Yet another company is reducing its workforce amid a broader shift toward artificial intelligence.
Recruit Holdings, which owns the online jobs platforms Glassdoor and Indeed, has announced that it is laying off 1,300 employees in its HR Technology segment. The decision will impact about 6% of jobs on the teams.
The layoffs are primarily in the job search companies growth, people and sustainability, and research and development teams, according to a memo cited by Reuters and other outlets. Affected employees are primarily U.S.-based but work across several countries.
Fast Company has reached out to Recruit, Indeed, and Glassdoor for comment.
In 2023, Indeed laid off about 2,200 employees15% of its workforcewith another 1,000 jobs cut last year. The current layoff round will see Glassdoors operations integrated into Indeed, with the formers CEO leaving on October 1.
Despite releasing its FY2025 Consolidated Financial Guidance in early May, Recruit stated that the layoffs had been largely incorporated into its HR Technology segment outlook.
Recruit’s CEO, Hisayuki Deko Idekoba, sent a clear message about AI’s role in the layoffs: AI is changing the world, and we must adapt by ensuring our product delivers truly great experiences for job seekers and employers, he said in the memo, according to Bloomberg.
Doing the robot dance
Many companies that are going all-in on generative AI have been simultaneously reducing their workforces.
In February, Meta and Workday laid off about 4,000 people and 1,750 people, respectively, in the name of putting their resources toward AI.
April saw Duolingo announce that it would reduce its use of contractors in cases where AI could do the joba move that months later still attracts negative comments on the companys social media postings.
AI-related layoffs are also visible at companies outside of the tech industry. Business Insider cut about 21% of its workforce in June while stressing its desire for all employees to regularly use Enterprise ChatGPT.
In some cases, these decisions have been met with regret.
Two years ago, Klarna instituted a hiring freeze to focus on utilizing AI. But its CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, has since announced a hiring spree. As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality, Siemiatkowski said. Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.
In the early morning hours of high summers holiday, July 4, a Southern summer camp became the site of tragedy: At Camp Mystic in Central Texas, flash flooding from a rapidly rising Guadalupe River claimed the lives of 27 people, many of them young girls. Among them were eight-year-old twin sisters.
As waters rose in the middle of the night, counselors wrote girls’ names on their arms in case the worst-case scenario happened.
Some campers tried to hold hands.
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Some didnt make it.
Its the kind of story that splits your heart open, especially if youre a parent packing your daughters trunk, labeling her socks, and reminding her to write. You let your child go just a little, trusting the world to hold her.
To any parent who sends their child to overnight camp, this is unfathomable, says Toronto-based perinatal and child psychologist Tanya Cotler, Ph.D., who currently has two children at overnight camp. The words I can’t imagine it come to mindand yet we can imagine it, and it is our greatest fear.
One of the most common sentiments weve heard from parents right now is “I cant stop thinking about those girls.” But how do we sit with the pain, without letting it swallow us, and how do we stay soft without hardening when the world feels anything but safe? Here, Cotler walks us through “collective grief” in parenthood, including how to channel it into healing action and support those walking through the deepest pain of all: losing a child.
Two Truths (TT): We’re seeing a lot of moms struggle with the dichotomy of witnessing this ongoing collective tragedy while also trying to be present and joyful with their children. How can we hold both?
Tanya Cotler, Ph.D. (TC): Collective grief is the emotional response that occurs when we experience a tragic event as a shared humanity. We feel sorrow as a community, as a nation, and as a world together, and that is exactly what we would expect. Even though it is so painful, it’s valid and it’s deeply human.
One of the most important things is validating and normalizing what parents are feeling so that they dont feel shame. It’s okay to feel impacted even when you don’t know the victims personally; grief can still find its way in. That seems simple, but it’s actually one of the most important ways to cope: We cope via connection. The pain and anxiety of grief expand and multiply in aloneness. Grieve is a verb, and one of the necessary steps is: What can I do?
TT: Lets follow that thread. What can we do when experiencing collective grief?
TC: We may journal to express sorrow. We might write letterseven if you dont know a grieving parent personallyas a way to release emotions. If you know someone who has been impacted, you can reach out. The power of showing up is that we also heal in the process. We can also connect with someone who understands, or speak to a therapist who can validate how difficult it is to witness all this tragedy in our world.
