A new open AI platform from the nonprofit created by the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen aims to make satellite imagery and other data about the earth more available and useful. The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2) on Tuesday unveiled the OlmoEarth Platform, backed by a family of AI foundation models trained on roughly 10 terabytes of data derived from millions of observations of the planet, including satellite images, radar readings, and existing maps of features like forest cover. The OlmoEarth models can then be fine-tuned for specific purposes, like detecting changes in vegetation, with the help of a companion software tool called OlmoEarth Studio. Details on model performance are included in a new scientific paper. Ai2 has already been working with a variety of organizations harnessing the AI, including groups looking to better assess and respond to wildfire risk. The International Food Policy Research Institute is using the technology to more frequently update maps of crops grown in one region of Kenya. Amazon Conservation is using the AI system to quickly spot deforestation. And a project called Global Mangrove Watch is harnessing the technology to more comprehensively track mangrove populations and quickly detect threats to those critical coastline trees. Patrick Beukema, lead researcher on Ai2s OlmoEarth team, says the project grew out of a realization that while AI can help put earth imagery and data to use by quickly analyzing both new and historic images, actually deploying the technology could be a challenge for many organizations, including government agencies and nonprofits doing important work. I think there’s a recognition that this kind of technology can be very valuable, but it’s so difficult to use, so we haven’t seen widespread adoption of these kinds of models, as we’ve seen, for example, within natural language processing or with [large-language models], he says. And we haven’t really seen the transformative power of artificial intelligence within this domain. State-of-the-artTo fill that gap, Ai2 created not only what Beukema calls state-of-the-art models, built using vision transformer technology similar to the large-language models that power tools like ChatGPT and Claude, but a set of companion tools making them practical to use. Those include OlmoEarth Studio, which simplifies the process of training the models for specific tasks by uploading human-labelled sample data showing relevant features like lands growing specific crops, areas of mangroves, or bits of forest vulnerable to wildfire. [Animation: Ai2]Once OlmoEarth models are fine-tuned, they can be used to analyze areas of the earth at a particular moment in time, selected as easily as finding a neighborhood on Google Maps and scheduling an event on a calendar app. They can just tell the system, ‘I want mangroves, I want them in Indonesia over the last six months,’ or ‘I want a global inference over the last four years,’ Beukema says. The idea is to build in that flexibility so that users can choose whatever they need. Then, users can publish or privately share maps illustrating their findings, which can be viewed in an OlmoEarth Viewer app that can support interactive maps with options to select places and time ranges. The Studio and Viewer tools can be used without the need to write any code, though Ai2 also released a suite of automation tools and APIs for easy programming of its technology. Providing the toolsThe organization also released documentation and examples on its GitHub page for the project, along with existing fine-tuned models that can immediately be put to use or even run offline on an organizations own computers. And OlmoEarth follows other recent software releases from Ai2, including a package of science-focused AI tools called Asta released in August, and a set of language models known as OLMo, for open language models. [Animation: Ai2]Overall, Beukema says, the goal with OlmoEarth is to give organizations free technology that compares favorably to existing commercial and academic AI projects, letting them efficiently analyze and visualize planetary data they often already deeply understand, even when they dont have the resources to build their own AI models from scratch. These people are often experts, so they know exactly what they’re looking for, he says. They just don’t necessarily have, or want to build, these complicated foundation models that are expensive to train, expensive to inference, expensive to really work with. [Animation: Ai2]Global Mangrove Watchwhich tracks those coastal trees that are environmentally important as fish habitats, carbon stores, and as barriers to erosion, storm surge, and even tsunamisis already working to improve its mapping and analysis processes with OlmoEarth. An existing machine learning and mapping system could already track mangroves with relatively high accuracy, but organizing training data and verifying the output still requires a lot of manual labor, says Lammert Hilarides, senior technical officer at Wetlands International, one of the organizations behind Global Mangrove Watch. A plan to scale upHilarides says OlmoEarth should allow the organizations to spend more time on other tasks, including working with governments and organizations around the world that are working to preserve mangroves and protect them from often-illegal deforestation. Critically, it will allow the project to update mangrove loss maps more quickly and let them cover a greater extent of the planet, catching disturbances to mangroves faster and more comprehensively. We really hope that as of next year, we can scale up our work from covering not just half the worlds mangroves but all of the worlds mangroves, he says. Ai2 plans to make OlmoEarth accessible to a wide range of organizations, with most features free for anyone to use, though a few features like fine-tuning elements will generally require groups to coordinate with Ai2 to make sure the product isnt used for harmful purposes. Beukema says the nonprofit institute encourages organizations that think the technology could be useful to be in contact. If you think this tech is going to help you accelerate your mission, please reach out, he says. We really want to help you.
The U.S. IPO market in 2025 has been relatively busy, with plenty of household names going public, including Klarna, eToro, and Chime. But as you can tell from that brief list, many of the most closely watched IPOs this year have been companies operating in the fintech space.
In a change of pace, one company operating in the aerospace sector is expected to make its market debut today. Heres what you need to know about Beta Technologies and its initial public offering:
What is Beta Technologies?
Beta Technologies is an aerospace company that specializes in electric aircraft, electric charging systems, and electric propulsion systems.
The company was founded in 2017 by pilot and engineer Kyle Clark, who is Beta’s current CEO. It is based in South Burlington, Vermont.
As far as aircraft go, the company has developed two electric vehicles.
The first is a conventional fixed-wing take-off and landing (CTOL) electric aircraft. This aircraft uses a conventional runway to take off and land.
The second is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) electric vehicle. This one uses rotating propellers to take off vertically. Both the CTOL and VTOL versions of the electric aircraft are known as the Alia.
Beta says its Alia aircraft have now flown more than 83,000 nautical miles on trips across the United States.
Last year, Beta Technologies was named as one of Fast Companys most innovative companies operating in the transportation space. At the time, Fast Company highlighted Beta’s flight milestones as well as its deliveries of its aircraft to the U.S. Department of Defense, with which the company has contracts.
In its Form S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Beta Technologies highlighted the energy efficiency of its Alia CTOL vehicle. A flight into John F. Kennedy International Airport required just $7 in fuel costs. That represented an approximate 95% savings over combustion aircraft, the company says.
