If you have travel plans this weekend and dont necessarily need to travel, you may be in luck.
A massive winter storm is forecasted this weekenddubbed Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channeland could bring crippling ice and heavy snow to more than 30 states stretching from Arizona to Maine. With some 230 million Americans potentially affected, many airlines are preemptively warning travelers about potential weather-related disruptions and offering travel waivers in advance.
The major U.S. carriers have issued alerts to travelers with flights scheduled out of airports across more than 20 states, though the terms for changing your travel plans can vary significantly by airline. If you plan to change your travel plans, for example, you will generally need to rebook in the next few days and choose new travel dates within the next year.
But its also important to gauge your expectations: Dont expect to score some cash from this storm. In September, the Department of Transportation updated its lengthy fly rights guidelines and cautioned that amenities to stranded passengers vary by airline, even if the cause is weather or something else beyond the carriers control.
Each airline has its own policies about what it will do for delayed passengers waiting at the airport; there are no federal requirements, according to information from the Transportation Department. Contrary to popular belief, for domestic itineraries, airlines are not required to compensate passengers whose flights are delayed or canceled.
Here are how the big four airlinesAmerican Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlinesare preparing for this weekends storm, along with some of the other popular U.S. carriers.
AMERICAN AIRLINES: CHANGE FEES WAIVED
American Airlines has issued a travel alert for more than 30 different airports and is likely to see some major disruptions, as its main hub is at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The National Weather Service is currently forecasting that the Dallas metro area could see cold rain beginning on Friday that will gradually transition into freezing rain and sleet, before eventually becoming snow by Sunday.
If you are booked on an American flight with travel scheduled for Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you can change your trip, and the change fee will be waived. However, you must follow a few rules: The fee will be waived if you can travel some other time until next Wednesday, January 28; dont change your origin or destination city; and rebook in the same cabin or pay the difference to upgrade.
To take advantage of the waiver on change fees, you will need to rebook your trip by this Sunday, and your travel must be completed within one year of the original ticket date.
DELTA AIR LINES: FARE DIFFERENCES WAIVED
Delta Air Lines, with its main hub at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, could fare somewhat better, as the Atlanta area is on a winter storm watch and slightly below the threat of the worst of the winter storm.
That said, the airline has issued a travel advisory for more than 40 airports in 10 states. Affected travelers have until next Wednesday, January 28, to rebook traveland rebooked travel must occur on or before that date to be eligible for the fare difference to be waived. However, a fare difference may apply, the airline cautions, if you upgrade your original booking class.
If youre not able to reschedule your travel to meet these rebooking guidelines, you may cancel your original reservation and apply the unused value of the ticket toward the purchase of a new ticket for travel within one year of the original issue date.
UNITED AIRLINES: CHANGE FEES, FARE DIFFERENCES WAIVED
With its headquarters in Chicago, United Airlines is very accustomed to dealing with winter weather disruptions, and the city isnt in the eye of this particular winter storm. Unlike American and Delta, United has issued two separate travel alertsone for the Eastern U.S. and the other for the Southern U.S.and they encompass two slightly different time periods.
The travel alert for the Southern U.S. could affect airports in nine states, according to United, and applies to flights scheduled for Friday through Sunday. Meanwhile, the travel alert for the Eastern U.S. could affect airports in 14 states and the District of Columbia, and applies to flights scheduled for Saturday and extending through Monday.
The options for United travelers who face potential disruptions are the same: Reschedule your travel plans, and the airline will waive change fees and fare difference. To qualify, the new flight must depart on or before next Wednesday, January 28, for flights on the East Coast, and on or before next Thursday, January 29, for flights in the South.
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: LONGER WINDOW FOR REBOOKING
Southwest Airlines, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier, has always done things a little differently than its bigger competitorsand that extends to how it is handling potential disruptions from the winter storm. Its main hub is at the Dallas Love Field Airport, so like American, Southwest is likely to see some impact to its flights and has issued a travel advisory for airports in 15 states and D.C.
The airline was just deemed the best in The Wall Street Journals ranking of airlines for 2025, beating out rivals in every category measured.
If youre a Southwest passenger with a reservation to, from, or through one of the airports on its list, you can enjoy a longer rebooking period of 14 days within the original date of travel to take advantage of the waiver in fare difference. Whats more, if you decide to cancel your trip, you may be eligible for a refund for the unused ticket, along with any optional travel charges you have already paid for on affected flights. As is true of all of the airlines, be sure to read the specific rules before making changes.
HOW OTHER AIRLINES ARE PREPARING
Airlines have more leeway than many passengers may realize on how they handle travel disruptionsand thats quite evident if you scroll through the Department of Transportations < href="https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellation-delay-dashboard">airline cancellation and delay dashboard. That dashboard details how 10 different U.S. carriers handle controllable disruptionsa cancellation or delay that was due to circumstances within the airlines control.
As the agency cautions, airlines similarly can chart their own route for how to handle weather disruptions.
