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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. It’s been five years since the intense early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and the first round of lockdowns that mandated work-from-home for companies around the world. Among the debate at the time: concerns about how younger workers and new recruits would cope without access to experienced colleagues and mentors. Doomed to impersonal video conferencing in converted bedrooms, these youngsters couldnt hope to gain the confidence and deep experience of their predecessors. They would make their mistakes out of sight, and fail to learn. Now imagine those new workers and interns are digital, not human. Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022, its not unusual to see generative AI systems referred to as interns, coworkers or even colleagues. In that case, its tempting to see their offspring, AI agents, as more experienced employees. Using the brain of a large language model, agents are given a specific purpose and granted access to an organizations software tools and data in order to autonomously fulfil their task. For many enterprises, the question is not whether they should adopt agentic AI, but how quickly and how widely. Gartner forecasts that, agentic AI will address and resolve 80% of regular customer service issues with no human intervention by 2029, and this will result in a 30% reduction in operational costs. With stats like that, other business functions will surely followand fast. Chain of thought Big-name tech companies such as Salesforce are going all-in on an agentic future and AI companions are already a common feature in business tools such as Zoom and Slack. AI rivals are reaching agreement at an unprecedented pace on new technology protocols that allow the integration of AI models with all types of business tools and applications. In this new era, the digital workers are being handed the keys to the enterprise. What can possibly go wrong? Potentially, quite a lot. All the major models are fallible and flawed. As Anthropic, maker of the popular Claude family of AI models, explains in a new research paper: Language models like Claude aren’t programmed directly by humansinstead, theyre trained on large amounts of data. During that training process, they learn their own strategies to solve problems. These strategies are encoded in the billions of computations a model performs for every word it writes. They arrive inscrutable to us, the models developers. This means that we dont understand how models do most of the things they do. [Italics added for emphasis.] Anthropics own research shows Claude being tricked into naming the ingredients for a bomb, though stopping short of giving instructions on how to make one. Separate Anthropic-backed research found that more advanced reasoning models, which show the chain of thought they use to reach their conclusions, dont always say what they think. Without the ability to rely on chain of thought, there may be safely-relevant factors affecting model behavior that remain hidden, the researchers concluded. (The researchers evaluated the faithfulness of two state-of-the-art reasoning models, Claude 3.7 Sonnet and DeepSeek-R1.) Connecting AI models to business tools, via agents, raises the safety stakes. An agent that has access to an email system can be exploited as a useful tool for attacker intent on phishing. Access to database systems can be levered to extract valuable data from an organization. Even instances of accidental misuse can have significant consequences in terms of disruption, cost, and reputational damage to an organization. An adult in the room In the absence of the ability to predict or drive the behavior, these new digital colleagueslike their human counterpartsneed chaperones to provide guidance and feedback. Its important there is at least one adult in the room to constantly monitor these (not very streetwise) interns, intervening in real time when they may be sent on a fools errand, tricked into handing over their wallet, or encouraged to say or do something offensive or illegal. We know from experience that attempting to rapidly introduce new technology across an enterprise can be a recipe for chaos. Someone, somewhereand likely many peoplewill find themselves in the headlines looking silly, at best. At worst, they may lose valuable intellectual property and suffer serious financial and reputational loss. The best solution for an agentic workforce is agentic oversightusing powerful, customized agents to simulate real-world scenarios and probe AI for weaknesses. Continuous, automated red teaming of these new technologies, at speed, can give enterprises the confidence they need before they send their armies of new interns and employees out to do real jobs. This agentic warfare approach offers the greatest chance of implementing enterprise AI for its intended purposes. After all, you wouldnt give an unvetted new employee completely unhindered and unsupervised access to your business systems, would you? Donnchadh Casey is CEO of CalypsoAI.