As of the end of June, the company reported having 828 full-time employees. For the fiscal year that ended on December 31, 2024, Beta said it generated just over $15 million in revenue. For the six-month period ending on June 30, 2025, the company generated $15.5 million in revenue.
When is Beta’s IPO?
Beta Technologies announced the pricing of its shares on Monday. It plans to list its shares today (Tuesday, November 4) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
What is Beta’s stock ticker?
Shares will trade under the stock ticker BETA.
What is the IPO share price of Beta?
The initial public offering price for Beta shares is $34 per share. That was above its marketed target range of $27 and $33 apiece.
How many Beta shares are available in its IPO?
Upon its IPO listing, Beta Technologies made roughly 30 million shares of its Class A common stock available, according to the company’s press release.
How much will Beta Technologies raise in its IPO?
Beta Technologies raised just over $1 billion in its IPO.
How much is Beta Technologies worth?
After its IPO, Beta Technologies has a potential valuation of $7.44 billion, according to Reuters.
Beta is the latest aerospace startup to go public
While the electric aerospace market is a relatively small one compared to other industries like technology or finance, a number of aerospace startups have gone public in the past few years, in some cases merging with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs.
Electric aircraft companies that have gone public in recent years include Joby Aviation and Vertical Aerospace in 2021, Surf Air Mobility in 2023, and Firefly Aerospace in 2025.
Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at age 84.Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement.“For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States,” the statement said. “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing. We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”The quietly forceful Cheney served father and son presidents, leading the armed forces as defense chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son George W. Bush.Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after his daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.His vice presidency defined by the age of terrorism, Cheney disclosed that he had had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile detractors called it a smirk Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.“Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”
The Iraq War
A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.
Cheney’s relationship with Bush
From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.That bargain largely held up.“He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq War. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court left the nation in limbo for weeks.Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to min and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.
Cheney’s political rise
Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill., serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s lone congressional seat.In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.
Associated Press writer Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, contributed to this report.
Calvin Woodward, Associated Press
Amid a crowded field of candidates, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has managed to cut through the clutterwith a campaign poster that challenged every convention of visual design.
New Yorkers found that the posters colors struck a chordMetroCard yellow, Mets blue, and nods to classic bodega signage. But a hasty glance could easily have missed just how deliberate every choice was, from typeface to shade to layout.
In the most recent episode of the By Design podcast, Fast Company spoke with Tyler Evans, the designer who took Mamdani’s brand identitycreated by the creative studio Forgeand turned it into an instantly iconic campaign visual. Evans, currently the creative director for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has also led design for the Teamsters and Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
His work tackles a question that lingers for many: why do so many campaign aesthetics fall flat with voters? And what should politicians do to break through?
Over a conversation with Liz Stinson and Mark Wilson, Evans breaks down what makes design effective in modern politics, how visuals shape political perception, and the strategies behind his work on progressive campaigns.
While design alone cant win elections, it plays a starring role in conveying identity and essence, especially in todays fast-moving landscape, where visual culture carries ever more weight amid shrinking attention spans.
This conversation has been condensed and edited.
Liz Stinson: I think we have to start with just a really simple question for people who might not understand what you do. Can you tell us what it is that a creative director on a campaign does?
Tyler Evans: Design is the bread and butter bulk of it. That’s how I spend the majority of my time basically weighing in on anything that visuals touch, which in this day and age is the majority of things. How that came to be, um, really started with Senator Sanders. Not to immediately go back in time here but he always had a really crucial understanding of how visual aesthetics and design can influence politics.Granted his, some of his Senate digital aesthetics weren’t always the most polished.
Mark Wilson: Bernie doesn’t hit me as a guy who’s really locked down on aesthetics and design.
Its sort of surprising, but he always understood that there needs to be something out there to communicate to people. There’s always been like a multi-pronged strategy of communications, and that’s actually how I found out who he is and what his politics were, and how I became more in touch with my own politics.
[On Occasio-Cortezs campaign] I also do social media. So in my day-to-day role, I also write social media posts, not for the congresswoman, but for an account called Team AOC. It’s myself and our photographer and we also have a videographer that we work with.
LS: So what I’m hearing is that it’s not just a poster, it’s not just social media, it’s sort of this all-encompassing communication between the campaign and the people who you’re hoping to reach.
Yeah, it’s just any way that we want to tell the story of the politics that we represent and any number of ways that can represent itself visually on the internet or not on the internet, honestly.
LS: I want to frame up this conversation because we thought right now would be a really good time to talk to you because you had a small, but I would say very important role in the Zoran Momani campaign. You created the poster for Momani that I see everywhere, as someone living in Brooklyn. Its based on the branding work done by the team at Forge, which is really great. It has all of these visual callbacks to the city with like the MetroCard yellow and the Mets blue and the fire engine red. But I would really like to understand from a design mind why you think this brand and this poster in particular has been so successful?
It took me going to New York once the poster was out there to kind of understand why people were vibing with it the way they were. To Forges credit and Aneesh, who did the whole brand suiteit’s kind of like a love language to like the bodega visual aesthetic. So there were references to the New York Post and their visual languages and their logo type. There were visual cues like hand lettering and the old school bodegas and how New York signage used to look when they would hire individual hand painted sign letterers.
So there were all these old references, and I just kind of downloaded that and then put a little bit of like a Bollywood aesthetic in there with a nod to Z’s mom in there as well. And just kind of pushed that all together. There were like 12 drafts before it. Zohran was very involved in it. We all worked together on it, but, I think it just represents the city pretty well is the short answer. It just feels right in the windows.
LS: What strikes me about this poster is that this does not look like any sort of political poster that I have seen in the past. There are some hallmarks of progressive politics that we can get into in a little bit, but to me, the reason this took off is because it’s totally unique. It speaks to the city as you just said, but it also feels like it’s an aesthetic object, too.
MW: Its also kind of 3D, right? With that giant extrusion that really sucks you into it. And it makes me think that so much political branding is just flat.
