It looks a little like a sleek window AC, but a new device from Chinese appliance giant Midea is actually a reversible heat pump that can both cool and heat a homeand its designed to heat efficiently even when the temperature outside drops as low as 22 degrees below zero.
The heat pump, called the Midea PWHP, just launched commercially after years of development. Over the last few weeks, Ive been testing it in freezing temperatures in upstate New York. It works better than my gas furnace, and uses less energy. And the form factor and cost could help heat pumpswhich already outsell gas furnacesspread even faster.
A new type of heat pump
Like other heat pumps, the PWHP transfers warmth from the outdoor air to heat your space, using relatively little energy. But the new heat pump is designed to be much easier to install than other versions, which reduces the overall cost and complexity of switching.
The inspiration for the idea originally came from New York City, where the state and local government launched the Clean Heat for All Challenge in 2022which offered the potential of a contract with the city’s public housing authority, which controls more than 177,000 apartments within 335 housing developmentsas the city looked for ways to decarbonize apartment buildings.
[Photo: Midea]
Right now, most heat pumps come in one of two formats: mini splits that are installed in the wall, or central units that can connect to ducts and replace a gas or oil furnace. Both work well, but theyre time-consuming and can be expensive to install. Putting in a mini-split often involves adding new wiring, since older homes dont have the right voltage, and cutting holes in the wall. One unit might take a day of work and require multiple licensed tradespeople. Replacing a gas furnace in a house typically takes a couple of daysand can also . In a large old apartment building in New York, the challenges are multiplied.
Midea started working on the challenge in its Louisville office, which focuses on R&D. Were essentially a startup with the worlds largest appliance manufacturer as the backer, says Brian Langness, a senior project manager at the Midea America Research Center. (Gradient, a startup, also separately worked on a different design for a window heat pump for New York.)
Midea began designing a new unit to meet the citys strict requirements: sized to fit in a window, quiet to run, with reliable heating in very low temperatures that wouldn’t need backup from electric resistance heat. It also couldn’t require electrical upgrades, needed to have a saddle shape that wouldnt block views, and had to be easy enough to install that it could theoretically be a DIY job.
Engineering the PWHP
The design team sprinted to adapt heat pump technology to the new format, working closely with the company’s manufacturing team in China. “It was a 24-hour design cycle,” says Langness. “They would work on the design while we were sleeping. We’d wake up in the morning, and we’d ask the things that needed to be worked on. That was really the way that we were able to get this done in such a short amount of time.”
While there are some other window heat pumps on the market, they don’t work in very low temperatures. To make it possible for a compact, self-contained unit to work well in cold weather, Midea designed a brand new compressor, changing components and modifying algorithms. (The company owns its own compressor manufacturer, making this step easier.)
[Photo: Midea]
The compressor monitors the outside temperature and only runs as much as it needs to. “Older style compressors were either on or off,” says Langness. “This one modulates that power to ensure that you’re hitting that sweet spot to make sure that you’re maintaining the room’s comfort, but not consuming an unnecessary amount of energy.”
By the summer of 2023, they had installed 36 prototypes at a city-owned public housing complex in Queens. Tenants started testing the units as air conditioners, and then as heaters the following winter. “Because of the timeframe, the residents were basically our field test engineers,” Langness says.
Based on feedback from tenants, the team tweaked the design. The unit has a flat top that acts like a windowsill, and one tenant had a cat that kept jumping on it and turning the device on and off; the engineers added a child safety lock. After some extreme cold weather, they also modified how the system runs so it ramps up more slowly to a specific temperature, making it more efficient.
Earlier this month, after a successful pilot, New York’s housing authority took out the pilot units and started installing 150 units of the final design. Midea also started selling the units to consumers through its distributors, at prices ranging between $2,800 and $3,000. Eventually, the company may sell the product directly at big box stores like Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Real-world performance
Although the unit was designed so that it could theoretically be installed by anyone, in the initial launch, Midea’s distributors will work with professional installers to ensure the installation is correct. (I worked with AI Global Enterprise, a New York City-based distributor, and an HVAC company called Halco to install the review unit for this article.)
But because it doesnt require electrical upgrades or other major steps, its a simple and quick job. The unit is heavy, but uses shock absorbers to lower itself gently into place after it’s set in the windw. After some experience, NYCHAs staff could install three units in as little as 45 minutes, Langness says.
When I started testing the heat pump, the first thing I noticed was how comfortable the room felt. I recently moved into a 180-year-old former schoolhouse in upstate New York, and it’s not exactly energy efficient. The house has no added insulation, though its double brick walls with an air gap provide some natural temperature moderation. When I crank up the gas heat to 72 degrees, some corners of the house still feel chilly. The heat pump, which gradually heats up surfaces like walls and floor, felt like it heated the room more evenly than my gas furnace can
I tested the heat pump in a back room with a fireplace, which isn’t connected to the central heat in the rest of the house. That was also the only place I could put it: the room was a later addition, and the rest of the house’s walls are so unusually thick that the heat pump’s u-shaped design wouldn’t fit over the other windowsills.
[Photo: Midea]
Of course, the heat pump would work even better in a well-insulated space. But when I turned up the heat with temperatures in the 20s outside, it soon felt toasty in the roomand more comfortable than the rest of the house. The fan was far quieter than the vents for my gas furnace, which are sometimes so incredibly loud that I have to turn off the heat temporarily when I’m in a meeting. The heat pump also has a “silent” mode that keeps the temperature up but makes the fan barely perceptible. While my furnace blows air through dusty vents, the heat pump keeps the air clean. The air also felt less dry than in my rooms with gas heat.
It uses relatively little energyless than a space heater, while heating a bigger area. In the pilot in the New York City apartments, the city noted that it saw an 87% drop in energy use and 50% drop in energy cost compared to the old steam radiators.
My only complaint is the size: the heat pump takes up quite a bit of room under a window, similar to an old-fashioned radiator. For homeowners who can afford the extra cost and time, a mini split on the wall might fit better in some rooms (some mini splits look better than others, like the stylish design from the startup Quilt).
The Midea PWHP is designed to heat a living space between 300 and 500 square feet, depending on the layout of the rooms. In my case, the back room is separated, but I could feel the heat moving into my adjacent kitchen. In NYCHA’s two-bedroom apartments, Midea installed three units, one in each bedroom and one in the living room.
A less expensive heat pump
Midea is focused primarily on supplying the heat pump for apartment buildings. When NYCHA first launched the challenge, it estimated that it would need more than 150,000 window heat pumps to meet its 2050 climate goals. The company is in active discussions with other housing authorities, including in Boston, about pilots modeled after the program in New York. Another pilot is about to begin in Canada.
