William Mays home in Pacific Palisades was destroyed in the L.A. wildfires in January 2025. Hes still haunted by the memory of the fireball burning everything in its path on that hellish day. And all he wants to do is rebuild his beautiful home, where the retired pediatrician lived with his wife.
Since then, hes been fighting with State Farm, his property insurer, to get the money he said he needs to rebuild his home. Back in 2017, when he bought the two-story home, he said it was valued at $1.7 million. But the insurer gave him an estimate of only $1.35 million after the fire, and May said hes driven himself into debt trying to rebuild the couples home while they wait for State Farm to reassess their claim. Property values in the neighborhood have increased 50% from $2.1 million on average in December 2017 to $3.076 million in December 2025, according to Zillows Home Values Index.
How can it be worth less now than it was when it was new?
May blames State Farms use of an AI-powered software called Xactimate, which the insurer employs to estimate property repair, rebuilding, and cleaning costs. They use this reductive method. Its a phony way of calculating every screw, every bolt, and coming up with a profit for State Farm by undervaluing the house.
May considers himself lucky, since he has the resources to rebuild, noting that many of his neighbors cant afford to do that and face similar problems with their insurers. He also blames Verisk, the data analytics company that makes Xactimate.
Im pretty sure these companies make these programs just to sell to insurance companies so that they can lowball people because the insurers are interested in squeezing people for profit, he said.
A spokesperson for State Farm told Capital & Main: State Farm remains committed to helping our customers throughout the entire recovery process and paying them all benefits available under their policies. So far, weve issued over $5 billion in payments to families whose homes, cars, and property were damaged or destroyed in the fires. We encourage any customer with questions or concerns to reach out to us.
A spokesperson for Verisk said that Xactimates AI capabilities support tasks such as summarizing information or labeling photos and always operate under human review and control. She added that Xactimate does not generate repair costs using AI, and AI does not determine the price of materials, labor or reconstruction. Xactwares construction cost database is market-based, transparent and rooted in human-validated data. It is intended as a flexible benchmark that users can adjust for specific jobs and local conditions.
State Farm, along with other major property insurers, is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to increase efficiency and improve risk modeling. The insurer posted a net income of $5.3 billion in 2024, a turnaround from a $6.3 billion loss in 2023. In late 2024, the companys former vice president of innovation and venture capital, Haden Kirkpatrick, said in an interview that AI and other emerging technologies will help the industry better predict and prevent losses.
As the insurance industry grapples with the climate crisis more extreme weather events destroying homes, leading to greater losses and skyrocketing premiums AI has been touted as a game-changing asset. By analyzing vast datasets, the technology has the potential to predict and manage risk more accurately, improving underwriting efficiency and even enabling insurers to offer coverage in areas that otherwise would be considered uninsurable due to climate volatility.
Yet AIs performance in recent years has been criticized for inaccurate predictions when it comes to climate change, algorithmic bias, privacy concerns, lack of transparency, and incorrect outputs such as hallucinations. Industry watchdogs have raised concerns that insurers could rely on the technology to make quick decisions in the name of cost efficiency with complicated claims that require human analysis.
From California to Alabama to Illinois, policyholders and prosecutors have filed lawsuits claiming that property insurers use of AI has allowed them to underpay claims, discriminate against nonwhite customers, and drop coverage altogether. The class-action suits have focused on whats called AI-washing when the technology is misapplied to manage risk in a way that hurts policyholders.
In the wake of complaints by homeowners like May, Los Angeles County recently announced a probe into State Farms use of AI tools that allegedly delayed or denied claims. The countys counsel sent a letter to the insurer in November seeking documents related to the L.A. wildfires: Any and all documents, including but not limited to memoranda, bulletins, manuals, training materials, policy statements, guidelines, or directives that reflect, describe, or constitute State Farms use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the claims review process.
State Farm announced in March 2024 that it would not renew about 72,000 California property insurance policies through 2025, citing wildfire risks and associated costs.
The insurer said in an online update on its California recovery response: Recovery, following a catastrophe, doesnt move in a straight line. It added that many families are engaged in the process of rebuilding and recovering from the devastation and that many families continue to navigate through parts of the claims process, with State Farm trying to address the needs of their unique circumstances.
The insurance industry touts AI as a tool to help it with risk modeling as climate change increases in severity. Its also optimistic that the technology will help it curb losses and improve its bottom line. In a policy paper by Bain & Co., consultants said they anticipate that generative AI will lead to a 30% to 50% decrease in total leakage the difference between what is paid vs. what is owed per the contract, which occurs when adjusters deviate from policy guidelines or when supply chain problems cause unanticipatedcosts.
In a recent white paper by CAPE Analytics, which specializes in AI-powered property risk intelligence it sells to insurers, the company noted several reasons why the technology is needed to sift through a mountain of contradictory data, and noted that it can help insurers avoid providing too much coverage at low rates. Without AI, The consequences of operating with raw data or drawing the wrong conclusions from it can lead to excessive exposure when quotes are too low and premium loss when theyre unnecessarily high.
To insurance professionals and advocates for policyholders, that raises concerns that insurers will rely on the technology to make hasty decisions in often-complicated claims processes.
For example, there is the potential for AI systems to make decisions based on incomplete or biased data, leading to unfair treatment of policyholders, noted Chip Merlin, a Florida lawyer who has represented policyholders.
