Flight delays and disruptions at U.S. airports have persisted for a fourth consecutive day due to staffing issues stemming from the government shutdown, which began on October 1.
Air traffic controllers are expected to work without pay during the shutdown. As federal employees begin to feel the financial impact of the shutdown, many are calling out of work. And as the shutdown continues, many airports are struggling with growing staffing issues.
Here’s what you need to knowespecially if you’re flying soon.
Over 16,000 flights have been delayed since Monday
According to FlightAware, which tracks flight delays, disruptions, and cancellations, as of late Thursday morning, more than 16,000 flights flying into, within, or out of the U.S. have been delayed since Monday, October 6.
On Monday, October 6,154 flights were delayed and 84 were canceled.
On Tuesday, October 7, 3,849 flights were delayed and 70 were canceled.
On Wednesday, October 8, 4,608 flights were delayed and 60 were canceled.
As of 11:50 a.m. ET today, 1,698 flights flying into, within, or out of the U.S. have been delayed, and 55 flights were canceled.
Temporary ground delays have been issued to slow air traffic
The FAA has issued temporary ground delays at several airports this week. Some of the impacted airports include Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD), Nashville International Airport (BNA), and Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).
On Monday, the FAA issued a temporary ground stop at Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR). Reports indicate that the airport was unstaffed for several hours.
An October 9 FAA operational plan notes the following airports may experience possible ground delays today:
Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport (FLL)
LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
Miami International Airport (MIA)
Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
Orlando International Airport (MCO)
Whats causing continued flight delays?
Federal employees working at airports, including air traffic controllers and TSA agents, are considered essential workers. That means they must keep working without pay during the government shutdown.
Airports are experiencing staffing issues as more employees call out sick. Flight disruptions are expected to continue throughout the shutdown.
Heres what to do if youre flying soon
The impact of flight delays may be more noticeable this weekend.
There will likely be an increase in air travel as Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and some people may have off work and choose to travel during the long weekend.
If you have a flight scheduled in the coming days, you may face disruptions. Remember to be kind to airport and airline employees. They have no control over flight delays and cancellations.
It’s good practice to check your flight status before heading to the airport; you can check the status of your flight on your airline’s website or mobile app.
Travelers can also check the FAA’s National Airspace System Status website for information regarding widespread delays at specific airports.
FlightAware also publishes its MiseryMap, which uses recent data to compare flight delays and cancellations vs. on-time flights at major airports nationwide.
If your flight is canceled or if a flight delay causes you to miss a connection, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines have policies that state they’ll rebook you on the next available flight.
Fast Company reached out to American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines for comment on the flight delays. We’ll update this story if we receive replies.
When a winter storm took out the grid across Texas in 2021, Matt Popovits and his family didnt have power for four days, and didnt have heat in the record cold. We spent the night huddled up lying on the floor in our living room next to our gas fireplace, just desperately trying to stay warm, he says. And I remember looking at my wife and saying, We can never let this happen again.
They started researching whole-house generators, but the cost, at around $15,000, was prohibitive. Last year, another storm took out the familys power again for several days. They relied on a small generator, but it didnt work well. Now theyve turned to a new solution: a battery backup system that they didnt have to buy.
The system was installed by Base Power, a Texas-based startup thats trying to reinvent the power company. The two-year-old companywhich announced this week that it raised $1 billion in a Series C round of funding, from sources like Addition, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, an othersowns a fleet of large batteries that it installs at homesboth to help homeowners and to provide critical support for the electric grid.
[Photo: Base]
A new type of power company
Instead of buying the batteries, homeowners pay an installation fee and a $19 monthly rental fee. Then they also choose Base Power as their electric company. The total monthly cost is often less than customers previously paid on their utility bill.
Base Power can charge low fees because of the second part of its business model: it uses the batteries to sell power to the grid when utilities need it. The startups software tracks electricity prices, charging the batteries when the cost of power is low, and selling it back for a profit that it can share with homeowners.
Base CEO Zach_Dell [Photo: Base]
We don’t sell batteries, we sell power, says Base Power founder Zach Dell. We install the battery on your home. We own it. We operate it. When the grid’s up and running, we use it to support the grid. When the grid’s down, you get it to back up your home. The customer gets all the benefits of the power backup without the high upfront cost. And we get to deploy this really efficient asset class of distributed batteries.