I was playing around a lot with this kind of approach in typography. His logo had a little bit of the drop shadow effect already, and I just kind of like, just really went overboard with like a maximalist extension of it…I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna throw this in here and they can tell me if its too much. But they loved it, and it draws the eye to Zohran. Because no one knew what he looked like or who he wasthat’s what he was struggling with at the time. He says it all the time now, but he was literally losing to or tied with someone else like the name someone else in the polls at the time. So he needed his name to get out there and people to know who he was.
LS: When we were talking to Michael Beirut for our first episode, he was talking about the Obama logo and how that team was coming up with ideas for the visual identity [for the 2008 campaign].They presented him with something that felt a little bit too corporate in his mind. And the argument there, at least at that point in political history, was basically like, nobody knows who you are, so nobody’s going to confuse you for the corporate suit that’s running for office. What you need is something that signifies that you are trustworthy, you’re familiar, you people, you’re friendly, people can trust you. And, and I think it’s interesting that Mamdani was not a known quantity, and yet he sort of leaned into that as opposed to going in that corporate direction.
I’m just gonna speak from personal experience, I’m really, really, really, really sick of the corporatization of visuals within politics, and especially within the Democratic brand of politics. I think it jst kind of tells you what you need to know about a candidate alreadyabout what they believe and what they stand for with what they say visually.
If they look like a corporate logokind of tells you where they’re gonna be coming from, a far as where their money comes from or who they stand up for or who they’re with. If they look like a corporation, you just kind of know intrinsically, like, that’s probably not for me.
LS: Do you really think that’s true that there’s a direct line between a corporate looking logo and where people get their money or where their heads are at?
I mean, maybe not for the money thing, butyeah, I think people draw that link because like there’s, there was a period there where some logos I couldn’t tell you if it was a yoga studio or the guy running for governor or Congress. It was just like, who knows? It was sans serif typeface, slight gradient, and happy person off in the distance.
MW: Is this a reason that so much of your work outside of Mandani leans towards retro aesthetics?
Yeah, it really started with the 2020 Sanders campaign. We drew a lot of that from the LBJ presidential effort, and we kind of wanted to look for when was the last time the nation did and tried to do really huge things? And what was the visual language looking like when those efforts were enormous?… I always looked to the past for who’s already done it well, and then where can we take it?
MW: Obviously Liz and I are big believers in design and the ability for design to make an impact. You mentioned earlier how Mamdanis poster really brought him to prominence in a way he hadn’t been. But I am curious how much you think design can sort of move the needle with politics. Rewinding to our conversation with Michael Beirut, I had asked him if he felt his logo for Hillary, which was incidentally very corporate, cost her the campaign. His conclusion was no, we don’t really have that much power. But I feel like based upon everything you’ve said, you feel like maybe there is more impact design can make
I don’t think it has that much power, but I do think it has power. Given the right time and the right space, like it’s very much like the stars have to be aligned. But if the visual is right and it lands in the right moment, at the right time and all the things up to that point are visually aligned, then yeah, absolutely it can do the right thing.
But its just part of the communications toolbox. It’s not gonna win the whole thing, but like, it’s definitely gonna help a whole lot. I think that visuals definitely speak a shorter language or simpler language than a lot of these other pieces of media that campaigns are putting out. Like for all the attention that video gets, they still take three minutes. Not everyone’s wearing their headphones on the train or some people are driving and they’re gonna miss that tweet because it’s gone and the algorithm is hiding it anyway because who, who lets left wing tweets get up there anymore?
But, you know, maybe they saw this meme because it’s on Reddit, or like, it can travel in a way that video can’t. In the spirit of like all of these weird platforms that were on these days, you just have to put your message everywhere and design has to be a part of that.
MW: It has to make some difference, especially in a highly visual culture. But some people on sort of the liberal end of the equation doubt it because weve just been so bad at it for a while, right? Theres no doubt that the MAGA hat has benefited the Right as a really powerful sort of design statement that has coalesced the message behind one powerful identity.
I don’t know that I’m in the minority, but I’m definitely of the opinion that Donald Trump’s branding is actually quite good. They know their audience. I’m not saying I love it, but does it work? Is it effective? Does it do what they’re trying to do? Yeah, it does. Every step of the way. It pisses people off. It sings to the people it’s trying to sing to, and that’s what they’re trying to do. So they know what they’re doing.
Those hats sold like crazy. And with every person who impersonates them and makes a blue version with a counterintuitive message on it, they’re just solidifying their message even further.
LS: One question I have is, what is the Trump brand though? Because sure, it’s the MAGA hat, but it doesn’t really say Trump on there, right? And that’s so powerful because other people get to claim it as their own. It’s their movement. It’s not just Trump’s movement. It’s, it’s for, for anyone who sort of buys into that perspective. Does the left have anything like that? The seeds of anything that powerful, that uniting?
No, not yet. I think there have been people to try, but it just hasn’t happened.
LS: And why do you think that is?
You know, I think there’s an aversion to to commercialism. There’s an aversion the capitalist impulse that Trump has. Because Trump started selling those hats to make money, you know; it wasn’t to build a movement. It just so happened that his movement was called Make America Great Again. And he was selling hats that had it on there, and he was making money hand over fist on it. And then a whole bunch of people took it and started selling hats too. And he is like, all right, cool.
LS: [Mamdanis] For a New York you can afford is such a good phrase if you generalize that a little bit. You don’t have the acronym potential there, but you do have a slogan, right? What would it take for the left to find its version ofI don’t wanna say the MAGA hat, but just like this central idea or ideology?
Not to like skip back a foot here, but Make America Great again is not original to Trump. It was Ronald Reagan’s first. And so if, if you want to unlock the potential on the Democratic side, I think you kind of have to do what Sanders has been doing, what Ocasio-Cortez has been doing, what Mamdani is doing and just get back to the roots. Like go back to the roots of the Democratic party and fight for working people. And I think that’s where you’ll unlock your full potential. And I think that’s where the Democrats have lost their way; the rest will follow is when the politics start first.
After a double-digit loss in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Andrew Cuomo launched his independent bid for the office in June with a video mimicking the style of his primary adversary, Zohran Mamdani. Since then, his campaign seems to have taken most of its cues from the pairs supposed common adversary, President Donald Trump.
