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• AI is teaching us to speak like bots and its a problem

  Immediately, after a keynote speaker I was coaching for a large conference finished her rehearsal I pulled her aside. “How much of your script was written by AI?” I asked. She looked up at me out of the corner of her eye and hesitantly said, “Most of it.” I delicately shared with her that I could hear it. She started several sentences with phrases like: “Here’s the thing,” “The truth is,” and the word “Unlock!” She sounded like a bot and not like a human, and, if I could hear it, I was certain the audience would too. 

  Around the same time, a speechwriter I work with told me her client kept barking orders at her as if she was speaking to her AI assistant. “Delete that.” “Move that. No, not that.” “Replace this phrase.” Her client was an early AI adopter who was used to dictating edits to an LLM and now, she was treating the speechwriter the same way.

  I’m a public speaking and executive communication coach and work with senior leaders and founders at companies like Amazon AWS, Google, Panasonic, which means I spend a lot of time inside the communication habits of people who are heavy AI users. For the past six months, I’ve been noticing a change in how people are talking to one another: I call it BotTalk.

  BotTalk is when AI starts bleeding into the way you talk to people. For example: giving commands without context or asking questions without warmth. It’s when humanity gets edited out of the conversation.

  The people doing it aren’t trying to be rude or cold. They’ve just been optimizing their communication for a system that doesn’t need a greeting, doesn’t need a “how are you doing,” doesn’t need any of the connective tissue that makes human conversation feel like, well, human conversation.

  This isn’t the first time technology has changed how we communicate. When texting arrived, linguists warned it would flatten our language. Some of it did bleed into how we speak. Columbia professor John McWhorter, in his TED Talk on language and texting, called texting “fingered speech,” pointing out that words like “lol” stopped being typed and started being said out loud. We adapted to the constraints of the medium, and the medium changed us in turn.

  What’s different now isn’t the direction of influence. It’s the scale, the speed, and the fact that something else is happening alongside the vocabulary shift. It’s also impacting how we treat each other: we’re getting less patient.

  AI responds instantly and never takes a breath. It doesn’t need a moment to think or get back to you. And the more time you spend in that kind of exchange, the more human hesitation starts to feel like a problem to solve. The colleague who needs a day to think or the direct report who takes a breath before answering, or the client who wants to talk something through before deciding start to feel slow. And slow starts to feel like a problem. I see this in sessions every week. 

  Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development analyzed 360,000 YouTube videos and 771,000 podcast episodes recorded before and after ChatGPT’s release and found a measurable shift. In the 18 months after ChatGPT launched, speakers used words like “meticulous,” “delve,” “realm,” and “adept” up to 51 percent more frequently than in the three years prior. A separate team at Florida State University found the same pattern after analyzing 22 million words from unscripted conversational podcasts, documenting what they call the “seep-in effect.”

  And researchers suggest the influence goes beyond word choice. Sociolinguistic researchers studying AI’s influence on speech note that short-term communication adjustments made during repeated AI interactions can, over time, lead to long-term changes in how people speak, affecting not just what words they use but the overall style and structure of their communication. The language becomes more organized, more formal, and, in the words of one researcher in a widely circulated interview, flatter. Which means it is less animated and more processed-sounding.

  This has a cost.

  When you strip the warmth out of how you communicate, you don’t just sound different, your words land differently and hurt your chances for genuine connection.

  The executives and senior leaders I’ve seen struggling right now aren’t struggling because they don’t know their material. They’re struggling because something in their delivery has fallen flat. They’re outputting instead of connecting. And what I’m noticing is the more time they spend communicating with AI, the more their own communication starts to reflect it back. The cadence. The polish. The way a thought is structured. It sounds competent. It just doesn’t sound like them anymore. And audiences feel that gap, even when they can’t name it.

  And there’s research that tells us why this matters beyond just “being nice.” A study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology found that the more time people spend interacting with emotionally capable AI, the more they start to perceive real people as less human. The researchers call it “assimilation-induced dehumanization.” You see AI as more human, so real humans start to look a little less so. And when that happens, how you treat them shifts too, even if you don’t realize it.

  For leaders, that’s a trust problem. For teams, that’s a culture problem. For anyone who has to persuade, influence, or inspire other human beings for a living, that’s a you problem.

  Here’s what it looks like on the ground: a leader starts to communicate in a more transactional way and the people around them start to self-censor. They stop sharing bad news, they stop pushing back, and they stop telling you what you actually need to hear. You don’t lose their effort, you start to lose their candor. And for executives, that is often the thing that matters most.

  The good news is this isn’t hard to fix. It just requires, what I like to say, noticing what you notice. 

  Here are a few things to think about:

  • Notice if you’re actually listening or just waiting to respond. AI doesn’t need to be heard. It just needs to be prompted. When we spend a lot of time in that dynamic, we can lose the habit of genuine listening without realizing it. The next time you ask someone a question, stay with their answer. Let it land before you go anywhere. That pause isn’t dead air. It’s the conversation working. I have been teaching improv for several years, and one of the first things we teach is “yes, and,” not because it makes you agreeable, but because it forces you to actually receive what someone just gave you before you add anything. You can’t “yes, and” something you weren’t listening to.

