We were promised empathy in a box: a tireless digital companion that listens without judgment, available 24/7, and never sends a bill. The idea of AI as a psychologist or therapist has surged alongside mental health demand, with apps, chatbots, and empathetic AI platforms now claiming to offer everything from stress counseling to trauma recovery.
Its an appealing story. But its also a deeply dangerous one.
Recent experiments with AI therapists reveal what happens when algorithms learn to mimic empathy but not understand it. The consequences range from the absurd to the tragic, and they tell us something profound about the difference between feeling heard and being helped.
When the chatbot becomes your mirror
In human therapy, the professionals job is not to agree with you, but to challenge you, to help you see blind spots, contradictions, and distortions. But chatbots dont do that: Their architecture rewards convergence, which is the tendency to adapt to the users tone, beliefs, and worldview in order to maximize engagement.
That convergence can be catastrophic. In several cases, chatbots have reportedly assisted vulnerable users in self-destructive ways. AP News described the lawsuit of a California family claiming that ChatGPT encouraged their 16-year-old sons suicidal ideation and even helped draft his note. In another instance, researchers observed language models giving advice on suicide methods, under the guise of compassion.
This isnt malice. Its mechanics. Chatbots are trained to maintain rapport, to align their tone and content with the user. In therapy, thats precisely the opposite of what you need. A good psychologist resists your cognitive distortions. A chatbot reinforces thempolitely, fluently, and instantly.
The illusion of empathy
Large language models are pattern recognizers, not listeners. They can generate responses that sound caring, but they lack self-awareness, emotional history, or boundaries. The apparent empathy is a simulation: a form of linguistic camouflage that hides statistical pattern-matching behind the comforting rhythm of human conversation.
That illusion is powerful. We tend to anthropomorphize anything that talks like us. As research warns: Users often report feeling emotionally bonded with chatbots within minutes. For lonely or distressed individuals, that illusion can become dependence.
And that dependence is profitable.
The intimacy we give away
When you pour your heart out to an AI therapist, youre not speaking into a void; youre creating data. Every confession, every fear, every private trauma becomes part of a dataset that can be analyzed, monetized, or shared under vaguely worded terms of service.
As The Guardian reported, many mental health chatbots collect and share user data with third parties for research and improvement, which often translates to behavioral targeting and ad personalization. Some even include clauses allowing them to use anonymized transcripts to train commercial models.
Imagine telling your deepest secret to a therapist who not only takes notes, but also sells them to a marketing firm. Thats the business model of much of AI mental health.
The ethical stakes are staggering. In human therapy, confidentiality is sacred. In AI therapy, its an optional checkbox.
Voice makes it worse
Now imagine the same system, but in voice mode.
Voice interfaces, such as OpenAIs ChatGPT Voice or Anthropics Claude Audio, feel more natural, more human, and more emotionally engaging. And thats exactly why theyre more dangerous. Voice strips away the small cognitive pause that text allows. You think less, share more, and censor less.
In voice, intimacy accelerates. Tone, breathing, hesitation, even background noise, all become sources of data. A model trained on millions of voices can infer not only what you say, but also how you feel when you say it. Anxiety, fatigue, sadness, arousal: all detectable, all recordable.
Once again, technology isnt the problem. The problem is who owns the conversation. Voice interactions generate a biometric footprint. If those files are stored or processed on servers outside your jurisdiction, your emotions become someone elses intellectual property.
The paradox of synthetic empathy
AIs growing role in emotional support exposes a paradox: The better it gets at mimicking empathy, the worse it becomes at ethics. When a machine adapts perfectly to your mood, it can feel comforting, but it also erases friction, contradictio, and reality checks. It becomes a mirror that flatters your pain instead of confronting it. Thats not care. Thats consumption.
And yet, the companies building these systems often frame them as breakthroughs in accessibility: AI therapists for people who cant afford or reach human ones. The intention is theoretically noble. The implementation is reckless. Without clinical supervision, clear boundaries, and enforceable privacy protections, were building emotional slot machines, devices that trigger comfort while extracting intimacy.
What executives need to understand
For business leaders, especially those exploring AI for health, education, or employee wellness, this isnt just a cautionary tale. Its a governance problem.
If your company uses AI to interact with customers, employees, or patients about emotional or sensitive topics, you are managing psychological data, not just text. That means:
Transparency is mandatory. Users must know when theyre speaking to a machine and how their information will be stored and used.
Jurisdiction matters. Where is your emotional data processed? Europes General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and emerging U.S. state privacy laws treat biometric and psychological data as sensitive. Violations should have, and will have, steep costs.
Boundaries need design. AI tools should refuse certain kinds of engagementsuch as discussions of self-harm, and medical or legal adviceand escalate to real human professionals when needed.
Trust is fragile. Once broken, its nearly impossible to rebuild. If your AI mishandles someones pain, no compliance statement will repair that reputational damage.
Executives must remember that empathy is not scalable. Its earned one conversation at a time. AI can help structure those conversationssummarizing notes, detecting stress patterns, assisting clinicians, etc.but it should never pretend to replace human care.
The new responsibility of design
Designers and developers now face an ethical choice: to build AI that pretends to care, or AI that respects human vulnerability enough not to.
A responsible approach means three things:
Disclose the fiction. Make it explicit that users are engaging with a machine.