He cited a 2022 class-action suit brought by homeowners in Illinois who claimed that State Farms use of algorithms in its claims-processing methods disproportionately impacts Black policyholders, causing delays in repairs and the payment of benefits. The case is pending, and the insurer insists that its practices do not violate federal law.
The biggest factors impacting the affordability and availability of insurance are climate change and technology like AI, said Amy Bach, the executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group.
Now theyre no longer willing to insure many people, and a lot of that is because of data and the use of AI in predictive analytics, as well as aerial surveillance. When people ask me, What benefits are consumers getting from AI? Im like, in the insurance context, none.
Monica Palmeira, associate director of economic equity at the nonprofit Greenling Institute, said that AI could be used to increase bluelining a modern version of redlining, describing a practice in which financial institutions and insurers withdraw from poor neighborhoods or dramatically hike rates in areas considered high risk for climate change.
When Palmeira and her colleagues started studying communities considered vulnerable to climate impacts, We saw this pattern of the same communities that were excluded from financial services in the past continue to come up for exclusion today.
Insurance, she said, is one of the first ways that communities experience that withdrawal of financial services and now its starting to be whole areas that cant get insurance and that means they cant get mortgages. So this contagion starts to happen.
To address such concerns, states are taking action to protect consumers. One of the common themes of such measures is greater transparency requiring that consumers be informed when AI is used in decision making, that companies maintain guidelines for the responsible use of AI, and make their policies and procedures for the use of AI publicly accessible. Those requirements are included in a guidance from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which provides a framework for the responsible use of AI.
At the same time, some lawmakers are pushing for human review in decision making by insurers. State Rep. Hillary Cassel, a Florida lawmaker, recently sponsored legislation that seeks to ensure humans make the ultimate decisions when it comes to insurance claims.
I think insurance companies should be allowed to use AI as a tool because premiums are very high across the country, especially here in Florida, and if insurance companies can use it to aggregate their resources and pass that savings on to consumers by using those types of tools, she told Capital & Main. But we also know that AI can be used for nefarious reasons, and I thought it was really important that in the space of dealing with denials that computers dont always get it right.
The state-level action gives hope to Palmeira that consumers will start to see the level of review and transparency that they really deserve. She noted that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners experienced protests by consumers at a meeting, shortly before it announced its guidance on AI. The way the insurance industry has been able to exert its power over insurance regulation has been so dominant for so long that were finally maybe starting to see a small shift in the tide.
Palmeira acknowledged that climate change might make certain parts of the country uninsurable and that AI can be utilized in beneficial ways by insurers to improve their risk modeling and predictive analytics.
But it shouldnt be black box models without a human check on their decisions or without working with communities to make informed decisions about their livelihoods and wellbeing.
One potential tool is parametric insurance which utilizes data such as satellite imagery, IoT (Internet of Things) sensors that detect changes in the environment and weather feeds to trigger automated payments to policyholders when specific weather conditions are met for a particular home. It can be a really useful tool to make sure folks have some kind of baseline coverage in a way that can be deployed very efficiently, Palmeira said.
In addition, she suggests more community-based measures such as a local government purchasing an insurance policy for an entire neighborhood or where there needs to be more sensitive and serious conversations about relocation in very defined areas.
Marcus Baram
Since 1920, the outdoor recreation brand Eddie Bauer has pioneered innovative apparel and sports gear designs for outdoorsmen in America.
Now, in another blow for physical retailers, sources say that all of the brands North American stores are on the chopping block amid an impending bankruptcy filing.
According to a person close to the matter, the company that owns the license to operate Eddie Bauer stores in both the U.S. and Canada, Catalyst Brands, is gearing up for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that could potentially shutter all of the brands North American stores. The bankruptcy would be limited to the entity that operates the stores, the person said.
Catalyst Brands did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.
Eddie Bauer operates 180 locations in the U.S and Canada and about 20 international locationsmeaning this filing could almost entirely eliminate the brands physical operations.
It would be the second bankruptcy to impact Eddie Bauer, which sought Chapter 11 protection in 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis.
The news comes as the so-called “retail apocalypse continues to slowly subsume brick-and-mortar stores of all specialties across the United States.
In 2025, store closures struck major retail chains like Macys, 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Party City, and Big Lots, and the internet grieved the final days of beloved brands like Joann and Claires.
And just this month, Saks Global announced the closure of most of its Saks Off 5th brand, while Francescas, another mall staple, began quietly shutting down its stores.
Which Eddie Bauer stores are closing?
Catalyst Brands, which also oversees operations for brands including Lucky Brand, Aéropostale, Nautica, Brooks Brothers, and JCPenney, has not yet announced details of its rumored Chapter 11 filing for Eddie Bauer or the specific stores that it intends to close.
Its likely that the move will encompass all of the brands North American locationshowever, sources say that there are several outside parties interested in purchasing at least part of the total fleet.
According to the publication WWD, which reported on the potential bankruptcy last week, the filing is expected to go through sometime in February.
In the absence of any official news from Catalyst, local media has been independently reporting on closures.
These include a 30-year-old location that closed its doors in Flagstaff, Arizona; a defunct mall spot in Amarillo, Texas; and a shuttered 20-year-old store in Naperville, Illinois, to name a few.
A full list of Eddie Bauers retail locations is still up on its website.
What does this mean for the Eddie Bauer brand?
The reported bankruptcy filing could spell the end of Eddie Bauers physical presence in the U.S., but it doesnt mean that the brand is going away entirely.