We should also manage our exposure to what we’re seeing and take breaks from social media and other forms of media. Images are very hard for the mind to unsee, and watching images repeatedly on a screen can increase anxiety; you’re sitting pretty helplessly and passively just consuming.
In aloneness, these feelings grow and expand. In connection, they can settle.
We want to lean into ways to cope with that helplessness and hopefulness; that is the action-based part of grief.
Because grieve is a verb, actions are important, such as donating to relief funds, providing supplies to displaced families, and sending compassionate and loving messages to those who have been impacted. All of that can be immensely helpful, especially at times when we feel potentially helpless and hopeless.
Land of Lovies is a group that helps match children who may have lost beloved lovies with replacements provided by donors. Another group, The Lost Stuffy Project, is trying to connect with every family thats been affected by the flooding in Texas. Losing a transitional object, such as a lovie, can be one of the most emotionally gripping experiences for a child. At an unsafe time, it can make the child feel even more unsafe, like they have lost their anchor. Being matched to help another parent find a lovie is a meaningful experience that can provide a small, tangible way to take action.
TT: How do we grapple with collective grief and the reality that we need to continue to send our children out into the world and teach them that it is a safe place?
TC: This is the space where anxiety lives: between what we can and can’t control, the known and unknown. One of the hardest parts of being human and a parent is learning how to live in the both/and, what we are able to know and what we don’t know, and what we can predict and what we cannot. We must have compassion for how hard it is to exist in this binary.
When we focus on what we can control in grief, it can ease anxiety, and that can help when were sending our children out into the world. Orienting in the present can be helpful. You might say, I am safe now. My children are safe now.
Rituals around routine and reunion can help; when I say goodbye to my child(ren), I say, “I will see you soon. Mommy always comes back.”
Of course, that voice in the back of your mind might be, but that didn’t happen at Mystic, and that’s where we move to grief. Guilt can emerge here, too, specifically the guilt that my child is okay, and these children were not.
Guilt gives us something to controlbut by blaming ourselves, our survivorship, or our children’s, we’re misusing it. Beneath guilt is often helplessness and heartbreak. We might need to allow ourselves to just feel that, without shutting it down, and validate the feeling. Permission to feel (without trying to fix) is one of the most powerful ways to cope. We can channel this into action when we have the space and capacity.
TT: How do we connect with and support those directly impacted by this tragedy?
TC: For parents carrying the most shattering gref of allthose grieving the loss of a childthis is a pain that will forever form the fabric of their being, but they will learn to bend as they break. They will learn to soften around it.
When I support someone through the grief of losing a child, I remind them that I will continue to show up and be with them in their hardest, biggest, and most unbearable feelings.
We learn to live in momentsto help them get their feet out of bed, to help them stand up, or to eat one meal. At first, its how do I get through this minute, this hour, this day?
Most importantly, we let them continue to talk about the person they love and lost, to tell their story, and to be witnessed. When possible, we share our own memories of the person. We say their name. We allow the person to feel felt and known.
We are so scared as humans to say the wrong thing or to sit at the bottom of the ditch with someone who is really in pain. We want to protect the other person, we want to protect ourselves. But this is what those grieving need: They need authentic emotion; they need to be asked again and again how they are. We won’t find words to fix itthat’s why people say, there are no words. Its not words that people need. In the face of unspeakable loss, our presence helps redistribute the weight of grief so it isnt carried alone. We must remember the importance and power of bearing witness: simply being there.
To support the Texas Hill Country and all those affected, see this updated roundup of resources from Shannon Watts, organizer and founder of Moms Demand Action.
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Investors in reigning cryptocurrency champ Bitcoin are having a pretty good week. As of the time of this writing, the crypto is up over 8% this week and over 6% in the last day alone.
The token is now within reach of the psychologically important $120,000 threshold, which would be an all-time high. Here is a possible reason for Bitcoin’s recent all-time highs.
Bitcoins rise to $120,000
As of the time of this writing, BTC is sitting at just above $118,000 per coin after hitting an earlier all-time high of $118,780.
At $118,000, Bitcoin is within striking distance of hitting $120,000 per coin, which would mark the first time in history that Bitcoin has reached that level. That threshold would represent a psychologically important barrier and could serve as a launchpad for Bitcoin to rise further in the months ahead.