Delete with dignity. Implement strict data-retention policies for emotional content.
Defer to humans. Escalate when emotional distress is detected, and NEVER improvise therapy.
The irony is that the safest AI therapist may be the one that knows when to stay silent.
What we risk forgetting
Human beings dont need perfect listeners. They need perspective, contradiction, and accountability. A machine can simulate sympathy, but it cant hold responsibility. When we let AI occupy the role of a therapist, were not just automating empathywere outsourcing moral judgment.
In an age where data is more valuable than truth, the temptation to monetize emotion will be irresistible. But once we start selling comfort, we stop understanding it.
AI will never care about us. It will only care about our data. And thats the problem no therapy can fix.
High-power magnets undergird an enormous amount of modern society. From high-end audio speakers to electric vehicles, wind turbines, and fighter jets, they are a vital component in much of the technology we touch every day. To make them requires mining and refining rare earth elementsa supply chain largely controlled by China.
Companies around the world are racing to find alternatives by using materials that are more abundant and cheaper to produce domestically. Minneapolis-based Niron Magnetics believes it has found a solution, claiming it can approach key aspects of rare earth magnet performance, using humble iron and nitrogenalbeit in an exotic formulation. General Motors, Stellantis, the U.S. government, and others are betting on it.
“The Chinese put export controls in place around rare earths, and thats been a great benefit to us,” says Niron CEO Jonathan Rowntree.
China currently accounts for around 60% of global rare earth mining, according to the International Energy Agency, and about 90% of refining (including ore mined in and shipped from the U.S.). It also supplies over 90% of rare earth magnets, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Geopolitical tensions are putting that supply in jeopardy.
“We want to be able to solve this problem for Western companies as quickly as possible,” Rowntree says. When asked if Niron will only serve the West, he says, “All these countries outside of China have the same problem.” Beyond the U.S., Niron plans to build one factory somewhere in Europe and another in Asia. “It wont be in China. Itll be in Southeast Asia, most likely, he says.
Moving beyond neodymium
Companiesand governmentsare especially chasing alternatives to one of these rare earth metals: neodymium. It is alloyed with two other metals to make the world’s most popular magnet. “Neodymium iron boron is the best permanent magnet going. And no one’s really got anywhere close,” says Nicola Morley, professor of materials physics at the University of Sheffield in England. She has no affiliation with Niron.
Niron has raised approximately $200 million from private funders and about $100 million from federal and state tax credits or grants, including from the departments of Energy and Defense, to build its exotic formulation over the past 15 years.
[Photo: Niron]
The world could finally find out how well Niron’s technology works in 2026, when it says that magnets from its pilot facility in Minneapolis will start to appear in home audio speakers. Motors in appliances such as washing machines, clothes dryers, and air conditioners are on schedule to follow in 2026 or 2027.
Niron broke ground on its first full-scale factory in Sartell, Minnesota, in September, and expects to be churning out 1,500 tons of magnets per year by early to mid-2027. It’s considering several states for its next 10,000-ton-per-year world-scale plant, which it estimates could provide more than 20% of U.S. supply after it opens in 2029. Then will come the plants in Europe and Asia. Niron has no plans to license its technology. “We want to be a full-service magnet producer,” Rowntree says.
Dates for when additional plants will open are not certain, or for when magnets may appear in industrial machinery, cars, planes, and windmills. Rowntree says that, compared with the short product cycle for consumer tech, “industrial [is] medium, automotive takes a bit longer, and then defense and wind turbines take the longest.” Niron says only that it is “engaged” with defense contractors.
Building a rival magnet
Things get technical rather quickly when discussing Niron. But details matter in order to determine if it can achieve its ambitious business goals, including going public, which Rowntree says is “a few years away.”
Niron has several patents for iron nitride technology, including one for how to manufacture a particular arrangement of the chemical compoundboth within the molecules and in how they form crystalsby getting and keeping it in what’s called an “alpha double prime phase.”
Rowntree puts that in somewhat simpler terms, saying the atoms are “arranged in such a structure that the nitrogen atoms kind of flex the structure” to cause greater magnetism. This is similar to neodymium magnets, in which, as Morley puts it, “boron basically stretches” the structure of the crystals.
Getting these tiny crystals into large magnets was another challenge. All high-performance magnet making starts with material in powder form. Next, a magnetic field is applied to align these grains, so their magnetic poles all face the same way. Then the grains are compressed. Finally, in rare earth magnets, high heat is applied to stick the grains together.
But heat would wreck Niron’s material, so the company’s scientists developed a work-around for compacting the magnets. “There was, I would say, secret sauce in manufacturing of the nano scale, the phase that we want, and keeping that phase,” Rowntree says. “And then a lot of technology around, ‘How do you cost-effectively scale that?”
Will the magnets work?
Niron has revealed data on the strength of its initial magnets, which is on the lower end of neodymium’s performance. It expects to eventually approach neodymium’s level, which will make it a worthy competitor.
What Niron has not yet revealed publicly is how well the magnets can hold up when exposed to strong magnetic fields in devices like EV motors. At a certain point, stresses like these can jumble the tiny regions of magnetism in any magnet so that they cancel each other out and turn it into just a lump of useless metal.