Eddie Bauers assets are technically controlled by three separate entities: Catalyst, which owns the license to operate stores in the U.S.; Authentic Brands Group, which owns Eddie Bauers global brand IP; and Outdoor 5, which recently acquired the licenses to Eddie Bauers manufacturing, e-commerce, and wholesale operations.
Thus, while Catalyst might shutter the brands North American stores, Outdoor 5 will continue to manage its digital sales and distribution channels to other retailers.
Eddie Bauer has been signaling a retreat from its brick-and-mortar business for years.
Back in 2023, when the brand ditched its cursive logo for a new sans serif mark, then-CEO Tim Bantle told Fast Company that wholesale retail and international distribution were two of his top priorities for the company.
Americans lived through the worst bout of inflation in about 40 years at the start of this decade, but the sting of higher prices differed significantly depending on where you live. Even though wages also rose during that period, residents of only nine states have actually come out ahead, according to a new study.
From 2020 to 2024, consumer prices for things like housing, groceries, energy, and everyday essentials climbed 21%, as measured by the consumer price index. During that same period, the average American workers pay rose 18%, from about $64,000 to $75,600, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those differences illustrate what many Americans have experienced: Inflation erased much of the apparent progress of wage increases, according to a recent analysis by MyPerfectResume, an online resume building site. In fact, the typical U.S. worker is now earning approximately 2.6% less in real termsafter adjusting for inflation and cost of livingthan in 2020, the study found.
The findings highlight a crucial truth: A high-paying job doesnt automatically mean a higher standard of living, Jasmine Escalera, a certified career coach who provides career advice for MyPerfect Resume, wrote in the report. The nation got a pay raise on paper, but a pay cut in reality.
Thats because inflation has erased years of progress and workers paychecks arent stretching so far, according to MyPerfectResume, which didnt immediately respond to an interview request from Fast Company.
And despite a recent claim by President Donal Trump that inflation has been defeated, economists expect it to tick up from a 2.7% annual rate in 2025. Inflation is forecasted to increase at an annual rate of 2.9% in 2026, according to the consensus forecast of about 50 professional economic forecasters surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
WHERE WORKERS CAME OUT AHEAD
The sting of inflation hasnt been the same for all Americans. Residents in 40 states lost purchasing power from 2020 to 2024, while Utahns saw no change in their standard of living during that same period, MyPerfectResume found, based on an analysis of the changes in real earnings and purchasing power across all 50 U.S. states from 2020 through 2024.
But Americans in the following nine states, mostly concentrated in the West and South, saw their paychecks stretch farthest:
Idaho: +3.1%
Florida: +2.6%
Washington: +2.3%
Montana: +2.3%
Wyoming: +1.8%
South Carolina: +1.5%
North Carolina: +0.9%
Tennessee: +0.9%
Maine: +0.5%
Workers there actually came out ahead once inflation and local prices were taken into account, Escalera wrote.
WHERE WORKERS ARE FALLING BEHIND
Workers in the vast majority of states, however, are grappling with higher paychecks that feels like less money to spend on essentials.
The analysis pointed to particular pain for workers on the East Coast, where the decline in real purchasing power from 2020 to 2024 was worstled by New Jersey:
New Jersey: -7.0%
Rhode Island: -6.9%
Maryland: -5.4%
New York: -5.3%
Massachusetts: -5.3%
For workers in these states, nominal wage growth was insufficient to keep pace with inflation and high living costs, in some cases prompting workers to choose job security over career moves, Escalera wrote.
SIDE GIGS
To grapple with paychecks that buy less today than they did just a few years ago, many Americans rely on supplemental income or side gigs.
In fact, MyPerfectResume conducted a recent survey that found that 72% of American workers currently rely on at least one source of secondary income, with the majority citing inflation as making such side gigs more necessary.
What began as a stopgap during high inflation has transformed into a long-term financial strategy, shaping how Americans navigate rising costs, stagnant wages, and economic uncertainty, Escalera wrote in that report.
Wild swings that swept through financial markets overnight eased after Wall Street opened for trading on Monday. U.S. stocks rose modestly following gains in Europe and sharp drops in Asia, while gold and silver prices rallied back from severe earlier losses.
The S&P 500 added 0.5% and is on track to snap a three-day losing streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 317 points, or 0.6%, as of 10:15 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.
Stocks of companies that make computer storage helped lead the market, adding to gains from last week following several profit reports that topped analysts’ expectations. Airlines and cruise-ship operators were also strong, benefiting from a sharp easing of oil prices.
The center of the action in financial markets was again precious metals, where momentum suddenly halted after golds price roughly doubled in 12 months.
Gold briefly dropped below $4,500 per ounce in the overnight hours, down more than $1,000 from its high point reached just last week. It later pulled back to $4,742.80, down 0.1% from Friday.
Silvers price has been on an even wilder ride recently, and it swung from a 9% loss overnight to a 0.3% gain.
Gold and silver prices had earlier been surging as investors looked for safer things to own amid a wide range of worries, including a Federal Reserve that may be set to become less independent, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, threats of tariffs, and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.
Their prices cratered on Friday, including a 31.4% plunge for silver. Some on Wall Street saw it as a result of President Donald Trumps nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Fed. Warshs reputation as a former Fed governor may have raised expectations among some investors that he may keep interest rates high to fight against inflation, which would reduce the need to hide out in gold and silver for protection.
