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For the past year and a half, there’s been a simmering concern over what AI is going to do to the workforce. Last week, that concern boiled over in a big way following back-to-back news stories: First, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei set off alarm bells by predicting that AI would wipe out half of entry-level jobs and massively drive up unemployment. As if on cue, Business Insider announced it was laying off 21% of its staff. While the two obviously aren’t directly related, the one-two punch landed hard in the media business, which faces an existential threat to its business model (in a nutshell, AI answers mean less traffic than search). But like all demographics, it’s important to remember that the media isn’t a monolith. While AI summaries mean rapidly changing audience habits for all publishers, BI‘s move emphasizes that digital-native brands are particularly vulnerable. In her memo to BI staff, CEO Barbara Peng said the company was “going all-in on AI,” explaining that the layoffs were part of a broader strategic shift and that, going forward, the publication would need to reduce its dependence on traffic in general. In addition to cutting click-dependent areas like its commerce business, BI would launch live journalism events, double down on subscriptions, and encourage all its journalists to embrace AI tools. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} This is far from the publication’s first move on this course. Not long ago, the company had ambitions to become a general interest brand, but after changing its name to Insider in 2021, it switched back to Business Insider less than three years later. Since then, the publication has been investing more in unique voices and talent instead of the volume content that fueled the company’s rise in the 2010s, when media brands like Vice, Quartz, and Buzzfeed were dominant. The old media playbook meets a new world The thing about BI, though, is that it was one of the few success stories to come out of that era. The publication sold to Axel Springer for $343 million dollars back in 2015, just before the bottom fell out of the scale media market. Perhaps that’s why it took BI so long to adapt. It’s been shedding its workforce for a couple of yearsnow roughly half the size of its 2022 peak of 1,000 people, according to Press Gazette. Now AI is forcing the issue. Peng’s memo says that 70% of BI‘s business suffers from “traffic sensitivity,” a euphemism for content designed to attract eyeballs on the open web by appearing in search, social, or feeds. Who are those people? How do you keep them coming back or transacting with your brand? In the media model BI was built for, it didn’t matterit only mattered how big the number was on any given day. Now BI is doing exactly what any media consultant would recommend: adopting tactics like paywalled subscriptions, events, newsletters, and first-party data. It’s the right strategy, but for BI the moves are reactive retreats rather than proactive bets. That doesn’t mean they’re bad ideas, but BI‘s DNA was born out of a different era. It has a brand, but is it strong enough to make the transition that AI demands? I don’t mean to pick on BI, but I do think it exemplifies why digital media companies from the 2010s are likely going to have the hardest time in the AI era. Legacy mainstream outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have built moats with their strong journalism and diverse revenue streams. On the other end, smaller digital upstarts like 404 Media, The Ankler, and The Free Press are finding success by cultivating talent, getting scoops, and offering unique perspectives. It’s the brands in betweenthe ones that followed the same playbook as BInow scrambling to re-architect themselves to meet this moment. Ziff Davis (owner of PCMag, Mashable, and IGN) is similarly feeling pressure, as seen in its lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing that its strategy of publishing evergreen, free content on the internet to maximize clicks has made it particularly vulnerable to substitution by AI. Experimentation isnt transformation As evidence of the BI‘s all-in bet on AI, Peng talked about AI-powered features like its site search and dynamic paywall. She also mentioned that 75% of the staff were now using AI tools, specifically ChatGPT Enterprise, with the aim to get the figure to 100%. The note encourages “bold experimentation,” and says they’re building prompt libraries and sharing everyday AI use cases among staff. However, this description of AI initiatives, while directionally solid, sounds like it’s still in the early stages. Contrast that with an AI-forward newsroom like Reuters, which has built modular tooling tailored to newsroom workflows, under a clear “reduce, augment, transform” framework. It’s great that they’re moving forward, but without a focus on systems, transformation will be piecemeal. And while the choice of ChatGPT is expected given the company’s partnership with OpenAI, pushing a single AI model over all the others is inherently limiting. For other digital media brands who fear death or downsizing, BI‘s approach is instructive. It’s urgent to rethink dependency on traffic, and even the lens of measuring success through traffic. Certainly, ad impressions are the KPI driving all this, and it’s not going to go away overnight (or ever, really). But a long decline seems inevitable. Shifting focus from traffic to metrics that measure impact, engagement, and loyalty is step one. That’s the path to cultivating direct reader relationshipsessential to building media brands that are sustainable in the AI era. BIs shift is a step n the right direction, but survival wont come from cost-cutting or tool adoption alone. The digital media brands that make it through this next wave will be the ones that know who theyre for and what makes them worth returning to. That means being willing to rethink how things get made in the first placeand why. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Getting federal approval for permits to build bridges, wind farms, highways, and other major infrastructure projects has long been a complicated and time-consuming process. Despite growing calls from both parties for Congress and federal agencies to reform that process, there had been few significant revisionsuntil now. In one fell swoop, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed a big part of the game. Whether the effects are good or bad depends on the viewers perspective. Either way, there is a new interpretation in place for the law that is the centerpiece of the debate about permittingthe National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, known as NEPA. Taking a big-picture look NEPA requires federal agencies to document and describe the environmental effects of any proposed action, including construction of oil pipelines, renewable energy, and other infrastructure projects. Only after completing that work can the agency make a final decision to approve or deny the project. These reports must evaluate direct effects, such as the destruction of habitat to make way for a new highway, and indirect effects, such as the air pollution from cars using the highway after it is built. Decades of litigation about the scope of indirect effects have widened the required evaluation. As I explain it to my students, that logical and legal progression is reminiscent of the popular childrens book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, in which granting a request for a cookie triggers a seemingly endless series of further requestsfor a glass of milk, a napkin, and so on. For the highway example, the arguments went, even if the agency properly assessed the pollution from the cars, it also had to consider the new subdivisions, malls, and jobs the new highway foreseeably could induce. The challenge for federal agencies was knowing how much of that potentially limitless series of indirect effects courts would require them to evaluate. In recent litigation, the question in particular has been how broad a range of effects on and from climate change could be linked to any one specific project and therefore require evaluation. With the courts ruling, federal agencies days of uncertainty are over. Biggest NEPA case in decades On May 29, 2025, the Supreme Court (minus Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had recused himself) decided the case of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, the first major NEPA dispute before the court in 20 years. At issue was an 85-mile rail line a group of developers proposed to build in Utah to connect oil wells to the interstate rail network and from there transport waxy crude oil to refineries in Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere. The federal Surface Transportation Board reviewed the environmental effects and approved the required license in 2021. The report was 637 pages long, with more than 3,000 pages of appendices containing additional information. It acknowledged but did not give a detailed assessment of the indirect upstream effects of constructing the rail linesuch as spurring new oil drillingand the indirect downstream effects of the ultimate use of the waxy oil in places as far-flung as Louisiana. In February 2022, Eagle County, Colorado, through which trains coming from the new railway would pass, along with the Center for Biological Diversity appealed that decision in federal court, arguing that the board had failed to properly explain why it did not assess those effects. Therefore, the county argued, the report was incomplete and the board license should be vacated. In August 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed and held that the agency had failed to adequately explain why it could not employ some degree of forecasting to identify those impacts and that the board could prevent those effects by exercising its authority to deny the license. The railway developers appealed to the Supreme Court, asking whether NEPA requires a federal agency to look beyond the action being proposed to evaluate indirect effects outside its own jurisdiction. A resounding declaration Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered a ringing, table-pounding lecture about courts run amok. Kavanaugh did not stop to provide specific support for each admonition, describing NEPA as a legislative acorn that has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development. He bemoaned the delay upon delay NEPA imposes on projects as so complicated that it bordered on the Kafkaesque. In his view, NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents. He called for a course correction . . . to bring judicial review under NEPA back in line with the statutory text and common sense. His opinion reset the course in three ways. First, despite the Supreme Court having recently reduced the deference courts must give to federal agency decisions in other contexts, Kavanaugh wrote that courts should give agencies strong deference when reviewing an agencys NEPA effects analyses. Because these assessments are fact-dependent, context-specific, and policy-laden choices about the depth and breadth of its inquiry . . . (c)ourts should afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness. Second, Kavanaugh crafted a new rule saying that the review of one project did not need to consider the potential indirect effects of other related projects it could foreseeably induce, such as the rail line encouraging more drilling for oil. This limitation is especially relevant, Kavanaugh emphasized, when the effects are from projects over which the reviewing agency does not have urisdiction. That applied in this case, because the board does not regulate oil wells or oil drilling. And third, Kavanaugh created something like a no harm, no foul rule, under which even if an [environmental impact statement] falls short in some respects, that deficiency may not necessarily require a court to vacate the agencys ultimate approval of a project. The strong implication is that courts should not overturn an agency decision unless its NEPA assessment has a serious flaw. The upshot for the project at hand was that the Supreme Court deferred to the boards decision that it could not reliably predict the rail lines effects on oil drilling or use of the oil transported. And the fact that the agency had no regulatory power over those separate issues reinforced the idea that those concerns were outside the scope of the boards required review. A split court Although Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that she would have reached the same end result and upheld the agency permit, her proposed test is far narrower. By her reading, the federal law creating the Surface Transportation Board restricted it from considering the broader indirect effects of the rail line. But her finding would be relevant only for any federal agencies whose governing statutes were similarly restrictive. By contrast, Kavanaughs course correction applies to judicial review of NEPA findings for all federal agencies. Though the full effects remain to be seen, this decision significantly changes the legal landscape of environmental reviews of major projects. Agencies will have more latitude to shorten the causal chain of indirect effects they consider, and to exclude them entirely if they flow from separate projects beyond the agencys regulatory control. Now, for example, if a federal agency is considering an application to build a new natural gas power plant, the review must still include its direct greenhouse gas emissions and their effects on the climate. But emissions that could result from additional gas extraction and transportation projects to fuel the power plant, and any climate effects from whatever the produced electricity is used for, are now clearly outside the agencys required review. And if the agency voluntarily decided to consider any of those effects, courts would have to defer to its analysis, and any minor deficiencies would be inconsequential. That is a far cry from how the legal structure around the National Environmental Policy Act has worked for decades. For lawyers, industry, advocacy groups, and the courts, environmental review after the Eagle County decision is not just a new ball gameits a new sport. J.B. Ruhl is a professor of law and director of the Program on Law and Innovation and co-director of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program at Vanderbilt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
