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As the midterm election primaries inch closer, some candidates are focusing their campaigns on how theyll regulate artificial intelligence. On the right, populist Republicans are warning that the AI industry stands to undermine the Make America Great Again movement. On the left, theres worry about the sectors growing political and social power. Across the spectrum, theres near-universal concern about what the technology might be doing to children. The donor class is now getting involved: A super PAC called Leading the Future backed by OpenAI executive Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz plans to spend as much as $100 million in the midterms to support its preferred candidates. Another bipartisan super PAC, focused on pushing for a national framework on regulating AI, formed earlier this week. These fights come as the Trump administration pushes to limit the ability of states to regulate the technology. Alex Bores, who authored legislation on AI in New York state and is running to represent its 12th district, has become an early target for Leading the Futures political spending during the midterms. It’s a badge of honor, he says, comparing the effort to an F rating from the National Rifle Association. This is not tech versus everyone else, he tells Fast Company. This is one small subset of the tech ecosystem that, instead of engaging in collaborative discussions on bills and how we can work for all, has decided they want to drown out the voices of anyone who isn’t them by spending hundreds of millions. Fast Company chatted with Bores about AI in politics, his time working at Palantir, and what it might take to modernize the government. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. One of the things the draft executive order talks about is creating a federal approach to regulating AI by the Trump administration. How seriously do you take that? It’s a cliché in D.C. that when you want something to not get done, make a commission to study it. And so making a proposal to study a thingto maybe put a policy forwardis silly. I want to be clear, the correct answer to these questions is a federal standard. The only reason the states have been acting is because the federal government hasn’t. If they want to actually work on a federal standard, they will find partners across the aisle. What they are prioritizing is stopping any state from taking action, not actually solving problems. We’re in a moment when there’s a lot of criticism and debate about what the future of the Democratic Party should look like. In New York, a liberal stronghold, Im curious about where conversations about how we should handle emerging technologies and AI might sit in the remaking of the Democratic Partyand the push to focus on issues that speak to younger voters and disaffected voters who havent been so into what the Democrats have been offering. We should always be human first and human focused. The specific ways that plays out in AI policy are ones that speak to younger people. The biggest impact of AI on the job market right now is on entry-level jobs, and you’re seeing a rise in unemployment of people in that cohort looking for their first job. One of the most popular things we did in New York this year was phone-free schools and making it so that we could actually change how tech is used in the classroom and make sure that it’s been used for education and not for screening or scrolling on social media. [Earlier this year, the state instituted new rules on electronic devices during school hours.] We shouldnt shoot for one big grand bargain on AI, as if it’s a static issue. It is something that infuses everything we do, and we need to continually be updating our protections as the technology grows. Can you talk a little bit more about what you did at Palantir and your decision to leave? I was at Palantir for four and a half years. I spent the vast majority of that time on the federal civilian team, and so it was working with the government to better serve the American people. I worked with the Department of Justice to go after the opioid epidemic. . . . I worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs on better staffing their hospitals and better serving veterans. I worked with the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] on understanding epidemics. I’m really proud of the work that I did there, because it was all about actually making government work better. Separate from tech, I think that’s the thing that the Democratic party and the country as a whole needs to see more of, is people who are willing to push through the obstacles and make sure that government is actually a force for good and serving people, and not just the political mudslinging that is most of what they see on TV. I left in 2019 when Palantir renewedor soon afterPalantir renewed their contract with ICE. Palantir had a contract with Homeland Security Investigations to help with fighting cross-border drug trafficking and human trafficking. During the first Trump administration, they started using that software for Enforcement and Removal Operationsfor what most people think of as deportation. That’s a different department within ICE. . . . That wasn’t something that was foreseen when the contract was signed in the Obama administration. And when Palantir renewed that contract, without cutting off that work or putting in protections that would step up in the future, that motivated me to leave. What do you make of the conversation surrounding Palantir right now? The company has insisted that its worked through multiple administrations, but the work with ICE, as well as with Israel, has sparked major criticisms of the company. I haven’t been there for six years, so I don’t have more detail on how they currently operate than anyone reading the news, but I’m proud of the work that I did there and very public with the reasons why I left. How hard is it to buy technology in