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Artificial intelligence is doing more than just automating workflows in 2025: Its dismantling the very idea of education. Once seen as one-time achievements, a bachelors degree, a professional certificate, or an annual corporate training session, are no longer guarantees of relevance in a world where knowledge ages almost as quickly as technology itself. Nearly half of talent development leaders surveyed in LinkedIns 2025 Workplace Learning Report say they see a skills crisis, with organizations under pressure to equip employees for both present and future roles through dynamic skill-building, particularly in AI and generative AI. Likewise, the AI in education market that includes K12, higher education and corporate training is projected to grow to between $32.27 billion by 2030 and $127.2 billion by 2035, driven by a surge in demand for personalized learning in workforce-aligned corporate skills training and scalable edtech solutions. Were seeing skills become obsolete in two to three years instead of decades. Demand on our platform shows professionals know learning cant stop at graduation in an AI-driven world, says Hugo Sarrazin, CEO of Udemy, one of the worlds largest online learning platforms. He predicts that universities will increasingly serve as launchpads, awarding degrees alongside lifelong digital memberships. Think of it like Netflix, but for education, he says. Sarrazin says that every minute, roughly five to eight people sign up for an AI course on the platform. According to Udemys 2026 Global Learning and Skills Trends Report, AI-related enrollments have surged fivefold in the past year, surpassing 11 million globally. The study also found rising interest in AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot, underscoring a strong demand for practical AI proficiency. That surge has likely bolstered Udemys market growth, with the company reporting $199.9 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2025, a 3% increase from a year earlier. Companies are realizing employees who can use AI fluidly while thinking critically about its risks, outputs, and impacts will drive the biggest business gains. Were seeing budgets shift from annual training events to continuous, integrated skill-building happening in daily workflows, helping employees learn skills precisely when theyre needed, Sarrazin says. Skill fitness and adaptability in the AI era Sarrazin describes this shift as the dawn of the skill fitness era, where learning becomes akin to working out: AI fluency is strength, critical thinking is cardio, and communication is flexibility. Education is no longer a stopover, but a lifelong regimen. In fitness, you dont go to the gym once and then declare yourself fit for life. But, thats how we have traditionally approached learning, he says. But skills only stick when theyre exercised in contextAI is enabling this kind of practice at scale. Udemys AI Role Play, launched in May of this yaer, enables employees to rehearse real-world scenarios such as negotiation, feedback conversations, or conflict resolution through AI-driven simulations. I anticipate in the coming year, the use case of play and test runs using AI will explode, going beyond conversations to action, Sarrazin says. Gen Z, poised to dominate the workforce, recognizes that in an AI-saturated world, its real advantage is adaptability. According to Udemys Gen Z in the Workplace report, 84% of Gen Z professionals now prioritize developing adaptive skills such as decision-making, communication, and critical thinking over purely technical training. Gen Z grew up with technology that evolved constantly, Sarrazin says. Theyre becoming the first generation thats truly AI-native while remaining distinctly human-centered. Cautious integration for a responsible future While AI integrations are set to make learning easier, experts caution that it is critical to separate genuine progress from marketing noise. While the technology holds great promise for improving education quality, its full impact is still being measured, says Shai Reshef, education expert and president of University of the People. Responsible institutions must ensure that claims are backed by real evidence and that their deployment actually benefits students globally, especially those turning to online options out of necessity. He added that while personalization through AI is a powerful opportunity, it also carries risks of isolation and bias. If the underlying datasets within AI-powered education systems are flawed, or if algorithms reinforce existing inequalities, the technology might amplify problems instead of solving them. Kavitta Ghai, CEO of Nectir, echoed the concern, noting that a single poorly designed AI-powered education rollout can spark headlines about AI hurting learning, even though the reality is more nuanced. Its all about how responsibly institutions deploy and maintain it, Ghai says. The responsible path is running controlled pilots, measuring outcomes, and iterating. She also notes that while AI tools have made it easier to gain workforce and technical skills, formal education and degrees still play a critical role in developing strong fundamentals and depth of expertise.The real danger is that students and professionals might stop learning how to recognize what good work looks like. Without that foundation, they cant judge quality or innovate, she says. The real opportunity is to use AI as a Socratic tutor; guiding individuals through mistakes, not doing the work for them. Thats what keeps critical thinking alive in an AI-first world. That perspective underscores a deeper truth: education might soon become less about consuming content and more about cultivating culture. Organizations and universities will need to treat learning as a shared value, a collective discipline that keeps pace with technological change. Like electricity or the internet, I believe AI will become an invisible infrastructure. You wont think about using AI to learn, because learning will simply be AI-enhanced by default, says Sarrazin. Rather than competing, AI and universities will complement one another, helping learners build skills in a format that works best for their unique needs.