Major announcements around the VisionPro headset are expected next week and may even confirm tantalizing rumors that a lighter model of the high-end XR device is coming next year. Whatever Apple reveals at WWDC, we can expect another round of analyst predictions that this time, mass adoption of head-mounted displays is finally happening. As Apple, Meta, and other major players continue to struggle with taking the technology mainstream, its worth addressing the virtual elephant in the room: Theres reason to suspect that XR headsets barrier to success isnt just about cost, headset weight, lack of content, eye strain, or other frequently cited issues. Neuroscience suggests that the sensory experience of XR can’t compensate for the value of sharing a physical environment with our screensespecially when it comes to how we form knowledge and memory. Experiments with XR for Full-Time Computing About 10 years ago, I started spending long sessions in VR (48 hours daily over several weeks) to see how it might affect my sense of time and attention. I began with the HTC Vive, which was comfortable and fun. Later, I tested the Apple VisionPro with a full virtual workstation of monitors and displays. I was curious whether XR could improve focus and research. It felt like a very different thing to use VR all day, versus a brief demo in a museum or Apple showroom. Early on, I had to stand and move constantly throughout the day. It was exhausting, though it made for a great workout (SUPERHOT was one of my favorites). But this kind of motion-based interaction didnt translate well to daily work tasks. Tossing data around in 3D like in Minority Report might make for compelling cinema, but it’s far less practical over time. When the VisionPro arrived, I was excited to use it while seated. A friend set me up with a massive virtual workspace, and I genuinely appreciated the focus it provided when I was digging into something newsay, reading a dense Wikipedia article. Still, when I set up my home office last year, I chose two large physical monitors at eye level and a sit/stand desk. As enjoyable as VR was, the process of setup and adjusting the space took more time and energy than docking a laptop. And even though I was initially thrilled to be in a virtual workspace, I found myself feeling more distant from the real world. I wanted to go outside more, and didnt feel like looking at any screen at all by days end. I also noticed the difference in eye strain from screens so close to my face. I prefer to work near a window where I can shift my gaze into the distance. That rhythm of looking away and refocusing helps me process thoughtsespecially after encountering something new. The Trouble With Losing Touch I asked my colleague Dr. David Sisson, a neurophysiologist, why XR adoption hasnt matched media hype. He reminded me that audio and visual inputsthe primary senses XR taps intoarent the full picture. Then theres the matter of touch in XR. Without touch, theres no intimacy. Youre not really interacting with whats going on, David told me. You can hit a balland hear the crack in VRbut youre not feeling anything other than a little jerk in the controller that makes you feel like theres some inertia happening. In short, headsets deprive us of the tactile and physical context that supports memory formation. Contrast that with playing a console game: you’re anchored in a physical space, hands on colorful controllers, with the screen at a distance. If you’re like me, you vividly remember not just the game, but the exact couch you sat on and the friends or family who played with you. The Neuroscience of Virtual Experience This sense of placeness goes beyond just touch. As David explained, [C]hemical senses are not a part of [the VR experience] . . . Theres a well-considered idea, a linkage between olfaction, smell between memorythat youre living that out of the [VR] picture entirely. Attempts at incorporating virtual smells into XR exist, but it’s unclear whether theyre effectiveor even desirable. Recent research supports what French literature has long told us: smell powerfully evokes memory. Studies show scent not only enhances recall but may also support learning across other sensory areas. While XR devices like VisionPro do re-create home and office setups and allow for vast screen real estate, they lack a true sense of location. Evolution shaped our brains to operate differently depending on whether we’re traveling or at home. Researchers call this the encoding specificity principleour memories link closely with the environment where they were first formed. With a headset on, our minds dont fully orient to a place, and so we never quite settle in. Apple offers a vast virtual workspace you can take on the go, but that benefit comes at the cost of the sensory richness and physical grounding of a real-world setup. Neuroscience, not just practicality, suggests that working in a physical spacewith monitors, windows, textures, smells, and distanceoffers deeper engagement and memory retention. Putting the Pro in VisionPro To be clear, XR headsets excel in specific contexts like rehabilitation or short bursts of fully embodied interaction, where body motion tracking is vital. Some content creators might find immense value in a distraction-free, multiscreen virtual studio. But thats not a mass-market audience. XR evangelists may continue promoting VisionPro as the breakout device, but weand Apple, for that mattershould remember that Pro isnt just branding. It reflects the narrow set of advanced use cases that justify immersion. For most of us, computing still works best in a physical world that engages all five senses. And thats not something XR can replicateat least, not yet.
Category:
E-Commerce
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