government to make things faster, more efficient? Government modernizationupdating government software and providing better customer servicecontinues to be a big challenge. No one asks about government acquisition. This is amazing. It’s horribly inefficient, and that hurts the American people. It takes the government far too long to be able to sign a contract, so the costtherefore what the American people end up payingrises. It then benefits sort of the insiders who know how to do contracting more than the people who can deliver useful services, so then the American people don’t get the benefits from startups and others that might have cheaper, faster ways of solving problems. It is a problem at every level of government. One of the first bills I passed in New York, as an Assembly member, was making it easier for the government to actually use cloud computing instead of buying servers and always running on hardware, which slowed down getting services to New Yorkers. . . . A program called FedRAMP was supposed to make it easier to get tech to the government: You would do one security screening, be certified, and then be able to sell to each [federal] department, so they didn’t have to do their own [screening]. But it has become an incredibly onerous process that just makes it much more difficult to actualy work with the federal government. Should politicians be using generative AI in advertisements? I haven’t done it. But I have written the laws in New York that regulate it, and what we came to was it has to be disclosed. And if you use it to make deepfakes of a candidate, the candidate has the right to sue for injunctive relief with expedited review to pull that ad down if it’s going to deceive the public into something that actually happened. The problem of deepfakes is one that has a technical solution, and policymakers just haven’t kept up. Historically, we’re told it’s . . . just going to be a cat and mouse game where you have better detectors of deepfakes and then better AI generators [or that] we’ll never win that battle. But the industry has created a free, open-source metadata standards of data called C2PA that can be attached to any standard audio, video, or image file type that cryptographically proves whether that piece of content was taken from an actual device, was generated by AI, and/or how it’s been edited throughout the process. If you got to a place where 90%, 95% of people were using that standard, we’ve solved the problem of deepfakes, because anytime you don’t see that credential, you would immediately be suspicious of what’s being shown.
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E-Commerce
Social media has become inexorably intertwined with our daily lives, but not all platforms are equally popular. For every cultural phenomenon like TikTok, there’s a Mastodon. It would be easy, based on the news media’s borderline obsession with TikTok and X, to assume that those platforms are, if not the most used social media tools in America today, then very close to the top. They’re not. In fact, they’re squarely in the middle, according to a new study from Pew Research. Instead, it’s YouTube that is the most commonly used social media platform in the U.S.by a landslide. Pew reports that 84% of U.S. adults use YouTube. (The platform is also the most widely used by U.S. teens.) Facebook ranks high in usage as well, with 71% of adults saying they use it. Roughly half of U.S. adults say they visit each of these platforms at least once a day. Another Meta holding, Instagram, comes in third with 50% of the 5,022 adults surveyed saying they use it. Things fall off from there, though. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are the only platforms with usage figures above 50%. TikTok, which ranks fourth, is used by just 37% of the adult respondents (usage numbers by teens and tweens are almost certainly much higher). WhatsApp comes in at 32% and Reddit at 26%, which is just a fraction above Snapchat’s 25%. While X comes in with roughly 20% of respondents saying they use it, Meta’s Threads is used by just 8% of the people Pew surveyed, Bluesky by 4%, and Truth Social is last among the ranked sites, coming in at just 3%. Pew’s study looked beyond which sites are the most popular to also give a demographic breakdown of who’s using what. As you might expect, adults younger than 30 are more frequent users of social media than older adults, but that also can vary by platform. (For instance, while YouTube sees heavy usage from all age groups, Instagram is used by 80% of adults between 18 and 29, but only 19% of people 65 or older.) Here’s how usage breaks down by other demographic fields. Gender Women are much more likely to use platforms that lean toward communication and interaction. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are most used by that demographic, while men opt more for X and Reddit. Ethnicity While people of all races and ethnicities use social media, some groups favor certain platforms more than others. Pew reports that TikTok and WhatsApp are used more frequently by Black and Hispanic adults. Among the survey pool, Instagram is used regularly by 62% of Hispanics, 58% of Asians, and 54% of Black adults versus 45% of white adults. Education Americans with higher levels of education are more likely to use Reddit, WhatsApp, and Instagram, the study found. People with less education lean toward TikTok. Roughly 40% of American adults with a college degree say they use Reddit, compared to just 15% of people with a high school diploma or less. Political leanings You can probably figure this one out without the study. Democrats and left-leaning folks are more likely than Republicans to use WhatsApp, Reddit, TikTok, Bluesky, and Threads. When it comes to X and Truth Social, things are reversed. Just two years ago, though, things weren’t as cut-and-dried. In 2023, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to use X (which was still Twitter until July 23 of that year).