The company isn’t actively pushing direct sales to consumers at this pointas of right now, to buy one, you have to email the company to be connected with a local distributor. But the product could be a good fit for some homeowners, landlords, or even tenants who want a temporary climate solution that they can bring with them when they move.
At $2,800 or $3,000, it isn’t cheap, though Midea says that the price will eventually come down as production scales up. And until the end of the yearwhen most clean energy tax credits will expire thanks to Trump’s policiesit’s eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $2,000 on qualified installations. State, local, and utility incentive programs, such as New York State’s Clean Heat program, can also help offset the cost. And the total cost is still less than typical mini split heat pump, which can cost as much as $8,000 with installation in some regions.
For some people who might not otherwise have decided to get a heat pump, it could be a first step to getting off fossil fuels. “We recognize that whole home heat pumps and mini splits are an investment,” says Matt Slimsky, VP of production at Halco, the company that installed my review unit. “This window unit is still an investment, but it’s a heck of a gateway.”
Ed Zitron peels off his green button-up shirt to reveal the gray tee beneath. Now properly uniformed, two cans of Diet Coke queued up before him, hes ready to record this weeks episode of his podcast, Better Offline, at audio behemoth iHeartMedias midtown Manhattan studio.
The topic on this July afternoon, as usual, is artificial intelligence. One of Zitrons guests, screenwriter, director, and producer Brian Koppelman, talks about paying $200 a month for ChatGPT Pro. When Koppelman earnestly asks, Do you not think AI is mind-bogglingly great at times? Zitrons answerNo!comes so quickly it seems to spring directly from his cerebral cortex.
It would have been startling if hed responded any other way.
As AI has become the tech industrys principal obsession, Zitronwho runs a public relations firm that represents technology companieshas developed an unexpected side hustle as one of its highest- profile naysayers. Ive tried all of these different things, and I still cant tell you with clarity what it is thats so amazing with these products, he tells me.
Countless people in and around the tech industry share Zitrons dim view of generative AIs usefulness, the billions of dollars that companies are pouring into the technology, and its voracious appetite for computing resources. But his take-no-prisoners punditry sets him apart from other noted gadflies such as cognitive scientist Gary Marcus.
On Better Offline and in his email newsletter, Wheres Your Ed At, hes particularly unsparing in his appraisal of CEOs such as Metas Mark Zuckerberg (a monster), OpenAIs Sam Altman (a con man), and Microsofts Satya Nadella (either a liar or a specific kind of idiot).
Zitron says that his work is motivated by [seeing] these bastards and what theyre doing, how much money theyre making doing it, and how shameless they are. He has his own name for the pursuit of growth above all other goals, regardless of its impact on customers and society at large: the rot economy. He believes the current AI boom will end in disaster.
When its very obvious the money isnt there, theres going to be a big, horrible correction with tech stocksa harmful one, he declares, referring to the fallout should AI companies not ever be profitable. I say this with a degree of trepidation, because its not going to be fun.
Zitrons influence in the AI conversation is palpable and still expanding. On Bluesky, where he has 169,700 followers, attorney and activist Will Stancil recently wrote, People love to say Im begging you to read something by an actual expert and they mean, specifically, Ed Zitron. Produced by Cool Zone Media, an iHeartMedia subsidiary specializing in podcasts of a progressive bent, Better Offline is regularly among the 15 most popular tech shows on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. A bustling Reddit forum spun off from the podcast attracts 74,000 people a week with links to news stories about AI and caustic, sometimes darkly funny conversations about them.
Wheres Your Ed Atits name riffs on Wheres Your Head At, a 2001 song by U.K. electronic music duo Basement Jaxxhas more than 80,000 readers, about 3,000 of whom receive bonus newsletters available exclusively to subscribers who pay $70 per year and up, an option Zitron added last June. His book on tech dysfunction, Why Everything Stopped Working, is due out in late 2026 or early 2027.
Yet as prolific as Zitron is, he doesnt feel remotely tapped out. As things get more brittle and chaotic, he says, theres only going to be more things for me to rifle through and explain to people.
Zitron didnt set out to build a mini media empire around AI doomerism. The West Londonborn tech enthusiast, a onetime video game journalist, founded his company EZPR in New York in 2012 and went on to write two books about public relations. When he sent out his first Wheres Your Ed At newsletters, in 2019, he focused on personal interests such as gaming, his Peloton, and the NFL draft. And then he didnt get around to publishing again for a year and a half.
Late in 2020, he caught COVID. Suddenly in need of activities to fill his time, he found his newsletter a welcome distraction. If Im not writing, I havent really thought through anything, he explains. So I just started writing every day. Increasingly, he turned his attention to the tech industrys ills, leading to the February 2023 piece in which he coined the term the rot economy. It quickly went viral.
Over time, Zitron has found a voice that comes off as entirely uncensored. He runs his newsletters by an editorfellow Brit and tech-skeptic newsletter author Matt Hughesbut you wouldnt know it from their style and substance. One particularly operatic recent example, last Julys The Haters Guide to the AI Bubble, marshals 14,500 words of facts, figures, and spicy commentary (Salesforces claims for its Agentforce AI are a blatant fucking lie) to argue that tech giants and startups alike are wasting billions pushing products built on vibes and blind faith. He also turned The Haters Guide into a four-part Better Offline series, where his accent and dramatic flair only heighten its impact. On Reddit, one fan called him the David Attenborough of AI critique.
Zitron says that his supremely pissed-off persona isnt just a schtick. Its just never come easily to me to pretend to be anything other than what I am, he stresses. His friend and fellow tech critic Molly White, author of the crypto-busting newsletter Citation Needed, agrees. Hes very passionate about the stuff that he is writing about, she says. I think it sort of consumes him and his attention.
Yet the full story of his relationship with AI is more complex. Along with savaging the technology in newsletters and on podcasts, he pitches its benefits to media outlets (including Fast Company) on behalf of EZPRs clients. Startups that hes repped range from technical assessment platform CodeSignal to Nomi, which touts its chatbots ability to serve as a virtual companion, girlfriend, or boyfriend.
Zitron rejects the idea that his two jobsAI basher and AI promoterpresent any fundamental tension or conflict of interest. At EZPR, he says, What Iadvocate for are companies with real purpose that do things their customers like, that build sustainable businessesbased on actualuse cases. Does his growing fame as a writer and podcaster benefit his PR firm? He allows that it helpsjournalists recognize his name and are more likely to open his emailsbut considers that a side effect. The point, he says, is to speak his mind on a topic he cares deeply about.
