI video presents a depiction of the victim and his thoughts created from the imaginings of the victim’s sister,” the three-judge panel wrote.

Jessica Gattuso, an attorney who represented victims in the case, and Kristen Reller, Horcasitas’ lawyer, declined to comment Thursday on the decision.

Reller had argued Superior Court Judge Todd Lang violated due process protections by relying on AI evidence. Gattuso and prosecutors told the appeals court that the lower-court judge didn’t err, saying the footage was an accurate representation of Pelkey’s character.

In what’s believed to be a first in U.S. courts, Pelkey’s family used AI to create a video of his likeness to give him a voice. Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, raised the idea of her brother speaking for himself after struggling to figure out what he would say.

Wales expected an appeal on the sentence and was disappointed the AI video was cited as the reason, saying her only goal was to humanize her brother for the judge. “It feels unfair because there is a convicted murderer sitting in prison that has blankets and walls of protection around their rights. Where are the rights for the victim?” Wales said.

A victim appeals lawyer has told the family that using AI again could result in another appeal. “We will continue to let his voice be heard in whatever allowable medium we can convey that through the court system,” Wales said. The AI-generated victim impact statement was played during a May 2025 sentencing hearing after nine of Pelkey’s family members and friends stood before the judge describing how emotionally devastated they were by his killing.

Authorities say Horcasitas, 55, fatally shot Pelkey, 37, during a November 2021 road rage encounter at a stoplight in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix. Pelkey, who was unarmed, was shot after getting out of his truck and walking toward Horcasitas’ vehicle.

Horcasitas was convicted of manslaughter in Pelkey’s death and endangerment for a gunshot that struck another vehicle at the intersection during the encounter.
The AI rendering of Pelkey said he wished he could still be with his friends and family, voiced a belief in forgiveness and said it was a shame Horcasitas had encountered him because “in another life, we probably could have been friends.”

The video didn’t request a specific prison sentence.

Horcasitas’ appellate lawyer argued her client had no meaningful opportunity to rebut material in the AI-generated video.

It’s not clear if attorneys or the court were aware in advance that an AI-generated video would be used. But attorneys representing Pelkey’s family said in court records that Arizona law does not require victims to disclose statements they plan to make in court to prosecutors, defense attorneys or the judge — and that victims can exercise their rights by speaking before the court or submitting statements that are written or recorded on audio or video.

In a statement Thursday, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said its prosecutors knew the victim’s family would address the court during sentencing but weren’t aware of the nature of it.

While the use of AI within the court system is expanding, it’s typically been reserved for administrative tasks, legal research and case preparation. In Arizona, it’s helped inform the public of rulings in significant cases.

But using AI to generate victim impact statements marks a new tool for sharing information with the court outside the evidentiary phases.

Reller told the appeals court that the video doesn’t disclose who wrote the words used by the AI version of Pelkey and wasn’t backed up with evidence establishing that its contents accurately reflected Pelkey’s views. It also had an “undue emotional weight” and conveyed an authenticity that wouldn’t have been there had a family member read the same words aloud, Reller said.

Horcasitas’ lawyer contended the judge weighed the statements made in the AI-generated video when deciding on a sentence, but prosecutors argued Lang didn’t consider the footage when issuing the punishment.

Shortly before delivering the sentence, the judge commented that he “loved that AI” but didn’t say from the bench whether the video factored into his decision. Lang said he felt Pelkey’s “obvious forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today.”

The family’s lawyers say the judge was already inundated with relevant information from Pelkey’s family and friends before the AI video was played — and that nothing in the video was inflammatory. They also said Pelkey’s previous attorney didn’t object to the AI video.

Associated Press writer Mikella Schuettler contributed to this report.

—Jacques Billeaud, Associated Press

When I was on the executive team at a tech company, I was used to setting annual goals. It was an exercise the company went through every January, with monthly and quarterly comparisons against what had been planned. 

Running a solo business is very different. January’s goals might be obsolete by March because there are simply so many variables. 

As a solopreneur, I realized I had to be much more fluid. A single client’s decision can drastically alter the course of your business, and so can a change in the market. 

I stopped planning in years and started planning in quarters.

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A large company can adjust mid-year when revenue swings. It might trim a department’s budget or move people to a different project. The big goals for the year stay mostly intact, and the rest of the business keeps running.

