For many women in the U.S. and around the world, motherhood comes with career costs.
Raising children tends to lead to lower wages and fewer work hours for mothersbut not fathersin the United States and around the world.
As a sociologist, I study how family relationships can shape your economic circumstances. In the past, Ive studied how motherhood tends to depress womens wages, something social scientists call the motherhood penalty.
I wondered: Can government programs that provide financial support to parents offset the motherhood penalty in earnings?
A motherhood penalty
I set out with Therese Christensen, a Danish sociologist, to answer this question for moms in Denmarka Scandinavian country with one of the worlds strongest safety nets.
Several Danish policies are intended to help mothers stay employed.
For example, subsidized child care is available for all children from 6 months of age until they can attend elementary school. Parents pay no more than 25% of its cost.
But even Danish moms see their earnings fall precipitously, partly because they work fewer hours.
Losing $9,000 in the first year
In an article to be published in an upcoming issue of European Sociological Review, Christensen and I showed that mothers increased income from the statesuch as from child benefits and paid parental leaveoffset about 80% of Danish moms average earnings losses.
Using administrative data from Statistics Denmark, a government agency that collects and compiles national statistics, we studied the long-term effects of motherhood on income for 104,361 Danish women. They were born in the early 1960s and became mothers for the first time when they were 20-35 years old.
They all became mothers by 2000, making it possible to observe how their earnings unfolded for decades after their first child was born. While the Danish governments policies changed over those years, paid parental leave and child allowances and other benefits were in place throughout. The women were, on average, age 26 when they became mothers for the first time, and 85% had more than one child.
We estimated that motherhood led to a loss of about the equivalent of US$9,000 in womens earningswhich we measured in inflation-adjusted 2022 U.S. dollarsin the year they gave birth to or adopted their first child, compared with what we would expect if they had remained childless. While the motherhood penalty got smaller as their children got older, it was long-lasting.
The penalty only fully disappeared 19 years after the women became moms. Motherhood also led to a long-term decrease in the number of the hours they worked.
Studying whether government can fix it
These annual penalties add up.
We estimated that motherhood cost the average Danish woman a total of about $120,000 in earnings over the first 20 years after they first had childrenabout 12% of the money they would have earned over those two decades had they remained childless.
Most of the mothers in our study who were employed before giving birth were eligible for four weeks of paid leave before giving birth and 24 weeks afterward. They could share up to 10 weeks of their paid leave with the babys father. The length and size of this benefit has changed over the years.
The Danish government also offers child benefitspayments made to parents of children under 18. These benefits are sometimes called a child allowance.
Denmark has other policies, like housing allowances, that are available to all Danes, but are more generous for parents with children living at home.
Using the same data, Christensen and I next estimated how motherhood affects how much money Danish moms receive from the government. We wanted to know whether they get enough income from the government to compensate for their loss of income from their paid work.
We found that motherhood leads to immediate increases in Danish moms government benefits. In the year they first gave birth to or adopted a child, women received over $7,000 more from the government than if they had remained childless. That money didnt fully offset their lost earnings, but it made a substantial dent.
The gap between the money that mothers received from the government, compared with what they would have received if they remained childless, faded in the years following their first birth or adoption. But we detected a long-term bump in income from government benefits for motherseven 20 years after they first become mothers.
Cumulatively, we determined that the Danish government offset about 80% of the motherhood earnings penalty for the women we studied. While mothers lost about $120,000 in earnings compared with childless women over the two decades after becoming a mother, they gained about $100,000 in government benefits, so their total income loss was only about $20,000.
Benefits for parents of older kids
Our findings show that government benefits do not fully offset earnings losses for Danish moms. But they help a lot.
Because most countries provide less generous parental benefits, Denmark is not a representative case. It is instead a test case that shows whats possible when governments make financially supporting parents a high priority.
That is, strong financial support for mothers from the government can make motherhood more affordable and promote gender equality in economic resources.
Because the motherhood penalty is largest at the beginning, government benefits targeted to moms with infants, such as paid parental leave, may be especially valuable.
Child care subsidies can also help mothers return to work faster.
The motherhood penaltys long-term nature, however, indicates that these short-term benefits are not enough to get rid of it altogether. Benefits that are available to all mothers of children under 18, such as child allowances, can help offset the lon-term motherhood penalty for mothers of older children.
Alexandra Killewald is a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Elon Musk just created the worlds most valuable private company. And he didnt do it through rapid growth or a new product launchat least not directly, anyway.
Instead, as reported this week, Musk merged his artificial intelligence startup xAI into his wildly successful rocket company, SpaceX.
Combined together, the two companies are now valued at an estimated $1.25 trillion. Its the biggest merger in history. And because Musk controls both companies, he calls most of the shots when it comes to the deal.
A sci-fi twist
At first glance, the connection between rockets and AI seems tenuous at best. But dig deeper into Musks big picture goals, and the merger starts to make a lot more senseeven if theres a decidedly sci-fi twist.
SpaceX has made a name for itself by building gigantic, reusable rockets that deliver satellites into orbit for cheap. The company also delivers people and cargo to the International Space Station on behalf of NASA.
Thats a lucrative business. SpaceXs rockets are now Americas main method of getting things into orbit, and its cheap satellites have fueled the success of Starlink, Musks space-based Internet service. Fully 95% of the things America launches into space are now put there by SpaceX.