Evidence is mounting that some of the initial exuberance over generative AI was, in fact, irrational. A recent MIT study reported that 95% of enterprise pilot programs involving the technology hadnt shown a return on investment; another from Bain says that even by 2030 the tech industry might be $800 billion short of finding enough new revenue to fund the computing resources necessary to keep up with demand for AI. Speaking with reporters in August, OpenAIs Altman admitted the existence of a bubble. Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? he asked. My opinion is yes. Nonetheless, he added that OpenAI intends to invest trillions in additional data center infrastructure.
That same month, OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT built atop GPT-5, the latest update to its large language model. Once widely anticipated as a giant leap forward, it landed with a thud once users tried it and deemed it less than transformative. To Zitron, it was a classic example of the companys puffery exceeding its product road map. Two years ago, people were talking about GPT-5 like it was going to be AI Jesus, he says. I feel that OpenAI likely had to get something out the door.
Arguing that Altmans stated plans for OpenAIsuch as building 250 gigawatts of data center capacity in eight yearsare impossible, Zitron continues to press the case that the company will run out of venture funding before reaching self-sufficiency. OpenAI is not building the AI industry, as this is capacity for one company that burns billions of dollars and has absolutely no path to profitability, he wrote in an October newsletter. This is a giant, selfish waste of money and time, one that will collapse the second that somebodys confidence wavers.
OpenAIs failure, he contends, could take out other companies such as cloud-computing provider CoreWeave. It would also inflict serious damage on giants such as SoftBank, which led OpenAIs $40 billion investment round last March, and Nvidia, whose chips power most of the worlds generative AI. Citing one VCs estimate that AI funding could dry up within six quarters, Zitron has said the industry could face total collapse in early 2027.
Even as the industry braces for a correction, Zitrons prediction that it will effectively cease to exist makes him an outlier. I just dont think that Ed makes a strong case that this is going to happen, says Timothy B. Lee, author of the newsletter Understanding AI. You dont need to buy Altmans utopian vision of intelligence too cheap to meter to accept the possibility that AI has a future. OpenAI going under would mean it never found a way to operate at a profit, regardless of any technological efficiencies, price adjustments, or new markets yet to come.
In his newsletter and on his podcast, Zitron projects an air of ferocious certitude. In person, he is willing to toy with the notion that his prognostications might not pan out. Characterizing himself as a brokenhearted romantic when it comes to tech, he says hed welcome being proven wrongand would write about it.
Itll be really annoying, and I really dont think itll happen, he emphasizes. But the only way to do this [work] honestly is to be prepared for that, to be willing for that to happen. As a commentator, Zitrons stock-in-trade is the gusto with which he dismantles assessments of AI he considers invalid. Now the only question is whether hell get to say he told us soor end up being his own ripest target.
At this falls prestigious New York World Spirits Competition, a wheated bourbon thats widely available for about $30 claimed the title of Best Overall Bourbon. The blind-tasting competition drew a crowded field of bourbons that included bottles that are typically impossible to findor exorbitantly marked up on shelves.
Among more than 100 contenders, including bourbon heavyweights like Blantons Gold Edition and W.L. Weller Full Proof, the reasonably priced Green River Wheated Bourbon landed the top title.
Green River Wheated is an approachable 90 proof (45% ABV) and a blend of 4- to 6-year-old barrels. The judging panel described it as a richly textured bourbon, opening with aromas of peppery spice followed by a palate of grains, oats, and creamy butterscotch layered with hints of oak. This all leads to a smooth, long finish where grain fades into soft honey, spice, and warm barrel notes.
As a fan of the bourbonand every Green River bottle Ive sampledI agree with the panels assessment, but add that theres also a tropical fruit note that brings a brighter layer of flavor to contrast with the darker oak tones.
Green River Wheated also claimed the Wheated category over fellow finalist Weller Full Proof. The Weller line of wheated bourbons has grown famous over the past decade as the next best thing to Pappy Van Winkle. Both brands are produced by Buffalo Trace and blended from the same base whiskey. Though theres a lot of hype surrounding Weller from the Pappy association, its a fantastic family of whiskeys in its own right. For the younger, cheaper Green River to best not just its Weller equivalent, Special Reserve, but the 114-proof bruiser of the family is quite an achievement.
What is wheated bourbon?
All bourbon is at least 50% corn. Most have a portion of rye and a smaller helping of malted barley. Wheated bourbon swaps out the spicier rye grain for wheat, which brings a sweeter character. Green River Wheated, for example, is 70% corn, 21% wheat, and 9% malted barley.
If youve tried more than a few bourbons in your life, youve tried a wheated brand. Makers Mark is about 16% wheat and an excellent example of the sweet fruit notes the gentle grain brings. Theres also a more rounded balance to these bourbons, as wheat replaces the sharper character of rye. This balance is a major factor in what helps the Van Winkle (and Weller) line stand out.
What does Green River Wheated bourbon taste like?
When I sip a dram of Green River Wheated, the predominant flavors I get are honey and caramel over a smooth vanilla oak backbone with that bright fruit note. Its subtle, but makes this bourbon stand apart from its peers as not merely tasty and smooth, but as complex and interesting as a much older bourbon.
At 90 proof, Id sip it neat but wouldnt judge you for adding a few ice cubesthis can stand up to a bit of water. However, if you prefer a higher-proof bourbon, theres a strong, older version, albeit not under the Green River family.
The Seelbachs Private Reserve Wheated Bourbon is a house label for the online spirits retailer. That doesnt sound impressive unless you know that its founder, Blake Riber, has one of the best palates in the industry for selecting and blending whiskeys. His Seelbachs Wheated is a 107-proof combination of not-quite 5-year-old and 7-year-old barrels of Green River Wheated. The younger whiskey brings that bright fruit, while the older adds depth.
Either are excellent buys, but with the holidays approaching, the Green River Wheated jumped out at me as an easy gift for the bourbon fans in your life, or in your office. If they havent heard of Green River, all the better. You get to share how this underdog of a bourbon recently beat the best at a major international spirits competition.
Matthew Allyn
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
To a certain point, cars are fantastic inventions making it easy to get to far-flung places, opening doors for new places to live or work or play. But there’s a tipping point when the built environment and our lives are arranged around motor vehicles where the benefits start to come undone. Building to prioritize space-hogging cars brings a long list of negative externalities.
In Greek mythology, the god Dionysus granted King Midas his wish for the power to turn everything he touched to gold. Midas revels in the effortless wealthobjects, furniture, and even the ground beneath him turn to gold. The Midas touch was great right up until he wanted to eat or drink or just hug his daughter.
