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Have you ever opened a jar of Crisco and proceeded to slather it all over your body? I have, in the summer of 1992. I was just exiting sixth grade, and my friend was over for an afternoon of suntanning. When I reached for the brown bottle of suntan lotion, my friend stopped me, Let’s go look for your mom’s Crisco. Crisco??? I said. Yes, it’s how my older sister gets so tan. Although I was suspicious that vegetable shortening was good for my skin, I silenced my doubts when I pictured her older sister in my mindshe was gorgeous, popular, and bronze. From a young age, we have an immature relationship with authority. Psychologists call this authority bias, which means we are more influenced by the opinions and judgments of perceived authority figures. This can lead us to accept information or follow instructions without critically evaluating the content.In middle school, this meant that I put high schoolers on the pedestal of perfection. But sadly, we never really outgrow this. It reared its ugly head again when I found myself in corporate America, sitting in a windowless gray conference room, in one of those all-day meetings. I felt like the conversation was going in circles, and we kept hearing from the same voices. Frustrated, I wondered why other people, especially the women in the room, werent speaking up. And then I realized that I wasnt speaking up, either. I silenced my ideas because I was intimidated by the HiPPo in the room: the highest-paid persons opinion. Looking back now, I realize that I had a big problem: what I now call a Pedestal Problem. THE PEDESTAL PROBLEM Have you ever put someone on a pedestal, because they had a higher title, more experience, or even more charisma than you? Did you think that they knew best and therefore, your ideas, questions, or insights didn’t matter? Or, there was no room for your expertise? I did, for years. And it held me back from being a more confident and impactful leader. In my current work as an executive coach and speaker, which includes hundreds of conversations with leaders, I learned that the pedestal problem interrupts the connection we have with ourselves. When we put other people on a pedestal, we assume they know better than us, and we should silence our ideas and insights to get along. We stop listening to our inner knowledge or trusting ourselves. Books are left unwritten, status quos unchanged, products undeveloped, and cultures mediocre. In contrast, when people put us on a pedestal, we can develop an inflated ego and never get good feedback, as people are too intimidated to share concerns or ideas with us. Putting others on a pedestal super-humanizes leaders, which actually dehumanizes them. Teams withhold concerns and feedback that leaders need. Research from Visier (2025) shows that nearly half (46%) of employees admit to withholding honest feedback at work. If you relate to any of this, it may be time to pull the pedestal. Instead of giving you advice (which tends to age as well as sunscreen recommendations from the 1900s), here are some questions to consider to move you closer to the confident leader you are meant to become: RECONNECT WITH YOURSELF I spent 12 years at a company that practically raised me. Around year nine, I started to think about leaving. But in our area, the bank had a great reputation, as both a business and an employer. While ruminating over my decision, I spoke to colleagues and friends, many whom had years more experience than I. Almost everyone urged me to stick it out, with some senior leaders in the bank even sharing that they “had tough periods too, but it always passed.” Reconnecting with myself meant recognizing thatat the end of the daythis job didn’t align with my values. In spite of what others advised, I enjoyed creativity, and a highly regulated bank was a mismatch for this. Ultimately, I decided to leave and found a new job that aligned strongly with my values. Ask yourself: Does this advice, person, or situation align with my values and what I stand for? Because if I don’t know what I stand for, what will I settle for? RE-ESTABLISH EQUAL CONNECTION WITH OTHERS When we meet people more senior than us, we often shrink and hold back on ideas. To establish equal connection, I had to identify how my doubts and lack of confidence kept me more silent than I needed to be. And then, I started to explore what experiences, talents, or points of view only I can bring to the world, my work, or this meeting. In my work coaching executive leaders now, it’s not uncommon that I feel intimidated by the prospect of consulting with a CEO for a company that I admire. However, to establish equal connection, I remind myself that I am not there to have their level of expertise or have all the answers or questions. Instead, my unique talents and contributions lie in my ability to hold space, ask the right questions, and get them thinking about things in different ways.Ask yourself: What experiences, talents, or points of view can only I bring to the world, my work, or this meeting? Owning our talents helps us see the talents in others without compare and despair, bringing us together at the table as equals. CONNECT WITH YOUR FUTURE POTENTIAL When I started my executive coaching business, I had a lot of doubts. Taking those first steps and showing upeven though I didn’t feel like an equal among other entrepreneursmeant getting very clear with my future potential. I asked questions like, “Where do I want to be by the time I’m retired?,” “What am I passionate about?,” “What are the unique talents and skills that I bring?” The answer was clear: It had always been training, leadership development, and coaching. While I was terrified, it was tapping into this calling that gave me the drive to build my business and show up as an equal, in spite of the pedestal problem. Ask yourself: What am I meant to create? When I’m 80 years old and in my dream retirement, what legacy have I left behind that I am known for? Its time to stop underestimating ourselves and pull the pedesta, so we can be more confident and impactful leaders. Many people might think that to pull the pedestal, you should just have more confidence or “fake it until you make it,” but that never worked for me or anyone I know. My leadership conversations have shown that confident, fulfilled leaders reconnect to themselves, equalize their connections with others, and connect with the future they desire to create.