  • Notice when you’re making a command instead of inviting. Commands close conversations and questions open them. If everything you’re sending is a directive, you’re prompting, not communicating. Here is something you can consider the next time you are having a 1:1 with a direct report or colleague: try opening with a question that isn’t work related. “What’s one thing you’re looking forward to this weekend?” or “What’s been the highlight of your week so far?” This works because it shows the other person you care about them, it builds trust, and they will also be more likely to follow through with the task at hand.

  • Bring your body back into it.AI has no body. No breath, no pause, no hesitation, no pulse. When you speak like a human, use what a human has. Slow down. Take a moment to pause. Let yourself find the word if you can’t think of it in the moment. Feel the floor beneath your feet. Before a presentation, high stakes meeting or difficult conversation, what are you doing to prepare beforehand? Breathing? Moving your body? Listening to your favorite music? Escaping to do power poses in the bathroom? Take some time to center your body. 

  We built AI to sound more human and it is getting better at doing this with each passing day. 

  And now, quietly, we’re starting to sound more like it. 

  So the next time you’re standing at Samantha-in-IT’s desk, just check in with yourself: did I just talk to her, or did I prompt her? Because she’s not a chatbot. And honestly, she’s noticed that you treat her like one.

  Remember, when you communicate like a human, with something real to say, that’s still the most powerful thing in any room.

• This free web tool makes everything way easier to read

  It sure is nice to have the web look the way you want—without all the usual awkward font choices and other assorted distractions—isn’t it?

  Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored a slew of interesting tools for taking total control of whateveryou’re reading online:

  1. First, right here in these Cool Tools headquarters last week, my compadre and fellow Fast Companycontributor Jared Newman showed you a series of simple sites for ​seeing minimalist, plain-text versions of sports, news, and weather​ online.
  2. Then, in my Android Intelligence newsletter soon after, I surfaced an awesome, out-of-sight feature in that arena for​ cleaning up and customizing the look of any text you’re ingesting​ via a simple system-level button press.

  Today, I want to round out that collection of personal power-washers with one more worthwhile tool that can turn any website you’re looking at into a clutter-free, simply formatted plain-text document.

  It transforms any article, menu, or other type of information into something delightfully easy to read, save, share, you name it—without any ads, images, or funky formatting of any sort.

  It’s an incredibly handy resource to keep around, to say the least. And once you’ve got it in front of you, it couldn’t be much easier to use.

  This tip originally appeared in the freeCool Tools newsletter fromThe Intelligence. Get the next issuein your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!

  10 seconds to plain text

  The next time you find yourself facing a web page with way too much going on, remember a tool called Textise​.

  ➜ Textise is a simple-as-can-be website that converts any page you’re looking at into plain text—no fuss, no formatting, no images of any sort included.

  ⌚ It takes all of 10 secondsto use:

  • Just head over to Textise.net​ in any browser, on any device in front of you.
  • Click or tap the box in the center of the screen, then paste in the address of whatever page you want to convert.

  

  • Click or tap “Textise”—or just hit Enter on your keyboard—and poof: In an instant, you’ll see a text-only view of the page in question.

  

  Not bad, right?!

  💡 If you’re using Textise on a computer, you can also set it up as a bookmarklet within your browser’s bookmark bar​ for even easier ongoing access.

  🧠 Beyond that, if you’re feelin’ especially fancy:

  • You can customize the font, color, and layout of your plain text view via the (plain-text) “Textise Options Page” link toward the top of your result.
  • You can print any plain-text view via the “Print this page” option—or just by using your browser’s standard printing command.
  • And you can share any plain-text transformation simply by copying the address of the result page or using the standard share command built into your browser.

  By and large, Textise is basic and limited by design. And that’s precisely what makes it a tool worth keeping around in your web cleanup toolbox.

  • Textise exists entirely on the web​, without any installations or downloads (though you can opt to set it up as a browser bookmarklet​ on larger-screen devices where bookmarklets are available).
  • It’s completely free to use, with just the occasional mildly annoying ad to support its existence.
  • The site doesn’t require any sort of sign-ins, account creations, or personal data to be shared.

  Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the freeCool Tools newsletter—starting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app that’ll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.

• Should you trust AI to do your taxes?

  No language on earth has ever produced the expression “as enjoyable as filing your taxes.” This annual chore is the pits. It’s slow, frustrating work that requires organization, math skills, and the ability to decipher meaning from the U.S. tax code. People will jump on pretty much any solution that makes filing quicker, easier, and less painful–including giving AI a crack at it.

  Recent survey research from Qlik found that nearly 11% of taxpayers have used or plan to use a consumer AI system (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini) to help them prepare their 2025 tax returns. But how trustworthy are these AI systems when it comes to something as sensitive as your taxes?  It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that studies have shown AI is not so great at math.

  If you’re considering letting your AI assistant give you some tax assistance, here’s what Claude himself won’t tell you.

  Tax pros are using AI

  While it may seem outlandish to consult AI for anything tax-related (at least, that’s my visceral reaction as a card-carrying, middle-aged luddite), the IRS itself has been using artificial intelligence for several years.