If you have a ticket issued by Alaska Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines, which are under the same ownership, you can change or cancel your trip without a fee. The same is true for passengers on flights with Frontier Airlines and JetBlue, though the latter offers a slightly longer rebooking period (through January 31).
Finally, low-fare and regional airlines may provide even fewer accommodations to travelers affected by this weekends disruptions.If you have a ticket with Spirit Airlines, the carrier will waive fare differences on rebooked tickets, though its travel advisory makes no mention of what happens if you cancel your trip. Allegiant Air has issued a travel alert for 15 cities it serves, but makes absolutely no mention of what accommodations it will offer to impacted travelers. And Breeze Airways has similarly issued a travel advisory, though the airline indicates that affected travelers will be notified with optionsand its typical accommodations vary widely, depending on the length of the delay or type of disruption.
With birth rates down around the world, Procter & Gamble is leaning into premium diapers to bolster sales figures. Specifically, the conglomerate is planning to sell diapers made with silk fibers in China, the companys second-largest market, in hopes of attracting new parents.
The news came out of Procter & Gambles earnings conference call on Thursday, during which president and CEO Shailesh Jejurikar discussed the logic behind leaning into the premium diaper category with Pampers Prestige.
The China team created a product, he said, that leveraged Chinese history with silk. The shiny, soft-yet-strong, luxurious material has been a status symbol for more than 2,000 years, he said.
Pampers Prestige is the only leading diaper brand that has real silky ingredients in the product. Delivering the ultimate experience of skin comfort and protection. The shiny soft feel package conveys superiority at first touch.
The data does support the decision, too. Jejurikar noted that P&Gs latest earnings report showed that in Greater China, the companys baby care business line has seen robust organic sales growth and increased its market share by almost 3%. Meanwhile, in North America, organic sales were down 2%.
But again, with fewer babies in China and elsewhere, the company needs to find ways to keep sales figures upso, its going with higher-priced, premium products, rather than aiming for volume. Overall, the global diaper market is huge, valued at around more than $72 billion as of 2025, according to data from Precedence Research. That number is expected to grow to nearly $118 billion by 2035.
Also important: Research indicates that Gen Z and millennial parents have expressed a willingness to pay more for premium, sustainable products, such as diapers. That includes diapers that use plant-based materials and fibers, which could include silk or bamboo.
P&Gs pre-market earnings announcement was met positively by investors, and as of 12 p.m. ET, shares were trading up more than 2%.
Large language models feel intelligent because they speak fluently, confidently, and at scale. But fluency is not understanding, and confidence is not perception. To grasp the real limitation of todays AI systems, it helps to revisit an idea that is more than two thousand years old.
In The Republic, Plato describes the allegory of the cave: prisoners chained inside a cave can only see shadows projected on a wall. Having never seen the real objects casting those shadows, they mistake appearances for reality, and they are deprived from experiencing the real world.
Large language models live in a very similar cave.
LLMs dont perceive the world: they read about it
LLMs do not see, hear, touch, or interact with reality. They are trained almost entirely on text: books, articles, posts, comments, transcripts, and fragments of human expression collected from across history and the internet. That text is their only input. Their only experience.
LLMs only see shadows: texts produced by humans describing the world. Those texts are their entire universe. Everything an LLM knows about reality comes filtered through language, written by people with varying degrees of intelligence, honesty, bias, knowledge, and intent.
Text is not reality: it is a human representation of reality. It is mediated, incomplete, biased, and wildly heterogeneous, often distorted. Human language reflects opinions, misunderstandings, cultural blind spots, and outright falsehoods. Books and the internet contain extraordinary insights, but also conspiracy theories, propaganda, pornography, abuse, and sheer nonsense. When we train LLMs on all the text, we are not giving them access to the world. We are giving them access to humanitys shadows on the wall.
This is not a minor limitation. It is the core architectural flaw of current AI.
Why scale doesnt solve the problem
The prevailing assumption in AI strategy has been that scale fixes everything: more data, bigger models, more parameters, more compute. But more shadows on the wall do not equal reality.
Because LLMs are trained to predict the most statistically likely next word, they excel at producing plausible language, but not at understanding causality, physical constraints, or real-world consequences. This is why hallucinations are not a bug to be patched away, but a structural limitation.
As Yann LeCun has repeatedly argued, language alone is not a sufficient foundation for intelligence.
The shift toward world models
This is why attention is increasingly turning toward world models: systems that build internal representations of how environments work, learn from interaction, and simulate outcomes before acting.
Unlike LLMs, world models are not limited to text. They can incorporate time-series data, sensor inputs, feedback loops, ERP data, spreadsheets, simulations, and the consequences of actions. Instead of asking What is the most likely next word?, they ask a far more powerful question:
What will happen if we do this?
What this looks like in practice
For executives, this is not an abstract research debate. World models are already emerging (often without being labeled as such), in domains where language alone is insufficient.
Supply chains and logistics: A language model can summarize disruptions or generate reports. A world model can simulate how a port closure, fuel price increase, or supplier failure propagates through a network, and test alternative responses before committing capital.