But many on Wall Street are also skeptical of that initial reading and say the expectation from Trump is likely that Warsh will cut interest rates, something the president has been demanding. That could give the economy a boost, but also inflation.
The Fed chair has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. That affects prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control.
The recent swoons for gold and silver are likely more about the washout for some traders who had borrowed money to bet on metals prices continuing to soar, rather than about a wholesale change in expectations for demand for metals, according to Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer for Wealth & Investment Management at Wells Fargo
On Wall Street, Sandisk leaped 11.4% to lead the S&P 500. The data-storage company added to its 6.9% gain from Friday, after it reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It credited demand created by the artificial-intelligence boom, among other things.
That helped offset a 1.3% drop for Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the worlds move into AI technology. The losses were worse in Asia, where AI winners plunged. South Koreas Kospi fell 5.3% from its record for its worst day in almost 10 months after chip company SK Hynix lost nearly 9%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields edged higher after a report said that U.S. manufacturing grew last month, when economists were expecting a contraction. The yield on the 10-year Treasury erased an earlier dip and rose to 4.27%, up from 4.26% late Friday.
Oil prices dropped more than 4% after Trump told reporters that Iran is seriously talking to us. Its a potential signal of improving relations between the two countries, which could prevent a possible disruption to the global flow of oil.
In stock markets abroad, European indexes rose nearly 1% following Asias washout. Japans Nikkei 225 fell 1.3%, while stocks fell 2.2% in Hong Kong and 2.5% in Shanghai.
By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
When we return to work after the holidays, we tend to bring renewed energy, a laundry list of annual goals, and a few aspirational New Years resolutions. This is the year youre going to run the marathon.
Though we arrive ready to hit the ground running, actual business momentum might tell a different story. I call it the Q1 paradox. Were prepared for a flurry of activity, but in reality, we experience a slower cadence. With GDP growth typically slower in Q1, consumer and business spending may lag. Demands feel less urgent. Phones are quieter.
As CEO of Jotform, Ive found that the first quarter is the perfect time to lay the groundwork for the years success.
Heres how my team and I make the most of this valuable window.
Lead by example
For leaders, the first order of business is getting your team to start projecting themselves and the organization into the following 12 months. When theyve just closed out 2025 and wrapped up year-end reports, that can be easier said than done.
While getting your team into this mindset begins with clear directives, thats only half the equation. Modeling the behavior is just as important. Formal policies may attempt to create organizational culture and norms, but routinesthe way leaders and employees actually show up and functionare just as vital. As Harvard Business Impact notes, leaders uphold and demonstrate their character through the daily habits they follow and the decisions they make. Thats why leaders must model proactive behaviors that encourage forward-thinking across the team.
At Jotform, for example, I start with a nudge in early January, sharing my objectives for the new year with the entire organization. I try to keep these big-picture, beginning with my most audacious goals, since those tend to be the ones that excite and inspire me. They keep the momentum going during inevitable lulls in motivation. Often, Ill include a brief road map outlining how we can reach each objective. Finally, I encourage employees to reach out if they have questions or ideas. And, of course, to think about what they most want to achieve in the year ahead.
Modeling this forward-looking behavior can help employees rise above the busywork from day one and gain much-needed perspective on where were headed.
Reflect and refine your strategies
If the first step is looking forward, the second involves gazing back and taking stock of your current business strategies. In todays fast-changing world, where AI stands to reinvent workflows at breakneck speed, this is more vital than ever.
At my company, I work with our teams to evaluate strategies, identify gaps, and determine which adjustments are needed to move toward our goals with confidence. With each department, we begin by reviewing their respective strategies and considering whether they serve our larger purpose: making users lives easier through automation. We then map out the processes and workflows that carry out those strategies, looking for weak spotsfor example, tasks that could be accelerated through automation without sacrificing the essential human elements, such as strategic judgment and creative thinking. Finally, we ensure that each workflow within a strategy has a clear human owner to oversee decision-making and step in when issues arise.
As Ive found, this balance of reflection, automation, and human accountability helps ensure continued progress, year after year.
Carve out time for experimentation
If Ive learned one thing in two decades of entrepreneurship, its the importance of scheduling everything. If you dont deliberately carve out time for it, chances increase that youll kick it down the road. Thats why everything, including creativity, must be built into your schedule.
When we do our first quarter strategizing, I urge our employees to create space for experimentation: to test new ideas, refine processes, tool around with new AI applications, and explore innovative approacheswithout the usual time pressure.
On an organizational level, we hold demo dayswhere each team shares their latest ideas and projectsand regular hack weeks. These five-day creative sprints allow our product teams to laser-focus on a single idea, while completely putting aside their day-to-day to-do lists. Hack weeks have led to some of our biggest innovations, and we schedule them as soon as we return to work in January.
With some proactive thinking, moments for reflection, and dedicated time for experimentation, the quiet first quarter can become less of a pause, and more of a launchpad for a year of meaningful progress.
The one thing N. Lee Plumb knows for sure about being laid off from Amazon last week is that it wasnt a failure to get on board with the companys artificial intelligence plans.
Plumb, his teams head of AI enablement, says he was so prolific in his use of Amazons new AI coding tool that the company flagged him as one of its top users.
Many assumed Amazon’s 16,000 corporate layoffs announced last week reflected CEO Andy Jassys push to reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.