Dell started thinking about the need for utilities to change while working in private equity at Blackstone and as an investor at the VC firm Thrive Capital. I identified that there was a paradigm shift happening in the industry, he says. The last five decades of energy have been defined by coal and natural gas. And the next five decades are likely to be defined by solar and storage.
As an investor, he watched tech companies go after slow-moving industries and quickly take market share. It occurred to me that the energy industry was really the last great part of the economy that had gone undisrupted, Dell says. If you look at electric utilities and the businesses in that category, theyre big, and not necessarily innovative, and not focused on technology and R&D. So the idea was okay, lets go build the category-defining, technology-driven energy company around this paradigm shift.
[Photo: Base]
A different approach to battery storage
Most batteries on the grid today are utility-scalepacked in shipping containers in fields that often sit next to a solar or wind farm. Like renewable projects, they face long delays waiting for interconnection approval. Because theyre typically far from the cities that need the power, they also face challenges with congestion on the grids outdated wires.
Distributed batteries allow you to circumvent the two constraints, says Dell. You dont have to wait in the interconnection queue, because you deploy the batteries where interconnection already exists. And the deployment are co-located with the load, so you dont have those transmission constraints.
Other home batteries already exist, but the company wanted to offer something different. First, most home batteries are out of reach for many consumers. The home batteries on the market today are very expensive, very premium, he says. Theyre literally made of glass. They cost $20,000 and they look like an iPhone strapped to the wall.
Instead of a premium product, the company decided to offer something utilitarian. Unlike other sleek home batteries, it looks more like an air conditioning unit. At 25 kilowatt-hours of storage, it has around twice as much power as some other home batteries, enough to fully power a house.
Some homeowners, like the Popovits family, get two units. While they’ve only had it installed for the month and the power hasn’t gone out in the neighborhood yet, they’ve run the system in test mode. “It really does run everything,” Popvits says. “It runs your air conditioner, which is a really big deal.”
Over the year and a half that the company has been installing the units, Dell says that other customers have used the batteries in thousands of outages. In some parts of Texas, it’s common for the power to go out once or twice a month.
[Photo: Base]
A fast way to supply power to the grid
Using batteries as virtual power plants is increasingly seen as a critical tool to support electric grids. In California, two large utilities recently ran a massive test with customers who signed up to let their Tesla Powerwalls and Sunrun batteries send power to the grid; together, thousands of homes delivered 535 megawatts of electricity as proof of how the system could work when the grid is under strain.
In some cases, utilities are helping pay for distributed batteries. California’s PG&E offers some customers in wildfire zones free or low-cost batteries. In Minnesota, Xcel Energy plans to deploy a network of large batteries at businesses (the companies will be paid for the use of their space, but won’t use the power directly).
Some other companies also try to make it as easy as possible for customers to get home battery systems. In Texas, Sonnen and Solrite offer no-money-down batteries, though customers have to commit to 25 years; Base Power has a three-year contract.
Base Power’s low-friction approach could help virtual power plants grow much more quicklyand add capacity to the grid far faster than building standard solar farms or gas power plants. The company is now making plans to expand outside of Texas.
“We are in an unprecedented time of electricity demand, and we need more supply,” Dell says. The company can add supply to the grid faster and more cost-effectively than any other approach, he argues. “We’re deploying hundreds of megawatts a quarter now,” he says. “Hopefully we’ll be doing hundreds of megawatts a month.” We need to rise to the occasion and meet this massive demand.”
So far, the company has installed batteries in around 5,000 homes, and has more demand from homeowners than it can currently meet. “When I did my homework and I discovered that I could lower my energy bills and have power generation when I was in an outage or a storm, it just kind of seemed like a no-brainer for me,” says Popovits, who learned about the company from a friend who also has a system installed. “The lights stay on, my bills go down, and my overall cost to get whole-house generation is just really, really small.”
There are many reasons why someone may have a second job or some kind of side gig when theyre working for you. They may have financial needs that are greater than what you can pay. They may have expertise that enables them to consult or engage with other businesses. They may have a passion project or startup that theyre nurturing while they work for you.
Whatever it is that is driving your employees, their other line of work can affect their performance for you. It is valuable to understand what your team members are doing and the impact it is having on their responsibilities for you.
Some workplaces (like mine) require explicit declarations of conflicts of interest that include any outside employment. Even if that is not a requirement, you may want to encourage members of your team to keep you apprised of their other commitments (including their work with nonprofits that might burnish the image of your organization).
Ultimately, it is important to know three things about any outside employment of your team members: the drawbacks, the synergies, and the potential for an exit.