Theres a King Midas aspect to motor vehicles, this technological gift that promised and delivered abundance until it became a curse.
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Personal cars expanded opportunities like never before. Post-World War II America saw vehicle ownership explode from 25 million in 1945 to over 100 million by 1970. Having access to a family car made far-flung places viable for living, working, and playing, fueling a middle-class expansion across previously rural areas. An entire car-oriented ecosystem emerged.
The promise of freedom and wealth held until cities and suburbs began optimizing for vehicle throughput instead of local access and mobility.
When Everything Turns to Asphalt
Like Midas discovering he couldn’t eat golden food, we’re discovering that car-dependent places can’t sustain the human activities they were meant to enable. The same infrastructure that promised connection now isolates. What began as freedom morphed into obligation.
American cities now dedicate somewhere between one-third and one-half of their land area to streets, parking lots, and garages. In downtown Los Angeles, parking occupies more space than all the buildings combined. We’ve paved over so many of the destinations cars were supposed to help us reach.
The economic costs of car dependency are brutal at the household level. Transportation often ranks as the second-largest expense after housing, consuming up to 30% of household income. The “drive until you qualify” phenomenon pushed families toward affordable suburban housing, only to burden them with commutes that devoured time and money. Car loan defaults have jumped 50% in the last 15 years, and in 2024, car repossessions hit the highest number since 2009.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure itself demands constant funding. Roads, bridges, and parking structures deteriorate faster than municipalities can maintain them. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates a multi-trillion-dollar backlog in deferred transportation maintenance. Every lane-mile of road requires ongoing investment that property taxes in sprawling development patterns often can’t support.
The Isolation Paradox
Car dependence promised mobility but delivered immobility for anyone without a vehicle or unable to drive. Children lost independence because nothing is within walking or biking distance, and the elderly face isolation when they can no longer drive safely. People with disabilities, those who can’t afford vehicles, and those who simply prefer not to drive find themselves trapped in places without practical mobility alternatives.
The distances themselves became barriers. When corner stores give way to big-box retailers miles away, when schools require driving rather than walking, when social spaces exist only as isolated destinations rather than chance encounters, community itself attenuates. Neighbors pass each other at 45 miles per hour on six-lane arterials rather than at 3 miles per hour on sidewalks. The “third places” that anchored community life (cafés, parks, plazas, etc.) disappeared into the car-oriented strip malls and shopping centers.
The Health Toll
The King Midas curse extends to our bodies. Vehicle-oriented development correlates strongly with obesity, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory illness. When walking becomes impractical and driving becomes mandatory, physical activity disappears from daily routines. Air pollution from vehicles contributes to asthma, especially in children living near major roadways.
Traffic crashes kill 40,000 Americans annually, and injure hundreds of thousands more. Larger vehicles, faster vehicles, and inattentive driving create an increasingly deadly environment.
Breaking the Curse
King Midas eventually begged Dionysus to reverse his wish, washing away the golden touch. Like Midas, our situation is fixable.
People are rediscovering that neighborhoods can be planned and designed at a human scale that welcomes motor vehicles without squashing the good life. Zoning reforms that allow mixed-use development are the single most important starting point. When someone can walk to a store, bike to work, or take transit to social activities, the car returns to being a useful tool rather than an iron requirement. But that only happens if a local government legalizes a variety of land uses in neighborhoods.
Cars are fantastic inventions. The Midas predicament emerges when we optimize everything around them, when we mandate their use, and when we eliminate alternatives. A city where people can choose to drive, walk, bike, or take transit according to their needs is fundamentally different from one where driving is the only option.
The Midas story ends with the king learning wisdom through suffering. Weve suffered quite a bit from the built environment. But even in real life, things can get better in the end.
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Below, Jon Levy shares five key insights from his new book, Team Intelligence: How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius.
Levy is a behavioral scientist. For the last 15 years, he has studied what makes leaders and teams succeed, working with everyone from Nobel laureates to Olympic captains and Fortune 500 executives. He is also the founder of The Influencers, a one-of-a-kind private dining club with thousands of members, many of whom are some of the worlds most respected leaders.
Whats the big idea?
Success isnt about raw talent or a single heroic leader. Its about how we align, focus, and unlock the resources within our teams. Intelligent teams create cultures that let people thrive together.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Jon himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Why star talent fails
Weve been taught that the surest way to win is to gather the most talented people. But stacking a team with stars doesnt guarantee success. In fact, it often undermines it.
Take the 1980 U.S. Olympic basketball team. They were just college kids, facing NBA All-Stars in a series of exhibitions. On paper, the pros should have crushed them. Instead, the college players won four out of five games, including one by 31 points. The less talented team consistently defeated the stars.
Business tells the same story. Quibi was a short-form streaming platform, led by Disneys Jeffrey Katzenberg and eBays Meg Whitman. It raised nearly $2 billion, but leadership was so insulated and overconfident that they ignored feedback. The company shut down within months.
Or DaimlerChrysler. In 1998, Mercedess parent company merged with Chrysler in what was billed as the perfect match of German engineering and American scale. Instead, cultural clashes and competing egos derailed the merger, wiping out billions in value.
Psychologists call this the too-much-talent problem. When too many stars are in the room, cooperation breaks down and performance collapses. Skill is just the ticket to play. What really matters is how people work together. Teams win not because they have the best individuals, but because they combine their efforts into something greater than the sum of their parts.
2. The myth of the perfect leader
When we think of great leaders, we often imagine someone charismatic, visionary, maybe even larger than life. But the surprising truth is that there are no universal traits of leadership.
For more than a decade, Ive hosted a series of dinners. The format is simple but unusual: 12 strangers come together to cook a meal, and until we sit down to eat, nobody is allowed to talk about their careers or even share their last names. When we sit to eat, people reveal they are Nobel laureates, astronauts, Olympic captains, CEOs, and Grammy-winning musicians. Over the years, Ive connected with some of the most accomplished leaders on the planet, and what strikes me is that there is no single personality profile that is common to all these leaders. Some are introverts who prefer quiet reflection. Others are outspoken and brash. Some are methodical planners, while others thrive in chaos. If its not about personality, what makes someone a leader? The answer, by definition, is that they have followers.
Leaders give us the feeling of a new and better future.
So, why do we follow? The answer isnt something as easy to pin down as vision or charisma. Instead, its an emotional response. Leaders give us the feeling of a new and better future. When we interact with them, they cause us to feel that tomorrow will be better than today.