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E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Leadership transformation isn’t found in boardroomsit’s happening in our homes. In a world facing converging crises of climate, technology, and social displacement, how we create our spaces reveals everything about how we’ll lead through these transformative times. Integrity derives from the Latin word “integer”meaning whole, complete, undivided. This word describes both ethical leadership and structural soundness. A home lacks integrity when its foundation cracks or its systems fail to work as a unified whole. Similarly, leadership without integrity fragments under pressure, creates waste through misalignment, and fails to shelter those who depend on it. The decisions that shape our homesfrom material sourcing to energy systems to spatial designare fundamentally ethical choices. They reveal whether we truly understand our relationship to resources, community, and future generations. This connection between home and leadership becomes clearest when we contrast two fundamentally different approaches: The extractive mindset designs homes that deplete resources, prioritize appearance over performance, and externalize their true costs to communities and ecosystems. The regenerative mindset creates living spaces that work in harmony with natural systems, optimize for both human and planetary health, and regenerate the communities they exist within. The mindset we adopt when designing our homes reveals our relationship with material resources, directly reflecting our capacity to lead with integrity. The same patterns of thinking that have contributed to environmentally wasteful building practices in the past inevitably also surface in organizational decision making. The good news is that embracing regenerative practices creates a virtuous cycletransforming our homes, reshaping our mindsets, and ultimately enhancing our leadership abilities. Beyond four walls Visionary leaders recognize that their organizations, like homes, exist within living systems. Just as a sustainable home requires understanding energy flows, material lifecycles, and community impacts, effective leadership requires seeing beyond isolated metrics to the health of entire ecosystemsorganizational, financial, social, and ecological. These systems transform leadership in four critical dimensions: Holistic integration: The alignment of systems, values, and resources to create a unified whole greater than the sum of its parts. In homes, this means designing spaces where energy, water, materials, and human needs work in harmony. In leadership, it means cultivating organizations where purpose, people, profit, and planetary impact reinforce rather than undermine each other. Regenerative stewardship: Moving beyond sustainability to actively restore and enhance the systems that support life. In homes, this means creating spaces that give more than they take. In leadership, it means building organizations that actively heal social divides, regenerate depleted resources, and leave ecosystems healthier. Honest materiality: Embracing the true nature, origins, and impacts of what we build with. In homes, this means selecting materials for their authentic properties rather than superficial aesthetics. In leadership, it means fostering transparency about how value is created, and impacts are managed throughout the entire organizational ecosystem. Adaptive co-evolution: Designing for a dynamic relationship with changing environments rather than rigid control. In homes, this means creating spaces that respond to seasonal shifts, climate extremes, and evolving family needs. In leadership, it means developing organizations capable of thriving amid uncertaintysensing, responding to, and shaping emerging futures. As technological acceleration and climate impacts intensify, transformative leaders mirror sustainable builders: envisioning regenerative systems, pioneering new methods, and understanding the interconnectedness of people and planet. The next generation of breakthrough leaders won’t just manage extraction more efficientlythey’ll architect regeneration more intelligently. And like all great architects, they’ll understand that integrity isn’t just a virtueit’s structural necessity. The whole puzzle Traditional leadership focuses on optimizing fragments: profit centers, performance metrics, quarterly returns. This fragmentation is like building a house by perfecting individual rooms without ensuring they work togethera strategy that inevitably creates dysfunction at both local and planetary scales. The integrity-driven approach sees the whole puzzleunderstanding that a home, like an organization, exists within Earth’s living systems. When our homes and businesses operate with fragmented thinking, the collective impact accelerates climate destabilization. When we design with integrity, we create regenerative ripples beyond our immediate sphere. This planetary perspective transforms leadership from an exercise in optimization to an act of stewardship. It requires alignment between systems, purpose, and impact across scalesfrom the individual home to the global commons we all share. The future of leadership starts in the home because our profound transformations begin with reconsidering what we’ve taken for granted. By examining the integrity of our fundamental structuresour living spaceswe reveal the blueprint for leading organizations capable of thriving amid complexity while contributing to a flourishing world. The leadership our future demands builds on the same foundation as sustainable homes: the recognition that integrityboth structural and moralisn’t optional. It’s essential for creating systems that withstand time, resource constraints, and accelerating change. Gene Eidelman is cofounder of Azure Homes. Rachel Weissman is founder of Congruence.