The real and perceived drawbacks
When you find out that someone working for you has another job as well, that can be disconcerting. It may even feel like a betrayal. It is important to separate the actual drawbacks of this arrangement from your feelings.
Clearly, one problem with an employee who has a second job is that they may not be spending enough time on the primary work you need them to do. If your organization has a formal policy around the number of hours an employee is working, then you need to ensure that they are actually putting in the time. This can be particularly difficult to do when your workforce is remote. But, if you have concerns about the hours and effort, then have a conversation with your employee and and develop a system for accountability.
Another significant problem is the potential for conflicts of interest. For one thing, your employee may be taking information or client engagement and siphoning it off to their other venture. For another, they may want to bias their work in directions that benefit their other venture. It is important to create clear documentation of the way your team is making decisions and to require that employees be transparent about their other jobs to ensure that decisions are not being made in ways that benefit the secondary engagement of your employees.
That said, you also dont want to penalize your employees from doing other work. You dont know their personal situation, and an extra income may be crucial for their survival. In addition, the modern workforce gives employees no reason to believe that the organization will be looking out for them if times get difficult. So, employees should not be punished for looking out for themselves. Be sympathetic to your employees’ needs and ambitions rather than taking it as a person affront.
The synergies
A less obvious aspect of secondary employment is that it may benefit the organization or your team members performance. Some industries recognize this explicitly. For example, I have been a faculty member for over three decades. Universities often encourage their faculty to consult or do work for other companies. Often, faculty can work up to one day a week for an outside entity. At times, faculty members have split appointments in which they have named roles at companies as well as faculty roles at the university.
These arrangements allow knowledge and expertise developed at the university to benefit the broader community, bring prestige to the university, and can feed back positively on a faculty members research. These outside engagements also create opportunities for students and solidify connections between the university and prospective employers of graduates.
Similarly, your employees are developing additional skills in their secondary work. These skills may help them to bring new perspectives to the work they are doing for you. You are prone to think of the ways that employees are siphoning time and ideas from their primary employment to second jobs. Dont forget that the flow of knowledge and skills can go in the other direction as well.
Is the second job an off-ramp?
Another reason to track the other jobs and side-gigs of employees is that they may reflect a passion project of the employee that they are hoping will become a full-time source of income and fulfillment. Knowing your team members goals can help you to plan for the future. You want to hold onto your productive employees, but the more advance warning you can get of an employees departure, the more that you can do good succession planning.
Indeed, if you suspect that one of your supervisees is working to create an alternative career path, engage them in conversation. Support their efforts in exchange for getting a longer runway to find their replacement. Having a few months before a key employee departs enables you to hire someone new and let your new team member get trained by the old one.
In addition, your employees side gigs are often in the same neighborhood as the business youre in. Treating your employees well gives you the best possible relationship to the new firm they join or create. You never know when that positive relationship can be turned into a mutually beneficial collaboration in the future. Give your support without expectation of a return, but recognize that your good deeds may very well pay off down the line.
Around 70,000 Discord users may have had images of their government IDs stolen, according to an update from the company. Last week, the popular chat platform notified users that the third-party vendor the platform uses for customer service was hacked, affecting Discord users who had interacted with the apps customer support or trust and safety teams.
Discord initially announced last week that an unauthorized group gained access to a small number of government ID images. That includes images of sensitive documents like drivers licenses, passports, and potentially even selfies of people holding those documentsa common way to verify identity for online accounts.
On Wednesday, the company updated its blog post, estimating the number of affected users to be 70,000. While that is a small sliver of the chat apps 200 million monthly users, its still a large swath of people who now have very good reason to be worried about identity theft.
Beyond government ID images, the hackers may have gained access to Discord users names, usernames, emails, contact information, the last four digits of credit cards linked to accounts, IP addresses, and messages with customer service agents. Discord emphasized that full credit card numbers and CCV codes were not compromised, nor were passwords or messages on Discord that werent with its third-party customer support provider.
As soon as we became aware of this attack, we took immediate steps to address the situation, Discord said in a newly updated blog post. This included revoking the customer support providers access to our ticketing system, launching an internal investigation, engaging a leading computer forensics firm to support our investigation and remediation efforts, and engaging law enforcement.
The hacking group stole the documents explicitly in an effort to extort a financial ransom, Discord disclosed in its blog post.