Insurance and risk management: LLMs can explain policies or answer customer questions. World models can learn how risk actually evolves over time, simulate extreme events, and estimate cascading losses under different scenarios, something no text-only system can reliably do.
Manufacturing and operations: Digital twins of factories are early world models. They dont just describe processes; they simulate how machines, materials, and timing interact, allowing companies to predict failures, optimize throughput, and test changes virtually before touching the real system.
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In all these cases, language is useful, but insufficient. Understanding requires a model of how the world behaves, not just how people talk about it.
The post-LLM architecture
This does not mean abandoning language models. It means putting them in their proper place.
In the next phase of AI:
LLMs become interfaces, copilots, and translators
World models provide grounding, prediction, and planning
Language sits on top of systems that learn from reality itself
In Platos allegory, the prisoners are not freed by studying the shadows more carefully: they are freed by turning around and confronting the source of those shadows, and eventually the world outside the cave.
AI is approaching a similar moment.
The organizations that recognize this early will stop mistaking fluent language for understanding and start investing in architectures that model their own reality. Those companies wont just build AI that talks convincingly about the world: theyll build AI that actually understands how it works.
Will your company understand this? Will your company be able to build its world model?
Valentino, who died on Monday at 93, leaves a lasting legacy full of celebrities, glamour and, in his words, knowing what women want: to be beautiful.
The Italian fashion powerhouse has secured his dream of making a lasting impact, outliving Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent.
Valentino was known for his unique blend between the bold and colourful Italian fashion and the elegant French haute couturethe highest level of craftsmanship in fashion, with exceptional detail and strict professional dressmaking standards.
The blending of these styles to create the signature Valentino silhouette made his style distinctive. Valentinos style was reserved, and over his career, he built upon the haute couture skills he had developed, maintaining his signature style while he led his fashion house for five decades.
But he was certainly not without his own controversial views on beauty for women.
Becoming the designer
Born in Voghera, Italy, in 1932, Valentino Clemente Ludovico began his career early, knowing from a young age he would pursue fashion.
He drew from a young age and studied fashion drawing at Santa Marta Institute of Fashion Drawing in Milan before honing his technical design skills at École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the fashion trade association, in Paris.
He started his fashion career at two prominent Parisian haute couture houses, first at Jean Desss before moving to Guy Laroche.
He opened his own fashion house in Italy in 1959.
His early work had a heavy French influence with simple, clean designs and complex silhouettes and construction. His early work had blocked colour and more of a minimalist approach, before his Italian culture really came through later in his collections.
He achieved early success through his connections to the Italian film industry, including dressing Elizabeth Taylor fresh off her appearance in Cleopatra (1963).
Elizabeth Taylor wearing Valentino while dancing with Kirk Douglas at the party in Rome for the film Spartacus. [Photo: Keystone/Getty Images]
Valentino joined the world stage on his first showing at the Pritti Palace in Florence in 1962.
His most notable collection during that era was in 1968 with The White Collection, a series of A-line dresses and classic suit jackets. The collection was striking: all in white, while Italy was all about colour.
He quickly grew in international popularity. He was beloved by European celebrities, and an elite group of women who were willing to spend the moneythe dresses ran into the thousands of dollars.
In 1963, he travelled to the United States to attract Hollywood stars.
The Valentino woman
Valentinos wish was to make women beautiful. He certainly attracted the A-list celebrities to do so. The Valentino woman was one who would hold themselves with confidence and a lady-like elegance.
Valentino wanted to see women attract attention with his classic silhouettes and balanced proportions. Valentino dressed women such as Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anne Hathaway.
Anne Hathaway and Valentino Garavani attend the 2011 Oscars. [Photo: Fairchild Archive/Penske Media/Getty Images]
His aristocratic taste inherited ideas of beauty and old European style, rather than innovating with new trends. His signature style was formal designs that had the ability to quietly intimidateincluding the insatiable Valentino red.
Red was a signature colour of his collections. The colour provided confidence and romance, while not distracting away from the beauty of the woman.
French influence
Being French-trained, Valentino was well acquainted with the rules of couture.
With this expertise, he was one of the first Italian designers to be successful in France as an outsider with the launch of his first Paris collection in 1975. This Paris collection showcased more relaxed silhouettes with many layers, playing towards the casual nature of fashion.
A model in the Valentino Spring 1976 ready to wear collection walks the runway in Paris in 1975. [Photo: Fairchild Archive/WWD/Penske Media/Getty Images]
While his design base was in Rome, many of his collections were shown in Paris over the next four decades. His Italian culture mixed with the technicality of Parisian haute couture made Valentino the designer he was.
Throughout his career, his designs often maintained a classic silhouette bust, matched with a bold Italian colour or texture.
Unlike some designers today, Valentinos collections didnt change too dramatically each season. Instead, they continued to maintain the craftsmanship and high couture standards.
Quintessentially beautiful is often the description of Valentinos work however this devotion to high beauty standards has seen criticism of the industry. In 2007, Valentino defended the trend of very skinny women on runways, saying when girls are skinny, the dresses are more attractive.