Todays all-time high price is also notable because it is a reversal of fortune for the coin, which saw its value plummet to nearly $76,000 in April. Over the past year, the coin had gone even lower, falling to nearly $49,000 in August.
But since its April 2025 lows, Bitcoin has been steadily climbing, and in the past week alone, the coin has jumped nearly 8%. But whats behind its most recent gains?
Institutional demand for Bitcoin is up
Its never possible to say with 100% certainty why Bitcoin rises or falls. So much of Bitcoin trading, like most asset trading, is based on fear or greedpowerful emotions fueled by myriad real-world factors.
However, one of the reasons Bitcoin may be surging this week is due to institutional investors, notes Reuters.
Institutional investors are group entities and differ from what are known as retail investorsindividuals who invest in the stock market. Institutional investors include banks, hedge funds, pension funds, and other organizations that have tremendous buying power.
And as Reuters notes, institutional demand for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been surging lately as the digital tokens gain legitimacy as another arm of the economy, particularly after President Trump signed an executive order in March establishing a strategic cryptocurrency reserve.
Legitimacy increases demand for an asset, and so institutional investors are snapping the tokens up, leading to an increase in their value, based on the assumption that the coins will become a more important part of the financial sector going forward.
As for where Bitcoin goes from hereno one knows for sure. Bitcoin, like most crypto assets, is highly volatile. The price can fluctuate widely over just a few days. Some Bitcoin proponents believe passing the $120,000 threshold could mean that the token is on its way to hitting $150,000.
But whether that happens, or whether Bitcoin falls from here, is anyone’s guess.
Even as AI becomes a common workplace tool, its use in hiring raises serious concerns that employers cant afford to ignore.
Recent research suggests companies are being overwhelmed by AI-generated résumés. LinkedIn reports 11,000 applications per minute submitted through its platform, a 45% increase over the past year. The temptation for hiring managers to rely on off-the-shelf generative AI tools like ChatGPT is strong, but a new study published on Cornell Universitys preprint server arXiv warns that doing so could open companies to claims of bias if a rejected candidate challenges the decision.
The study evaluated several state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) from tech giants including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta, analyzing both their predictive accuracy and fairness using impact ratio analysis across declared gender, race, and intersectional subgroups. These AI systems were tested on around 10,000 real-world job applications, revealing that the off-the-shelf tools most businesses would likely use to sift through résumés show significant bias.
While some LLMs, such as GPT-4o, showed near-perfect gender parity in candidate assessments, they demonstrated racial bias. When both gender and race were considered together, none of the models succeeded in achieving fair hiring outcomes, according to the researchers own evaluations. (The researchers did not respond to Fast Company‘s requests for comment.)
The models impact ratiosa metric that highlights potential disparate impact between groups, critical to fair hiring practicesfell as low as 0.809 for race and 0.773 for intersectional groups. These figures are at least 20% below the threshold typically considered impartial.
The findings offer little comfort to those who study organizational behavior and workplace dynamics. The jobs market is chilly enough at the moment, so inflicting too much inhuman AI on job seekers seems like a cruel blow, says Stefan Stern, visiting professor in management practice at Bayes Business School. (Stern was not involved in the study.) There is a case for efficiency but there should also be humanity, especially if we are still interested in hiring human beings.
Beyond legal risk, relying on AI in hiring can also alienate successful applicants, fostering a sense of distrust that can hurt the organization in the long run. Stern argues that candidates might reconsider joining a company that uses AI to screen them. Why work for a firm that isn’t interested enough in you to get a fellow human to interview and assess you? he asks.
In a world where artificial intelligence is becoming the norm, Stern believes that emotional intelligencethoughtfully applied by hiring managers and leadershipcan significantly improve employee well-being and retention. It can also shape a companys culture and business practices moving forward.
Too much heavy-handed use of AI would be a red flag to me as a job hunter, he says. I want to work for and with other humans, not for and with machines.
When it’s our birthdays, were the ones who get gifts. But when it’s a companys birthday, sometimes they are the ones giving gifts away.
Thats the case with convenience store chain 7-Eleven, which is celebrating its 98th birthday today. The chain, along with its Speedway and Stripes stores, is giving away free Slurpees on what it calls Slurpee Day. Heres what you need to know.
What is Slurpee Day?