Age verification comes with its own risks
Discord emphasizes that this wasnt a breach of its own systems and servers, but rather one that succeeded in compromising an external vendor the company uses. That distinction is important: Discord hosts a massive trove of chat logs and private conversations for its hundreds of millions of monthly active users.
This hack is still very bad news, particularly given the nature of the images that were stolenthe very images people rely on to establish the legitimacy of accounts around the web. Still, Discord users should know that server logs and private chats werent part of this hack. Discord says that it is in the process of contacting users affected by the ID document breach with an email from noreply@discord.com.
Discord did not name the vendor in its public statements, but signs and initial reports seem to point to Zendesk, which handles customer support for the platform. In a statement to Fast Company, Zendesk said that its investigation indicates this incident did not arise from a vulnerability within Zendesk’s platform and that its own systems were not compromised. Discord also uses the age verification provider k-ID for automated facial age estimation and identity document verification, though the company states that neither company permanently stores ID documents or the video selfies users upload to verify their age.
The hack is the latest example of the risks companies take when they collect sensitive personal data from users. As age verification laws spread, companies like Discord are increasingly requiring users to upload their passports and drivers licenses to prove that they are adults.
In July, Discord announced that it would make changes to comply with the U.K.s newly enacted Online Safety Act. That law requires platforms to shield young people from pornography and content promoting self-harm, eating disorders, or suicide through the implementation of age gates. While the Online Safety Act and similar U.S. state-specific age verification laws may have noble goals, they have faced pushback from critics concerned over their efficacy, privacy implications, and the broader risk of letting governments decide what people are allowed to see online.
Heres a question about the shutdown submitted by an Associated Press reader, Ryan S.:
How might the shutdown affect the U.S. economy?
Shutdowns of the federal government usually dont leave much economic damage. But the one that started Wednesday looks riskier, not least because President Donald Trump is threatening to use the standoff to permanently eliminate thousands of government jobs, and the state of the economy is already precarious.
For now, financial markets are shrugging off the impasse as just the latest failure of Republicans and Democrats to agree on a budget and keep the government running.
Lets take a look at a range of possible economic effects:
A couple of days: Financial markets may experience some fluctuation, but that likely wont be significant if funding is restored before too long. Workers will get paid back, and ideally, theres not much of an economic lag.
Longer term: Federal workers get furloughed and the federal government delays some spending during a shutdown. But when the funding comes back, workers go back to their jobs and collect back pay, and the government belatedly spends the money it had withheld. Its pretty much a wash.
Very long term: If there are significant disruptions to sectors like air travel due to shutdown-related circumstances like the security screeners and air traffic controllers who called out sick during the 2018-2019 shutdown that can mean more trouble for industries. But even in that 35-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that just 0.02% was shaved off 2019 U.S. gross domestic product, the nations output of goods and services.
Also: Trump has threatened to permanently eliminate thousands of government jobs during this shutdown, so if that happens, and new tranches of people are immediately out of work, that can upset an already precarious economy. We just dont know yet if those layoffs will happen.
___
Do you have a question for AP about the government shutdown? You can submit it here.
Meg Kinnard, Associated Press
Wall Street is taking a pause on Thursday as U.S. stocks and even the price of gold pull back from record highs following their torrid runs.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2%, coming off its latest all-time high and its eighth gain in the last nine days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 145 points, or 0.3%, as of noon Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower.
Gold also fell following its stellar rally this year, while Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. Theyre taking a moment following big runs driven in large part by expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to support the economy.
Financial markets have been so relentless, including a roughly 35% leap for the S&P 500 since a low in April, that worries are rising that stock prices may have shot too high and become too expensive. Concerns are particularly strong about the frenzy lifting stocks related to artificial-intelligence technology.
Dell Technologies sank 5% for one of the markets bigger losses, but that only trimmed its surge since talking up its AI growth opportunities earlier in the week. It’s still up 11% for the week so far.
Tesla was one of the heaviest weights on the market after falling 2%. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a preliminary evaluation of its Full Self-Driving system due to safety concerns.
Those losses helped offset a 4.9% ascent for Delta Air Lines, which reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected.
Delta also gave a forecast for profit over the full year that topped analysts estimates. Its president, Glen Hauenstein, highlighted a broad-based acceleration in sales trends over the last six weeks, including for business travel domestically.
Such reports from companies are taking on more significance, offering windows into the strength of the economy. Thats because the U.S. governments shutdown is delaying reports that would clearly show how the overall economy is doing. This is the second week where the U.S. government has not published its update on unemployment claims, for example, a report that usually guides Wall Streets trading each Thursday.