But like other companies that have tied workforce changes to AI including Expedia, Pinterest, and Dow last week it can be hard for economists, or individual employees like Plumb, to know if AI is the real reason behind the layoffs or if it’s the message a company wants to tell Wall Street.
AI has to drive a return on investment, said Plumb, who worked at Amazon for eight years. When you reduce head count, youve demonstrated efficiency, you attract more capital, the share price goes up.
So you could potentially have just been bloated in the first place, reduce head count, attribute it to AI, and now youve got a value story, he said.
Amazon said in an emailed statement that AI was not the reason behind the vast majority of these reductions.
These changes are about continuing to strengthen our culture and teams by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and helping reduce bureaucracy to drive speed and ownership, it said.
Plumb is atypical for an Amazon worker in that he’s also running what he describes as a long shot bid for Congress in Texas, on a platform focused on stopping the tech industry’s reliance on work visas to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
But whatever it was that cost Plumb his job, his skepticism about AI-driven job replacement is one shared by many economists.
We just don’t know, said Karan Girotra, a professor of management at Cornell University’s business school. Not because AI isnt great, but because it requires a lot of adjustment and most of the gains accrue to individual employees rather than to the organization. People save time and they get their work done earlier.
If an employer works faster because of AI, Girotra said it takes time to adjust a company’s management structure in a way that would enable a smaller workforce. He’s not convinced that’s happening at Amazon, which he said is still scaling back from a glut of hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report by Goldman Sachs said AI’s overall impact on the labor market remains limited, though some effects might be felt in specific occupations like marketing, graphic design, customer service, and especially tech. Those are fields involving tasks that correlate with the strengths of the current crop of generative AI chatbots that can write emails and marketing pitches, produce synthetic images, answer questions, and help write code.
But the bank’s economic research division said in its most recent monthly AI adoption tracker that, since December, very few employees were affected by corporate layoffs attributed to AI, though the report was published Jan. 16, before Amazon, Dow and Pinterest announced their layoffs.
San Francisco-based Pinterest was the most explicit in asserting that AI drove it to cut up to 15% of its workforce. The social media company said it was making organizational changes to further deliver on our AI-forward strategy, which includes hiring AI-proficient talent. As a result, weve made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our team members.
Pinterest echoed that message in a regulatory disclosure that said the company was reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution.”
Expedia has voiced a similar message but the 162 tech workers the travel website cut from its Seattle headquarters last week included several AI-specific roles, such as machine-learning scientists.
Dow’s regulatory disclosures tied its 4,500 layoffs to a new plan utilizing AI and automation to increase productivity and improve shareholder returns.
Amazon’s 16,000 corporate job cuts were part of a broader reduction of employees at the ecommerce giant. At the same time as those cuts, all believed to be office jobs, Amazon said it would cut about 5,000 retail workers, according to notices it sent to state workforce agencies in California, Maryland and Washington, resulting from its decision to close almost all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores.
That’s on top of a round of 14,000 job cuts in October, bringing the total to well over 30,000 since Jassy first signaled a push for AI-driven organizational changes.
Like many companies, in technology and otherwise, but particularly those that make and sell AI tools and services, Amazon has been pushing its workforce to find more efficiencies with AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that 2026 will be when AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work.
Were investing in AI-native tooling so individuals at Meta can get more done, were elevating individual contributors, and flattening teams, he said on an earnings call. Were starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.
So far, Metas layoffs this year have focused on cutting jobs from its virtual reality and metaverse divisions. Also driving job impacts is the industry shifting resources to AI development, which requires huge spending on computer chips, energy-hungry data centers and talent.
Jassy told Amazon employees last June to be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your teams brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams.
Plumb was fully on board with that and said he demonstrated his proficiency in using Amazon’s AI coding tool, Kiro, to solve massive problems in the company’s compensation system.
If you werent using them, your manager would get a report and they would talk to you about using it, he said. There were only five people in the entire company that were a higher user of Kiro than I was, or had achieved more milestones.
Now he’s shifting gears to his candidacy among a field of epublicans in the Houston area looking to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw in the March primary.
Cornell’s Girotra said it’s possible that increasing AI productivity is leading companies to cut middle management, but he said the reality is that those making layoff decisions just need to cut costs and make it happen. Thats it. I don’t think they care what the reason for that is.
Not all companies are signaling AI as a reason for cuts. Home Depot confirmed on Thursday that it was eliminating 800 roles tied to its corporate headquarters in Atlanta, though most of the affected employees worked remotely.
Home Depots spokesman George Lane said that Home Depots cuts were not driven by AI or automation but truly about speed, agility and serving the needs of its customers and front-line workers.
And exercise equipment maker Peloton confirmed on Friday that it is reducing its workforce by 11% as part of a broader cost-cutting move to pare down operating expenses.
Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer
AP Retail Writer Anne DInnocenzio contributed to this report.
An outbreak of Nipah virus outbreak in India is currently causing alarm for health officials and travelers across a number of countries in Asia.
On January 26, health officials from India notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of two laboratory-confirmed cases of Nipah virus (NiV) infection in West Bengal State. No additional NiV cases have been detected.
Following news of the outbreak, authorities in some Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, have ramped up airport health screening efforts.
However, according to Reuters, the screenings are more for “reassurance” than a tactic to stop the spread. The WHO says risk of spread at the national, regional, and global levels is low.
The latest developments
Both recent West Bengal cases involved healthcare workers who began showing typical NiV symptoms in late December 2025.