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Japanese auto manufacturer Mazda has released a simplified new logo, and it has bigger implications than your typical brand refresh. It’s indicative of a broader brandingor should we say blandingtrend that’s taking over the car industry. Mazda Motor Corp. rolled out a new, flatter version of its logo at the Japan Mobility Show 2025 in October that did away with the dimensional, beveled silver chrome effect the logomark used to have in favor of a solid black line. The new M mark is more angular, too, evoking a pair of wings that was first introduced in 1997. The company says it designed the flat new logo for improved visibility, especially in digital environments. That also makes it late to the party. [Images: Mazda] Yesterdays bland is todays car brand A dozen car brands have flattened their logos in roughly the past half dozen years, and Mazda is now the latest. Toyota did so in 2019; Rolls Royce in 2020; BMW, Cadillac, Kia, Nissan, and Volvo in 2021; Audi and Bugatti in 2022; and Genesis and Jaguar Land Rover in 2023. [Images: BMW] Jaguar famously introduced its new, lighter logo with a mix of upper- and lowercase letters in 2024; and this March, Lamborghini toned down the sheen on its bull-and-shield logo. Bentley, which updated its winged B logo in July, kept the chrome look but simplified the mark. It’s not flat, but it’s more minimalist. [Images: Jaguar] Overall, a “blanding” and flattening of car branding has swept through the industry years after the trend hit graphic design more broadly. Out are chrome, 3D, skeuomorphic logos designed to look like car badges. In are logos meant to be rendered at small sizes on screens. [Images: Volkswagen] Sans serif? Its electric Now de-chromed, these new logos are thinner and lighter, and they come as automakers adapt to a more electric future. At the same show where it unveiled its new, flat logo, Mazda also showed off a pair of futuristic-looking hybrid concept cars. Its first EV is expected in 2027. Graphically, the updated logos of legacy automakers are going up against those of EV newcomers such as Tesla and Rivian, which use sleek, futuristic-style fonts inspired by the typography of 20th-century science fiction, like Blade Runner and Back to the Future II. It’s possible that legacy car brand logos are getting updated to visually signal contemporary relevance in those markets as well. Ironically, the trend toward flat logos better designed for digital expression comes even as carmakers are getting rid of touchscreens in their vehicles in favor of old-school, analog knobs and dials. As automakers reconsider the screens in car interiors, they may one day reconsider their flat, digital-first logos too. For now, the flat-logo look reigns supreme.
