Social media platform TikTok is laying off hundreds of employees from its global workforce, including a large number of staff in Malaysia, the company said on Friday, as it shifts focus towards a greater use of AI in content moderation.
Two sources familiar with the matter earlier told Reuters that more than 700 jobs were slashed in Malaysia. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, later clarified that less than 500 employees in the country were affected.
The employees, most of whom were involved in the firm’s content moderation operations, were informed of their dismissal by email late Wednesday, the sources said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to media.
In response to Reuters’ queries, TikTok confirmed the layoffs and said that several hundred employees were expected to be impacted globally as part of a wider plan to improve its moderation operations.
TikTok employs a mix of automated detection and human moderators to review content posted on the site.
ByteDance has over 110,000 employees in more than 200 cities globally, according to the company website.
The technology firm is also planning more retrenchments next month as it looks to consolidate some of its regional operations, one of the sources said.
“We’re making these changes as part of our ongoing efforts to further strengthen our global operating model for content moderation,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
The company expects to invest $2 billion globally in trust and safety this year and will continue to improve efficiency, with 80% of guidelines-violating content now removed by automated technologies, the spokesperson said.
The layoffs were first reported by business portal The Malaysian Reserve on Thursday.
The job cuts occur as global technology firms face greater regulatory pressure in Malaysia, where the government has asked social media operators to apply for an operating licence by January as part of an effort to combat cyber offences.
Malaysia reported a sharp increase in harmful social media content earlier this year and urged firms, including TikTok, to step up monitoring on their platforms.
There are certain social media rules we can all agree on: Ghosting a conversation is impolite, and replying “k” to a text is the equivalent of a backhand slap (violent, wrong, and rude). But what about the rest of the rules? When can we really remind someone of our old Venmo request? What happens when someone tries to flirt with you on LinkedIn?
Fortunately, terminally online writers Delia Cai and Steffi Cao are here to answer all your digital quandaries, big or small. Welcome to Fast Company’s advice column,Posting Playbook. This week, Delia Cai tackles your biggest questions about oversharing in the group chat—and maybe texting too much in general.
My college friends and I have had a group chat for years—most of us live far away from each other, so it’s what keeps us close. But lately, one of the friends (who I’m not as tight with, to be honest) has been dumping these multiple paragraphs-long rants about her life in the chat, and it’s honestly killing the vibe because the rest of us don’t know what to say. I’m annoyed that she’s basically using our chat as her personal emotional support hotline. Does that make me a bad friend? Is there a way to ask her to stop oversharing there?
I feel your pain. You’re not a bad friend! You’re frustrated with her but also with the limitations of digital communication, as much of a lifeline as it is for long-distance friendships. Group chats are particularly delicate little ecosystems because they lack context clues and nonverbal cues that usually help everyone gauge the social subtext—i.e., if you were all out together at happy hour celebrating someone’s birthday, it’s less likely that your friend would suddenly start ranting out of nowhere, for example.
In general, a group chat exists in a weird suspended zone of manners, where no one can really read anyone’s moods, and the convenience of having 24/7 access to our loved ones brings with it quite a few inconveniences as well. What I’m saying is that it’s very normal to be annoyed when someone doesn’t seem to understand the “rules” of the group chat because they are so rarely, if ever, articulated; each chat has its own set of customs and expectations that can only become defined with time. It’s more of an anarchy in there than a democracy!
It sounds like your friend is terribly lonely. A group chat can be a reliable place to find emotional support, but it shouldn’t be anyone’s only source of solace, especially because the medium kind of dilutes the sense of responsibility amongst members of the group (i.e., everyone assumes someone else will respond first, which can lead to a very awkward silence). Ideally, whichever group chat member is closest to her could reach and plan either a phone call or a one-on-one hang to better offer her the support she clearly needs. But you also don’t have to personally be on bestie terms to simply text her separately and express concern. Something like, “Hey, I’ve noticed you’ve been having a tough time lately. Do you want to talk about it?” Everyone goes through a rough patch now and then, and they usually just want to feel seen and heard. You don’t have to sign yourself up to be her de facto therapist, but it is part of any friendship contract to at least check in once when someone’s clearly unhappy.
Whatever you do, do not start a separate chat to discuss this friend with everyone else. That’s the equivalent of talking behind her back, and if you are all really friends—even if you’re not personally close to her—that would be quite a betrayal. The exception to this rule is if you genuinely have cause for concern over her behavior; if she’s threatening to hurt herself, for example, you absolutely want all hands on deck to figure out how to best help your friend.
Listen, I love my partner. I really do. But she’s been getting on my nerves lately because she’s constantly texting me when I’m at work. Sometimes she gets mad if I haven’t responded within the hour. I think her job is just less demanding than mine, but I simply can’t be on my phone all day, nor do I really want to! I genuinely like my job, and I can’t always focus when I have to keep an eye out for her texts. How do I get her to stop doing this?
Honestly, this sounds very addressable. You and your partner just need to have a discussion about boundaries by way of texting preferences. She might be the kind of person who simply likes to express her affection through a steady supply of memes and links and chitchat, and you just have to tell her that you can’t give her your full attention when you’re at work.
There’s definitely a compromise to be made here: maybe you can carve out a 15-minute window during lunch where you can tell each other about your day so far. Or you might even say that you’d rather catch up properly at the end of the day—perhaps even with a phone call, because you’d prefer to hear her voice. Just make sure you frame the discussion as a question of “What do we both need in terms of space and validation during the day, and how do we come up with a solution that makes us both happy?” versus “Can you stop texting me?” The wondrous instantaneity of iMessage and group chats make us feel like we should always be constantly available to one another, but that isn’t true, not even for the happiest of couples. If she can’t respect that there are going to be vast stretches of the day when you can’t text back, you may need to have a bigger discussion about the relationship and your expectations.
With hurricanes dominating the headlines in recent weeks, and for good reason, homeowners and potential buyers are likely thinking more carefully about the threats that extreme weather and climate change pose to their homes.
Consider this: Hurricane Helene, which wrought widespread damage along the Gulf Coast and parts of Appalachia in early October, is estimated to have caused as much as $47.5 billion in damage. Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida this week, could cause as much as $180 billion in damage, per early estimates.
Given our changing world, Zillow is adding climate risk scores for every for-sale listing on its platform.
First Street, a climate risk financial modeling company, provides the company’s climate risk data, which will help provide insight into extreme climate risks posed by floods, wildfires, wind, heat, and air quality. According to a company press release, listings will also include maps and insurance requirements.
“Climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions,” said Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow, in comments included in the release. “Healthy markets are ones where buyers and sellers have access to all relevant data for their decisions. As concerns about flooding, extreme temperatures, and wildfires grow—and what that might mean for future insurance costs—this tool also helps agents inform their clients in discussing climate risk, insurance, and long-term affordability.”
Research shows that homebuyers can and will also act on climate risk data. A Redfin survey conducted in October 2022 found that nearly two-thirds of potential homebuyers were “reluctant to relocate to a place at risk of natural disasters, extreme temperatures, and/or rising sea levels.” Further, 40% of buyers and sellers pointed at climate risks as a role in a decision to move.
Further, another survey published in September 2023 by Zillow found that 83% of home shoppers considered climate risks when looking at homes. Buyers in the Northeast and West were most likely to consider at least one climate risk, and younger buyers—specifically, members of the millennial and Gen Z generations—were “most likely to consider a climate risk when determining where to shop for a home.”
This is the season of patriotism in Latin America as many countries commemorate their independence from colonial powers. From July to September, public plazas in countries from Mexico to Honduras and Chile fill with crowds dressed and painted in national colors, parades feature participants costumed as independence heroes, fireworks fill the skies, and schoolchildren reenact historical battles.
Beneath these nationalist displays ripples an uneasy tide: the colonial legacies that still tie the Americas to their Iberian conquerors. And as the calendar turns to October, another holiday highlights similar tensions—Columbus Day.
Since 1937, the U.S. has observed the holiday on the second Monday of the month, commemorating the explorer’s 1492 arrival in the New World. It remains a federal holiday, even as many states and cities rename it “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” rejecting Christopher Columbus as a symbol of imperialism.
Most Latin Americans, meanwhile, know Oct. 12 as “Día de la Raza,” or Day of the Race, which also celebrates Columbus’ arrival in the New World and the tide of Iberian conquistadors that followed. But commemorating the event is all the more charged in these countries, home to the Spanish Empire’s most lucrative territorial assets and sweeping spiritual conquests. Days before taking office in September 2024, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated her predecessor’s demand that the king of Spain apologize for the genocide and exploitation of the conquest 500 years ago.
As a historian of Latin America, I’ve paid attention to the ways calendars signal a nation’s “official” values and how countries wrestle with these holidays’ meanings.
This moment of contact began Mexico’s 500-year transformation into a “mestizo” nation: a hybrid identity with largely European and Indigenous roots. During the colonial period, racial differences were codified into law, and those with “pure” Spanish bloodlines enjoyed legal privileges over the racially mixed categories that fell below them. The 19th century ushered in independence from Spain and liberal ideas that promoted racial equality—in principle—but in reality, European influence prevailed.
It was Spain that first proposed the Día de la Raza, held on Oct. 12, 1892, to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas—implying a celebration of Spain’s contributions to the mestizo racial mixture.
The celebration was part of a bid to fortify nationalism in Spain, as the waning colonial power continued its retreat from the hemisphere it controlled for the better part of four centuries. Spain also hoped to export the invented holiday to the Americas, strengthening trans-Atlantic cultural affinities tested by the United States’ growing sway. Across the Americas, Día de la Raza came to be synonymous with celebrating European influence.
In Mexico, the 1892 commemoration empowered members of the political elite who promoted European investments and culture as the model for modernizing the country. They used the occasion to extol the civilizing influence of the “madre patria,” or motherland, justifying the conquest and colonialism as a period of benevolent rule.
Mestizo nationalism
Only a few years later, however, the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War swept the last vestiges of Spanish empire from the hemisphere. Spain’s exit made way for dual—and dueling—phenomena: rising patriotic spirit in Latin American countries, even amid increasing economic pressure and cultural influence from the U.S.
The 1910 Mexican Revolution ignited mestizo nationalism, which soon extended to other countries. In 1930s Nicaragua, Augusto Sandino started a revolution to oust the occupying U.S. Marines while calling for the unification of the “Indo-Hispanic Race.” Meanwhile, Peruvian intellectual José Mariátegui envisioned a modern nation built upon the ideals of a collective, reciprocal society, modeled by the Incan ayllu system. And in Mexico, beauty pageants celebrating native features gained popularity among the social classes accustomed to perusing department stores for Parisian imports.