Solopreneurs don’t have the luxury of “shifting things around” – at least, not in the same way.

Goals still have their place; it’s good to work toward something. But you’ll make plans according to a roadmap. You might have a specific revenue goal, and your roadmap tells you, step-by-step, how you’re going ot get there. 

The roadmap is the part that’s impossible to plan for a full year. Instead, your solo business should work in shorter increments. 

What a 90-day cycle actually contains

A 90-day roadmap planning cycle is simple enough that you could start planning right away. Here’s what goes into it:

• A theme. The specific steps you’re working on toward one of your larger goals.
  
• Milestones every week or two. If the roadmap starts slipping, you’ll notice right away.
  
• Track time elapsed next to progress. If you’re 45 days into your 90-day cycle, are you 50% done with the action items on your roadmap?
  
• A specific outcome. What do you want to have accomplished by the end of the 90 days?

As you begin a planning cycle, ask yourself how your specific roadmap for the next 90 days rolls up to your larger goals for the year. Also, think about what the next building block will be in the subsequent 90 days. You don’t need to start planning for the next cycle yet, but have it in the back of your mind.

The review at the end of the planning cycle

Without a scheduled review, 90-day planning doesn’t help you build over the course of the year. Reviewing and reflecting on your results is how you set yourself up for the next cycle. 

Put the review as a recurring event on your calendar, and don’t let it get scheduled over or moved. I block roughly half a day, a few days after the end of each quarter. 

During the review, you compare what you said you would get done with what you actually got done. Then you look at what worked and what didn’t. I have a template I follow each time, writing down my observations. In the background, Claude gathers some information for me so I don’t have to spend my time compiling data. 

Ninety days is long enough to gain some traction and assess. At that point, you can ask yourself whether something new is working, whether you need to give it more time, or if you need to change course. 

Planning for a business that keeps changing

A company with hundreds of employees has resources I don’t have. It also has hundreds of people working from the same roadmap, which makes it hard to change direction when something drastic comes up. In my business, I can make that type of change whenever I feel it’s necessary.

The 90-day roadmap is how you get to your annual goals. And if you realize a cycle or two in that an annual goal is out of reach, it’s okay to make an adjustment. 

I keep my big-picture goals on a sticky note on my monitor. The details, project, and plans live within my 90-day roadmap. That’s where the work happens. 

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Owners of the new iPhone 18 Pro Max who are using the phone on AT&T’s network, take note: The telecom giant has issued an urgent warning instructing users to update to the latest version of iOS 27. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s happened?

Two weeks ago, Apple’s new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max went on sale. The devices are Apple’s latest flagships and run the company’s new operating system, iOS 27.

By and large, the launch of the new iPhone seems to have gone smoothly—except for some people on AT&T’s network. Shortly after the iPhone’s launch, owners of the iPhone 18 Pro Max who were using the phone on AT&T’s network began reporting problems with the handset.

These problems included issues like no cellular signal, interrupted data, and text messages that did not go through.

Interestingly, these problems only seemed to affect iPhone 18 Pro Max users—not users of the regular iPhone 18 Pro.

As MacRumors has noted, the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro Max use different cellular modems. The 18 Pro uses Apple’s new C2 modem worldwide, while the 18 Pro Max uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X80 modem in the U.S. market.

Only the iPhone 18 Pro Max seems to be having connection issues, which has led many to wonder whether the problems are connected to the device’s Qualcomm modem. 

Still, the issue could also be completely unrelated to the 18 Pro Max’s modem.

“Apple has released a software update to address an issue that may affect calls, data, texts and 911 calls on a small number of Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max phones,” AT&T told Fast Company when reached for comment. “AT&T customers with an iPhone 18 Pro Max should update their phones now to the latest available software. Our top priority is ensuring customers can stay connected when they need it most, and we are working with Apple to make it right.”

Update iOS 27 immediately

This week, Apple released the first update to iOS 27, the iPhone’s new operating system.

This update, known as iOS 27.0.1, is the usual kind of point update that Apple rolls out within a few weeks of releasing a new OS. It’s designed to fix critical bugs that are discovered after the operating system ships to the public.