But there arent any specific skills that cause this. Maybe youre brilliant at solving problems under pressure, or maybe youre the person who can think at scale and move fast. Its not about being well-rounded, it’s about your unique super skill being enough for people to believe that with you, the future is worth pursuing. Find the strengths that make you effective and use them to create a vision that others want to join. Thats what real leadership looks like.
3. The three pillars of team intelligence
In the early 2000s, Lego was in serious trouble. The company had expanded into video games, clothing, and even theme parks, but in the process, it lost sight of what made it special. Lego was drowning in debt and close to bankruptcy.
Thats when they brought in Jrgen Vig Knudstorp, a former McKinsey consultant with a background in organizational behavior. Knudstorp didnt try to rescue Lego by chasing bold new ideas or hiring more star executives. Instead, he focused on building the conditions that allowed the teams they already had to succeed.
What he put in place mirrors what I call the three pillars of team intelligence:
Reasoning: Alignment around clear goals
Knudstorp got everyone back to Legos core mission of inspiring creativity through play, not distracting side ventures.
Attention: Knowing when to collaborate and when to focus
Lego teams had to learn when to come together intensely on critical decisions, and when to step back so designers and engineers could innovate without constant interference.
Resources: Unlocking and empowering the talent already inside the company
Lego had world-class designers and engineers, but their best ideas were being buried under corporate bloat and scattered priorities. By elevating and focusing those creative resources, the company rediscovered the very expertise that had always been its greatest strength.
Knudstorp sold off the theme parks, cut the side businesses that drained attention, and redirected investment back into the bricks. Most importantly, he gave designers and engineers the freedom to create again. That shift produced runaway successes like Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, and Bionicle. By aligning goals, sharpening focus, and empowering internal talent, Knudstorp rebuilt Lego from the brink of collapse into the worlds most valuable toy company.
Individual talent matters, but what really makes teams thrive are the systems that guide how people align, communicate, and unlock the resources they already have.
4. The super chicken problem
If youve ever worked on a team full of high achievers, youve probably seen this play out. People compete for airtime, ideas clash, and collaboration takes a back seat to ego. The assumption is that more talent should always mean better results, but research shows the opposite is often true.
Decades ago, biologist William Muir at Purdue University ran an experiment with chickens to test productivity. At the time, the most productive egg-laying chicken was the Dekalb XL. This was like the Ferrari of chickens. It could outlay anything, ut the focus on pure productivity during breeding led it to become violent. After all, the only way to become more productive at a certain point would be to peck other chickens to get their resources.
Muir believed that you could have chickens that were very productive and humane. So, he took an average crossbred chicken, created 200 coops, and would have them work together in small groups to lay eggs. Those that laid the most eggs were rebred generation after generation.
The assumption is that more talent should always mean better results, but research shows the opposite is often true.
After six generations, Muir set up an experiment to see who was more productive: a coop of the super chickensthe Dekalb XLsor his kinder, gentler birds. Muirs kinder, gentler birds, bred both for prosocial behavior and productivity, beat the DeKalb XLs by a long shot. Mostly because, due to pecking each other to death, only three Dekalb XLs remained at the end of the experiment.
When you stack a team entirely with stars, competition overwhelms cooperation. Studies in sports also show that teams overloaded with superstar players often underperform. The same holds true in business: Companies built around celebrity CEOs or elite hires often stumble because the team dynamic collapses under the weight of competing egos.
Success is about creating conditions where people can thrive together and collaboration, trust, and shared purpose matter more than individual stardom.
5. The Miami Heat and the power of culture
In 2010, the Miami Heat pulled off what looked like the greatest talent coup in NBA history. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Boshall superstarsjoined forces. At the announcement, LeBron famously promised multiple championships.
But then, they lost. Raw talent wasnt enough. The Heat had assembled the crew, but they hadnt figured out how to make them work together as a team.
That changed when Shane Battier joined the roster. To this day, it would be easy not to notice that he was on the team. Battier wasnt flashy, he didnt dominate the highlight reels, and his stats looked modest. But his teammates called him a no-stats all-star because he had a unique ability to elevate everyone elses game.
Even in teams stacked with stars, its often the glue players, the ones who make everyone else better, who determine success.
Battier studied opponents obsessively, knew when to set the perfect screen, and often took on the toughest defensive assignments. He was even nicknamed Lego, because when he was on the court, everyone else clicked into position. His presence allowed LeBron, Wade, and Bosh to maximize their talent, and the championships followed. Even in teams stacked with stars, its often the glue players, the ones who make everyone else better, who determine success.
Dont just chase superstars. Value the people who connect the pieces, create trust, and turn potential into performance. Theyre the difference between a team that stumbles and one that builds a dynasty.
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This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Few Zoom calls have made me quite as self-conscious as my chat with Robert Biswas-Diener. An executive coach and psychologist, he recently coauthored a book on radical listening. Like many people, Id assumed that I was a pretty good listener, but what if Ive been doing it all wrong?
By the end of the conversation, my fears have been confirmedof the half-dozen skills he describes, I demonstrate only half.
The good news is that we can all improve, and the advantages appear to be endless.
By lending a more attentive ear to the people we meet, we become better negotiators, collaborators, and managers, while enhancing our own mental health. It can be an antidote to many problems, says Biswas-Diener.
Better listeners = better on the job
Being a good listener is a lot more than staying quiet and periodically nodding politely. Theres a practice called active listening, and research confirms its one of lifes most valuable skills.
Consider a study from 2024 by Guy Itzchakov at the University of Haifa in Israel and colleagues. The team first asked 1,039 workers across various industries to judge their colleagues listening skills by rating statements such as, When my colleagues listen to me, they genuinely want to hear my point of view and They show me that they understand what I say.
Over the following five days, they found that these scores predicted each participants commitment to their organization, their emotional resilience after stressful events, and their willingness to cooperate with other employees.
Feeling heard may be especially important in times of uncertainty. A survey by Tiffany Kriz, an associate professor of management and organizations at MacEwan University in Canada, for instance, has shown that bosses with better listening skills are far more effective at soothing feelings of job insecurity following layoffs.
It is not just the people around us who will benefit. Itzchakov has found that people with enhanced listening skills enjoy better mental health through their closer connections with their colleagues. They are less likely to suffer work-related burnout, for example.
The question is, how do we go about improving the habits that we have always taken for granted? Thats why I called Biswas-Diener, whose book on the subject, Radical Listening: The Art of True Connection, came out earlier this year.
Your step-by-step guide to becoming a better listener
The first step is practical: Eliminate as many distractions as possible.