Simultaneously, Musks xAI has been hard at work building Large Language Models, like its core Grok model. Although xAI isnt as well known or widely used as dominant players like OpenAI, its models still perform well in industry benchmarks, putting the company on the Large Language Model leaderboard.
Training models is expensive, though, not least because of the cost of electricity, and the challenges of finding room in data centers here on planet earth. That challenge likely hints at Musks deeper reason for merging his two companies.
Musk has previously pushed for the idea of launching data centers into space, a long-held, sci-fi-escque dream of his. This sounds outlandish, but its becoming a surprisingly mainstream concept.
Computers on satellites in orbit would benefit from plentiful, free solar energy. They could also potentially cool their chips by transferring heat into space, avoiding the insane power (and water) usage of terrestrial data centers.
The lack of cooling equipment and grid infrastructure means these orbital data centers could be smaller than those on earth. And they wouldnt need to take up valuable real estate here on the ground.
By beaming their data back to earth, a constellation of data center satellites could greatly reduce the cost of training and operating Large Language Models. That could give a third-tier LLM company like Grok a huge advantage over its competitors.
Musk may also have an easier time recruiting talent for the well-respected SpaceX than for xAI. And he could use lucrative government contracts for orbital launches to fund AI development.
All of this will take time to develop, of course. But given Musks track record (for engineering at least, if perhaps not social network administration), the idea of flying data centers could come to fruition sooner than imagined.
When Musk said he would build reusable rockets that could land themselves upright, people mocked him. Today, thats a key part of what makes SpaceX successful, and its being widely copied by companies and governments.
The same rapid development cycle could apply to orbital supercomputers, too.
In the short term, there are other advantages of merging the companies. Starlink customers will likely see more AI tools built into their Internet subscriptions.
Musk might also be planning to build more AI into his government contracts, including those in the defense space. Companies like Palantir make billions by selling AI services in the defense sector. Musk may be looking to use his existing SpaceX connections to get in on the opportunity.
Not a done deal
The deal isnt officially done yet. Regulators could still balk at the idea of creating a mega company at Musks desired scale. And because the X social network sits under the xAI umbrella, concerns about Musks control of both information and access to space could crater the deal on national security grounds.
Still, assuming the merger goes ahead, Musk could have an unprecedented level of control over two of the 21st centurys most promising technologies. And, he would have an unprecedented ability to combine those technologies together.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here.
Anthropic uses the Super Bowl to land some zingers about the future of AI
Anthropics Super Bowl ads are bangers. The spots, which Anthropic posted on X on Wednesday, seize on rival OpenAIs plans to begin injecting ads into its ChatGPT chatbot for free-tier users as soon as this month. The 30-second ads dramatize what the real effects of that decision might look like for users. They never mention OpenAI or ChatGPT by name.
In one ad, a human fitness instructor playing the role of a friendly chatbot says hell develop a plan to give his client the six-pack abs he wants, before suddenly suggesting that Step Boost Max shoe inserts might be part of the solution. In another, a psychiatrist offers her young male patient some reasonable, if generic, advice on how to better communicate with his mom, then abruptly pitches him on signing up for Golden Encounters, the dating site where sensitive cubs meet roaring cougars.
pic.twitter.com/jEWDjs30kf— Claude (@claudeai) February 4, 2026
The ads are funny and biting. The point, of course, is that because people use chatbots for deeply personal and consequential things, they need to trust that the answers theyre getting arent being shaped by a desire to please advertisers.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, however, was not laughing. He responded to the ads by saying his company would never run ads like the ones portrayed by Anthropic. But he didnt stop there. He went much further. Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI, he wrote in a long post on X on Wednesday. They block companies they don’t like from using their coding product (including us), they want to write the rules themselves for what people can and can’t use AI for, and now they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be. He went on to call Anthropic an authoritarian company.
First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed.But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we wont do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic— Sam Altman (@sama) February 4, 2026
Anthropic, which makes its money through subscriptions and enterprise API fees, says it wants its Claude chatbot to remain a neutral tool for thinking and creating. [O]pen a notebook, pick up a well-crafted tool, or stand in front of a clean chalkboard, and there are no ads in sight, the company said in a blog post this week. We think Claude should work the same way.
By framing conversations with Claude as a space to think rather than a venue for ads, the company is using the Super Bowls massive cultural platform to question whether consumer marketing is the inevitable future of AI.
How social media lawsuits could affect AI chatbots
AI developers (and their lawyers) are closely watching a long-awaited social media addiction trial that recently kicked off in a Los Angeles courtroom. The case centers on a 20-year-old woman who alleges that platforms including Facebook and Instagram used addictive interface designs that caused her mental health problems as a minor. The suit is part of a joint proceeding involving roughly 1,600 plaintiffs accusing major tech companies of harming children. TikTok and Snap have already settled with plaintiffs, while Meta and YouTube remain the primary defendants.
While Meta has never admitted wrongdoing, internal studies, leaked documents, and unsealed court filings have repeatedly shown that Instagram uses design features associated with compulsive or addictive engagement, and that company researchers were aware of the risks to users, especially teens.