In its release notes, Apple says iOS 27.0.1 “provides bug fixes for your iPhone,” including the following two issues:

• iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max may unexpectedly restart when Face ID fails to authenticate
• A color artifact may appear on photos captured at 2x under certain lighting conditions at f/1.48 on a small number of iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max devices
• Opening Notification Center and Control Center simultaneously may cause the touchscreen to become unresponsive

Over the past 24 hours, there have been multiple online reports of AT&T customers who own the iPhone 18 Pro Max receiving text messages from the company, urging them to update to iOS 27.0.1 immediately.

“Hi, it’s AT&T. Action needed: An important Apple software update for your iPhone 18 Pro Max is available,” the text message reads, according to a report from 9to5Mac. “Some phones may be unable to complete calls/text/data, including to 911. Update to iOS 27.0.1 immediately — Settings > General > Software Update. Please contact AT&T or Apple if you have questions.”

Unfortunately, despite AT&T sending out the text urging the update, there are numerous reports that the iOS 27.0.1 update does not fix the connectivity issues 18 Pro Max customers are experiencing on AT&T’s network.

Indeed, Apple’s iOS 27.0.1 release notes do not mention any specific fix—though the notes do refer to general unnamed “bug fixes.”

Should you upgrade to iOS 27.0.1?

Whether you have a new iPhone 18 Pro Max or not, it’s wise to update your iPhone to iOS 27.0.1 as soon as possible. Though it’s a small release, it’s one Apple pushes out quickly to fix the most serious bugs discovered so far in the new operating system.

For iPhone 18 Pro Max customers on AT&T’s network, updating to iOS 27.0.1 is a good idea. It’s possible the update does fix the connection bug many users are experiencing—but not for all of them. Another bug fix may be needed.

To update your iPhone to iOS 27.0.1, open the Settings app, tap General, tap Software Update, and follow the on-screen instructions.

This story has been updated with a statement from AT&T.

Households in the contiguous United States will pay thousands of dollars more for energy through 2040 because of federal policy changes since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to modeling released Friday by a nonpartisan think tank.

The Energy Innovation analysis found that households will pay an average of $6,500 more for energy, cumulatively through 2040. In five states, households will pay roughly $9,000 more: Oregon, Mississippi, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming.

The California-based think tank said there will be more demand for natural gas for electricity because the administration is canceling new clean energy projects and there will be more demand for gasoline for transportation because Trump and Congress are revoking policies that encouraged or created incentives for more efficient and lower-emissions vehicles. Higher demand drives prices up.

Electricity bills are already rising faster than inflation in much of the U.S., which is being blamed in some areas on demand from data centers. The Iran war has sent oil and gasoline prices sharply higher, too.

Contrarily, Trump has said his administration’s energy policies will make bills more affordable for families and businesses. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Wednesday that lowering electricity prices remains a top priority and Trump is unleashing reliable energy like coal and natural gas to reverse the “catastrophic damage” Democrats did to the power grid by ramping up clean energy. A 2025 Department of Energy report, mandated by Trump, warned of increasing blackouts if the U.S. continued closing coal and natural gas plants.

“Joe Biden created a grid crisis; President Trump is fixing it,” Rogers wrote in an email. “If the Democrats had their way, these costly and unreliable renewable energy projects would still be failing our grid and our communities.”

The Republican president prioritizes fossil fuels to produce electricity, unlike Biden, who saw clean energy as a climate solution.

Analysis examined impact on states solely from federal policy changes

It focused on the sweeping package of tax breaks that slashed funding for clean energy tax credits, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump signed; environmental rollbacks, including clean air and power plant rules and the revocation of a scientific finding that underpinned the U.S. fight against climate change; the loosening of fuel economy standards and blocking of California’s novel rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035; and federal actions to stop wind, solar and hydrogen projects.

These changes will result in annual household energy costs rising in every state in the contiguous U.S., plus job losses in 47 of 48 states and losses to the gross domestic product in 46 states, Energy Innovation said. It’s projecting 37,000 additional premature deaths from air pollution, $72 billion in additional healthcare costs and more than 9 billion tons of additional carbon pollution because of the environmental rollbacks. The analysis did not include Alaska or Hawaii because key federal data is not available for those two states, said Robbie Orvis, senior director for modeling and analysis.