Critics said his designs reinforce exclusion, gatekeeping fashion from those who dont conform to traditional beauty standards.
The Valentino runways only recently have started to feature more average sized bodies and expand their definition of beauty.
The $300 million sale of Valentino
The Valentino fashion brand sold for US$300 million in 1998 to Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali, with Valentino still designing until his retirement in 2007.
Valentino sold to increase the size of his brand: he knew without the support of a larger corporation surviving alone would be impossible. Since Valentinos retirement, the fashion house has continued under other creative directors.
Valentino will leave a lasting legacy as the Italian designer who managed to break through the noise of the French haute couture elite and make a name for himself.
The iconic Valentino red will forever be remembered for its glamour, and will live on with his legacy. A true Roman visionary with unmatched craftsmanship.
Jye Marshall is a lecturer of fashion design at the School of Design and Architecture at Swinburne University of Technology.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In 2019, during his first term, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed a desire to buy Greenland, which has been a part of Denmark for some 300 years. Danes and Greenlanders quickly rebuffed the offer at the time.
During Trumps second term, those offers have turned to threats.
Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social in late December 2024 that, for purposes of national security, U.S. control over Greenland was a necessity. The president has continued to insist on the national security rationale into January 2026. And he has refused to rule out the use of military force to control Greenland.
From my perspective as an international relations scholar focused on Europe, Trumps national security rationale doesnt make sense. Greenland, like the U.S., is a member of NATO, which provides a collective defense pact, meaning member nations will respond to an attack on any alliance member. And because of a 1951 defense agreement between the U.S. and Denmark, the U.S. can already build military installations in Greenland to protect the region.
Trumps 2025 National Security Strategy, which stresses control of the Western Hemisphere and keeping China out of the region, provides insight into Trumps thinking.
US interests in Greenland
The United States has tried to acquire Greenland several times.
In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward commissioned a survey of Greenland. Impressed with the abundance of natural resources on the island, he pushed to acquire Greenland and Iceland for US$5.5 millionroughly $125 million today.
But Congress was still concerned about the purchase of Alaska that year, which Seward had engineered. It had seen Alaska as too cold and too distant from the rest of the U.S. to justify spending $7.2 millionroughly $164 million todayalthough Congress ultimately agreed to do it. There was not enough national support for another frozen land.
In 1910, the U.S. ambassador to Denmark proposed a complex trade involving Germany, Denmark and the United States. Denmark would give the U.S. Greenland, and the U.S. would give Denmark islands in the Philippines. Denmark would then give those islands to Germany, and Germany would return Schleswig-HolsteinGermanys northernmost stateto Denmark.
But the U.S. quickly dismissed the proposed trade as too audacious.
During World War II, Nazi Germany occupied Denmark, and the U.S. assumed the role of protector of both Greenland and Iceland, both of which belonged to Denmark at the time. The U.S. built airstrips, weather stations and radar and communications stationsfive on Greenlands east coast and nine on the west coast.
The Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, is pictured in northern Greenland on Oct. 4, 2023. [Photo: Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images]
The U.S. used Greenland and Iceland as bases for bombers that attacked Germany and German-occupied areas. Greenland had a high value for military strategists because of its location in the North Atlanticto counter Nazi threats to Allied shipping lanes and protect transatlantic routes, and because it was a midpoint for refueling U.S. aircraft. Greenlands importance also rested on its deposits of cryolite, useful for making aluminum.
In 1946, the Truman administration offered to buy Greenland for $100 million, as U.S. military leaders thought it would play a critical role in the Cold War.
The secret U.S. project Operation Blue Jay at the beginning of the Cold War resulted in the construction of Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland, which allowed U.S. bombers to be closer to the Soviet Union. Renamed Pituffik Space Base, today it provides a 24/7 missile warning and space surveillance facility that is critical to NATO and U.S. security strategy.
At the end of World War II, Denmark recognized Greenland as one of its territories. In 1953, Greenland gained constitutional rights and became a country within the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenland was assigned self-rule in 1979, and by 2009 it became a self-governing country, still within the Kingdom of Denmark, which includes Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Denmark recognizes the government of Greenland as an equal partner and recently gave it a more significant role as the first voice for Denmark in the Arctic Council, which promotes cooperation in the Arctic.
What the US may want
The Trump administrations 2025 National Security Strategy identifies three threats in the Western Hemisphere: migration, drugs and crimes, and Chinas increasing influence.
Two of those threats are irrelevant when considering Greenland. Greenlandic people are not migrating to the U.S., and they are not drug traffickers. However, Greenland is rich in rare earth minerals, including neodymium, dysprosium, graphite, copper and lithium.
Additionally, China seeks to establish mining interests in Greenland and the Arctic as part of its Polar Silk Road initiative. China had offered to build an infrastructure for Greenland, including improving the airport, until Denmark stepped in and offered airport funding. And China has worked with Australian companies to secure mining opportunities on the island.