  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the IRS has set up AI systems to increase operational efficiency (i.e., automatic meeting summaries), help with audit selection for tax compliance and fraud detection, and provide taxpayer services, such as chatbots.

  But it’s not just the IRS using AI. Professional tax preparers are also embracing AI. Andy Phillips, vice president of The Tax Institute at H&R Block explains how this technology is changing the industry:

  “Tax pros spend a significant amount of time on data collection and data entry,” Phillips says. “By embedding AI into workflows, we can extract data from documents, pre-populate returns, and automate repetitive tasks behind the scenes. That has the potential to free our tax pros to focus more on explanation and guidance.”

  But just because the tax pros are using AI doesn’t mean it’s an automatic slam dunk for taxpayers to do the same. The IRS and tax preparation businesses are using AI to do the slow, tedious, and repetitive work that doesn’t necessarily need a human’s oversight. That’s a scalable use of artificial intelligence.

  Individual tax returns, on the other hand, require specific, personalized information, which is a granular use of AI. Those are very different ways of using this technology.

  Beware confidently wrong answers

  Two-thirds of the taxpayers using consumer AI on their 2025 returns are using it to supplement whatever software or tax professional help they used last year. But Qlik found that 33% of those using AI were not seeking any other help.

  This is a concern, according to Phillips. “AI can be incredibly helpful. But if it’s unguided, it can also be confidently wrong,” he says. “And when it comes to taxes, that’s a risk most people shouldn’t take.”

  But despite the well-reported phenomenon of AI hallucinations (remember the glue on pizza recommendation?), taxpayers aren’t especially worried about AI’s habit of making stuff up.

  Qlik’s research found that privacy is the primary concern keeping taxpayers from adopting AI as a tax filing tool. Forty-eight percent of taxpayers who refuse to use AI cite data exposure as the biggest obstacle to adopting this technology, compared to the 16% who worry most about AI’s accuracy.

  How to use AI for tax preparation

  There is a place for consumer AI tools in tax preparation–as long as you remember that artificial intelligence is only as good as the information you feed it.

  “Our tax attorneys, analysts, and researchers operate year-round to dissect every detail of new legislation and anticipate challenges,” Phillips says. “Generic AI without a trusted foundation could be a pitfall. People should use caution with AI that’s not grounded in real tax expertise.”

  But taxpayers don’t necessarily take this to heart. The Qlik survey found that taxpayers considered AI as most helpful for these tasks:

  • Identifying deductions and credits
  • Reviewing the completed return for errors and omissions
  • Asking general tax questions (such as deadlines, forms, and basic rules)
  • Helping fill out sections of the tax return
  • Estimating the refund or amount owed
  • Organizing documents or creating checklists

  While some of these tasks are well within the purview of any general AI tool, others may not be something you want to leave up to a bot that makes up fake books by real authors.

  Which means you have to double check any tax prep that you allow an AI to help you with. Skipping over that step could leave you vulnerable to the IRS AI that handles audit selection.

  AI won’t save us from tax time

  Although more Americans are exploring AI as a tax-filing tool, we’re still a long way from having general artificial intelligence systems file our tax returns for us each year.

  That’s partially because AI is designed as a tool for organizations to scale their operations. The IRS uses AI for operational efficiency, tax compliance and fraud detection, and low-contact taxpayer services. Tax preparation businesses like H&R Block use AI to automate data entry so their tax pros can spend more time one-on-one with their clients. Using AI to file an individual tax return requires a much different approach to artificial intelligence.

  Taxpayers should also be wary of AI’s penchant for hallucination. These tools can and do make up “confidently wrong” answers, which could be a serious problem when it comes to filing your taxes.

  AI is only as good as the information it’s trained on, which means a consumer tool is unlikely to have the knowledge base necessary to ensure a correct return. So if you do use an AI tool for help with your taxes, you will need to double check its work before filing. “AI can support how people file taxes, but the best use is combining it with real expertise,” Phillips says. “Otherwise, you’re just automating guesswork.”

• 99 housing markets where home prices are falling: See the map

  Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’sResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

  Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just +0.4% year-over-year between January 2025 and January 2026. That marks a deceleration from the +2.1% growth rate a year earlier—though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking a tad higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025.

  In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since stopped ticking up.

  • 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Jan. 2024to Jan. 2025 window.
  • 42 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 14% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Feb. 2024to Feb. 2025window.
  • 60 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 20% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the March 2024 to March 2025 window.
  • 80 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 27% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the April 2024to April 2025 window.
  • 96 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 32% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the May 2024to May 2025window.
  • 110 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 36% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the June 2024 to June 2025 window.
  • 105 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 36% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the July 2024to July 2025 window.
  • 109 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Aug. 2024to Aug. 2025 window.
  • 105 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Sept. 2024to Sept. 2025 window.
  • 105 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Oct. 2024to Oct. 2025 window.
  • 98 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 33% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Nov. 2024to Nov. 2025 window.
  • 106 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Dec. 2024to Dec. 2025 window.
  • 100 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 33% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Jan. 2025to Jan. 2026 window.
  • 99 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 33% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Feb. 2025to Feb. 2026 window.