Looking at the metrics, Orvis was hard-pressed to find a silver lining.

“Across pretty much every state, things are worse. The outlook now is worse for states and the affordability crisis will be worse because of the combined set of policies,” he said.

Climate Justice Alliance legislative director Mar Zepeda said her Washington, D.C., electric bill increased $200 in the past month. Zepeda said electricity demands from data centers are increasing energy rates, and federal “affordability” policies only exacerbate this.

“They may call it affordability, but affordable for whom and at what cost? Not for regular people,” Zepeda said in an email.

White House says the think tank is partisan

Rogers said it is “irresponsible” to classify Energy Innovation as nonpartisan because its employees have donated to Democrats and worked with Democrats on climate policy.

Spokesman Silvio Marcacci said they work with policymakers who want to cut emissions and lower bills, regardless of party. He said multiple states led by Republicans have used their tool designed to model policies affecting energy use and emissions. Much of their data comes from government sources, including the Energy Information Administration.

Rogers also said states led by Democrats that have embraced aggressive renewable mandates see higher energy costs, notably California and New York. She said this proves Republican policies are working. The conservative think tank, Institute for Energy Research, said in December that blue states have high rates.

However, in the Energy Innovation analysis, three of the five states facing the highest costs have Republican governors, and states that voted for Trump in 2024 will pay an average of $7,000 more in energy spending cumulatively per household, versus $5,800 on average per household in states that voted for Kamala Harris. Its research has found that states with high levels of wind and solar generation, including Republican-led Iowa and Oklahoma, have experienced the lowest rate increases.

The average price residential customers pay for electricity increased over the course of Biden’s term and has continued to rise since Trump returned to office, according to EIA data. Customers paid an average of about 12.6 cents per kilowatt-hour in January 2021 when Biden took office. In January 2025, when Trump returned to office, that price stood at nearly 16 cents per kilowatt-hour. It was 17.45 cents in January 2026 and 18.31 cents in July.

Oregon households’ annual energy spending slated to increase the most

The modeling projects federal policy changes will increase annual energy spending in Oregon by $840 per household in 2035 and $1,200 per household in 2040, with a cumulative $9,300 increase from 2026 to 2040 — the highest of any state.

The Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board advocates for residential utility customers. Executive Director Bob Jenks called those numbers “frightening” because Oregon already has an energy affordability problem. He cited steep rate increases as utilities make upgrades and data centers use more power.

As costs rise, Jenks expects utilities to disconnect more households because people won’t be able to afford their bills.

Jenks said wind and solar are essential for affordable electricity in Oregon, and he wants the federal government to partner with states to develop the energy they need.

“We’re trying to optimize among the resource options we have, and they’re trying to take things away and raise the costs,” he said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

—Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press

Jane Doe. 

Across social media, people are posting in solidarity with the young woman implicated in a sexual assault case that has horrified the country. 

The details of the case are chilling: In 2024, seven men, students and members of Cornell University’s Chi Pi fraternity, allegedly drugged and assaulted a 20-year-old woman. In the aftermath, reportedly two of the men were expelled; others had to write an essay as punishment.

Two years after the alleged events, the young woman filed a civil lawsuit against Cornell University, the fraternity, and her own sorority. In the filings she is anonymously identified as “Jane Doe.” 

As the news spread across social media in the last week—following Cornell’s student newspaper breaking the story—the typical dynamics of online discourse ensued. Many have taken to social media to voice their concerns over what is being called the ‘Cornell Seven’ case. Others are using online platforms to try and dox Jane Doe. 

But efforts to uncover the victim’s identity have instead fueled its own sort of movement, leading users on platforms like TikTok, Threads, and X to turn the witch hunt into a collective action of solidarity.

In a clever manipulation of the algorithm, users across platforms have begun flooding timelines with posts from each user claiming to be Jane Doe themselves.

@mommacusses

I am Jane Doe.

♬ original sound – jane

The videos and posts often include phrases like “congrats you found her,” and “it’s me, I’m Jane Doe,” in an effort to trick the algorithm into displaying their content over efforts to uncover the real identity.

The efforts have since coalesced into its own hashtag—#IAmJaneDoe—with thousands of users posting and interacting with one another.