Slurpee Day is the name that 7-Eleven gives to its annual birthday celebration, which it holds on July 11 every year. (The seventh month and eleventh dayget it?)
While we think of convenience stores as modern-day conveniences, 7-Eleven has actually been around for nearly a century now. The chain was founded in 1927 as the Southland Ice Company, before becoming known as Tote’m Stores through 1946, after which the chain was bestowed with the name we know it by today.
The Slurpee is, of course, 7-Elevens most iconic offering. It was invented in 1966, making it 59 years old this year. The slushy-type drink is currently sold at 7-Eleven stores as well as at Speedway and Stripes convenience stores, which are also owned by 7-Eleven’s parent company, Seven & i Holdings Co., Ltd.
In celebration of Slurpee Day, 7-Eleven gives away free Slurpees to customers.
How to get your free Slurpee on Slurpee Day
All you have to do to get your free Slurpee on Slurpee Day is go to a participating 7-Eleven, Speedway, or Stripes store today, July 11, 2025.
There, youll be able to grab a free small Slurpeeno other purchase necessary.
But today isnt the only day that you can get a free Slurpee
How to get a second free Slurpee
7-Eleven is actually giving people the chance to get another free Slurpee this month.
In order to get a second free Slurpee, youll need to go into a store today and scan your rewards information. Youll then get a coupon for a free Slurpee that you can redeem anytime between July 12 – July 31, 2025.
Full details of 7-Elevens free Slurpee offers can be found here.
7-Eleven parent company stock up 24% over the past year
7-Eleven is owned by Seven & i Holdings Co., Ltd. (OTC Markets OTCPK: SVNDY), based in Tokyo.
The company just reported its first-quarter results on July 10, in which it posted a profit of 65.1 billion yen ($445.19 million). This profit was mainly due to the performance of its overseas locations, particularly those in the United States, notes RetailNews Asia.
SVNDY shares are currently hovering just below $15 as of the time of this writing, with the stock down about 4.7% since the beginning of the year.
However, over the past 12 months, Seven & i Holdings has seen its share price surge by over 24%, according to data from Yahoo Finance.
The technology industry has always adored its improbably audacious goals and their associated buzzwords. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the most enamored. After all, the name Meta is the residue of his 2021 rebranding of the company formerly known as Facebook Inc. That was supposed to emphasize an utter commitment to building the metaversean ambitious yet fuzzy concept blurring aspects of virtual reality, augmented reality, and social networking.
Except Zuckerbergs goals have already drifted. Now hes all-in on attaining an advanced form of AI called superintelligence. Its the focus of a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which Meta is stocking with some of the planets top AI talent. Whether the company is really dangling $100 million offers to snag some potential recruits remains unclear. But MSL is led by Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta in June as part of a deal involving it investing $14 billion in his startup, Scale AIan eye-watering sum all by itself.
The term superintelligence isnt new (it was the title of a 2014 book by philosopher Nick Bostrom), but it may turn out to be 2025s buzzword of the year. A few more data points:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently declared that his company is a lot of things now, but before anything else, we are a superintelligence research company.
One of Altmans OpenAI cofounders, famed AI scientist Ilya Sutskever, left a year ago to cofound a new startup called Safe Superintelligence, which just lost another of its founders, Daniel Gross, to Metas new lab.
Last month, when Microsoft said it had trained AI to diagnose disease more accurately than doctors can, its AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, called the feat a genuine step toward medical superintelligence.
So what is superintelligence? In an excellent piece on its emergence as a Silicon Valley obsession, Bloombergs Shirin Ghaffary defines it as AI that is not just at parity with most people, but even better than all humans at all tasks. Ghaffary says the industry is gravitating toward superintelligence because its a more tangible goal than artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Google DeepMind chief AGI scientist Shane Legg, who popularized that term, defined it for me as something that can at least match human capability in the sorts of cognitive tasks that people can typically do.
Even better than humans at all tasks would seem to be a substantially loftier ambition than merely matching human capability in tasks that people can typically do. But over at IBM.com, an article says we definitely havent achieved AGI but arguably have achieved superintelligence. Thats because the IBM pieces far less sweeping definition of superintelligence only involves it outperforming humans at certain jobs, not all of them. It cites four existing examples: IBMs own Deep Blue (chess) and Watson (Jeopardy!) along with Google DeepMinds AlphaGo (Go) and AlphaFold (protein structure predictions).
