Black Friday isn’t what it used to be. Less than 15 years ago, it was fairly common for people to wake up at ridiculously early hours to drive to a store, where they would stand in line, waiting for the doors to open in order to grab the best deals.
Those people still exist, but not in the numbers they used to, thanks to the convenience of online shopping (and the early start to holiday deals). But as artificial intelligence becomes more entrenched, it could play an outsized role in Black Friday (and Cyber Monday)and 2025 could be something of a test case for the technology.
The average consumer is expected to spend $1,595 on holiday gifts this year, according to Deloitte. That’s 10% less than 2024 and highlights the importance shoppers will place on bargains this year. And a growing number of consumers will be relying on AI to help them find those deals.
Some 33% of the people Deloitte spoke to in its 2025 Holiday Retail Survey said they plan to use AI as part of their holiday shoppingdouble the number who did last year. Many say the tech could assist them with inspiration and product discovery.
That could benefit retailers who have already embraced AI in their recommendation engines, as well as those planning to roll it out.
“Consumer adoption of gen AI shows that expectations are shifting toward personalization and efficiency,” Deloitte’s report states. “Shoppers now expect instant recommendations tailored to their preferences, budgets, and recipients, raising the bar for retailers digital experiences. To meet holiday shoppers expectations, retailers could consider embedding AI-powered gift finders, style assistants, or deal copilots directly into their sites or apps.”
A separate study from marketing automation platform Klaviyo found that 56% of consumers say theyll use AI tools during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
AI can do a lot more than just help people think of creative gifts, of course. Gen AI models like ChatGPT can research prices and recommend the best deal, in some cases even making the purchase for you, a feature used by a growing number of people. Traffic from AI platforms to retail sites during Prime Days and other sales in July was up by 4,700%, according to Adobe Analytics. And the company is predicting an increase in AI usage of between 515% and 550% this holiday season, compared to 2024.
Thinking of enlisting a Gen AI to help you find deals? Here’s how to go about it.
Make your list. Check it twice
Chatbots dont work so well without specifics. You’ll need to know exactly what you’re looking to buy if you’re planning to use AI for price comparisons.
Using the broadest example, telling ChatGPT you’re looking for the best price on, say, a Barbie or a blender is akin to calling a Best Buy or Gamestop and saying you want to know their best price for a game console. The $60 no-name brand that has a Tetris clone might technically be the correct answer, but that does you no good if you really wanted a PlayStation 5.
Set the AI loose
Ask your chatbot to find the best deals for your specific product.
Again, details matter, so be sure to offer as much granularity as you can about the product. (To go back to the PS5 example, do you want the PS5 with a disc drive? What amount of internal storage do you want? Do you want a PS5 Slim or Pro or some other model?) It’s also worth asking the chatbot to suggest additional ways to save, such as applicable cash-back apps (like Rakuten), promo codes, or coupons.
Fact check the results
Prices change all the time during the holiday season, so just because ChatGPT says Store X has the best deal, you’ll still want to check that store’s website to verify the amount your AI assistant quoted is still valid. At the very least, using AI to help you shop will quickly eliminate some options and, ideally, free up some of your time, letting you spend less of November and December hunting for deals and more time enjoying the season.
Below, Corinne Low shares five key insights from her new book, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Womens Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours.
Corinne is an economist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy. She also regularly speaks to and advises companies on their practices.
Whats the big idea?
Women face unequal demands at home and in the workplace, making having it all costly. Research shows how hidden factors shape choices and offers a way to reclaim time, energy, and joy.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Corinne herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Its not in your head; its in the data
In 2017, I gave birth to my sonand had a midlife crisis. Things that used to work, like commuting two and a half hours to my job, just didnt add up anymore. I was constantly stressed, angry, depleted, and so tired all the time. Pumping in the Amtrak bathroom, crying that I would miss my sons bedtime because of a train delay, I wondered, Is it just me?
I started studying womens time use, and the data told me I was far from alone. Women are getting squeezed from all sides. As our time in the labor market has increased, our time on home responsibilities hasnt declined accordingly. This is for two reasons:
Mens time spent cooking and cleaning has stayed fixed since the 1970s.
The way we parent has become much more intensive than a generation ago.
Mothers in the ’80s were not babywearing and pumping at work or driving to a million activities. I grew up in the ’80s, and we were out riding bikes with no snacks and no water bottleswe must have been very dehydrated! The parenting game has changed.
Some changes are great and have to do with our greater understanding of child development, but we spend almost twice as much time with our kids as compared to mothers only a generation ago. Without getting sufficient help from our partners, there just arent enough hours in the day.
The amount our partners do also doesnt change when women are the primary breadwinners at home. Women who are the breadwinners still do twice as much cooking and cleaning as their lower-earning male partnerswinning the bread and baking it too.
If you look at time usage over a lifecycle, you see womens time use on kids and housework swells to a mountain in our thirties (a period I call the squeeze), and the mirror image of that is our time on leisure and career investments, which goes down like a valley. During that period, time inequality with men is also at its peak. They do less childcare and housework and have more work and leisure time. We need to figure out a different way forward.