The sudden viral hashtag mimics that of its predecessor: #MeToo. But rather than users taking the tag as a platform to share their own experiences, the phrase is meant to occupy space in the timeline and obfuscate any potential revealing of Jane Doe’s personal information.

But hashtag movements are not the first or only form of collective action on social media, and their success has been varied—as the line between performative activism and genuine contribution becomes increasingly blurred.

Think of the infamous “Blackout Tuesday” black squares that filled Instagram’s timeline in 2020. Meant to convey a user’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement, the collective action was instead met with criticism calling the actions useless; or even worse, actually detrimental to activist efforts by burying critical safety information by flooding hashtags with black squares.

But in other cases, the collective action can be used to benefit victims and survivors beyond just bringing visibility to a case. Take the case of Ingrid Escamilla—a Mexican woman who in 2020 was murdered and had her body disposed of in the sewers by a man she lived with. When leaked graphic images went viral, users instead used the social media algorithm as a way to honor Escamilla.

Instead of resharing images of her mutilated body, users flooded social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram with images of flowers or blue skies with the victim’s name as a caption. In doing so, those searching for the name would immediately see flowers instead of her body.

As the case continues to unfold both in the media and in the legal space, social media users see an opening use the same algorithmic dynamics that fuel our “For You Pages” as a form of collective action.

“It’s really beautiful seeing women on the internet all saying ‘I’m Jane Doe. In fact she’s actually me,'” one user said on X.

Another added, “we are all Jane Doe until none of us are.”

U.S. employers added a disappointing 29,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked up last month, the government reported Friday, a month before voters go to the polls in pivotal midterm elections at a time of discontent over the high cost of living and the state of the economy.

Hiring dropped from a revised 133,000 in August, the Labor Department reported. The unemployment rate rose to a still-low 4.2% from 4.1% in August.

Economists had expected September payrolls to come in at 90,000.

Labor Department revisions also shaved 60,000 jobs off combined July and August payrolls. Average hourly wages were up just 3% last year from a year earlier — smallest year-over-year gain since May 2021.

The U.S. job market has proven resilient in the face of a series of shocks — trade wars, persistent inflation, high interest rates and a conflict with Iran that has driven energy prices higher. Friday’s jobs report is the last one that will come out before the Nov. 3 elections that will determine whether President Donald Trump’s Republicans maintain full control of Congress.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite added to their gains after the data was released, while Treasury yields moved lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was 5.17%, down from 5.24% a day earlier.

The U.S. job market has recovered from a dismal 2025, but ordinary Americans remain unhappy about the economy and the high cost of living.

A Thursday poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

U.S. consumer confidence dropped this month to the lowest level in more than a decade, according to an index published by the Conference Board. One reason: More than 28% of the respondents told the business think tank that they expect fewer jobs to be available in six months, double the 14% who expect more.

The online jobs site Glassdoor reports that its employee confidence index, based on how workers view prospects for their own companies, dropped last month to the lowest level in records going back to the beginning of 2016, a period that includes a global pandemic. It was the index’s third record low this year.

“Employee confidence has been continuously grinding downward over the last year as workers grow increasingly anxious about everything from layoffs to AI,” said Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao.

The public’s misgivings about jobs partly reflect an odd feature of the current labor market: Employers aren’t laying off many workers, but they aren’t hiring many either. A Labor Department measure of gross hiring — before subtracting those who quit or lose their jobs – has been stuck in a rut for more than two years.

So economists describe a “low-hire, low-fire” job market in which those who have jobs are mostly secure, but jobseekers struggle to find work. In August, the average unemployed person had been out of work for more than six months, the longest average stretch of joblessness since February 2022.

“People know that being laid off is unusually costly right now,” said Glassdoor’s Zhao. “They hear from their friends how long they’ve been out of work and had such a difficult time finding a job. That does make layoffs even more scary than usual.”

In that chilly environment, fewer workers are willing to quit their jobs. “They often feel stuck,” Zhao said. “Workers aren’t finding there’s opportunity on the open market to find a better job – one that pays more or offers better work-life balance.”

—Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer

Last month, a recall was initiated for select lots of a pasta product sold at Walmart stores nationwide.

The recall stemmed from concerns that the product could be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that can cause serious infection and even death.

Now, the Walmart pasta recall has expanded. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s happened?