Yet a tendency to emphasize Spanish cultural ancestry rather than Indigenous ones persisted. In the late 1930s, for example, October issues of Mexican children’s magazine Palomilla celebrated Columbus’ arrival as a heroic entry that provided the region with a common language and religion.
Pan American Day
Meanwhile, the U.S viewed Pan-Hispanic sentiments as a threat: Spanish economic goals, cloaked in racial and cultural solidarity.
The Pan American Union, an inter-American organization headquartered in Washington, saw the new date as an opportunity to forge common traditions across the hemisphere. It vigorously promoted Pan American Day celebrations, primarily among schoolchildren, exhorting teachers to implement games, puzzles, pageants and songs created in Pan American Union offices.
The holiday met enthusiastic reception in the United States. Midwesterners donned sombreros for parades, and Spanish language clubs in California hosted pageants celebrating the flags of American nations.
But Latin American commemoration was tepid at best. The Organization of American States, the successor to the Pan American Union, still recognizes Pan American Day. However, it never gained traction in Latin America and faded in the U.S. during World War II.
Recent shift
Latin America’s ambivalence toward holidays to commemorate the colonizers has taken a turn since 1992. The 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival corresponded with yet another form of colonialism, in many Latin Americans’ eyes, as a new wave of multinational corporations colluded with heads of state to tap the continent’s oil, lithium, water and avocados.
Activists used the commemoration to call attention to lingering economic, social, racial and cultural inequities. In particular, the anniversary inspired Indigenous rights movements—some of which commemorated an “anti-quincentenary” to celebrate “500 years of resistance.”
In some places, renaming the holiday has drawn attention to Indigenous rights and culture. Bolivians, for example, draped a statue of a European monarch in a traditional “aguayo” garment, transforming her into an Indigenous woman. However, critics suggest that removing the holiday’s reference to the colonizers erases an important reminder of the conquest and its painful legacy.
As in the U.S., monuments to colonizers are coming down—including the monument to Columbus that occupied a conspicuous spot on La Reforma, one of Mexico City’s most-traversed thoroughfares.
In its place is a new installation: a purple silhouette of a girl with her fist raised, in honor of Latin America’s women activists. She heralds a new era of statues lining La Reforma, and heroes for the future—not mired in the colonial legacies of the past.
Tesla introduced the long-awaited Cybercab Robotaxi at its flashy We, Robot event on October 10—which was aptly set in Hollywood, California.
The two-scissor-door, two-passenger vehicle features no steering wheel or pedals for fully autonomous use, and it was announced along with a 20-person shuttle called the Robovan. According to Musk, they will use full autonomous driving to take you to your destination, after you hail them with a yet-to-be disclosed app.
Musk said that he wants to reshape urban spaces, transforming parking lots into parks. On paper, it’s a lovely vision of a future defined by sleek, autonomous vehicles and urban renewal that will start in 2026, when the first vehicles will arrive to get hailed by customers that will get magically driven everywhere, he claimed.
To skeptics, it’s a repeat of Tesla’s hyperbole. “Musk’s rhetoric at We Robot is merely a tired repetition of the same broken promises he made five years ago at Autonomy Day,” as autonomous vehicle safety advocate Dan O’Dowd, founder of safety advocacy group The Dawn Project, put it to Fast Company in an email.
[Rendering: Tesla]
The Cybercab and the Robovan’s design
The Tesla Cybercab we saw was an orange two-door compact vehicle with a chunky back that vaguely reminds me of any generic European or Japanese or Chinese compact car (or even the Model 3 and Model Y)—but its limited capacity means only you and a single friend or family member could ever travel together. He wants to bring it to market by 2026 at a price below $30,000, charging end users 20 cents a mile. The Robovan looks like a train diesel engine from the art deco era, and is designed to carry up to 20 passengers.
The vehicle designs are certainly feasible. But anyone who has followed Tesla’s story closely can’t help but ask: Will this really happen in 2026?
[Rendering: Tesla]
Is 2026 possible?
First in the list of potential problems is the announced delivery date. All of Musk’s products—cars or rockets—have been delayed multiple times, by years, and then fell short on execution one way or another. The Cybertruck was promised in 2019, initially set for delivery in 2021, then slated to begin manufacturing in 2023, reaching buyers in November 2023.
It seems especially hard to buy when you consider the current dismal state of full autonomous driving in Tesla’s cars. As Reuters reports, there are plenty of experts who believe Tesla’s AI is lagging behind the competition, with regulatory and technical hurdles making Musk’s timeline appear unrealistic. “Tesla software is at least years behind where Waymo is. That’s the hard part. No flashy vehicle design is going to change that,” Matthew Wansley, professor at New York’s Cardozo School of Law, told the news agency.
So while Musk says that the Cybercab will make driving 10 times safer, claiming that the fully autonomous systems would vastly improve safety and affordability, some experts disagree. “After over 10 years of Full Self-Driving development, Tesla is limited to a 20-30 acre geofenced 5mph 1950s Disneyland ride on a preprogrammed, pre-mapped and heavily rehearsed route with no traffic and no pedestrians,” O’Dowd says.
Backed by Alphabet, Waymo has achieved considerable success in the autonomous driving space, with its vehicles capable of traveling 17,311 miles between critical disengagements (industry parlance for when a human has to take the wheel)—a stark contrast to Tesla’s latest FSD version, which manages only 71 miles. This is even a worse data point when you consider that, with all their experience and miles, Waymo still has serious problems with its driving software.
The hundreds of daily open-and-closings of the motorized scissor doors will likely wear their mechanism down fast, even if they are well-built. Imagine how these door will react to the abuse it will receive in a city like New York, Mexico City, or Rome.
Which brings us to the next potential failure point: The Cybercab’s price, which Musk promised will cost “under $30,000.” Tesla recently cancelled its plans to introduce a cheaper car to compete with the cheaper EVs from brands in Asia, Europea, and the U.S. Even if they build it over an existing platform like a Model 3? It feels really hard to believe. Again, if anything, Tesla has had a story of releasing at higher prices than what they announced originally. The latest example was the Cybertruck, which costs about double its originally announced tag: It went from $39,900 back in 2019 to $60,990 at release, and now, the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck starts at $81,895.
[Rendering: Tesla]
Be skeptical
Quite simply, it’s hard to imagine Tesla’s latest vision arriving in 2026. As Ramesh Poola, cochief investment officer at Creative Planning, told Reuters, “Obviously, we were looking for more details on what exactly his future plans are going to be.” Sure. But the public and the investors have been left wondering if this vision is backed by much more than a premature spectacle.
The very concept of a fully autonomous vehicle is one that Musk has been promising for nearly a decade. Originally claimed to be arriving in 2017, that date has been pushed back repeatedly, year after year. We are now looking at a potential launch in 2025, according to Musk’s latest statement. As O’Dowd writes, “Elon Musk has claimed that Tesla will solve FSD ‘this year,’ every year since 2014, most recently in July. Now he has announced that FSD has been delayed another year until the end of 2025. This date will be delayed again next year as it has for each of the past 10 years.”
Fisher-Price is recalling more than 2 million infant swings due to safety concerns. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued the recall on the company’s Snuga Swings this week due to a risk of suffocation when infants use the swings.
The recall, which includes 21 models of the swing, comes after five deaths were reported between 2012 and 2022. The infants who died in the swings were all between the ages of three months and one year, CPSC said, noting that “most” of the infants were not restrained and that the swings had bedding materials added to them. The infants were all sleeping in the swings at the time of death.
The alert noted that infants should not sleep in infant swings. It also said that extra bedding materials “should never be added to it,” and even the headrest and body support insert “can increase the risk of suffocation.”
While the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has long-advised parents not to allow infants to fall asleep in infant swings, it’s not uncommon for parents who are looking for helpful products to get their babies to sleep to let them. Some even routinely rely on swings for nap time. A 2013 AAP warning noted that if a baby falls asleep in a swing (car seat or bouncy seat), a caregiver should “move the child to a firm sleep surface as soon as possible.”
Still, it can be confusing territory for tired parents, especially as some other Fisher-Price products, which closely resemble swings, were designed with nap time and bedtime in mind. The Rock’ N Play Sleeper, which gained popularity with families over claims that it helped soothe infants to sleep, was recalled after a Consumer Reports investigation linked the product to at least 32 deaths. AAP urged it to recall the device.
At the time, Dr. Rachel Moon, chair of the AAP Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), said in a recall demand, “We cannot put any more children’s lives at risk by keeping these dangerous products on the shelves. The Rock’ n Play inclined sleeper should be removed from the market immediately. It does not meet the AAP’s recommendations for a safe sleep environment for any baby.”
Moon added, “Infants should always sleep on their back, on a separate, flat, and firm sleep surface without any bumpers or bedding.
If you have one of the swings on the recall list, which can be found on CPSC’s website, CPSC advises customers who keep the swing to “immediately remove both the headrest (by cutting the tether) and the body support insert from the seat pad before continuing to use the swing.” It added that the brand will provide a $25 refund to those who “remove and destroy the headrest and body support insert.” How to do so can be found here.
7-Eleven is closing 444 of its “underperforming” convenience-store locations across North America, as a result of decreased traffic and slower sales, including cigarette purchases.
Reached by Fast Company, 7-Eleven declined to provide a list of locations that will be closing, but noted that the move is “aligned with our long-term growth strategy.”
“We made the decision to optimize a number of noncore assets that do not fit into our growth strategy,” the company said. “At the same time, we continue to open stores in areas where customers are looking for more convenience.”
The news comes a day after 7-Eleven’s parent company, Japanese convenience retailer Seven & i Holdings, cut earnings forecasts for the fiscal year ending in February 2025 and announced restructuring plans that would split the company into two businesses.
The Tokyo-based retailer, which earns a majority of its profit from 7-Eleven, plans to separate its core business (7-Eleven and select convenience stores and gas stations) from its less-profitable, sprawling portfolio of supermarkets, specialty stores, and businesses.
That spin-off would include Loft general goods stores, Akachan Honpo baby goods stores, and the operating company of Denny’s restaurants in Japan, and could eventually IPO, according to Bloomberg.
The restructuring plans and store closings are an attempt by Seven & i to reassure unhappy investors and stave off a takeover bid from Canadian retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard, owner of the Circle K brand of convenience stores.
In September, 7-Eleven’s parent company rejected an initial takeover offer of $14.86 per share. Couche-Tard recently increased that offer to $18.19 per share, or about $47 billion, which was a 20% increase, Bloomberg reported.
Shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Helene—which killed hundreds of people across the Southeast—Florida residents are now reeling from the impact of yet another deadly storm. Millions are still without power after Hurricane Milton made landfall this week, and at least 16 people have died with many more still missing.