2. Your goal in life is utility, not career success
The problems facing women in the workplace are structural. Were trying to be a Frankenstein of a super career woman at the office and an Instagram mom at home. We feel like were falling behind because were trying to do more (succeed in a world built by and for men) with less. But economists model human beings as maximizing not career success, not prestige, but their utility function.
Your utility function is unique to you.
Utility is like a firms profit function. Your personal profit function is made up of all the things that bring you joy, meaning, and fulfillment over the course of your lifetime. If you were to look back at your life when youre 85 years old, what would make you say, That was a life well lived? Your career is part of that, but its not the whole thing.
Your utility function is unique to you. Only you know what brings you the deepest feelings of satisfaction. So, you cant compare yourself to someone else in terms of accomplishment because theyve accomplished different thingstheir utility function is different! Meaning, theyre maximizing something else.
3. A job is a tool to turn time into money
Lets talk about where your career fits into your utility function. Your job converts time (the natural resource youre endowed with to maximize utility) into money. Your job is like an ATM; you put time into it and get money out of it.
Ideally, it does this with minimal hassle and maybe some enjoyment, potentially adding to your utility rather than subtracting from it. But when I ask people what they would do with their time if money were no object, almost no one says theyd try to file more reports or climb higher on the corporate ladder. Thats because we recognize that a job is a means to utility, not an end.
If we didnt need the money that comes from employment, wed spend most of our time on things we really enjoy: being with loved ones, hobbies, nature, and taking care of ourselves. We need to think of our careers a little more transactionally than the business books at airports press us to. Exactly how much money do I need at each phase of my life, and how do I plot a career that gets me that while eating up as little of my precious time as possible? This means thinking hard about the lifecycle of your job.
Investing lots of time in your twenties can make sense because youre not as squeezed by home responsibilities, and it can buy you a better time-to-money conversion rate from your job later in life. But you want to make sure youre in a field where you are working toward the ability to take your foot off the gas at some pointlike during the squeezeand use more of that time making utility directly. Otherwise, the prize for the pie-eating contest is more pie! Your investment in your career should be proportional to the role money plays in maximizing your utility. Everything else is just chasing success at the expense of true happiness.
4. You can work like a girl and get paid
There is no evidence that male traits are actually more productive, and there certainly isnt any evidence that women will be rewarded for mimicking them. When I got to Wharton, a male colleague told me that students respect you more when you are tough, saying that I needed to show them who was boss right from the start.
So, I marked them tardy if they were a minute late, and guess what? They hated it coming from me. A female professor told me that shed found her students expected her to be really nice, and she had to fulfill their social expectations to receive good reviews. Research backs up this anecdote: Women are often penalized for failing to exhibit expected traits like niceness and community-mindedness.
I want women to view their gendered traits as superpowers.
While its also true that the evidence shows that men are, on average, more competitive, more risk-loving, tougher negotiators, and greater self-promoters, it does not say that those things lead to more productivity or higher profits. In a study on competitiveness, men were overcompetitive. Subjects performed a task and had to decide whether they wanted to receive payment for their efforts or participate in a tournament, where they would only be paid if they scored the highest. Of the worst-performing men (the men certain to lose the tournament), 60% still chose to enter rather than take the guaranteed payoff.
In my own research on negotiation, I found that male-male pairs were more than twice as likely to fail to reach an agreement and therefore walk away from a negotiation with nothing. I want women to view their gendered traits as superpowers, and find workplaces where they can get ahead by being themselvesnot by pretending to be a man and getting punished for it anyway.
5. We must radically prioritize what contributes to our happiness
When the deck is stacked against us, we cant keep trying to play fairmeeting everyone elses needs, and never our own. We have to become ruthless in aligning our time with what gives us utility. Take these three steps:
Renegotiate how time and money are allocated in your household.
Throw out your houseplants and make other hard choices.
Pay yourself first with leisure time.
First, to renegotiate the deal in your household, I want you and your partner to track your time. Often, men think theyre doing about half the household work, but thats only because they do half of the things they know about. While theyre doing half the school drop-offs, youre the one making sure there are clothes in the right size, lunches packed, after-school care, and playdates are scheduledhalf of which you multitask during work. If you track your time, you might realize theres a lot more inequality than you think, and you can start reallocating.
Once you reallocate the households joint time budget, if theres still inequality in work and leisure time, see if reallocating money can help. Not outsourcing a task is hiring yourself to do it. We rarely do this with male-coded tasks (like car repair and plumbing), but somehow, for female-coded tasks, we forget that doing something in-house has an opportunity cost of where else you could invest that time. If youre a lawyer who bills at a certain rate, or a nurse who could pick up an extra shift, can you really afford that much of your own time for laundry?
We have to become ruthless in aligning our time with what gives us utility.