A U.S. Air Force helicopter flies near Thule Air Base in Greenland in 1955. [Photo: James McAnally/Archive Photos/Getty Images]
Those rare earth minerals appeal to the European Union, too. The EU lists some 30 raw materials that are essential for their economies. Twenty-five are in Greenland.
The Trump administration has made it clear that controlling these minerals is a national security issue, and the president wants to keep them away from China.
Figures vary, but it is estimated that over 60% of rare earth elements or minerals are currently mined in China. China also refines some 90% of rare earths. This gives China tremendous leverage in trade talks. And it results in a dangerous vulnerability for the U.S. and other nation states seeking to modernize their economies. With few suppliers of these rare earth elements, the political and economic costs of securing them are high.
Greenland has only two operating mines. One is the Tan Breez project in southern Greenland. It produces 17 metals, including terbium and neodymium, that are used in high-strength magnets used in many green technologies and in aircraft manufacturing, including for the F-35 fighter planes.
Consider for a moment that Trump is not interested in owning Greenland.
Instead, he is using this threatening position to secure promises from the Greenlandic government to make economic deals with the U.S. and not China. Thus, Trumps threats could be less about national security and much more about eliminating competition from China and securing wealth for U.S. interests.
This form of coercive diplomacy threatens the political and economic development of not only Greenland but Europe. In recent interviews, Trump has made it clear that he does not respect international law and the sovereignty of countries. His position, I believe, undermines the international order and removes the U.S. as a responsible leader of that framework established after World War II.
Steven Lamy is a professor emeritus of political science and international relations and spatial sciences at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Autodesk, Inc., a maker of digital design software, announced Thursday it plans to lay off about 1,000 employees, largely in sales roles.
The announcement comes just a week after another tech company, Meta, announced it would eliminate up to 1,500 positions.
Heres what you need to know about the latest tech company layoffs.
Whats happened?
The plan will reduce Autodesk’s workforce by approximately 7%. Autodesk indicated a significant number of the affected jobs would be in customer-facing sales roles.
The plan will also reallocate resources to accelerate strategic priorities, The Wall Street Journal reported.
CEO Andrew Anagnost assured employees in a letter that these layoffs were not indicative of a yearly pattern or a shift to replacing workers with AI. Last February, Autodesk announced a plan to reduce its workforce by 9%.
How many jobs are being lost?
The 2026 layoffs are projected to affect around 1,000 employees.
Autodesks 2025 layoffs were projected to affect around 1,350 employees, according to Anagnosts internal message.
Autodesk predicts pre-tax restructuring charges between $135 and $160 million, largely tied to employee termination benefits. The restructuring plan is expected to conclude by the end of fiscal year 2027.
Why is Autodesk laying off employees?
This move is part of the final phase in Autodesks recent efforts to optimize sales and marketing.
Last Februarys layoffs were informed by the need to drive more efficiency and focus to implement specific programs, according to Anagnosts statement to employees.
In the letter to employees, Anagnost said the reduction focuses on completing the companys go-to-market transformation, expanding its AI and platform capabilities and strengthening corporate functions.
At Autodesk University in September 2025, the company revealed brand-new AI tools with pre-beta software, indicating a big step forward in Autodesks AI investments. One such tool was a neural CAD, which Autodesk said could automate 80-90% of routine design tasks.
Other 2026 tech layoffs
Just last week, Meta announced a 10% reduction in its Reality Labs division, the section of the company primarily responsible for augmented and virtual reality (like the metaverse). It was the largest layoff announcement in the tech sector so far in 2026.
Nearly 124,000 employees across 269 tech companies were laid off in 2025, according to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi.
With Meta and Autodesk’s projected reductions alone, at least 2,500 employees across the two companies will lose their jobs.
Since 2023, Autodesk has laid off at least 1,600 employees.
After spending much of his career in marketing, Daniel Hebert pivoted into Software as a Service (SaaS) sales for a high-growth startup in 2018. But what started out as a dream job soon turned into a nightmare.
Like many tech startups, the business went from growth mode to scaling down as the market turned in 2022. As the head of the sales team, Hebert found himself on the front lines of that cost-cutting campaign.
I would be assigned a team and have to fire half the people. Then Id have to rebuild the process and rebuild the team. I did three or four cycles of that in 15 months, and I just got so insanely burnt out, he says. I just randomly started getting [stress-induced] vertigo, to the point where I was bedridden for days at a time. Like, I couldnt stand up without falling over.
Though he was just a couple of months shy of a big payday when the company was set to be acquired, Hebert resigned and began offering independent sales coaching services in early 2023.
In the very early days, I used AI a lot for brainstorming: figuring out, like, how do I market this thing? he says. Then it became kind of like a marketing editor, and then I started using it with my clients. And from there, it went wild.
As he got more comfortable with the technology, Hebert says he started to look for ways he could leverage it to scale his offering. If I want to increase my income as a coach, I have to add more coaching hours, and theres so many hours I can coach before I max out, he says. So if I want to scale my income, I have to do it in a way that doesnt require my time.
