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Before I go any further, a programming note: On Thursday, March 27 at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Max Ufberg and I will host The AI Tools We Love Right Nowand Whats Next, an online event exclusively for Fast Company Premium subscribers. Well discuss the AI-assisted productivity products that are actually helping us get our jobs done, and where wed like to see the whole category go. Fast Company Premium subscribers can RSVP here. And if you arent yet a subscriber, heres where you can become one. Hope to see you there! When I first got excited by Siri, it wasnt part of Apple, let alone the iPhone. At the timeFebruary 2010it was just promising a stand-alone iPhone app from a startup that had been spun out of Silicon Valley R&D icon SRI, drawing on its research collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defenses DARPA lab. Almost three months elapsed before Apple acquired Siri, and another year and a half until the company built it into iOS, starting with a beta version on the iPhone 4s. I was excited about that, too, calling it breathtaking for a beta and adding, If voice-activated assistants are all around us in five or ten years, well look back and say it all started here. They were, and we did. Screenshots I took of Siri in February 2010, well before it was a standard iPhone feature. (It still cant help book flights.) But long before Siri celebrated its fifth birthday, its reputation foundered. Even early on, much analysis of the voice assistant deemed it a disappointment, often expressing the hope that Apple would eventually give it a transformative upgrade. Over time, oceans of wordage were dedicated to the topic. More than 15 years after I first gave Siri a try, its still waiting for its big, game-changing update. In this case, the update in question is the more natural, relevant, personal version that Apple previewed last June as part of Apple Intelligence during its WWDC keynote. It still hasnt shipped. And on Friday, the company announced that work on the update was taking longer than we thought and the release wouldn’t happen until sometime in the coming year. The most logical guess: It will be rolled into iOS 19 and MacOS 16, which should ship this fall. Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has a long and acidic account of the delay and its implications. In brief: Apple seems to have repeatedly shown off stuff so far from completion that it wasnt even ready for live demos. Eventually, the company concluded that it was in over its headfor reasons it hasnt explained, and wontand pushed the release off to some unspecified date. Theres a name for products like that: vaporware. The tech industry is rife with examples. Apple, in its modern history, has been atypically disciplined about avoiding themwhich makes this incident only more striking. Now, its easy to understand how Apple bit off a more ambitious upgrade than it could chew its way through as quickly as expected. The new Siri is designed to respond to free-form requests such as Send Erica the photos from Saturdays barbecue, a big leap from the assistants history of only understanding a limited set of instructions expressed in a precise way. Along with requiring greater language skills, the new Siri will sift through your email, calendar, contacts, notes, photos, and other information stored on your device in ways that havent been done before. All this is the most interesting use of AI that Apple has announced, and also the most ambitious. Its literally something only Apple could do. No other company has enough access to iOS to dream of building itthough as my colleague Jared Newman explained last June, it also held the potential to make third-party apps way more Siri-friendly than in the past. But for all of the new Siris potential, it also feels like something that Apple was scrambling to release as proof it isnt behind in AI. The generative AI boom unleashed more than two years ago by ChatGPT has left the company in an unusually reactive mode, as it plays catch-up in areas such as image generation. A much better Siri might have taken Apple far beyond me-too territory. It still could. With the delay, however, the company only looks more like it doesnt yet have a handle on AI and how to make the most of it in Apple products. I cant help but think, though, that Apples failure to get the new Siri out the door isnt just about the challenge of doing AI in a way thats useful, reliable, and safe. Its part of the much larger, longer story of Siri being full of promise and only sporadically living up to it. I see two other specific factors at play. Part of Apples 2024 preview of the new era for Siri. [Screenshot: Apple] Factor one: Apple may be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of software updates it tries to pump out each year. In the pre-iPhone era, the company had only one operating system to wrangleMacOS, then known as OS Xand didnt attempt to update it on a set timetable. Now its put itself on a yearly schedule and must juggle upgrades for MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, tvOS, and VisionOS. Of course thats tough. Its no shocker that certain elements might suffer from insufficient resource allocation: More often than not, for instance, my beloved iPad feels neglected from a software standpoint. And Apple TVtheoretically a core Apple product in the streaming ageremains a little-changing hobby. Artificial intelligence must be the furthest thing from an area Apple feels it can safely deprioritize. But its also among the most demanding. The company may simply have had too many things going on at once to adequately focus on Siri, even after bragging about the new version during its WWDC and iPhone 16 