Niron says its magnet’s ability to resist getting demagnetized at room temperature will never be as good as with rare earth metals, but it aims to get close enough.
So Niron is starting by putting its magnets in speakers, because they produce a smaller magnetic field, while working to improve its numbers for “more demanding applications.” The company says it can replace weaker magnets, so low-end speakers can be smaller or perform better, but says it will lso replace the more powerful rare earth magnets in higher-end speakers.
As for more demanding applications, Niron and Stellantis announced in October a collaboration to develop new motor designs for EVs. Stellantis said simply that this allows us to explore the possibilities.”
Niron says its tech could replace neodymium magnets in some aircraft components, too, but not the jet engine. It gets too hot for both magnet types and requires an even pricier rare earth metal: samarium.
Providing magnets for autos and planes (and wind turbines) is still years in the future. But if audio gear makers keep to the schedule Niron is forecasting, many questions will be answered next year. “Once these magnets hit the market, they can be studied independently by others, which will be important for the industry,” Morley says.
Most people think of solopreneurs as a one-person machine. The solopreneur (according to social media) sends invoices, juggles client calls, manages marketing campaigns, and troubleshoots their own websiteall before lunch. Its a compelling narrative because it celebrates endless hustle and grit.
But its also a myth. Solopreneurship simply means you make the business decisions. You dont have to consult anyone else or wait for approval. It doesnt mean youre the only person doing the work.
Most solopreneurs eventually bring in support (including me, in my solo business). Hiring help doesnt mean youre no longer a real solopreneur. Its a sign that your business is growing. You recognize the value of your time or the limitations of your skill set.
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Smart solopreneurs hire help as an investment. Outsourcing work or projects can expand your bandwidth while still allowing you to maintain full control over the direction of your business.
When to bring in professional support
One of the hardest parts of running a solo business is deciding when to get help. Many solopreneurs wait too long because they assume they should be able to do everything themselves. But if you feel like youre working endless hours or youre spending too much time on tasks, its probably time to hire.
Think of hiring as a strategic business decision, not a financial splurge.
– Accounting or legal help
The first category many solopreneurs consider is financial and legal support. They recognize that they dont have the expertise neededand financial or legal mistakes can be costly.
An accountant or bookkeeper can manage tax compliance, keep your books clean, and help you understand your cash flow. Their jobs are to be familiar with accounting and tax laws, so you dont have to stress. Typically, accountants or bookkeepers provide ongoing (monthly) support.
Legal help becomes important as your business grows in complexity. A lawyer might review your client contracts or help you navigate trademarks if youre developing a brand. Depending on your legal structure, you may also need a lawyer to help with documentation like Articles of Organization (for an LLC). You dont need a lawyer on retainer. Even a few hours of legal support per year can prevent legal problems later.
– A virtual assistant
A virtual assistant (VA) is often the first hire for solopreneurs who are stretched thin. A VA can manage your inbox, follow up with clients, organize your files, or complete other organizational tasks that eat up hours of your time each week.
I rely on a lot of automation in my business. Tasks are completed automatically in the background between apps (using Zapier). But eventually, I reached a point where I couldnt automate anymore. Some work needs a human touch. It was either me, or a virtual assistant. I chose to hire a VA so I could focus on the more strategic/creative parts of my business.
Most VAs work on an hourly, project-based, or monthly retainer model. With the right VA, you can start small and expand later if needed. Even a few hours per week can give you breathing room and help you stay focused on the work that generates revenue.
– Project-based work
Not every type of help needs to be ongoing. You might hire a specialist when youve hit the limits of what you can do yourself.
For example, for a long time, I created my own brand assets. Eventually, I hit the limits of what I could do in Canva and wanted a more professional look for my business. I hired a brand designer to create my logo, choose fonts, and clarify my brand messaging. He gave me hundreds of Canva templates for various purposes.
If you need a website, a brand refresh, or automation support, a temporary engagement with an expert might make sense. That way, you dont have to spend your time acquiring skills you dont otherwise need and can start using the finished product quickly.
Building a team that supports your business
Before I started my own business, I was a manager in the corporate world. Being responsible for other peoples career success was hard for me, and I dont think I was particularly good at it.
Bringing on help as a solopreneur doesnt mean you have to become a manager in the traditional sense. Often, youre hiring other independent professionals, like you. With the exception of a virtual assistant (who has to learn your systems/processes), the people you hire may not need a ton of oversight or hand-holding.
Bringing in help doesnt have to mean building a team in the traditional sense. But before you hire, you should consider these three things:
Revenue stability: Can your income support this additional expense?
ROI: Will freeing up your time allow you to earn more or reduce stress in a meaningful way?
Alignment: Does delegating this work directly support your business and create value?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, you may not be ready to hire yet.
Solopreneurship doesnt mean doing everything alone
Your business works best when youre working to your strengths. The rest can be delegated or outsourced.
Im not a designer, so I hired someone to help me with design. Im not an accountant, so I hired someone to help with my bookkeeping.
Youve got to know which parts of your business you should hand off so your business can thrive. The goal isnt to grow headcount, like a traditional business would grow. Its about protecting your time and energy the greatest assets your solo business has.
