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For decades, huge swaths of Brazils Cerrado ecosystem have been used to support the global demand for burgers. Forests and grasslands were replaced by pastures along with farms growing soy to feed cattle. But a major restoration project is now underway on an area nearly twice as large as Manhattan. If you fly over one part of southwestern Brazil, youll see a patchwork of dozens of square plots where a local university is studying different methods of helping native plants regrow on former cattle pastures. On more than 25,000 acres, along rivers and the edge of remaining pieces of forest, new vegetation has been growing quickly over the past two years. Wildlife cameras track the native species that are returning, from puma to an endangered species of rabbit. The environmental group Conservation International is working on the project with an unlikely set of partners: a forestry company and the tech giant Apple. [Photo: TIG] Why Apple is investing in forests The project is one piece of Apples climate strategy. When we look at the global climate science, its clear that we have to cut emissions as quickly as possible, but we also have to end deforestation and rapidly scale up carbon removal in order to stay within 1.5 degrees [of global temperature rise], says Chris Busch, director of environmental initiatives at Apple. The companys first priority is reducing its own emissions. Through tactics like using recycled rare earth elements in iPhones and helping suppliers shift to renewable energy at factories, it has already cut its emissions by 60% compared to 2015. By 2030, its aiming to hit 75%. But for the remaining 25%, Busch says, We just don’t have a clear line of sight to how to avoid those emissions at scale today within our value chain. So that is where nature comes in to play a role for us. There are several ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, including nascent technology like direct air capture. But Apple knew that in order to reach its short-term goals for 2030, it would need to lean on natures ability to capture carbon because no other approach was ready to scale up quickly enough. At the same time, the company recognized that there werent enough nature-based carbon credits available to buyand restoration and preservation projects often struggle to prove that they actually have as much benefit as they claim. In 2021, Apple committed $200 million to the Restore Fund, a new fund established with Conservational International and Goldman Sachs, to help carbon removal grow more quickly and to focus on creating quality projects. (In 2023, it pledged an additional $200 million for a second fund within the program.) One of the first investments, in 2022, was Project Alpha in Brazil. Restoration and planting started in 2023. It’s the first step in a larger effort that will eventually restore 741,000 acres of degraded land across Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. A biodiversity hot spot The Cerrado ecosystem, which originally sprawled over more than a million square miles in Brazil with a mix of dense forests, grasslands, and wetlands, is a biodiversity hot spot. Many of its 1,600-plus species of animals, and 10,000 species of plants, can’t be found anywhere else. It’s also quickly disappearing. “It’s faced a rate of loss that’s fairly extreme,” says Will Turner, senior vice president at Conservation International’s Center for Natural Climate Solutions. “Well over half of the native Cerrado vegetation has been destroyed, predominantly due to agriculture.” The restoration project is focusing on an area that was converted for grazing in the 1990s, and bought the land from cattle farmers. As grasslands were replaced by pasture, they were planted with invasive grasses to feed cattle. The grass chokes off the growth of native plants. Because it’s spread so much, the non-native grass makes restoration expensive and challenging. That’s why the project took a new approach: Instead of focusing solely on restoration, it’s happening in combination with carefully managed forestry. [Photo: TIG] Why an environmental group wanted to partner with a forestry company BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group (TIG), the forestry partner on the project, is planting tree farms on half of the former grazing land, and managing restoration on the other half. In some ways, the solution seems counterintuitive: The tree farms will grow eucalyptus, a non-native species from Australia. In other parts of Brazil, environmental groups have derided eucalyptus plantations, arguing that they’re destructive. But the trees can thrive in degraded soil where other species struggle to grow. They also grow quickly, taking up large amounts of CO2. Since deforestation reduces rainfall, planting new trees can also help with the hydrological cycle. And as global demand for wood continues to grow, the new plantationswhich are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certifiedcan potentially help avoid deforestation of native trees in places like the Amazon rainforest. Some critics argue that eucalyptus overuses groundwater, but Conservation International says that’s often caused by poor management. If a eucalyptus plantation is managed well, the nonprofit says, recent research suggests it will use the same amount of water as a native forest. (The forestry company is also screening out locations that have insufficient water availability and monitoring water security for others in the area.) When TIG bought grazig land from farmers, it carefully tracked where the cattle were moved, making sure that the process didn’t lead to new land being cleared elsewhere. (The company agreed to this, along with other sustainability critera, as part of the project.) Then, with guidance from Conservation International, it began “assisted natural regeneration,” taking steps to help native vegetation regrow. In some areas, it’s also planting seeds or seedlings. Having the forestry company on the site also means that its crew can protect the restored areas from encroachment from other farmers or fight wildfires if needed. The forestry company will earn carbon credits both as its trees capture CO2 and as native vegetation is being restored. Apple also has a stake in the project. “What we’re aiming to do is generate a financial return as an investor in those projects, but also a carbon return,” says Busch. “Part of the return that we get on that investment is carbon credits.” Third-party auditors will monitor the project before the carbon credits are issued. Apple is also helping with some of the monitoring technology, including testing ways to use the iPhone’s lidar scanner to measure the diameter of trees. Without the forestry part of the project in place, Conservation International says it’s unlikely that any restoration would have happened in the area at all. Including forestry makes the restoration financially viable. And it helped it happen at a large scale: The project will increase the restoration across the entire Cerrado region by 50%. “At the end of the day, what we think is really important is figuring out how to get to scale in terms of restoration and carbon sequestration quickly,” says Apple’s Busch. “That needs to be funded somehow. The conservation side of the operation is truly [financially] sustainable because it can be funded by the business side.”
