Americas most iconic shoe giant is starting 2026 by laying off workers. Nike has confirmed that it will lay off 775 employees in the United States. The move marks the third year in a row that Nike has cut jobs. Heres what you need to know about the latest Nike layoffs.
Whats happened?
On Monday, CNBC reported that shoe giant Nike would eliminate 775 jobs. The job cuts will primarily encompass positions at the companys distribution centers in Mississippi and Tennessee. Nike has warehouses in those states that act as major hubs in the companys supply chain. The distribution centers store the companys inventory before shipping the products out to customers and retail partners.
Nikes most recent round of job cuts is the third in as many years. In 2024, Nike announced it would cut 2% of its total workforce, or about 1,600 roles. Those cuts were made so the company could reduce expenses in response to weakening sales.
Then last year, Nike announced in August that it would cut about 1% of its corporate staff. Those cuts were part of a company realignment, Nike said at the time.
In May 2025, Nike had around 77,800 employees. Todays confirmed layoffs of 775 workers mean the latest job cuts equate to around 1% of its workforce.
Why is Nike cutting jobs?
When reached for comment, a Nike spokesperson told Fast Company that the job cuts were part of the steps the company was taking to strengthen and streamline our operations so we can move faster, operate with greater discipline, and better serve athletes and consumers.
As part of those steps, Nike said it’s sharpening our supply chain footprint, accelerating the use of advanced technologyand automation, and investing in the skills our teams need for the future.
The company said its actions to consolidate its footprint will primarily impact its U.S. distribution operations.
These actions are designed to reduce complexity, improve flexibility, and build a more responsive, resilient, responsible, and efficient operation and to support our path back to long-term, profitable growth, including contributing to improved EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) margins over time, the spokesperson added.
Under former Nike CEO John Donahoe, the company moved away from wholesale partners in favor of direct selling, which necessitated a buildup of employees at its distribution centers. But ultimately, Nikes lackluster sales demand could not support the number of employees at the distribution centers. Nikes new CEO Elliott Hill has flipped its sales playbook, embracing wholesale partners again, and focusing on cutting costs to increase margins.
How has Nikes stock price reacted?
As of yesterdays closing price, Nike shares (NYSE: NKE) were trading at $64.99. In premarket trading this morning, shares are essentially flat.
In other words, investors so far seem to have shrugged off the fact that the layoffs will have an immediate impact on the companys finances or operations.
After reaching an all-time high of around $180 in 2021, Nikes share price has steadily declined, falling to as low as the $62 range in March of last year.
Over the past 12 months, Nikes share price has declined by more than 11%, and over the past five years, the stocks price has collapsed by more than 50%. Since the new year began, NKE shares have risen about 2%.
In todays experience economy, cultural capital is increasingly valuable, especially for cities seeking to differentiate themselves. Municipalities routinely invest in traditional industries, physical infrastructure, and innovation pipelines, but music is often siloed as entertainment. Music can function as an economic engine, a form of cultural connective tissue, and a powerful competitive differentiator.
The scale of the opportunity is significant. The music industry contributes more than $212 billion to the U.S. GDP and accounts for 2.5 million jobs nationwide. Cultural exports are not just symbolic; they shape global perception, attract investment, and support workforce retention. According to the Recording Academy, when an out-of-town visitor buys a concert ticket for $100, the local economy sees an additional $335 in related spending.
New models show that with the right civic support, music can and should be treated like any other high-impact export.
MUSIC AS A BRAND AND A BRIDGE
City-supported music touring programs are emerging as effective tools for both artist development and place branding. When artists tour, they become de facto cultural diplomats who carry a citys stories, aesthetics, and identity into new markets. As artists expand their reach, the citys cultural profile grows alongside them, creating a powerful feedback loop of visibility and credibility. This reframes the relationship between municipalities and creators. Rather than acting as passive supporters, cities become strategic amplifiers.
One of the things that we have found that operationalizes this approach is to provide financial support to musicians who promote the city while on tour. When our city launched its Music Ambassador Program (MAP), we learned through Memphiss MAP initiative that cash touring grants and facilitated media opportunities generate artist growth and a stronger global position as a music destination. The benefits are twofold: artists receive tangible career support, and the city gains authentic, artist-led storytelling.
A STRATEGY FROM THE TECH PLAYBOOK
The private sector, music companies, and recording studios are beginning to recognize the value of these partnership models closely mirror what the tech industry has been doing for years. When private sector, government, music companies, and recording studios collaborate, artists gain regional and national exposure with cities extending their cultural footprint. For example, weve teamed up with Universal Music Groups East Iris Studios in Nashville, the MidCity District and Apollo Coalition here in Huntsville to expand visibility for the artist and our community.
Partnerships like this mirror successful long-standing economic exchange programs in tech and business that also apply toward creative capital.