PepsiCo rose 2.1% after it delivered a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, saying momentum improved for its drinks business in North America. Delivering bigger profits is one of two ways that companies can make their stock prices look less expensive following their big rallies. The other is if their stock prices fall.
Akero Therapeutics leaped 16.7% after Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of weight-loss drug Wegovy, said it would buy the South San Francisco-based drug developer. The price tag could reach $5.2 billion if Akeros lead product candidate wins federal regulatory approval.
MP Materials, a company that mines and processes rare earths in California, rose 7.1% after China announced curbs on its exports of the materials, which are critical for the making of everything from consumer electronics to jet engines.
Costco Wholesale climbed 2.4% after the retailer said its revenue rose 8% in September from a year earlier.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after Italy’s Ferrari tumbled 14.1% following the release of financial forecasts that some analysts said were below their expectations.
Stocks in Shanghai leaped 1.3% after trading resumed there following a holiday.
Japans Nikkei 225 jumped 1.8% for another one of the worlds bigger moves. Technology giant SoftBank Group surged 11.4% after it announced a $5.4 billion deal to acquire the robotics unit of Swiss engineering firm ABB.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.13%, where it was late Wednesday.
Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
In a single day, OpenAI laid out the two pillars of its next empire: first, it signed a sweeping deal with AMD to secure no less than six gigawatts of GPU compute, an agreement that could give it up to a 10% stake in AMD if certain milestones are met. Then, on stage at DevDay, it unveiled a new layer of mini-apps that live inside ChatGPT, turning the chatbot into something much bigger: not a product, but a platform.
Together, these moves define OpenAIs ambition with perfect clarity: control the power and control the interface.
Power, literally
The AMD deal is more than a supply contract: its a signal. Six gigawatts of GPU compute by 2026, the first one-gigawatt plant in construction, and stock warrants worth up to 160 million shares at a cent apiece if performance goals are hit.
Thats not procurement: its vertical integration through financial engineering. By embedding itself in AMDs roadmap for the next-generation MI450 chips, OpenAI is locking in compute capacity at a planetary scale. Its also buying influence: the right to co-design, the ability to shape pricing, and a hedge against Nvidias dominance.
Compute has become the new oil, and OpenAI just secured drilling rights.
From app to ecosystem
Then came DevDay. On stage, Sam Altman introduced mini-apps from Spotify, Canva, Expedia, Zillow, and others, micro-interfaces that live inside ChatGPT. The goal: let users interact with third-party services without ever leaving the chat, OpenAIs bid to make ChatGPT your conversational operating system.
Think of it as the app store without the store. No icons, no screens, just conversation. You ask ChatGPT to plan a trip, it calls Expedia; you ask about housing, it queries Zillow; you design a logo, and Canva appears, seamlessly. The interface disappears. The agent decides.
This is not a super-app in the Asian sense. Its something deeper: an orchestration layer that sits above every other digital service, turning natural language into the default control surface for your digital life.
If it works, ChatGPT stops being a chatbot and becomes the front end of the internet.
Weve been here before
Anyone who has watched the history of Silicon Valley knows how this story goes. Platforms begin as enablers and end as gatekeepers. In the 1980s, Microsoft used Windows to control distribution. In the 2000s, Google turned search into an auction for attention. In the 2010s, Apple and Meta built app stores and ad ecosystems that extracted rents from everything that passed through them.
Now, the interface itself, the conversation, becomes the platform. And the pattern is repeating.
When ChatGPT suggests which app to use, who decides which ones appear? Zillow proudly claims to be the exclusive real-estate partner inside ChatGPT today. But what happens when competitors arrive, and we all know they will? Will placement depend on merit, or on bidding? Will we see a market where companies pay for their slot in the agents recommendations, as SEO for AI conversations?
History suggests we will. The difference is that, this time, theres no search results page to scrutinize. The decision happens invisibly, in the flow of a chat.
The illusion of agency
For users, the promise is pretty seductive and sounds apparently very well. You no longer need to juggle tabs or apps, the agent does it all, it even starts the conversations. But the price of convenience is asymmetry. When you ask ChatGPT to find the best flight, youre not searching, youre delegating. And we all know that delegation without transparency leads to dependence.
Who audits the logic behind your agents choices? What data informs them? What economic incentives bias them? The more the interface simplifies, the more opaque the underlying process becomes.
Weve spent two decades complaining about algorithmic black boxes in search and social media. Now were about to build one around every digital decision we make.