As hurricanes and other natural disasters increase in frequency and intensity, they are also causing significant economic distress. Between 1980 and 2023, natural disasters have cost the U.S. economy about $2.6 trillion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In 2023 alone, there were 28 climate disasters with billion-dollar consequences. And now, Hurricane Helene has reportedly caused $34 billion worth of damage while Milton could add billions more to that figure.
These weather events have a notable impact on workers’ personal and professional lives, obviously. Some economists have said Hurricane Helene could lead businesses to cut 40,000 to 50,000 jobs in October. Other estimates suggest that up to 100,000 jobs could be compromised. Indeed, unemployment claims have already increased, in part due to recent disasters.
And perhaps most importantly, when employers and employees are not prepared for a natural disaster, lives are on the line: In Tennessee, workers at a plastics factory were expected to show up during Hurricane Helene. Witnesses say that workers were trapped as the facilityand nearby area flooded; at least three workers have been found dead and others are still missing.(The company in question, Impact Plastics, is currently under investigation by state authoritiesand has denied wrongdoing.)
It is vitally important for employers to preemptively prepare for natural disasters—especially as they become more commonplace, says Bruce Tracey, a professor of human resource management at Cornell University. Corporations, he says, are “members of communities too. They have a vested stake in how they’re affected by natural disasters [and] the economy.”
In Tracey’s experience, many companies do have some kind of response plan in place for natural disasters. But where there’s often a disconnect is how those plans are conveyed to workers, according to Tracey. “A lot of it is communicating with employees about: Look, heads up, there are going to be situations that are beyond our control that may force us to close our business,” he says. “In which case, let us tell you how we’re going to do our business.”
Beyond this high-level communication, it’s important for employers to share local resources. And companies can also reassure employees by promising to help them access emergency services in the aftermath of a disaster. Tracey has found that some companies go a step further and set aside emergency funds for employees to buy groceries and other essentials.
Employers’ emergency response plans should also be dynamic and evolve as needed over time. For instance, Tracey points out that many companies adjusted their emergency response protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the pandemic illustrated, every industry is different—and a solution that works for one organization, such as a company in which teams can work remotely, may not be feasible for another. Regardless, all leaders should make sure their organizations are prepared for weather events by preemptively and clearly sharing necessary information.
“Firms can have a lot of these great plans in place, but I find that unless you have very routinized means for making sure people are aware, it’s not always top of mind—and that’s where you get not the greatest response in the world,” he says. “If [a plan] is buried in a handbook somewhere, it’s probably not going to have any real utility.”
Employers have an even greater responsibility to prepare for emergencies when their facilities or offices are in areas that are especially prone to natural disasters, Tracey argues. “When you’re in communities, you’re part of that ecosystem,” he says. In some cases, that could mean thinking twice about building manufacturing sites in low-lying areas, for example. But as evidenced by the recent storms, even supposed “climate havens” are no longer spared the effects of natural disasters—which means all employers need to be on the alert, regardless of where they are based.
“I fear for those organizations that are not aware,” Tracey says. “There’s a lot of evidence that we need to take a lot more precautions and understand risk much more effectively than many organizations do right now.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says that Microsoft has done the AI industry a “tremendous disservice” by overhyping the capabilities of products like Copilot. Benioff argues that Agentforce, Salesforce’s new fleet of AI tools, is “what AI was meant to be.” Benioff has never been more excited in his career, confident that Agentforce will deliver a transformation on par with the cloud, mobile, social revolutions of the past.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Bob Safian, a former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
You’re coming off another Dreamforce, which, for those who aren’t familiar, is Salesforce’s annual gathering. I always think of it as somewhere between a business conference, an urban festival, and like a revival meeting. Are there any evocative moments for you personally from this year’s event?
Well, it was amazing. It was probably not only our best Dreamforce ever, but also our most important. Forty-five thousand people came to San Francisco. It was three amazing days. Incredible show with 1,500 sessions. About 20 million or 50 million people joined us online as well.
We’re doing a dozen or two dozen world tours over the next month or two because the message is so important. It wasn’t just our largest and best Dreamforce, but by far it was our most important Dreamforce.
A lot of the focus was on Agentforce, a new Salesforce tool to build and customize AI agents. I hope I’m describing that the right way. Clearly, you’re very excited about it.
I would just say I’ve never been more excited about anything at Salesforce, maybe in my career.
And not only would I say that’s true for me, but what we did at Dreamforce was let customers get their hands on and build their first agent. It’s extremely important because customers have been told things about enterprise AI, maybe AI overall, that are not true. They need to understand what is true, how it works, and what it can do for them.
Salesforce is probably the largest enterprise AI supplier in the world. We’ll do a couple trillion AI transactions this week alone with Einstein, but what we have built with Agentforce is very different, very unusual, and very exciting.
This is what AI was meant to be. Just yesterday, I was reading feedback from a customer who had just turned it on and they were like, “This must be witchcraft. This is crazy what’s happening with my customers now.” And I am really excited about this. I think this is going to change companies forever. I think it’s going to change software forever. And I think it’ll change Salesforce forever.
At the risk of poking the bear, how is Agentforce different from Microsoft’s Copilot?
Oh, God. Bob, you know you’re going there. Well, first of all, Bob, I think, unfortunately, I’ll just have to tell you, I think Microsoft has done a tremendous disservice to not only our whole industry but all of the AI research that has been done.
Because when you look at how Copilot has been sold to our customers, it’s disappointing. It doesn’t work, it spews data all over the floor, it doesn’t deliver value to customers. I haven’t found a customer who has had transformational work with Copilot.
And customers are so confused based on this Microsoft narrative that we have to let them get what we’ve been keep saying: get their hands in the soil because they need to see for themselves exactly what is possible, what is real, and how easy it is to get huge value from AI, how to make it low hallucinogenic, how to help them connect with their customers in new ways, raise revenues, augment employees.
But, yeah, it’s not Microsoft Copilot. Copilot is really the new Microsoft Clippy. I don’t know if you remember that, Bob, but it was not a huge success. I don’t think Copilot will be around. I don’t think customers will use it, and I think that we will see the transformation of enterprises with agents and Agentforce will be the number one supplier.
I think we’ll have more than a billion agents running from Salesforce within the next 12 months. Even at Dreamforce, I got 10,000 customers hands-on with Agentforce. This was very important to me. And, Bob, you’ve been in the industry a long time. You know you can have a vision for technology in a demo, and you can have customers, but you’ve got to put two and two together to get four.
I just wanted to train them and really get them in it. I’ve never really done it at a level of scale like that before. And, Bob, it worked out far better than I could have imagined. And I think that this agent revolution is real and as exciting as the cloud revolution was, the social revolution, the mobile revolution. It will provide a level of transformation that we’ve never seen.
You had an idea for what Agentforce could be. Was there a moment where you realized like, oh, this actually works? Like this does what we thought it would do.
I have a friend of mine, he’s the CTO of a very large medical company. And they’re one of the largest healthcare providers in the world.
And he called me, and he goes, “We’re using Agentforce, but we just shifted to Agentforce version two,” which we call Atlas. It has this new next-generation Atlas reasoning engine in it. “And something is happening, Marc. Agentforce is resolving more than 90 percent of all of our patient inquiries and scheduling needs. And now the vision is very clear.” Agentforce is going to, like, you’re going to say, “Hey, Agentforce, my leg is hurting, I need to schedule an MRI, I need to see my orthopedic surgeon, I need to get labs drawn,” and Agentforce is going to do all of these things. And then as you get the MRI or see the doctor or whatever, all these things, Agentforce is going to call you back and say, “Hey, how’d it go? Is everything okay? Are you taking your meds?’”
That is a level of capability that technology can now provide. And I think then as you move into other industries like media, financial services, travel, and entertainment, I mean, across the board. The ability to put these agents into place rapidly and get very high outcomes is going to be a huge shock to customers, and that’s why, as I said, I’m getting their hands in the soil. They need to get their hands on it, and it’s going to get turned on live October 25th for all of our customers. So those hundreds of thousands of customers who will begin to get access to this technology, I expect to see tremendous velocity in the number of companies that are going to deploy these agents.
Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that I should have?
Look, I think that this is an incredible moment. This is a moment where the world is going to change. We may have heard from these AI priest and priestesses of these LLM model companies and Microsoft and others about AI is now curing cancer, and AI is curing climate change, and we all have to plug into these nuclear power plants to get these data centers. None of this is true.
It’s all fantasy land. What is true is that the current version of AI is going to help us run our businesses and be more productive, augment our employees, improve our margins, increase our revenues, and improve our customer relationships and our business KPIs.
That’s what’s exciting about AI today. We need to move the Fantasyland folks to the side and say, “Let me actually show you that we are in a moment that is truly incredible.”
Entertainment reporters tend to quickly learn a lot of harsh truths when they start interviewing celebrities for a living. For instance, when a glamorous movie star says, “That’s a great question,” it’s often meant less as a compliment on the reporter’s inquisitive mind than as a way to vamp for time while thinking of a tactful evasion.
The harshest truth of all, though, might be the most obvious: that a reporter’s big, exciting interview with a telegenic zillionaire is actually just a pesky part of that person’s day—one they might be quietly gritting their teeth to get through.
An entertainment reporter will be made keenly aware of that reality in some interviews more than others, but being a professional means trying not to take it personally. That’s the job.
Recently, interviewer Kjersti Flaa made waves by recirculating old footage on TikTok of an uncomfortable interview with Anne Hathaway. In it, the star is promoting her Oscar-winning turn in 2012’s Les Misérables with short, clipped answers and an unamused expression. Though it’s difficult to watch, the video has racked up 10.4 million views in four days. It provoked a strong enough negative reaction that Hathaway has since sent a personal apology to Flaa.
But the backlash seems to have this situation backward. Ultimately, it’s more unprofessional for a reporter to behave the way Flaa does in the video—not to mention attempt to shame the star for it years later—than it was for Hathaway to give an ungenerous interview in the first place.
This didn’t go as planned. 🫣Watch my lateat episode on YouTube where i go down memory lane showing another cringe interview. Link in bio ⬆️ #annehathaway#foryou#celebritytiktok
The clip begins with Flaa asking Hathaway if she can sing her questions and further asking if the star wouldn’t mind singing her answers back. Hathaway’s response, unsurprisingly, is: “Well, I won’t be doing that but you’re more than welcome to sing.”
The rest of the 30-second clip shows the actress answering questions about life in 19th-century France and whether she remembers her first crush—both with curt noes. Whether Hathaway answered the several minutes’ worth of other questions more thoughtfully remains unclear for now.
What is absolutely unambiguous, however, is that this is a terrible way for any interviewer to start an interview.