BEYOND VENUES: RETHINKING MUSIC INFRASTRUCTURE
Supporting music as an export requires more than building amphitheaters and creating performance spaces. It demands logistical support, funding mechanisms, professional pathways, and investment in the systems that allow artists to scale their careers. High-impact, cost-effective strategies include:
Stipends or grant programs for touring
Mentorship pipelines connecting local talent with established and influential industry professionals
Relationships, residencies, or cultural exchange programs with peer cities
Public-private partnerships that lower barriers to touring and cross-market visibility
The goal here is to reduce friction in talent mobility and help artists build sustainable, long-term careers that extend beyond local gigscareers that have a ripple effect on job creation, production, marketing, hospitality, and tourism across the broader music ecosystem.
PROMOTE ARTISTS WITH EQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY
Here in Huntsville, Alabama, we have seen great success with our music export programs and have also learned many important lessons along the way. These three lessons in particular are helpful to consider when building or expanding a program in your city.
1. Programs must be intentionally designed to avoid favoritism or the commodification of local culture for external approval. Exporting culture carries the risk of disproportionately favoring established artists unless equity is prioritized.
2. Authenticity matters. The most successful music export initiatives reflect the true dynamics, diversity, and texture of a citys creative communitynot a curated version of its scene.
3. Community engagement is essential. Listening sessions, grassroots input, and shared ownership are crucial components needed for ensuring music strategies are sustainable and scalable. Bringing the local community into the fold is critical to the long-term success of cultural exports.
THE FUTURE: CULTURE AS ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE
As the boundaries between industry, culture, and identity continue to blur, cities that treat music as an exportnot just an amenitywill gain a measurable advantage.
Municipal governments and chambers of commerce have long focused on exporting products, ideas, and innovation. In an era where identity, experience, and narrative shape everything from tourism to talent recruitment, it is time to recognize music and the arts not simply as local assets but as exportable engines of economic growth.
Matt Mandrella is the music officer for the City of Huntsville, Alabama.
Before the age of technological distraction, we lived more in tune with our bodies. We spent more time outdoors where the sun regulated our circadian rhythms, which has been scientifically proven to reduce anxiety and depression. Without constant distraction, people sat in their boredom, which became drivers of artistic endeavors, creative ideas, and human connection.
But how many of us can remember the last time we were truly bored?Drove without music, or sat in a coffee shop simply looking out the window?
Today, our digital devices have optimized our lives to the point of exhaustion. In pursuit of a frictionless experience, technology has eradicated the natural pauses that once grounded us in our bodies and environments. Yet research shows that taking breaks throughout the day is critical for restoring energy, improving focus, and inspiring creativity.
THE MYTH ABOUT OPTIMIZATION
We currently subscribe to the myth that if everything is efficient and optimized, our lives will feel easy and pain-free. We can order just about anything with the press of a button, or access infinite entertainment to fill every idle moment. Machines clean our clothes, dishes, and soon, well be able to offload daily chores to household robots. At work, we can use AI to automate tedious tasks or avoid the sometimes painful stuckness of thinking. Everything around us is designed to feel effortless, yet somehow it feels anything but.
For decades, businesses have equated technological progress with the most optimized path. In many ways weve arrived, yet were more unhappy than ever. Since 2005, the depression and anxiety among young people has increased by 63%, due, in part, to greater levels of social media engagement, academic stress, and economic stress.
Most of us know this experience firsthand: We get lost in a social media or news feed, only to emerge an hour later, disembodied, losing the throughline of the initial query. Or we pick up a phone reflexively, even if theres nothing pressing to do or see.
Research shows that overuse of smartphones can make us more in touch with our screens and less in touch with our bodies. This has only been exacerbated as platforms have shifted away from user autonomy and toward extractive profit models. As journalist and coiner of the term enshittification, Cory Doctorow wrote in a story for Wired, Technological self-determination is at odds with the natural imperatives of tech businesses. They make more money when they take away our freedomour freedom to speak, to leave, to connect.
In response, a growing movement of young people has begun leaving social media platforms, even ditching their cell phones altogether. In a New York Times story featuring Luddite teens, one teen was quoted as saying, things instantly changed. I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person, after trading their smartphone for a flip phone. Their goal isnt for everyone to get a flip phone, but to inspire people to reflect on their relationships with technology.
DESIGN THAT GIVES USERS CONTROL
With AI embedded into our devices and digital platforms, the tension between user autonomy and technological progress is growing. Our tools are evolving to anticipate our habits and desires, often outside of cognitive awareness.
Now is our opportunity to step back and determine what we want technology to do for us, and what we want to do for ourselves. For designers, its about questioning how we might create products and experiences that restore control to the user over their time and attention. Only when we begin designing for moments of pause, can we begin to address our fundamental human needs.
In the same way handwriting can slow your thoughts, dumb phones force users to pause and contemplate their next moves and interactions. Light Phone and Mudita are examples of a design philosophy that give control back to the user. Instead of the typical smartphone that commodifies your attention, dumb phones are designed as a tool to be used, giving users the ability to customize the apps loaded onto the device. These phones are not for everyone. The experience is intentionally slow and far from seamless. The friction is a forcing mechanism for users to pause.
Like handwriting, resonant breathing has been proven to improve heart rate variability, a metric that can indicate wellbeing and mood. Devices intentionally designed with minimal features, like Ohm, help users slow down and reconnect to their bodys signals through breathwork.