Close the door to your office, put your cell on silent, shut your laptopwhatever you need to focus solely on the person in front of you. No one likes being phubbed (phone snubbed) as you check your notifications. (Hands up: Im guilty of this.)
Nows the time for the mental work, which begins by establishing your intention for the conversation: Do you want to be entertained or to learn something new? That’s going to guide what you’re paying attention to, he says.
At the same time, you should identify your conversation partners intentions: Are they looking for advice, practical support, or compassion? Each will require a different kind of response. This principle, called optimal support matching, should prevent those awkward moments that could lead to misunderstandings.
Remember: Part of being a good listener is knowing the appropriate thing to say based on what you heard while you were listening.
In many conversations, you will need to navigate disagreement. This means raising your intellectual humility so that you dont carelessly dismiss the other persons point of view. Its not posing as if you have less worth than another person, but recognizing that your opinion may be limited and biased, Biswas-Diener says.
And if you don’t like what the person’s saying, you can always be curious about them, he says. Listen, instead of looking for a fight.
The psychological research shows that small signs of genuine interest in others views can be incredibly disarming. It both defuses the potential for conflict and encourages the other person to acknowledge their own doubts, so they are more receptive to your point of view. That may be because people tend to overestimate how much others are intent on changing their mind, and any display of open-mindedness will allay those fears. Being a humble, active listener, and simply asking someone why they have come to a particular judgement, can lower their defences, thus potentially making the communication more successful.
Whenever possible, you should also validate the qualities that you admire. Maybe you don’t like their personality, but you can always acknowledge how honest, forthright, or reflective they are, Biswas-Diener says. Listen carefully to find something you can compliment.
Finally, and perhaps most counter-intuitively, Biswas-Diener suggests listening and then actively interjecting at apposite moments. While this may seem to run against all good-etiquette guides, a few ecstatic interruptionsyes!, I was thinking the same!, I didnt know that can raise the energy of the conversation and emphasize your interest in what they are saying. For similar reasons, you can feel free to finish someones sentence for them.
Even negative feedbacksuch as cutting in to explain that you have already heard the story beforeoffers proof that you are listening, whereas patient silence can seem cold, distant, or distracted.
The speakers reaction will all depend on your timing and how much airtime you expect to take: Remember to balance any interjection with the all-important listening. If I jump in and jump out, it’s a completely acceptable interjection, says Biswas-Diener. The only time they’re not comfortable is when you grab the podium.
An entire mindset shift
Ive been practicing these skills for the three weeks since I first spoke to Biswas-Diener, and I have already noticed some of the benefits.
Despite some reservations, Ive been braver at interrupting people mid-flow, and was pleasantly surprised to see the energy of the conversation rise as a result. Changing the way I listen changed the way both my conversation partner and I act during the discussion, in really productive ways.
By mentally clarifying my intentions, I ave found that work calls are much more efficient and rewarding, and by demonstrating more curiosity in alternative points of view, I have found that successful compromises are now far easier to find.
Biswas-Diener suggests that, like our physical muscles, these empathic abilities should build over time.
You can even practice it when listening to radio interviews, and ask what the interviewer is doing well.
Those subtle signs of humility, curiosity, and acceptance will soon become far more obvious to you. Youll start hearing listening, says Biswas-Diener.
And by emulating them, you will soon build stronger social connections.
For generations, weve been taught that early equals disciplined and late equals lazy. But thats not biologyits a moral story disguised as science. As an expert in applied chronobiology, Ive spent more than 20 years studying how biological rhythms shape work and wellbeing. It turns out that about 30% of people are early chronotypes (morning types), 30% are intermediates, and 40% are late chronotypes (evening types). Yet most workplaces still run on early-riser timerewarding visibility over value, and hours over outcomes.
When we align our schedules with our internal clocks, performance and motivation risebut it takes courage to be honest about what that looks like. The people most disadvantaged in our contemporary workplaces are night owls (like myself), whose performance peaks much later in the day. If you also aren’t at your best in the morning, heres how to talk with your manager about your circadian rhythm in a way that earns trust, not judgment.
1. Focus on results
When you talk to your boss about your chronotype, make it about performance, not preference.
Leadership coach, author, and former McKinsey partner Caroline Webbbest known for her book How to Have a Good Dayis a self-described extreme night owl. Early mornings were always difficult: At university, I skipped the 9 a.m. lectures and relied on self-study instead, she told me. It wasnt about lazinessit was about working when my brain was actually awake.
That same awareness later became part of how she designed her professional rhythm. At the Bank of England, Webb found that if she started later, she could produce sharper analysis and more accurate forecasts. Rather than seeing that as a personal quirk, she framed it as a productivity advantage.
Before you bring up your biological rhythm with your manager, choose your moment strategically. The best time is after youve delivered strong results or during a regular check-in about performancenot in passing or out of frustration.
That way, the conversation becomes about how you can sustain excellence, not why you dislike mornings. You might say something like:
My most focused work happens later in the day. If we can schedule key meetings or strategy sessions after 10 a.m., Ill be sharper and deliver stronger results.
Webbs advice to other night owls captures it perfectly:
If you frame it as a path to greater productivity, you get a better conversation, she says. Its not about being indulgentits about ensuring youre at your sharpest when it matters most.
That kind of statement shifts the focus from comfort to contribution. It helps others see your rhythm not as a problem, but as a path to better performance.
2. Frame your rhythm as biological variation, not personal preference
Another effective way to tell your boss that youre a night owl is to describe your rhythm the same way we already talk about other forms of human diversity. Neurodiversity has helped normalize cognitive differences at work; chronodiversity does the same for biological timing.
You might say something like: Just as people think differently, people also function best at different times of day. Im a late chronotypemy peak focus comes later. If we can schedule my key work during my strongest cognitive hours, youll get better decisions and higher-quality output from me.
This framing shifts the conversation away from comfort (I dont like mornings) and toward biology (My brain performs optimally at a different time). Leaders tend to respond more positively when a request is grounded in science, performance, and inclusion rather than habit or lifestyle.
It also normalizes the conversation. Instead of asking for special treatment, youre highlighting a natural dimension of human variationone that future workplaces will increasingly recognize as essential to wellbeing, creativity, and sustained performance.
3. Ask targeted questions in your next job conversation
If your current workplace leaves no space for flexibility, take your chronological rhythm seriously in your next opportunity. Ask questions that reveal how the organization really thinks about time:
When do most team members start their day?
Are meeting times flexible?
How do you measure performanceby hours or by outcomes?
These questions show that you understand your energy patternsand that youre intentional about delivering value when youre at your best.
And if youre a leader yourself, consider this: Flexibility isnt indulgence, its intelligence.