Les Miz might be a musical, but did that give Flaa the right to ask Hathaway to sing for her supper? At best, it’s a corny request; at worst, it’s dehumanizing, reducing the actor to a dancing monkey who performs on cue. It would be like asking a comedian to conduct an interview exclusively in improvised knock-knock jokes. That the interview went less than smoothly after such an opening gambit should not be a shock, much less a mini-scandal.
Flaa herself seems to understand as much. In a far longer clip on her YouTube channel—throughout which she dons a baby blue shirt that reads, “Being polite is easy”—the interviewer details extensively how she landed on the singing gambit. If this current desire to justify that part of the interview didn’t suggest she now thinks it was a bad idea, she goes a step further later. “I’ve learned throughout the years,” she eventually says, “to not try to be funny or do a stunt during interviews, because most of the time, it just turns out really awkward.”
You know, it’s almost as if she has perfectly diagnosed where the interview went wrong.
Press junkets: speed dating for Hollywood
Hathaway’s reaction may have been sharper than Flaa expected at the time, but with some distance and some perspective, it should also be understandable. It certainly shouldn’t be circulated 12 years later with an unflattering edit as an example of traumatizing rudeness.
Especially not with the added context that the interview occurred during a junket.
For anyone who doesn’t know what a junket is, it’s when the talent from an upcoming film or TV show commandeers a bunch of hotel suites in New York or Los Angeles for a precisely scheduled gauntlet of interviews. Some of these are filmed; others are not. Some feature one-on-ones with each of the leads or the filmmakers; others put the cast in pairs or other configurations.
The interviews run anywhere from 7 to 30 minutes, often back-to-back, with not even enough time in between to check one’s email. It seems like kind of a grind. And even though the stars are extraordinarily well-compensated for it, a grind is still a grind.
Any reporter who does enough junkets is bound to eventually either catch a star at their breaking point for the day, or ruin an interview with a dumb question. (As a seasoned veteran of the junket circuit, I have personally experienced both outcomes several times.) If it’s part of a well-documented pattern of rude behavior, it might indeed mean that the celebrity is just a junket-jerk. In most instances, though, it’s more likely that this famous person was having a natural and human reaction to the deeply unnatural, inhuman experience of being grilled for hours on end by a cavalcade of strangers, some of whom want to get weirdly personal.
As long as those icy interviews aren’t outright antagonistic, they demand grace—not an eventual shaming campaign.
Uncomfortable moments as engagement bait
Perhaps the reason the Hathaway clip got so much traction is because Flaa has been carving out a name for herself lately in the influencer space, spilling celebrity tea to her many followers. She went viral back in August for dredging up a 2016 interview with Blake Lively and Parker Posey that, Flaa claims, made her want to quit her job.
The video begins with the interviewer congratulating a not-visibly-pregnant Lively on her “little bump,” to which a smiling Lively blithely replies, “Congrats on your little bump!” (Flaa is not pregnant in the video; Lively’s comment appears to be a taste-of-your-own-medicine kind of thing, rather than a comment on Flaa’s appearance.) The rest of the interview goes on in pretty much the same tone, and ends with Posey rolling her eyes at what just occurred.
Perhaps instead of making her want to quit her job, this experience should have made Flaa want to reconsider her approach to kicking off interviews. Apparently, however, she has instead taken to making videos like this TikTok, in which she declares of Lively: “It’s not okay to behave like that, and I think it needs to be called out.”
It’s difficult to parse what sort of social change Flaa hopes to accomplish by calling out such behavior. Forcing celebrities in the 2010s to avoid reacting when an interviewer rubs them the wrong way? If anything, this cynical mining of uncomfortable moments only diminishes the impact of more legitimate callouts around microagressions.
Still, making hay out of regrettable celebrity behavior certainly seems to be working out for Flaa. While Lively rode out the ensuing social media storm from the interviewer’s videos, Hathaway not only apologized to Flaa for the “awful” interview but also offered to make it up to her while promoting one of her upcoming projects in 2025.
Hathaway almost certainly won’t be looking forward to it, but she’ll likely show up anyway, with her famous smile plastered on her face and gracious answers this time. Being polite is easy, after all. And so is being professional. Flaa should try it sometime.
The handle @America is a valuable account name on any social media network—and in many cases, it’s also become a right-wing calling card.
As the presidential election looms, America and its imagery have become increasingly partisan. That’s especially true online, where @USA on Instagram and @America on X post increasingly alt-right content. Meanwhile, the “patriot” accounts of Facebook are frequently shaming liberals, and the flag emoji has grown into a Trumpist symbol.
Across the U.S., patriotism is on the decline. At the time of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, 81% of Americans considered themselves “extremely” or “very proud” of America, per Gallup. Now, it sits at 67%. Both Trump and Kamala Harris have used loving their country as a campaign tactic. But, when it comes to America-themed accounts online, the right tends to dominate.
For so many, these online spaces are the closest there is to a “town hall,” a free space to think and form political opinions. If the right owns “America,” how can we have a fair debate?
The right’s influencer of an online “America”
The Instagram handle @USA, which has more than one million followers, started innocuously enough. Its first post dates back to 2022, in commemoration of 9/11. And yet, just a year later, the account started posting clips of Trump triumphantly entering a UFC arena and AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by women (caption: his “rizz was so powerful”). Now, the account’s story is clogged with Elon Musk reposts and links to merch from the controversial pro-Trump advocacy group Turning Point USA.
Instagram’s other generic “patriotic” account, @America, attempts to remain nonpartisan. That is, if you ignore who the account is following (Dana White, Joe Rogan, and the list goes on). Even as it posts gloried videos of bald eagles, the account’s comments are flooded by Trump supporters. On videos restoring flags, users comment about their other favorite flag: The Trump one. In a video honoring lost American soldiers, commenters railed not only against Biden, but against small Bud Light cans in the clip.
On Facebook, @Patriot posts videos of the waving American flag—and writes about “Scamala Harris.” @GreatAmericanPatriots creates graphics to call out some favorite liberal favorites. In just one day, Jack Smith was “OBLITERATED” and Barack Obama proved himself a “LOSER!,” per their account. Facebook groups are among the largest strongholds of patriotism-cum-Trumpism. Groups at “Proud to Be an American” sport thousands of members, while throwing around alt-right items.
Under Elon Musk, X has been the most extreme in regulating these handles. On Saturday, X booted the owner of @America, reassigning the coveted title to Elon Musk’s Donald Trump-supporting America PAC. Now, @America is reposting Fox News clips while trashing MSNBC. Meanwhile, @USA remains banned on the platform.
“Stop framing it as patriotism”
Still, there are detractors. The same videos posted to Instagram under @America are posted to TikTok, where the comments mostly remain apolitical. On Reddit, r/USA tells its members to “vote blue” and sports links to pro-Harris content. But for the most part, the American flag itself has become a calling card for Trumpism. On X, Trump–supportingaccounts put the American flag in their account name. On Instagram, @AmericanFlag cross-posts with the Trumpy @USA, and has comments full of MAGA heads.
The fact is, brandishing patriotic symbols and using all manner of “America” in account names does not, by default, make those groups and accounts and followers more patriotic. Especially since much of the accompanying rhetoric is the exact opposite of the country’s founding doctrines. As Jon Stewart said in addressed the topic on The Daily Show, “If you want to love Trump, love him . . . But stop framing it as patriotism. Because the one thing you cannot say is that Donald Trump is following the tradition of the founders. He is advocating for complete and total presidential immunity . . . That is monarchy sh*t.”
Stewart finished with, “Just do me a favor for historical accuracy. Next time you want to dress up at the rallies, wear the right f**king colored coats”—and with that, a photo of British Revolutionary War soldiers appeared on the screen behind him.
If you missed last night’s spectacular northern lights, fear not. There could be another chance to view the aurora borealis on Friday night.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explained that the aurora borealis may become visible over many northern U.S. states, and some of the lower Midwest to Oregon.
The lights are best observed “just after sunset,” NOAA advised. If you can’t see them with the naked eye, you may be able to capture them on a phone or camera.
On Thursday night, Americans as far south as Florida and as north as Maine were treated to a rare, dazzling show of red, green, and purple. People in otherwise brightly lit cities like New York City and Chicago posted photos to social media of the rare sighting. The aurora borealis is normally only visible near Earth’s poles, not over the contiguous U.S.
Thursday and Friday nights’ aurora borealis sightings are the result of a “strong” G3 geomagnetic storm (3 out of 5 on NOAA’s severity scale). A geomagnetic storm occurs when a coronal mass ejection, an eruption of solar material, reaches Earth.
This year’s increased solar activity is likely the result of an 11-year sun cycle peaking through October. Solar activity is expected to remain high for the next year or so.
Track the aurora borealis on NOAA’s map and page, where the agency is providing live updates.
In Plant City, 20 miles inland from Tampa, at least 35 people had been rescued by dawn, City Manager Bill McDaniel said. While the storm wasn’t as extreme as feared, McDaniel said his city had flooded in places and to levels he had never seen before. Traffic signals were out. Power lines and trees were down. The sewage plant had been inundated, affecting the public water supply.
Evacuating might seem like the obvious move when a major hurricane is bearing down on your region, but that choice is not always as easy as it may seem.
Evacuating from a hurricane requires money, planning, the ability to leave, and, importantly, a belief that evacuating is better than staying put.
I recently examined years of research on what motivates people to leave or seek shelter during hurricanes as part of a project with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Natural Hazards Center. I found three main reasons that people didn’t leave.
Evacuating can be expensive
Evacuating requires transportation, money, a place to stay, the ability to take off work days ahead of a storm, and other resources that many people do not have.
With one in nine Americans facing poverty today, many have limited evacuation options. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, for example, many residents did not own vehicles and couldn’t reach evacuation buses. That left them stranded in the face of a deadly hurricane. Nearly 1,400 people died in the storm, many of them in flooded homes.
Gas shortages and traffic jams can leave people stranded on highways and unable to find shelter before the storm hits. This happened during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 as 2 million Floridians tried to evacuate.
People who experienced past evacuations or saw news video of congested highways ahead of Hurricane Milton might not leave for fear of getting stuck.
Health, pets, and being physically able to leave
The logistics of evacuating are even more challenging for people who are disabled or in nursing homes. Additionally, people who are incarcerated may have no choice in the matter—and the justice system may have few options for moving them.
Evacuating nursing homes, people with disabilities, or prison populations is complex. Many shelters are not set up to accommodate their needs. In one example during Hurricane Floyd, a disabled person arrived at a shelter, but the hallways were too narrow for their wheelchair, so they were restricted to a cot for the duration of their stay. Moving people whose health is fragile, and doing so under stressful conditions, can also worsen health problems, leaving nursing home staff to make difficult decisions.