On the creative side, publishing platforms like Substack and Inoreader allow users to choose who they read and subscribe to. These intentionally designed platforms allow users to build their own news feeds and maximize their time rather than being fed content based on algorithms.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We may have different aspirations for our relationships with technology, but we should all feel autonomous in choosing them. Questioning the never-ending optimization is the first step to determining what we want our collective future to look like.
For designers, its about not assuming the maximum, most feature-rich experience, but about distilling a product to its essential utility and allowing people to form their own relationship to it.
Designing for natural pauses allows us all to feel a little more present and in tune with our core needs, and how to address them. So perhaps the next wave of technology isnt about doing everything for us, but instead about giving us back the space to choose.
Dan Harden is the founder and CEO of Whipsaw.
There’s a lot of noise in the crypto space. Price swings rile up the internet, new jargony terms pop up constantly, and the hype and haters can turn people off before they begin. But if you’re curious about where crypto is actually headed, here’s what’s worth paying attention to in 2026.
Three key shifts are changing how everyday people interact with digital assets. None of them require you to have tech or financial expertise. And none of them require you to act right now.
Think of this as a look at the horizon, so you can make informed choices when you’re ready.
1. ADOPTION IS PICKING UP, EVEN IF YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED
At the beginning of 2025, our State of Crypto Holders Report found that one in five U.S. adults was using digital assets. And at the end of 2025, our Crypto Holiday Report found that nearly one in four had or were considering gifting crypto for the holidays, indicating that even more Americans had begun embracing digital assets.
Crypto is increasingly going mainstream, even when that story doesnt show up in headlines. More often, it seems like small, practical changes: a coffee shop adding crypto as a payment option, a payroll service letting employees receive wages in crypto, or an artist selling work directly on a blockchain instead of through a gallery.
Think about how mobile payments crept into everyday life. Nobody declared a “mobile wallet revolution.” It just became easier to tap your phone than dig for cash; eventually, we stopped noticing the change. Crypto is following a similar pattern. More people hold digital assets, more places accept them at the register, and the infrastructure to use it is simpler.
Imagine your niece, fresh out of college, getting a percentage of her paycheck deposited directly into a digital wallet. Shes not obsessing over charts or trading daily; she’s just letting it sit there, just as past generations might have put money into savings bonds and forgotten about it. That’s what quiet adoption looks like.
The tipping point might not feel dramatic when it arrives. It’ll feel normal. And that’s the point.
2. REAL-WORLD ASSETS ARE GOING DIGITAL
Here’s where crypto starts becoming an even bigger part of our everyday lives. Tokenization is a way to digitally represent ownership of physical assets like property, art, or commodities. Instead of needingor being ableto buy an entire house as an investment, you can own a fraction of it.
Say there’s a vacation home you’d love for an investment property, but its out of reach financially. With tokenization, you could buy just a slice of the place instead. You’d have a stake in the property and benefit if its value rises.
But dont think of it like owning a second home. You’re not getting the keys to stay there whenever you want; you’re getting a piece of the upside. The more pieces you own, the greater that upside, and the more power you have to make decisions about property management. This gives you some key benefits of property ownership without the headaches like dealing with maintenance calls or property taxes on your own.
Depending on how these opportunities are structured, different laws may apply. For example, securities laws may entitle you to receive certain legal disclosures before agreeing to anything. But for now, the point is about opportunity and access. A lot of people have been locked out of owning certain assets because the entry cost is too high. Tokenization chips away at that barrier, opening up opportunities to people who couldn’t participate before.
3. CRYPTO AND TRADITIONAL FINANCE ARE WORKING TOGETHER
For years, the narrative around crypto and traditional finance was adversarial. Digital assets were positioned as a replacement for banks, cutting out the middleman entirely.
But now, traditional financial institutions are starting to integrate crypto services into legacy systems, making things easier. If you want to dip your toes into digital assets but not abandon everything familiar, you don’t have to. Banks and crypto are figuring out how to work together, which means fewer either-or decisions for the rest of us.
It’s like when streaming services started working with cable providers instead of trying to replace them. The transition got smoother and more people got on board. The same thing is happening with crypto and finance. Regulatory clarity is improving, trust is building, and the walls between “traditional” and “digital” are thinning.
Picture your parents, who have banked at the same place for 30 years. They may not want to download a new app and figure out how it works on their own. But if their bank starts offering a simple way to hold crypto in an account they already trust, that changes things. They don’t have to learn a whole new system; they have a new option within one they already use.
For people newer to all this, that’s genuinely helpful. You can start exploring without overhauling how you manage your money or learn new platforms all at once.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?
Are you on the fence or curious about crypto but unsure of where to start? This might be the year to learn more. Not because of hype and FOMO, but because the tools are better, the education more accessible, and there are more ways in.
Crypto in 2026 is about quiet adoption, real-world assets going digital, and traditional finance finding common ground with digital assets. The tech isn’t going mainstream because of hype; it’s getting there through practical, unglamorous changes in how people actually use it.
Stu Alderoty is president of the National Cryptocurrency Association.