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E-Commerce
Its that time of year again. My mailbox is stuffed with catalogs. Targeted seasonal ads from Amazon, Walmart, and Target are following me around the internet. And every other email in my overflowing inbox offers me the go-to 2025 gift guide for everyone on my list! Anyone else out there starting to dread gift-giving? Sometime in the past 30 years, cheaply made stuff became easily available at the click of a button on our phones, and that took a lot of the shine off of gifts. Not only did online shopping make it much easier to buy things for ourselves (whether we needed them or not), but also it was much easier to buy things for other people. And that influx of stuff has also helped illuminate the very short life cycle of thing I covet to dust collector to trash. Why would I spend money on a gift thats just going to end up in a landfill? If you, too, are sick of the gift guides hawking next years refuse, heres the anti-gift-guide gift guide that will help you survive the 2025 holiday season without losing your mind or all your money. Define your gifting ethos This may sound ridiculously obvious, but my goal with gift-giving is to find something that the recipient will appreciate and use. I want the gift to show that I was thinking about them and that I pay attention to their likes and dislikes. (Groundbreaking, I know.) But if youve ever gotten a sweater that is wildly the wrong size in a color best described as baby diarrhea umber, you know not everyone adheres to such giving goals. In fact, many of us give gifts for reasons other than wanting to please the recipient. If you are giving presents to people because of obligation, because of habit, or because its a complex dance of meanness disguised as altruism, remember that you dont have to. Figure out who you want to give presents to, and go from there. That doesnt necessarily mean you can just bow out of giving gifts to everyone who expects it. You may still need to continue the long-standing revenge gifting with your sister-in-law until the heat death of the universe. But you can at least put more thought into the gifts you give to the people you actually care about and dial back the effort and money on those obligatory gifts. Think beyond objects Figuring out what your recipients want often starts with understanding what they dont want. In many cases, thats clutter. If you know your friends and family well enough to identify a charitable organization thats close to their hearts, making a donation in their name could be a great gift. But you may not be on So whos your favorite charity? terms with everyone on your list. To find the right present for those recipients, check out our anti-junk gift guide below. These are all gifts your loved ones and friends will appreciate that they generally dont have to find a spot for in their home. Heartfelt words Believe it or not, letting people know how much you appreciate them is often the best gift you can give. This is especially true for anyone who occupies what might be described as a thankless position. This former educator would especially encourage you to write a heartfelt note to your childs teacher, rather than give them a mug with an assortment of teas and hot chocolates. (You know who else is probably giving Juniors teacher a mug? Every other parent in the classroom.) It doesnt need to be long or poetic. Just relay a quick anecdote about something your kid said or did as a result of the teachers hard work and sign your name. If you attach a small piece of chocolate to the card, youll elevate it to the best teacher gift ever. But this isnt just a gift for teachers. Writing a letter to your significant other, to your in-laws, to your kids, to your parents, to your best friend, or to anyone you want to acknowledge will probably be one of the most memorable gifts you could ever give. Tell them how you feel and share a memory. Tell them something they may not know about your relationship. Tell them what you hope for the new year. They will cherish your words. Experiences Even though my sister is possibly the easiest person in my life to shop for (she has impeccable taste that is easy to identify), I find its more meaningful for both of us if I buy experiential gifts for her instead of another piece of art or jewelry. Thats why my Hanukkah gift for her this year is a pair of tickets to see Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in Waiting for Godot on Broadway. Because watching Bill and Ted perform Samuel Beckett is the kind of experience that must be shared. Similarly, I like to purchase concert tickets for my husband, who loves live music. He returns the favor by buying me tickets to see some of my favorite comedians live. But there are plenty of other experience gifts that could be the best present under the tree: cooking, art, language, or music classes; museum or zoo memberships; camp registration; a vacation or weekend getaway. Photos It is a truth universally acknowledged that all our favorite photographs are never framed and put up on the wallespecially since the