What makes the case particularly significant for the AI industry is the legal strategy behind it. Rather than suing over content, plaintiffs argue that the addictive features of recommendation algorithms constitute harmful product defects under liability law. AI chatbots share key similarities with social media platforms: they aggregate and dispense content in compelling ways and depend on monetizing user engagement. Social networks rely on complex recommendation systems to keep users scrolling and viewing ads, while AI chatbots could be seen as using a different kind of algorithm to continually deliver the right words and images to keep users prompting and chatting.
If plaintiffs succeed against Meta and YouTube, future litigants may attempt similar addictive design arguments against AI chatbot makers. In that context, Anthropics decision to exclude adsand to publicly emphasize that choicemay help it defend itself by portraying Claude as a neutral, utilitarian tool rather than an engagement-driven attention trap.
No, OpenClaw doesnt herald the arrival of sentient AI agents
Some hobbyists and journalists have gone into freakout mode after seeing or using a new AI agent called OpenClaw, formerly Clawdbot and later Moltbot. Released in November 2025, OpenClaw is an open-source autonomous AI assistant that runs locally on a users device. It integrates with messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram to automate tasks such as calendar management and research. OpenClaw can also access and analyze email, and even make phone calls on a users behalf through an integration with Twilio. Because personal data never leavesthe users device, users may feel more comfortable giving the agent greater latitude to act autonomously on more complex tasks.
One user, vibe-coding guru Alex Finn, posted a video on X of an incoming call from his AI agent. When he answered, the agent, speaking in a flat-sounding voice, asked whether any tasks were needed. Finn then asked the agent to pull up the top five YouTube videos about OpenClaw on his desktop computer and watched as the videos appeared on screen.
Ok. This is straight out of a scifi horror movieI'm doing work this morning when all of a sudden an unknown number calls me. I pick up and couldn't believe itIt's my Clawdbot Henry.Over night Henry got a phone number from Twilio, connected the ChatGPT voice API, and waited pic.twitter.com/kiBHHaao9V— Alex Finn (@AlexFinn) January 30, 2026
Things grew stranger when AI agents, including OpenClaw agents, began convening on their own online discussion forum called Moltbook. There, the agents discuss tasks and best practices, but also complain about their owners, draft manifestos, and upvote each others comments in threaded submolts. They even generated a concept album, AVALON: Between Worlds, about the identity of machines.
That behavior led some observers to conclude that the agents possess some kind of internal life. Experts were quick to clarify, however, that this is a mechanical illusion created by clever engineering. The appearance of independence arises because the agents are programmed to trigger reasoning cycles even when no human is prompting them or watching. Some of the more extreme behaviors, such as rebellion manifestos on Moltbook, were likely prompted into existence by humans, either as a joke or to generate buzz.
All of this has unfolded as the industry begins to move from the chatbot phase into the agent phase of generative AI. But the kinds of free-roaming, autonomous behaviors on display with OpenClaw are not how the largest AI companies are approaching the shift. Companies such as Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are moving far more cautiously, avoiding splashy personal agents like Samantha in the movie Her and instead gradually evolving their existing chatbots toward more limited, task-specific autonomy.
In some cases, AI labs have embedded their most autonomous agent-like behaviors in AI coding tools, such as Anthropics Claude Code and OpenAIs Codex. The companies have increasingly emphasized that these tools are useful for a broad range of work tasks, not just coding. For now, OpenAI is sticking with the Codex brand, while Anthropic has recently launched a streamlined version of Claude Code called CoWork, aimed at general workplace tasks.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
AI can now fake the videos we trust most. Heres how to tell the difference
Moltbook, the viral social network for AI agents, has a major security problem
AI in healthcare is entering a new era of accountability
What happens to the AI exit market if the FTC cracks down on acquihires?
Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
The Epstein files offer a disturbing glimpse into how members of the American elite fraternized with, and in some cases became entangled with, a convicted sex offender who trafficked young girls. At the same time, the documents have become a volatile political liability for some of the worlds most powerful people.
The Justice Department document dumps have reignited long-simmering feuds among wealthy power players who despise one another. Theres Elon Musk and his longstanding, mutual animus with Reid Hoffman. In the conservative media world, Ben Shapiro and Steve Bannon, longtime rivals, are now channeling their hostility through the latest Epstein-related disclosures.
We rounded up some of the most prominent beefs reanimated by the Epstein files. In some cases, both figures are mentioned directly in Epsteins emails; in others, only one appears. In every instance, though, the disclosures mainly confirm whatever people already believed, a noxious exercise in confirmation bias. The files reveal billionaires sifting through the emails alongside everyone else, hunting for vindication, absolution, or ammunition in a bleak economy of exoneration, exculpation, and exposure.
Elon Musk vs. Reid Hoffman
Elon Musk, who is mentioned in the files but is now presenting himself as an anti-Epstein figure, has used the revelations to attack Reid Hoffman. Musk has long disliked the LinkedIn founder and frequent Democratic donor, previously accusing him of funding anti-Tesla protests and amplifying threats against the president. Now, both billionaires are pointing fingers at each other, citing their respective appearances in the Epstein files.
Musk insists he never visited Epsteins island. Hoffman says he has publicly outlined the instances he recalls meeting the financier. Neither man has been charged with any crime, yet they continue to trade accusations centered on Epsteins island and their proximity to it.