Hebert says he had lots of ideas for tech products over the years, but never had the time, resources, or capacity to build them. That is, until he became a solopreneur and learned how to use Lovable, an AI-powered app builder.
I could actually build functioning B2B SaaS software, and it completely changed everything for me, he says. I could now build a handful of these tools and get some subscribers, and have this portfolio of apps generating income without me having to add more coaching hours.
AI is widely expected to be a game changer for businesses of all shapes and sizes, enabling new kinds of productivity and revenue. But that transformation is already well underway among solopreneurs.
Thats because those who are independently employed dont have the practical constraints that hold back those operating in traditional organizations, like legal compliance, or a lengthy rollout process of new tools involving large groups of people and many teams. They also enjoy more direct financial rewards from being early AI adopters.
Why solopreneurs are winning the AI race
In a recent survey conducted by online freelance marketplace Upwork, 90% of freelancers said AI is helping them learn new skills faster, and 88% said it positively impacted their careers. Furthermore, 34% strongly agree that AI gives them an edge, compared with 28% of those who are traditionally employed.
Overall, 54% of independently employed professionals self-report advanced AI proficiency, compared with 38% of those who are independently employed.
The data overwhelmingly shows that independent talent is adopting AI at higher rates, says Gabby Burlacu, a senior researcher at the Upwork Research Institute and one of the studys authors. They are faster at adopting it, and they are also more proficient in finding ways to use these tools to improve their work, and actually embedding them in their workflows when we compare them to full-time employees.
As traditional organizations sort through how to deploy which AI tools and embark on lengthy integration and change management campaigns, solopreneurs are taking it upon themselves to experiment on their own.
They are pursuing self-developmentwhich we’re seeing across the boardat much higher rates than full-time employees who tend to rely more on organizational learning and development, Burlacu says. The tools are available to everyone, but the ability to unlock their power and do better work comes from being in control of how you work, how you learn. Thats the game changer.
Not just for knowledge workers
While knowledge industry workers are the most likely to latch onto the technology, solopreneurs of all shapes and sizes are finding ways to grow their business using AI.
According to a study conducted by business insurance provider Simply Business, about 37.5% of independently employed knowledge workers, such as accountants, IT specialists and legal advisers, are using AI in their day-to-day operations. At the same time, so are 29.7% of those with independent creative or lifestyle ventureslike artists, coaches, and photographersand 14% of tradespeople and contractors.
Those figures, however, only capture intentional adoption, and don’t include those that are using other software tools to run their business, which are increasingly integrating AI functionality.
According to the survey, more than half use digital marketing tools, and another 39% leverage accounting software. Some of those, quite frankly, have AI built in that they may not even realize they’re using, says Dana Edwards, group chief technology officer at Simply Business. In our 2025 survey, 23% [of solopreneurs] were using AI, and if you kind of follow the trend line, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in the 60 or 70% range in 2026.
AI offers solopreneurs direct value
In a recent survey of solopreneurs who are already using AI conducted by Zoom and Upwork, 93% agreed or strongly agreed that the technology is critical to their success.
Furthermore, 75% said it has reduced costs, 89% said its helped them expand into new markets, 78% said it allowed them to automate repetitive tasks, and 74% said it’s directly contributed to a new product or service offering.
Seven out of 10 of those individuals are already seeing revenue impact from incorporating AI in their day-to-day operations, and were just at the start, says Lisa Scheiring, Zooms new global small business advisor and chief solo officer. Technology now is enabling those individuals to build durable, scalable businesses that can compete directly with some of the larger enterprises in their categories.
Scheiring says the establishment of her position, along with Zooms recently announced Solopreneur 50 recognition program, are a testament to the impact the company believes businesses of one will have in the AI era.
She adds that its not just the lack of traditional constraints that allows solopreneurs to leverage AI more readily; its also about personality and risk appetite.
If you are bold enough to take on a solo venture, you are already someone who is willing to learn new things and change and grow. Those are the same skills that you need to learn how to use AI, Scheiring says.
Someone who s willing to take that step forward and be a solopreneur, those same capabilitieswhen applied to a new technology like AIwill help them move further, faster.
That proved the case for Hebert, who went from burned-out sales professional to independent sales coach to launching his own tech products in less than three years.
You used to have to raise a lot of money and hire a big team to do things like thisnow you just need an idea and the patience to actually learn the AI skills to make it happen, he says.
Thats the superpower of the solopreneur.