invention of Instagram. An easy and inexpensive gift that your friends and family will appreciate is taking the time to print out some of the best photos of you all together and getting them framed. For a bigger gift, you could create an entire photo book if youd like to commemorate your relationship over the years. These kinds of photo books are relatively easy to make and print using sites like Shutterfly. Consumables Giving consumable gifts is an easy way to ensure your presents dont have a subtext of Here, you throw this away. And the holiday season is a traditional time to exchange gifts of cookies, wine, and other treats. But remember, there are other types of consumable gifts. This gift guide is 100% affiliate-marketing free: Were not giving you specific items or linking to stuff to buy. Just consider consumable gifts like these for your loved ones: Candles or incense Essential oils Bath bombs, bath salts, or bubble bath Hand soap nd lotion Infused olive oil or vinegar Gourmet spices Coffee, tea, or cocoa Temporary tattoos (for kids) A more practical gift guide We all need things like socks, sunscreen, an ice scraper, a warm hat, a tool kit, and a first aid kit. And while most people probably already have most of these at home, they probably dont have high-quality versions of them. High-end practical essentials from brands that you personally love can be a great gift, especially if you know the recipient would never spend money on little luxuries for themselves. You can personalize these kinds of gifts. For example, my son and I recently tie-dyed some white bucket hats for an older relative who needed some additional sun protection. Making these sun hats one-of-a-kind made her even more delighted with the unexpected present. Books While some people may consider books to be clutter (blasphemers, all of them), many booklovers are happy to accept literary giftssince most methods of getting rid of a book are unlikely to contribute to environmental pollution. If you know your recipient is an avid reader, dont be afraid to give them a book. Of course, as any booklover who has been given books that did not in any way reflect their reading taste can attest, its not enough to simply pick up whatever book du jour is getting the most press and give it to your friend. And while no book aficionado will ever turn down a gift card to a local small bookseller, its a little impersonal. The best book gift is one youve read yourself that made you think of the recipient. I still treasure a book I received nearly 25 years ago, because the narrators sarcasm reminded the giver of my sense of humor. A guide to more joyful gift-giving When were all awash with too much stuff and anything we need is a one-click overnight delivery away, gift-giving loses a lot of its meaning. We can put the meaning back in if we embrace an anti-junk gift ethos for the holiday season. Instead of buying stuff just to have something to exchange, lets try to really give our loved ones things they will appreciate and remember, rather than something that will become the 2025 layer of municipal solid landfill waste.
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E-Commerce
After Thanksgiving, brands will bombard you with Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. It can be overwhelming to know what to buy. After all, some deals aren’t actually all that good. And besides, you don’t want to make impulse buys that you’ll regret later and that will end up in a landfill in the near future. To help cut through the noise, we’ve picked out the best deals from design-forward brands. They create beautiful products that are thoughtfully designed to last for years. We’ve even picked out some of our favorite classic products that you will enjoy using for a long time. All the prices below are before discounts. [Photos: MoMA Design Store] MoMA Design Store 20% off site-wide Might we suggest these quirky espresso mugs ($50) or these toasty Jeffrey Gibson-designed slippers ($85) or this gorgeous color-saturated Japanese toolbox ($145)? [Photo: Boll & Branch] Boll & Branch 25% off site-wide, with up to 50% off select styles Boll & Branch has some of the most beautiful bedding on the market. But more impressively, each product is fully traceableso you know that neither workers nor the planet were harmed in creating them. Their soft blankets are worth the investment. We recommend the signature hand-stitched quilt (from $498) and the new woven icon ($699). [Photo: Brightland] Brightland 25% off site-wide It’s not just olive oil; it’s olive oil in an elegant bottle adorned with art. The Artist Series ($170) features labels featuring exclusive art from independent artists that Brightland commissioned. There’s also a Classic Minis gift set ($89) that serves as a sampler. The boxes are packaged so beautifully that you don’t need wrapping paper. [Photo: Terra Kaffe] Terra Kaffe Between $250 and $400 off If you’re in the market for a new coffee maker, this beautifully designed, high-tech automatic espresso machine by Terra Kaffe could be your answer. It doesn’t require any pods (just beans), which saves