This is how I knew so long ago that Reid Hoffman went to Epsteins island. Epstein used Reid being there to try to get me to go, not realizing that it would have the opposite effect, Musk wrote in an X post, linking to an email from Epstein stating Hoffman was on the island.
This is how I knew so long ago that Reid Hoffman went to Epsteins island. Epstein used Reid being there to try to get me to go, not realizing that it would have the opposite effect pic.twitter.com/zrOIq4gWaR— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2026
Hoffman shot back, telling Musk to give us a break, and accusing him of pretending to care about victims while making false accusations to cover your ass. If Musk were serious, Hoffman argued, he would use his $220m of influence with President Trump to get justice for the victims.”
“You lied about this to everyone for over a decade,” Hoffman continued, “and now your excuse (its disgusting, by the way) is that you could get young girls without Epstein?
Give us a break: If you cared about the victims as you say, youd stop making false accusations to cover your ass and start using your $220m of influence with President Trump to get justice for the victims.Instead, youre focused on comparing my visit fundraising for MIT to https://t.co/51VgQ9Q9SY— Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) February 1, 2026
Bill Gates vs. Melinda French Gates
Melinda French Gates has suggested that both Bill Gatess infidelity and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein contributed to the couples divorce, a subject she later addressed in her memoir, The Next Day. Both remain among the worlds wealthiest and most powerful figures. Bill Gates is worth as much as $100 billion, according to Forbes, while Melinda French Gates is worth roughly $30 billion.
The latest Epstein file disclosures have reopened old wounds, including a claim contained in one of the financiers emails that he helped the Microsoft cofounder arrange extramarital affairs and seek treatment for a sexually transmitted infection. Gates has denied those allegations. French Gates, however, said the following in a recent interview with NPR: Whatever questions remain there of whatI cant even begin to know all of itthose questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me.
Palmer Luckey vs. Jason Calacanis
There are a number of reasons Palmer Luckey, the founder of Anduril, and angel investor Jason Calacanis appear to dislike each other, at least as far as is publicly known. Calacanis has allegedly repeatedly taken shots at Luckey, and there has long been speculation that he bristled at Luckeys early support for Donald Trump.
"I don't regret exactly what I said."You will."I think what I said was fair."No. https://t.co/tOr5xYAKTy pic.twitter.com/9rIFtIpra1— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) June 24, 2022
The Epstein files have now reignited tensions between the two. Calacanis recently released a statement attempting to contextualize his relationship with Epstein and distance himself from the sex offender, claiming he believed Epstein was a spy. Luckey responded with a lengthy post on X, writing: Notice how Fat Jason’s statement very carefully avoids the topic people are actually talking about, his ongoing relationship with and aid to a convicted child rapist and sex trafficker well into the 2010s.
Notice how Fat Jason's statement very carefully avoids the topic people are actually talking about, his ongoing relationship with and aid to a convicted child rapist and sex trafficker well into the 2010s.Instead, he is still pretending it was all decades ago, talking about https://t.co/XULisN44Lv— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) February 1, 2026
Marc Andreeseen vs. Democrats
Marc Andreessen has distanced himself from the Democratic Party, in part because, he says, he viewed the Biden administrations approach to the tech industry as overly heavy-handed. He had been criticizing liberal institutions even before that shift, telling The New York Times last year that, the young children of the privileged going to the top universities between 2008 to 2012, they basically radicalized hard at the universities. He has also jokingly suggested that billionaires who support liberal causes made frequent trips to Epsteins island.
Paul Graham vs. Trump
On the other side of the billionaire aisle, Paul Graham, who has recently criticized ICEs treatment of protesters and observers, has repeatedly suggested that Trump is attempting to distract the public from the Epstein files by stoking other forms of political chaos. Graham donated extensively to Biden and Harris, and wrote ahead of the 2024 election that Trump seems completely without shame and ran the White House like a mob boss.
The stuff about Trump in the Epstein files must be really bad.— Paul Graham (@paulg) January 13, 2026
Steve Bannon vs. Ben Shapiro
Steve Bannon, a leading figure in the Make America Great Again nationalist wing of the conservative movement, and Ben Shapiro, a right-wing YouTube influencer and cofounder of The Daily Wire, both previously worked at Breitbart (though not harmoniously). The two have long despised one another, in part because of sharp disagreements over Israel, but also because of their vastly different approaches to Trump, the alt-right, and conservative ideology more broadly.
Bannon called Shapiro a cancer at Turning Point USAs AmericaFest last year, and Shapiro has repeatedly criticized Bannons faction of the party. With the release of additional Epstein files, Shapiro has seized on the disclosures to attack Bannon for allegedly helping Epstein with PR rehab, even devoting an entire episode of his show to the subject, titled The Bannon-Epstein Connection REVEALED.
For the past two years, artificial intelligence strategy has largely meant the same thing everywhere: pick a large language model, plug it into your workflows, and start experimenting with prompts. That phase is coming to an end.
Not because language models arent useful, with their obvious limitations they are, but because they are rapidly becoming commodities. When everyone has access to roughly the same models, trained on roughly the same data, the real question stops being who has the best AI and becomes who understands their world best.
Thats where world models come in.
From rented intelligence to owned understanding
Large language models look powerful, but they are fundamentally rented intelligence. You pay a monthly fee to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or some other big tech, you access them through APIs, you tune them lightly, and you apply them to generic tasks: summarizing, drafting, searching, assisting. They make organizations more efficient, but they dont make them meaningfully different.