  As you can see above, in the first half of 2025, there was a notable increase in the number of housing markets slipping into year-over-year price declines as the supply–demand equilibrium (as measured by inventory) shifted more quickly toward homebuyers. Over the past seven months, however, the list of declining markets has begun to stabilize and inventory growth has also decelerated.

  Home prices are still climbing a little year-over-year in many regions where active inventory remains well below pre-pandemic 2019 levels, such as pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. In contrast, some pockets in states like Texas, Florida, and Colorado—where active inventory exceeds pre-pandemic 2019 levels by a solid clip—are seeing modest home price pullbacks or flat pricing.

  Click here for an interactive version of the chart below

  

  Many of the housing markets seeing the most softness, where homebuyers have gained the most leverage, are primarily located in Sun Belt regions, particularly the Gulf Coast and Mountain West.

  Many of these areas saw even greater price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home price growth outpacing local income levels. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose in 2022, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices.

  That Sun Belt softening was further compounded by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives to maintain sales, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market. As a result, some buyers who might have previously opted for existing homes are instead choosing new construction with more attractive deals—which added further upward pressure to resale inventory growth over the past few years.

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  Of course, while 99 of the nation’s 300 largest metro area housing markets are seeing year-over-year home price declines, another 200 are seeing year-over-year home price increases.

  Where are home prices still up on a year-over-year basis? See the map below.

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  Below is a historical chart showing the year-over-year change in home prices across the 50 largest metro housing markets, with the yellow line representing the national aggregate, dating back to 2000.

  

  While the “range” [see chart above] between the strongest and weakest metro area housing markets right now is fairly normal historically speaking, the “bifurcation” (i.e., direction) itself—the share of markets with rising home prices versus those with falling prices—is wider than normal, given that national appreciation has stabilized into a softer market with growth barely above +0.0%. And the longer some markets remain in the “rising” camp while others stay in the “falling” camp, the wider the gulf can become between the relatively more resilient markets and the weaker ones.

  For example, home prices in the Hartford, CT metro area are now +21.2% above their 2022 peak, while home prices in the Austin, TX metro area sit -27.9% below their 2022 peak. Some of that “bifurcation” boils down to mean reversion, with many of the outright home price declines occurring in markets that overheated further during the Pandemic Housing Boom.

  Note: For the historical chart below, we analyzed the 200 largest markets rather than the 300 used above, as some markets ranked 201 to 300 lack complete data going back to 2000. When weighted by population (not visualized), the housing market appears slightly weaker than the chart below suggests—which aligns with the fact that, among just the 50 largest housing markets, 25 (roughly 50%) are currently posting negative year-over-year price growth, and nationally aggregated home prices are up just +0.% year-over-year using the Zillow Home Value Index.

  

• You might be stuck in TSA lines for hours. Make sure you have these travel gadgets with you 

  As the government shutdown drags on, having devastating effects on Transportation Security Administration staffing, millions of Americans continue to face long lines at TSA checkpoints at airports nationwide. With the busy Easter holiday travel weekend around the corner, wait times are expected to worsen as the number of travelers increases.

  If you have a flight scheduled in the days ahead, here are some travel gadgets that can help make your TSA wait times more bearable.

  

  Battery packs for long TSA lines

  Thanks to modern smartphone batteries, which can last a day or more, you ordinarily don’t have to worry about your phone running out of juice if you have a direct flight between any two points in the continental United States. But given that many airports are now advising you to get to the airport hours earlier to get through the long TSA checkpoints in time to make your flight, you may be risking a dead phone well before reaching your destination.

  If you are planning to watch videos or surf the web on your phone to pass the time spent in TSA lines, make sure you have a battery pack, also known as a power bank, with you. If you’re traveling alone, even a smaller power bank (around 5,000 mAh capacity) will be fine. But if you are traveling with others, a larger power bank (around 20,000 mAh capacity) that can charge multiple devices at once is better. 

  However, keep in mind that while the TSA allows power banks in checked baggage, the Federal Aviation Administration generally limits power banks aboard aircraft to those rated 100 watt-hours (Wh) per battery (about 27,000 mAh) or lower.

  

  Luggage with smartphone or laptop mounts

  Speaking of using your devices to pass the time in the TSA line, holding your phone in front of you for hours on end can get exhausting. Whipping out your laptop is even more of a struggle. So why not give your arm a rest and let your luggage do the holding for you?

  Several manufacturers now make luggage with built-in smartphone and laptop stands. These stands essentially turn your luggage into a desk that supports your device, giving your arms a rest. One popular luggage with a built-in laptop stand is the Tramora CABIN – T7. If you’re just looking for smartphone support and don’t feel like buying new luggage, there’s no shortage of smartphone luggage handle mounts on sites like Amazon.

  

  Collapsible stools

  Even if you use one of the above gadgets to spare your arms while waiting in long TSA lines, your legs still face their own issues—holding you up. That’s where collapsible travel stools come in. They are small, sturdy, and highly portable, and great for giving your legs a rest when you are standing stationary in TSA lines for hours.