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E-Commerce
In recent years, leading artificial intelligence labs and startups have released AI software designed for tasks of ever-growing complexity, including solving PhD-level math problems, reasoning through complex questions step-by-step, and using tools like web browsers to carry out intricate tasks. The role of AI engineers in making that happen is well-documentedand often well-compensated. But less publicized is the role of a growing army of freelance experts, from physicists and mathematicians to photographers and art critics, enlisted by companies specialized in AI training, itself a multibillion-dollar industry. Those companies say human wisdom is essential to create sample problems, solutions, and grading rubrics that help AI improve its performance in a wide range of fields. As long as AI matters, humans will matter, says Aakash Sabharwal, vice president of engineering at AI training company Scale AI. Scale AI recently made the news when Meta announced plans to invest $14.3 billion in the companyand hired away its then-CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new Superintelligence lab focused on AI research. But the company remains a top player in the field, recruiting expert AI trainers in a wide variety of subjects and building digital environments Sabharwal compares to flight simulators for AI, where humans can help machines learn everything from sending business emails to writing code. “Way more PhDs” The modern AI training industry grew out of earlier work to create labeled training data teaching computers to identify objects in photos or spot social media posts in need of moderation. The early days of how people thought of this industry was what you’d call commodity labeling, like cat/dog, cat/dog, cat/dog, says Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of AI training company Invisible Technologies. More recently, as generative AI models became available, human workers helped steer the software to correctly answer questions about topics like high-school level mathematics and communicate with virtual fluency in a variety of languages. Companies like Scale and Invisible have also built relationships with big businesses to help them fine-tune AI technology that can deliver insights based on their own needs and internal data. And now, as leaders of AI companies regularly boast of their chatbots prowess at tackling advanced math and science problems, human experts are working behind the scenes to test their limits and push their knowledge levels forward. You’ve seen a real change in the seniority and expertise set of the expert pools, says Fitzpatrick. Way more PhDs, way more masters [degrees]. Hyper-specificity Exactly what training firms provide to AI companies varies from task to task. It can include a mix of AI prompts and ideal answers, rubrics for evaluating AI responses, and corrections to the AIs current best attempts. Trust is also an implicit part of the product: As Holger Mueller, a principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research, points out, it has taken some time for big businesses to trust AI companies with their own dataincluding for fine-tuning purposes. And many AI training companies decline to publicly share a list of clients, citing confidentiality, with even training workers often not told exactly which companys AI theyre working to improve. Another big part of what training firms deliver is access to vetted pools of experts, and the promise that they can produce training data in even obscure areas on short notice, which is critical given the AI industrys pace of growth. Its not unusual for a client to expect Invisible to line up 50 experts in, say, computational biology overnight, with the expectation theyll deliver usable training data within a week, Fitzpatrick says. Despite reports that some AI companies have begun directly hiring experts themselves to train their systemsOpenAI has reportedly hired more than 100 former bankers from top Wall Street institutions to help teach its systems to do at least entry-level financial analysisFitzpatrick and other training company leaders say the specialized nature of their work, involving managing both technically sophisticated training platforms and large numbers of human workers, generally makes it hard for AI labs to do themselves. The vast majority of our work is hyper-specific experts for short sprints at a time, he says. It’s a complicated thing to do in house. That means that Invisible, which announced a $100-million funding round in September, along with its competitors, have all also devoted time to building robust recruitment and evaluation pipelines for human expertsoften complete with AI tools of their own to speedily screen and onboard those experts and assess their progress. And clients are likely doing their own assessments of the data they get back. Its not unusual for AI companies to solicit training data from multiple companies and compare the results, Fitzpatrick says. Intellectual curiosity The market for freelance experts with the time and knowledge necessary to train AI in obscure fields is, itself, naturally competitive, with training company executives boasting of their expert contractors credentials the way college presidents might brag about a new class of elite undergrads. One AI training company, Mercor, currently has listings posted seeking recreation workers at $60 to $80 per hour, a bilingual Spanish marketing expert at $20 to $60 per hour, legal experts at $90 to $120 per hour, and Ireland-based general practitioners in medicine at $160 to $185 per hour, among numerous other listings. And in many areas of knowledge, the bar steadily rises to get assigned to projects, according to Mercor product manager Osvald Nitski. Software engineers are now required