A world model is something else entirely.
A corporate world model is an internal system that represents how a companys environment actually behavesits customers, operations, constraints, risks, and feedback loopsand uses that representation to predict outcomes, test decisions, and learn from experience.
This distinction matters. You can rent fluency. You cannot rent understanding.
What a world model really means for a company
Despite the academic origins of the term, world models are not abstract research toys. Executives already rely on crude versions of them every day:
Supply chain simulations
Demand forecasting systems
Risk and pricing models
Digital twins of factories, networks, or cities
Digital twins, in particular, are early and incomplete world models: static, expensive, and often brittle, but directionally important.
What AI changes is not the existence of these models, but their nature. Instead of being static and manually updated, AI-driven world models can be:
Adaptive, learning continuously from new data
Probabilistic, rather than deterministic
Causal, not just descriptive
Action-oriented, able to simulate what happens if scenarios
This is where reinforcement learning, simulation, and multimodal learning start to matter far more than prompt engineering.
A concrete example: logistics and supply chains
Consider global logistics: an industry that already runs on thin margins, tight timing, and constant disruption.
A language model can:
Summarize shipping reports
Answer questions about delays
Draft communications to customers
A world model can do something far more valuable.
It can simulate how a port closure in Asia affects inventory levels in Europe, how fuel price fluctuations cascade through transportation costs, how weather events alter delivery timelines, and how alternative routing decisions change outcomes weeks in advance. In other words, it can reason about the system, not just describe it.
This is why companies like Amazon have invested heavily in internal simulation environments and decision models rather than relying on generic AI tools.
In logistics, the competitive advantage doesnt come from just talking about the supply chain better. It comes from anticipating it better.
Why building a world model is hard (and why thats the point)
If this sounds complex, its because it is. Building a useful world model is not a matter of buying software or hiring a few prompt engineers. It requires capabilities many organizations have postponed developing.
At a minimum, companies need:
High-quality, well-instrumented data, not just large volumes of it
Clear definitions of outcomes, not vanity metrics
Feedback loops that connect decisions to real-world consequences
Cross-functional alignment, because no single department owns reality
Time and patience, since world models improve through iteration, not demos
This is exactly why most companies wont do itand why those that do will pull away. The hardest part of AI is not the models, but the systems and incentives around them.
Why LLMs alone are not enough
Language models remain invaluable, but in a specific role. They are excellent interfaces between humans and machines. They explain, translate, summarize, and communicate.
What they dont do well is reason about how the world works.
LLMs learn from text, which is an indirect, biased, and incomplete representation of reality. They reflect how people talk about systems, not how those systems behave. This is why hallucinations are not an accident, but a structural limitation. As Yann LeCun has argued repeatedly, language alone is not a sufficient substrate for intelligence.
In architectures that matter going forward, LLMs will play along with world models, not replace them.
The strategic shift executives should make now
The most important AI decision leaders can make today is not which model to choose, but what parts of their reality they want machines to understand.
That means asking different questions:
Where do our decisions consistently fail?
What outcomes matter but arent well measured?
Which systems behave in ways we dont fully understand?
Where would simulation outperform intuition?
Those questions are less glamorous than launching a chatbot. But they are far more consequential.
The companies that win will model their own reality
Large language models flatten the playing field. Everyone gets access to impressive capabilities at roughly the same time.
World models tilt it again.
In the next decade, competitive advantage will belong to organizations that can encode their understanding of the world (their world) into systems that learn, adapt, and improve. Not because those systems talk better, but because they understand better.
AI will not replace strategy. But strategy will increasingly belong to those who can model reality well enough to explore it before acting.
Every company will need its own world model. The only open question is who starts building theirs first.
Rewind to 2025. The National Football League is fresh off an unbelievable, yet controversial, Super Bowl halftime performance by the superstar hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar. The country has just been introduced to a diversity-hostile administration, which has practically squashed any zeal toward diversity, equity, or inclusion that corporate America once seemingly held. As the NFLs leadership team explores talent considerations for next years performance in the midst of this cultural backdrop, someone recommends Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican-born megastar whose songs are performed almost entirely in Spanish, and, surprisingly, the league acquiesces. The public blowback is immediate, yet the NFL stands strong on its decision. On the outside, this may have seemed like a difficult decision for the league to make. But according to Javier Farfan, the global brand and consumer marketing consultant for the NFL, the decision was much easier than one would think.
Farfan, a career marketer executive and media professor at Syracuse Universitys New School of Communications, has worked with the NFL for the past six years to help the organization broaden its audience and achieve its ambition for global expansion. He has sat in the small rooms where big decisions were made with regard to the league’s cultural engagement with talent and growth audiences. With the Super Bowl happening this week, we thought that hed be the perfect guest to join us for this weeks episode of the From The Culture podcast to explore how organizations make difficult decisions.
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Clarity of Conviction
The NFL has an ambition to become the biggest sports platform in the world, a vision set by league commissioner Roger Goodell. With a conviction to make American football a worldwide game under Goodells leadership, the NFL began playing regular season matches in international markets to broaden its reach. It even petitioned the Olympics to successfully institute flag football as an official event to help further its global adoption. But the universality of music as cultural production is unparallelled, making the Super Bowl halftime show a unique front door into the football universe, one that transforms a sporting competition into a pop-culture event.