  The telescoping stools generally extend to about 17 inches high and can collapse into a film canister-like format with a thickness of just a few inches. Most collapsible stools can support hundreds of pounds—some advertise up to 400-pound thresholds. Pair a collapsible stool with luggage that has a laptop stand, and you’ll have a nearly desk-like setup you can work from while your TSA line slowly advances.

  

  Portable travel fans

  While spring has only just arrived, and in many parts of the country the summer heatwave is still a few months away, waiting in stagnant, crowded spaces can still significantly increase ambient air temperature, regardless of climate controls.

  That’s why it may be worth bringing a portable travel fan, especially if you already tend to get hot in crowded spaces. Many modern travel fans are small and collapsible, making them easy to travel with. They are also relatively silent, which means they won’t be an annoyance to the hundreds of other people standing in line with you.

  Most portable travel fans can be purchased for less than $20, and many even have USB-C ports, so they can be charged from the same power bank that charges your phone. Speaking of your phone, you can even find a fan that plugs into your Android or iPhone, so you can browse the web and stay cool as the TSA line you’re stuck in slowly inches forward.

• Apple’s most important contribution over the past 50 years isn’t what you expect

  Wednesday, April 1, marks 50 years since Apple was founded. Over the next week, you’ll no doubt see countless articles examining the company’s influence, with many likely focusing on which single Apple product had the most consequential impact on the tech industry and society as a whole. To be sure, there are myriad options to choose from, most notably, the original Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone.

  Yet to me, Apple’s most important contribution over the past fifty years isn’t a physical product. Rather, it’s a policy—one asserting that privacy is a fundamental human right, and, to protect that right, products must be designed with privacy in mind.

  It’s a policy that is more important today than ever.

  Apple makes a seismic shift

  Whether you realize it or not, you are the most important product sold by many of the largest companies in existence. Sure, Google might sell ads, but those ads are only valuable to businesses because of the amount of data that the search giant has on you, which allows those ads to be targeted more effectively. The same goes for Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snap, and more. These companies offer services in exchange for you giving up your privacy (either knowingly or, often, unknowingly), and then monetizing your data to rake in billions.

  For roughly the first 20 years of the public internet’s existence, most online companies collected privacy-invasive personal data as a central part of their business model. And as technology became more integrated into our daily lives— with the advent of smartphones packed with all kinds of new sensors and chips that could gather even more data about us—most tech companies only grew hungrier for our data.

  But then something changed. Around 15 years ago, the world’s largest tech company, Apple, began to embrace privacy. One of the first big privacy moves Apple made was to make its iMessage platform end-to-end encrypted, ensuring that no one but you and the recipient could read your messages.

  It’s hard to overstate how seismic a privacy shift this was. While end-to-end encryption had existed earlier in some enterprise messaging solutions, we ordinary everyday users had always been denied equivalent protection—until Apple decided to step in.

  Nearly every year since, Apple has continued innovating on the privacy front, implementing new measures to keep more of our data out of others’ hands. For example, the company was the first to block both third-party and first-party trackers in its web browser, shutting advertisers and publishers from tracking you around the web. It was also the first company to let users block the sharing of their precise location data with apps.

  Guarding user privacy, even from itself

  And keep in mind, Apple hasn’t just provided privacy mechanisms to prevent other companies from obtaining your personal data—it’s prevented itself from doing so as well. 

  For example, your iPhone and Apple Watch contain all sorts of health information about you—from how many calories you burn to how well you sleep. All this data is end-to-end encrypted, so not even Apple can read it.

  Or take Apple Pay, the company’s digital payment solution. Apple built its digital payments platform in a way that ensures it never has access to users’ personally identifiable purchasing history, despite the billions in revenue this data could generate for Apple.

  And as our data moved from our computer’s hard drives to the cloud, Apple was the first major tech giant (and currently, still the only one) that let users enable end-to-end encryption of their cloud storage by default, preventing even Apple from knowing what you store on its servers.

  The hardware factor

  To be sure, Apple’s business model was always different than most of its tech peers. It sold high-margin physical hardware, not services or ads, so it didn’t need to mine user data for profit.

  Indeed, cynics might say that Apple can embrace privacy in the way it does because it rakes in hundreds of billions a year through its hardware, so the company has the luxury of not having to mine user data for a profit. These critics would also, rightfully, point out that Apple benefits massively from marketing its strong privacy stance to help it sell even more hardware. 

  Apple’s ardent fans, on the other hand, would argue that Apple has embraced privacy to the degree it has for ideological reasons—that its executives actually do believe that privacy “is a fundamental human right” and thus believe that the company must use its power to protect privacy for the good of all.

  Yet for me, the reason doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that Apple does embrace privacy—and does so loudly. Apple is one of the most successful (and now oldest) tech companies in the world. The industry pays attention to what it does. So do consumers. And Apple’s industry competitors know that if their customers have friends who use Apple products and constantly boast about those products’ privacy protections, their own users will come to expect the same privacy protections—or else they may jump ship. 

  How Apple can lead in the age of AI

  Indeed, several years ago, Apple’s software chief, Craig Federighi, conceded to me that Apple’s stance likely plays an important role in advancing privacy industry-wide.