All of this leaves me with more questions than answers:
If IBMs four examples arent enough to confirm that superintelligence has been attained, how many would be?
Who gets to decide what better than humans means?
What happens if AI sails past humans on some fronts while remaining stubbornly behind on others?
Dont many of our skills involve the ability to interact with the physical world, making surpassing them as much about robotics as software? (Meta is working on that, too.)
This we do know: Like AGI before it, superintelligence is inherently aspirational. It exists as a notion in part so that groups of people have something to race toward. In that sense, it bears some resemblance to past moonshots such as, well, NASAs Apollo program. The difference is that superintelligence offers no well-defined end point akin to landing a human being on the moon, which youve either accomplished or you havent. There will be no superintelligence equivalent of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.
Back in March 2024, I wrote about the pointlessness of fixating on what AGI is and when it might be achieved. Swapping in superintelligence as fodder for this debate doesnt accomplish anything. Yes, we all need to gird ourselves for a world in which AI competes with people for jobs. I dont discount the possibility of it presenting existential risks to humanity. It will unquestionably cause trouble of types yet to be identified. Andfingers crossedit may help with some of our thorniest unsolved problems.
These points remain true no matter how you define superintelligence and regardless of whether its ever reached. Which means that fixating on the race for it isnt a terribly productive way of readying ourselves for AIs future impact on our lives.
Meanwhile, AI companies still have a spotty record at figuring out practical applications for AI in its present, less-than-superintelligent state. Thats especially tue for Meta, which has larded my Facebook feed with clueless Meta AI interjections wholly incapable of grasping the conversations theyre trying to join. Meta getting better at using the AI it already has would be an encouraging sign that its quest for superintelligence isnt just raw, unbridled ambition in search of actual useful purpose.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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From being the face of memestock mania to going viral for inadvertently stapling the screens of brand-new video game consoles, GameStop is no stranger to infamy.
Last month, during the midnight release of the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2, employees at GameStop’s Staten Island location punctured both the cardboard packaging and screens of some devices in a single motionwhile stapling customers receipts. Although the company replaced the damaged devices, the incident quickly went viral on social media.
Now, in typical GameStop fashion, the company is selling what it calls “authentic relics from the now-infamous ‘Staplegate’ incident,” launching an eBay auction on July 9 starting at $1.
“Sometimes the universe hands you a stapler and says, Run with it. So we didfor a good cause,” a company spokesperson tells Fast Company.
The stapler in question is described in the listing as having “authentic field-use wear throughout.” In the spokespersons words, The stapler now stands as a retail legend born from a half-second decision.
At the time of this writing, the listing had received more than 200 bids, the highest reaching $122,800. According to the company, all proceeds will be donated to Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals.
In addition to the stapler, the listing includes “the first known console to be officially stapled during a product launch by GameStop,” the stapled box, the removed single staple, and a certificate of authenticity signed by GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen.
The auction aligns with GameStops history of unconventional decisionsincluding the announcement earlier this year that the company would invest its cash, equity issuances, and future debt into Bitcoin.
The listing gained nearly 250,000 views within its first 24 hours and is rapidly gaining traction on social media, in part due to comments made by the CEO.
“If this reaches six figures I will include my underwear,” Cohen said on X.
When the listing surpassed $100,000, he promised another prize: “If this reaches seven figures I will fly the winner to Miami, take them to McDonalds for lunch and personally deliver my preowned underwear.”
Users on social media have flooded the posts comment section, sharing AI-generated images of the proposed transaction and asking questions.
“Important detail needed: Used or laundered?” one person replied on X.
As to the state of the CEOs undergarments, the GameStop spokesperson tells Fast Company: “The winner will have to find out.”
Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD claims it has delivered what Elon Musk has promised forever but has failed to deliver again and again: a car that can park itself with full Level 4 (L4) autonomy. That means that the car can navigate a parking lot, find a spot, and park completely unattended.
Some cars have assisted parking, including brands like BMW, Nissan, and Tesla, but none offers total autonomy except Mercedes-Benz. The latter is only a very limited L4 parking test confined to a single airport parking lot in Stuttgart, Germany, with special equipment installed. BYD’s system operates outside dedicated structures and is not restricted to pre-mapped locations.