Compute as a barrier, distribution as capture
The AMD alliance and the mini-apps announcement are two halves of the same strategy. Compute is the barrier to entry, distribution is the mechanism of capture.
By securing vast energy and chip capacity, OpenAI ensures that no competitor can easily match its scale. By embedding itself as the interface to other apps, it ensures that even if competitors exist, theyll have to go through its ecosystem to reach users. Its the classic Silicon Valley playbook, executed with breathtaking speed and a layer of AI pixie dust.
Altman learned from the best. He watched Apple, Google, and Facebook turn control of interfaces into control of economies. Now hes applying the lesson to the age of agents: own the conversation, and you own the user.
The energy question
The AMD deal also underscores an uncomfortable truth: large-scale AI is energy-intensive by design. Six gigawatts is roughly the output of six nuclear reactors. Training and running advanced models already consume staggering amounts of power. What happens when the worlds most popular interface is also one of its biggest electricity buyers?
OpenAI is not just building software: its building infrastructure with a carbon footprint and geopolitical consequences. When a private company starts locking up gigawatts of generation capacity, regulators should treat it not as a startup, but as a utility.
The governance gap
Every platform shift creates governance lags: rules arrive years after dominance is established. Thats how we ended up with app-store monopolies, ad-tech cartels, and search markets worth trillions, but accountable to no one.
ChatGPTs platformization is happening faster than any previous transition. And regulators, distracted by content moderation and copyright disputes, seem completely unprepared.
The risks are not theoretical. Once an agent acts on your behalf (booking travel, recommending purchases, even making hiring decisions) it will be impossible to disentangle convenience from manipulation. The more we outsource judgment to machines, the easier it becomes for those who own the machines to shape our behavior.
What happens next
The momentum is undeniable. OpenAI is buying computing, embedding partners, and positioning ChatGPT as the front end of everything. The financial press reads it as a triumph of execution. The tech industry reads it as the dawn of agentic computing. Both may be right.
But beneath the excitement, theres a warning written in the footnotes of tech history. Every time a platform promises frictionless integration, it ends up centralizing power. Every time we think this one will be different, it isnt.
Im not one more European obsessed with regulating everything, Im just old enough to remember several previous experiences akin to this one. The world doesnt need another operating system that mediates access to everything: it needs transparency, interoperability, and competition. If we dont insist on them now, we may find ourselves living inside the most powerful black box ever built: one that doesnt just answer our questions, but quietly decides which ones were allowed to ask. Be warned.
If every afternoon, like clockwork, you find yourself at the vending machine punching in the code for your daily Diet Coke, you may want to rethink your selection. According to a newly released study, the popular drink may be doing damage to one of your body’s most important organs.
The study, which was recently presented at the 2025 United European Gastroenterology Week conference in Berlin, involved tracking the beverage consumption habits of 123,788 participants. It found that just nine ounces of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), such as soda, can increase the risk of liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) by about 50%.
However, when it comes to diet sodas, the findings are even worse. When it comes to diet drinks made with artificial sweeteners, the risk rises for 60%. At a 10.3 year follow-up, 108 of the participants had died from liver-related causes. However, while no significant association was found for the regular soda drinkers, consumption of low- or non-sugar-sweetened beverages (diet drinks) was linked to a higher rate of liver-related death. Both drinks were linked to higher liver fat content, as well.
SSBs have long been under scrutiny, while their diet alternatives are often seen as the healthier choice. Both, however, are widely consumed and their effects on liver health have not been well understood,” lead author of the study, Lihe Liu, said in a press release.
Liu continued, Our study shows that LNSSBs were actually linked to a higher risk of MASLD, even at modest intake levels such as a single can per day. These findings challenge the common perception that these drinks are harmless and highlight the need to reconsider their role in diet and liver health, especially as MASLD emerges as a global health concern.
Diet beverages have also been associated with weight gain, insulin confusion, and even cancer. Regardless, Diet Coke has surged in popularity in recent years. Some social media users have even begun referring to the trendy habit as a “fridge cigarette,” given it’s a habit widely known to be unhealthy, but that just seems to hit the spot anyway.
Experts say that it’s best to avoid consuming both drinks with any regularity. The safest approach is to limit both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks,” Liu says. “Water remains the best choice as it removes the metabolic burden and prevents fat accumulation in the liver, whilst hydrating the body.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Thursday that it is opening an investigation into 2.88 million Tesla vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving system over more than 50 reports of traffic-safety violations and a series of crashes.