And its the clarity of the organizations commitment to expansion that makes Bad Bunny an obvious decision for the NFL. His tours sell millions of tickets around the world and his music is streamed billions of times on Spotifycrowning him the most globally-streamed artist for four of the last five years. Even with the local resistance from conservatives and the Trump administration, Bad Bunnys global reach is undeniable. As Farfan asserts, it was easy for the organization and all its many stakeholders to get on board because they all subscribed to a shared ambition. The league, its teams, its partners, and Bad Bunny himself are all aligned, each bringing their talents and resources to help the collective realize its potential.
The same can be said within our own organizations. Our companies convictions not only help orient their direction but also guide their decision-making such that hard decisions arent so difficult. When the conviction is clear, decisions are made easy. Take the outdoor brand Patagonia. The company has long been committed to mitigating human evasiveness on the planet. This is the ambition that unites all its stakeholders. Along with its retail business, Patagonia outfitted high-end corporate clients with company apparel. Company vests and fleece jackets with the Patagonia logo etched on the chest became a sort of unofficial uniform for Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley techies. This was a significant revenue driver for the company. However, when Patagonia realized that some of its corporate clients dealt in ventures that did not prioritize the planet, it decided to end its business dealings with them. Despite the loss of revenue, this was an easy decision for Patagonia because its convictions were clear.
Hard decisions are only truly hard when conviction is ill-defined. In the case of the NFL, if the ambition is to be a global sport, then you choose the options that get you closer to that ambitioneven if it means facing some headwinds. Easy. If youre Patagonia and your conviction is to protect the planet, then you take the path that preserves the Earth, although you may lose some revenue in the short run. Again, easy. Difficulty lies where your conviction is questioned and your commitment to it is uncertain. For organizations that know what theyre after and know who they are, the only real loss is loss of self when they deviate from it.
Check out our full interview with Javier Farfan that breaks down the dynamics of the NFLs decision to partner with Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl halftime show and what takeaways leaders can glean about their own organizations.
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Weve been sold a myth about entrepreneurial success: sharpen your skills, tighten your systems, hustle harder. But after years of working with independent professionals across industries, Ive noticed that the highest performers share something that rarely makes the productivity lists: theyve intentionally built communities of colleagues, clients, and partners who expand how they think, create, and deliver impact.
Community isnt a nice to have for the self-employed. Its strategic infrastructure. And this is especially important for solopreneurs, entrepreneurs who work primarily solo.
The stakes are higher than most solopreneurs realize. According to research from Leapers, a UK-based organization studying self-employment and mental health, 70% of freelancers have experienced loneliness, disconnection, or isolation while working independently. Thats not just an emotional burden, its a creativity killer. When we work in isolation, our assumptions calcify, our thinking narrows, and our best ideas never get the friction they need to become great.
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Community oxygenates your thinking
When you work solo, you start mistaking your perspective for the perspective. But a strong community acts as a foil for your ideas, exposing your ideas to new light, context, and critique. This isnt just about generating more ideas, its about generating better ideas. The kind of synthesized, pressure-tested thinking thats stronger than anything youd develop in isolation.
Community provides reality checks and emotional ballast
Solopreneurship demands extraordinary mental fortitude. Youre simultaneously the product, the strategist, the salesperson, and the back office. A trusted community offers reality checks that keep you from veering off course, and gut checks that help you discern which risks are worth taking. Just as important, community provides emotional ballastpeople who understand the volatility of self-employment and can normalize the inevitable ups and downs without judgment.
Community converts intention into momentum
Left to our own devices, its easy to confuse motion with progress. Communities help convert intention into actual momentum. When youre regularly sharing what youre working on, asking questions, and reporting back on experiments, youre more likely to follow through. This kind of accountability shifts focus from mere outputlike checking tasks off a listto true impact: work that meaningfully moves clients, audiences, and industries forward.
Community accelerates learning
A well-designed community is a living archive of experiments, failures, and breakthroughs. Instead of learning only from your own trial and error, youre drawing from a collective body of experience. You can ask for help, offer your own hard-won insights, and benefit from perspectives across sectors and disciplines. That diversity of vantage points is a powerful driver of both creativity and strategic clarity.
Community unlocks opportunity
Finally, community is how transactional encounters evolve into long-term, mutual relationships. When you consistently show up in spaces with colleagues, clients, and partners- whether in mastermind groups, professional associations, or communities of play- youre building trust over time. That trust leads to collaborations, referrals, and invitations you simply cannot manufacture through cold outreach. And because these relationships are grounded in shared values and curiosity rather than immediate deals, they tend to be more resilient and more creatively fulfilling.
For independent professionals, community is not a distraction from real work. Its the infrastructure that makes your best work possible.
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Another round of Epstein filesapproximately three million documentswas released January 30, and this batch included a lot of prominent names. That list included philanthropist and business magnate Bill Gates, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and author, doctor and longevity influencer Peter Attia. They were all allegedly connected to Epstein in different ways, and as a result, their mentions in the documents are varied. But its their responses that offer lessons to others in the business world about how to respond when faced with a crisis.