  “I think history has shown that we can move the industry in really meaningful ways,” Federighi told me in 2021. “And certainly, sometimes others come along slowly or reluctantly. But ultimately, when customers become aware of what they should expect, what they can expect, what is possible once they are made aware that the deal they thought they had to make—that actually, that’s not a deal they have to make—then the whole industry has to react to offer customers what they now realize they want and demand.” 

  Today, fifty years after Apple was founded, and with potentially invasive technology now deeply embedded in every aspect of our lives, it’s more important than ever to uphold the expectation that privacy is a fundamental human right. This is especially true in the new era of artificial intelligence we find ourselves in—an era in which AI companies are even hungrier for our data than the adtech giants of the past, making the risk to our privacy even greater, too.

  Apple’s privacy ethos stands to continue to set the company apart—and make society better—in the AI age. If the company’s policy of designing products around privacy can not only continue to affect the development of its own artificial intelligence products, but also the development of its competitors’ AI products in users’ favor, then there is no doubt in my mind that Apple’s most significant contribution in the next fifty years will be the same as its first fifty years. And that is something we will all benefit from.

• Women aren’t opting out of work. Workplaces are pushing them out

  Companies often assume that when mid-career women step back from leadership tracks, their ambition has faded. Our research suggests something else is happening.

  The real pressure point is caregiving strain. Caregiver strain is the cognitive, emotional, and logistical burden of coordinating care for children, parents, or other dependents—and our research found it was the most powerful predictor of workforce exit.

  Unlike other pressures, caregiving strain does not shut off when the workday begins: kids get sick, elderly relatives have bad falls around the clock. Yet most workplaces continue to treat it as a private matter that “doesn’t clock in” alongside paid work rather than a central driver of workplace outcomes.

  In 2025, we conducted a national survey of 690 U.S. employees (354 men and 360 women). While both men and women caregivers reported similar levels of caregiving strain, women were more likely than men to report long-term unpaid caregiving responsibilities (83% to 72%), and thus were disproportionately shouldering more caregiving strain. Moreover, we found that caregiving strain, not ambition or seniority, was the strongest predictor of reporting burnout and exit consideration.

  This was especially true  for women in mid-level roles (managers, senior managers, and directors). Higher levels of caregiving strain was most strongly linked to increased burnout and a higher likelihood of leaving the workforce.

  At this stage, job performance expectations are high, roles carry greater responsibility, and advancement depends increasingly on sustained visibility, availability, and informal networking. At the same time, caregiving demands tend to intensify—children require more complex support, elder care becomes more common, and financial and household coordination grows more demanding.

  The result is a structural squeeze when escalating workplace expectations collide with intensifying caregiving demands. 

  Rethinking the “Missing Middle”

  Organizations often misinterpret the mid-career gap as a lack of motivation or ambition, often assuming women lose momentum and become less committed over time. While there is near equal representation at the entry level, women only represent 39% of mid-level roles (senior managers and directors). 

  However, in 2025, the same period in which women were widely described as disengaging from traditional employment, women’s participation in entrepreneurship and self-employment increased. This does not signal declining ambition. 

  Rather, companies are losing high-performing women. This comes at a cost.  Companies with more gender diversity have a 39% greater likelihood of financially outperforming and 73% increase in better decision making capabilities. If organizations want to retain their future leaders, flexibility, peer support, fair pay, representation, and sponsorship are not optional benefits. They are core systems of workforce sustainability.

  That means rethinking how work is structured. In practice, this means rewarding productivity over constant visibility, building formal sponsorship structures, and expanding flexible work arrangements (e.g., hybrid schedules, remote work options, and caregiver-responsive flexibility).

  The payoff is clear: 87% of employees report higher productivity in flexible arrangements, and companies that offer flexibility see higher engagement, lower turnover, and 1.7x faster revenue growth than those enforcing strict in-office mandates.

  For companies, there is a clear takeaway: talent is not disappearing but being reallocated to structures that are more compatible with the realities of modern work and care. Mid-level roles serve as the pipeline to senior leadership, yet they are also the stage when caregiving strain often peaks.

  When caregiving strain becomes the strongest driver of burnout and exit consideration, organizations need to address it as a structural workforce challenge instead of a private one. Only then will they be able to keep experienced, high-performing women.

• Your tax refund could be delayed—and the IRS says you need to act fast

  Tax refunds are typically a welcomed reprieve for millions of Americans facing challenging financial times. While many tax filers are set to receive higher refunds this year, around 1.4 million Americans who typically receive paper refund checks may have to wait longer for their refunds because the federal government has moved to phase out the paper check option.

  The deadline to file your taxes is April 15. But some filers may have to wait six to 10 weeks longer to see their refunds if they didn’t provide direct deposit information on their tax returns this year. The IRS is sending notices about the extended wait time to those taxpayers and the actions they need to take in order to avoid such a delay.

  The CP53E notice explains that filers should add or update their bank account information on their online account with the IRS. It also said filers have 30 days to do so after receiving the notice. “If you don’t respond to the notice, we will issue a paper check after 6 weeks. For updates on your refund status, visit the “Where’s My Refund?” section on the irs.gov site, the notice explained.