The auto safety agency said FSD an assistance system that requires drivers to pay attention and intervene if needed has “induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws.”
The agency said it has reports of Tesla vehicles using FSD driving through red traffic lights and driving against the proper direction of travel during a lane change.
RECALL COULD FOLLOW IF NHTSA FINDS SAFETY RISKS
In total, NHTSA is reviewing 58 reports of issues involving traffic safety violations when using FSD, including 14 crashes and 23 injuries.
The new investigation comes amid growing scrutiny of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system from Congress and weeks after a new NHTSA administrator was confirmed.
Tesla, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, issued a software update to FSD this week.
NHTSA said it has six reports in which a Tesla vehicle, operating with FSD engaged, “approached an intersection with a red traffic signal, continued to travel into the intersection against the red light and was subsequently involved in a crash with other motor vehicles in the intersection.”
NHTSA said four crashes resulted in one or more injuries.
The investigation – a preliminary evaluation – is the first step before the agency could seek a recall of the vehicles if it believes they pose an unreasonable risk to safety.
A driver in Houston in 2024 told NHTSA that FSD “is not recognizing traffic signals. This results in the vehicle proceeding through red lights, and stopping at green lights.”
The complaint added: “Tesla doesn’t want to fix it, or even acknowledge the problem, even though they’ve done a test drive with me and seen the issue with their own eyes.”
NHTSA also said it will review FSD behavior when approaching railroad crossings. Last month, Democrat Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal cited a growing number of reported near-collisions in urging the agency to investigate.
Tesla’s FSD, which is more advanced than its Autopilot system, has been under investigation by NHTSA for a year.
In October 2024, the agency began an inquiry into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD after four reported collisions in conditions of reduced roadway visibility, such as sun glare, fog or airborne dust, including a 2023 fatal crash.
Tesla says FSD “will drive you almost anywhere with your active supervision, requiring minimal intervention” but does not make the car self-driving.
Tesla’s other automated vehicle features have also drawn agency scrutiny.
In January, NHTSA opened an investigation into 2.6 million Tesla vehicles over reports of crashes involving a feature that lets users move their cars remotely.
NHTSA is also reviewing Tesla’s deployment of self-driving robotaxis in Austin, Texas, launched in June.
David Shepardson, Reuters
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on how generative AI and agents might radically change websites. I also look at the circular arrangements that are financing the AI boom, and at Blackrocks big move into data centers.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan.
How AI and agents could completely change websites
At OpenAIs developer event this week, the company had a lot to say about autonomous agents, the AI-powered helpers that can understand what a user needs (sometimes proactively) and then do the work of getting it. The common narrative this week based on OpenAIs announcements is that the company is building a platform around ChatGPT and people will use the chatbot as a gateway to all sorts of web content. Freestanding websites (like Fast Company) will likely still exist, but they might look and work very differently when powered by large language models and agents.
How might they change?
A new UX. Right now, we use a mouse or a touchscreen to peruse menus, tap buttons, and scroll. We do all this either to see what the publisher has on offer, or to find the specific content we want within the virtual layers of information on the website. The only intelligence guiding that process is the descriptive language in the menus and buttons. AI models could inject much more intelligence into the experience. Users might be able to just talk to the interface and let the website gather the most relevant information in real timesimilar to the way AI search engines like Perplexity form a custom package of multimedia information after a user enters a query. And all that information might change in front of the users eyes as they give the AI more instructions. In other words, websites may no longer have a standard structure dictating how and where content is displayed. It may depend entirely on what the user is looking for and how they describe their need.
Agent, my agent. At OpenAIs developer event on Monday, Christina Huang, one of the companys execs, used the platforms new Agent Builder tool to create an agent (live, onstage, in under eight minutes) that would act as a sort of concierge to help users at a standard web page the company built about the event. It showed developers the agent builder was the main point, but it also gave a glimpse of how OpenAI is thinking about the future of websites. Website visitors could tell the agent what they hoped to learn at the conference, and the agent would assemble a schedule full of the best panels and work groups to suit that end. The agent also had its own personality and visual style. The user interacted with it by typing, but it could easily have been a voice interaction between user and agent, which would have added a new dimension to the agents vibe.
An intelligent UX and agents might play key roles in the websites of the future, or at least in the first phase of AI influencing how we access information online. From there, it could evolve to types of interaction that are hard to imagine right now. We should also remember that it may not be all about us (humans). Researchers are already trying to understand how websites might be coded differently for when most of the sites visitors are AI agents.