Throughout his run, Cuomo has used AI slop in attack ads every bit as disgraceful as the worst of Trumps Truth Social feed, while flirting with the kind of fearmongering and bigotry that have colored Trumps entire political career. Its a questionable choice in a campaign filled with questionable choices. The former governors closing argument seems destined to be clarifying for any voters still on the fencejust not in the way he hopes.
While Mamdani made a splash throughout the primary by campaigning heavily, cutting social-ready videos, and hammering a message of affordability, Cuomo appeared to sleepwalk through the race. He held relatively few events, didnt speak to many reporters, and clung to an outdated message of public safety. In April, he released a 29-page, typo-ridden housing plan with a footnote referencing ChatGPT. (In response, the campaign claimed they only used ChatGPT for research, leaving them open to charges of outsourcing important policy to AI.)
It was as if Cuomo hoped name recognition and a foggy collective memory around why he left the governors office would propel him to victory. He certainly seemed surprised when it turned out New Yorkers might indeed harbor some reservations about a candidate tainted by more than a dozen credible sexual harassment allegations and a peak COVID-era nursing home scandal. Clearly, he needed to try something new.
The general-election playbook was somehow worse, with Cuomo mostly making waves for the videos his campaign posted that were generated by AI and designed to stoke fear and bigotry.
One thing nobody can accuse him of in the general race is lacking sustained, sweaty effort, which translated into some of the dirtiest, most AI-heavy campaigning the country has seen so farat least, from someone who isn’t Donald Trump.
A festival of fearmongering and bigotry
Cuomo started out in the general election with a campaign of cringe, loaded with clumsy stabs at humor, including Office memes. The end stretch has seen Cuomo pivot from his usual attacks on Mamdanis policies and lack of experience to more fear-driven, identity-based tactics against the frontrunner, who would be the first Muslim mayor of New York City. Cuomo also did not denounce blatantly Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani, including an October 23 ad from the Cuomo-supporting For Our City PAC, which placed the words Jihad on NYC over Mamdanis smiling face.
But the nadir of the campaign had actually come a day earlier.
On October 22, Cuomo tweeted and quickly deleted an AI-generated mock ad from a group called Criminals for Zohran Mamdani. (The ad lives on in Instagram clips and elsewhere.) It starts with an uncanny-valley Mamdani eating rice with his handsa common custom in Uganda, where Mamdani was born, which his more xenophobic critics have deployed to fearmonger based on his perceived foreignness. The ad then features a procession of criminals, including a man who bears a striking resemblance to actor Idris Elba donning a keffiyeh to do some shoplifting. After predictable backlash, Cuomos campaign quickly blamed the ad on a junior staffer, claiming it was released by accident.
The same day For Our City released the “Jihad” ad, Cuomo turned a guest spot on radio host Sal Rosenbergs show into a lightning rod for toxic publicity when he raised the question of how Mamdani might handle another 9/11. The host suggested Mamdani would be cheering in this hypothetical scenario, a wildly insulting attack many critics alleged crosses a line. Cuomo didnt merely let the claim go unchallenged; instead he added, Thats another problem, before circling back to the more general bedlam that might result from Mamdani presiding over the city during such a crisis.
Cuomo has since acknowledged that Rosenbergs comment was offensive, but still insists that nobody is attacking [Mamdani] for being Muslim. Meanwhile, even the Republican candidate in the race, Curtis Sliwa, has weighd in against Cuomos characterization of the interview. (Andy, get your big boy pants on, he said of Cuomo. When you go on a talk radio program and you say something, own it. Own it.)
Ultimately, what Cuomos much-criticized radio interview accomplished is handing Mamdani an opportunity to open up, finally, about the Islamophobia he has encountered during this race, and throughout his life. His video on the topic was viewed 25 million times on X alone.
Ramping up the AI
As offensive as it was, the “Criminals for Zohran” ad was just one of several missteps in Cuomo’s full-blown embrace of Trumpian AI in attack ads in the final stretch of the campaign. While the AI slop in the presidents Truth Social feed has long since infected the rest of his administrations weirdly meme-filled social output, its a new development for the mayoral race in New York City.
The AI usage began inoffensively enough, with an October 1 ad depicting Cuomo performing various jobs throughout the city. He stars as a window washer, a subway conductor, and a theater grip; all to demonstrate the NYC jobs he knows hes not suited for as a way to underscore his preparedness to run the city. Although his AI smile in the ad is as strained as the real one, the clip is more clever than much of the campaigns previous output.
He didnt stay in this lane for very long. On October 21, Cuomo released a trollish ad using AI to render Mamdani as a Mini-Me to former Mayor Bill de Blasios Dr. Evila youth-courting reference to Austin Powers, the last installment of which came out 23 years ago. Although it may have been jarring to see a candidate other than lame-duck Eric Adams depict Mamdani using AI, the Mini-Me ad came across as more pathetic than offensive. It ended up being a warmup for the Criminals for Mamdani ad the next day.
The wide criticism Cuomos AI ads have generated has not deterred the candidate from releasing more of them. Last week, he released a Schoolhouse Rock-style clipfinger on the pulse as everwhich attracted attention for featuring a legislative bill that appeared to be pregnant. The ad also stood out for attributing claims about Mamdanis voting to ChatGPT.
Finally, Cuomo released a trick-or-treating themed ad on Halloween, featuring an AI likeness of Mamdani going door-to-door wearing the scariest costume of allsocialist.
If Cuomo has any qualms about a political future in which candidates use AI to literally put words in each others mouths, they are not evident at this time.
The desperation of imminent defeat
Cuomo isnt the only NYC mayoral candidate who posted a video on HalloweenMamdani did, too. Instead of AI-based fearmongering, though, his video featured the candidate out in the streets interviewing trick-or-treaters. (The caption? Its scary how cute Park Slope was tonight.) This post is reflective of a campaign that has remained focused on positivity and affordability more than mudslinging, although the candidate has landed some tremendous dunks along the way.
Theres a reason Cuomo has apparently opted for the dark side at the end of his campaign. Its because his tortured-smile, Man of the People act at the beginning did not resonate. Neither did much else, for that matter. The biggest bump in his polls throughout the election cycle came after Adams dropped out in September, and it still left him underwater by double digits. Cuomo is leaning on Trumpian AI, fear, and bigotry because hes desperate. And anyone that desperate to win shouldnt be trusted to leadleast of all under a Trump presidency.