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E-Commerce
Anthropic, Menlo Ventures, and other AI industry players are betting $50 million on a company called Goodfire, which aims to understand how AI models think and steer them toward better, safer answers. Even as AI becomes more embedded in business systems and personal lives, researchers still lack a clear understanding of how AI models generate their output. So far, the go-to method for improving AI behavior has focused on shaping training data and refining prompting methods, rather than addressing the models internal thought processes. Goodfire is tackling the latterand showing real promise. The company boasts a kind of dream team of mechanistic interpretability pioneers. Cofounder Tom McGrath helped create the interpretability team at DeepMind. Cofounder Lee Sharkey pioneered the use of sparse autoencoders in language models. Nick Cammarata started the interpretability team at OpenAI alongside Chris Olah, who later cofounded Anthropic. Collectively, these researchers have delivered some of the fields biggest breakthroughs. Goodfire founder and CEO Eric Ho, who left a successful AI app company in 2022 to focus on interpretability, tells Fast Company that the new funding will be used to expand the research team and enhance its Ember interpretability platform. In addition to its core research efforts, Goodfire also generates revenue by deploying field teams to help client organizations understand and control the outputs of their AI models. Goodfire is developing the knowledge and tools needed to perform brain surgery on AI models. Its researchers have found ways to isolate modules within neural networks to reveal the AIs thoughts. Using a technique they call neural programming, they can intervene and redirect a models cognition toward higher-quality, more aligned outputs. We envision a future where you can bring a little bit of the engineering back to neural networks, Ho says. The company has also been collaborating with other AI labs to solve interpretability challenges. For example, Goodfire has helped the Arc Institute interpret the inner workings of its Evo 2 DNA foundation model, which analyzes nucleotide sequences and predicts what comes next. By understanding how the model makes its predictions, researchers have uncovered unique biological conceptspotentially valuable for new scientific discoveries. Anthropic, too, may benefit from Goodfires insights. “Our investment in Goodfire reflects our belief that mechanistic interpretability is among the best bets to help us transform black-box neural networks into understandable, steerable systemsa critical foundation for the responsible development of powerful AI,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement. According to Ho, Goodfire has also been fielding requests from Fortune 500 companies that want to better understand how the large language models they use for business are thinkingand how to change faulty reasoning into sound decision-making. He notes that many within businesses still see AI models as another kind of software, something that can be reprogrammed when it produces incorrect outputs. But AI works differently: It generates responses based on probabilities and a degree of randomness. Improving those outputs requires intervention within the models cognitive processes, steering them in more productive directions. This kind of intervention is still a new and imprecise science. It remains crude and at a high level and not precise, Ho says. Still, Goodfire offers an initial tool kit that gives enterprises a level of control more familiar from traditional deterministic software. As companies increasingly rely on AI for decisions that affect real lives, Ho believes the ability to understand and redirect AI models will become essential. For instance, if a developer equips a model with ethical or safety guardrails, an organization should be able to locate the layer or parameter in the neural network where the model chose to bypass the rulesor tried to appear compliant while it wasnt. This would mean turning the AI black box into a glass box, with tools to reach inside and make necessary adjustments. Ho is optimistic that interpretability research can rise to the challenge. This is a solvable, tractable, technical problem, but it’s going to take our smartest researchers and engineers to solve the really hard problem of understanding and aligning models to human goals and morals. As AI systems begin to surpass human intelligence, concerns are growing about their alignment with human values and interests. A major part of the challenge lies in simply understanding whats happening inside AI models, which often think in alien, opaque ways. Whether the big AI labs are investing enough in interpretability remains an open questionone with serious implications for our readiness for an AI-driven future. Thats why its encouraging to see major industry players putting real funding behind an interpretability research lab. Lightspeed Venture Partners, B Capital, Work-Bench, Wing, and South Park Commons also participated in the funding round. Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das will join Goodfires board of directors. While most of the tech world now rushes ahead with the development and application of generative AI models, concerns about the inscrutable nature of the models often get brushed aside as afterthoughts. But that wasnt always the case. Google hesitated to put generative models into production because it feared being sued over unexpected and unexplainable model outputs. In some industries, however, such concerns remain very relevant, Das points out. There are extremely sensitive use cases in law, finance, and so on, where trying to deploy AI models as we know them today is just not feasible because you’re relying on a black box to make decisions that you don’t understand why it’s making those decisions, Das says. A good part of [Goodfires] mission is just to be able to do that.