to have either experience in some niche programming language or incredibly strong scores on competitive coding challenges, Nitski says. We’re now sometimes sourcing named individuals, because the bar that needs to be met is so high that there are limited number of people in the world who actually meet it. Mercor, which on Octoer 27 announced a $350 million Series C round at a $10-billion valuation, says it pays more than $1.5 million per day to its experts, with average pay above $85 per hour. More than 30,000 experts are signed to Mercors platform, according to the company. And while the pay no doubt motivates experts, many of whom are working full-time in their fields, to enter the AI training arena, some are also motivated by intellectual curiosity and the desire to help hone software they hope can one day assist in their work or tackle outstanding problems. “A harder problem” Alice Chiao, an emergency medicine physician who serves as an expert for Mercor, says she hopes that AI can automate some of the drudgery, like charting and scribing, of medicine and thus help doctors better connect with their patients. She says her AI training work includes asking the systems to answer medical questions that may have stumped her in her practicethe kind of puzzling scenarios that pop up when real-world patients differ from textbook examples. We input these things and try to see where a model might fail, she says. And then we create an ideal responseyou know, based on this finding, I would have ranked this differential diagnosis higher. Chiao emphasizes that she doesnt anticipate the AI she trains replacing her or her fellow physicians. Rather, she sees the technologys assistance helping to restore a level of human interaction thats often disappeared from medical practice. I do not think that training the AI is training a replacement, she says. I think that it has the significant potential to enhance the patient-physician relationship, which has eroded to a point where most physicians are not happy with the quality of patient-physician conversation and dialog that they get anymore. Another AI training company, Micro1, focuses on talent in finance, medicine, law, and engineering fields, says founder and CEO Ali Ansari. Average rates paid by the company hover around $100 an hour, though it varies between subject areas, with about 70% of experts making between $70 and $210 per hour, he says. Micro1, which in September announced a $35 million Series A round at a $500-million valuation, also operates an AI recruiter that can vet potential candidates and even help share job listings on platforms like LinkedIn. Finding talent is a critical part of its operations. Part of the companys goal, Ansari says, is to make sure that in-demand experts will not only perform well at a certain training task but have a good time doing it. We want to be able to predict how much an expert will enjoy a certain job as well, which is, in fact, actually a harder problem, he says. A social calling One expert that works with Micro1 is Mark Esposito, a professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. He now serves as Micro1s chief economist but began his association with the company by training AI to answer policy questions. Thats something he sees as important in ensuring AI doesnt give misguided advice to users looking to make important decisions. You don’t want any policymaker to be dealing with information that is grossly incorrect, he says. So that’s why I think there’s a bit of a social calling for this, in making sure that youre really training models ethically, because they might really help people make a decision in the real world. Edwin Chen, CEO of AI training company Surge AI, speaks to a similar sort of calling, saying hes dreamed of helping craft artificial general intelligence (AGI)essentially, truly thinking machinessince he was a child. Instead of playing the startup game, we’re a lot closer to a research lab, he says. And the only thing that matters to us is whether we succeed in building AGI. Still, the company recently boasted its making more than $1 billion in annual revenue, and Chen says pay rates for some of the experts it works with can reach as high as $500 per hour, with the company website citing contributions by Supreme Court litigators, Oxford linguists, Navy SEALs, and Olympic athletes. The proportion of specialized experts among the AI training workforce has grown over time, but people with more general knowledge still contribute as well, Chen says. Thats unlikely to change, he adds, since AI tools do need steady training on even basic problems. And even if AI continues to do better with hard problems and take on more roles, itll still need human guidance, as standards for its performance will continue to grow. This means AI is unlikely to make its human teachers obsolete any time soon. As they get used more and more, the capabilities increase, the applications increase, and so it’s no longer okay for models to be at 80% accuracyyou need to be at 99.99999% or whatever it is, Chen says. And at the same time, as the models get smarter and smarter, you always need humans to steer and align them. Historically, some AI training companies have faced complaints from less-expert training contractors of unpredictable hours, difficulties getting paid, and other issues familiar to gig economy workers. Others, including Scale AI, have since said theyve taken steps to address complaints or otherwise emphasized their commitment to fair pay. And in general, work in the AI training field seems likely to grow as long as businesses continue to invest in deploying AI, as training companies expand into enterprise work and even work with robotics companies to help AI understand how to move about in the physical world.
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