Cuomo keeps insisting hes the last person Donald Trump wants to see as mayor, even though that is objectively untrue. Cuomo reportedly courted Trumps endorsement and as of this past weekend, he apparently got it.
If Cuomo truly were the last person Trump wanted to see as mayor, though, it would be only because Trump might hate to see someone win an election by so blatantly stealing his shtick.
Have you ever opened a jar of Crisco and proceeded to slather it all over your body? I have, in the summer of 1992. I was just exiting sixth grade, and my friend was over for an afternoon of suntanning. When I reached for the brown bottle of suntan lotion, my friend stopped me, Let’s go look for your mom’s Crisco. Crisco??? I said. Yes, it’s how my older sister gets so tan.
Although I was suspicious that vegetable shortening was good for my skin, I silenced my doubts when I pictured her older sister in my mindshe was gorgeous, popular, and bronze.
From a young age, we have an immature relationship with authority. Psychologists call this authority bias, which means we are more influenced by the opinions and judgments of perceived authority figures. This can lead us to accept information or follow instructions without critically evaluating the content.In middle school, this meant that I put high schoolers on the pedestal of perfection. But sadly, we never really outgrow this. It reared its ugly head again when I found myself in corporate America, sitting in a windowless gray conference room, in one of those all-day meetings. I felt like the conversation was going in circles, and we kept hearing from the same voices. Frustrated, I wondered why other people, especially the women in the room, werent speaking up. And then I realized that I wasnt speaking up, either.
I silenced my ideas because I was intimidated by the HiPPo in the room: the highest-paid persons opinion. Looking back now, I realize that I had a big problem: what I now call a Pedestal Problem.
THE PEDESTAL PROBLEM
Have you ever put someone on a pedestal, because they had a higher title, more experience, or even more charisma than you? Did you think that they knew best and therefore, your ideas, questions, or insights didn’t matter? Or, there was no room for your expertise? I did, for years. And it held me back from being a more confident and impactful leader.
In my current work as an executive coach and speaker, which includes hundreds of conversations with leaders, I learned that the pedestal problem interrupts the connection we have with ourselves. When we put other people on a pedestal, we assume they know better than us, and we should silence our ideas and insights to get along. We stop listening to our inner knowledge or trusting ourselves. Books are left unwritten, status quos unchanged, products undeveloped, and cultures mediocre.
In contrast, when people put us on a pedestal, we can develop an inflated ego and never get good feedback, as people are too intimidated to share concerns or ideas with us. Putting others on a pedestal super-humanizes leaders, which actually dehumanizes them. Teams withhold concerns and feedback that leaders need. Research from Visier (2025) shows that nearly half (46%) of employees admit to withholding honest feedback at work.
If you relate to any of this, it may be time to pull the pedestal. Instead of giving you advice (which tends to age as well as sunscreen recommendations from the 1900s), here are some questions to consider to move you closer to the confident leader you are meant to become:
RECONNECT WITH YOURSELF
I spent 12 years at a company that practically raised me. Around year nine, I started to think about leaving. But in our area, the bank had a great reputation, as both a business and an employer. While ruminating over my decision, I spoke to colleagues and friends, many whom had years more experience than I. Almost everyone urged me to stick it out, with some senior leaders in the bank even sharing that they “had tough periods too, but it always passed.” Reconnecting with myself meant recognizing thatat the end of the daythis job didn’t align with my values. In spite of what others advised, I enjoyed creativity, and a highly regulated bank was a mismatch for this. Ultimately, I decided to leave and found a new job that aligned strongly with my values.
Ask yourself: Does this advice, person, or situation align with my values and what I stand for? Because if I don’t know what I stand for, what will I settle for?
RE-ESTABLISH EQUAL CONNECTION WITH OTHERS
When we meet people more senior than us, we often shrink and hold back on ideas. To establish equal connection, I had to identify how my doubts and lack of confidence kept me more silent than I needed to be. And then, I started to explore what experiences, talents, or points of view only I can bring to the world, my work, or this meeting. In my work coaching executive leaders now, it’s not uncommon that I feel intimidated by the prospect of consulting with a CEO for a company that I admire. However, to establish equal connection, I remind myself that I am not there to have their level of expertise or have all the answers or questions. Instead, my unique talents and contributions lie in my ability to hold space, ask the right questions, and get them thinking about things in different ways.Ask yourself: What experiences, talents, or points of view can only I bring to the world, my work, or this meeting? Owning our talents helps us see the talents in others without compare and despair, bringing us together at the table as equals.
CONNECT WITH YOUR FUTURE POTENTIAL
When I started my executive coaching business, I had a lot of doubts. Taking those first steps and showing upeven though I didn’t feel like an equal among other entrepreneursmeant getting very clear with my future potential. I asked questions like, “Where do I want to be by the time I’m retired?,” “What am I passionate about?,” “What are the unique talents and skills that I bring?” The answer was clear: It had always been training, leadership development, and coaching. While I was terrified, it was tapping into this calling that gave me the drive to build my business and show up as an equal, in spite of the pedestal problem.
Ask yourself: What am I meant to create? When I’m 80 years old and in my dream retirement, what legacy have I left behind that I am known for?
Its time to stop underestimating ourselves and pull the pedesta, so we can be more confident and impactful leaders. Many people might think that to pull the pedestal, you should just have more confidence or “fake it until you make it,” but that never worked for me or anyone I know. My leadership conversations have shown that confident, fulfilled leaders reconnect to themselves, equalize their connections with others, and connect with the future they desire to create.
Japanese auto manufacturer Mazda has released a simplified new logo, and it has bigger implications than your typical brand refresh. It’s indicative of a broader brandingor should we say blandingtrend that’s taking over the car industry.
Mazda Motor Corp. rolled out a new, flatter version of its logo at the Japan Mobility Show 2025 in October that did away with the dimensional, beveled silver chrome effect the logomark used to have in favor of a solid black line. The new M mark is more angular, too, evoking a pair of wings that was first introduced in 1997. The company says it designed the flat new logo for improved visibility, especially in digital environments. That also makes it late to the party.