plastic. The Wi-Fi-enabled, fully loaded machine goes for $1,995 (now $400 off), and the compact Demi goes for $795 (now $250 off). [Photo: Everlane] Everlane Up to 50% off everything Skip the impulse buys and shop for classic, minimalist pieces, which are Everlane’s specialty. You can’t go wrong with a wool rollneck sweater ($228) or a pair of classic leather booties ($298) or the brand’s new fully recyclable jacket, the Everpuff ($348now at half price). [Photo: Baggu] Baggu 25% off site-wide It’s time to stock up on some of the best-designed reusable bags on the market. The Duck Bag ($42) is an icon. Don’t sleep on the limited-edition three-packs of standard Baggus ($42), which now come in Miffy and Western designs. [Photos: The Citizenry] The Citizenry 25% off site-wide We recommend the brand’s architectural vases that are handcrafted by artisans in India and Mexico, like the Vati ($79) or the Terranova ($429). The home decor company is also famous for its Mercado baskets, which start at $105. [Photos: Larroudé] Larroudé 50% off site-wide (exclusions apply) Larroudé is known for making comfortable shoes designed by the former fashion director at Barneys. They are high quality and manufactured in the brand’s own factories in Brazil. Now is the time to pick classics you will wear for years to come, like the block-heel Ricky Boot ($550), the party-ready Ari Pump ($395), or the Verona Ballet Flat ($315). The brand’s new sneaker, the Stella ($250), has been a bestseller this year. [Photos: Clare V.] Clare V. Special deals across the site The brand’s iconic designs include the Moyen Messenger ($485), the Simple Tote ($575), and the Remi Backpack ($485). [Photos: Alessi] Alessi Up to 50% off everything, plus an additional 10% for Black Friday The Italian housewares brand Alessi is very popular among design nerds for good reason. Over the years, it has collaborated with industrial designers and architects to make thougtful products for everyday lifefrom a flyswatter designed by Philippe Starck ($30 now 25% off) to iconic kettles in the shape of a cone, originally designed by Aldo Rossi ($435 now 25% off).
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E-Commerce
What does it mean to be a courageous leader in 2025? Stanley McChrystal, retired four-star general in the U.S. Army, joins futurist and culture critic Baratunde Thurston to discuss McChrystals new book, On Character, the responsibility of leaders today, and the weight of being an active citizen in democracy. Considering President Trumps deployment of the National Guard, McChrystal explores the role of the military in civil society. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I was moved by your book. I was moved by your philosophical exploration, the concept of characternot just pushing a specific version of it, but breaking it down into component parts. Character is conviction plus discipline, and the thing that you argue for is to be curious about our convictions. Why is it important for you, for us, to not just have character or have good character, but to challenge the components of it in our lives? If you break character into the convictions, the strongly held beliefs you havetimes your discipline to live to them, because anything is zero if you don’t have the discipline to live to itthe convictions matter a lot, but they’re not the things that someone just told you. And if you think about it, most of us are the religion we were raised in, were the nationality we were born into. We are a product of the experience we’ve had. So much of what we believe is what was sort of handed to us as we went along, and that doesn’t make it right. I remember in the counterterrorist fight we would be against members of Al-Qaeda who were extraordinarily effective, and they were killing people and they were trying to kill us. At the same time, the best they had were loyal, they were brave, they were focused on a cause that they believed in. And the only difference between me and my people and them was the life’s journey. Had we switched life’s journey, every probability is we’d have been at the other place. And so once you get there, you step back and go, Well then, maybe they’re not entirely wrong. Doesn’t mean I agree with them, it doesn’t mean I support them, but it means that my convictions need me to pressure-test them to the greatest degree possible. Part of that comes with philosophy, and I didn’t do it through much of my life. I did a few things, but then as I get older [Im] realizing how important character always was. It was always the thing. At the moment, you didn’t always consider it that way. You were trying to be more proficient in this or more successful in this or more powerful. And then at the end . . . the common denominator of getting it right was always character. The decisions that I’m most proud of were good character and the ones that I regretand there are somethey were places where I didn’t live to the character that I knew was the right answer. And so I think we’ve got to be humble enough to decide what we think we believe and then challenge it. I want to follow