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E-Commerce
Take a look at your to-do list. Does it seem never-ending? The thing about task lists is that they are filled with specific things you need to accomplish. Combine that with an ever-expanding inbox, and you have a recipe for busy work days. While you may get many things done, you may not feel like they are adding up to a more significant contribution to the mission of your workplace or your own big-picture goals. To ensure that the specific things youre doing lead to important outcomes, you need some time in your schedule to reflect on the big-picture goals you have and their relationship to the actions youre taking day-to-day. Here are a few things you can do to clear the mental space to make sure your days are not just busy, but productive. The value of unstructured time Ensuring that your daily activities lead up to something more substantial will not happen by magic. Instead, you need to regularly save some time that is not devoted to the particular tasks that are already on your task list. There are several purposes for this time. You want to reflect on whether the things that take up most of your time are related to the most important goals both for you and the organization. Chances are, there are many things you have to do each day that do not contribute significantly to that mission. Identify some of the activities that soak up your time that are not that productive. Are they necessary? Are there things youre doing that you can put further down the list of priorities? Do you need to talk to your supervisor about some of the things that clutter your calendar? Are there things you should be doing to make your contribution that are not happening? You also want to have a list of activities youre not doing that you need to be doing. Youll need to figure out how to add more of those into your daily and weekly schedule. Finding a space to make space One problem with trying to take a big-picture view of things is that you are likely to be surrounded by reminders to take care of the next task. You probably have documents on your desk and your computer desktop that need to be completed. You have an email inbox with a constant drip of new messages crying out to be answered. You have DMs from team members asking for information. That can make it difficult to disconnect enough to create the mindset you need to think about strategic issues. It can be helpful to use physical distance from your most pressing tasks to think strategically. Consider taking a walk or going to a conference room at your workplace that has a whiteboard. The distance has two benefits: First, it separates you from the specific reminders of the tasks at hand; second, psychology research suggests that physical distance can actually help you think more abstractly about your work. When you think more abstractly, youre better able to ignore the specific tasks and focus on the primary accomplishments youd like to achieve as well as the general barriers that may stand in the way of success. Drawing your big-picture goals When talking about strategic goals, we often use phrases like achieving a vision or seeing the future. Yet we also tend to lay out our goals in written documents. Sometimes, it can be helpful to take the language of envisioning more literally. Sketches and diagrams may be helpful for changing the way you think about your desired contribution. So many of our workplace tools involve writing (like email, instant messages, and meeting agendas) that we get locked into needing the right words to describe what we want to bring about. Grab a big sheet of paper or use a whiteboard. Leave the words behind at first and just sketch out processes, concepts, or prototypes. Dont worry if you dont think youre good at capturing likenesses. The power of sketches and diagrams comes from being able to use space as an element of your thinking to engage the massive amount of brain real estate devoted to vision more deeply.