[Images: Mazda]
Yesterdays bland is todays car brand
A dozen car brands have flattened their logos in roughly the past half dozen years, and Mazda is now the latest. Toyota did so in 2019; Rolls Royce in 2020; BMW, Cadillac, Kia, Nissan, and Volvo in 2021; Audi and Bugatti in 2022; and Genesis and Jaguar Land Rover in 2023.
[Images: BMW]
Jaguar famously introduced its new, lighter logo with a mix of upper- and lowercase letters in 2024; and this March, Lamborghini toned down the sheen on its bull-and-shield logo. Bentley, which updated its winged B logo in July, kept the chrome look but simplified the mark. It’s not flat, but it’s more minimalist.
[Images: Jaguar]
Overall, a “blanding” and flattening of car branding has swept through the industry years after the trend hit graphic design more broadly. Out are chrome, 3D, skeuomorphic logos designed to look like car badges. In are logos meant to be rendered at small sizes on screens.
[Images: Volkswagen]
Sans serif? Its electric
Now de-chromed, these new logos are thinner and lighter, and they come as automakers adapt to a more electric future. At the same show where it unveiled its new, flat logo, Mazda also showed off a pair of futuristic-looking hybrid concept cars. Its first EV is expected in 2027.
Graphically, the updated logos of legacy automakers are going up against those of EV newcomers such as Tesla and Rivian, which use sleek, futuristic-style fonts inspired by the typography of 20th-century science fiction, like Blade Runner and Back to the Future II. It’s possible that legacy car brand logos are getting updated to visually signal contemporary relevance in those markets as well.
Ironically, the trend toward flat logos better designed for digital expression comes even as carmakers are getting rid of touchscreens in their vehicles in favor of old-school, analog knobs and dials. As automakers reconsider the screens in car interiors, they may one day reconsider their flat, digital-first logos too. For now, the flat-logo look reigns supreme.
In recent years, leading artificial intelligence labs and startups have released AI software designed for tasks of ever-growing complexity, including solving PhD-level math problems, reasoning through complex questions step-by-step, and using tools like web browsers to carry out intricate tasks.
The role of AI engineers in making that happen is well-documentedand often well-compensated. But less publicized is the role of a growing army of freelance experts, from physicists and mathematicians to photographers and art critics, enlisted by companies specialized in AI training, itself a multibillion-dollar industry. Those companies say human wisdom is essential to create sample problems, solutions, and grading rubrics that help AI improve its performance in a wide range of fields.
As long as AI matters, humans will matter, says Aakash Sabharwal, vice president of engineering at AI training company Scale AI.
Scale AI recently made the news when Meta announced plans to invest $14.3 billion in the companyand hired away its then-CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new Superintelligence lab focused on AI research. But the company remains a top player in the field, recruiting expert AI trainers in a wide variety of subjects and building digital environments Sabharwal compares to flight simulators for AI, where humans can help machines learn everything from sending business emails to writing code.
“Way more PhDs”
The modern AI training industry grew out of earlier work to create labeled training data teaching computers to identify objects in photos or spot social media posts in need of moderation. The early days of how people thought of this industry was what you’d call commodity labeling, like cat/dog, cat/dog, cat/dog, says Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of AI training company Invisible Technologies.
More recently, as generative AI models became available, human workers helped steer the software to correctly answer questions about topics like high-school level mathematics and communicate with virtual fluency in a variety of languages. Companies like Scale and Invisible have also built relationships with big businesses to help them fine-tune AI technology that can deliver insights based on their own needs and internal data.
And now, as leaders of AI companies regularly boast of their chatbots prowess at tackling advanced math and science problems, human experts are working behind the scenes to test their limits and push their knowledge levels forward.
You’ve seen a real change in the seniority and expertise set of the expert pools, says Fitzpatrick. Way more PhDs, way more masters [degrees].
Hyper-specificity
Exactly what training firms provide to AI companies varies from task to task. It can include a mix of AI prompts and ideal answers, rubrics for evaluating AI responses, and corrections to the AIs current best attempts. Trust is also an implicit part of the product: As Holger Mueller, a principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research, points out, it has taken some time for big businesses to trust AI companies with their own dataincluding for fine-tuning purposes. And many AI training companies decline to publicly share a list of clients, citing confidentiality, with even training workers often not told exactly which companys AI theyre working to improve.
Another big part of what training firms deliver is access to vetted pools of experts, and the promise that they can produce training data in even obscure areas on short notice, which is critical given the AI industrys pace of growth. Its not unusual for a client to expect Invisible to line up 50 experts in, say, computational biology overnight, with the expectation theyll deliver usable training data within a week, Fitzpatrick says. Despite reports that some AI companies have begun directly hiring experts themselves to train their systemsOpenAI has reportedly hired more than 100 former bankers from top Wall Street institutions to help teach its systems to do at least entry-level financial analysisFitzpatrick and other training company leaders say the specialized nature of their work, involving managing both technically sophisticated training platforms and large numbers of human workers, generally makes it hard for AI labs to do themselves.
The vast majority of our work is hyper-specific experts for short sprints at a time, he says. It’s a complicated thing to do in house. That means that Invisible, which announced a $100-million funding round in September, along with its competitors, have all also devoted time to building robust recruitment and evaluation pipelines for human expertsoften complete with AI tools of their own to speedily screen and onboard those experts and assess their progress. And clients are likely doing their own assessments of the data they get back. Its not unusual for AI companies to solicit training data from multiple companies and compare the results, Fitzpatrick says.
Intellectual curiosity
The market for freelance experts with the time and knowledge necessary to train AI in obscure fields is, itself, naturally competitive, with training company executives boasting of their expert contractors credentials the way college presidents might brag about a new class of elite undergrads.
One AI training company, Mercor, currently has listings posted seeking recreation workers at $60 to $80 per hour, a bilingual Spanish marketing expert at $20 to $60 per hour, legal experts at $90 to $120 per hour, and Ireland-based general practitioners in medicine at $160 to $185 per hour, among numerous other listings. And in many areas of knowledge, the bar steadily rises to get assigned to projects, according to Mercor product manager Osvald Nitski.