Second, throw out your houseplants is my pithy phrase for decluttering your time of anything thats an obligation rather than a calling. For me, it was wilting houseplants that I didnt have time to care for and made me feel like a failure. For you, it might be volunteering at your kids school, making homemade baby food, or planning the office retreat. Understanding how were being squeezed from all sides gives you the freedom to say, Nope, this doesnt add up for me right now. Importantly, you can always say yes later when youre in a different, and easier, chapter of your life.
Lastly, pay yourself first with leisure time. We do get some time to ourselves, but often its just little crumbles of time left over at the end of the day. By then, were so depleted we end up just zoning out on our phones. If we block out time for the things that bring us the most joy and meaning, everything else can claim the scraps! Its like how we can suddenly get a project done in an hour before the deadlinethings expand to fill the available space in our calendars. Block your leisure time like an important meeting, and let yourself be your own top priority.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea app.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
With millennials and Gen Z opting for fur babies over actual babies, a new workplace benefit is starting to take over. Enter the era of pawternity leave, where pets are dictating benefits, as companies scramble to keep up with shifting priorities. The reality is: without pet perks, companies are risking losing top talent.
Sixty percent of pet parents say they would quit their job if it interfered with their ability to care for their pet and almost 10% already have. With the growing number of people placing such a high value on their pets, companies are beginning to recognize pet parenthood as more than just a lifestyle choice. Its a reflection of todays priorities, and its reshaping how employers approach workplace inclusion.
Younger generations are replacing kids with pets
Generational differences are driving the need for modernized workplace benefits. Twenty years ago, two-thirds of women at age 30 had at least one child. Today, half of American women at that age do not. This comes as 67% of millennials and Gen Z say they would rather have a dog than a kid.
As the workforce transitions from parents to pet owners, traditional benefits like paid parental leave are not resonating with newer generations in the same way more flexible, lifestyle-oriented perks like pet care do.
According to a study from Vetster, 48% of Gen Z see no difference between their pet and an actual human child compared to past generations, a powerful indicator of how deeply pets are integrated into their emotional lives. These new family priorities present an opportunity for companies to recognize pet parenthood as a legitimate caregiving role. Offering benefits like pawternity leave, free or discounted pet health care, or pet-friendly office policies allows companies to meet employees where they are in todays age.
Supporting mental health through pet-inclusive policies
Amid economic uncertainty and looming layoffs within many industries, 80% of people cite work as their primary source of stress. Knowing that heightened stress negatively impacts productivity, companies are turning to pet-friendly policies as a part of their overall well-being strategy to ensure employees feel cared for. Pets such as dogs have been shown to lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Beyond physical health, their presence in the workplace also directly impacts employees mental well-being with 73% of people saying having pets in the office reduces stress levels. For remote workers, the impact is significant, too51% of pet owners working from home report lower stress levels because of the ability to easily care for their pet. By recognizing the emotional needs of employees and integrating pets into workplace culture, companies are helping to alleviate stress while fostering a more compassionate and inclusive environment that supports employees.
Companies are seeing high engagement with pet benefits
Fifty-three percent of workplaces are pet-friendly to some degree and those that are implementing pet benefits are seeing high engagement with the benefits. For example, Samsungs pet benefits program saved employees $20,000 on vet bills and over 800 hours that would have otherwise been lost to time spent on vet appointments. These types of programs not only reduce logistical and financial burdens for employees, but also demonstrate that the company values their employees needs beyond traditional healthcare. As a result, pet benefits are emerging as a meaningful component of inclusive workplace culture
A more inclusive workplace starts with recognizing pets as family
Seventy percent of the workforce are pet owners. Neglecting to acknowledge and support the role pets play in employees lives means overlooking a key part of what drives employees personal well-being.
At its core, inclusion means creating a workplace where people feel seen and supported. As definitions of family evolve, so should benefits and policies. In recognizing pets not just as companions, but as central figures in many employees lives, companies who recognize this dynamic when considering benefits packages are experiencing a much happier, healthier company culture.
Circa 1450, the creative community was jolted. The printing press had just been invented in Europe. Scribes, typically monks who had spent lifetimes perfecting the spiritual art of hand-copying manuscripts, saw their specialized skills suddenly rendered obsolete. Yet in short order, the disruptive innovation democratized knowledge, enabled the Renaissance, and created entirely new creative roles for editors, typesetters, printmakers, and illustrators.
More than five centuries later, Photoshop sparked similar concerns about devaluing traditional skills and compromising image integrity. Artists worried it would cheapen the craft. Instead, it became foundational to modern graphic design, opening new creative possibilities while making visual expression accessible to wider audiences.
New tools that initially seem threatening often become indispensable partners in creative work. People in creative fields are, by nature, creative. They tend to think beyond what currently exists and adopt emerging technologies to accelerate their process, embolden their output, and make their medium more accessible.
ENTER: AI
Artificial intelligences threats to the creative community are well documented. At the same time, we are also seeing myriad ways the technology can quickly deliver valuable information, patterns, and research that can liberate the creative community to spend more time actually creating.