But failing to evacuate can also be deadly. During Hurricane Irma in 2017, seven nursing home residents died in the rising heat after their facility lost power near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In some cases, public water systems are shut down or become contaminated. And flooding can create several health hazards, including the risk of infectious diseases.
In a study of 291 long-term care facilities in Florida, 81% sheltered residents in place during the 2004 hurricane season because they had limited transportation options and faced issues finding places for residents to go.
People with pets face another difficult choice—some choose to stay at home for fear of leaving their pet behind. Studies have found that pet owners are significantly less likely to evacuate than others because of difficulties transporting pets and finding shelters that will take them. In destructive storms, it can be days to weeks before people can return home.
Risk perception can also get in the way
People’s perceptions of risk can also prevent them from leaving.
If people have experienced a hurricane before that didn’t do significant damage, they may perceive the risks of a coming storm to be lower and not leave.
People had fears about safety and whether shelter environments could meet their needs. For example, religious minorities were not sure whether shelters would be clean, safe, have private places for religious practice, and food options consistent with faith practices. Diabetics and people with young children also had concerns about finding appropriate food in shelters.
How to improve evacuations for the future
There are ways leaders can reduce the barriers to evacuation and shelter use. For example:
Building more shelters able to withstand hurricane-force winds can create safe havens for people without transportation or who are unable to leave their jobs in time to evacuate.
Arranging more shelters and transportation able to accommodate people with disabilities and those with special needs, such as nursing home residents, can help protect vulnerable populations.
Opening shelters to accommodate pets with their owners can also increase the likelihood that pet owners will evacuate.
Public education can be improved so people know their options. Clearer risk communication on how these storms are different than past ones and what people are likely to experience can also help people make informed decisions.
Being prepared saves lives. Many areas would benefit from better advance planning that takes into account the needs of large, diverse populations and can ensure populations have ways to evacuate to safety.
Price hikes like this are as painful as they are aggravating, and they can have real effects on both household spending and the broader economy. So it’s not surprising that the topic is coming up on the campaign trail.
But oftentimes, complexity can get lost amid the politicking. Here, economic history—and economic historians like me—can provide some context.
How Americans spend their food dollars
For starters, despite the run-up in food prices in the U.S., there’s little evidence of price gouging in the grocery industry today.
Price gouging is notoriously difficult to define, but the term is usually invoked after a supply or demand shock of some kind, when sellers are said to take advantage and jack up prices, particularly for basics such as food or gasoline. Concern over “gouging” goes way back—in some ways, it can be seen as an outgrowth of medieval Christian injunctions against mercantile greed.
Although many states have laws on the books against price gouging, such laws have proved difficult to enforce. In the case of the U.S. grocery industry, profit margins (traditionally razor-thin at about 1% or 2%) remain small even today.
What’s more, it’s important to note that food prices in the U.S.—relatively speaking—are the cheapest in the world, and have been for a long time. This is the case whether measured in terms of disposable personal income or in terms of percentage of household expenditures.
For example, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows that in 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, Americans spent about 11.2% of their disposable personal income (or income after taxes) on food. That was unchanged from 2022.
This includes expenditures for both food at home—generally purchased at supermarkets and other grocery stores—and food purchased “away” at restaurants and the like. Interestingly, the “away” component has been growing as a proportion of total food spending since the onset of COVID-19.
Grocery prices around the world
No one likes to pay more for food, but a little comparative data can reduce one’s sense of victimization, if not alleviate the pocketbook pain.
Cross-national data compiled by the USDA shows that in 2022, Americans spent less on food as a proportion of total consumer expenditures than people in any other country. People in many other nations spent two, three, or four times as much in percentage terms, and sometimes even more.
The differences were greatest between the U.S. and low-income countries in South Asia and Africa—Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Ethiopia, for example—but were also quite sizable between the U.S. and middle-income countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, and Mexico.
These differences aren’t altogether surprising. Why not? Because as the German statistician Ernst Engel first noted in the middle of the 19th century, as family or household income increases, the proportion of the total spent on food declines. After all, you can only eat so much no matter how rich you are.
Scholars have found that Engel’s insight still applies in the contemporary world, which provides context for the sharp distinctions between low-income and middle-income countries and the U.S.
That said, however, there are big differences between the U.S. and other high-income countries such as Japan, Sweden, Norway, France, and Italy, with the U.S. percentage spent on food considerably lowerthan in any of these otherrich countries. This is because economies of scale are more important in American agriculture, among other reasons.
To be sure, if so inclined, one can point to certain negative environmental externalities in American food production and question the ways animals and laborers are treated in the American food system, which prizes efficiency—or at least low prices—above all else.
But food that is dirt cheap in comparative terms, even in a time of rising food prices, is a problem virtually every other nation in the world would love to have.
About 200 women ages 18 to 22 from across Africa have been recruited to work in a factory alongside Russian vocational students assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with the Associated Press, some of the women said they were misled that it would be a work-study program, describing long hours under constant surveillance, broken promises about wages and areas of study, and working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching.
The AP analyzed satellite images of the complex in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan and its leaked internal documents, spoke to a half dozen African women who ended up there, and tracked down hundreds of videos in the online recruiting program to piece together life at the plant in what is called the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 600 miles east of Moscow.
Satellite images show the plant at Alabuga quickly expanded.
It is now Russia’s main plant for making the one-way, exploding drones, with plans to produce 6,000 a year by 2025, according to the internal documents and the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security.
Facing a wartime labor shortage in Russia, Alabuga has recruited from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
About 90% of the foreign women recruited via a campaign dubbed “Alabuga Start” manufacture drones, according to David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector now with the Institute for Science and International Security. The documents show the women largely assemble the drones, use chemicals, and paint them. The AP has been told some women have left the plant but are discouraged from doing so by management.
Constant surveillance and caustic chemicals
The foreign workers travel by bus from their living quarters to the factory, passing multiple security checkpoints, according to one worker who assembled drones.
They share dormitories and kitchens that are “guarded around the clock,” Alabuga’s social media posts say.
Foreigners receive local SIM cards upon arrival but cannot bring phones into the factory. Four women indicated they couldn’t speak freely to outsiders, and one suggested her messages were monitored.
The woman who assembled drones said recruits put them together and coat them with a caustic substance with the consistency of yogurt. Many workers lack protective gear, she said, adding that the chemicals made her face feel like it was being pricked with tiny needles, and “small holes” appeared on her cheeks, making them itch.
Disagreements over pay
Although one woman said she loved working at Alabuga because she was well-paid and enjoyed experiencing a different culture and people, most interviewed by AP disagreed about the compensation and suggested that life there did not meet their expectations.
The program initially promised $700 a month, but later social media posts put it at “over $500.”
One African woman said she couldn’t send money home because of banking sanctions on Russia, but another said she sent up to $150 a month.
Four women described long shifts of up to 12 hours, with haphazard days off, but some suggested they could tolerate it if they could send money home.
Human rights organizations said they were unaware of what was happening at the factory, although they said it sounded consistent with other actions by Russia in recruiting foreigners.
Russia’s actions “could potentially fulfill the criteria of trafficking if the recruitment is fraudulent and the purpose is exploitation,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, noting that Moscow is a party to the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.
The AP contacted governments of 22 countries whose citizens Alabuga said it had recruited for the program. Most didn’t answer or said they would look into it.
Betty Amongi, Uganda’s minister for Gender, Labour and Social Development, told AP that her ministry raised concerns about the recruitment with its embassy in Moscow, particularly on the age of the women, because “female migrant workers are the most vulnerable category.”
The ministry said it wanted to ensure the women “do not end up in exploitative employment,” and needed to know who was responsible for their welfare while in Russia. Alabuga’s Facebook page said 46 Ugandan women were at the complex, although Amongi had said there were none.
How accurate are the drones they make?
Bolstered by the Alabuga recruits, Russia has vastly increased the number of drones it can fire at Ukraine.
Nearly 4,000 were launched at Ukraine from the start of the war in February 2022 through 2023, the Institute for Science and International Security said. In the first seven months of this year, Russia launched nearly twice that number.
An AP analysis of about 2,000 Shahed attacks documented by Ukraine’s military since July 29 shows that about 95% of the drones hit no discernible target, instead crashing in Ukraine or flying out of its airspace.
The failure rate could be due to Ukraine’s improved air defenses or poor craftsmanship among the low-skilled workforce. Another factor could be that Russia is using a Shahed variant without explosives to overwhelm air defenses.
The social media plan
The “Alabuga Start” recruiting drive relies on a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos of smiling African women cleaning floors, directing cranes, or visiting Tatarstan’s cultural sites. They don’t mention the plant’s role at the heart of Russian drone production.
The program was promoted by education ministries in Uganda and Ethiopia, as well as in African media that portrays it as a way to earn money and learn skills.
Initially advertised as a work-study program, Alabuga Start’s newer posts say it “is NOT an educational programme,” although one of them still shows young women in plaid school uniforms.
Last month, the social media site said it was “excited to announce that our audience has grown significantly!” That could be due to its hiring of influencers to promote it on TikTok, describing it as an easy way to make money.
—By Emma Burrows and Lori Hinnant, Associated Press
Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker and Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.
Phones hold so much of our digital lives—emails, social media and bank accounts, photos, chat messages and more—that if they ever get stolen or go missing, it can cause major disruption beyond just the loss of a device.
In some places, phone thefts have surged so much it’s now an everyday problem, with thieves on electric bikes snatching them out of pedestrians’ hands, swiping them off restaurant tables or pickpocketing them on the subway.
In Britain, where 200 phones are stolen every day in “snatch thefts,” the government has pledged to crack down on the crime and is meeting with tech companies and device makers to come up with solutions.
Here are steps you can take before and after your phone goes missing:
Basic protections
There are things you can do to make it less painful if your phone is stolen. Because some of these features are more technical in nature, people often overlook them.
Lock down as much as you can. At a minimum, require a password or biometric scan to unlock the device. You can also add similar requirements to important individual apps—like your banking account, WhatsApp or Signal—to protect your finance or chats from thieves.
Also, activate the find my device feature, which is available for both iOS and Android. Samsung also offers its own service called SmartThings Find.
You’ll probably have lots of precious photos saved on your camera roll. It’s a good idea to back them up, along with contacts, calendar items and other files. Google and Apple offer cloud-based backup services, although the free versions have limited storage space. You can also back up your files to an external hard drive, memory card or a laptop.
Some police forces and phone companies advise turning off message previews, which prevents thieves trying to break into your accounts from seeing reset or login codes when the phone is locked. To do this on an iPhone, for example, go to the Notifications section of your settings menu and tap Show Previews. You can also scroll down the app list to turn previews off for individual apps but leave them on for less risky ones like news or weather.
Turn on newer features
Recent iOS and Android updates include a number of new functions designed to make thefts less attractive.