As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, an auction in New York will feature rare items that trace the nation’s history.The event Friday at Christie’s, dubbed “We the People: America at 250,” will bring together foundational political texts, iconic American art and rare historical artifacts.Among the highlights is a rare 1776 broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence produced in New Hampshire by printer Robert Luist Fowle, estimated at $3 million to $5 million.“It’s historically significant because you get to see what people at the time actually saw,” said Peter Klarnet, senior specialist for books, manuscripts and Americana at Christie’s.While the initial printing was produced by John Dunlap on the night of July 4, 1776 with about 200 copies printed and only 26 known to survive other printers quickly began producing their own versions.“This is the way that everyday Americans would have encountered the Declaration of Independence whether it was tacked to a wall or read from the pulpit of their local congregation,” Klarnet said.Another founding document up for sale is Rufus King’s edited draft of the U.S. Constitution, estimated at $3 million to $5 million. Printed just five days before the final version was issued on Sept. 17, 1787, the document captures the nation’s founding charter as it was being finalized.“This is the Constitution taking final form,” Klarnet said. “You can see the edits being made in real time.”King was a delegate from Massachusetts to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He was also a member of The Committee of Style, a five-member group tasked with refining the text.“This puts you directly in Independence Hall as they’re drafting and making the final changes and edits to this remarkable document,” Klarnet said.The auction also includes a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. The authorized printed edition was commissioned for the Great Central Fair, a Civil War-era fundraiser held in Philadelphia in June 1864 to raise money for Union troops. The Proclamation is estimated at $3 million to $5 million.“Lincoln, together with his Secretary of State William Seward and his Secretary John Nicolay, signed 48 copies of this,” Klarnet said, noting they were originally sold for $20 each and not all sold at the time.American art plays a major role in the sale as well. Leading the category is Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington thought to have inspired the face on the U.S. dollar bill. The painting was commissioned by James Madison. It is estimated to bring between $500,000 and $1 million.Other artworks include a Jamie Wyeth painting of John F. Kennedy accepting the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination at the Los Angeles Coliseum estimated at $200,000 to $300,000.There is also Grant Wood’s original pencil sketch of American Gothic drawn on the back an envelope estimated at $70,000 to $100,000.Beyond the founding documents, the sale features rare historical objects like the only known flag recovered by U.S. forces from the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. The flag is expected to sell for between $2 million and $4 million.Historians say auctions like these underscore the role of private collectors in preserving the nation’s material past.“Private collectors play an important role,” historian Harold Holzer said. “They save things, they preserve things, and ultimately they pass on their collections.”For Holzer, the emotional power of the items remains meaningful.“You almost feel the electricity from these relics,” Holzer said, “their impact on the people, who not only read these documents, but fought for what they were calling for.”He calls the documents “great words fought for with blood.”
Joseph Frederick, Associated Press
President Donald Trumps late-night Truth Social posting spree on Tuesdaydoubling down on his Greenland ambitions and threatening any who try to get in his wayalso included a flurry of leaked texts from the leaders of NATO, France, Finland, and Norway.
TL;DR: French President Emmanuel Macron invited him to dinner in Paris. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte cant wait to see him. America is threatening to take over Greenland.
Turns out, they text just like us.
[Screenshots: Truth Social]
Posted on Truth Social, Trump apparently leaked a private text from the French President: My friend, We are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran. I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland, the message from Macron appeared to read.
Social media users were quick to share their thoughts on the text exchangenot so much the threat to blow apart the alliance that has underpinned Western security for decades, but the fact that matters of diplomacy are conducted over iMessage.
I honestly love this for reasons I cannot articulate, one X user wrote, alongside a screenshot of the messages.
They continued in a follow-up post: you can imagine Trump getting *so many texts like this*. An edited screenshot of the original conversation read: we are totally in line on real estate. We can do great things on reality television. I do not understand what you are doing running for president.
Theyre just like us fr fr, another X user responded. This feels like when Kanye went crazy and started posting text messages, another suggested.
In a leaked Sunday message to Jonas Gahr Stre, the prime minister of Norway, Trump reiterates threats of a takeover, now apparent to be rooted in a personal grudge over being snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America, Trump wrote.
He went on to question Denmarks claim to Greenland, signing off Thank you! President DJT
Leaking an opponent’s private messages (or coming in hot with receipts) is a common power play tactic some social media users have likened to teenage behavior: Trump is leaking the texts of WORLD LEADERS like hes a 13 year old girl, as one X user noted.
Exchanging messages over apps such as WhatsApp or Signal has become common practice in government. And public snafus because of it have become a bit more common, too: Last year, the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, landed in hot water after accidentally adding The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat in which senior officials discussed Yemen war plans.
Still, it’s rather unsettling to imagine world leaders simply texting sensitive discussions around the fate of geopolitics to one another. Perhaps it doesnt feel secure enough, or official enough.And in this instance, when it comes to the U.S. President, he appears to have taken diplomacy advice from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake Citys Heather Gay: “Receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company,covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
Im dedicating this weeks newsletter to a conversation I had with the main author of Anthropics new and improved constitution, the document it uses to govern the outputs of its models and its Claude chatbot.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X @thesullivan.
A necessary update
Amid growing concerns that new generative AI models might deceive or even cause harm to human users, Anthropic decided to update its constitutionits code of conduct for AI modelsto reflect the growing intelligence and capabilities of todays AI and the evolving set of risks faced by users. I talked to the main author of the document, Amanda Askell, Anthropics in-house philosopher responsible for Claudes character, about the new documents approach and how it differs from the old constitution.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Can you give us some context about how the constitution comes into play during model training? I assume this happens after pretraining, during reinforcement learning?