When it comes to my area of expertiseempowering the design community to leverage the full emotional, narrative, and commercial power of colorAI can be a valuable partner in the creative process. Pantone just introduced a new tool, in fact, that employs conversational AI technology to help creatives expedite designs research and inspiration phases. The tool helps users explore color palettes, leverage trend forecasting data, and generate design concepts.
But while AI can process data and identify patterns, the forward-looking trend insights themselves remain uniquely human, rooted in cultural analysis and nuanced insight, intuition, and imagination. A creative process that uses artificial intelligence also demands human intelligence. AI tools trained on human-identified trends help designers respond with greater speed, depth, and nuance, but the trends themselves must first be recognized by human experts attuned to cultural shifts.
REQUIRED: THE HUMAN IMAGINATION
When Pantone selected Mocha Mousse as Color of the Year 2025an evocative brown leaning into our desire for everyday pleasuresno machine learning model could have sensed the burgeoning cultural ethos it spoke to. Human forecasters recognized a global appetite for thoughtful indulgence, harmonious comfort, and personal luxury, all expressed by this rich, deep brown.
Trend forecasting demands humanspeople who sense subtle undercurrents of collective emotion before they surface, who understand when comfort becomes more important than adventure, when personal expression pushes back against homogenization , when nostalgia begins to feel fresh again. Color scientists track films in production, new artists, fashion movements, emerging lifestyles, socioeconomic shifts, evolving technologies and materialsbuilding a comprehensive view of where culture is headed.
After all, humans are animals, and animals have always used color as a multifaceted and sentient signal system: attracting mates, establishing identity, communicating mood, warning of danger. Just as a vermilion flycatcher uses red feathers to attract females while a kingsnakes bright red bands warn predators away, we use color to send messages about who we are and what we desire. These messages shift with our cultural moment in ways no algorithm or technology can anticipate. The insights require the unique ability to sense what’s emerging before it fully arrives.
From the printing press to Photoshop to AI, new technologies amplify what creatives can do. It makes processes swifter, bolder, more affordable, and more accessible. AI can help creatives tap into powerful color stories and trend insights. But the creative vision, the cultural fluency, and the ability to sense what will move people remains distinctly, irreplaceably human. AI is another powerful tool in the creative arsenal, most potent when it augments rather than attempts to replace human insight and imagination.
Sky Kelley is president of Pantone.
Were living through a seismic workforce disruption. Business leaders are poised to have a significant impact on the way our economy is shaped over the next decade. You already see it with the big company CEOs creating a cult of celebrity far beyond anything weve seen historically, but this phenomenon cascades down to all leaders across companies. Today, however, your personal brand is built in authentic micro-momentshow you lead meetings, navigate change, and bring others along. What story are you telling?Earlier this month, I sat down with Marissa Andrada and Al Dea at Guilds Opportunity Summit to discuss why personal brand building is no longer optional for leaders who want to drive meaningful impact.
DOES PERSONAL BRAND NEED A REBRAND?
The concept of a personal brand can sound like a marketing buzzword. But if you write it off as such, youre going to fall behind.
We arent advocating for leaders to break out their tripods at a conference and do the latest Taylor Swift TikTok dance (but if thats authentic to you, go for it).
Your personal brandor leadership signature if you really want to avoid the b wordis built through micro-moments: the tone you bring to a meeting, the decisions you make, and how you develop and support people during times of transformation.As Al put it, Every stakeholder conversation is a chance to show people what youre about. That starts with understanding the beliefs and motivations that drive others.
People can only see things from their seat, he added. If you want them to see things from yours, you first need to see things from theirs.
ELEVATE YOUR WORK THROUGH STRATEGIC STORYTELLING
Personal brand canand shouldcoexist with humility. For the introverts among us, this isnt about self-promotion. Its about translating your teams impact into stories that resonate with the business.
Strategic storytelling connects people to purpose. It transforms complex initiatives into narratives that inspire action and resonate with the business.
As leaders, we can help our teams do this by focusing on what I call the three Cs: clarity, commitment, and consistency.Clarity: Clear really is kind. Strip out jargon and acronyms. Ask yourself: Would the average employee understand what Im trying to say? If not, simplify.Commitment: Audiences can sense when youre reciting a script versus speaking from conviction. Belief cant be fakedand when leaders try, trust erodes fast.
Consistency: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your leadership signature wont be either. Words and action, over a sustained period of time, reinforce your stated values. The small, unseen momentshow you respond to challenges, how you show up when no ones watchingcreate the foundation of your credibility.
2 SHIFTS TO BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND FOUNDATION
Mindfully consider your personal style and how you want your brand to show up. Gut-check that with others. Ask yourself: What do you want others to say about your leadership? Does that align with the feedback I receive? If not, where are there gaps and how can I work toward reconciling them?
Here are two shifts you can make today to create that foundation.
1) Ground in outcomes
Too often, leaders fall into the same traps we coach early-career workers to avoid on their resumes. Shift away from the activity, into the outcome.
Activity: We led a large-scale software integration this quarter.
Outcome: We transformed how our company connects people strategy to business results.Leading with outcomes helps to contextualize the weight and the why behind your teams work, building credibility with the listener.