IPhone users can turn on Stolen Device Protection, which makes it a lot harder for phone thieves to access key functions and settings. Many thieves will want to wipe the data off and reset so they can resell it, but with this feature on, they’ll need a face or fingerprint scan to do so. Apple also recently updated its ” activation lock ” feature to make it harder for thieves to sell parts from stolen phones.
Android phones, meanwhile, can now use use artificial intelligence to detect motion indicating someone snatched it out of your hand and is racing away on foot or a bike, and then lock the screen immediately. And there’s a feature called Private Spaces that lets you hide sensitive files on your phone.
Jot down your device number
Take note of your phone’s serial number, also known as an IMEI number. It can link you to the phone if it does eventually get recovered. Call it up by typing (asterisk)#06# on your phone’s keypad. If you’ve already lost your phone you can also find it in other places like the box it came in.
If it’s stolen
If you’re unlucky enough to have your phone stolen, notify police. Call your insurance company if you have a policy that covers the device. Inform your phone company so they can freeze your number and issue a replacement SIM card or eSIM. Notify your bank so they can watch out for suspicious transactions.
Tracking your device
Try to locate your phone with the find my device feature. For iPhones, go to iCloud.com/find from a web browser while Android users should head to www.google.com/android/find. Samsung also has its own service for Galaxy phones.
These services will show your phone’s current or last known location on a map, which is also handy if you’ve just lost track of it somewhere in the house. Apple says even if a phone can’t connect to the internet or has been turned off, it can use Bluetooth to ping any nearby Apple devices using the same network behind its AirTags tracking devices. Google says newer Pixel phones can be located “for several hours” after they’ve been turned off using similar technology.
You can get the phone to play a sound, even if it’s on silent. You can also put the phone in lost mode, which locks it and displays a message and contact details on the screen for anyone who finds it. Lost mode on iOS also suspends any Apple Pay cards and passes.
If the device shows up in an unfamiliar location on the map, and you suspect it has been stolen, experts say it’s better to notify police rather than trying to get it back yourself.
Cybersecurity company Norton says, “Confronting a thief yourself is not recommended.”
Final steps
If you can’t find your phone, there are some final steps to take.
Log yourself out of all your accounts that might be accessible on the phone, and then remove it from your list of trusted devices that you use to get multifactor authentication codes—but make sure you can get those codes somewhere else, such as email.
Then, as a last resort, you can erase the phone remotely so that there’s no chance of any data falling into the wrong hands. However, take note: Apple says that if the iPhone is offline, the remote erase will only happen the next time it come back online. But if you find the phone before it gets erased, you can cancel the request.
Google warns that SD memory cards plugged into Android phones might not be remotely erased. And after the phone has been wiped, it won’t show up with find my device.
Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris saw Google searches for glass cliff triple, and conversations around this loaded term are back in the headlines. But with Harris now leading in the polls, the vibe may be changing.
For many women, the news was first met with unease and suspicion. Her appointment bore the trademarks of the glass cliff phenomenon, where women are promoted to leadership positions during times of organizational crisis, increasing their risk of failure. Women have good reason to be wary of these scenarios: Studies show that in facing glass cliffs women are often knowingly set up to fail, perpetuating perceptions about female leaders’ limitations.
But as Harris’s nomination revives conversations around glass cliffs, many female leaders are now seizing on the moment to approach these discussions from more than one angle. Whereas the discourse often revolves around the systemic biases pushing women into high-risk situations, they’re reminding us that women also frequently ascend to these posts by their unique, hard-won capabilities—and that within no-win situations it’s the women who often do win.
To have successful careers, women, especially women of color, must embrace high-risk career paths from day one, welcoming precarious situations where their gender makes them hypervisible and subject to greater scrutiny. Through adversity, they sharpen skills crucial to navigating crises, including exceptional resilience, strategic thinking, and strong interpersonal skills. Far from being passively conned into accepting leadership roles, women know the risk tax they’re paying and their appointors know full well their singular capacity to pay it and succeed.
In this fraught moment, it’s paramount to consider lessons from the many women capably striding along the edge of glass cliffs: how they’re often winning and, in the process, actively rewriting the rules for how future women leaders will ascend to leadership positions.
Doomed to thrive
It’s important to be able to identify and assess a glass cliff, as well as to know how to avoid falling. It’s also critical to realize that walking into this scenario is often not in your best interest.
But it’s equally crucial to recognize that women’s continual struggle toward greater equality has frequently left them without the option of avoiding high-risk scenarios. And, at the same time, we must learn from those who take the job, flip the script, and pave the path forward.
Women have converted cliffs to runways because they’re uniquely capable leaders in times of crisis. Anecdotal evidence, data, and real-world examples back this up. Comparing pre- and post-pandemic studies, for example, research from Harvard Business Review concludes that women are better leaders during periods of turmoil.
Their effectiveness is thanks to a specialized skill set honed from continually facing unfair expectations and additional scrutiny.
The first of these special attributes is resilience. It’s the bedrock upon which other strengths are built. Beyond the inherited difficulties of a crisis, women on the glass cliff often face disproportionate scrutiny and doubt. For women and other underrepresented occupational groups, research indicates that failure or even lack of improvement tends to be attributed to personal failings rather than the situation.
Taking the reins in turbulent times requires immense resilience. Confronted by overwhelming challenges, leaders in these positions are often isolated, bearing the brunt of criticism for issues beyond their control. As they endure these pressures, they must maintain a singular focus on actionable solutions and a readiness to adapt.
Lamentably, women, particularly women of color, are well-accustomed to soldiering on in the face of formidable barriers. Through a history of systemic obstacles and underrepresentation, women leaders become keenly adept at overcoming the odds and shouldering accountability, while keeping a positive outlook and readiness to adapt. Not surprisingly, research finds that women are considered by their peers to be significantly more skilled at taking initiative, championing change, and agile learning during moments of crisis.
Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, is an example of this resilience. Assuming the role after a bankruptcy and a massive ignition switch recall, Barra was thrust into the global spotlight as the first female CEO of a major automaker. Though critics constantly viewed her decisions through the lens of gender, Barra deftly handled a public relations nightmare, implemented key strategic changes, and personally embodied a culture of accountability.
Steering GM to record-breaking profits, Barra’s resilience upended stereotypes and offers other women valuable lessons for what it means to boldly tread the glass cliff. Barra learned to embrace rather than downplay her identity as a female leader, reminding us that when women succeed where others can’t, their hypervisibility becomes an opportunity to inspire. Along a glass cliff, women must draw on a deep reservoir of unique experience and know that future women leaders are waiting and watching.
Both soft and hard skills
In a sometimes less flattering way, assumptions about women’s “feminine touch” and “intuition” for fixing things are also used in typical explanations for why women ascend glass cliffs. What is more empowering, however, is the fact that numerous studies also show that women in high-risk situations assert strengths in strategic and analytic thinking more effectively than men. While much is made of women’s soft skills, studies by neuroscientists conclude that when the pressure is on women are more likely to make data-driven, sure-bet decisions. More specifically, they score higher in categories measuring capacities for making decisions, driving results, establishing stretch goals, solving problems, and analyzing issues, according to studies by Harvard Business Review.
During challenging times, leaders must assess complex situations, perceive the interconnectedness of multiple factors, and develop effective action plans with limited resources. Having navigated marginalized identities, women (particularly of color) develop a keen understanding of complex social dynamics, which are critical skills for analytical decision-making. Constantly revalidating their competence sharpens their problem-solving skills, while frequent exclusion from informal networks and career-enhancing opportunities can endow women with unique resourcefulness.
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Iceland’s first female prime minister (from 2009 to 2013), entered office just after Iceland’s banking system collapsed. Its currency was dramatically devalued, unemployment had skyrocketed, protests erupted, and the country faced bankruptcy. An extremely capable critical thinker, Sigurðardóttir walked the glass cliff, working with the International Monetary Fund to fix the economy, stabilize the exchange rate, and restructure the banking sector. Her government shrewdly maneuvered to reduce the budget deficit while also making sure to protect essential public services.
Credited with saving Iceland’s economy, Sigurðardóttir’s glass cliff became a runway. She challenged stereotypes about women as primarily intuitive rather than analytical leaders and paved the path forward with initiatives such as gender budgeting and achieving a gender-balanced Cabinet. Her example reminds women to assert their capacities for strategic thinking in turbulent moments. In doing so, they make a powerful business case for gender equality and can redefine organizational culture.
Cliffside communication
Anne Mulcahy was appointed Xerox CEO in August 2001, with the company on the edge of bankruptcy. On the day she took her position, Xerox’s stock dropped by 15%. One month later, the 9/11 attacks triggered a global economic downturn.
As one of the few female CEOs of a major corporation, Mulcahy faced additional skepticism and pressure to take Xerox into Chapter 11. But if her appointers had been willing to let Mulcahy take the fall, they were also likely aware of her 25-year track record at Xerox for driving results through a people-centric approach that inspired and motivated her teams.
Mulcahy resisted pressure. She drew on a singular knack for effective communication and an ability to mix empathetic leadership with a firm hand. Mulcahy prioritized providing emotional support and two-way communication for employees reeling from the 9/11 tragedy and the strain of potential financial collapse. At the same time, she was honest and firm, telling them that they must either “roll up their sleeves and go to work or leave Xerox.”
The diverse social dynamics and workplace challenges that women are forced to maneuver throughout their careers further strengthen a level of emotional intelligence that research indicates is frequently distinct to women. Studies show that during times of crisis female leaders are more effective at inspiring and motivating, developing team members, and building relationships. When employees’ engagement levels are measured during tumultuous periods, those working for female leaders are significantly higher.
Mulcahy engineered an astounding turnaround that propelled Xerox back into a market leader position. She, too, provided a blueprint for other bold women leaders by using her role and influence during a crisis to champion diversity and inclusivity initiatives, firmly establishing Xerox as an industry leader in these critical areas.
While Mulcahy gives us one more story of how female leaders are uniquely equipped to win in no-win situations, her case also provides an especially powerful example for today’s historic moment and what it means when women turn the tables. Mulcahy won and forged a path forward with her boldness, competence, and commitment to future generations.
Mulcahy passed the reins to Ursula Burns, whom she had mentored, making Burns the first African American woman to lead an S&P 500 company. Burns also successfully led through crisis, guiding Xerox through the decline of its traditional printing business and diversifying its model into services.
There will be much more talk of glass cliffs in the next few months. Among female leaders, the message will be clear: We cannot and do not acquiesce to glass cliffs. But our capacity for turning high-risk precipices into springboards can teach the world a lot.