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On Monday evening at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York Citys last-standing mayoral candidatesZohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwatook the stage to address their plans to meet the needs of Black women in New York should they take on the role. New Yorks mayoral election has captured global attention, with an international audience deeply invested in the outcome after newcomer and current state Assembly member Mamdani beat former Gov. Cuomo as the Democratic nominee in June. Noticeably absent was the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams. The forum took place on the heels of Adams dropping his bid for mayoral reelection just one day prior, bringing renewed interest in the battle to win the hearts of New Yorkersor at least their votes. The event was organized by The Links Inc., an international service nonprofit for African American women; the Higher Heights Leadership Fund; the National Action Network; the National Urban League; and the New York Urban League, and it took place at the Apollo Stages at the Victoria, where it was open to the public. The importance of our voices in todays world is crucial,” said Jamila Beckford, president of the Greater Bronx chapter of The Links. The group tapped NY1 news anchor Cheryl Wills to interview each mayoral candidate on how they intended to address various issues that are uniquely experienced by Black womenparticularly topics related to healthcare, domestic violence, entrepreneurial efforts, and the workforce. Interestingly, the forum was devoid of face-to-face contact between the candidates: They were individually brought before the audience to participate in a series of 20-minute-long interviews. [Photo: Courtesy of Shahar Azran for the Apollo] On housing Housing insecurity is a major challenge experienced by Black women. When asked about his plans to secure safe and affordable housing, Sliwa suggested opening the 8,000 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) apartments that are currently unoccupiedan idea Wills was quick to shut down, pointing out how the empty apartments are dilapidated and therefore unhabitable. Sliwa replied by stating that he would devise plans for New Yorkers to become homeowners, particularly for apartments they had resided in for years. I think I know what can be done, and the fiscal limitations for what cant be done, he said. Mamdani, whose mayoral campaign has championed a rent freeze for two million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, reiterated these plans and points to how such a tactic would impact Black families. The previous mayoral admin did it three times, he said. We know its a question of political will. He added that affordability isnt just about tenants, but landlords and homeowners, pointing to the issue of deed thefts and his plans to protect homeowners. Cuomos solution was to build more housing, though Wills clarified that new housing was usually priced at market rate What we are doing now is destroying historically Black communities with gentrifiers, where people have to move out because they are being priced out of their neighborhoods, Cuomo said. [Photo: Courtesy of Shahar Azran for The Apollo] On the workplace and leadership Wills pressed each candidate about their take on the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies by the Trump administration, as well as the purging of government jobs, which, among other factors, has reportedly led to an exodus of 300,000 Black women from the U.S. workforce. A concern for many in the room was the visibility of Black women in senior leadership positions. Mamdani, often critical of Eric Adamss tenure as mayor, made a positive observation about his former opponent’s staff: His leadership team looks like the city. When we speak about the necessity of excellence and diversity and a team that looks like the city that it serves, that its intentional, Mamdani added. Emphasizing the need for vocational school and training, Sliwa said, Obviously, qualified Black women have to be prioritized. Theyre raising families for a future generation. Wills rebutted by mentioning that many Black women are highly educated beyond vocational school. As for Cuomo, he stressed that his administration would look like New York City. I believe deeply in the power of Black women, he said. In response to a question about widening pay gaps between white men and Black women, he insisted that lawsuits were the answer. [Photo: Courtesy of Shahar Azran for The Apollo] On mental health Wills mentioned that domestic and intimate partner violence against women are