keynotes. Factor two: On some level I dont quite understand, Apple may never quite have emotionally bonded with Siri. How else to explain the companys failure to do all that much with it over all these years? Acquiring Siri in 2010 was prescient. So was building it into the iPhone. If Apple had pushed ahead with the feature as ambitiously as possible, iOS might look quite different today. Apple might even have a reputation for being ahead in AI. But maybe Siri simply took it out of its comfort zone of polished visuals, touch input, consistent experiences, and the other elements that made the iPhone such a landmark. Declaring that Siri was headed for a new era, showing it off in splashy canned presentations, and then kicking the can down the road is one of the more embarrassing predicaments Apple has created for itself in recent years. Despite that, I think the delay was sensible. Its more important that Siri be great than that it arrive on time. And having waited for it to be great since 2011, we can surely wait a little longer. 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 youre 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. Im also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. More top tech stories from Fast Company Box CEO Aaron Levie finds a middle ground on tech policy during Trumps second termThe Box CEO says U.S. leadership in AI and innovation still depends on smart policyand hes cautiously encouraged by what hes seen so far. Read More TikToks comment sections are being flooded with copy-pasted Christian messagesIs it a revival, a bot campaign, or just TikTok being TikTok? Read More Moonvalley launches an AI video generator built for moviemakingThe startups Marey model creates high-definition video from licensed footageand its already being tested by major studios and brands. Read More 4 AI robots your aging parents want in their homesFrom digital assistants to handy robots, AI could dramatically change the way people age in place. Read More NASAs new AI satellites could revolutionize disaster responseIn partnership with startup Ubotica, NASAs JPL is testing AI-powered satellites that analyze and act in real timewithout waiting for human input. Read More Try these hybrid tools for thinking on paperFrom reMarkable to Rocketbook, heres how you can combine analog and digital tools to capture ideas, stay organized, and avoid distraction. Read More
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In Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Lifes Purpose, Martha Beck, PhD, writes that anxiety always lies. When I asked her why, she highlighted one of the books central teachings: When you seek the truth beneath your anxious thoughts, you discover that many of them arent real. This newfound awareness is transformative. It dismantles anxietys prevailing narrative that in order to be safe, you must live in fear. So many people tell me: But, the world is in bad shape right now, Beck shares. I say: Yes, and doesn’t that require us to show up as our calmest, most committed, and competent selves? Anxiety does not do that, it just tells lies that say: Be in a defensive posture. Never think you’re safe. Don’t tell anyone the truth, she says. Scare someone and watch them behave. You’ll see that they’re not reacting to reality. As a bestselling author and Harvard trained sociologist, Beck is often described as the best known life coach in America. Her latest book is a comprehensive guide to liberate yourself from anxiety and rediscover your creativity. In our conversation, Beck discusses how to calm your nervous system, reignite your joy, and discover your purpose. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What do we get wrong about anxiety and how can we adopt a new perspective? Its this very materialist viewpoint that is dominant in the left hemisphere [of the brain]. It not only says that matter is all that we are. But, also that nothing else exists. When you see a person that way, you start to treat the body and mind like machines that are broken. That’s where the medical model goes. You cut something up and see what makes it tick. You have to kill it to do that. So, you never understand what makes it alive, but you can see how it fits together. We try to pin down the mechanisms and intervene with chemicals or new habit formingAll of it is an attempt to adjust, fix, or alter the machine. We don’t give credit to our anxiety for being sentient. It feels. It’s not mechanical. When you say to something that is a feeling, living, beingI’m going to cut you up, drug you into insensibility, and work against you in every way I can until youre gonethe very mechanism of life says: I’m going to ramp up my defenses. Im going to get more frightened. We attack everything about ourselves that we dont like. It just makes us more frightened. You explain that our brain interprets our thoughts about the past and future as if they are actually happening. How does this impact our mind and body and how can we decrease its potency? It means that we’re in a constant fight-or-flight stateActually fight, flight, fawn, faint, or freeze. It revs up a system that is meant to be an emergencies-only system. It’s like you have a little firefighter that comes running out, puts out fires, and then goes back to sleep. But, instead of letting them sleep, you’re constantly screaming: Fire, fire, fire! The fear response is running around inside your head going: Where’s the danger? But, since there is no local danger (there’s just a thought), it can’t find the thing to fight. So, it keeps running around in fear, which means that you are constantly secreting stress hormones. We know that when you continuously bathe the inside of your body with stress hormonesthat are only supposed to be little