Apple iOS 18, launched in September, is one of the most important updates to the iPhone’s operating system in the device’s history. Why? Because it lays the groundwork for Apple Intelligence, Apple’s artificial intelligence platform, which will power the phone in the years ahead. iOS 18 also adds several new features to the iPhone, including many that are great for productivity, privacy, and security.
But the operating system goes even further. With iOS 18, Apple has introduced an entirely new app—Passwords—which aims to bring password management to the masses in an easy and intuitive way. Here’s what you need to know about the Passwords app and how to become an iPhone password management pro.
What is a password manager?
A password manager is simply an app that stores your passwords—it saves you from having to remember them in your head or write them down in a notebook. The first widely used password managers were built into web browsers, like Safari—a natural place for them, since most passwords we have are for websites.
But in today’s world, we may have passwords for more than just websites. Many apps we use require us to log in with a password, and we also have numerous passwords for the Wi-Fi networks we connect to. Some login processes have grown more complicated, too, with the addition of authentication codes (the numbers you need to enter on some sites after you enter your password). Then, there is the increasing number of passkeys we have, which aim to replace passwords entirely.
What Apple’s new password management app, called Passwords, does is simple: it allows you to see and manage your numerous passwords, authentication codes, and passkeys in a single place.
The new Passwords app in iOS 18. [Photo: Apple]
How does Passwords help manage my passwords?
Passwords helps you manage your passwords by storing them all in a single, easy-to-navigate app, while also protecting them behind biometric authentication so that even if someone else has your unlocked phone, they can’t access your passwords.
In addition, the app allows you to automatically sync your passwords across your devices, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, the Apple Vision Pro, and even Windows PCs. This ensures that all your devices have the latest passwords saved on them. These saved passwords can then be autofilled into the password field when you log into a website or app. This means you don’t have to remember your passwords anymore.
But Passwords’ features don’t end there. The app has some other powerful and useful tools to help you use and manage your passwords.
Adding and managing a password
If you’re on an Apple device, any passwords you had previously saved in Safari or your iCloud Keychain will be automatically added to the Passwords app. And any time you create a new website password in the future, your iPhone will ask you if you want to save the password to the Passwords app. However, you can also manually add login and password information for a website to the Password app. Here’s how:
Launch the Passwords app on your iPhone (the app’s icon has three yellow, green, and blue keys on it).
Tap All.
On the All screen, tap the + button.
Tap New Password.
On the New Password screen enter the website domain, your username, and password.
Tap Save.
You can also easily edit or delete a password. To do this, from the “All” screen in step #3 above, tap on the password you want to edit or delete. On that password’s screen tap the edit button to change the username or password, or tap the red Delete Password button to delete the password entry entirely.
Get your authentication codes from one place
Authentication codes are those strings of numbers you must enter on a website after you enter your username and password. They are what’s known as multifactor authentication (MFA), or two-factor authentication (2FA). They ensure that even if someone has your password, they can’t access your account without the additional code, which is only valid for 30 seconds before it expires.
There are two main ways to receive the code: via text message or an authenticator app. Passwords, however, has an authenticator code generator built in, and it can even autofill these codes on a website login screen, so you don’t need to copy and paste the code manually. If a website offers you the ability to enable MFA, you should do it.
Here’s how to add the authenticator codes to the Passwords app. The website that offers you the ability to set up MFA will show you a QR code that you can scan to easily add authentication codes to your authenticator app (Passwords, in this case). Once this QR code is on your computer’s screen:
Open the Passwords app on your iPhone.
Tap All.
Tap the password for the website for which you want to add authentication codes.
On that password’s screen, tap Set Up Verification Code.
Tap Scan QR code with Camera (this is the easiest way. You can also manually paste in a setup key to add the codes).
Using the iPhone’s camera, scan the QR code on your computer’s screen.
A new field of the password screen will appear called “Verification Code.” It will have a 6-digit number that changes every 30 seconds.
Passwords can now automatically fill in this authentication code when a website asks for it. You can also open the Passwords app to view the current code and manually enter it when the website requests it.
Quickly search all your passwords. [Photo: Apple]
Create groups to share passwords
Sometimes we may want to share our passwords with family members and friends so that they can easily log into one or more of our online accounts. Passwords makes sharing passwords to a group easy. Here’s how to do it:
Open the Passwords app.
Tap the New Group button.
On the next screen, tap Continue.
Name your group.
Tap Add People.
You can add people to the group by entering their name (if they are saved in your contacts already), email, or phone number.
Tap Add when you are done adding people.
Tap Create.
Now from the list of passwords, tap any password you want to share with the group. A blue checkmark will appear next to it.
Tap Move.
Your password group is now set up. Any member of the group will now have the password saved on their device, so they can easily log into the account. In addition to sharing passwords, you can also share passkeys with your group.
Get security alerts
The final big advantage of the Passwords app is that it has a dedicated section that will alert you to security threats involving your passwords. It could let you know if your password has been leaked in a data breach, or if your password is weak and could be easily guessed. To view your Passwords security alerts:
Open the Passwords app.
Tap Security.
If there are any security alerts for any of your passwords, they will appear on the Security Recommendations screen.
Passwords is included in iOS 18, which is now available as a free download for supported iPhones. The Passwords app is also available for iPad, Apple Vision Pro, and Mac. And your stored passwords can even be synced to PCs with the iCloud for Windows app.
Looking at all the stuff surrounding Lin Kayser in his Dubai office, it’s easy to assume he’s a rocket scientist working on a spaceship to escape Earth’s gravity. Drawings, plans, and prototypes seemingly stolen from an interstellar alien probe frame Kayser on Zoom. But the cofounder of Leap 71 is no rocket scientist—even if he looks like he could play one in a movie.
“We are fundamentally a software company,” Kayser tells me. “We’re building a computational model that can autonomously generate technical objects and machines.” Leap 71 doesn’t use generative AI, the predictive-based engines that power tools like ChatGPT, or even CAD software from Autodesk, nTopology, or Divergent 3D.It is not parametric CAD either. Rather, the company has developed something entirely different, a major leap in computational engineering design. Its name is Noyron, a system that is trying to harness the knowledge and creativity of engineers into a powerful artificial intelligence tool that autonomously designs advanced machinery and products.
Developed in-house, the software encapsulates the expertise of skilled engineers, integrating physics, such as thermal models, rules about manufacturing, and the logic of different engineering fields within one coherent framework. According to Kayser, Noyron is constantly evolving, learning from data fed back from real-world tests and manufacturing outcomes. The system can be specialized and tailored to serve different industries. There’s Noyron RP for rocket motors, for example, Noyron EA for electromagnetic systems, and Noyron HX for heat exchangers.
One of the defining features of Noyron, according to Kayser, is that it doesn’t just produce a shape—it predicts how that object will perform in real-life conditions. Like a human engineer, the system tries to create components that meet the desired requirements, based on the collective knowledge embedded within it. “In theory, parametric CAD should have been that, but parametric CAD is geometry-driven,” he tells me. “Our stuff is physics, it’s logic, it’s decisions, it’s iteration.”
Kayser says that Noryon uses machine learning so the software knows how to think like an engineer to solve new problems. Unlike parametric CAD, which adjusts geometry, Noyron knows how to design a new record engine from scratch to match a series of specs like thrust or thermal limits. “You can’t put a thermal model in parametric CAD,” Kayser tells me. “[Noyron] is way more sophisticated than that. Calling it parametric CAD would be like saying ChatGPT is autocomplete.”
Each time a new piece of information—whether a successful test or a failure—is introduced, Noyron fine-tunes itself, getting smarter and more accurate with each iteration. Noyron doesn’t stop at generating the geometry of an object; it also outputs manufacturing files, instructions for post-processing, and physical data that can be used in simulations. It’s basically a software created not just to design objects, but to make stuff and make those objects work.
[Photo: Leap 71]
Trial by fire
Recently, the company put Noyron to the test with a 5-kilonewton rocket engine designed entirely by its computational model—the first of its kind in the world. Despite what Noyron knows and can predict, Kayser says when it comes to rocket engineering, “until you test it, it’s all theory.”
To validate the software capabilities, Leap 71, which is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, collaborated with the University of Sheffield and AMCM, a leading European 3D printing firm, to build and test the engine. The engine runs on liquid oxygen and kerosene—an inherently challenging combination due to their volatility and the extreme conditions they require. “Liquid oxygen is extremely reactive,” Kayser says. “Even a small piece of copper in the wrong place could cause a spark and lead to an explosion.”
The team installed the engine in an old WWII-era bunker in the U.K., retrofitted with modern aerospace testing capabilities. Old concrete walls sheltered the alien-looking engine from conditions and materials that could cause a reaction.
The first test burn lasted just three seconds, with fire bursting out of the exhaust nozzle. It worked. But there was no immediate celebration, Kayser says, only a silent, collective acknowledgment that they were on the right path. Then they tried a second, longer burn of 13 seconds. This one confirmed the engine’s stability and reliability. The software had actually made a rocket engine that worked as predicted.
Kayser tells me that the engine worked after printing directly from the CAD file because of this technology. Moving traditional engineering knowledge into a computational space allows AI to achieve in minutes what would take a skilled human engineer weeks or even months. It’s not just feeding a large language model a ton of books on rocket engine design. It’s about carefully setting rules while learning the knowledge of rocket engineering. The successful test shows that this may be a fundamental reimagining of the engineering process—one in which AI serves as a true partner rather than just a tool.
[Photo: Leap 71]
Consistent output
Noyron operates differently from generative AI solutions for modern CAD software, Kayser says. These can be unpredictable and produce results that vary with each run. They require an engineer to supervise the resulting parts generated by the AI, which has to use its knowledge and intuition to spot what’s wrong and fix it, one prompt at a time. Just like when you use ChatGPT or Gemini.
To understand the difference between Noyron and current CAD software generative AI tools, look no further than the work coming out of NASA. Ryan McClelland, a research engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has been working on using generative AI to design spacecraft components to increase strength while shaving precious weight. His strange-looking “evolved structures,” as he calls them, are used in complex mission hardware, from parts in astrophysics balloon observatories to future planetary probes’ instruments.
McClelland explained to me that generative AI design starts with a prompt, similar to how people use it to generate images, text, or music. In this case, the prompts include physical requirements—geometric interfaces, specific loads, and conditions, like having to sustain 60 g-force acceleration. The AI then creates a part that meets these specifications, iterating dozens of designs within hours. While this speeds up the design process, it still requires human oversight.
[Photo: Leap 71][Photo: Leap 71]
The AI’s suggestions may include impractical features, such as parts that are too thin or not structurally sound for the intended purpose. “You still have to apply human intuition,” McClelland notes. While generative AI can quickly produce multiple designs, he says, the process cannot move forward without a human engineer’s intuition and understanding of practical limits.