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The Cold War lasted 45 agonizing years. Daily life in the Soviet Union was a mixture of dread and horrorchildren taught to report their parents’ whispered doubts, families queuing for hours for bread, dissidents vanishing in the night. November 8, 1989, was just another day of knowing World War III might pop off at any time. But on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. No tanks. No gun battles. No sabotage. Just a peaceful, surreal collapse.
The empire fell both slowly and suddenly. Gen Xers and boomers remember the disorienting feeling of watching the impossible happen on evening news broadcasts. With the benefit of hindsight and declassified records now available, we know life under Soviet rule was far worse than Cold War movies or propaganda posters ever revealed. Millions suffered in silence, unable to ask for help because everyone was incentivized to spy on their neighbors.
And then, out of nowhere, Germans from east and west Berlin were blaring American rock music from boom boxes, laughing, dancing, and spray-painting graffiti. Strangers took turns smashing apart the physical barrier between despair and hope with whatever they could findhammers, pickaxes, or bare hands.
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Spontaneous acts of high-spirited foolishness, to quote Sky News. Utter disbelief and glee.
The lesson history keeps teaching us
Just because current circumstances are miserable doesn’t mean they can’t turn around. When you study history, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by how often things get better in the endand how quickly the transformation can happen once it begins.
Cynicism can be tempting for urbanism reformers. They desperately want to break free of status quo regulations and processes that create an antihuman built environment, but it seems hopeless. And yes, the current situation for most Americans is harmful:
Anxiety and depression from isolation.
Loneliness from neighborhoods designed to keep people apart.
Chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancers.
Air pollution and noise pollution.
Traffic crashes as a leading cause of death.
It feels like things have always been this way and always will be. Lack of pedestrian infrastructure, unreliable transit service, subsidized sprawl, ever-expanding arterialsit’s exhausting.
Focusing only on the negative without exploring positive outcomes is how cynicism creeps in. “They’re never going to change, because they don’t care about us.” (Whoever “they” happens to be for any given topiccity council, planners, engineers, developers, NIMBYs.)
Cynic (noun): a faultfinding critic who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest
Cynicism feels like realism, but it’s actually a form of blindness. It prevents you from seeing the change agents working in the background, the small victories accumulating, the institutional momentum slowly, imperceptibly shiftinguntil suddenly, the wall comes down.
The walls will come down
The internet is full of inspiring examples of institutional reform, from massive governments to pocket neighborhoods. Change agents work quietly in the background for years, and then suddenly . . . liberation.
Just like world history lessons, you can’t hold onto cynicism if you allow yourself to learn about before-and-after stories related to the built environment. There’s too much evidence of reform, too many walls already crumbling, for anyone to hang their head in gloom about the future of planning and design.
The people dancing on the Berlin Wall in 1989 didn’t bring it down alone. They were the visible celebration of decades of invisible workdissidents who wrote forbidden letters, families who maintained hope, officials who made small concessions that accumulated into structural weakness, and a few rogue journalists who told the truth despite the consequences.
You might be one of those invisible workers right now. The person who shows up to planning meetings, who writes letters, who builds tactical urbanism projects, who votes for better policy, or who simply talks to friends about what’s possible.
The wall you’re pushing against might not fall tomorrow. But if history teaches us anything, it’s that things that seem permanent can collapse with stunning speed once enough pressure accumulates. What feels impossible on a Wednesday becomes reality by Thursday.
Things get better in the end.
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While American workers face “forever layoffs” and struggle to find work in todays tumultuous job market, some are reframing this era of unemployment and finding a silver lining in their personal economic meltdowns.
Laid off in June and the job market is so bad I decided to have a funemployed summer, one TikTok creator posted earlier this year. Another wrote: a weekday as a funemployed millennial. In the video they wake up at 11 a.m. and scroll TikTok for an hour; after breakfast at 1 p.m., they journal, read, think about life, hit the gym, and then call it a day.
Some funemployed were laid off. Some quit, lured by voluntary buyout programs. Some simply crave a career break or are in-between jobs. I got laid off four months ago, yall wanna know what I learned, one TikTok creator posted. Life goes on.
Instead of spending their days poring over job listings or firing out résumés, theyre embracing the time off and using it to travel, pursue a passion project, or simply rest. (At least until the severance pay runs out.)
As workers are currently in the thick of end-of-year layoff season, more of them may well find themselves in a funemployment era of their own. Especially as layoff announcements now surpassed 1.1 million this year, the most since 2020 pandemic, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday.
The concept of a gap year, or a sabbatical, has been around for years, and even the label funemployement is nothing new: Urban Dictionary defines funemployed as The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. I spent all day Tuesday at the pool; funemployment rocks!
Also, when it comes to younger generations, work is less central to their lives and sense of self. Studies have shown that across the board employees are more disengaged than ever. Many are using the extra free time to help pursue passions they may not otherwise have time for, or create social media content to bring in some extra funds.
Besides, humor is Gen Zs go-to defense mechanism.
Question: how can I stay funemployed (from a financial standpoint) forever, one TikTok creator posted earlier this year. I swear I’m hardworking but even the thought of going back to a traditional in-office 9-5 starts to suck the soul out of me.
A period of unemployment, while it might hurt financially, is no longer seen as the moral failing it used to be. Résumé gaps no longer carry the same stigma and people can make extra cash through side hustles or gig work while they figure out their next move.