especially high among Black women. When asked what he would do to protect this vulnerable population, Sliwa stated that sending social workers is not the answeran apparent dig at Mamdani, who has previously shared this strategy as part of his public safety plans. You team up police with social workersif a man is continually abusive, he has to be out of the house, he has to go through therapy, Sliwa said, citing his experience as founder of the Guardian Angels. The volunteer-based organization enlists people to defend against crime on the city’s public transit system and, most recently, perform wellness checks on homeless people. Mamdani, in his response, stated plainly, One of my primary responsibilities is to uplift the existing agendas. The Trump administrations deliberate takedown of DEI efforts and its subsequent impact on the Black community was a charged topic, and one that the candidates appeared aligned on pushing back against. When asked how he would deal with Trumps attempts to meddle in local politics, Mamdani said, I would remind them who I work for, which is the people of New York City. Cuomo, who has dealt with Trumps many threats during his prior tenure as New York State governor, said Let him come with his demands, and well say hell no, we won’t go. New York’s mayoral election is on November 4. Most polls show Mamdani in the lead by a significant margin.
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Hello there, and welcome once again to Fast Companys Plugged In. For something that continues to suck up so much of the worlds attention, social networking has not exactly been a font of wild innovation in recent years. Its big names are all up there in years and showing their age: Facebook is 21, Twitter is 19. Instagram is 15, Snapchat is 14. Newer entrants, such as BeReal, rarely live up to their early great expectations. Even Bluesky, where many of us have found a home after fleeing the Elon Muskified version of Twitter, isnt growing at its old clip. So I was intrigued when two new social networking experiences debuted in rapid succession in late September: Metas Vibes and OpenAIs Sora. Thanks to the fact that both focus on letting people share AI-generated imagery, they compete directly with each other. But their all-AI format also sets them apart from existing social networks, where generative AI is most often a distraction from human contact, not the main attraction. Personally, I like the idea of AI being cordoned off into its own social app. Most examples of the technology showing up in other social feeds have a dystopian tinge, from Twitters Grok bot going full Hitler to the maudlin deepfakes that have recently become an unwelcome element of my Facebook time. (For some reason, Paul McCartney stars in many of the newest onesin one instance shown dolefully strumming a guitar at Charlie Kirks funeral.) Plenty of my friends get downright surly when they encounter AI on their feeds; to avoid making them unhappy, I have gone cold turkey on sharing it. Isolated in its own apps, however, AI imagery only gets exposed to people who want to see it. And everyone who does see it will understand that its syntheticor so I hope. While I was waiting to snag an invite code for the Sora appa requirement to try it at the momentI dived into Vibes, which is not an app unto itself. Instead, its an element of the Meta AI app, which also includes a general-purpose chatbot and serves as a companion for the Meta-powered smart glasses from Ray-Ban and Oakley. Meta is billing Vibes as an early preview and says additional personalization and creation tools are in the works. In its debut incarnation, Vibes doesnt do all that much. You can enter prompts to create brief AI videos, add music, and then post them to the Vibes feed (or Instagram or Facebookalthough I kind of hope you wont). A Discover feed lets you flip through clips posted by other users, TikTok style, and theres a remix option that enables you to modify those clips and reshare them. I cheerfully admit that I found thumbing my way through Vibes mildly entertaining in a hypnotic, untaxing way. Ultimately, though, it felt a little like snacking on Chex Mixunrelenting sameness, packaged as variety. Little about the videos I saw felt like an expression of individual creativity: I lost track of the number of buttery-smooth tracking shots of obsessively detailed, Pixar-esque orange monsters I saw. The image-generating algorithmsnot the humans typing the promptsare the stars here. Which brings us back to Sora. Its biggest differentiator from Vibes is that you can create a cameo digitized version of yourself and make it the main character of your AI clips. You