Whereas generative AI acts more like a helper to the engineer, offering possible designs that humans must then validate and refine, Noyron aims to produce end-to-end work. Kayser likens the software to an “engineer-brain-in-a-box,” where rationale is given for every decision the computer makes. This is essential in the context of aerospace engineering. Designing rocket engines is an unforgiving task; every detail must be accounted for, and mistakes can be catastrophic. Unlike the black-box nature of generative AI models, where decisions may be opaque, Noyron’s approach is transparent, making it easier for engineers to understand why certain design decisions are made.
Leap 71 cofounders Josefine Lissner and Lin Kayser [Photo: Leap 71]
The importance of human know-how
The transparency of Noyron makes it especially effective for human-machine collaboration. Engineers using Noyron can see the rationale behind each design decision, which makes it easy to adjust the model’s logic or tweak inputs to improve outcomes. Nothing is arbitrary. Rapid iteration is key here too, Kayser says, as Leap 71 software can refine designs to meet the practical requirements of aerospace systems much faster than with traditional approaches. The model can iterate on designs in minutes, allowing engineers to explore different configurations and select the optimal solution without having to start from scratch each time. But given a set of specs (you can call it a prompt), the result will always be the same. This ensures the reliability needed in such a critical field.
Kayser believes that future versions of Noyron could bring Moore’s law to engineering—which refers to the observation made by Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years, leading to the same boost in computing power while costs decrease. This principle has driven the rapid growth of technology for decades, resulting in exponential progress in computing capability.
[Photo: Leap 71]
“It’s about making engineering computational and applying the principles of software development to physical object design,” Kayser says. Instead of the slow, painstaking process of drafting designs, engineers can use Noyron to instantly explore different possibilities—such as swapping materials or adjusting design parameters—and receive immediate feedback. This capability allows for a level of creativity and risk-taking that was previously impossible. Engineers no longer have to be afraid of the time cost associated with experimenting. What used to take months can now happen in minutes, and that changes everything.
Kayser says companies customize Noyron based on their own knowledge, experiences, and specific requirements. “Companies don’t just use Noyron off the shelf,” he tells me. “They add their own proprietary knowledge, their way of approaching problems, into the system. Noyron gets smarter and tailored to reflect the specific expertise of the company that’s using it. It’s like having an engineering team that already knows your unique methods and priorities.”
That allows human engineers to build their unique expertise into the system, which results in new engineering solutions that reflect the company’s particular approach. The ability to integrate diverse sets of experiences into Noyron means that different companies can come up with different solutions even when starting from the same specifications.
By encoding engineering expertise into a computational model, Kayser says, Leap 71 is creating a shared language that engineers from various disciplines can use for collaboration. “Engineering is often fragmented and relies on the knowledge of individual experts,” he says, noting that Noyron aims to unify this scattered expertise, providing a reusable and adaptable model that engineers can use to collaborate across disciplines.
Another major strength is Noyron’s ability to integrate real-world test data directly into future designs. Traditional engineering methods keep design and testing phases separate, making the iteration process slow. Each cycle of testing and redesign can take weeks or even months. Noyron changes this by allowing data from each test—whether the design succeeds or fails—to feed back into the model seamlessly. “Innovation depends on iteration,” Kayser says. “There’s no way you can just come up with a perfect design in isolation; you have to test it.”
This feedback loop not only makes Noyron smarter but also accelerates the entire engineering process. Instead of waiting weeks for test results to inform design adjustments, engineers can see the impact of test data in real time and make necessary changes immediately.
Making the real-life Tony Stark’s Jarvis
Leap 71’s ambitions go beyond rocket engines. Kayser hints that they are working toward building the first general-purpose AI for engineering—a system capable of designing anything from rocket components and heat exchangers to a fuselage, dam, and fusion engine in the extremely far future.
“It sounds like you’re trying to create something similar to Jarvis, the AI that designs stuff for Tony Stark in Iron Man—an AI that can do pretty much anything,” I say, surprised by his ambition. “Exactly,” he says. “We want to build the first general-purpose AI for engineering, something that can be applied to a wide range of problems, not just aerospace.”
Imagine having an AI assistant that knows all the details of your company, your industry, and can come up with solutions almost like a team of engineers, but faster. The successful test of the 5-kilonewton rocket engine is just the start, a proof of concept that demonstrates Noyron’s potential across a range of applications. “We’re aiming for something that can revolutionize not just aerospace, but anything that needs complex engineering,” Kayser says.
He imagines a future in which computational models like Noyron are ubiquitous across industries—to design everything from cars to consumer electronics, fundamentally altering how products are engineered. The timeline, of course, may be uncertain, but early results like this rocket engine and others that Leap 71 and its partners have achieved are promising. The Noyron models initially developed for aerospace are already being adapted for other uses. The thermal models used in rockets, for instance, are finding applications in HVAC systems. This kind of cross-pollination, Kayser claims, shows the multi-industry path ahead.
The path to a future in which engineering innovation is accelerated to this degree is a long one, for sure. But Leap 71’s idea may actually work, at least judging from its rocket test. It’s a great first step to transform engineering from a manual, slow-paced process into a computational solution that is agile, inherently collaborative, and accumulates knowledge to speed up creation of new wares. If Kayser’s company—or anyone else with a similar approach—can pull off this Jarvis idea, it will be a fundamental shift in how humanity’s future will be designed and built. That cool 5-kilonewton rocket engine is a great technological achievement, a world first, yes. But more importantly, it’s a glimpse into a new era of design.
Many entrepreneurs are inspired by romantic conceptions of how great startup life can be, and are looking for an exit path from the typical culture of a big company. They dream about getting rid of bureaucracy, hierarchies, irrelevant policies, unfair inequalities, and all the other corporate irritations. The appeal of reinventing all this is especially strong for founders who see themselves as maverick disruptors. If you believe that it’s possible to reinvent a product, service, or industry, it’s easy to extend that thinking to reinventing the way people are managed. Many corporate practices can seem as outdated as a VHS machine in the age of streaming.
It’s relatively easy to be a management maverick in the early days of a startup, when a handful of cofounders and early hires share the same passion, goals, and energy. You can throw out all those corporate practices and run the startup as an egalitarian, non-bureaucratic, highly effective team. And you might congratulate yourself for being a management disruptor as well as a product or service disruptor.
But sooner than you think, your anti-corporate vibe will become hard to sustain. If you insist on clinging to maverick leadership as the startup grows, the result can be a dysfunctional and unhealthy culture, which can breed deep conflicts among the cofounders and the team.
It’s no surprise that maverick founders hate the very idea of hierarchy. What could be a bigger drag on creativity and boldness than a chain of command, requiring permission from above before anything gets done? Hierarchy seems to spawn bureaucracy. Leaders at the top tend to lose touch with the realities of the work and the needs of users or customers. Decision-making slows down, and teams get stuck in a loop of overexplaining to deflect blame and paperwork to keep management apprised. Who would want their exciting new startup to become that kind of organization?
One of today’s leading thinkers in organizational design, INSEAD’s Phanish Puranam, studied the often unspoken reasons why hierarchy is unpopular. Hierarchy contradicts the egalitarian ideal that everyone is equal, and implies that some people deserve more power and autonomy than others. It forces people to take narrower and more specialized roles, creating deep dissatisfaction among those who value variety in their work. It forces managers to create reporting systems to coordinate and integrate a team’s efforts, but people experience these management reports as drudgery and red tape, not as an essential tool. And hierarchy forces managers to do intangible work that’s hard to measure, relative to the more visible and quantifiable work of writing lines of code, closing sales, or completing projects. Tangible output is widely seen as more valuable, so people who aren’t managers start to resent them as unnecessary.
People often conflate hierarchy with bureaucracy—for good reason, because they tend to expand in tandem. All other things being equal, a company with fifty people with a layer of managers will have more meetings, documentation, and approval processes than a company of five. Nevertheless, it’s possible to reap the positive aspects of hierarchy to help a growing startup achieve its goals without suffering from the downsides of too much bureaucracy. Maverick managers get into trouble when they ban hierarchy in the hopes of minimizing bureaucracy but create chaos instead.
In Google’s early days, Larry Page and Sergey Brin experimented with a nearly flat organization, eliminating engineering managers and having a few hundred people report directly to a single VP of engineering, Wayne Rosing. Their goal was to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in grad school. But this maverick management experiment lasted only a few months. Too many people were going directly to the founders with minutia, such as questions about expense reports and minor interpersonal conflicts. Projects that needed resources didn’t get them, while redundancy of projects became an issue. The engineers craved feedback and guidance on their career development. Everyone soon realized that at least some hierarchy is useful.
Other maverick startups such as Valve, Zappos, GitHub, Medium, and Buffer have also attempted flat organizations. Tony Hsieh, Zappos’s founder, implemented a radical self-management fad known as “holacracy” in 2014, to widespread grumbling. Holacracy decentralizes authority and decision-making in dramatic ways: Employees raise their hands to work on a task, then fluidly assemble a working group that has full authorization to make decisions. Holacracy’s proponents call it self-management, but its critics have called it undermanagement. Two years after adopting the system, Hsieh gave everyone an ultimatum to either commit to holacracy or take a severance package; a third of the 1,500 employees quit. (Ironically, that move was a dramatic use of power and hierarchy.)
Within three years, Zappos was unwinding holacracy and re-creating some amount of hierarchy. They found that as the company continued to grow, teams craved rules and guidance in the face of what felt like anarchy—especially for important business functions such as budgeting and setting priorities. Self-managed teams also spent a lot of time negotiating with each other, instead of having a manager to make quick decisions so everyone could move forward. John Bunch, who coled the rollout of holacracy, recounted that the business metrics started to get shaky, and the company’s reputation for exceptional customer service was at risk.
The evidence is clear that a healthy hierarchy with effective managers can help reduce operational ambiguity. It can help align the team around shared goals, resolve conflicts, speed up progress, and ensure that people’s development and well-being are looked after. Columbia professor Adam Galinsky showed in several studies that if you need a collaborative team to solve complex problems, you’re better off with a boss in the mix instead of a group of equal friends.
Similarly, Saerom Lee of Wharton studied the impact of hierarchy on a large sample of video game studios responsible for more than 190,000 games. He found that every additional layer of management correlated to a decrease of about 1% in the average customer ratings of a studio’s games, attributed to some reduction of cross-pollination of ideas when managers divide large groups into smaller teams. On the other hand, adding one extra layer of management correlated with a 14% increase in global sales, attributed to a reduction in aimless exploration and dysfunctional conflicts. That’s a big gain in commercial success in return for a very small decrease in perceived product quality.
Hierarchy doesn’t have to devolve into bureaucracy. Applied within reasonable limits, it can add speed and clarity within your team, driving measurably better results. Startups need not fear hierarchy.