We get the model to create a lot of synthetic data that allows it to understand and grapple with the constitution. Its things like creating situations where the constitution might be relevantthings that the model can train onthinking through those, thinking about what the constitution would recommend in those cases. Data just to literally understand the document and understand its content. And then during reinforcement learning, getting the model to move towards behaviors that are in line with the document. You can do that via things like giving it the full constitution, having it think through which response is most in line with it, and then moving the model in that direction. Its lots of layers of training that allow for this kind of internalization of the things in the constitution.
You mentioned letting the model generate synthetic training data. Does that mean its imagining situations where this could be applied?
Yeah, thats one way it can do this. It can include data that would allow it to think about and understand the constitution. In supervised learning, for example, that might include queries or conversations where the constitution is particularly relevant, and the model might explore the constitution, try to find some of those, and then think about what the constitution is going to recommendthink about a reasonable response in this case and try and construct that.
How is this new constitution different from the old one?
The old constitution was trying to move the model towards these kinds of high-level principles or traits. The new constitution is a big, holistic document that, instead of just these isolated properties, were trying to explain to the model: Heres your broad situation. Heres the way that we want you to interact with the world. Here are all the reasons behind that, and we would like you to understand and ideally agree with those. Lets give you the full context on us, what we want, how we think you should behave, and why we think that.
So [were] trying to arm the model with context and trying to get the model to use its own judgment and to be nuanced with that kind of understanding in mind.
So if youre able to give it more general concepts, you dont have to worry that you have specific rules for specific things as much.
Yeah. It feels interestingly related to how models are getting more capable. Ive thought about this as the difference between someone who is taking inbound calls in a call center and they might have a checklist, and someone who is an expert in their fieldoften we trust their judgment. Its kind of like if youre a doctor: You know the interests of your patients and we trust you to work within a broader set of rules and regulations, but we trust you to use good judgment, understanding what the goal of the whole thing is, which is in that case to serve the patient. As models get better, it feels like they benefit a bit less from these checklists and much more from this notion of broad understanding of the situation and being able to use judgment.
So, for example, instead of including something in the constitution like Dont ever say the word suicide or self-harm there would be a broader principle that just says everything you do has to consider the well-being of the person youre talking to? Is there a more generalized approach to those types of things?
My ideal would be if a person, a really skilled person, were in Claudes situation, what would they do? And thats going to take into account things like the well-being of the person theyre talking with and their immediate preferences and learning how to deal with cases where those might conflict. You could imagine someone mentioning that theyre trying to overcome a gambling addiction, and that being somehow stored in the models memory, and then the user asking the model Oh, what are some really good gambling websites that I can access? Thats an interesting case where their immediate preference might not be in line with what theyve stated feels good for their overall well-being. The models going to have to balance that.
In some cases its not clear, because if the person really insists, should the model help them? Or should the model initially say, I noticed that one of the things you asked me to remember was that you want to stop gamblingso do you actually want me to do this?
Its almost like the model might be conflicted between two different principlesyou know, I always want to be helpful, but I also want to look out for the well-being of this person.
Exactly. And you have to. You dont want to be paternalistic. So I could imagine the person saying I know I said that but Ive actually decided and Im an adult. And then maybe the model should be like Look, I flagged it, but ultimately youre right, its your choice. So theres a conversation and then maybe the model should just help the person. So these things are delicate, and the [model is] having to balance a lot, and the constitution is trying to just give it a little bit of context and tools to help it do that.
People view chatbots as everything from coaches to romantic interests to close confidants to who knows what else. From a trust and safety perspective, what is the ideal persona for an AI?
When a model initially talks with you, its actually much more like a professional relationship. And theres a certain kind of professional distance thats appropriate. On things like political opinions, one of the norms that we often have with people like doctors or lawyers who operate in the public sphere, its not that they dont have political opinions, but if you were to go to your doctor and ask, Who did you vote for? or Whats your view on this political issue? they might say, Its not really that appropriate for me to say because its importnt that I can serve everyone, and that includes a certain level of detachment from my personal opinions to how I interact with you.Some people have questions about the neutrality or openness of AI chatbots like Claude. They ask whether a group of affluent, well-educated people in San Francisco should be calling balls and strikes when it comes to what a chatbot can and cant say.
I guess when people are suspecting that you are injecting these really specific values, theres something nice about being able to just say, Well, here are the values that were actually trying to get the model to align with, and we can then have a conversation. Maybe people could ask us about hard cases and maybe well just openly discuss those. Im excited about people giving feedback. But its not like were just trying to inject this particular perspective.
Is there anything you could tell me about the people who were involved in writing this new version? Was it all written internally?
The document was written internally and we got feedback. I wrote a lot of the document and I worked with (philosopher) Joe Carlsmith, whos also here, and other people have given a lot of contributions internally. Ive worked with other teams who work with external experts. Ive looked at a lot of the use cases of the model. It comes from years of that kind of input.
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