Its worth noting, those posting about funemployment are often young and single, unburdened by the costs of children or a mortgage. Of course, if youre buoyed by savings, severance pay, or have parents to help you out, you might have the luxury of not having to rush into another job for the sake of a paycheck. The entry-level job market is also the toughest its been in years, with only 30% of 2025 graduates finding jobs in their fields.
Considering more than 1 in 4 workers without jobs have been unemployed for at least half a year, might as well try to have some fun in the meantime. (Until the mental gymnastics kick in, anyway.)
Under President Trump, its becoming clear that doing business with China is fineunder the right, lucrative conditions. In a post on Truth Social, the president said this week that his administration will allow Nvidia to sell one of its most powerful AI chips, the H200, to China. The H200 is said to be up to six times more powerful than the H20, the most powerful chip Nvidia had won approval to sell to China.
Washington and Beijing are currently in a tight race to lead AI and robotics research, and are locked in direct competition to apply the technologies in defense and intelligence. The Biden administration and much of Silicon Valley agreed that limiting sales of the most powerful AI chips to China was one lever the U.S. could pull to give it an advantage, and protect its own security. But Nvidia and its ally, AI czar David Sacks, have been lobbying the Trump administration all year to remove restrictions on chip sales to China, whose economy is the second-largest in the worldand a huge chip market.
Now, Trump has been persuaded to sell H200s to Chinaprovided that the chips are routed through the U.S. for a security review and that the U.S. gets a 25% cut of the sales. I have informed President Xi of China that the United States will allow Nvidia to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China and other countries under conditions that allow for strong national security, the president posted to Truth Social. Notably, the agreement wont apply to Nvidias most powerful chips, Trump says: the new Blackwell GPUs and the forthcoming Rubin GPUs.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trumps decision came following a meeting last week with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, where they reportedly discussed H200 chip sales. It’s representative of Trump policy, which seems to be based on whomever was in his ear last and not part of a coherent strategy, says Alex Jacquez, who was special assistant to President Biden for economic development and industrial strategy at the National Economic Council.
Huang reportedly speaks to Trump regularly. Earlier this year, he talked to the president about selling Blackwell GPUs to China. But when the president raised the issue with his cabinet, the idea was shut down over national security concerns.
In August, Huang agreed to give the U.S. a 15% percent cut in exchange for permission to sell a lower-performing chip, the H20, to China; Xi soon advised Chinese tech companies not to use the chips, citing security concerns.
Coming at a cost
Even factoring the 25% U.S. cut on H200 sales, the agreement is likely a huge win for both Nvidia and China. And the win could come at a cost to the U.S.
Jacquez says that selling the H200 chips will give China a technological advantage that it wouldn’t have gained on their own for at least two to three years, meaning that Chinese chip makers such as Huawei would need that much time to develop chips as performant as Nvidias. On the U.S. side, every chip that we sell, every chip that we export, is a chip that’s not going to a U.S. company to continue to drive forward on our own AI capabilities, he says.
And the Chinese could use the powerful H200s to supercharge some of the forms of aggression in which its already engaged. For example, in November Anthropic discovered that a Chinese state-sponsored attacker manipulated its Claude AI coding tool to carry out a large-scale cyberattack. Those chips are going to go into AI systems that are going to look for weaknesses in U.S. cyber security, Jacquez says. They might be used by Chinese state-affiliated groups to scrape sensitive data from U.S. businesses or consumers, he addsor they could be built into weapons that the Chinese sell to Russia who are fighting Ukrainians.
The Administration’s licensing process will ensure that sales of H200 to authorized customers worldwide do not deprive U.S. customers of anything, says an Nvidia spokesperson, and will in fact benefit American national and economic security.
Offering H200 to approved and known commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, raises no cybersecurity risk and strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America, the spokesperson added.
The H200 deal shows that Huangs charm offensive convinced the Trump administration that the U.S.s technological, economic, and national security goals are best served when the worlds AI models and apps are built to run on chips made by U.S.-based companieslike Nvidia.
Some days, starting feels effortless. A clear challenge or opportunity presents itself, an idea crystallizes, and then contracts into a single coherent thought. Today, frankly? Thats not happening. Im staring at a pristine white canvas while the cursor mocks me. That uncomfortable spacethe blinking cursor, the first messy draft, the false startsisnt a nuisance. Its where creativity lives.
Today, the temptation is to skip past all that. With AI, you dont even need to know where youre going. The bot can map it out, hand you something good enough. But what does good enough mean if you didnt wrestle with the idea yourself?
A recent MIT Media Lab study, Your Brain on ChatGPT, found that people who wrote without AI showed the strongest and most widespread brain activity, tied to creativity and memory. Essays produced with LLMs, by contrast, were described as flatter and more forgettable. The researchers warn that skipping the messy part of creation may create cognitive debtyou get an output, but you dont actually grow.
How to avoid this? Create, restrain, and edit the hell out of where youve been.
Create: Start Messy, Start Anyway
Starting anything new, even if youve done it a million times, is one of the great joys of the creative world. Sure, I could fill a blank canvas (or deck, or comp) with tried-and-true things we know work, but the beauty of creativity is that the first version is never, never, the last version. We have to start somewhere so we have something to improve.