up on the humility and on what we do, and I use we intentionally. I know I have not always lived up to the character I profess and deeply believe in. I’ve put my emotional needs before someone close to mean act of small but significant selfishness. And maybe you’ve had your own versions and people here have. What have you found works when we recognize that we haven’t lived up to our character, to recover from that and still maintain a good path forward? I think the first thing is we say, “Well, that’s not me.” But if any of you flew here and you made the mistake of checking your luggage, you had to go to the turnstile where the bags come out. And what do you typically see? You see people crowded right up next to it, like wildebeests at the last watering hole in the Serengeti. And there’s this idea that my bag’s going to come out faster if I’m closer. But the people down below putting the bags on the thing, they don’t care. If we all stepped back three or four feet, everybody could see it, we could calmly get in and reach our bag when it came out, and we could move on. Yet why are we that way? Not because we’re bad people, I don’t think. It’s because those people in that moment, we are anonymous to. We’re tired, we want to get home, we’re never going to see them again, so we can be that way. And how many times do you deal with somebody or some instance where you just think, I’m going to be this way because I’m angry or it serves my purposes? Things you would never do around people that you see routinely or your family. And then you realize we have lapses. So I think that the key thing for me isand I’m pretty self-criticalat the end of every day I literally say and think of the times in the day when I was not the person I should have been, when I responded incorrectly to somebody. I got mad, I was short . . . you name it, there’s just a litany. And the key is not to make that the new standard. The key is to say that was wrong, and tomorrow I’m going to try to do better, knowing you’re never going to get to perfect. . . . And I think the other thing that we desperately need in society are norms where we hold each other accountable, where we’re willing to do that. Your mom would do that, but if your mom’s not around, who will do it? Sometimes we need to look each other in the eye and just go, “That’s not the way we do things. That’s not the way we treat other people. That’s not what we would consider the standard that we all want to hold ourselves to.” Since you brought up how we treat other people, let’s talk about what is happening with the U.S. government right now, which has a duty of care to treat people a certain way and is making really radical decisions on how to deploy the services of the government. How do you respond to the deployment of armed forces in American cities, particularly those run by Democrats, but really any city, or the deployment of immigration officers dressed as special operators? How do you see this, and how do you feel [about] this use of our military right now? Well, I think it’s unfortunate and I think it’s a big mistake. But if we stepped back and sort of antiseptically said, someone looks at you and you didn’t like it, and they say, “Well, you don’t believe in illegal immigration, do you?” And I sort of don’t believe in anything that begins with illegal, but that’s really not the issue here. The issue is how we’re treating each other, how we’re treating people. And there are probably two levels to it. The first is people are human beings and there should be a standard that we all decide we’re going to treat people, particularly people who are less strong than we are, who need to be supported, who need to be respected, who need to be helped. Then the use of the miltary, and this is of course personal to me, there’s a tradition of not using the military in the streets of the United States, the Posse Comitatus rule, and it’s got a really good reason. It’s because you don’t want the American people to identify the military with people that come and police. . . . We dont want the American people to grow to fear or be resentful of our own military. Now, are there instances where the military can do things other organizations cant? Absolutely. There’s a common-sense point of this, but I think the apolitical nature of our military is one of the sacred norms that we have respected for most of our historynever perfectly, but pretty darn well. When I was a senior officer, actually at all ranks, I never knew the political persuasion of any of my peers. I didn’t know if they were liberal. I didn’t know if they were conservative. We didn’t talk about it. It was considered inappropriate to do that. And of course it was inappropriate to talk about it with your subordinates because that’s undue influence. You just didn’t because the military wasn’t part of that. The problem is if a military gets politicizedwe need only to look around the world for examples where that happensthen suddenly it has a different role in society, and we won’t like it. I guarantee it.
Category:
E-Commerce
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