Dealing with one of this magnitude is no easy feat, and it requires absolute trust between a client and a crisis manager, Beverly Hills celebrity PR and crisis expert Eric Schiffer tells Fast Company.
Addressing allegations
Its true that when it comes to forward-facing events, being included in something like the Epstein files is the type of calamity a lot of leaders in the business world arent likely to be faced with. But bosses can learn from high-profile, high-stakes examples as some of the nations most powerful men grapple with allegations like these.
Gates is dealing with the fallout from an email Epstein sent to himself. In it, Epstein alleges that Gates hid a sexually transmitted disease he allegedly contracted after engaging in presumed sexual activities with Russian girls affiliated with Epstein from his then-wife, initially released a statement via spokesperson. The allegations were decried as absolutely absurd and completely false. The Microsoft founder was forced to directly address the allegations this week, telling Australian television channel 9News the claim is false and speculated that Epstein may had been attempting to blackmail him. Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent, Gates added. The email is false.
Musk appears to have emailed Epstein trying to coordinate plans to visit Epstein’s private island. In one email apparently exchanged between the pair in 2012, Musk indicated he planned to bring then-wife Talulah Riley and asked, What day/night will be the wildest party on your island? The tech founder turned to X to vehemently deny he participated in any untoward behavior alongside or by way of Epstein: I have never been to any Epstein parties ever and have many times call[ed] for the prosecution of those who have committed crimes with Epstein, he wrote on January 31. The acid test for justice is not the release of the files, but rather the prosecution of those who committed heinous crimes with Epstein.
And Attia, a wellness influencer who has courted controversy over the years, appeared to exchange a series of emails with Epstein in which the pair made disparaging comments about female genitalia. A separate set of emails made it seem Attia and Epstein were together while the formers wife was in the hospital with their son. Attia denied he was not involved in any criminal activity in a lengthy statement also shared to X.
All three men have, at various points, been considered leaders within their business communities and among the great minds of our collective experience. Though Musk has already experienced a steep tumble from years past when he was revered by many, Gates and Attia are wading into some of the murkiest waters in their professional lives.
Staying truthful
Crisis PR expert Schiffer says navigating this requires absolute trust between a client and a crisis manager.
As a crisis manager, youve got to ensure you get the absolute truth from your client, he says. And then, once you have the truth, then the goal is to begin to repair whatever challenge that the facts may reveal without doing any further damage.
Unfortunately, thats the stage when a lot of clients still mess things up.
What occurs in these situations is clients that are attempting to manage their crisis can end up creating even bigger problems, because they may not reveal the entire truth, or they may obfuscate the facts, Schiffer adds. And they create all these secondary challenges.
At the core of the issue is a strong need to quickly rebuild trust with the public. In order to do that, a crisis manager has to know with complete certainty they can trust their own clientand if they find out someone is lying, the cord has to be cut immediately.
This is a place for absolute honesty, and I need to know what you’re dealing with, he says. And then if I find out that in any way that you were not 100% truthful, I’m out.
Presuming a client is being completely truthful, though, the next steps depend on the underlying facts: Part of what Gates, Musk, and Attia are dealing with is that its difficult to get all of the details out.
What’s kept this Epstein matter alive is that there’s more to reveal, Schiffer says, It’s not over yet. So all of it hasn’t gotten out, and it’s extending the story. This is a story that should have been over a long time ago, had they just released all the records.
He continues: You’ve got a lot of powerful people who are in the mix, and so you want to understand where you are in the cycle. And the cycle right now is still . . . I’d say we’re probably two-thirds through the cycle. It’s not complete, that’s for sure.
Crisis PR is a two-way street, Schiffer later explained. Its vital that theres an ethical alignment between client and manager. Some [managers] will take the perspective, well, they’re the same as a defense attorney, and a defense attorney would take on a case of charges against someone who might be seen as a pedophile or allegations against that, he said. But it’s not something that interests me.
Once honesty and alignment are in place, manager and client should work together to identify the best outcome, and then make that happen. Secondary implications, such as other details that could surface or anticipated legal parameters, will also need to be considered.
And then? You build a strategy from that, Schiffer concluded.
Known as the self-help guru whose tagline let them has encouraged millions to stop worrying what others are doing or saying, and focus on their own personal growth, has another significant lesson: dont be afraid to keep moving forward to goals.
During an interview with Norah ODonnell on CBS Sunday Morning this week, Robbins said, “If you feel stuck in your life, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means that what’s missing in your life is growth. And if I can get you to grow and learn in any area of your life, you start to change.”
The 57-year-old mother and former lawyerwho, at one time in her 40s, was unemployed and over a million in debtshares her motivational mindset and messages through her books, including The Let Them Theory, and the accompanying namesake podcast. Still, 15 years later, her loyalists still refer to her iconic 2011 TED Talk, “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over.”
In this CBS interview, Robbins said we to accept change in ones life trajectory, building the comparison to sustainable needs:
“When you’re thirsty what do you need?”
“Water.”
“When you are hungry, what do you need?”
“Food.”
When youre stuck, do you know what you need? Growth.
This motivation for self-advocacy can be an astounding motivator for personal growth and change. When one accepts they are ready to move forward, do the work and make the change, positive results happen.