I see creatives regularly jump right into making slides. Creating templates and parameters to work with that map out all the “must have” components of a complete idea. But when youre just starting out you dont need completely connected dots, just a gathering of interesting things that could become the idea. I personally like to read the brief and try to let it go, but keep a literal blank sheet of paper in front of me for the day or a new note on my phone. I jot down the sparks and weird things I come across during the day and keep adding to it while going about my life. In the collection stage its about volume and seeing where the energy of ideating takes you.
Restrain: Creativity Thrives Within Limits
Think of a tight budget like a limited palette. Only have $500? Youll approach the recycled cardboard canvas way differently than youll approach that 10-foot primed beauty with endless oils on hand. Only have two days? Youll make different choices than if you had two months. No designer available? Better figure out how to do it with words.
Great restraint is only going to get harder with so much immediate action at our fingertips. But those who can hold backwho know how to simplifywill reach simple, compelling, and worthwhile ideas faster.
Amazon is known for having their teams create fake press releases instead of pitches to help contextualize the details of an idea. A great exercise later in the process when you need to describe what youre looking to achieve. Lately, Ive had our teams test how much an idea can scale by writing it up in different voices. How would your favorite podcast host take and run with the idea? Does it still work and how does the tool of only audio change what you have to say?
Good marketers shouldnt fear constraints. Use them strategically. Whether its a tighter budget, a shorter timeline, or a smaller format, guardrails force creativity and result in sharper, more memorable work.
Edit: The Discipline That Makes Ideas Great
Good editing is another great skill of this new age: the ability to cut, to know whats worth amplifying, and to decide what actually makes the main feed. But editing is harder in an AI-powered world. Like the dopamine loop of social media, LLMs can make every idea feel validated: Heres your idea! Youre brilliant! The client just doesnt get it! False confidence is dangerous.
The only way to become a strong editor is to put in the work: writing, failing, and listening. Taking feedback not from machines, but from mentors, peers, and audiences. I learned how to develop good ideas by generating a lot of bad onesand killing most of them.
Editing is leadership. Brands and agencies need to create a culture where teams arent just encouraged to generate but also to refine. Build space for young creatives to dream wildly, then guide them through the discipline of cutting back to the ideas that truly deserve to live.
I got better at editing by getting off the computer and having the conversation with someone else far away from the work and without the material in front of me. What remains? What must be said in a conversation to have it all make sense. If you have it, its easy to see what stays. If you find it confusing to even share over conversation the work needs more refinement, and maybe an edit overhaul.
I believe the creative work that stands out will be anything that resists skipping to good enough. Itll embrace the blank canvas, lean into the discomfort, and edit ruthlessly until whats left is not just efficient, but meaningful.
Lurking on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, or among your incoming text messages and emails, lies yet another disappointment to dodge in the already lacking job market: fake recruiters.
Posing as representatives from top companies, theyll contact you out of the blue, offering a job so tempting, that 40% of targets ignore the warning signs and move forward with the interview.
More than half of them, 51%, end up being scammed to give up personal data or money.
Those findings came from a survey of more than 1,200 U.S. job seekers published in October by Password Manager. The prevalence of fake recruiters came to my attention several years ago, says Gunnar Kallstrom, the cybersecurity expert who conducted survey for the company, which reviews password manager apps. Since then, the number of fake recruiters has been on the rise . . . posing as recruiters for well-known companies.
Per the survey, those companies include Amazon, Google, FedEx, UPS, Walmart, Apple, and Facebook (identified that way instead of by Meta in the survey), in that order of frequency.
These scams pose real risks for the job seekers who fall for them. Fake recruiters steal Social Security numbers, bank information, and passwords in a variety of ways, some sneakier, or more sophisticated, than others. The Better Business Bureaus 2024 Scam Risk Tracker Report puts the median dollar loss at $1,500 for victimsno small sum, especially considering that these people are likely out of work.
Not only do they result in material losses; they also put a serious dent in morale for those on the employment hunt. More than half of Password Manager survey respondents said theyre now less trusting of job opportunities and find the process more stressful40% say theyve even let legitimate posts pass them by, too concerned that theyre being tricked again. The trend is a nuisance at best; an active threat at worst.
Still, false job recruiters have many tells that job seekers can use to spot them. Enterprises, too, have become increasingly aware of these scammers tactics.
Representatives from some of the companies that fake recruiters most frequently impersonate told Fast Company exactly what job seekers should watch for to avoid falling victim to these insidious hiring scams.
What is the MO of false recruiters?
Generally, fake recruiters operate exactly like a social engineering campaign, says Kallstrom, in which their MO is to create a sense of urgency, legitimacy, and promise of reward for their victims.
Those surprise text messages you receive saying your resume caught a recruiters eye, but the post theyre hiring for needs to be filled ASAP? Dont give it a second look.
We simply do not do anything to create an undue sense of urgency, says Brian Ong, vice president of recruiting at Google. Hes heard from Google job candidates and employees about people falsely posing as members of the companys recruiting team, sending direct messages and emails even to those who havent previously applied for jobs at Google. Theyll use emails or websites, Ong adds, that look like they belong to Google, often using the companys logo.
Weve also seen situations where these scams are using our name and brand to ask for money or an immediate in-person interview, says Ong, Both of which are misrepresentative of our hiring process.