2) Mind your language
On our San Diego panel, Marissa shared a story of her time at Universal Studios. Early on, she introduced herself to business leads with HR-speak: Im here to help develop a new performance management and talent planning process.
She received clear, actionable feedback that the corporate jargonwhat she jokingly called corponicswas not resonating. The very colleagues she was trying to rally did not know what she was saying.Taking their feedback, she dropped the lingo, and recalibrated to human-first language.
Instead of succession planning, she said, Were growing fast. When youre ready for your next role, how do you ensure someones ready to step into your seat?
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP IN AN ERA OF ERODED TRUST
Personal brands can no longer be “crafted” in a conference room with a team of external consultants.
Todays workforce is skeptical, discerning, and exhausted. Decades of information overload, polarization, and change have left employees craving authenticity and wary of anything that feels performative. People are drawn to leaders who reflect their stated values through daily interactions.
If you think your leadership brand only lives on LinkedIn, youre tracking the wrong KPIs.
Do your public posts reflect the experiences your customers and teams are having privately? The leaders who will define the next decade are those whose public narratives match their private behaviors.
When leaders clarify their values, master storytelling, and lead with authenticity, they dont just strengthen their own brandsthey rebuild trust in business itself.
One example Marissa shared in San Diego, was her time as chief people officer at Chipotle and the experience of partnering with Guild to transform their employee tuition reimbursement program into an initiative that reinforced the companys belief in peoples potential. The result? Measurable business outcomes. Chipotle saw stronger retention and greater internal mobility made possible by the new skills through education.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Building a personal brand isnt about self-promotion. Its about creating alignment between who you are, how you lead, and the impact you create.
By cultivating clarity of values, mastering the art of strategic storytelling, and leading with authenticity, todays executives can build personal brands that elevate their voices and strengthen trust in their organizations. In doing so, leaders transform branding from an exercise in visibility into a discipline of influence anchored in purpose.
Rebecca Biestman is CMO of Guild.
Enterprises across the globe are pouring an estimated $1.5 trillion into artificial intelligence, and the results are already significant: AI has added more than $400 billion to the U.S. economy alone. Yet beneath these headline numbers lies a less celebrated truth. Most GenAI projects (95%) are failing to deliver a return on investment.
This disconnect isnt a technology problem. Its a transformation problem. And the fix is not coming from the boardroom or the IT department. Its coming from the cubicles, the customer service desks, and the HR teamsthe employees who know firsthand where bottlenecks and opportunities exist.
THE BOTTOM-UP AI MOVEMENT
New data, based on a survey of 200 IT executives at billion-dollar U.S. companies that we conducted, reveals a quiet but historic shift in how innovation happens. For the first time, non-technical employees are driving the adoption of agentic AI, systems that can act on their own, make decisions, and automate complex workflows, at a scale weve never seen before.
A staggering 91% of executives say that non-technical staff are playing a larger role in AI projects than they did in any previous wave of technology adoption. These arent hypothetical use cases or innovation theater projects. The majority (78%) of these initiatives are laser-focused on solving real, persistent, everyday challenges. From automating repetitive workflows to surfacing insights buried in mountains of data across numerous systems, employees are using AI to reduce their digital friction and return their focus to projects they are passionate about and drive the business forward.
The results of our research78% of leaders reported that agentic AI has already caused a significant transformation in at least one part of their operations. This isnt about incremental change; its about reimagining how work gets done.
A CHANGING CORPORATE POWER STRUCTURE
This shift isnt just technical. Its changing the structure of organizations. For decades, IT departments have been the gatekeepers of new technology, often operating as the tallest tower in the enterprise. But the data shows that it is changing fast. Only 38% of executives now believe IT will be the department most responsible for AI innovation in the next three years, based on our survey results.
The old notion of shadow IT, where teams bypass official channels to use their own tools, has long been viewed as risky or even reckless. But now, this approach is being recognized for what it really is: A sign that employees across the business are hungry for solutions, and they are willing to take the initiative to get them.
Other business teams, such as operations, human resources, and customer service, are stepping up as leaders in AI-driven change. This redistribution of power is making organizations more agile and responsive, and its opening new avenues for career advancement. Four in ten executives expect AI to create upward mobility for all employees, not just technical specialists.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF AI TRANSFORMATION
This bottom-up shift presents new cultural complexities. While 89% of employees are receptive to AI tools, theres a strong preference for integration into existing workflows. Our survey reveals that 65% favor AI enhancing current processes over forcing a complete overhaul.
This approach highlights a key tension: incremental improvement versus bold transformation. The most forward-thinking companies are designing AI around people, not the other way around, and as one IT executive put it in their response to our survey, [Agentic AI is] going to challenge the way we work today, but also open a new front door to smarter, faster, and more collaborative ways of working.
Leaders must recognize the cultural and structural impact of agentic AI, and the companies that succeed will be those that embrace these shifts while keeping people and purpose firmly at the center. Balancing immediate adoption with the potential for true innovation requires a delicate touch. Leaders need to meet employees where they are while inspiring them to envision a future in which AI amplifies their capabilities, enabling them to focus on supervising systems and applying judgments in complex scenarios.