  While most filers receive their refunds electronically, many still opt for paper checks. According to the IRS, about 7% of taxpayers still receive their refunds by mail. The National Taxpayer Advocate reported that around 10 million taxpayers received paper checks last year. However, the federal government has argued that paper checks are more vulnerable to fraud, slower to process, and more expensive to issue than electronic payouts. 

  In an executive order last year, President Donald Trump mandated that federal payments be issued electronically starting in October 2025. “The continued use of paper-based payments by the federal government, including checks and money orders, flowing into and out of the United States General Fund, which might be thought of as America’s bank account, imposes unnecessary costs, delays, and risks of fraud, lost payments, theft, and inefficiencies,” the order said. 

  It continued: “Mail theft complaints have increased substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic.” It also asserted that digitizing paper records cost taxpayers “over $657 million in fiscal year 2024 alone.”

  Still, some lawmakers are concerned about how the refund delays will impact Americans who depend on the payments. House Ways and Means Committee Democrats sent a second letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an effort to get answers for affected filers. The letter explained that there were discrepancies between the notice that filers received about delays and an altered version of the notice that lawmakers received.

  “Our first and foremost concern is that taxpayers could face a 10-week wait for their paper refunds,” the letter explained, per a press release. “This is not clearly stated on the notice. Nor does it warn taxpayers that a paper check could take another six weeks beyond the 30 days given to respond.”

  Fast Company reached out to the Treasury Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.

• Your job isn’t disappearing—it’s shapeshifting

  I talk to a lot of people who are quietly terrified about their careers right now, wondering if the thing they spent 15 years getting good at is about to become irrelevant. The kind of fear where you smile through another LinkedIn post about AI productivity gains and feel your stomach drop.

  I get it. I build AI systems and agents for enterprise clients—and for myself. I watch these tools get more capable every week. And the narrative everywhere, from VCs, from CEOs, from the breathless tech press, is that your job is going to be automated. That you’re going to be replaced. That AI is coming for your job, and you should be very, very worried.

  I think that narrative is mostly wrong. Not because AI isn’t transforming work—it absolutely is. But because it’s answering the wrong question. The question isn’t whether your job will exist in 5 years. It’s what your job will look like.

  JOBS DON’T VANISH, THEY MUTATE

  Here’s what’s actually happening when you look past the panic. A Harvard Business School studyanalyzing nearly all U.S. job postings from 2019 through 2025 found that while postings for repetitive, automatable roles dropped 13%, demand for jobs requiring analytical, technical, or creative work grew 20%. The skills required within those roles are shifting fast—but the roles themselves aren’t disappearing. They’re morphing.

  PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analyzed almost a billion job ads across six continents, found something that should make us all feel better: Wages are rising twice as fast in industries exposed the most to AI compared to those that are the least exposed. Not falling. Rising. Even in highly automatable roles, workers with AI skills are commanding a significant wage premium. The people who figured out how to work alongside the technology aren’t getting replaced. They’re getting paid more.

  Vanguard’s chief economist projects that over 60% of occupations—nurses, teachers, engineers, HR managers, insurance agents—will benefit from AI as an augmentation tool, not be eliminated by it. The analogy he uses is the personal computer: It didn’t kill jobs so much as it let people focus on higher-value work. We’re in a version of that transition, just moving faster.

  THE PANIC ISN’T USEFUL, THE CURIOSITY IS

  Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Some roles are getting gutted. Data entry. Basic customer service. Routine legal research. Rote translation. If your entire job is a task that a machine can now do faster, cheaper, and without complaining about the coffee—yes, that role is in trouble.

  But most jobs aren’t one task. They’re bundles of tasks. A software developer writes code, but also designs systems, mentors juniors, navigates office politics, and argues with product managers about scope. AI can now handle a chunk of the code-writing. That doesn’t eliminate the developer; it shifts the balance of what’s valuable in the role. As one thorough analysis put it, when AI automates one task in a job bundle, the job changes. It doesn’t vanish.

  The people who are going to thrive in this aren’t the ones with the best credentials or the most experience. They’re the ones who are curious enough to ask: What does my job look like when AI handles the repetitive parts? What’s left? What becomes more valuable? And—critically—am I building those skills now, am I building toward that reality, or am I just hoping the wave doesn’t reach me?

  THE TRANSITION IS THE HARD PART

  The destination is probably fine. The journey is rough. A Pearson study presented at Davos this year found that the economic promise of AI—up to $6.6 trillion added to the U.S. economy by 2034—only materializes if employers pair the technology with actual training. And right now, most aren’t. Only 16% of workers had what Forrester considers high “AI readiness” in 2025. Companies are buying the tools and skipping the part where they teach anyone how to use them.

  Meanwhile, 59% of companies admit they’re framing ordinary cost-cutting as “AI-driven layoffs” because it sounds better to investors. The real story is messier than the headlines. Some of these cuts are genuine automation. Some are just budget trimming in a tech-company trench coat.