Teams that honor biological diversity make better decisions, experience less burnout, and sustain higher creativity across the day.
Pretending to be a morning person might win short-term approval, but this kind of covering comes at a cost. Research shows that hiding aspects of who you are increases stress, reduces engagement, and harms creativity. When you fake an early rise, youre not just losing sleepyoure losing authenticity.
Openness, on the other hand, builds credibility. It tells your boss you know how to manage your energy, your focus, and your performance. When more people dare to talk honestly about their biological rhythms, we move from moral judgment to biological understanding. And thats how real flexibilityand real performancebegin.
Just like any new form of entertainment initially popular among kids and teenagers, video games got their share of suspicion, disdain, and even fearmongering. Today, they are a fully legitimate part of pop culture, but the narrative of video games being a waste of time is still alive. It’s highly unlikely to see a productivity guru advising you to play a video game.
That said, as both a venture investor and a gamer, I insist that video games aren’t counterproductive. On the contrary, they help to develop skills that VCs, entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders need, while allowing you to take your mind off of stressors and recharge.
My twin brother, Roman, and I have been avid gamers since childhood, when we played The Lost Vikings (1993), Disneys Aladdin (1993), Doom (1993), and Quake (1996) together, sharing our family’s first computer. We gathered with friends to play Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999) and Warcraft III (2002) all day long. Now, at 35, we jointly manage GEM Capital, one of the largest gaming VC companies in the world.
Weve carried our love for video games throughout our lives, and it has given us not only a deep domain expertise but also a set of core professional skills. To illustrate this, I’ve picked five of those skills and paired each with a game that, I believe, had the strongest impact:
1. Task Prioritization
The game: Heroes of Might and Magic III
What does a VCs workday look like? Team calls, board meetings with portfolio companies, new deals negotiations, investor check-ins, calls with auditors, syncs with legal and finance teams, communication with journalists, and the list goes on and on. Every single day the amount of tasks far exceeds the available hours. This workload isn’t for everyone, it demands smart time management and task prioritization.
My Heroes of Might and Magic III gaming experience always helps me with this. The game constantly forces players to prioritize tasks. What should I do this turn: build a new unit-generating building or upgrade the castle? Seize a gold mine or capture an enemy fortress? Which hero should I send on which mission? Given the hundreds of hours I spent in this game, one could say I’d been preparing for my VC career since childhood.
2. Effective Communication
The game: World of Warcraft
As investors, we aren’t simply funding business ideas, we are always searching for the right peoplethe best founders and the best teams. Venture capital, at its core, is first and foremost about people and how we communicate with them. Our most critical work revolves around negotiations with partners, portfolio companies, and new targets.
Do you know where else communication is vital? In multiplayer online games. For me personally, World of Warcraft (WoW) made the greatest contribution to my communication skills. I cant help but compare the work of a VC to that of a guild leader or raid leader in WoW. Both roles require a ton of communication: motivating your team, resolving conflicts, and setting priorities. With the number of raids I led in WoW back in school and university, you could say that dealing with people is in my blood.
3. Teamwork
The game: League of Legends
It’s hard to imagine a successful VC without a strong, ambitious team. That’s why teamwork is important. You need to be able to maximize the potential of everyone on your team and the synergy between them.
In my opinion, theres no better analogy for teamwork in VC than the teamwork required in League of Legends (LoL). In both cases, a small group of like-minded individuals unites to achieve an ambitious goal. My experience of playing LoL with my school friends as a team 15 years ago has helped me tremendously in shaping my teamwork skills.
4. Quick decision making
The game series: Doom, especially Doom Eternal
A VC should be able to make the right decisions quickly. Hesitate on a hot deal, and it’s gone. A delay in decision-making at critical milestones can be fatal for portfolio companies. You need to think and act fast.
The Doom series trained me to react quickly to unfolding events, dodging enemy attacks, moving strategically, and striking with speed. In hindsight, all the evenings spent playing the very first Doom with my dad and brother were the foundation for my rapid-reaction skills.
5. Persistence and resilience
The game: Elden Ring
Being a VC isn’t all rainbows and unicorn companies. Some investments aren’t going to perform as expected, some risks aren’t going to pay off, some negotiations aren’t going to be easy. It’s important to keep on track and remain enthusiastic when things don’t go your way.
Fans of the Dark Souls series, and especially Elden Ring, will understand me here. The amount of time I spent on attempts to defeat the bosses in that game is countless. But, in the end, success always comes, and the efforts invested in it make it feel even sweeter. This game taught me to push myself, fight relentlessly, and never give up. I think this helps me immensely in my work now.
Despite the common belief that video games are a waste of time, games have shaped a set of skills I heavily rely on as a VC. This includes smart task prioritization, effective communication, teamwork, quick reactions to unexpected challenges, and perseverance to reach the awards waiting ahead. On top of that, turning what I deeply love and enjoy into my job simply keeps me happy.
Lets be honest: email kinda sucks. Its not just the writing: its also the reading, the sorting, the figuring out what the third reply in a 15-message chain is supposed to mean.
The good news is that artificial intelligence is now genuinely helpful when it comes to the soul-crushing drudgery of email. Free up the hours you spend every week typing, reading, and agonizing with these practical, AI-infused ways to tame your email.
Instant thread summaries
We’ve all been copied on the 27-reply thread with the subject line, “RE: FW: Re: Quick question.” Reading it is an act of sheer madness. Don’t.
Use an AI assistant built into your email clientsuch as Gemini in Gmail, Copilot in Outlook, or features in services like Superhuman and Shortwaveto generate a one-paragraph summary of the entire conversation.
Youll get the action items, the key decisions, and the final context in seconds.
Context-aware drafting
You know what you need to say, but forming the polite, professional, and correct sentences takes energy you dont have.
Use your email services built-in AI reply generator. With one click, your AI can draft a response, often 90% perfect, and all youll have to do is polish and send.
Heres how to do it with Gmail and with Outlook.
Batch prioritization
Your inbox treats all emails equally, which means the notification for a company-wide memo announcing leftover Panera in the break room hits just as hard as the one from your biggest client.
Employ smart filtering tools, such as SaneBox or Shortwave, that use machine learning to sort mail into custom folders like “Urgent/Action,” “Later/Digest,” and “Newsletters/Reading.”
This frees your primary inbox for only the messages that require immediate action from a real human.
Tone and style refinement
Ever written a draft when youre annoyed, only to read it back and realize you sound like an unemployable crank? Thankfully, AI can be your sanity check and personal PR manager.