WHAT COMES NEXT
First, leaders should recognize that the most successful AI initiatives arent handed down from the top, they bubble up from the front lines. Organizations that empower employees to identify problems and experiment with solutions will outpace those that rely on mandates and one-size-fits-all platforms.
Second, the IT departments role must evolve. Rather than acting as a gatekeeper, IT can become an enabler, providing guardrails, tools, and support while giving other departments the freedom to innovate.
Finally, leaders must address the cultural hurdles that come with any major change. That means investing in education, building trust in new tools, and ensuring that every employee, regardless of technical background, has a chance to participate in the AI future.
AIs real promise isnt in algorithms or hardware. Its in unleashing the creativity, expertise, and ambition of every person in the organization. The future of enterprise AI is bottom-up, not top-down. And the companies that embrace this shift will be the ones that truly transform.
Bhavin Shah is the CEO of Moveworks.
Lets be honest: When we talk about workplace equity, menopause rarely makes the agenda. But it should. This life stage impacts half the workforce, often right when women are at the peak of their careers, influence, and leadership.
As a CEO and advocate for womens health, Ive seen firsthand how menopause becomes an invisible career barrier. And now the data backs it up: Ignoring menopause in the workplace isnt just a health oversight, its a systemic equity issue.
According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, full-time, year-round working women earn only 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, a gap thats actually widening. The year before, women earned almost 83 cents for every dollar. That should stop us in our tracks.
Menopause often coincides with a critical phase in a womans career, when experience, insight, and leadership potential are at their highest. But symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, hot flashes, and mood swings can disrupt work and energy levels. The issue isnt the symptoms, its the silence surrounding them.
Women are expected to power through. Some do, but for many it turns into what is known as the midcareer cliff. Women begin quietly stepping back, missing promotions, or leaving leadership roles altogether. This isnt just personal loss, its organizational erosion. When experienced women exit, we lose innovation, mentorship, and momentum across the pipeline.
THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE
Lets be clear: Supporting women through menopause isnt a favor. Its a business imperative. If we want strong, competitive, resilient organizations, we need more women in leadership roles at every age, including midlife and beyond.
Heres how companies can show up:
1. Make menopause part of the conversation
Start normalizing it, openly, not awkwardly. Include menopause in DEI and wellness conversations just like we do with maternity or mental health. Train managers. Create employee resource groups. Let women share experiences, not suffer in silence.
2. Back words with policy
Talking is great, but action matters. Promote flexible work options, access to hormone therapy or menopause specialists, and comprehensive benefit programslike what we did recently at Beacon Wellness Brands in partnership with Midi Health. These arent perks, theyre proof points.
3. Measure what matters
If youre not tracking retention and promotion by age and gender, youre missing the story. Look at your data. If mid-career women are quietly disappearing, menopause might be a hidden factor.
At Beacon Wellness, we believe real equity means meeting women where they are. That includes menopause. When we normalize and support this stage, women can keep leading, innovating, mentoringand building the future of work.
Equity isnt a box to check off, its something you nurture over decades. And if were serious about closing the wage gap, we have to support the years that define a womans legacy, not just her entry.
Workplaces that support women ultimately strengthen their entire organization.
Maria Warrington is the CEO of Beacon Wellness Brands.
A new study from MIT that shows that AI might be poised to replace a lot more jobs than what initial estimates might predict. According to researchers, a hidden mass of data reveals that AI is currently capable of taking over 11.7% of the labor market.
The new estimate comes courtesy of a project called The Iceberg Index, which was made through a partnership between MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a federally funded research center in Tennessee. According to its website, the Iceberg Index simulates an agentic U.S.a human-AI workforce where 151M+ human workers coordinate with thousands of AI agents. In simpler terms, the tool is designed to simulate precisely how AI is poised to disrupt the current workforce, down to specific local zip codes.
The Iceberg Index model treats Americas 151 million workers as individual agents, each categorized by their skills, tasks, occupation, and location. In total, it maps more than 32,000 skills and 923 occupations across 3,000 counties. In an interview with CNBC, Prasanna Balaprakash, ORNL director and co-leader of the research, described this as a digital twin for the U.S. labor market. Using that base of data, the index analyzes to what extent digital AI tools can already perform certain technical and cognitive tasks, and then produces an estimate of what AI exposure in each area looks like.
Already, state governments in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Utah are using the index to prepare for AI-driven workforce changes. Here are three main takeaways from the study:
AI is more pervasive in the workforce than we think
Perhaps the biggest finding from the study is the discovery of what it calls a substantial measurement gap in how we typically think about AI replacing jobs.
According to the report, if analysts only observe current AI adoption, which is mainly concentrated in computing and technology, theyll find that AI exposure accounts for only about 2.2% of the workforce, or around $211 billion in wage value (the report refers to this as Surface Index). But, it says, thats only the tip of the iceberg.