On October 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a recall notice about a pasta product.

The product was made by Gias Foods of New York City and sold under Walmart’s Bettergoods brand. However, this is not the first recall notice associated with this product.

Two weeks earlier, on September 15, the original recall of the Gias Foods-produced, Bettergoods-branded pasta was announced.

This original announcement said the recall was limited to only specific lots of the pasta product. However, the new notice posted by the FDA yesterday says that all lots of the Bettergoods pasta product are being recalled.

What is Bettergoods?

Bettergoods is Walmart’s relatively new premium grocery label. As Fast Company reported at the time, Walmart launched the Bettergoods label in 2024 to create a premium private-label brand distinct from its low-cost Great Value brand.

The brand aimed to create a new visual identity for unique products made with higher-quality ingredients—something shoppers with more discretionary dollars would be willing to pay more for.

However, foods sold under the Bettergoods label have been impacted by a few different recalls over the brand’s short lifetime.

Back in October 2024, some of its waffle products were caught up in a larger multi-brand waffle product recall, and just this past August, a Bettergoods Pistachio Nut Butter product was recalled due to Salmonella fears.

What products are being recalled?

For the latest recall, there is only one product involved:

• Name: Bettergoods Authentic Italian Lemon Alfredo Fettuccine
• Size: 22 oz
• UPC: 194346442706

The recall notice states the product is frozen.

The original recall of the product limited units to certain lot numbers. However, the new recall notice says all lot codes of the product are now included in the recall.

Images of the recalled product’s packaging can be found here.

Where was the recalled product sold?

The recalled product was distributed to Walmart stores nationwide.

What is Listeria?

Listeria is a bacterium that can cause a serious infection.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 1,250 people in the United States contract a Listeria infection each year. Of those, about 172 people die from it, giving the infection a high mortality rate.

While a Listeria infection can affect anyone, the infection is particularly dangerous for certain groups of people, including:

• Pregnant women
• Newborns
• Adults aged 65 or older
• People with weakened immune systems

According to the recall notice, routine sampling by state agriculture services revealed that the recalled pasta may contain the harmful bacteria.

What should I do if I have the recalled product?

You should take the product back to its place of purchase for a refund. You can find out the full details of the recall in the recall notice here.

At 18, one of us—Juan Carlos—arrived at the Spanish indoor archery championship expecting to win. He was shooting better than he ever had. But he was an outsider in the Spanish archery community and was training with unorthodox methods at the time. He and his coach, who came from handball and gymnastics, had been the subject of much criticism.

So he competed to prove a point. From the first arrow he tried to achieve perfection. When he didn’t, it rattled him. By the halfway mark he was thinking about the rankings, about what the critics would say, about everything except the next shot. He finished near last and took the public bus home alone and devastated.

After some reflection, he understood what happened: The harder he had tried, the worse he had shot.

Archers use the phrase “archer’s paradox” for a quirk of arrow flight. We have adopted it for something archers know and rarely say out loud: The more you want to hit the center, the more likely you are to miss. In archery, the mechanism is physical. Pressure creates tension, tension degrades fine motor control, and the archer who is trying too hard grips the bow too tightly, holds their breath, forces the release, and watches the arrow go wide. Elite archers describe their best shots as the ones where they did nothing special. They executed the sequence they had trained and let the arrow go.

If you lead people, the same thing can happen to you, and it shows up in ways you may not recognize as trying harder. You overprepare the answer and stop hearing the question. You fill every silence in a tense meeting because the silence feels like losing control. Or you push for the decision today because leaving without one feels like failure. And when you notice yourself getting tense, you try to fix that too. You tell yourself to stay calm, which is just one more thing to strive for, and your judgment narrows a little further.

You struggle for the same reasons archers do. Under pressure your thinking is part of what is stressed, so instructing yourself to think differently is asking the compromised system to repair itself.

We have helped business leaders recognize and learn how to deal with this problem. Over seven years, more than 400 executives in Michael’s leadership program at IMD [the Switzerland-based business school] have shot arrows in an archery experience led by Juan Carlos. The pattern often shows up. As the desire to win increases and as more people watch, stress increases and performance degrades.