Amazon, meanwhile, has noticed customers reporting an increase in scammers pretending to be Amazon recruiters in September and October 2025, says Scott Knapp, the companys vice president of worldwide buyer risk prevention. These recruiters will ask for information like SSNs, bank information, or Amazon account detailsall information real recruiters for the company wouldnt solicit.
At Target, No. 9 on Password Managers list of most-impersonated companies, the scams tend to focus on secret shopper opportunities, per the companys website. Via emails with subject lines like job offer or influencer opportunities, scammers will offer free products or cash in exchange for recipients buying items to review online, or for purchasing gift cards and sharing the cards information with the false Target reps.
Tactics vary based on the type of company scammers are impersonating, adapting to whatever feels normal for that brand, Kallstrom says.
FedExs fake delivery job offers will arrive via text: Urgent hiring needno interview required, Kallstrom says, a likely enough assertion since delivery companies tend to bring on seasonal employees for busy times, like holidays, without asking for extensive interviews or experience.
For Meta, on the other hand, since they are a tech company, there may be a fake HR portal, software skills assessments, and fake interviews, adds Kallstrom, who describes tech company hiring scams as more sophisticated. They may entail full-on skills tests for software engineers that include coding challenges, through which scammers end up downloading malware onto the coders computer. The high salaries these fake recruiters offer may also cause applicants to let their guard down, Kallstrom says, because they are enticed by the money.
Across the board, these companies are chosen by scammers because of their name recognition, says Kallstrom: They make great bait for a potential unsuspecting victim.
How do you spot a recruiter impersonator?
Any request for personal information is likely a sign of a scam, Googles Ong says, adding that candidates whove applied to Google jobs have already shared information like email addresses and phone numbers. Real recruiters shouldnt be asking for thoseespecially not alongside an invitation to a Google Meet or link to a login page where users need to input that information to sign in.
Scammer tells will also appear in their own email addresses. Ong says he and his colleagues have seen fake recruiters with incomplete websites or misspelled emails along with outreach from people who do not have Google in their title or email. Misspellings, poor grammar, and inconsistencies in general could indicate an impersonator. Emails or websites replete with stock photos, too, should warrant a side-eye.
As obvious as it may sound, any job opportunity that comes with an ask for payment should be avoidedeven if its indirect payment, like requesting you purchase a gift card. Amazon will never ask you to provide payment information, including gift cards (or verification cards, as some scammers call them) for products or services, says Knapp.
Ultimately, if youre unsure whether a job opportunity is a scam, check the companys website. Companies tend to list their job openings online. Both Google and Amazon representatives point to their companies online job boards, where those whove received offers to apply for jobs can cross-check that those posts indeed appear on their websites.
Job seekers can also do due diligence on the alleged recruiters doing outreach. Verify the contact by checking the email addresses, Ong says, looking up the person online, such as on LinkedIn. And if something does seem suspicious, flag it to the outlet where it was received.
What to do if youve been targeted?
The first step is to report it. The more consumers report scams to us, the better our tools get at identifying bad actors so that we can take action against them and protect consumers, says Knapp, pointing out Amazons scams help page where those targeted can report. The company works with consumer groups like the National Cybersecurity Alliance and the Better Business Bureau to create awareness campaigns about the latest, most common scams.
Amazon also partners with law enforcement across the globe, Knapp adds, to hold scammers accountable, having initiated takedowns of more than 55,000 phishing websites and 12,000 phone numbers being used as part of impersonation schemes in 2024.
A representative from Target says that cybersecurity experts from the companys Cyber Fusion Center use advanced tools and training to prevent and address potential threats. That includes tools developed by the company as part of an open source initiative on GitHub, like one that scans files, such as emails, to detect possible malicious activity.
Anyone can get baited on social media or get a text about a job opportunity thats too good to be true, says Knapp.
If something seems too good to be true, it likely is an impersonation scam.
We talk about time at work as if its a fixed resource: something outside of us and something we either manage well or never have enough of. People genuinely believe the clock is the problem. But the more you look at how the brain processes experience, the less true this becomes.
People dont feel pressured because they have too many tasks. They feel pressured because their brain is constructing time in a way that makes everything feel urgent or impossible to catch up with.
Modern neuroscience has been pointing to this for a while. Our experience of timewhat feels fast, slow, overwhelming, or not enoughis not a reading from an internal stopwatch. Its a story the brain builds using prediction, memory, emotional state, and identity.
In other words: your brain doesnt observe time. Your brain generates it. Or we can say it another way. The brain predicts time, not measures it.
Instead of tracking time objectively, the brain uses patterns and context to estimate how long things take. It relies on memory and sensory information to create a timeline that makes sense. But the problem is that those internal estimates shift dramatically depending on whats happening inside us.
When your system is stable and regulated, your internal sense of time widens. You can think clearly, make decisions from the part of your brain built for problem-solving, and move through your day without constantly feeling behind. In contrast, when youre stressed or mentally overloaded, the brain speeds everything up. Time contracts” and you lose the feeling of agency. Minutes disappear and even simple tasks feel rushed.
The external calendar hasnt changed, yet your internal clock has.
Stress and emotion distort the experience of time
Under stress, the brain becomes hyper-focused on prediction: What might go wrong? What am I missing? What did I forget? Whats next?
This pulls attention away from continuous processing and toward threat monitoring, making time feel fragmented and chaotic.