By factoring in variables like AIs potential for automation in administrative, financial, and professional services, the numbers rise to 11.7% of the workforce and about $1.2 trillion in wages (this calculation is referred to as Iceberg Index).
The studys authors emphasize that these results only represent technical AI exposure, not actual future displacement outcomes. Those depend on how companies, workers, and local governments adapt over time.
The AI takeover is not limited to the coasts
Its fairly common to assume that the most AI job exposure is concentrated in coastal hubs, where tech companies predominantly gather. But the Iceberg Index shows that AIs ability to take over work force tasks is distributed much more widely.
Many states across the U.S., the study shows, register small AI impacts when accounting solely for current AI adoption in computing and tech, but much higher values when other variables are taken into consideration.
Rust Belt states such as Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee register modest Surface Index values but substantial Iceberg Index values driven by cognitive workfinancial analysis, administrative coordination, and professional servicesthat supports manufacturing operations, the study reads.
How this data can actually make a difference
Now that MIT and ORNL have successfully established the Iceberg Index, theyre hoping it can be used by local governments to protect workers and economies. Local lawmakers can use the map to source fine-grain insights, like examining a certain city block to see which skill sets are most in use and the likelihood of their automation.
Per CNBC, MIT and ORNL have also built an interactive tool that lets states experiment with different policy leverslike adjusting training programs or shifting workforce dollarsto predict how those changes might affect local employment and gross domestic product.
The Iceberg Index provides measurable intelligence for critical workforce decisions: where to invest in training, which skills to prioritize, how to balance infrastructure with human capital, the report reads. It reveals not only visible disruption in technology sectors but the larger transformation beneath the surface. By measuring exposure before adoption reshapes work, the Index enables states to prepare rather than reactturning AI into a navigable transition.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits declined last week in a sign that overall layoffs remain low, even as several high-profile companies have announced job cuts.
U.S. applications for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 22 dropped 6,000 from the previous week to 216,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The figure is below the 230,000 forecast by economists, according to a survey by data provider FactSet.
Applications for unemployment aid are seen as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS and Amazon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not yet be reflected in the claims data.
The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, dropped 1,000 to 223,750.
For now, the U.S. job market appears stuck in a low-hire, low-fire state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 15 rose 7,000 to 1.96 million, the government said. The increase is a sign that the unemployed are taking longer to find new work.
Last week, the government said that hiring picked up a bit in September, when employers added 119,000 new jobs. Yet the report also showed employers had shed jobs in August. And the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level in four years, as more Americans came off the sidelines to look for work but did not all immediately find jobs.
On Tuesday, the government reported that retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases. Consumer confidence plunged to its second-lowest level in five years, while wholesale inflation eased a bit.
The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, which boosted financial markets’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate at its next meeting Dec. 9-10.
Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
The job of a headline is to draw attention to the article beneath it. When a headline instead draws attention to itself, it feels as wrong as a carnival barker cursing out passersby.
The New York Times, which remains among the worlds load-bearing newspapers, has published plenty of stories in 2025 with that rogue carnival barker vibe. Why is someone screaming this at me? would be a natural response to headlines like Did Women Ruin the Workplace? which NYT ran earlier this month, inspiring an apoplectic backlash that forced editors to change it to the only-slightly better Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?. Since that controversial header is one of many quickly corrected misfires from the Paper of Record this year, maybe something else is going on beyond avant-garde attention-grabbing.
Its nothing new for New York Times headlines to undergo embarrassing post-publication edits, presumably after someone got yelled at. What feels different now is that headline debacles appear to be arriving more regularly in the second Trump termand nearly as often on the News side as on the Opinion side, despite each division having its own separate editors. Even longtime media critics like the NYT Pitchbot account on social media agree this has been a particularly cursed year for NYT headlines. The question is: To what end?
Headline mismatch
Sometimes, a headline is bending like a tortured circus contortionist to avoid stating the obvious. A recent News story offered the phrase Blending family and governance to describe Donald Trump enriching himself through business ventures while being the actual president. A froth of piping hot internet outrage swiftly followed. NYT then changed the headline to Trump Organization Is Said to Be in Talks on a Saudi Government Real Estate Deal, which sounds blessedly less like a story about finding innovative business loopholes for presidents.
Corruption at unprecedented levels with a murderous regime, a mark of totalitarian fascism but: "Blending family and governance" makes it sound like a harmless avocation. #BrokenTimes— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) 2025-11-15T23:18:25.948Z
The Times has this problem where they are afraid to say things frankly, says the anonymous person behind the long-running X and Bluesky account, NYT Pitchbot, which regularly mocks the framing of stories in NYT and The Washington Post.
Other times, the headline might be at odds with the story its hyping up. Amid ongoing revelations about the extent to which Jeffrey Epstein claimed Trump knew about his sex trafficking empire, a News story from last week took an arch tone in describing the fallout from recently unearthed Epstein emails and the broad, powerful network of people with which Epstein held sway.