The cases were confirmed by Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) testing, according to the WHO. Local health officials identified 196 contacts, all of whom tested negative for NiV and showed no symptoms.
NiV is serious, but rare. It is a zoonotic virus, meaning it usually spreads from animals to humans. Fruit bats or flying foxes are natural hosts for the virus.
However, the virus can also be transmitted through contaminated food and from person to person through close contact with an infected persons bodily fluids, such as saliva or urine.
Person-to-person contact is less common, according to the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training & Education Center (NETEC). Person-to-person transmission is most commonly reported in hospital or healthcare settings.
According to the WHO, the case fatality rate is estimated to be 40% to 75%. There are no licensed medications or vaccines for NiV infection, but early supportive care can improve survival.
Additional details can be found in the WHO’s January 30 disease outbreak news report.
A brief history of the virus
NiV was first identified in 1998 in Malaysia during an outbreak among pig farmers.
Since then, cases have been reported in less than a handful of countriesBangladesh, India, Malaysia, and Singapore. The most recent outbreak marks the third NiV infection outbreak reported in West Bengal.
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Back in 2023, this single-family home at 19374 Rizzuto St. in Venice, FL (34293 ZIP Code) was purchased for $565,000. By the time the transaction closed, the housing market had already begun to enter a period of cyclical coolingwith Florida seeing a sharper power swing to buyers and some pockets of Southwest Florida moving into what ResiClub considers correction mode.
By February 2025, the homeowner listed the property above for sale at $519,000. After 4 subsequent price cuts and a brief delisting, the home finally sold in December 2025 for $455,000or -19.5% below its 2023 sales price. While thats certainly a material home price correction from its Pandemic Housing Boom peak, we should note that the December 2025 sales price ($455K) was still +38.7% above the $328,000 price the same property fetched in 2017.
As weve closely documented for ResiClub readers for the past few years (heres our past feature on just Punta Gorda), Southwest Florida has been one of the two weakest regional chunks of the U.S. housing market. Among major U.S. metros, only Austin, Texas metro area (-27.3% since its 2022 peak) has seen a larger overall price drop this cycle than metros in Punta Gorda, FL (-25.3% from its 2022 peak), Cape Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL (-18.8% from its 2022 peak), and North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL (-17.4% from its 2022 peak). The North Port-Sarasota metro is where the home highlighted above is located.
Pulling from the ResiClub Terminal, single-family home prices in the ZIP Code highlighted in todays article (34293) are down -11.3% year-over-year.
Pulling from the ResiClub Terminal, single-family home prices in the highlighted ZIP Code (34293) are down -21.5% from their 2022 peak. Thats broadly in line with the -19.5% decline at which the highlighted property sold relative to its 2023 price.
Pulling from the ResiClub Terminal, single-family home prices in the highlighted ZIP Code (34293) are still up +37.3% above March 2020 levels. Thats broadly similar to the +38.7% increase the highlighted property sold for in December 2025 relative to its pre-pandemic sale in 2017 ($328,000).
Again, todays ResiClub article is not about a property in a market performing anywhere near the U.S. average right now. Instead, it highlights a market that has been among the weakest since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out. Indeed, U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, entered 2026 at +1.9% above their July 2022 levels. Meanwhile, home prices in the North PortSarasota metrowhere the home in the 34293 ZIP Code is locatedentered 2026 at -17.4% below their July 2022 levels.
Click here to view an interactive of the chart below
There are several factors that have come together to tilt the supply-demand balance in Southwest Florida more decisively toward homebuyers since the Pandemic Housing Boom ended.
One key factor is that home prices in Southwest Florida rose too far, too faststretching housing fundamentals well beyond what local incomes could reasonably support in a region that also happened to have relatively lower building costs and ample entitled land. When the Pandemic Housing Booms domestic migration surgeparticularly the influx of retirees and near-retireesbegan to decelerate, the Southwest Florida market experienced an even bigger demand shock. With fewer in-migrants, Southwest Florida increasingly had to rely on local incomes to support pricesin a market that already had strained fundamentals.
At the same time, as market conditions shifted, elevated levels of new single-family andmultifamily supply came online across parts of Southwest Florida. Builders and landlords were forced to offer larger incentives to move product, which pulled some marginal demand away from the resale market and added another layer of cooling.
Put more simply: Pockets of Southwest Florida had overshot, and the market needed a period of mean reversion.
Click here to view an interactive of the chart below
There are other factors, of course.
Following the Surfside condo collapse in June 2021, which killed 98 people, Florida passed new structural safety rules, requiring more inspections and additional funds for repairs to be set aside by the end of 2024. That has led to Florida HOAs issuing sky-high special assessments and monthly HOA fee increases to cover these costs. This has had a greater impact on older coastal Florida condo buildings.
Looking ahead, one big question is whether home prices in markets like Punta Gorda and Cape Coral (and metro area Austin, TX) have fallen enough to recapture the attention of homebuyers, mom-and-pop single-family investors, and single-family acquisition capital?
Its worth noting that while many pockets of Southwest Florida still have inventory/months of supply levels above the national average, the pace of inventory growth has slowed significantly over the past yearand some areas in SWFL have even begun to see modest year-over-year declines in active listings.
Back in spring 2022, while working at Fortune, I suggested that pockets of Southwest Florida could be at greater risk of a home price correction. At the time, Moodys Analytics model believed Punta Gorda, for example, was overvalued by 57.8%.