can also make your cameo available for incorporation into your friends videos, or even ones credited by the entire Sora community. Moreover, cameos and other characters in Sora videos talk; in Vibes, audio is limited to music you pick from its library. Once I got into Sora, it took only a minute or two of exposure to realize that the experience it offers is vastly richer than Vibes. Its clips arent just demos of what the technology can dotheyre wacky 10-second mini-movies, sometimes with multiple shots, that occasionally provoked me to literally LOL. Thanks to cameos and OpenAIs decision to allow depiction of copyrighted property unless its owners explicitly request otherwise, the cast of characters is dazzling: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Pikachu, SpongeBob, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Betty White, Mister Rogers, and several tech journalists of my acquaintance all made multiple appearances in my feed. Just in its first few days, Sora seems to have spawned a billion memes, such as a dog being pulled over for speeding, that users riff on by remixing them. In remixes I saw, the driver was a fish, a cow, a giraffe, and Dora the Explorer. No equivalent kindling of community-based humor seemed to be going on over at Vibes. In other words, Sora feels far more like a killer app with a truly social angle than Vibes. Its hard to imagine that Metawhich turned imitating (and sometimes improving upon) Snapchat into Instagrams entire modus operandiisnt working furiously on similar functionality. But even if it catches up, OpenAI got there first. Which means that it also has to worry about its app causing problems that the current, more anodyne Vibes probably wont. To its credit, OpenAI has clearly done a lot of thinking on that topic. When I signed into Sora for the first time, I got a full-screen disclaimer: You are about to enter a creative world of AI-generated content. Some videos may depict people you recognize, but the actions and events shown are not real. I wasnt able to create videos of living celebritiesI tried Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, and Bad Bunnyexcept for Altman, who created a cameo of himself and set it to allow open usage. Some baseline of good taste is being imposed: My attempt to create a clip of my own cameo punching out people resulted in an odd effect where the blows didnt quite land. The most worrisome misuse of Sora might involve it being used as a tool for deepfake-assisted bullying. OpenAI says its putting limits on teenagers use of the app, including tighter rules for cameo appearances. You can even see other peoples unpublished draft videos if they depict your cameo, a pretty important measure given that its possible to download Sora videos for use elsewhere without ever posting them in the app. (They carry Sora watermarks, indicating their provenance and fictional nature.) No matter how hard OpenAI works to keep Sora healthy, its tough to imagine there wont be instances of users with bad intent successfully jumping over its guardrails. Sora-generated slop could also overwhelm other social networks where AI is less welcome. Or maybe the app will simply grow tiresome once its novelty has worn off. For now, Sora is easily the most interesting consumer product that OpenAI has come up with since ChatGPT. More significantly, its the rare new social network that feels like it might have legs. Im @harrymccracken thereand hope it remains a silly ingredient in my social-media diet for the foreeeable future. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company ChatGPT can now spend your money for youIt’s a huge deal for users, brands, and the future of agentic AI. Read More How the White House redesigned its website to blame Democrats for the shutdownWH.gov transformed into a billboard for a government shutdown publicity moment. Read More One in five Americans now regularly get news on TikTok, up sharply from 2020‘No social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption.’ Read More Peloton is pivoting to AI. Here’s how it’s using custom-built models to improve your workoutThe embattled at-home fitness company is raising its prices and using machine learning to personalize members’ workouts. Read More Why Amazon went all-in on balls for its new line of speakersThree years in the making, Amazon’s new spherical Echo Studio and Echo Dot Max are built to raise the bar of Amazon’s audio quality and usher in the next generation of smart home. Read More Who controls the machines that control Artificial Intelligence?The hidden arms race of AI supercomputers. Read More
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