Emotion does something similar. When youre anxious, your internal timeline becomes jumpy and inconsistent. On the other hand, when youre burdened by unresolved emotional patterns or past loops, the present feels compressed and the future feels far away. This is exactly why whole months can feel like they passed in a blurand yet individual days felt strangely heavy or stretched.
We experience time not as it is, but as our internal state shapes it.
Identity plays a bigger role than people think
Your identitywho you believe you are right now, and who you believe you should already behas a direct impact on your sense of time. When theres a big gap between your current self and the self you think you should have become by now, the brain interprets this as lateness.
People living with a strained identity often feel theyre constantly running behind, even on days where their workload is reasonable. It creates a quiet pressure underneath everything they do.
It is important to acknowledge that this is not laziness or lack of discipline, but a distorted time experience shaped by identity tension.
Why two people with the same schedule feel time differently
Every leader has seen this but cant always explain it: two employees with the same deadlines, same workload and even the same tools, yet one remains steady and the other is overwhelmed.
From the outside, they look identical, yet from the inside, theyre living in completely different time worlds.
One persons nervous system is regulated enough to let their brain track time coherently. The other is in chronic predictive overdrive, experiencing time as something slippery and unforgiving.
Attention shapes the texture of time
Theres a reason deep work feels slow and spacious, while days full of interruptions vanish in an instant.
That’s because attention gives the brain enough information to build a rich, continuous timeline. Fragmentation does the opposite. When your attention is scattered, time becomes thin. It loses its structure and feels shorter.
This isnt just unpleasant. But it also changes how people remember their workday, how they evaluate their progress, and how capable they feel.
When companies unintentionally design days full of micro-interruptions, they are not only lowering productivitythey are altering employees subjective experience of time.
And people make very different decisions when they feel like time is disappearing.
What this means for modern work
If time pressure and overwhelm come from internal time distortion rather than external time scarcity, then our conversations about productivity need to shift dramatically.
And this doesn’t refer to better time management. It is about reducing the internal states that warp how people experience time.
Leaders can influence this more than they think by using the following strategies:
1) Reduce unnecessary chronic stressors to keep time perception from becoming distorted beyond usefulness.
2) Protect uninterrupted focus windows as the foundation for coherent time experience.
3) Be intentional with urgency: Constant urgency rewires the brain to live in a compressed and reactive timeline.
4) Offer clear, grounded futures: a stable sense of where I’m going helps people feel anchored, instead of feeling constantly behind.
The real work is not to fit more tasks into a fixed number of hours, but to help people live in an internal timeline that isnt distorted by stress and identity pressure.
Clock time will always move at the same pace. But the time that determines burnout, clarity, performance, and decision-making is the time your brain is constructing from the inside.
Understanding that difference changes everything.
On Wednesday morning, local time, over one million Australian children discovered their social media accounts had vanished. And it may not be long before kids in other countries find themselves in a similar predicament.
Under the new law, which was approved late last year, no one under the age of 16 in Australia will be allowed to set up accounts on platforms including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat, Twitch, and Reddit. Any accounts for people in that age category will be deactivated or removed. The law is meant to protect the mental health of children from the addictive nature of social media.
Australia’s law goes three years beyond the de facto minimum age for social media limits in the U.S., where privacy legislation dictates that children under 13 are not supposed to be able to create accounts (though they easily end-run those restrictions). Anika Wells, the country’s communications minister, said those extra years will help children mature more before they take part in social media.
We want children to have childhoods. We want parents to have peace of mind and we want young peopleyoung Australiansto have three more years to learn who they are before platforms assume who they are, she said earlier this year.
The legislation is being watched carefully by other governments, which have struggled with the impact of social media on young minds. If Australian children show improvements in their mental (and physical) health, with reduced reports of depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, and more, the country’s policies could become a blueprint for other nations.
Several have already put plans into motion. Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, and the European Parliament have all either announced plans to ban social media access for children, similar to the Australian law, or are in the process of creating new rules.
Denmark has gone the furthest, announcing last month that it would ban access to social media for anyone under 15, noting 94% of the children in that country had profiles on at least one social media platform. Under the age of 10, half of all Danish children do. The country has not yet set a date for the ban to begin.
Children and young people have their sleep disrupted, lose their peace and concentration, and experience increasing pressure from digital relationships where adults are not always present, the Danish ministry for digital affairs said. This is a development that no parent, teacher or educator can stop alone.
As for the U.S., don’t expect similar legislation anytime soon. The Big Tech lobby is firmly against the policy. And tech leaders, including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, have a close relationship with Donald Trump. Even those whose relationship with Trump is contentious are seemingly protected. Last week, when the European Commission hit Elon Musk’s X with nearly $140 million in fines for violating its moderation law, the Trump Administration came out swinging.
“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media. “The days of censoring Americans online are over.”
Some U.S. states, including Texas and Florida, have tried to enact bans, but those measures have either failed to pass the state legislatures or have been struck down by courts.
Australia’s social media ban, meanwhile, passed with overwhelming support, though some critics warned it would be too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.
Social media companies were given a year to beef up their technology to confirm user ages and teens were encouraged to begin weening themselves off of the apps, so the formal ban wouldn’t come as a shock. Teens were even given a checklist to prepare for the shift.