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E-Commerce
Its easy to get swept up in headlines predicting the end of the design industry as we know it. Its true: AI tools can now generate in seconds what once took days for teams of designers. So its no longer a question of whether these tools will be usedbut how, why, and by whom. If design as we know it is being automated, what remains? And what becomes more valuable? In the 1930s, cultural critic Walter Benjamin argued that mechanical reproductionphotography, film, the printing presswas transforming not just how art was made, but how it was perceived. His concern wasnt just about losing originality or craft; it was about losing aurathe sense of presence that comes from a works connection to time, place, and purpose. When something can be reproduced endlessly, that connection starts to dissolve. And in the post-internet world, its all but collapsedcontext has become slippery, distributed, and flattened. The role of creative direction, then, is to restore that lost dimensionalityto place things, to anchor them in context. The craft of execution is no longer a differentiator. For surface-level visuals, speed and quantity now rule. But this shift reveals something deeper: When production is automated, the designers role becomes less about making and more about meaning. Ive felt this shift firsthand. At the outset of my career, I spent hoursdaysin Photoshop extending backgrounds, removing objects, and meticulously cutting out product images for e-commerce sites. It was repetitive, yesbut also meditative. There was a quiet satisfaction in working with images by hand, pixel by pixel. That kind of technical work is now (thankfully) almost entirely automated. Although I miss blocking off an afternoon to push pixels, the ability to delegate those tasks means I no longer need to dedicate time to erasing shadowsI spend that time deciding what the image should say in the first place. Not all design disciplines are equally affected by AI. Those who work with material, scale, and spacebook designers, muralists, sign painters, mosaicistscontinue to operate through tacit knowledge and touch. Their work still resists automation because its rooted in place and presenceit has aura. But even in brand design, something similar holds true: The more a designers value is bound to personal taste, knowledge of context, and aesthetic judgment, the more durable it becomes. Its tempting to hold onto the idea of the designer as auteur, untouched by context. But that belief overlooks how meaning is actually made: not by the author alone, but in conversation with culture, with tools, with audience. Mistaking authorship for authority leads to stagnation. If you’re a designer today, your ability to thrive depends on shifting your creative identity from executor to editor, and from technician to translator. The cost of not adapting isnt just irrelevance. Its being indistinguishable from the tools themselves. As Chris Braden, my former CCO at Public Address, has said: In nature, things that don’t move are dead. Virgil Abloh, Pyrex Vision Rugby Flannel (2012). Abloh bought Ralph Lauren shirts from outlet stores, screen-printed PYREX 23 across the back, and sold them at a premium, reframing authorship through minimal intervention. [Image: Pyrex Vision] Which is why creative direction matters more now than ever. If designers are no longer the makers, they must become the orchestrators. This isnt without precedent. Rick Rubin doesnt read music or play instruments. Virgil Abloh was more interested in recontextualizing than inventing. Their value lies not in original execution but in framing, curation, and translation. The same is true now for brand designers. Creative direction is about synthesizing abstract ideas into aesthetic systemsshaping meaning through how things feel, not just how they look. This opens up a new kind of opportunity for ideas to come from more rigorous placescritical theory, art history, cultural analysiswithout being stripped of their richness. AI can absolutely help translate complex ideas into accessible ones. But its the designer who chooses which ideas to bring forward, how to apply them, and why they matter in a given moment. Thats not just a function of intelligenceits a function of intuition, authorship, and taste. Taste isnt just personal preference. Its an evolving, often unstable frameworkshaped by experience, exposure, and the cultural momentthat informs how we make aesthetic judgments. Its not fixed, nor is it singular. What feels resonant in one context may fall flat in another. Taste is less about knowing whats right and more about understanding whats relevantwhat aligns, what disrupts, what works now. In a world of infinite possibilities, taste becomes less of a crown and more of a compass. Top to bottom: Thorlo by High Tide NYC (2023), Artworld by Mouthwash Studio (2020), Ilford by an unknown designer (1997). Theyre nearly identical, yet each feels novel within its own context. [Image: courtesy of the author] Its no longer enough to know whats trending from scrolling your various feeds. As Abloh understood, when originality becomes obsolete, novelty comes from recombination, from juxtaposition: from having a point of view. If your value lies in how you seeand how you help others seethats not just algorithm-resistant. Its literally irreplaceable. AI is a toolbut like all technologies, its not neutral. It reflects the choices of its makers and transforms every system it touches. It influences markets, media, and belief. It expands whats possible while quietly reshaping how meaning is made. And its impact on creative work is especially complex. Its a medium, a system, a collaborator. It can generate, iterate, and surprise. But it cant decide what mattes. It cant assign meaning. It cant make a choice. AI responds to input. Creative direction is that input. This shift raises real questions for the future of design education and hiring. What does a portfolio look like when visuals are no longer enough? Increasingly, it might look less like a finished book and more like a screenplay: a series of prompts, iterations, references, and decisions that show how a designer directed a process, not just executed an outcome. The goal isnt to hide the machine but to show how its been used with intention. Were moving into an era where synthesis and judgmentnot just executionare the creative differentiators. AI will continue to evolve, and yesit will replace certain tasks and even entire roles. But it wont replace curiosity. It wont replace intuition. And it wont replace the ability to decide what matters.