bursts of energy when you’re in dangerit leads to all kinds of degenerative illnesses, from cancer to heart disease to autoimmune diseases. The imagination of danger is the primary source of our stress. How can we approach these situations with a more generative response? The first step is always to notice what is happening around you, because this stress response is only meant to deal with physical danger that is present in your environment. When you look around the room and say: In this place right now, there is no bear or murderer. You take a deep breath and a long exhale, because that’s something almost every animal does when it has escaped danger. Then, you come back to the present and start noticing the objects around you, especially if you can appreciate them. The moment that I start to think about that, I start to become preoccupied with what’s around me. Since I’m safe, what fires up is curiosity, connection, and gratitude. Suddenly, I’m in a safe, wealthy environment, no matter where I am; Instead of a terrifying place filled with monsters and constant scarcity. Presence, presence, presence. Come back to where you are. Tell us about the relationship between anxiety and purpose. What do we get wrong about purpose that keeps us from discovering it? The relationship between anxiety and purpose in our culture is that anxiety becomes a very dominant force; something that we culturally believe is going to make us safer. We are going to hang on to whatever makes us feel safebut also whatever makes us feel anxiousbecause that is anxiety’s ultimate lie: Without fear, you won’t be safe. So, in order to feel safe, you have to feel afraid. You get in this tight anxiety spiral. If you’re going down a tight anxiety spiral, there’s no way you can move toward anything purposeful. The left hemisphere of the brain creates the anxiety spiral. If you move into the right hemisphere by doing things that are creative, sensory, and proprioceptive, then you turn toward activities that spark your creativity, curiosity, connection, and compassion. Suddenly, instead of running away from everything, you’re moving toward things. There’s aversion and attraction. You will not find your sense of purpose by avoiding things that frighten you. You will find it by moving toward things that give you joy and the experience of abundance. You share research from child psychologist Karyn Purvis that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain with regular practice and only 1020 if were learning through play. How does dedicated play accelerate mastery? We learn through play. Its the same for adults as it is for kids. It’s just that kids are given a bit more room to frolic. One study they did for different groups in the 1960s identified 2% of the adults they surveyed as creative geniuses. They gave the same test to 4- and 5-year-olds98% of them scored as creative geniuses. What is happening in the meantime? A big part of it is that we’re forced not to play. We’re forced to learn a way of learning that is rigid, boring, and monotonous. We can learn that ay, but there’s no fun to it. If there’s no fun to it, you can’t remember it. When were trying to solve a challenge, you explain that we tend to zoom in and follow instructions; whereas you propose creating the conditions that are most likely to wake up the sleeping magician in your right hemisphere. The magician will then solve problems for you in ways that will leave your left hemisphere agape in disbelief. What are those conditions and how can we create them? Its always by going towards something that is kind to the self and creates comfort, joy, and a sense of gratitude. People used to come to me for coaching and I’d say: Let’s find your joy. But, they were so exhausted from living in a world of joylessness, that the first thing is usually rest; Giving yourself permission to rest is a massive step toward creating this life that you’re going to love. Its so scary for people. They haven’t yet touched the fertility of the creative state. Getting people to rest is the single most challenging thing that I do as a coach, because the culture does not provide for rest. Once you rest, then you start naturally getting curious about things. You start playing, solving problems, and making things happen. Steve Jobs was obsessed with making insanely great things out of machinery. People like that, whose creativity is fully loosened, they’re the ones who everybody thinks are doing something inaccessible and impossible. Its possible for all of us. You write: I know that the most important creative project youll undertakethe one you were born to completeis the shaping of your whole life. As you become more creative than our society deems prudent, youll make the choices that will lead to your own greatest happiness, and your best contribution to the world. What wisdom might you leave us with to begin realizing that vision? Sit down and imagine what you expect as a road going forward, which is probably some blend of what movies, culture, and living with your family has taught you. Think of it as having walls on each side. It may be wide or very narrow. But, see what’s there. What do you expect? Do you expect marriage, children, a jobwhatever it is, what is it? Now, imagine that the walls are suddenly gone. Youre in this broad field of nature and history. All these resources are available to you, if you wander off the pathways. Suddenly, people go fromI feel so trappedtoHoly crap, what am I going to do? This is too much opportunity. But, the biggest mistake that you can make is when people say: I’m going to take life as it comes. I’m not going to make anything up. No, you’re making it up. You’re making your expectations based on your experience. Make up something that makes you happy.