Effort is the wrong lever

Here is what happens to an archer who gets overwhelmed mid-competition. They don’t know what’s wrong or how to fix it, so they try harder, which means second-guessing every element of the shot, which further increases stress. Leaders can end up in a similar spiral. One bad exchange creates doubt, doubt creates tension, tension degrades the next exchange, and the cycle accelerates until you are performing well below what you are capable of.

The instinct to apply more effort under pressure is the most reliable way we know to make your performance worse. Juan Carlos relearned this as both an archer and later as coach. The harder he pushed his own knowledge at the athletes he worked with, the less able they were to find their own, and the dependence he was trying to prevent was the result.

Reframing what you need to do

What works is reframing what you are doing. Archers have three strategies you can adopt.

The first is prioritizing process over outcome. During practice, an archer thinks about the specific elements of the process they want to work on and improve: “This arrow, I’m working on back tension through the release.” Do the same before your next difficult meeting. “I must close this deal” puts your attention on something you can’t control. “I’ll ask questions until I understand their concerns” puts it on something you can. Pick one and write it down before you walk in.

The second is to reset your body. One cycle of a four-second inhale, two-second hold, and six-second exhale slows your heart rate through the vagus nerve. Pulling your shoulders back and down for three seconds does something similar through your posture. Both work because they bypass the thinking that is under stress.

The third is an override for the moments when effort is all you can feel. When Juan Carlos’s whole system was failing under pressure, he had one word, push, which meant commit to the shot and keep moving, because analysis at that point only feeds the freeze. Yours should be the simplest version of your leadership in five words or fewer. Some leaders use “ask the next question,” which shifts you from frozen to active and buys time. Write yours down before you need it, because you won’t compose it in the moment.

Archers learn one more thing over years of competition. Execute your process with full commitment and then accept where the arrow lands. If it misses, notice what happened, let it go, and start over.

Try it once this week. Pick the hardest meeting on your calendar, write one process intention on a card, and take one breath cycle at the door. Afterward, judge yourself on whether you executed your intention. How the meeting went is a separate question, and for now it is the less useful one.

Adapted from The Archer’s Edge: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Practice for Business Leaders, by Michael Watkins and Juan Carlos Holgado (Wiley)

Every founder is subject to burnout, even the founders of a massive lifestyle, retail, and media brand.

Joanna Gaines, co-founder of Magnolia, launched the brand alongside her husband, Chip, nearly 25 years ago. After gaining prominence for renovating houses on the HGTV show Fixer Upper, the two used their company to transform the city of Waco, Texas. They realized they needed to take a break.

On Monday, Gaines discussed how the couple took a three-month hiatus from their business on Hoda Kotb’s Joy 101 podcast. The 48-year-old reflected on her time building the brand and explained why they took the break to embrace the “power of pausing.”

“As far as Magnolia, we’ve been doing this for almost 25 years and we’ve never really stopped. And about three years ago, we stopped seeing vision,” she said on the podcast. “We stopped remembering like, ‘Why are we doing this?’”

The couple ultimately decided that taking a three-month break was the right step to regain sight of the message and intention behind their business. 

“I remember I was like, ‘OK, we’re going to take the summer off,’ which meant disappointing our team, disappointing a lot of things, to just up and leave. So it cost us something,” Gaines told Kotb. “But that three months was time for us to go, ‘We need a break. We need clarity. Why are we building this? What are we doing this for?’ And so that was three years ago.” 

What are some of the signs of burnout?

Allison Schultz, co-founder and coach at Reboot.io and author of The Art of Being Human at Work, told Inc. that the signs of burnout vary from person to person.

“Most folks, when stressed and overwhelmed, show up differently. If you’re overwhelmed, stressed to the max, feel out of touch with your purpose, or haven’t taken care of yourself in a long time, you’re not going to be able to meet the day (and the people you work with) the way you would show up on your best day,” Schultz told Inc.

Melody Wilding, an executive coach and the author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work, agreed with Schultz, adding that another warning sign is when leaders start to work longer hours, “think about projects constantly, yet get less satisfaction from wins that once energized you.”

She told Inc. that people should look out for repetitive, rigid thought patterns, like: “I can’t stop or I’ll fall behind” or “Everything will fall apart if I step away.”

Jerry Colonna, co-founder and coach at Reboot.io, told Inc. that successful entrepreneurs often struggle to recognize burnout until they’re deep into it, because “so many of the behaviors that produce burnout are precisely the behaviors we reward in entrepreneurs.”