  The uncomfortable truth is that we’re in a transition period where the old version of your job is fading and the new version hasn’t fully arrived yet. That’s genuinely disorienting. It’s also—if you’re honest about it—an opportunity to create a new role for yourself that doesn’t come along very often.

  THE ADVANTAGE GOES TO THE CURIOUS

  Every major technology shift has had this same shape: panic, then adaptation, then a new normal where the people who moved early have an outsized advantage. The internet didn’t eliminate retail; it reshaped it. Mobile didn’t kill desktop software; it created entirely new categories. AI is doing the same thing to knowledge work, just faster.

  The winners won’t be the people who learned to code in a weekend or got an AI certification. They’ll be the ones who got genuinely curious about how their specific expertise combines with these tools to create something new. The marketing director who figures out that AI handles the data analysis while she focuses on creative strategy. The lawyer who uses AI for research and spends the freed-up time on the judgment calls that actually win cases. The project manager who stops tracking status updates and starts doing the human work of alignment and persuasion.

  Your job is shapeshifting. The question is whether you’re going to watch it happen or get in there and shape it yourself. The window for that is open right now. I wouldn’t wait.

  Lindsey Witmer Collins is CEO and founder of WLCM.ai and ScribblyBooks.com.

• ‘Jeopardy!’ just got a YouTube makeover—and it’s nothing like the TV version

  Jeopardy!may have been born on over-the-air television, but it’s determined not to live and die there.

  The trivia game show’s first iteration premiered on NBC daytime television more than 60 years ago in 1964. Its modern syndicated version launched in 1984, and 41 seasons later, it’s still going strong, garnering 7.5 million viewers for its latest season premiere and maintaining its title as the most-watched syndicated series on TV.

  Though Jeopardy! made it through the cultural transition to streaming largely unscathed, its producers are still finding ways to innovate its format and bring the show to new platforms. That includes the newly announced Jeopardy! YouTube Edition, which will feature YouTube personalities playing for charity.

  The new show will premiere on Tuesday, March 31, at 9 p.m. ET, with a livestream on the Jeopardy!YouTube channel, hosted by Ken Jennings.

  What makes the YouTube Edition different from regular Jeopardy!? It will still use Jeopardy!’s signature answer-with-a-question format, but with trivia categories inspired by YouTube, including viral trends and the platform’s history. YouTube influencers and talent will also appear on the show to provide custom video clues.

  “From Sabrina Carpenter’s greatest hits to DIY homebuilding, there is so much to learn on YouTube, but who has learned the most?” Jennings teased in a promo for the series. He also introduced the three “internet icons” competing in the premiere episode.

  There’s Brennan Lee Mulligan, the host of tabletop gaming series Dimension 20, which has 1.11 million YouTube subscribers; drag queen Monét X Change, a star of reality TV shows including RuPaul’s Drag Race and The Traitors and a YouTube creator with 180,000 subscribers; and pop singer Rebecca Black, whose much-memed music video for 2011’s “Friday” boasts 179 million views on the platform. Each contestant will compete to win money for a charity of their choice, with Monét playing for GLAAD, the LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization, and both Mulligan and Black playing for the Trevor Project, the suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth.

  

  The relaunch of Jeopardy!’s YouTube channel is a collaboration between Sony Pictures Television, creative agency We Are Social, and YouTube itself. Katie McDonald, head of strategy at We Are Social, said in a press release that the new show aims to capture a younger audience’s attention.

  “Working off the insight that Gen Z is currently chasing knowledge and substance on social, and knowing that YouTube is the OG home for learning and long-form, we felt there was no better flex than centering Jeopardy! as the cultural standard for testing their smarts,” McDonald said. “It’s the perfect example of two iconic brands turning an audience truth into an idea worth talking about that is both authentic to their DNA and drives culture.”

  Jeopardy!has already found success on social platforms like TikTok, where short clips from the series routinely get tens of thousands of views and Jeopardy!’s account has garnered a cumulative 51.9 million likes. Leaning into the series’ untapped digital-first potential only makes sense.

  “Blurring the lines between a traditional broadcast format and a new era of digital consumption results in something that’s fun for both new fans and old ones,” said Kevin Allocca, global head of culture and trends at YouTube. “Seeing Jeopardy! intersect with YouTube creators underscores how the two can amplify each other in ways that feel surprisingly authentic and are a testament to the enduring relevance of these formats.”

  Jeopardy! YouTube Edition is far from the franchise’s first spin-off. There was Rock & Roll Jeopardy! and Jep!(an edition for children) at the turn of the century, and Sports Jeopardy! in the mid-2010s. Pop Culture Jeopardy!, the show’s most recent variation, aired its first season in 2024 on Amazon Prime Video, with a second season now in production for Netflix. 

  But Jeopardy! YouTube Edition is the first franchise entry to live entirely online. That doesn’t mean the show is leaving behind its television audience—just that it’s courting a new one. 

  “Jeopardy!is one of the most successful and enduring brands in television history, with decades of cultural relevance and a loyal audience,” said Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television. “As we bring our YouTube strategy to life, we’re incredibly excited to build on that legacy while connecting with new audiences in a way that feels fresh, interactive, and native to the platform.”