The company is so confident in the technology that it announced that it will cover any damages to your car or any other vehicle if things go wrong. This means if anything happens, the owner wont have to file a claim and have their premiums go up.
The breakthrough comes with the latest over-the-air update of BYD’s God’s Eye intelligent driving system, which now numbers more than 1 million cars across China. Theres no word when it will come to other markets.
The eye that sees it all
BYD’s confidence stems from a sophisticated sensor architecture. The God’s Eye system deploys multiple sensing technologies working in concert, unlike Tesla’s problematic camera-only approach. Even the entry-level God’s Eye C variantone of three autonomous driving levels included in most affordable modelsincludes 12 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors with 1-centimeter accuracy. The mid-tier God’s Eye B adds a lidar sensor, while the premium God’s Eye A variant features three lidar sensors for maximum precision.
The system’s parking accuracy allows the car to get within 0.8 inches of other objects, enabled by multiple redundant sensors that create a three-dimensional map. This allows the vehicle a deep understanding of its environment. This multi-sensor approach allows the system to detect obstacles. It can even recognize hanging objects over the roof line of the car.
The company reports that more than 1 million vehicles now carry the God’s Eye system, an impressive deployment scale that starts with the most inexpensive models, like the $9,550 BYD Seagull, and go all the way to the $236,000 BYD Yangwang U9, a hypercar that can detect potholes on the road and jump over them. Yes. If the Gods Eye detects an obstacle on the road, it will literally jump over it.
Mercedes-Benz is the only company that approaches BYDs new ability, and it only does so by cheating. Working with German hardware maker Bosch, it achieved L4 parking certification in 2022. But the automaker’s system operates exclusively in the P6 parking garage at Stuttgart Airport, requiring specific infrastructure and limiting availability to select S-Class and EQS models. Drivers must book parking spaces through the Mercedes Me app and drop off vehicles in designated zones, making the system more of a controlled experiment than practical technology.
Even if Mercedes could extend the idea to other parking lots throughout the worldwhich seem impracticalthis approach lacks the flexibility and scalability of BYD’s vehicle-centric solution.
BMW and other premium automakers offer advanced parking assistance but remain stuck at Level 2 automation. BMW’s Parking Assistant Professional can perform parallel and perpendicular parking, but requires constant driver supervision and cannot achieve true autonomous operation. The system includes features like remote control parking and recorded path memory, but falls short of the true hands-off capability that defines L4 autonomy, which BYD is claiming with its new Gods Eye update.
Chinese manufacturers are heavily investing in AI capabilities for their cars. BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu claims that it has 5,000 AI engineers working exclusively on solving full L4 autonomy. Companies like Baidu (whose open-source autonomous driving system Apollo is used by Volvo), Xiaomi, and Xpeng, are on similar paths. Chuanfu believes that Gods Eyes will provide full L4 in the next two to three years.
Tesla’s falling way behind
But perhaps the technology gap is more obvious when you compare it to Tesla which has been claiming full autonomous driving next year for the last seven years. While BYD and the other Chinese manufacturers deploy multiple sensor types for redundancy and accuracy, Musk decided that Tesla should abandon ultrasonic sensors in favor of cameras alone, creating dangerous blind spots and unreliable distance measurements. There have been multiple reports of Tesla autonomous driving problems.
Like BMW and Mercedes, Tesla has a basic parking assist feature, too. Its owners report persistent errors, particularly in rain, snow, or low-light conditions where cameras lose effectiveness. The system’s unreliability has become so notorious that Tesla forums overflow with complaints about parking functionality that worked better in older vehicles with dedicated sensors. Musk’s dismissal of lidar as “a crutch” and “loser’s technology” has clearly left Tesla technologically behind competitors who have embraced multi-sensor approaches.
BYD’s L4 parking achievement and its financial guarantee shows who the real loser is here. Not only Musk, but the entire Western automobile industry. s Fords CEO Jim Farley told the audience at the Aspen Ideas Summit last month talking about his last visit to China: Its the most humbling thing Ive ever seen . . . their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West. We are in a global competition with China, and its not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford. Ford and everyone else, Im afraid.
The steam engine in the 19th century, the microprocessor chip in the 20thcompanies that figured out how to use them thrived; those that didnt declined. And now the race to embrace AI is on. McKinsey estimates the potential for corporates to grow their productivity through this transformative technology at $4.4 trillion.