Software engineers are now required to have either experience in some niche programming language or incredibly strong scores on competitive coding challenges, Nitski says. We’re now sometimes sourcing named individuals, because the bar that needs to be met is so high that there are limited number of people in the world who actually meet it.
Mercor, which on Octoer 27 announced a $350 million Series C round at a $10-billion valuation, says it pays more than $1.5 million per day to its experts, with average pay above $85 per hour. More than 30,000 experts are signed to Mercors platform, according to the company.
And while the pay no doubt motivates experts, many of whom are working full-time in their fields, to enter the AI training arena, some are also motivated by intellectual curiosity and the desire to help hone software they hope can one day assist in their work or tackle outstanding problems.
“A harder problem”
Alice Chiao, an emergency medicine physician who serves as an expert for Mercor, says she hopes that AI can automate some of the drudgery, like charting and scribing, of medicine and thus help doctors better connect with their patients. She says her AI training work includes asking the systems to answer medical questions that may have stumped her in her practicethe kind of puzzling scenarios that pop up when real-world patients differ from textbook examples.
We input these things and try to see where a model might fail, she says. And then we create an ideal responseyou know, based on this finding, I would have ranked this differential diagnosis higher. Chiao emphasizes that she doesnt anticipate the AI she trains replacing her or her fellow physicians. Rather, she sees the technologys assistance helping to restore a level of human interaction thats often disappeared from medical practice. I do not think that training the AI is training a replacement, she says. I think that it has the significant potential to enhance the patient-physician relationship, which has eroded to a point where most physicians are not happy with the quality of patient-physician conversation and dialog that they get anymore. Another AI training company, Micro1, focuses on talent in finance, medicine, law, and engineering fields, says founder and CEO Ali Ansari. Average rates paid by the company hover around $100 an hour, though it varies between subject areas, with about 70% of experts making between $70 and $210 per hour, he says.
Micro1, which in September announced a $35 million Series A round at a $500-million valuation, also operates an AI recruiter that can vet potential candidates and even help share job listings on platforms like LinkedIn. Finding talent is a critical part of its operations. Part of the companys goal, Ansari says, is to make sure that in-demand experts will not only perform well at a certain training task but have a good time doing it.
We want to be able to predict how much an expert will enjoy a certain job as well, which is, in fact, actually a harder problem, he says.
A social calling
One expert that works with Micro1 is Mark Esposito, a professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. He now serves as Micro1s chief economist but began his association with the company by training AI to answer policy questions. Thats something he sees as important in ensuring AI doesnt give misguided advice to users looking to make important decisions.
You don’t want any policymaker to be dealing with information that is grossly incorrect, he says. So that’s why I think there’s a bit of a social calling for this, in making sure that youre really training models ethically, because they might really help people make a decision in the real world.
Edwin Chen, CEO of AI training company Surge AI, speaks to a similar sort of calling, saying hes dreamed of helping craft artificial general intelligence (AGI)essentially, truly thinking machinessince he was a child. Instead of playing the startup game, we’re a lot closer to a research lab, he says. And the only thing that matters to us is whether we succeed in building AGI.
Still, the company recently boasted its making more than $1 billion in annual revenue, and Chen says pay rates for some of the experts it works with can reach as high as $500 per hour, with the company website citing contributions by Supreme Court litigators, Oxford linguists, Navy SEALs, and Olympic athletes. The proportion of specialized experts among the AI training workforce has grown over time, but people with more general knowledge still contribute as well, Chen says. Thats unlikely to change, he adds, since AI tools do need steady training on even basic problems. And even if AI continues to do better with hard problems and take on more roles, itll still need human guidance, as standards for its performance will continue to grow. This means AI is unlikely to make its human teachers obsolete any time soon.
As they get used more and more, the capabilities increase, the applications increase, and so it’s no longer okay for models to be at 80% accuracyyou need to be at 99.99999% or whatever it is, Chen says. And at the same time, as the models get smarter and smarter, you always need humans to steer and align them.
Historically, some AI training companies have faced complaints from less-expert training contractors of unpredictable hours, difficulties getting paid, and other issues familiar to gig economy workers. Others, including Scale AI, have since said theyve taken steps to address complaints or otherwise emphasized their commitment to fair pay.
And in general, work in the AI training field seems likely to grow as long as businesses continue to invest in deploying AI, as training companies expand into enterprise work and even work with robotics companies to help AI understand how to move about in the physical world.
The 9-to-5 is fading, replaced by a fragmented cycle of early logins, late-night pings, and weekend catch-up. Microsofts latest Work Trend Index shows the infinite workday is no longer an edge case. Its the norm for many knowledge workers.
Unfortunately, it seems the pandemic-era triple peak work patternmorning, afternoon, and an evening spikehas stuck. After-hours activity is rising. Meetings after 8 p.m. are up 16% year over year, and by 10 p.m. nearly one-third of active workers are back in their inboxes.
Weekends are not off-limits: Among those working weekends, about 20% say they check email before noon on Saturday and Sunday. During the week, prime focus windows are being eaten alive. Half of meetings land between 9 and 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m.the very hours when many people are naturally sharpest.
What feels like productivity is quietly fueling burnout, chaos, and replaceability
The risk is fatigue and focus. When communication never sleeps, neither does context-switching, a leading cause of mental exhaustion. Microsofts telemetry finds employees are interrupted, on average, every two minutes during core work hoursadding hundreds of pings a day among heavy-communication users. Its no surprise that nearly half of employees (48%) and more than half of leaders (52%) say work feels chaotic and fragmented.
Samantha Madhosingh, a leadership consultant and executive coach with a background as a psychologist, says the issue is exacerbated by flexi-working while working remotely and trying to do it all. She says remote working makes it difficult for folks to have the strong structure and boundaries around their workday. And I see people really struggling. Theyre struggling to remain organized, to stay focused, and to not burn out.
At Lifehack Method, weve seen this up close as we coach busy professionals to reclaim their time and do meaningful, fulfilling work. When new clients arrive, most are drowning in what feels like normal work like an overflowing inbox, constant notifications, and a booked-up calendar. Well ask them, Whens the last time you had two uninterrupted hours to do your actual job? The answer is usually nervous laughter. But when they start putting up strategic boundaries, the turnaround is dramatic.