The correction Punta Gorda has gone through since thencoupled with additional income gainsmeans the market is now only overvalued by 9.0%, according to Moodys model. In other words, the ongoing correction in Southwest Florida has significantly reduced downside risk going forward relative to where things stood a few years ago.
In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality.
He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy, authority, and responsibility. This would require a more formal mode of organizationa bureaucracyin which roles and responsibilities were clearly defined. Power would be entrusted to institutions, not individuals.
Yet today, according to Gallup, our faith in institutions has been shattered. From political institutions to schools to big business, support has fallen precipitously, and now only the military and small business enjoy majority support. In essence, the process Weber described has been reversed: weve discarded institutions and embraced individuals. It is not serving us well.
How Institutions Shape Societies
In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. Today, regarded as the seminal work of capitalism, it wasnt seen that way at the time (the term did not exist in common usage). Rather, it was a powerful critique of mercantilism, the dominant economic model at the time, which sought to accumulate a countrys resources through promoting exports and minimizing imports.
Yet Smith pointed out that the wealth of a nation lies in what it produces, not what it can sock away in vaults. Moreover, he argued that when wealthy merchants have the opportunity, they tend to corrupt political systems in order to extract more wealth for themselves, and that free markets are the most effective way to allocate resources productively.
More recently, economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson build on Smiths ideas in Why Nations Fail. They explain why the fate of nations rests less on innate factors such as geography, culture, or climate and more on the quality and types of institutions they build: inclusive institutions or extractive institutions.
Inclusive institutions protect property rights broadly across society, establish fair competition, and reward innovation. Extractive institutions, on the other hand, concentrate wealth in the hands of a small elite who exploit the broader population. These elites control resources and use state power to enrich themselves at societys expense.
In other words, the wealth of nations is linked to the well-being of their people and this is largely a function of institutions. We depend on schools to educate, corporations to produce, governments to serve, and the media to inform. The health of a society is inextricably tied up in the health of its institutions.
Institution Building And Institutional Capture
Great leaders are remembered for the institutions they create. Napoleon is remembered for his civic code as much as for his military victories. Franklin Roosevelt will always be associated with the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson with the Great Society. We recognize great industrialists like Walt Disney not just for their individual deeds, but for the organizations they left behind.
Autocrats understand that their power is directly a function of their ability to control or influence institutions. Many of these, of course, are political institutions, such as ministries, parliaments, and courts. Many others, such as corporations, religious organizations, educational institutions, and the media, are not.
Thats why when Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in Russia, he moved quickly to consolidate private media under Gazprom, install his own oligarchs and cultivate a close partnership with the Orthodox Church. Power is never monolithic, but distributed across institutions. To control a society, you need to control its institutions.
Pro-democracy activists often employ a similar strategy. They target institutions that are important to the regime. For example, the Serbian activist group Otpor targeted the police with an elaborate strategy that both hampered their efforts and gradually recruited them to join the cause. When major protests broke out after an attempt to steal an election, the key security forces defected and joined the protestors.
As Dostoevsky explained in The Grand Inquisitor, there will always be a conflict between churches and their messiahs. If people truly love the messiah, they wont need priests to provide mystery and authority. They would be free to pursue truth for themselves.
The Erosion of Institutional Authority
In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan declared, Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem, and vowed to unleash the private sector. What followed was not a renaissance of institutional strength, but a steady erosion of it. His deregulation led to the Savings and Loan crisis. Then came the dot-com bubble and crash, two long and destructive wars, the Great Financial Crisis, and the Covid pandemic.
Each time there was a villain to execrate: Big Business, Wall Street, Neocons, the Military-Industrial Complex, Big Banks, Big Pharma, the media, and of course, nameless government bureaucrats (sometimes also known as public servants). As the Gallup dat clearly shows, we no longer trust our institutions.
It is, in a strange sort of way, like The Grand Inquisitor in reverse. With no more churches to worship, weve gone in search of messiahs: demagogues, tech billionaires, podcast hosts, and many others. Were not craving altars. We seek parasocial relationships, hoping that our personal saviors will free us from institutional authority.
The difference today is that we are often interacting with institutions without even knowing it. As the Filipino activist Maria Ressa has long documented, nation states are fighting an active information war, seeding our conversations on social media with divisive messaging, then amplifying the response with massive bot farms. Those tech oligarchs and podcast hosts arent just passive observers, but often actively pursuing an agenda for their own benefit.
What were left with is the worst of both worlds: less freedom and less prosperity.
The End Of History All Over Again
In the 1990s, Western-style liberal democracy was triumphant. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Cold War had been won. Teams of diplomats and consultants rushed to spread the Washington Consensus, an agreed-upon set of reforms that poor countries were pressured to undertake by their richer brethren.
Francis Fukuyama noted at the time that we had reached an endpoint in history, when one model had achieved dominance over all others. Yet even as he laid out the rational case, he invoked the ancient Greek concept of thymos, or spiritedness, to warn that even at the end of history, some would insist on going their own way, no matter the consequences.
The truth is that every revolution inspires its own counterrevolution and the pendulum will continue to swing until there can be some agreement about shared values and how to move forward. Today, we can see the consequences. Populists arent so much anti-elite as they are anti-institution, and todays media environment rewards those who attack them. The result is a world that feels far more divided and dangerous than it did even during the Cold War.