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E-Commerce
I was strolling up the hill in Greater Boston to a French cooking class. The rich aroma of melting butter and fresh herbs greeted us as it wafted through the chilly fall air. My friend Sylvie and I were eager to learn the art of soufflé-making. The French instructors asked for everyones background. When Sylvie said she was from France, they pressed her to be specific: Which part of France? When they learned she hailed from Strasbourg, the Parisiennes exchanged disapproving glances. Sylvie eyed their silent, snooty disdain. It got worse. When Sylvie started asking about techniques, we received curt responses and pronounced sighs. We left feeling as deflated as a collapsed soufflé. The French instructors may have mastered the art of French cooking but failed miserably in practicing humility toward Sylvie. They could have done so by celebrating Sylvies hometown as a region with its own culinary specialties. In snubbing Sylvie, the instructors missed an opportunity to demonstrate the rich diversity of soufflés across geographies and to toast the diversity of participants in the cooking class. Humility is based on a common theme: Train your focus on others, not on yourself. The importance of managing your ego Early in my Silicon Valley career, I had the good fortune to work for Bart, a humble leader who left his ego at the door. Bart regularly sought out employees at all levels for their input on new products and improving the company. He collaborated with individuals and other stakeholders, so they could see what made sense for the business. He asked customers crucial questions and listened carefully to their answers. Bart never threw his weight around. Instead, he was a role model for how to be in a position of power while ensuring each employee felt heard, included, and invited to showcase their influence. Humility requires you to check your ego and ensure that you dont let it dictate your actions. Seek and embrace feedback Later in my career while running my diagnostic equipment business, we hired a head of research and development. This professional came with an impressive pedigreehis PhD and postdoctoral research were from some of the top schools in the world. With his vast knowledge, accomplishments, and experience he easily could have asserted himself. You know, that arrogant person who knows best, never admits hes wrong, and isnt open to suggestions. Weve all met that individual. But our new head of R&D was actively soliciting feedback on products from collaborators, customers, and salespeople across the globe with less education. In the end, he was able to integrate input from a broad mix of stakeholders into our products. He always showed his gratitude for ideas people gave him and considered many of them for possible future use. Listen more than you speak William is a strength and conditioning coach friend of mine who trains professional and amateur athletes. He says that one of the most common phrases he hears from his clients is You really understand me. He believes that this is because he allows his clients to do most of the talking. They feel heard and understood, he says, because he signals hes listening intently. According to him, the following practices are key to being a good listener: Practice active listening without planning your response. If you predict what the other person is about to say, your response could miss the mark. Respond only after the person youre speaking with is done talking. Show genuine interest in others’ perspectives. Our natural tendency is to blurt out what we think. Resist the urge. Instead, draw the other person out through thoughtful questions. Dont interrupt or dominate conversations. This is arguably the hardest to do because we want to be heard. Keep your lips together when you feel compelled to interject. Learn to sense when to yield the conversation to another person. You dont want the reputation of being that person who doesnt know when to stop talking. Ask thoughtful follow-up questions. Think through your follow-up question before you ask it. If youve been listening carefully, a question will come to mind with little effort. Dont underestimate the impact of curiosity Theres a concept called epistemic humility, which refers to a trait where you seek to learn on a deep level while actively acknowledging how much you dont know. Approach each interaction with curiosity, an open mind, and an assumption youll learn something new. Ask thoughtful questions about others experiences, perspectives, and expertise. Then listen and show your genuine interest in their responses. Let them know what you just learned. By consistently being curious, you demonstrate youre not above learning from others. Juan, a successful entrepreneur in the healthy beverage space, approaches life and grows his business with intellectual humility. Hes a deeply curious professional who seeks feedback and perspectives from customers, employees, advisers, and investors. Juans ongoing openness to learning led him to adapt faster to market changes in his beverage category: He quickly identifies shifting customer preferences as well as competitive threats, then rapidly tweaks his product offerings to keep competitors at bay. He has the humility to realize he doesnt have all the answers and embraces listening to key voices that help make his business even more successful. A final reflection Being humble makes us more approachable and respected. With humility, we value others perspectives. The French soufflé instructors lost their class participants respect because far from practicing humility, they served up snobbery along with their lessons on creating the perfect soufflé. Humility isn’t about diminishing oneself. It’s about having a balanced perspective about yourself while showing genuine respect and appreciation for others. And if youre open to the journey, the growth and self-awareness will enrich your life and the lives of those around you.
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E-Commerce
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