In 2008, we published the first listing on a bare-bones website called RunMyErrand.com: a single task, posted by someone who needed help, to be completed by an individual who had opted into making their time and abilities available. At the time, it was an untested idea, launched in the midst of the worst financial downturn in a generation, and there was no established language for what we were building. The term gig economy did not yet exist, and there was no widely accepted model for how a person in need might hire a stranger through a digital marketplace to complete a unit of work.
This was before Uber, Instacart, and Postmates, and before on-demand labor became a familiar part of daily life. Smartphones were still early in their evolution, and engineers like me were only beginning to understand how mobile computing, location data, and social connection might combine to enable an entirely new economic behavior. We believed we were building a simple errand marketplace, but quickly realized this heralded a broader transition toward making these transactions of time and labor widely accessible. What we did not yet realize was that we were participating in a broader societal shift that would fundamentally change how people thought about work, income, and employment.
Looking back, it is now clear that this period marked the beginning of a structural transformation in the labor market. Platforms like TaskRabbit helped make flexible, on-demand work visible, available, and scalable, while also enabling new ways for individuals to participate in the economy outside of traditional full-time employment. Over time, these models contributed to the rise of portfolio careers and multiple income streams, blurring the boundary between salaried work and independent labor in ways that have since become normalized.
A New Inflection Point for Work
We are now standing at another inflection point, but the nature of this shift is different. While the gig economy reshaped how work is distributed and compensated, AI is reshaping what kind of work is valued in the first place.
For decades, jobs have been defined by discrete, specialized skills. Writing, coding, financial analysis, forecasting, and operational planning formed the foundation of most knowledge work, and expertise in these domains served as a proxy for value. Credentials, degrees, and job descriptions reinforced the idea that professional worth was tied to the ability to execute specific tasks accurately and efficiently.
AI disrupts this model at a fundamental level. Many of the activities that once signaled expertise are rapidly becoming baseline capabilities, available to anyone with access to the same tools. Writing, coding, and analysis can now be generated, refined, and scaled with unprecedented speed, flattening the value of execution itself.
Historically, technological change has displaced physical or repetitive labor, often eliminating some jobs while creating others. What distinguishes this moment is that AI does not merely automate tasks at the edges of knowledge work; it challenges the central premise that skills alone are a measurable advantage and worthwhile barometer for potential success.
From Skills to Creativity
As execution becomes commoditized, the next era of work will reward what these systems cannot replicate. Creativity, interpretation, and cross-disciplinary imagination are becoming increasingly valuable because they shape how judgement is made, not just how efficiently tasks are completed.
What matters now is not simply the ability to produce outputs, but the ability to frame problems, apply taste and novel ideas, and connect the dots across domains. Taste and interpretation take on new economic significance, along with making sense of complexity and possible decisions amid overwhelming choice.
As an investor, I have observed that many of the strongest founders operating today do not fit neatly into traditional categories of specialization. They tend to be hybrids who combine technical fluency with creative or human-centered disciplines, allowing them to reframe problems in ways that are difficult to replicate. These individuals are able to step outside established assumptions and articulate solutions that feel both novel and coherent.
My own background reflects this hybrid approach. I studied math and computer science, but I also minored in dance, and I attended a small liberal arts college that emphasized interdisciplinary thinking and communication across domains. At the time, this path did not resemble the conventional trajectory of an engineer, but it proved formative in shaping how I approached building a company during a period of severe constraint and uncertainty.
Constraint as a Creative Advantage
TaskRabbit was built between 2008 and 2010, when venture capital was scarce and consumer trust was fragile. Operating under these conditions forced clarity about priorities and sharpened our focus on what truly mattered. While the technological landscape has changed dramatically since then, the underlying lesson remains relevant. Constraint can be a powerful catalyst for creativity, particularly in an environment where new tools make it tempting to pursue too many directions at once.
Today, AI enables teams to experiment rapidly and produce a wide range of outputs with minimal friction. That abundance can be useful, but it can also dilute focus. Many organizations struggle not because they lack ideas or capabilities, but because they attempt to do too much at once. In contrast, the leaders most likely to succeed in this era will be those who can identify the few connections that matter and build with intention rather than breadth.
Five Principles for the AI Era
If I were starting over today, I would focus less on mastering skills and tools, and more on cultivating the capabilities for applied creativity:
Study outside your lane. Perspective is built by crossing disciplines, not by staying within them. Insight often emerges from unexpected combinations rather than deeper specialization alone.
Develop taste. AI can generate infinite viable options. The ability to discern what is meaningful, coherent, or worth pursuing is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
Learn to ask better questions. The framing of a problem now matters more than the speed at which an answer can be produced. Clear questions shape better outcomes.
Build with what you have. Constraint forces focus and intention. Limited resources can sharpen creativity rather than hinder it.
Seek friction, not agreement. AI is excellent at reinforcing existing perspectives. Innovation more often emerges from challenge, disagreement, and productive tension.
The Shape of Work Ahead
Over time, these shifts will reshape how organizations hire and evaluate talent. Credentials will matter less than originalty, and linear career paths will give way to bodies of work that demonstrate creative judgment and independent thinking. Side projects, essays, experiments, and unconventional experiences previously left off of résumés will increasingly signal potential for creative thinking.