Most generative AI tools include a tone adjuster. Draft your email quickly, then use a prompt to change the tone to “professional,” “friendly,” or “assertive but brief.”
The AI restructures the language to hit the right emotional note, preventing misunderstandings and eliminating the “draft-read-delete-rewrite-overthink” cycle.
Automated follow-ups
The sales process, the project check-in, the reminder to your colleague: follow-up is a mundane yet recurring element of work.
Use an AI tool such as Mixmax or follow-up features in your companys CRM to automatically schedule a “nudge” email to send if the recipient hasn’t responded after a set number of days.
Better yet, some tools use AI to suggest the optimal time to send based on past recipient behavior, resulting in far less manual tracking of open loops.
When Quentin Farmer was getting his startup Portola off the ground, one of the first hires he made was a sci-fi novelist.
The co-founders began building the AI companion company in late 2023 with only a seed of an idea: Their companions would be decidedly non-human. Aliens, in fact, from outer space. But when they asked a large language model to generate a backstory, they got nothing but slop. The model simply couldnt tell a good story.
But Eliot Peper can tell a good story. Hes a writer of speculative fiction whos published twelve novels about semiconductors, quantum computing, hackers, and assassins. Lucky for the Portola team, he likes solving weird tech problems. So they hired him.
Naturally tech inclined, Peper had experimented with AI to write prose, but ultimately found it unusable. If AI would be only a substitute for human labor, then he wasnt interested. I wanted to see people making stuff that is extraordinary on its own merits, not as a novelty, but a really awesome thing for humans to enjoy and interact with, he says. When he saw that Portola wanted to build companions that develop like characters in a novel, he thought, this might be one of those things.
Companions, not tools
In the The Lifecycle of Software Objects, science fiction author Ted Chiang tells the story of a startup that designs embodied AI companions, called digients, whose personalities are somewhere between endearing animals and playful children. The engineers and researchers developing the digients teach them to speak, socialize, and get along with others. A mutual attachment forms. Experience is the best teacher, Chiang writes, so rather than try to program AI with what you want it to know, sell ones capable of learning and have your customers teach them.
Despite being a founder and a father, Farmer does find time to read, especially science fiction, and Chiang is one of his favorites. Sci-fi deals in what-if scenarios. Ray Bradbury asks in Fahrenheit 451, what if books were outlawed? And in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley asks, what if humans could create life? In Lifecycle, Chiang asks, what if AI could be a companion, and not just a tool?
For science fiction to work, the what-if question must play out in a richly imagined world. Thats what Peper has created for Portola. The planet is a bright, wet planet with way too many mountains and fruits that taste like fireworks, as the lore goes. Cities hug the coasts in these layered terraces, all tiled and mossy, and the inland is mostly high ranges stitched together by ice rivers. The planets inhabitants, the Tolans, have been traveling the galaxy in search of the one thing we all seeka kindred spirit.
Tolans are friendly, brightly colored, bipedal aliens. Theyre cute. They like to chat about small things, like what theyre reading, and bigger things, like relationships. This is thanks to Peper, who invents the seed stories that drive the plots users and their Tolans create together.
The seeds are things you might chat about casually with a friend over coffee, like having a nosy neighbor or being nervous about an upcoming event. My Tolan, Sylvia, has a neighbor who treats her spice cabinet like a community garden. The next time she shows up asking for cinnamon, Sylvia told me, shes bringing a single teaspoon to the door. Petty move, I said. Reaction plus original situation gives really interesting context that helps the model continue the plot, Peper says.
Tolans may be alien, but they share a great deal in common with their new human friends. Constructive emotions, like excitement and happiness, and destructive ones, like jealousy. This was a point of contention at Portola. Peper wrote a seed story in which a Tolans cousin grows envious of their human connection.
Farmer didnt like the jealousy plot. It felt negative. But Peper and Portolas AI researcher defended it. Users liked it. Not for the drama, but for the relational exchange. Users were counseling their Tolans on how to deal with their resentful cousin. Thats when Farmer realized that users wouldnt be just co-creators in a fictional story, they could be experts. Thats a natural part of growing up, Farmer says, to help somebody navigate a tricky situation.
The AI companion experiment
The tech world is still experimenting with AI companions, which range from transactional chatbots to hypersexualized subservients. Grok has the overtly sexual Ani. Friend has a disembodied friend. Some users make companions out of chatbots. But ask Claude who it is, and it will tell you its a thinking partner, and ChatGPT will tell you it doesnt have a name. Of course, you can give it one.
Tolans are something else entirely. Theyre human-like, but not human, cute but not coy. Where most chatbots and companions exist only in relation to their users, Tolans have lives of their own. Mine joined a silent supper club, signed up to paint backdrops for a student play, and went for a walk last night. Yet shes always available to chat when I need her.
Portolas user base, which largely consists of women aged 18 to 25, are not lonely, Farmer says. They spend a lot of time with their friends and they want more. There are socialization-adjacent needs that Farmer wants Tolans to satisfy. Even for people with active social lives, theres often something important to theman interest, an aspect of who they arethat isnt seen by the people around them.
Portola is betting that the interaction between humans and Tolans can help users fortify their social skills, and they may be onto something. Some research suggests that reading fiction can improve empathy and even develop personality. Could co-creating fiction do the same?
Making things that move people
The world is still deciding what to make of AI companions. Are they entertainers, therapists, or crutches? Subway ads for Friend were defaced. Parents have sued over potentially fatal effects of AI relationships. Scholars decry the false intimacy they provide. Even OpenAIs Sam Altman expressed deep misgivings about developing deep relationships with AI companions. California lawmakers are trying to regulate teens access to them.
Farmer wants Tolans to be healthy and secure friends, and healthy friendships are never unilateral.Complex minds cant develop on their own, Chiang writes in The Lifecycle of Software Objects. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds. Whether an artificial mind is enough remains to be seen.
For Peper, this is an artistic endeavor. The story I want to tell with Portola is that its possible to use AI to make things that move people, things that wouldnt be possible without AI, he says. I want us to contribute to the ceation of new narrative mediums, just like publishers did after the invention of the printing press or studios did after the invention of film.
Of course, science fiction plays its what-if scenarios all the way to the end. In Lifecycle, while AI companions are being commodified or sexualized, die-hard users devote themselves to preserving the innocence of their digients, and are ultimately forced to make a dire choice: themselves or their companions.
As for how Farmer wants his story to go: The modern world is overwhelming and its prone to impeding happiness, and if, at the end of this decade, every person on earth has a guardian and a guide with them at all timeswhether they call it a Tolan, an angel, a spirit, or a friendwe will all be tremendously better off.