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Nothing strikes fear in a leader’s heart more than an upcoming announcement. Yet big changes and announcements are the turning point for many organizations. Whether its layoffs, acquisitions, launches, or reorganizations, the pressure to get it right is real. Company performance, team morale, retention, and public image are all on the line. Unfortunately, most leaders rely on advisers and experts when it comes to how, when, and what to communicate. Well-meaning attorneys, publicists, or CFOs typically water down the message, and the company ends up with something that is factual but uninspiring. Oftentimes, that message is also ambiguous with no plan, next steps, or information on how. This isnt helpful for building morale, or to arm employees with the right information to move forward. To do so, leaders need to strike the right balance of information and inspiration. Heres how. Step 1: start with the information When change is underway, humans fill a void of information with any number of presumptions and speculation. As our head of culture reminds me often, People just want to know how it affects them. Shes right. Its critical for leaders to share as much information as possible, as soon as possible. Our agency navigated this recently. A longtime client, partner, and friend acquired our business. It was a great acquisition situation, and one we had worked on for years. Yet, we knew for most of our team it would come as a big surpriseand surprise can turn negative in our minds. This is probably bad. Im losing my job. This is going to be terrible. To prepare and help ensure that they understood how this would affect them, we created a list of questions we knew would be top of mind and tried our best to answer them in our initial announcement. We were also upfront about questions we knew we couldnt answer yet. Lastly, we told them when they could expect more information. Step 2: share ‘why’ with care to build confidence Everyone wants to work for an inspirational leader. In seasons of change, inspiration comes from understanding the why. It also comes from leaders who truly care and are able to share their decision-making process with vulnerability and understanding. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I always tried to explain what we were doing and why. We came back to the office sooner than some would have liked and later than others could understand. I knew we had to acknowledge that. Heres what I had said to our team: We know some are wondering why the office is still closed and it may feel too cautious to you. Others are still concerned with safety. Were trying to make the right decision for everyone and for our business. We also know we need to stay at maximum capacity right now because so many of our changemaker clients are in need of our support. So heres what were going to do. . . . Acknowledging that I understood how it might feel and that I took their concerns into account allowed me to build confidence and trust with the team. It also helped everyone understand why. Step 3: Tailor the message to your people In communications, we talk at length about tailoring the message to your audienceto your people. The same principle applies when youre communicating change to your employees. Those in creative industries often lean more into inspiration while those in technical fields typically need more information. I was speaking with a marketing director for a biotech company about our mutual experiences introducing employee ownership to our teams. Her experience with a company of scientists was very different from mine at a creative agency. I told her that we took our team to Disney World for our announcement, while she noted that her team would have considered that fluff and preferred a different approach. There is no right or wrong here. The key is knowing your people and what they need to navigate a transition successfully. Your employees response is also highly dependent on organizational culturewhich comes from day-to-day interactions and operations. Consistent, candid, clear information builds trust. Once youve established that, you can lean into more and more inspirational messaging. Without trust, deeply inspirational messaging can seem manipulative and inauthentic. Step 4: Dont be afraid to showcase vulnerability While you should never make a company announcement about you, a dose of honesty can go a long way. Shortly after our acquisition, I was speaking privately with our team and they wanted to know how I felt. I could hear leadership experts in my mind: Instill confidence. But we all know nothing is 100% wonderful or perfect. So instead I told them, Im 95% sure this is a great decision. And I laughed as I said, The other 5% is just because you can never know. I watched as they smiled and knew they really believed me, because it was true. Were all looking for truth and can smell talking points from a mile away. Step 5: know when to mix Information and inspiration Great leaders inform and inspire, but exceptional leaders know just how to mix the two. I remember a leader of a billion-dollar global organization who stood in front of her large team. This year we are going to double revenue, she said. Her team cheered. They were highly engaged in the global good their work provided for others, and they respected their leader. She fed into the enthusiasm and continued her pep talk. As the meeting time wrapped up, everyone anxiously awaited for details, but got none. She ended with, Alright, lets do this! No plan or next steps, no information, no how. She lost credibility that day in a big way. Instead of the start of a new level of growth, it became the end of trust and ultimately her role in the organization. Exceptional leaders know that people need both the why and the howthe inspiration and the informationand mix both to meet the needs of their teams. These are the leaders that we love to follow, and work hard for.
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