In moments of profound technological change, there is rarely a clear playbook. There is, however, a pattern. The individuals and organizations that thrive are not those who optimize for efficiency alone, but those who are willing to break precedent, integrate diverse perspectives, and imagine new frameworks for value creation. In a world where everyone has access to artificial intelligence, creativity is no longer peripheral to work. It is becoming the primary currency through which work is defined and rewarded.
To anchor the long rows of server racks that power the artificial intelligence boom, every data center needs thousands of holes drilled into its concrete floor. It’s a precise part of the construction process that has required workers to bend over with handheld drills for hours at a time grinding meticulously placed holes into thick pads of concrete.
Now, there’s a robot doing it up to 10 times as fast.
Tool brand DeWalt has just revealed a downward-drilling robot that can autonomously roam the floors of under construction data centers to drill the thousands of holes that are necessary for installing server hardware and other building elements. Developed in conjunction with August Robotics and tested on data centers being built by an unnamed “hyperscaler” tech company, the autonomous robotic drill has been used to pop more than 90,000 holes into the floors of data centers, all without human involvement.
[Photo: DeWalt]
A task that can take human workers up to two months in a large data center can now be handled by a fleet of three or four robots in a matter of days. “That is so critical from a construction perspective, because they can’t move to the next stage of construction until this is done,” says Bill Beck, president of tools and outdoor for Stanley Black and Decker, the parent company of the DeWalt brand.
The pace is striking. For a smaller hole less than 1 inch wide and 2 inches deep, the robot can locate and drill one hole every 80 seconds. For a larger hole, 1 inch wide and 8 inches deep, it can finish a hole every 180 seconds. During its pilot phase, the robotic drill managed an accuracy rate of 99.97%. And because the robot is capable of operating 24 hours a day, project timelines can be drastically slashed.
[Video: DeWalt]
Making this process faster is increasingly important as data centers balloon in size. From single buildings to sprawling campuses, data centers are taking up vast amounts of space and becoming increasingly complex to build. “They’re huge slabs of concrete,” says Beck. With upwards of 10,000 holes needed to be drilled in each one, the job can be daunting. “And they’ve got to be perfect,” Beck says. “You can’t have the hole be a quarter-of-an-inch off.”
That would make it seem like a hard job to want to do, but that’s assuming there are even enough people to take on the role. One analysis suggests there is currently a shortage of more than 500,000 skilled laborers in the construction industry. And workforce shortages are the leading cause of construction delays, according to a recent survey from the Associated General Contractors of America.
The robotic drill offers an alternative. It also offers significant cost savings. Beck says it could cost about $65 per hole for this drilling work to be done by human crews. Using a fleet of the autonomous drilling robots developed by DeWalt and August Robotics, that cost comes down to about $20 per hole.
DPR Construction, the largest data center contractor in the U.S., is prioritizing this drilling robot for testing and validation in 2026, according to Tyler Williams, the company’s field and robotic innovation leader. He says the technology has “real potential to reduce ergonomic strain on craft teams, boost productivity, and generally make the onsite experience better for people.”
“Ultimately, everything were doing here is about supporting our customers, many of whom are focused on speed to market,” Williams says. “These kinds of methods are changing how projects get built and helping customers see returns on their capital investments sooner.”
DeWalt and August Robotics have been piloting this technology for the past few months and believe the robotic drill is ready for wider adoption. It will be commercially available by mid 2026. As the scale of data center construction increases, especially among hyperscaler tech companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI, there’s likely to be pent-up demand.
“They’ve got money, and they want to go as fast as they can,” Beck says. “They know it’s a race in terms of getting these data centers up and making sure they’ve got the capacity to be able to compete from an AI perspective. So their big push obviously is how fast can you go?”
For at least this one part of the job, the answer is much, much faster.
When you think of dangerous jobs, an office job that requires you to sit for hours probably doesnt come to mind. And while many jobs are objectively riskier, a sedentary job can pose a serious risk to your health.
The average office worker spends 70% of their workday sitting down, according to data by workplace supplies firm Banner. Yet, research shows that sitting for prolonged periods without any physical activity significantly increases the risk of ill effects such as high blood pressure, numerous musculoskeletal issues, and potentially heart disease. All in all, a desk job increases your risk of mortality by 16%, according to a study published by JAMA.
Our main objective at Zing Coach is to help millions take up exercise and lead healthier lives. And as a fitness coaching company, we wanted to avoid falling into the classic corporate trap of working long hours and leading a sedentary lifestyle. We didnt want to sacrifice our employees health in the pursuit of our goals.
Were seeing more and more workplaces spotlight mental health, which is important. However, physical health is just as important. Not only does it have a huge impact on productivity and performance, but its also a huge component of mental well-being.
How we took the right steps towards success
Like most companies, we felt the pressure to optimize productivity through processes and technology. Yet, as productivity gradually plateaued, it was evident to me that the real issue was a lack of energy.
I knew that a huge part of this came from sedentary work. As a cofounder, I decided to implement a culture of wellness and vitality. This included practical steps like providing a small but welcoming in-house training space, so that employees can do short, flexible workout sessions during gaps in the workday. When employees feel their minds wandering or their backs aching, they can stand up, head to the training area, complete a workout, or even just walk and stretch a little.