Todays corporate leaders are acutely aware of thisonly 1% call their companies mature on the deployment spectrumand they certainly want to do something about this: 92% plan to increase their AI investments over the next three years.
However, in the rush to embed AI, these leaders are missing, and even contributing to, a far greater issue than slow AI uptake: a disconnect between leadership and their workforce, leading to the erosion of alignment and trust inside organizations. This cultural disconnect is a far more urgent risk to business performance than technical lag.
Heres how to tackle this mounting challenge.
The problems with a disconnected workforce
Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workforce revealed that global employee engagement declined to 21% in 2024, only the second decline in engagement in the past 12 years.
This ought to alarm business leaders. Disengaged employees are a huge threat in multiple ways. They do the bare minimum work: studies show disengaged employees are 18% less productive on average.
Next consider the impact on the customer experience. Disengagement isnt contained, it leaks, and disengaged employees are likely to lower service quality, slow response times, and diminish brand loyalty.
Disengaged employees also kill innovation, problem-solving, and transformation. They dont speak up, challenge ideas, or contribute proactively. They dont resist loudly. They comply quietly via passive resistance. You lose not just output, but the critical energy that drives adaptation and progress.
Then they leave. Disengaged employees are 2.6 times more likely to actively seek a new job, creating costly churn. Gallup estimates the cost of replacing an employee is 150% of their salary. But before they go, many poison the culture from within, turning previously engaged employees into disengaged ones.
“Disengaged workforce” is a term that gets thrown around a lot by people functions, and too often its dismissed by leadership as HR fluff. But when you connect it to hard facts, it really is like death by a thousand invisible cuts.
AI: the disconnection accelerator
While this disconnect silently eats away at the corporate world, execs blindly plow on with AI implementation, and in doing so are making the issue far worse. A study of 2,500 workers from the U.S., U.K., and Australia revealed that for 77% of employees AI has increased their workload, with one in three full-time employees saying they will likely quit their jobs in the next six months.
Theyre not imagining the increased workload: 81% of global C-suite leaders acknowledge they have increased demands on their workers in the past year. With AI there is just more pressure to deliver more, faster, in less amount of time, and the relationship between employees and employers is eroding.
As one commentator recently put it: Companies are announcing layoffs alongside record-breaking financial results. You work hard, focus on impactful projects, and receive praise from your leadonly to find yourself let go by someone who likely doesnt even know you exist. It feels as though the trust between companies and employees is now broken. Companies, it seems, are either unaware of this shift or unwilling to address it. And frankly, Im not sure how they could fix it.
Slow down and listen
They can fix this. But first, leadership needs to take its foot off the gas. Because if you want AI transformation to succeed, your people need to come with you. And that starts by returning to the roots of effective employee engagement: human insight, gained the human way.
Its about spending real time understanding the lived, felt, experienced reality of your workforceironically, the kind of research AI cant replicate. Because while technology can summarize patterns, it cant observe culture in motion. It cant pick up on tension in a room. It cant notice whos talking, who isnt, and why. It cant notice your tiny invisible cuts forming.
Consider the approach of Dell which in 2024, imposed rigid return-to-office mandates, introduced employee monitoring, and fast-tracked GenAI, all with minimal listening to its employees. The result? Internal backlash, tanking morale, and public employer brand damage.
Contrast it with Toyota which has built its leadership philosophy around Genchi Genbutsu”go and see. Leaders embed, observe, and critically, understand before deciding. Its a major reason why it remains the worlds leading car brand.
Connection and understanding
From there its about rebuilding connection. Be authentic: own the challenges, and remember that people respect honesty over perfection. Surface and elevate the true human insights that come from the front lines. Then close the loop: when people see changes made from their input, trust grows.
Crucially, leaders need to recognise that while AI can help scale tasks, only they, the leaders, can scale trust. And theyll build it by realising that people still come first, AI second.
The organizations that win in the AI era wont be the ones that move the fastest. Theyll be the ones that stay closest to the ground. This isn’t a nostalgic plea for pre-AI leadership. Its a call on leaders to simply do better, by showing through actions, not words, that they are something AI can never be: human.