AIs incestuous funding circle
A growing number of people are voicing concern that just a few well-monied individuals and companies will control the AI that powers much of business and personal life, along with unprecedented amounts of personal information willingly fed into it by consumers. But the risks of AIs small circle of big players may run deeper than that. AIs biggest players are investing in each other, which some fear could be artificially inflating the stock prices and valuations of the whole group, as Bloombergs Emily Forgash and Agnee Ghosh point out.
For example, Nvidia announced a $100-billion investment in OpenAI, which will buy about 2% equity in the company. Notably, the Nvidia investment will time the release of the funds according to the pace at which OpenAI buys the chips: Nvidia gets guaranteed chip sales and a 2% share of OpenAI. [T]hese investments might be circular and raise related party concerns, as Nvidia may own shares in a customer that will likely use such funds to buy more Nvidia gear, writes Morningstar equity analyst Brian Colello in a research brief. OpenAI struck a similar agreement with Microsoft when it took a $10-billion investment from the software giant, then used the money to buy its Azure cloud computing services.
After facing criticism for the circular nature of the Nvidia deal, OpenAI doubled down and struck a similar deal with AMD, a rival AI chipmaker. OpenAI will buy large quantities of AMDs Instinct AI chips on a set schedule over the next decade. If it keeps to the schedule, itll get the option of taking a 10% stake in AMD. The deal gives OpenAI a solid second source for AI chips, and could give AMD the stamp of approval it needs to become a legit challenger to Nvidia. AMD CEO Lisa Su called the arrangement a virtuous, positive cycle. OpenAIs Sam Altman said during a meeting with reporters this week that the industry is still experimenting with the right financial models to pay for AIs immense development and hosting costs.
On Tuesday, reports said Nvidia will buy a stake of up to $2 billion in Elon Musks xAI, which is now raising a $20 billion round. The financing includes equity and debt and is tied to the purchase of Nvidia GPUs for xAIs Colossus 2 data center in Memphis.
The return on these big bets depends on how quickly AI can bring broad new efficiencies to big business, and, perhaps, find new ways to pry more dollars from consumers. There just isn’t much real evidence that these things are about to happennot yet. As Bloomberg puts it, AI remains an untested technology in business. So all the funding and equity and chip contracts flying back and forth between these companies are, in a sense, just promises among a relatively small group of people that AI indeed will pass the tests that lay ahead. Thats why the word bubble is on everybodys lis.
Blackrock is moving hard on data centers and energy
The big money is moving into AI data centers. Blackrock, the worlds largest asset manager, is reportedly in advanced talks to spend almost $40 billion to buy Aligned Data Centers, which owns 78 data centers across the U.S., Canada, and South America. That news came two days after reports that Blackrock is also in advanced talks to buy the utility company AES in a deal said to be worth $38 billion.
Massive amounts of investment are pouring into the data center space, fueled by a belief that AI models will soon power many business and personal computing functions. Among the biggest barriers to such a transformation is a dearth of both AI computing power and the electricity needed to power it. M&A in both the data center and energy spaces has surged.
Blackrock is doing the deals through its Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) subsidiary. The Aligned Data Center deal, which was reported Friday by Financial Times and confirmed by others, could close any day now. MGX, an Abu-Dhabi AI investment firm backed by Mubadala/G42, may also participate independently in the deal, the reports say. The deal would be one of the biggest acquisitions of the year.
Earlier this year, Aligned raised $5 billion in equity and more than $7 billion in debt financing to expand its global footprint. GIP, which Blackrock bought in early 2024, already co-owns another data center group called CyrusOne, which it bought for $15 billion in 2021.
Tech companies and data center developers will likely break ground or advance several hundred new data center projects by the end of 2025. A ConstructConnect report found that data center construction starts reached $12.9 billion by the end of June (with $2.4 billion in June alone), a 48% increase from the prior year. OpenAIs Stargate project alone will build massive data centers on five new sites. The big money behind that project comes from Oracle, Softbank, OpenAI, MGX, and Nvidia.
Blackrock, with more than $10 trillion under management is often called a shadow bank because it manages funds for governments, pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, and corporations, as well as for individual investors.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
How to figure out if an executive is AI fluent
Trumps coal bailout wont solve the data center power crunch
Sanders: AI may take 100 million jobs in the next 10 years
What can the rise and fall of NFTs teach us about the AI bubble?
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