Science supports this approach. Physical activity increases blood flow throughout your body, including to the brain, and particularly to the prefrontal cortex. This is the part in charge of planning, decision-making, problem-solving, working memory, and impulse control.
We suspected (and found) that this practice ended up boosting overall energy, which in turn sharpened focus, improved output, and reduced distractions. It was also a great way to build in more opportunities for interactions. Being a fitness company, these social workout sessions often led to innovative ideas.
Small moves, big returns: what I learned by introducing workout breaks
It doesnt take long to see results
People are often put off improving their physical health by a perceived lack of progress. Sure, it takes time to see your hard work paying off substantially, if youre solely focusing on the physical and visual aspects.
Encouraging employees to get up and move isnt just a way to counteract the harms of prolonged sitting; it actively and instantly improves mental function and overall energy. Research shows exercise boosts brain function immediately, with effects lasting hours. Even 10 minutes of moderate activity has been found to increase cognitive performance by 14%, according to research published by Neuropsychologia.
We havent crunched the numbers, but the difference in focus during meetings and the higher energy levels throughout the day are obvious. And weve seen this across multiple teams.
Better health leads to better teamwork
Introducing workout breaks didnt just boost individual performance. It improved the team collectively.
Exercise releases endorphins, the bodys natural mood elevators, which help us manage stress and deal with discomfort. Its the same chemical behind the runners highthat euphoric feeling you get after a good workout. It also improves sleep quality. It helps the person get better nighttime rest, reducing the likelihood of low-energy afternoons that are otherwise the norm.
As it turns out, feeling good both mentally and physically makes it easier for colleagues to get along and work together. We also found that teams that are energetic and enthusiastic automatically become less irritable and conflictual, which fuels far stronger cross-team collaboration.
Time at the desk and productivity arent the same
One important lesson is how little time at a desk actually correlates with output. Sure, youll see more empty chairs throughout the day, but that doesnt mean productivity will drop. Far from it.
Workers arent machines, and after 60 to 90 minutes, many lose focus and effectiveness. Short breaks in general can help refocus and recharge, and teams said that they experienced restorative effects after a physical break. They noticed improvement in all aspects of work performance and personal engagement with the next task after the active break.
When it comes to working out, theres a saying that quality often beats quantity. Turns out this is also true in a corporate job.
Health is the best productivity tool
Ultimately, good health equals good performance. Sure, software and systems can go so far, but if you dont take the steps to prioritize your employees health and well-being, youll never be able to get them to perfom to their true potential.
On January 22, President Donald Trump unveiled the logo for the Board of Peace, an international coalition his administration is forming to oversee the reconstruction of war-torn Gaza and address other global conflicts. There’s just one issue: The logo leaves out half the world.
Trump initiated the effort last year, but has expanded its scope since then, imagining an organization that he leads personally and that member countries pay at least $1 billion to remain a part of.
From left: The United Nations seal; the Board of Peace logo
Longtime allies and NATO members including Canada, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K. are not members, while member nations include authoritarian countries or illiberal democracies like Saudi Arabia and Belarus that the nonprofit Freedom House rates as “not free.”
It’s “like if Law & Order: SVU starred Diddy,” Saturday Night Lives Colin Jost joked about the board’s membership during SNLs Weekend Update” segment on January 24. Yet the group’s logo leans on the visual tropes of global peace to suggest a much different story.
A page from the past
The logo for the group riffs off the U.N. emblem, but in typical Trump fashion, it’s goldand cuts off more than half the rest of the world from the United States. Reaction online has been similar to the reaction to the board itself: negative.
A team led by American designer Oliver Lincoln Lundquist created the United Nations emblem in 1945. Lundquist was a World War II veteran who also designed the blue-and-white Q-Tip box and was on the team that designed the Chrysler Motors Exhibition at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, according to his 2009 obituary.
For the U.N., Lundquist and his team designed a mark showing the globe centered on the North Pole and encircled by a laurel wreath for the official badges worn by conference delegates. That mark was later modified to the current U.N. emblem by spinning it around so Alaska and Russia are on top of the world, and it’s now zoomed out to include more of the globe, as the original badge mark cut off Argentina and the bottom of South Africa and Australia. The U.N. Blue color used by the organization was chosen because it’s “the opposite of red, the war color,” Lundquist said.
Trump’s board logo is presumably gold because it’s Trump’s favorite color, and it centers roughly on the U.S. sphere of influence as Trump sees it, from Greenland to Venezuela, though Alaska is cut off and Africa peeks out. The logo is housed inside a shield instead of a circle.
A version of the logo initially shared by the White House X account has been criticized as made by AI (among its inaccurate details: a U.S.-Canada border that cuts off a big chunk of Ontario). A modified version of the logo that appeared onstage during the Board of Peace signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, was shinier and used a different map that covers roughly the same area.
Curiously, the logo’s map doesn’t include the very place the coalition was created to oversee. That means slides shared by the White House showing a nebulous timeline for a development plan of Gaza are all stamped with a logo that shows the U.S., but not Gaza.