Our mistake was that we were far too triumphant about a unipolar world to recognize that we needed to redesign our institutions to adapt to a new era. We are still largely living in a society governed by postwar institutions designed for how the world was nearly 80 years agono Internet, no cheap air travel, global GDP roughly five percent of what it is today.
Today, much like after World War II and in 1989, we are in the midst of a fundamental realignment. To build a different future, we need to rethink our institutionswhat values we want to embed in them and what our relationship to them should be. How should schools educate? Corporations produce? Governments serve? And the media inform?
We dont need saviors or messiahs. We need to redesign and rebuild institutions that can serve and sustain us for the 21st century.
Over the past two decades, the concept of mindfulness has become hugely popular around the world. An increasingly ubiquitous part of society, its taught everywhere from workplaces and schools to sports programs and the military.
On social media, television, and wellness apps, mindfulness is often shown as one simple thingstaying calm and paying attention to the moment.
Large companies like Google use mindfulness programs to help employees stay focused and less stressed. Hospitals use it to help people manage pain and improve mental health. Millions of people now use mindfulness apps that promise everything from lowering stress to sleeping better.
But as a professor of religious studies who has spent years examining how mindfulness is defined and practiced across different traditions and historical periods, Ive noticed a surprising problem beneath the current surge of enthusiasm: Scientists, clinicians, and educators still dont agree on what mindfulness actually isor how to measure it.
Because different researchers measure different things under the label mindfulness, two studies can give very different pictures of what the practice actually does. For someone choosing a meditation app or program based on research findings, this matters.
The study youre relying on may be testing a skill like attention, emotional calm, or self-kindness that isnt the one youre hoping to develop. This makes it harder to compare results and can leave people unsure about which approach will genuinely help them in daily life.
From ancient traditions to modern science
Mindfulness has deep roots in Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and other Asian contemplative lineages. The Buddhist Satipatthana Sutta: The Foundations of Mindfulness emphasizes moment-to-moment observation of body and mind.
The Hindu concept of dhyna, or contemplation, cultivates steady focus on the breath or a mantra; Jain samayika, or practice of equanimity, develops calm balance toward all beings; and Sikh simran, or continuous remembrance, dissolves self-centered thought into a deeper awareness of the underlying reality in each moment.
In the late 20th century, teachers and clinicians began adapting these techniques for secular settings, most notably through mindfulness-based stress reduction and other therapeutic programs. Since then, mindfulness has migrated into psychology, medicine, education, and even corporate wellness.
It has become a widely usedthough often differently definedtool across scientific and professional fields.
Why scientists disagree about mindfulness
In discussing the modern application of mindfulness in fields like psychology, the definitional challenge is front and center. Indeed, different researchers focus on different things and then design their tests around those ideas.
Some scientists see mindfulness mainly in terms of emphasizing attention and paying close attention to whats happening right now.
Other researchers define the concept in terms of emotional management and staying calm when things get stressful.
Another cohort of mindfulness studies emphasizes self-compassion, meaning being kind to yourself when you make mistakes.
And still others focus on moral awareness, the idea that mindfulness should help people make wiser, more ethical choices.
These differences become obvious when you look at the tests researchers use to measure mindfulness. The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, or MAAS, asks about how well someone stays focused on the present moment. The Freiburg Mindfulness InventoryFMIasks whether a person can notice thoughts and feelings as they come and accept them without judgment. The Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness ExperiencesCHIMEadds something most other tests leave out: questions about ethical awareness and making wise, moral choices.
As a result, comparative research can be tricky, and it can also be confusing for people who want to be more mindful but arent sure which path to take. Different programs may rely on different definitions of mindfulness, so the skills they teach and the benefits they promise can vary a lot.
This means that someone choosing a mindfulness course or app might end up learning something very different from what they expected unless they understand how that particular program defines and measures mindfulness.
Why different scales measure different things
John Dunne, a Buddhist philosophy scholar at the University of WisconsinMadison, offers a helpful explanation if youve ever wondered why everyone seems to talk about mindfulness in a different way. Dunne says mindfulness isnt one single thing, but a family of related practices shaped by different traditions, purposes, and cultural backgrounds.
This explains why scientists and people trying to be mindful often end up talking past each other. If one study measures attention and another measures compassion, their results wont line up. And if youre trying to practice mindfulness, it matters whether youre following a path that focuses on calming your mind, being kind to yourself, or making ethically aware choices.
Why this matters
Because mindfulness isnt just one thing, that affects how its studied, practiced and taught. Thats important both at the institutional and individual level.
Whether for places like schools and health care, a mindfulness program designed to reduce stress will look very different from one that teaches compassion or ethical awareness.
Without clarity, teachers, doctors, and counselors may not know which approach works best for their goals. The same rough idea applies in business for organizational effectiveness and stress management.
Despite the disagreements, research does show that different forms of mindfulness can produce different kinds of benefits. Practices that sharpen attention to the moment are associated with improved focus and workplace performance.
Approaches oriented towards acceptance tend to help people better manage stress, anxiety, and chronic pain. A focus on compassion-based methods can support emotional resilience. Programs that emphasize ethical awareness may promote more thoughtful, prosocial behavior.
These varied outcomes help explain why researchers continue to debate which definition of mindfulness should guide scientific study.
For anyone practicing minfulness as an individual, this is a reminder to choose practices that fit your needs.
Ronald S. Green is a professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Coastal Carolina University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