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E-Commerce
When Twitter cofounder and Medium founder Evan “Ev” Williams was planning his 50th birthday party, he didnt know who to invite. Having spent more of his life building and scaling tech companies, he found himself feeling disconnected from friends. Thats why he started Mozi last year with Molly DeWolf Swenson, a marketer and producer. Swenson, who serves as CEO of the company, says that the appwhich lets users check in to certain locations where other contacts can join them and vice-versais intended to facilitate spontaneous, in-person interactions. Launched in December 2024, Mozi raised $6 million in seed funding from Williams Obvious Ventureswhich he cofounded with Vishal Vasishth and James Joaquinand is live in 135 countries. During South by Southwest, Swenson and Williams joined Most Innovative Companies host Yasmin Gagne to discuss what inspired the app, how it works, and how they plan to make money off of it. This interview has been edited and condensed. How does Mozi work? MDS: You set up a basic profile. The only information we require is what city is your home base, a photo, your phone number, and your name. Then you sync your contacts so that we know which of them are on Mozi. Then you can decide whether you want them to be able to see your plans or not. Then as you go, you input your travel plans or your local plans. The idea is that you open up Mozi and you see where your friends are and the things that they’re doing that you could join them for, whether that’s coworking at a coffee shop, or going to a show that night. Those are the kinds of things we’re trying to drop people into. It’s not something where you’re spending a bunch of time on your phone. You’re actually getting together in person. Molly, what attracted you to the business? MDS: I had a spreadsheet of 450 people that I started at my first company, Riot, which was a media company. We’d be traveling back and forth to New York a lot and I’d be like, Ive got to remember to reach out to these people when I’m in New York. So it just started with Who are the important people I need to remember to reach out to that live in New York?. And then that expanded to Who’s in San Francisco? and Who’s in these other cities? Then that list ended up expanding to potential clients, people with audiences, people who are single so I could set them up. It wasn’t very accurate for very long because it takes a lot of effort to keep something like that up to date. So when Evan and I came together to talk about Mozi for the first time, I described the spreadsheet to him. Do you worry about the app promoting behavior like stalking? MDS: Its encrypted as fuck in terms of personal information. We’ve been really, I’d say conservative on making sure that privacy is protected for you and your contacts. EW: We don’t just broadcast your location to everyone. We only tell people the plans you share with a subset of your contacts. Nothing in Mozi is public. Cant you just text your friends to make plans? EW: But through Mozi you could share plans with people who you want to know better as well. How are you going to make money through the app? MDW: Premium features. There’s dating apps now that people will pay for, there’s health tracker apps that people pay for. There’s tons and tons of utilities on our phones that people are willing to pay some amount for. you We have a thesis that people would be willing to pay for an app that is purpose-built for maintaining and strengthening their friendships and relationships. People write to us saying, I’d be willing to pay for a product like this, just don’t bring ads into it. A lot of our users initiallyMozers, as we call themare in an older demographic. They’re in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. They’re less price-sensitive than some of the [users of] social platforms that are targeting younger users. EW: Mozi is really in the category of utilities. The types of apps Molly was mentioning are utilities; they can charge a subscription because people don’t spend all day on them. You kind of need people to spend all day on the app if you’re going to make an ad model work. We’re not focusing on monetization right now. We need to grow the network. But it seems very likely to us that this can provide such value in life as a utility. What would a premium feature look like? MDS: We prototyped a map view with a slider into the future. You could, at the city level, see where your friends are, then you slide into the future with your finger and all those little bubbles move to different cities where they will be. That could be one. Ive also talked about this feature of being able to sort my contacts by who is single so I can set them up. EW: Another cool feature idea is an intro feature where if you see two people who don’t know each other who are going to be in the same place, you can introduce them. Normally that would take a good six text messages, but in the app you could do it like boom, boom, if they both opt in. MDS: We actually had a cool Mozi moment yesterday. Two people connected at the Mozi event and they realized they had the same birthday they just happened to see each other’s profiles. We should have just popped that information up when they connected on the app. Theres things like that where you connect and it’s likehere’s your common ground. How do you figure out you have the same birthday that fast? Evan, you cofounded X (formerly Twitter). What is your relationship like to social media now? EW: I don’t spend much time on it at all. I just think for mental health and for ROI on time invested, I like to do other things. Twitter is still an amazing source of tech information if you want to know what’s happening. If you want to recruit people, LinkedIn is social media. But now I’m just enjoying my time reading books and hanging out with friends. Have you made any friends through Mozi? MDS: We found out a friend was in Kyoto and went out to drinks with her and her brother because of Mozi. I heard from someone yesterday who was like, I ran into someone because of Mozi in Dubai. We hadn’t seen each other in four years. It feels like we’re delivering on something important. We want to increase the surface area of that social serendipity.
Category:
E-Commerce
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