Trump said at the signing that the Board of Peace represents the first steps to “a brighter day for the Middle East.” That’s not the story his logo tells.
Saudi Arabia is officially gutting Neom and turning The Line into a server farm. After a year-long review triggered by financial reality, the Financial Times reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans flagship project is being “significantly downscaled.”
The futuristic linear city known as The Line, originally designed to stretch 150 miles across the desert, is scrapping its sci-fi ambitions to become a far smaller project focused on industrial sectors, says the FT. It’s a rumor that the Saudis originally dismissed when The Guardian first reported on it in 2024. The redesign confirms what skeptics have long suspected: the laws of physics and economics have finally breached the walls of the kingdom’s futuristic Saudi Vision 2030, a country reconversion program aimed at lowering Saudi Arabia’s dependency on oil and transforming the country into a more modern society.
Satellite view of construction progress at the Western portion of NEOM, The Line, Saudi Arabia, 2023. [Photo: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2023]
The glossy renderings of the mile-long skyscraper and vertical forests that was The Line are now dissolving into a pragmatic, if desperate, attempt to salvage the sunk costs. The development, once framed as a “civilization revolution” was originally imagined as a 105-mile long, 1,640-foot high, 656-foot wide car-free smart city designed to house 9 million residents. The redesign pivots toward making Neom a hub for data centers to support the kingdom’s aggressive AI push. An insider told the FT the logic is purely utilitarian: “Data centers need water cooling and this is right on the coast,” signaling that the ambitious city has been downgraded to server farm with a view of the Red Sea.
The end of the line
The scaling back follows years of operational chaos and financial bleeding. Since its 2017 launch, the project promised a 105-mile strip of high-density living. But reality struck early. By April 2024, The Guardian reported that planners were already being forced to slash the initial phase to just 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) by 2030, reducing the projected population from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000.
Satellite view of construction progress at the Western portion of NEOM, The Line, Saudi Arabia, 2023. [Photo: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2023]
While the public infrastructure stalledleaving what critics called “giant holes in the middle of nowhere”satellite imagery revealed that construction resources were successfully diverted to a massive royal palace with 16 buildings and a golf course. Internally, the situation was dire. The Wall Street Journal reported an audit revealing “deliberate manipulation of finances” by management to justify soaring costs, with the “end-state” estimate ballooning to an impossible $8.8 trillionmore than 25 times the annual Saudi budget.
[Screenshot: Business Insider]
The turmoil culminated in the abrupt departure of longtime CEO Nadhmi al-Nasr in November 2024, leaving behind a legacy marred by allegations of abuse. An ITV documentary claimed 21,000 workers had died since the inception of Saudi Vision 2030, with laborers describing 16-hour shifts for weeks on end. Even completed projects failed to launch; the high-end island resort Sindalah sat idle despite being finished, reportedly plagued by design flaws that prevented its opening.
By July 2025, the sovereign wealth fundfacing tightening liquidity and oil prices hovering around $71 a barrelfinally hit the brakes. Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia had hired consultants to conduct a “strategic review” to determine if The Line was even feasible. The goal was to “recalibrate” Vision 2030, a polite euphemism for slashing expenditures as the kingdom faced hard deadlines for the 2030 Expo and the 2034 World Cup.
The review’s conclusion is stripping away even the most publicized milestones. Trojena, the ski resort that defied meteorological logic, will no longer host the Asian Winter Games in 2029 as planned. The resort is being downsized, a casualty of the realization that the kingdom needs to “prioritize market readiness and sustainable economic impact” over snow in the desert.
What remains of The Line will be unrecognizable to those who bought into the sci-fi dream. The FT says that sources briefed on the redesign state it will be a “totally different concept” that utilizes existing infrastructure in a “totally different manner.” The new Neom CEO, Aiman al-Mudaifer, is now tasked with managing a “modest” development that aligns with the Public Investment Fund’s need to actually generate returns rather than burn cash.
Even bin Salman has publicly given up, although he’s framing it not as a failure but a strategic pivot. Addressing the Shura Councila consultative body for the kingdomhe framed the move as flexibility, stating, “we will not hesitate to cancel or make any radical amendment to any programs or targets if we find that the public interest so requires.
And thats how a “civilization revolution” ends, my friends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. The hum of cooling fans in yet another farm producing AI slop that always was (and still is) more believable than The Line and Neom projects.
Generative AI was trained on centuries of art and writing produced by humans.
But scientists and critics have wondered what would happen once AI became widely adopted and started training on its outputs.
A new study points to some answers.
In January 2026, artificial intelligence researchers Arend Hintze, Frida Proschinger ström, and Jory Schossau published a study showing what happens when generative AI systems are allowed to run autonomouslygenerating and interpreting their own outputs without human intervention.
The researchers linked a text-to-image system with an image-to-text system and let them iterateimage, caption, image, captionover and over and over.
Regardless of how diverse the starting prompts wereand regardless of how much randomness the systems were allowedthe outputs quickly converged onto a narrow set of generic, familiar visual themes: atmospheric cityscapes, grandiose buildings, and pastoral landscapes. Even more striking, the system quickly forgot its starting prompt.