When it comes to the future of urban mobility, its not the sci-fi fantasies that will shape our cities. Its functional solutions for the everyday. While tech visionaries promote high-speed concepts like ET3s vacuum-sealed capsules, true transformation will come from transportation solutions that are accessible, reliable, and affordablelike modernizing existing transit infrastructure, digitizing bus routes, and reducing traffic congestion. Sexy, futuristic modes of transportation like autonomous vehicles may dominate the headlines, but what Americans really crave are reliable, inexpensive options to get them from point A to point Bnot a self-driving car.
Public frustration around the future of transit is mounting. Waymos are crashing in Los Angeles, congestion pricing is contentious in New York City, and the U.S. lacks a reliable high-speed rail network. These realities make it clear that companies should rethink what the city of the future looks like and reprioritize achievable solutions to real needs.
New data from Censuswide, commissioned by Diffusion, offers a closer look at the evolving sentiment on mobility in Americas biggest citiesand the findings highlight a pressing need for better solutions. Alarmingly, fewer than 18% of Americans describe their citys transit as highly efficient and nearly as many say its struggling. With American people driving around twice as much annually compared to their European counterparts, the overreliance on personal vehicles underscores the urgency for investments in reliable public transit that can reduce congestion, cut emissions and improve quality of life.
While exciting, the novelty of new mobility tech, like the 2,000 new food delivery bots roaming around Los Angeles, wears off quickly when residents can depend more on their takeout delivery than the bus they take to work. In fact, bus delays are collectively costing L.A. residents more than a cumulative decade on the average weekday. Despite the ability to ask ChatGPT nearly any question and get the answer in seconds, Americans are understandably frustrated that they cant seem to get an accurate transit schedule.
Back to the basics
The top three priorities for Americans when it comes to urban mobility are affordability (50.8%), reliable public transit (47%), and accessibility (39.3%) demonstrating a need for options that reduce traffic congestion, provide economical alternatives, and are available to all. Visionaries in the urban mobility space need to focus on these core components before setting their sights on mass adoption. Without demonstrating a positive potential impact on cost, convenience, reliability, and ease of use, companies innovating in the space will only continue to be met with skepticism and resistance.
Fears around AV
Sentiment around automated vehicles (AVs), for example, perfectly illustrates the increasing skepticism and resistance to adapt. Despite AVs being at the forefront of the future and modern urban transit conversation, the public isnt on board, with over half (50.5%) of respondents disagreeing that AVs are the future.
Furthermore, 74.5% of Americans said they dont trust the safety of AVs and 66% said that the technology isnt ready. Yet just this month, Waymo announced they are expanding to New York City. This move suggests that companies in the urban mobility space may be out of touch with what American commuters are ready to embrace. AVs still dont feel normal or comfortable to most, so now is the time to build trust. Rolling them out at scale without addressing fundamental mobility concerns risks missing the mark entirely, since commuters need confidence in the safety and reliability of the technology before theyll consider taking the risk themselves.
Beyond issues of trust and comfort, however, concerns extend to the broader economic impact of AVs. Nearly 60% said theyre concerned about AVs impact on jobs, a sentiment that isnt surprising given growing fears about AIs effects on the American workforce and the disappearance of certain roles. While businesses race to advance AV technology, assuming widespread excitement for futuristic transportation options, they often overlook how these developments will directly affect everyday people.
Job loss is not the only aspect of new technology that concerns Americansprivacy remains at the forefront of conversation, with over 60% of people reporting a concern for their digital safety. Many of these futuristic transport options require a certain amount of data about oneself, location, etc. which can be scary to the everyday commuter. Companies modernizing urban mobility should focus on transparency when it comes to data collection, to help ease users minds, and highlight the ways in which their technology will tangibly improve day-to-day lives. Otherwise, theyll face resistance in the pursuit of mass acceptance.
The real ‘City of the Future’
Since what Americans truly want isnt flying cars or futuristic cities, efforts should focus on enhancing existing infrastructure through smart technology instead of pursuing a complete overhaul. Innovations that fail to get someone to their destination quickly and affordably are far less transformative than companies believe.
The real future of urban mobility isnt about who has the flashiest new system, its about who solves the real problems. Progress is about improving upon how people live, work and move within cities, not making headlines for futuristic features that dont have real-world impact. Before we prioritize the city of the future, lets strengthen our cities in the present.