It was then saddled with the unfortunate headline Epstein Emails Reveal a Lost New York, which provoked a digital jetspray of bile on social media. Judging from the headline, one might reasonably conclude it was a wistful lament for a golden age of sex crimes in the city. (It was later changed to Epstein Emails Reveal a Bygone Elite.)
NYT: We Miss the Old, Rapey New York, Before Our Favorite Financiers Becane Disgraced— Keith Decent (@keithdecent.bsky.social) 2025-11-16T16:33:33.821Z
That "clubby" NYT headline is awful, but the piece itself is clear-eyed & observant, if cool in tone it's by a strong writer & it documents the creepy, backpatting insider world of guys griping about MeToo as it happens. The NYT is always doing this! If the hed was different, the piece wd be legit— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum.bsky.social) 2025-11-16T17:17:45.491Z
Over on the Opinion side, plenty of headlines seem expressly designed as ragebait, practically begging Bluesky users to screenshot them into viral infamy. (More so than usual, even.) The same week readers were greeted with Did Women Ruin the Workplace, for instance, one of the writers credited with that piece authored a column bearing the headline Mamdanis Victory is Less Significant Than You Think. That headline arrived the morning after Zohran Mamdanis win in New Yorks mayoral race, before anyone could credibly claim special knowledge about its significance or lack thereof. It did not go down smoothly online, which felt like the entire point.
He actually lost by winning— Molly Knight (@mollyknight.bsky.social) 2025-11-05T14:47:02.508Z
we can chalk it up to youth and inexperience but the biggest mistake the mamdani campaign made was winning by 8.8% and not 1.5%, which is the margin needed for the media to say its a total mandate— andy (@andylevy.net) 2025-11-05T14:25:22.439Z
With headlines like these being a predictable pattern this year, in both News and Opinion, its no wonder the Times is so easily memeable. Social media users are forever fixing the papers headlinesa genre of dunk even the White House oafishly attempted earlier this year.
A growing trend
When an NYT headline is especially galling, followers of the NYT Pitchbot account tend to tag its creatoreither to make sure hes seen the offending headline, or to suggest a past NYT Pitchbot post may have willed it into existence.
According to the person who runs the account, this year has been heavy on such occasions.
Even bigger than Did Women Ruin the Workplace was Charlie Kirk Was Doing Politics the Right Way,” the anonymous creator tells Fast Company, describing the headline of an Ezra Klein op-ed NYT ran the morning after the polarizing MAGA influencer was killed. [It was] the worst ever. That had the biggest response from my readers that I have ever seen.
Although the person behind NYT Pitchbot claims The Washington Post generates more forehead-slapper headlines than the Times these days, at least theres a simple explanation for that lapse. In the leadup to Trumps electoral victory in 2024, owner Jeff Bezos pulled the papers planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, and hes since announced sweeping changes to the opinion section, giving it a more Trump-friendly bent. Amid an exhaustive exodus of talented writers, one remaining columnist recently boasted, Were now a conservative opinion page.
But whats the New York Times excuse for producing headlines that seem scientifically engineered to cause a nuclear meltdown on Bluesky?
Traffic watch
One possible explanation is that the editors are indeed aiming for maximum outrage. A hate-share gets just as much as much traffic as any other kind, after all, and modern media incentives heavily favor the pot-stirring headlines NYT keeps cooking up.
I think that they think the dumb headlines encourage people to click through, adds the creator of NYT Pitchbot.
Its hard to argue with the strategys apparent success. Theres only so many times one can see the same screenshot of a headline furiously posted online before clicking to find out whether the outrage is warranted or overblown. (Your mileage may vary.)
If the explanation is as simple as clicks-at-all-costs, though, its truly a sorry state of affairs for the world. The New York Times is still the crown jewel of legacy media, with all the authority and hefty subscriber base that come with it. If even the upper echelon of journalism is subject to the whims of algo-bait, SEO sorcery, and dying digital readership, what chance does any publication have? As TikTokers, substackers and AI podcasters map out the future of newsand the president attempts to hold dominion over itlegacy media has a responsibility to stay tethered to an era of concise language and a shared reality in its stories and their packaging.
In 2025, NYT has too often fallen short of that low bar.
When a headline describes the anti-vaxx Secretary of Health as hitting his stride just days after a second Texas child died from a disease the U.S. officially eliminated 25 years ago, its failing its readers.
When a headline uses Trump says to uncritically pass along the presidents preferred framing, it feels like capitulation.
And when a headline grossly underplays the gravity of a U.S. president threatening his political enemies with death, its practically daring him to give it a go.
In a recent piece, the NYT editorial board used 12 metrics to illustrate that the U.S. is well on its way to becoming an autocracy. If the News editors who contributed to that piece believe its findings, they might agree this moment urgently demands political, scientific, and moral clarity. If the Opinion editors also believe our democracy is backsliding, they might admit its the worst possible moment to ask regressive questions about women in the workplace for hate-clicks, something they likely wouldnt have done just a year or two ago.
In the meantime, both groups seem to be ushering in a world where the New York Times continued existence is less significant than you think.