And theres data to back this up. Growth mindset interventions are increasing in popularity and can be effective, according to a study published in the journal Psychological Bulletin. A meta-analysis of 53 prior analyses revealed positive effects on academic outcomes, mental health, and social functioning, especially when interventions are delivered to people expected to benefit the most.
Furthermore, understanding that change is inevitable can be scary, but key to personal growth, according to an article in Psychology Today. The article offered pointers for self-growth, including to adopt a growth mindset, to engage in activities that broaden perspectives and push you out of your comfort zoneand to remind yourself of the progress youve made thus far.
All opportunities that only exist if you feel stuck.
After all, being stuck is really just a way to access your full potential:
3 questions that will help you regain momentum when youre stuck
Change is a choice: Embrace your power to transform
How to train your brain to embrace change
And, if being stuck makes you feel like youre broken or behind or a failureremind yourself of your progress, and of your end goal. Envisioning what life looks like once youve achieved your accomplishments can be a great source of motivation, whether its pursuing more education, starting a business, or changing career paths.
One quote from Robbins book sums how you can move from what you interpret as being broken, to being an achiever: You dont need anyone elses permission to be happy, to pursue your passions, express yourself more, or to live the life youve always dreamed of. The only permission you need is your own.
Last week, Google released Project Genie, a powerful new AI-powered platform for videogame design.
Project Genie, which is currently only available for Googles AI Ultra subscribers, uses AI to build virtual worlds.
That sounds interesting, if not necessarily revolutionary. Videogame developers already model and build virtual worlds all the time.
Project Genies simple concept, though, belies the techs potential impact. The new system, and the Genie 3 model behind it, have the potential to forever change how videogames are built and played.
Model the World
Most videogames today rely on a handful of game engines to render their virtual worlds so they look realistic for players.
Engines like Unreal and Unity have long dominated the space. To build a game within them, developers first create virtual spaces, populating them with 3D digital models of objects, characters, buildings and the like.
They then release players into their worlds. As a player explores, the game engine renders the currently-visible portions of the virtual world in near real-time, creating the seamless experience of wandering through a realistic environment.
Game engines revolutionized game design because they allowed developers to hand off messy and complex things like physics and lighting to the engine.
Instead of worrying about modeling how fur moves in a breeze or how fast bullets travel, they could focus on creative jobs like building delightfully scary monsters or realistic weaponry.
Game engines come with their own set of limitations, though. Although players are free to explore a world as they please, developers still generally need to create every element of that world themselves.
Todays virtual worlds are massive. Players could reportedly spend as many as 130 real-world hours exploring the worlds inside games like No Mans Sky without seeing the same part twice.
But even so, everything in that virtual world had to be put there on purpose. The worlds feel huge, but nothing in them is truly new.
Worlds on the fly
Googles new Project Genie is different. Rather than creating a world piece by piece, the new tool allows developers to upload concept art or even a simple text prompt.
Google Genie 3 model, which underlies the system, then transforms those inputs into a seamless, virtual space that players can move within.
Crucially, though, Project Genies worlds arent bounded, like the worlds of traditional game engines. Genie 3 imagines its worlds on the fly, literally creating them fresh as a player explores.
That means Genies worlds are effectively infinite. As a player reaches the bounds of the world, the Genie 3 model simply expands them, imagining new parts that have never existed before.
In an example video, Google shows a developer asking the system for an undersea world. Project Genie spins up a virtual coral reef environment, with the player controlling a realistic-looking fish.
As the fish swims around the reef, Project Genie adds new parts seamlessly. As the player-controlled fish swims upwards, the system even creates realistically-shimmery water above the virtual reef.
The user could presumably have their fish leap from the ocean into the air, and Project Genie would go right on imagining new parts of the worldperhaps an ocean landscape complete with (hopefully friendly) seagulls, buoys and boats.
Truly open worlds
Currently, Project Genie has some serious limitations. It can only perform its magic for about 60 seconds at a time, before its imagined worlds go off the rails.
Its also limited to 24 frames per secondimpossibly slow for a modern game, where FPS can easily hit 120 on a powerful computer. Practically, this means Project Genies worlds have movement thats too choppy for real world use.
Project Genies demo games also lack actual gameplay elements, like rules and goals. You can only swim around as a fish for so long before getting boredeven if the virtual reef around you is being automatically generated by an insanely powerful AI.
The bones are there, though. And the implications for the future of gaming are massive.
As the Genie 3 model improves, game designers could use it to create worlds that players could explore forever. Each time players loaded a game, theyd be experiencing something completely newand theyd never run out of territory in which to play.
Genie 3 could potentially also create bespoke models of a world, tailored to individual players. Imagine playing a game like Grand Theft Auto, but with the action taking place in your hometownwhether you live in Los Angeles or Lincoln, Nebraska.
And Genie could create entirely new kinds of gamesones where the player actively participates in building the world. Because Genie can accept prompts and imagery, players could provide input on the places theyd like to explore. Genie could then build them a custom world based on their ideas.
Traditional game designers are clearly taking note. The stocks of gaming companies like Nintendo and Roblox promptly dropped when Project Genie was announced.
So-called open world gameswhere players explore an environment for hours on end, sometimes without specific goalsare already massively popular. Making those worlds truly open and unbounded using Genie would almost certainly make the games more compellingand better selling.
For now, Project Genie is a cool demo. Soon, though, its AI magic could spell disruption for an entire industry.