Heres how to set new boundaries around the infinite workday so that you can not only survive but thrive.
What Frontier Firms do differently
Some 53% of leaders say productivity must climb, yet 80% of the global workforce reports lacking the time or energy to do their jobs. That mismatchrising demand versus human bandwidthcreates a capacity gap that organizations are racing to close.
Microsofts Frontier Firms, which are early adopters deploying AI across the org, report better sentiment and headroom: 71% of workers at these firms say their company is thriving (versus 37% globally), and 55% say they can take on more work (versus 20% globally). Many leaders plan to upskill existing employees (47%) and use AI as digital labor (45%).
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella repeatedly posted on LinkedIn in August 2025 highlighting new AI tools that free people from drudgery and give them more time for highimpact work. He wrote that GPT5 integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot has become part of his everyday workflow, adding a layer of intelligence across apps, and praised the new =COPILOT() function in Excel that lets users analyze, generate content, and brainstorm directly in the grid.
But AI is only part of the fix. It can automate tasks, but it cant make your choices for you. Your scarcest asset isnt talentits time. Go a month without clear goals or let each week fray into constant notifications, and you quietly become easier to replace. Thats because reactive work, jumping at every @mention or ping, keeps you busy without moving the needle.
Push back on norms for big results
Teams that tame the infinite workday reject the normal flow of work and actively redesign their calendars. For example, Shopify periodically purges calendars of recurring meetings with more than two people. Meta and Clorox have meeting-free days. Dropbox has core collaboration hours, a four-hour block of synchronous time across its workforce that relieves the pressure of all-day meetings and lets employees decline meetings outside this window. GitLab runs on asynchronous workflows (a favorite trick here at Lifehack Method) to reduce urgency and alleviate stress.
If youre not in a position to flip the switch company-wide, here are some individual power moves:
Swap meetings for screencasts. Most 30-minute info-transfer meetings could have been an email, or at least a shorter meeting. Record a Loom or Clipchamp, send it off, and let people listen at 1.5x speed. Boomyou just gifted yourself and your team back half an hour.
Trade 1:1s for weekly office hours. You become more accessible, employees get a pressure valve for urgent problems, and you solve a pile of small issues in two to five minutes instead of bloating everyones calendar with half-hour blocks. The best leaders use office hours as a speed bump. If someone really needs a private 1:1, theyll earn that time after showing up in office hours first.
Set a win-win communication policy. Uncertainty kills productivity. People dont need instant replies, they need predictable ones. Instead of winging it (aka defaulting to chaos), publish a simple rule: I check email at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., and 3 p.m., or I dont take meetings on Mondays because Im with clients. The magic is in the head-nodding clarity. People stop expecting and start respecting.
Close the floodgates. There should be moents when people can reach you and moments when they cant. Otherwise, youre drowning 24/7. The best way to enforce those on/off cycles? Plan your week in advance. If you dont, the week will make a (bad) plan for you. Which leads to the next suggestion:
Make weekly planning a ritual, not a wish. Pros dont win with fancy hacks, they win by doing the boring basics consistently. Thousands of our clients at Lifehack Method use weekly planning as their tip of the spear. If you want to win the week, youve got to plan the week.
Prioritize your physical and mental health, before its too late. Madhosingh warns that work cannot take over your entire day and life. For a lot of people, thats what ends up happening. They dont know when to stop. Ultimately, your brain or your body will shut you down. . . . People end up really physically ill and sick because theyre not taking care of themselves.
The infinite workday isnt your destiny
If you dont set boundaries, your tools will set them for you, and theyll always choose chaos. Thats why the most competitive professionals and companies in 2026 wont be the ones who can stay logged in the longest. Theyll be the ones who deliberately carve out time for deep work, compress their collaboration windows, and enlist AI to strip away drudgery.
The infinite workday is real, but its not inevitable. You can either accept it as the new default, or treat it as the wake-up call it is. Leaders who redesign their calendars, enforce boundaries, and invest in human focus will not only outlast the chaos, theyll outperform it.
More buildings are being converted into apartments in the U.S. than ever before, and it’s not just old offices that are finding new use.
After the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted relocation patterns and work arrangements nationwide, suddenly vacant city office space seemed like prime real estate for housing. But it’s actually hotels more than any other building type that are driving the spike in conversions now: Hotels made up 37% of all apartment conversions in 2024, followed by offices at 24%, industrial at 19%, schools at 8%, and other at 12%.
New sourcing to meet newfound growth
This shift in sourcing comes at a time when a record number of converted apartments are hitting the market. 24,735 such units were completed in 2024, according to a new report from the property management and apartment listing site Rent Cafe. That’s up about 50% from 2023, when 16,513 apartments were converted. That trend is expected to continue. There are currently 181,000 apartment conversions currently in development, according to the report.
While office-to-apartment conversions are on the rise, some office buildings present design challenges that stand in the way of adaptive reuse, like utilities that aren’t wired for multifamily residential use, or a lack of windows, which would fail to meet residential codes for bedrooms.
The process for redesigning a hotel into a residential space is much more streamlined by comparison, as it already has a base infrastructure of single unit residences, much like the apartment complex it will become. That similarity suggests that converting the space would require less rewiring, less HV/AC installation, less tear downs, and less time and money for the developer.
Hotels under pressure
The rise in hotel-to-apartment conversion is driven less by design, though, than by economic factors. The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) said in its 2025 report that U.S. hotel industry is experiencing a period of stagnation because of operating costs that are growing faster than related revenue as travel patterns normalize post-pandemic.
Some hotel owners, then, are choosing to sell. According to the Rent Cafe report, most of the hotels that converted were more vulnerable to market uncertainty. Hotels that cater to the wealthy are doing just fine, though, which makes sense considering the K-shaped recovery from the pandemic recession.
People who can’t afford their rent can’t afford to travel either, and the buildings that once made up the infrastructure of these industries are adapting to the times. Hotels that once catered to middle-class travelers are now making a play for middle-class renters.