The researchers called the outcomes visual elevator musicpleasant and polished, yet devoid of any real meaning.
For example, they started with the image prompt, The Prime Minister pored over strategy documents, trying to sell the public on a fragile peace deal while juggling the weight of his job amidst impending military action. The resulting image was then captioned by AI. This caption was used as a prompt to generate the next image.
After repeating this loop, the researchers ended up with a bland image of a formal interior spaceno people, no drama, no real sense of time and place.
As a computer scientist who studies generative models and creativity, I see the findings from this study as an important piece of the debate over whether AI will lead to cultural stagnation.
The results show that generative AI systems themselves tend toward homogenization when used autonomously and repeatedly. They even suggest that AI systems are currently operating in this way by default.
The familiar is the default
This experiment may appear beside the point: Most people dont ask AI systems to endlessly describe and regenerate their own images. The convergence to a set of bland, stock images happened without retraining. No new data was added. Nothing was learned. The collapse emerged purely from repeated use.
But I think the setup of the experiment can be thought of as a diagnostic tool. It reveals what generative systems preserve when no one intervenes.
This has broader implications, because modern culture is increasingly influenced by exactly these kinds of pipelines. Images are summarized into text. Text is turned into images. Content is ranked, filtered, and regenerated as it moves between words, images, and videos. New articles on the web are now more likely to be written by AI than humans. Even when humans remain in the loop, they are often choosing from AI-generated options rather than starting from scratch.
The findings of this recent study show that the default behavior of these systems is to compress meaning toward what is most familiar, recognizable, and easy to regenerate.
Cultural stagnation or acceleration?
For the past few years, skeptics have warned that generative AI could lead to cultural stagnation by flooding the web with synthetic content that future AI systems then train on. Over time, the argument goes, this recursive loop would narrow diversity and innovation.
Champions of the technology have pushed back, pointing out that fears of cultural decline accompany every new technology. Humans, they argue, will always be the final arbiter of creative decisions.
What has been missing from this debate is empirical evidence showing where homogenization actually begins.
The new study does not test retraining on AI-generated data. Instead, it shows something more fundamental: Homogenization happens before retraining even enters the picture. The content that generative AI systems naturally producewhen used autonomously and repeatedlyis already compressed and generic.
This reframes the stagnation argument. The risk is not only that future models might train on AI-generated content, but that AI-mediated culture is already being filtered in ways that favor the familiar, the describable, and the conventional.
Retraining would amplify this effect. But it is not its source.
This is no moral panic
Skeptics are right about one thing: Culture has always adapted to new technologies. Photography did not kill painting. Film did not kill theater. Digital tools have enabled new forms of expression.
But those earlier technologies never forced culture to be endlessly reshaped across various mediums at a global scale. They did not summarize, regenerate and rank cultural productsnews stories, songs, memes, academic papers, photographs, or social media postsmillions of times per day, guided by the same built-in assumptions about what is typical.
The study shows that when meaning is forced through such pipelines repeatedly, diversity collapses not because of bad intentions, malicious design or corporate negligence, but because only certain kinds of meaning survive the text-to-image-to-text repeated conversions.
This does not mean cultural stagnation is inevitable. Human creativity is resilient. Institutions, subcultures, and artists have always found ways to resist homogenization. But in my view, the findings of the study show that stagnation is a real risknot a speculative fearif generative systems are left to operate in their current iteration.
They also help clarify a common misconception about AI creativity: Producing endless variations is not the same as producing innovation. A system can generate millions of images while exploring only a tiny corner of cultural space.
In my own research on creative AI, I found that novelty requires designing AI systems with incentives to deviate from the norms. Without it, systems optimize for familiarity because familiarity is what they have learned best. The study reinforces this point empirically. Autonomy alone does not guarantee exploration. In some cases, it accelerates convergence.
This pattern already emerged in the real world: One study found that AI-generated lesson plans featured the same drift toward conventional, uninspiring content, underscoring that AI systems converge toward whats typical rather than whats unique or creative.
Lost in translation
Whenever you write a caption for an image, details will be lost. Likewise, for generating an image from text. And this happens whether its being performed by a human or a machine.
In that sense, the convergence that took place is not a failure thats unique to AI. It reflects a deeper property of bouncing from one medium to another. When meaning passes repeatedly through two different formats, only the most stable elements persist.
But by highlighting what survives during repeated translations between text and images, the authors are able to show that meaning is processed inside generative systems with a quiet pull toward the generic.
The implication is sobering: Even with human guidancewhether that means writing prompts, selecting outputs, or refining resultsthese systems are still stripping away some details and amplifying others in ways that are oriented toward whats average.
If generative AI is to enrich culture rather than flatten it, I think systems need to be designed in ways that resist convergence toward statistically average outputs. There can be rewards for deviation and support for less common and less mainstream forms of expression.
The study makes one thing clear: Absent these interventions, generative AI will continue to drift toward mediocre and uninspired content.
Cultural stagnation is no longer speculation. Its already happening.
Ahmed Elgammal is a professor of computer science and director of the Art & AI Lab at Rutgers University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