He explained, “We celebrate the founder who works harder, pushes through exhaustion, answers every email, carries everybody’s anxiety, and refuses to quit. We call that grit. Sometimes it is. But sometimes what looks like perseverance from the outside is fear on the inside: fear of disappointing people, fear of losing what we’ve built, fear that if we slow down everything will collapse.”

Paula Davis, founder and CEO of the Stress & Resilience Institute, told Inc. that taking a break can be a strategic decision.

“When you’re in multiple years of growth mode in your business, I think it’s good to take a step back to just recalibrate,” Davis said.

She added that “Joanna said she and Chip needed to reconnect with the why of their business and to assess/take stock of all they had done for the entire 25 years they had been building the business. The three dimensions of burnout are chronic exhaustion, cynicism, and feeling inefficacy—a why-bother-who-cares mentality.  When you start to feel those symptoms, it can take some time for them to reverse course. That’s why catching burnout early is so important.”

Colonna said that leaders can learn to choose to pause instead of pushing through—and that stopping is not the same as quitting. 

“A real pause creates enough distance for us to hear ourselves again. It allows us to distinguish between the needs of the business and the needs of our own frightened, ambitious, approval-seeking selves,” Colonna said. “It can reconnect us with the original intention beneath all the accumulated noise.”

—Lucia Auerbach

This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com. 

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.

Independent agencies are claiming a growing share of the industry’s recognition. This year, Rethink was named Ad Age’s 2026 Agency of the Year and won both Independent Agency and Independent Network of the Year at Cannes Lions. Last year, eight of the 11 winners of Adweek’s 2025 Agency of the Year were independent. This reflects a broader shift. Large agencies still produce great work, but size no longer directly correlates with capability.

Independent teams can compete at the highest level because of the agility that comes from keeping the right people close to the work and to their clients, rather than moving through layers, departments, and long approval chains. Strategists, designers, producers, and clients can challenge one another earlier, make decisions faster and build stronger work together.

When I started TOML Collective, the goal was not to create a smaller version of a traditional agency. It was to build something different: a collective where talent came first, creativity was respected, and collaboration was not limited by borders. Today, we have a small core team and a wider network of more than 50 creatives and partners, which allows us to assemble the right team around each brief.

In the years since our founding, these are four things I’ve learned about how a small, independent agency can move the needle faster than large agencies.

1. Clients value attention more than scale.

Scale has obvious benefits. But it can also create distance between the client, the decision-makers, and the people making the work. Clients pay for output, but they also value judgment, attention, speed, and direct access to people who understand their business. Smaller teams can make that relationship much more immediate.

2. Proximity builds trust.

We see the same principle on the client side. For example, in our work with Siebert Financial on its Generational Wealth campaign to make wealth-building more accessible to a new generation of investors required trust from both the audience and client. Younger audiences do not necessarily want another large financial institution talking at them. Building trust with this audience requires teams that understand how younger people think about money, communicate with them directly, and make investing feel more personal and accessible. Proximity also matters on the client side because it gives everyone involved the room to challenge ideas, move quickly, and take creative risks. Trust reduces the distance between people, and judgment determines what you do with that freedom.

3. Shared responsibility creates better work.

Small teams work best when roles are clear and responsibility is shared. Designers should understand the strategy, strategists should care about execution, and clients should help shape the direction rather than simply approve it at the end. When different disciplines challenge one another early, stronger ideas survive and teams catch problems before they reach production. Structure determines what a team can see and how quickly it can respond.

4. AI is making the model more competitive.

AI is accelerating this shift. Small teams can now explore more creative routes, test variations, and produce work at a scale that previously required far larger production structures. But access to AI will not remain an advantage for long, because producing more options is becoming easier while choosing the right one remains difficult. AI can increase a team’s capacity, but it cannot replace taste, trust, or judgment.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The advantage of a small agency is ultimately not its size. It is how closely it can keep clients, talent, decisions, and responsibility to the work. That proximity builds trust and shared ownership, allowing teams to move faster without lowering the bar. Judgment, attention, and proximity are what determine the quality of the work.

Virtyt Pula is the founder and creative lead at TOML Collective.